Friend of My Youth

shipping it is too high. Austin agrees with him. The money could be better spent, he says. What’s furniture? Then Austin is called upon to explain about the Auction Barn and what Karin is doing.
    “Of course, of course, no trouble,” Austin says. “They’ll list everything they get and what it sold for. They can easily send a copy. They’ve got a computer, I understand. No longer the Dark Ages up here.…
    “Yes,” Austin says. “I hoped you’d see it that way about the money. It’s a project close to my heart. And you and your sister are providing well for yourselves. I’m very fortunate in my children.…
    “The Old Age Pension and my minister’s pension,” he says. “Whatever more could I want? And this lady, this lady, I can tell you, Sheila—she is not short of money, if I can put it that way.…” He laughs rather mischievously at something his son says.
    After he hangs up, he says to Karin, “Well, my son is worried about my finances and my daughter is worried about my mental state. My mental-emotional state. The male and female way of looking at things. The male and female way of expressing their anxiety. Underneath it’s the same thing. The old order changeth, yielding place to new.”
    Don wouldn’t remember everything that was in the house, anyway. How could he? He was here the day of the funeral and his wife wasn’t with him; she was too pregnant to come. He wouldn’t have her to rely on. Men don’t remember that sort of thing well. He just asked for the list so that it would look as if he were keeping track of everything and nobody’d better try to hoodwink him. Or hoodwink his father.
    There were things Karin was going to get, and nobody need know where she had got them. Nobody came up to her place. A willow-pattern plate. The blue-and-gray flowered curtains. A little, fat jug of ruby-colored glass with a silver lid. A white damask cloth, a tablecloth, that she had ironed till it shone like a frosted snowfield, and the enormous napkins that went with it. The tablecloth alone weighed as much as a child, and the napkins would flop out of wineglasses like lilies—if you had wineglasses. Just as a start, she has already taken home six silver spoons in her coat pocket. She knows enough not to disturb the silver tea service or the good dishes. But some pink glass dishes for dessert, with long stems, have taken her eye. She can see her place transformed, with these things in it. More than that, she can feel the quiet and content they would extend to her. Sitting in a room so furnished, she wouldn’t need to go out. She would never need to think of Brent, and ways to torment him. A person sitting in such a room could turn and floor anybody trying to intrude.
    Was there something you wanted?
    On Monday of Austin’s last week—he was supposed to fly to Hawaii on Saturday—the first big storm of the winter began.The wind came in from the west, over the lake; there was driving snow all day and night. Monday and Tuesday the schools were closed, so Karin didn’t have to work as a guard. But she couldn’t stand staying indoors; she put on her duffel coat and wrapped her head and half her face in a wool scarf and plowed through the snow-filled streets to the parsonage.
    The house is cold, the wind is coming in around the doors and windows. In the kitchen cupboard along the west wall, the dishes feel like ice. Austin is dressed but lying down on the living-room sofa, wrapped in various quilts and blankets. He is not reading or watching television or dozing, as far as she can tell—just staring. She makes him a cup of instant coffee.
    “Do you think this’ll stop by Saturday?” she says. She has the feeling that if he doesn’t go Saturday, he just may not go at all. The whole thing could be called off, all plans could falter.
    “It’ll stop in due time,” he says. “I’m not worried.”
    Karin’s baby died in a snowstorm. In the afternoon, when Brent was drinking with his friend Rob and watching television, Karin said that the baby was sick and she needed money for a taxi to take him to the hospital. Brent told her to fuck off. He thought she was just trying to bother him. And partly she was—the baby had just thrown up once, and whimpered, and he didn’t seem very hot. Then about suppertime, with Rob gone, Brent went to pick up the baby and play with him, forgetting that he was sick. “This baby’s like a hot coal!” he yelled at Karin, and wanted to know why she hadn’t