What He's Poised to Do: Stories Read Free Page A

sometimes, and though she is with another man now, though she is carrying his child, she is still close to me in ways I cannot explain to my satisfaction. When I went there last week, she asked me why I seemed happy and I told her, as best as I am able; the words fill my heart but cannot always make the journey to my mouth. ‘You have hope,’ she said, and I agreed, saying ‘yes’ and then saying nothing. I have hope, but I am unsure whether I am to act on it or not. If I act, there is the possibility of gain but a greater possibility of loss. The sweetness of hope will last only until I take action, at which point it will vanish. I force my mind to realize this. Is hope a spiritual state? I carry out this petition in hope’s name. And so I remain in the grass with Eileen, sitting there, touching her hand. I remain with you in the café in Havana, watching your hand round off a sentence in the air. I remain with my sister, reunited for the first time. I remain with my poor dear mother, at her bedside. That is a continual paradise. And yet, I am still rooted to the earth. I am still a poor man. I am still the son of two parents who are in the ground. I am still at the cigar factory, still a slave of James Hooper, whom I turn away from each time I pass him by. Yamila, my darling, my love, I will write you tomorrow, and the day after that, and every day on into eternity.” He did.

BARN

     
    S HE’S OLDER . T HAT’S THE FIRST THING YOU NEED TO KNOW about her.
    I’m pregnant. That’s the first thing you need to know about me.
    Our favorite colors are one color, blue. Even two sisters who are very different can be similar. You should know that, too, because it may explain the way things went.
     
     
    I MARRIED A FARMER . I didn’t plan to do it. It just happened. To be fair, I didn’t know he was a farmer. He was just a guy I met at a dance, and then later he came into the hardware store where I was working and pretended to be surprised to see me. We went out on two dates before I even got his name right—I thought it was Bert and it turned out to be Berne, which is such a strange first name that I don’t think I can be blamed for my mistake. My sister’s husband, Ed, who owned the hardware store, said that when he first saw the name on a personal check he thought it was Verne, and he blinked twice to get the B to turn. But it didn’t. It was Berne. Berne never had trouble with my name. Who has trouble with Susan?
    Berne and I dated for eleven months. He bought me presents all the time: a necklace with a heart-shaped charm, a red scarf, a hat. Then we broke it off when I went to McCook Community College to learn to be a medical secretary. My parents wanted me to go. My mother, in particular, was sold on the idea. She told me that a marriage was one thing, but you always needed a career.
    We wrote to each other. He wrote more often, and though he was unpracticed at it—he spelled about every third word wrong, and his punctuation was a form of improvisation—it made me love him more, because I saw how I could improve matters. I used to tell friends at McCook that I had a boy waiting for me at home. They would nod or smile and I’d complete the thought; “He’s waiting to become a man,” I’d say.
    Then we broke it off. That’s what I like to say, but really he broke up with me because he thought I was dating my teacher, Mr. Carr. This wasn’t true at all, of course. Once Mr. Carr and I went out to coffee because he said he needed to talk to me about my exam, but after about fifteen minutes it became painfully clear that he had nothing at all to say about the exam, and that he just wanted to tell me all about his divorce, and how his wife couldn’t give him any kids. I guess I felt sorry for him, because I went back to his house after that, but we didn’t do anything except sit around on the couch with the outsides of our legs touching each other. Then he leaned over and kissed my shoulder. His lips were