alike, Mark reading the sports pages and Molly turning the pages of her coloring book. I said, “Way to go, dream” because I don’t usually get the chance to stand around thinking how beautiful they both are. Just then Mark looked up and said he’d put an egg on for me. I sat down on a stool pulled up to the counter and he tossed me part of the Sunday paper. I wanted to tell Mark about it being a dream—he always makes fun of me because he can whistle the theme from the “Twilight Zone” and I can’t — but then he started talking about what he had to do at the mine the next day to get ready for the two-week shutdown for maintenance. I knew then I had to wake up. I didn’t want to be dreaming about what it would be like for Mark to have a job again. I'm the one who’s always telling both of us that we have to face what’s happened and go from there, not spend time worrying about the way things might have been. Mark calls it, “Mrs. O’Brien’s spilt milk speech” and he usually puts his fingers in his ears when I start it. So I couldn’t be having this dream about a different house; it wasn’t fair to Mark. I said, “I want to wake up,” real loud and Mark looked at me and said, “So drink some coffee and say it a little louder, hon. The neighbors behind us might have missed it.” I yelled it again, and then again, louder. And then I did wake up, because Molly was standing by the bed, pulling at the spread and crying because she was scared. I started to reach for her, to pull her into bed with me, when I realized I was holding on to the headboard with both hands. I knew I had to let go and take Molly, but I couldn’t for a long time. Holding on yvas the only way I knew to keep from falling. Fo»d and Skin Three nights ago I went with Bev Urquhardt to a food shelf meeting at the church. Donations have been falling off for a couple of months and Pastor Robertson thought we should talk about what we can do to keep it stocked through the winter. I felt a little funny about going, since we use the food shelf once or twice a month now, but when I got there I realized most of the other women in the room do, too. We hadn’t talked very long when a woman in the choir who hasn’t lived here long came in with a reporter from the Twin Cities here for another story about unemployment on the Iron Range. I started to leave, but then I realized I couldn’t blame her for writing nonsense if I didn’t at least try to explain what things are really like. And I did try. I talked about how hard Mark has tried to find permanent work and the way we’ve scraped to stay because this is where we grew up and where we want Molly to grow up. And how there’s nothing sacred about wanting to live on the range, but we do want to, and we’d like to be able to earn a living here the way other people do in other places. At least I said some of those things until I realized that the words were going straight from my mouth into the reporter’s brain and then immediately were being transformed into a sort of cartoon picture, “Little House on the Range,” a touching portrait of sturdy working class people fighting for their way of life against impossible odds. Buke, as Molly would say. I mean it. I hate the way what’s going on here is shoved into these neat little slots that people bring with them and unpack at the same time they hang up their blue suits and silk ties. So, depending on what slots the reporter from Minneapolis or National Public Radio or the Task Force of the Week bring with them, my neighbors and I are either so long- suffering we make Joan of Arc look like a whiner or clinging to the past so stupidly we sound like Popeye and Olive Oyl discussing retraining the work force. This reporter was a little different, though; she’d brought along the desperation slots, too, and she wanted to know every last juicy detail about what it’s like to be “newly poor.” It came out all wrong, like I was accusing him, reminding him we’ll only ever have the one child because we can’t afford another baby. Bev and the other ladies were trying to be nice, telling little stories about how sad it is to see friends move away to find work and what it feels like to have a snowmobile repossessed, or a check bounce for the first time—and then to have to give up the checking account because all your cash can fit in a coffee can with room left over for half a pound of Folger’s. The reporter was nodding her head, “Yes, yes,” and favoring us with enough Arpege to float one of Molly’s toy boats, when I imagined myself leaning into the circle and saying, “Well, yes, Lorraine, my husband and I do have some stress in our marriage because he hasn’t worked more than a week-at a time in over two years. And yes, we do feel pretty desperate sometimes. But you know what, Lorraine? A lot of the time we just feel horny. Really. I don’t know what it is about living on the edge of financial ruin, but we just want sex all the time. I mean, honestly, Lorraine, I’ll be sitting in the living room of our tremendously mortgaged home and Mark will be on the couch watching TV and I’ll notice the skin between his tennis shoes and his blue jeans— Mark never wears socks, Lorraine— and I’ll realize all over again there are things you can do without a job or a dime in the bank.” By the time I’d finished making that little speech in my head, the meeting was over and Bev drove me home talking about how this story might be a good one. I didn’t say anything. I was thinking about Mark’s skin. Tuna with Noodles M ark and Molly disappear when I spread out all the cents-off coupons on the kitchen table my mother sends me to help save on groceries. Mark says he doesn’t want to know in advance what we’re eating for another week; he prefers the suspense. I pretend