A Star Tribune serialized novel by Richard Horberg
Chapter 13
The story so far: Allen and Helen savor walks home under the stars.
Allen was leaving school for the next day when he ran into Superintendent Magnuson in the hall. The school board had met the previous night, Magnuson told him, and declined to allow any school dances other than the prom. There wasn't even a discussion. Somebody had called for an immediate vote, which was seconded and approved at once. The vote was unanimous.
Allen shook his head. "Do they think that dancing is evil?"
"Maybe they think that school should focus on education."
"How about athletics?"
Magnuson grinned wryly. "Perhaps I should have invited you to the meeting."
Allen smiled too. "It would hardly have done any good."
Magnuson explained that three or four years ago some people wanted to build a dance hall out on the highway, on the edge of town. The Rev. Mayfield circulated a petition and got a thousand signatures almost overnight.
"That's incredible."
"Really, he's not a bad sort, though."
Allen half agreed. "I know that," he said.
***
One Saturday afternoon, having taken his dirty clothes to the little depot that sent them to Crookston to be washed or dry cleaned, he ran into Annette Bowman on the street.
At first he didn't recognize her. She looked tired, pale — much older than the last time he'd seen her and, somehow, shriveled. Even though it was a mild January day, she held the shabby collar of her jacket up against her throat.
"I've been sick," she said to him. "This is the first time I've been out in a week. And who do I run into but you? I must look terrible." She gave him a beseeching look.
He said she looked fine and asked if she'd had the flu.
"Whatever you call it."
"I had it too."
They stopped in Hauglund's Cafe for a cup of coffee. Sitting in a booth in back, she confessed to him that she'd been sick more or less ever since Christmas.
"I got over it fast," he said.
"Oh, you would."
She was wearing an old gray jacket with a sweatshirt of darker gray under it. Her hair clearly had gone unwashed for days. She wore no makeup and there were dark hollows under her eyes. Still, he found her rather attractive — like a pearl discovered in a tub of dishwater.
"Would a piece of pie help?" he asked.
"How can I say no?"
He called the waitress over — at 3 o'clock in the afternoon the place was empty — and ordered two pieces of lemon meringue pie, which he'd seen in the showcase.
The waitress was smoking a cigarette, flicking ashes on the floor.
Annette told him she'd been reading one of the books on his list, "Madame Bovary," which, when she discovered he was gone over Christmas, she had managed to borrow from the old woman she worked for.
"It's not the easiest book to read," he said, surprised at her selection.
"It's very sad."
"One of the things that makes it difficult, I think, is that the background is so rich it's hard for the reader to distinguish it from the main story. The background jumps out at you, so the main story recedes. Unless he's experienced, the reader doesn't know what's central and what's peripheral."
She was not interested in the background. She was interested in Emma Bovary.
"The poor woman," she said. "She doesn't get anything that she wants. I suppose that marrying a doctor should have been enough for her, but it isn't. She wants parties. She wants to dance and be admired by famous people. She wants to be loved by fascinating and distinguished men. And why can't she? Because she's stuck in a little town full of simpletons and dolts. Her stupid husband is always busy with something trivial and meaningless. Even when she has a child, it isn't enough for her. She wants more. She wants what everybody wants but is afraid to say it. She just wants to be happy."
"People find happiness in different ways," he said.
"Oh, I know. But what way can she find? Where can she find it?"
He thought he should be positive. "She could try to develop her talents. Maybe she could write. Maybe she could paint."
"Oh, I tried that — painting, I mean — but I wasn't any good at it. A couple of years ago there was a notice in the newspaper about an art class. I signed up — I really did. I hoped that the teacher would be some famous painter who just happened to be passing through town — looking for subjects, you know. I hoped that he'd have a beard and an accent. Instead it was just that woman in your school who teaches music and art — Ruth Armstrong. There were three other people in the little class, all of them women. And they all learned how to paint pretty good. They really did. But I didn't. Oh, you've been in my house. You saw those two pictures on the wall, didn't you? They're mine. You saw how awful they are. I'm ashamed now that I actually put them up. I even framed them. I bet they scared you away."
He remembered. Broad streaks of blue and red. Amateurish in the extreme. What could he say?
"You're too hard on yourself," he said. "Evaluating paintings is a highly subjective process. What one critic likes another detests. Some artists don't even know what to make of their own work — whether it's good or bad."
"What did you think?"
He hesitated. Why not say it? "Well, to be honest, I think you could have done better. I would have thought the same of those paintings those other women did, I'm sure."
She looked at him, surprised. Then she laughed. "So he tells me the truth."
"The truth is, I've never seen a painting yet that I liked," he lied.
"Oh, you."
He told her about the two prints on the wall in his room, "Guided by Love," of a young couple in a boat being pushed by Cupid, and "Adagio," an angel in a gilt-edged frame playing a violin. "Every time I look at them I think I'm in the 19th century," he said.
"In Stone Lake, you are."
"Well, there's some truth to that."
She became more animated. Perhaps he did make her feel better. "I tried to write a little bit too," she confessed. "Little poems, I mean. Don't worry, you won't have to read them — I threw them all away. When I was in Crookston once I saw some beautiful stationery in a store, so I bought a box and tried writing what I thought were fashionable letters to my sister in Iowa. Can you believe it? She called me on the telephone to ask if anything was wrong. You can't imagine how embarrassed I was."
He laughed. "What about music? Do you play anything or sing? You know there are a lot of musical activities in town."
"Too many, my son says. I told you — didn't I? — that Leland plays the clarinet. He's very good too. But not me. I think I'm tone deaf. I can't tell one note from another. No musical group would have me."
Tomorrow: Chapter 13 continues.
