A Boy of Good Breeding by Miriam Toews Read Free Book Online Page B

over his mouth and he was taken away for his session. These sessions consisted of various activities. Tom and Hosea, for one year in particular, were the whipping boys for a group of older kids from school. Sometimes they were forced to crouch on their hands and knees right below Evangeline Goosen’s bedroom window and the older boys would stand on their backs and watch Evangeline change from her school clothes to her play clothes.
    Anyway, on this day they had managed to get his jacket but not him. Hosea didn’t want to go inside his house, he remembered, because Euphemia might get mad at him for losing his jacket. He would never have told her what had really happened. Even now, at age fifty-two, Hosea shuddered to think of his mother marching over to the home of one of the big boys and telling his parents what he had done and demanding that her son’s jacket be returned immediately. But Euphemia wouldn’t have been angry, really, thought Hosea. She would have shrugged and said something like, “Well, easy come, easy go.” And then she would have gone to the hall closet and pulled out one of her old curling sweaters and rolled up the sleeves and made Hosea try it on for size. “There you go, pumpkin, a new jacket.”
    She wouldn’t have gotten into a flap over a jacket. She wouldn’t have run over to the school to look for it, or asked Hosea to think back or retrace his steps. She wouldn’t have asked why this was the third jacket he had lost in as many months or why his jackets always had grass stains and leaves and twigs and dirt on the back of them as though he’d been rollingaround on the ground like a crazed horse with a bad case of ringworm. Why, thought Hosea, did he possess none of her insouciance? Why, Hosea thought further, did her laissez-faire attitude towards just about everything irritate him so?
    Finally Hosea went inside the house. He remembered hoping his mother would act normally and be upset about the jacket, and yet knowing she wouldn’t be upset comforted him. What Hosea got from his mother was what he wanted but what he didn’t get was what he felt he needed. Euphemia would have disagreed with this, he knew. “Why shouldn’t I do my best to make you happy, Hose?” And he would have said something like, “Well, it’s just that maybe I need more discipline or maybe you should get mad at me more.” And he’d tug at his shirt and stare at the ground and Euphemia would look at him and then pull his head to her bosom and rub her lips in his hair and laugh. “Oh, Hose. Don’t make it harder than it has to be.” He remembered the song she always sang exuberantly at full volume. “Man’s life’s a vapour, full of woes …”
    Anyway, that day Hosea tiptoed inside hoping to make a silent detour of the kitchen and go directly to his bedroom. But Euphemia was right there, standing at the stove, her back to Hosea. He changed his mind and decided to surprise her instead. He crept up behind her and said “hello,” clear as a bell, and Euphemia, startled by the sudden greeting, twirled around and knocked him against the stove. Hosea put his hand out, against the red-hot element, to break his fall and wound up with a large oval-shaped burn on his right palm. Euphemia had apologized profusely and rushed around getting butter and ice and ointment for Hosea’s burn. Afterwards Euphemia and Hosea had sat at the table, the little white wooden table in the kitchen, and Euphemia had said, “Hosea, I want you to go outside and pick some roses. We’re going to visit somebody very special later this evening.” Hadn’t that been it? thought Hosea.Yes, that’s what she had said. Because Hosea remembered the thorns from the roses pricking the burn on his palm, even after Euphemia had tied around it a beige piece of cotton from one of her aprons. Hosea even remembered thinking that he deserved the pain, that it was a token of his allegiance to Tom who had been caught by the big boys when Hosea