normajanesfiction

This is one of several excerpts of a novel titled Common Decency, located in the sand hills of western Nebraska.

And this is Imogene’s mother, Maureen O’Malley:

    “Well, Rosa hated me from the beginning, and that’s all there was to that.  All the time acting like she was just helping out, just being a good neighbor, well what she really wanted was my kids, at least that oldest one anyway.  And don’t think I didn’t know why, I just didn’t know what to do about it, and after a while I didn’t care.  That country takes it out of you, takes the caring right out of you.  It got so I used to think about the war as a happy time and peace as a misery, that’s how bad it was.  I used to hope they’d activate the armed forces again just so’s Bart ‘n me’d have to go back to Connecticut and I’d have to go back to singing in that little club where I met him.  People used to say I sounded like Judy Garland, but I didn’t, it was just something nice of them to say.  I didn’t look anything like her, and sure, I got to drinking a little out there in that empty country, but Bart was worse’n me, a lot worse’n me.  My mother said he was no good, but all I saw at the time was that uniform and that cute way he grinned.  I didn’t see the bottle, didn’t see it all the way out on the train to Omaha.”

    “I just thought it was clever of him to make a party out of that whole long trip.  But then on the bus north to the sand hills, it was like the hangover set in.  I’d never been west before that.  I never knew there was country where it never rained, never grew anything but sand grass, just baked and blew like that.  No towns to speak of except little one-horse burgs a hundred miles apart where the bus stopped -- maybe one bar on the street, and me and Bart just staring out the windows.  Then the bus finally came to the dinkiest town of them all and Bart said this is where we get off. I couldn’t believe it.  Maybe six houses and a building that was a grocery store and a house all in one and across the street a bar and a hotel up above, if you could call that place a hotel, and Bart says this is where we get off?   This is home, he said.  Ma lives over there.  And he started walking on ahead of me in that wind, the wind blowing like a hurricane, dust and sand up in my face, tearing off my hat and my feather boa first thing. He just goes on ahead to the middle one of those six houses, which I saw was a school house from the bell on top, and he walks on in like he owns the place and there is his Ma. Doesn’t even get up to greet him, or me.  Just sits there with this sour look on her face and says so, you’re back. 

    “And that was it.  No coffee, no tea, no come on in and sit down and let me get to know you.  Acted like she never even saw me.  Room full of kids so I guess school was more important.  Bart, he just turns around and walks out. And so did I.”

    “And so there we stand in the middle of that dirt street with our suitcases and him drunk, which I can see why by now.  He goes straight into the bar and calls up what he says is an old friend of his from before, a man by the name of Mason Johnson, and says he’d come to get us.  I am amazed there is even a telephone at that point.  I didn’t know then who this Mason Johnson would turn out to be. I was just glad there was somebody, glad to at least be back in a bar with a bathroom.          

    “And finally this big guy comes in, tall and great-looking, could of played football maybe back a few years, has this grin on his face and this cowboy hat, and you just know he belongs in that country.  Not us, just him. I’m already wanting to jump up into his arms, but can’t do more than shake his hand and try not to cy.  He gets us into his pick-up truck, me in the middle of course, to take us out to that awful place where we were going to have to live and I try to keep my dress which was already ruined from all that dust from getting worse ruined by the gearshift in that truck. They weren’t saying much that I had to hear so I kept looking out at all those dunes with grass on ‘em and thinking it was the moon we were on, that people couldn’t live in a place like this with no trees, no houses, just that raw-looking grass everywhere.  It was just miles and miles of fences and this long trail road we were on.  I remember thinking it wasn’t real, that I was going to go crazy if it took an hour just to get to the house, and then the house itself – well it was full of mouse manure and leftover grain from them using it for storage, and dust was all over.”

    “I just saw this blue water lake out in the pasture and I headed straight for that at a dead run, clothes and all, and dived in.  Maybe I thought I was going to drown myself, I don’t know.  But you should of heard Mason Johnson laugh.  Bart stayed on the porch like he could care less but that big guy followed me out there and stood like a man should stand and grinned at me swimming around in circles in the water. Then he waded in and hauled me out like I was so much kindling wood.  It didn’t matter who was married to who or if it was the wrong thing to do, it was just that he was the only thing in that whole empty country that made any kind of sense to me. 

    “I’m sorry if this sounds bad.  I’m sorry I basically abandoned my oldest daughter out there and let his mother Rosa Johnson raise her, but that’s what they acted like they wanted.  I’m sorry if I let Bart O’Malley ruin my life.  But that’s what I did.  I used to think where I’d have been otherwise, singing on some stage in New York, probably married to a musician, which is what I should’ve done.  But there I was out in those dunes, burning to a crisp, making moral mistakes left and right and generally going crazy.  And all Bart could think of to do was beat me for it, like it was my fault he brought me to that place, like it was my fault he didn’t know what to do with it or how to fix fence or raise cattle, like it was my fault all he could do was rent out his land to Mason Johnson all those years and then spend every dime of what he got paid for it down at Willy Bell’s Bar.  Like that was my fault.”