Free A Boy of Good Breeding by Miriam Toews Page A

Wine,” at which point Hosea would produce two bottles of wine, red for the heart, one in each hand, and they would sit down and have a drink.
    None of this happened. The tape hadn’t played when he’d pushed play because he had, in his haste, unplugged the tape deck to plug in his tri-light desk lamp to create more of a mood. He hadn’t been able to find his corkscrew for the wine and so, while Lorna roamed around the house switching lights on and wondering out loud why it was so dark in there, he had rammed the cork down the neck of one of the bottles with his ballpoint pen and then spilled the wine all over himself when it splurched out around the cork. He used the tea towel hanging on the fridge handle to wipe up the wine and then, pushing the cork way down with his pen, managed to pour two glasses without much spillage.
    He brought the wine to Lorna and sat down beside her on the couch. “Oh thanks, Hose,” she said.
    “Lorna?” said Hosea. “Are you mad at me?”
    Lorna shifted around to look at him. “Why would I be mad at you?”
    Hosea jerked his head towards the answering machine. “Well, because of your message. You didn’t call back to finish it. Usually you do.”
    Lorna put her wine down and took Hosea’s hand in hers. She slung one of her legs over his and stroked the top of his hand with her thumb. “Hosea,” she said, “you really are something, you know that?”
    Hosea used his remaining free hand to flatten her hand over his and stop her from stroking. He longed for his glass of wine, but now his hands were busy. He smiled at Lorna. “You’re something, too,” he said.
    “I suppose I am,” said Lorna.
    Hosea shifted slightly and smiled again. He stared at their hands, tangled together and resting on Lorna’s thigh. He noticed that the middle knuckles on Lorna’s fingers were wider than the other parts of her fingers, whereas his ownfingers tapered to a point. He wished his fingers were more like Lorna’s.
    “Hmmmm,” murmured Lorna.
    “Lorna?” said Hosea.
    “Yeah?”
    “Are you mad at me?”
    “No, Hosea, I am not mad at you. Look at me here. I’m trying to get closer to you. Jesus, Hose, can’t you figure it out?”
    “But what about the message on the—”
    “I was in a hurry, okay? I love you, I’m not mad at you. I love you.”
    “Well, what were you going to say, I should what, you should what? You know, you were going to say you should do something and I …”
    “I was going to say, ‘I should go if I’m gonna make the bus.’ That’s what I should do, go. Okay? Go so I could make the bus to get to
you!
”
    Lorna sighed, removed her hands from Hosea’s, and used one of them to reach for her glass of wine.
    “Well, now you’re mad then, aren’t you?” asked Hosea.
    “Hosea, what the hell is your problem? Why do you have to derail every romantic moment in our lives with your paranoid worrying? Do you do it on purpose? Maybe you don’t love me, maybe you’re mad at
me
and you don’t know how to tell me, and you turn it around to make it look like I’m mad at you and then you won’t feel so bad, and you’ll be the martyr. Great. Now I
am
mad at you.”
    “I knew it,” said Hosea. “And I do love you.” He looked at his hands, at his tapered fingers. They were pudgy, he thought. Why? The rest of him wasn’t fat. Could he lose weight in his fingers? They looked childish to him. He slipped them under his thighs for a few seconds, then pulled them up and folded them behind his head. Just a minute ago Lorna had beenstroking one of his hands and he had wanted her to quit. Now he wanted her to continue, more than anything. He reached for his glass of wine.
    “No, you do not know it, Hose, I’m not really mad at you. Can’t we just have a normal time together?”
    “That’s what I really want, Lorna.”
    “Okay, then why don’t you just shut up and relax,” said Lorna.
    “Oh. Well,” said Hosea. And quickly put his glass back on the coffee