to be angry, but I know exactly what he feels. I think the kind way to say it would be that our diet, like our bank account, lacks interest lately. The other day I had the television on to some women’s show where the interviewer was asking this Mayo Clinic doctor about the three major causes of depression in 20th century America. Mark walked through at that moment and without even slowing down, he said, “Tuna. Tuna.Tunawith noodles.” I fixed liver and onions for dinner. He hates that even more. Homecoming Court I took Molly to Dr. Martin today for her booster shots. When I bent over in the examining room to lift her onto the table I saw my face in the mirror over the sink. It was my mother’s face, the way she looked when I was a little girl. Because I was holding Molly, I didn’t do what I thought of first—I didn’t scream— but I plopped her down on the examining table and myself in a chair as fast as I could. I calmed down okay; I mean, I do look like my mother and I am Molly’s mother, so I suppose I’ll have to accept the fact that the only person who still sees me the way I was at 18 is me. Lately, the worse things get, the more I think about that year, when I was in the Homecoming Court in November and married Mark in May. Oh, I don’t mean I don’t love Mark and Molly; I can imagine life without them for about two minutes, tops, before I run out of things to think about that don’t involve teaching Molly to spell her name or playing Monopoly in bed with Mark when she’s alone. We both cheat, but I’m much better at it. So it’s not that I want a different life or anything. It’s not that. But sometimes I remember all the things I didn’t know. And then I think I’d give anything I ever had to be that girl again. Cet-Up Time Story W e’ve been okay. It’s not great without money, but both Mark and I work when we can and we’ve still got the house. There’s food on the table every night and Molly has warm clothes and a new toy everytime I can pick one up for 25 cents at a garage sale. We’ve been making it. But I guess we haven’t been, not really, because Mark’s given up. It started when he heard he didn’t get the job at the canning factory that opened in Hibbing. He took the phone call next door—we don’t have a phone anymore—and after he told me about it, he stopped talking to me. I left him alone for a while but then I started getting scared, and begging him to tell me what he was thinking. He’d just look at me, and then he started staying away from Molly. He wasn’t mean or anything; he just put her down if she climbed into his lap and he always had something else to do when it was time to read her a story. She didn’t know what was happening —she’s been his little girl and his Molly-face and his best buddy since before she was even born—but she didn’t cry about it. She just stopped talking too, and she wouldn’t let me hold her for very long before she’d go into her room and close the door. One night when she did that, I screamed at him to look at what he was doing, but he still wouldn’t talk to me. I thought it had gotten as bad as it possibly could, and then last night it got much worse. I opened the garage door to take the trash out that way (because the’back walk wasn’t shoveled. When I did, I saw Mark / talked about how hard Mark has tried to find permanent work and the way we’ve scraped to stay because this is where we grew up and where we want Molly to grow up. standing by his work bench cleaning a rifle. Mark’s hunted all his life, with his father and his brother, but he stopped about the time Molly was born. His dad brings us meat pretty often and that helps, but Mark has never been interested in going along. I didn’t even know he still had a rifle; I thought we’d sold everything like that a long time ago. Mark looked startled when he turned around and saw me, but he kept on running arag—a pieceof one of Molly’s old flannel sleepers—up and down the barrel. I don’t think I knew a human heart really could stop beating. I couldn’t have stood there for more than a minute, but it seemed like I thought for a very long time about what to say and what to do. Somehow I knew telling Mark how much I love him or screaming or crying or begging him not to hurt himself wouldn’t make any difference. He knows I love him and I know that isn’t enough right now. So I didn’t do or say any of those things. Instead, from somewhere, I found the only words I knew would matter to Mark in the garage with a rifle. I said very slowly, “Mark, whatever you do, Molly will grow up and do it too.” And then I went into the house and got into bed with Molly and told her the story of how her father and I danced every dance at Homecoming the year Mark was a senior. I told her everything, my dress and the band and that ridiculous wrist corsage—only Mark would have thought of buying me a gladiola. I stayed there holding her after she fell asleep, and then I told the story to myself all over again. I didn’t move when I heard the door into the kitchen slam and Mark go into our bedroom. This morning, he woke Molly up to tell her what he called a ‘get-up time’ story. He didn’t say anything to me until tonight when he said he’d sold the rifle to Joe Staley’s brother. He said it wasn’t safe to have it around with Molly getting into everything. Cartoon Show Sandy had a doctor’sappointment this morning so I took Molly to the library to see some kiddy cartoons. I wasn’t paying much attention and all she wanted to do was see how many different ways there are to sit in a chair. (Nineteen, if you count the handstand.) But I looked up at one point and there was a little character swallowing some dynamite. He 34 Clinton St. Quarterly— Fall, 1988
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