The Other Shoe by Matt Pavelich Read Free Book Online Page A

she might need to say; they told her how important it was that she tell them everything. Their lips puckered in anticipation of hearing it. Karen thought that they must have seen through, and hated, her puny invention about being loved. “No,” she said. “This is that nice kind. Very nice. Probably the best, okay? Can we just leave it at that?”
    Karen was not accustomed to very much of anyone’s attention, not yet accustomed to the necessity of having to cover her tracks, and she suffered the interviews that followed—talks with the health nurse and with Mrs. Hemphill, the social worker, and eventually, very secretively, with her mother—in deep confusion. Karen soon lost track of the facts such as they were, lost or misremembered those things she’d told them or failed to tell them previously, and by the time she was taken to the county attorney’s office she’d decided to stay quiet, to act as if she’d lost the power of speech altogether. Someone had mentioned their purpose. They wanted to find out if she was safe in her home, safe in the company of her father. Safe? Safety, as far as Karen knew, lay inlooking both ways before crossing any busy road. The truth, they said. They just wanted the truth. The only reliable truth lay crouched in her heart, composed of nothing like words, and was nothing anyone, despite what they told her, would really want to hear.
    She remembered that when she’d left the county attorney’s office that day, Mrs. Hemphill had huffed, “Well that really cuts it. We can’t do anything for you. Can we, Karen?” Karen had never imagined that anyone could, and had never asked for anyone’s help. She apologized, however, if only because that was what seemed to happen every time she opened her mouth.
    Jean quit bowling after that, though she was carrying a 143 average in league play, and soon she had joined another church. She got busy at her sewing machine and made them all Sunday clothes so that they could attend services with her. Jean and Galahad and the twins were newly baptized, properly baptized at last, and the boys learned to speak in tongues, which they considered hilarious. Karen could never repent of her sins to the pastor’s complete satisfaction, and so she was weekly admitted to the Chapel of the Lamb but never gained admission to the church, not as a member. Both Pastor Hurlburt and Jean would frequently remind her of how they suffered, of how fearful they were for her as she stood in darkness, outside the church, stubbornly denying herself its warmth and light. But all this dreamy talk of dying or not-dying, and of big swings in the temperature and in people’s fortunes? A God so mean and grudging he’d require gratitude of men with holes in their filthy socks? She wanted no part of him. Having not found grace, Karen continued to haunt her family’s twilight, and she entered a trackless adolescence where even the thrumming of her powerful good health sometimes made her anxious.
    Jean’s new religion required the doing of good works, so Pastor Hurlburt offered them a succession of rootless men who could benefit by exposure to the loving warmth of the Dents’ home and a decentSunday supper. As Jean liked to cook, and as Galahad was willing to transform the floor plan of the trailer to accommodate a long table, and as his willingness extended even to going out and gathering up those selected strays who lacked transportation, most Sunday evenings in the Dent household now began to savor of Thanksgiving at the mission—good, aromatic food, bad hygiene, and, of course, our Heavenly Father to be beseeched and thanked for this and that. Not all their guests were bums or bums in the making, though, and it was at these Sunday suppers that Karen first encountered Henry Brusett.
    Mr. Brusett was the only one of their guests to bring gifts for the household; it was safe to assume on Monday morning that