I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore

Author:Lorrie Moore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2023-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Darling sister,

Here I sit by the lantern with its chicory blue flame. It shines off the oak desk that I just this morning polished with cold tea. I have recently taken to having a little claret in the evenings with the gentleman boarder Jack. He sometimes adds a pinch of powder to his and offers me the same. I have said yes to the powder now twice and pretend I don’t know it is opium of a fine grade— he is a touch proud— stronger than the usual housewife powder and good for sleep, baths, reading the scripture, and staring at the additional ambrotypes I found in a crate on the porch of an abandoned house years ago and which I have been using to mend the broken windowpanes in some of the rooms upstairs, as I may have mentioned. Moonlight sets them quite to life. And the late afternoon sun, when it is horizontal and diffuse, even more.

Mr. Jack once told me he felt he had a lot to offer as a man. He meant in a woman’s eyes. That he had a lot to offer a woman. But when men say this and they don’t mean a fine house in a fine town I just think, Hmmm-hmmm.

Still I pray for features such as goodness and gentlemanly indulgence. I have had to refreshen day old biscuits with steam and hot skillet grease. In all ways, if you know what I mean.

As I said to the pastor once, “I believe it’s not the prayer, it’s the things you do to help the prayer along that gives the prayer a fighting chance.”

He said, “No man of faith would know what to say to that.”

And I said, “Well, then no man of faith would argue. Faith is not about argument.”

“Well, Miss Libby, men of faith love to argue, I’m afraid.”

“Well, that’s a bit of a contradiction of character, don’t you think?” Since that is how it seems to me.

“Oh, I’m not so sure,” he said with an indulgent smile.

“I believe the scriptures are like crossword puzzles. The clues aren’t really clues just confirmation when you figure it out some other way.”

“That is certainly one way of looking at it,” he said.

“But I gather not the correct one.”

Earlier in the day the handsome boarder hiked downstreet past the wheelwright’s to the printer’s shop to get a copy of the newspaper from St. Louis, the newspaper from Memphis, and the newspaper from Chicago. “Have to find out if I’ve been arrested or if I died or got married or perhaps for some reason have been elected governor.” He wore a silk ascot for this errand and kept it on all day.

“Well, here you be,” I said when he returned. “Guess life’s been uneventful.” A shadow crossed his face. “Or your publicity mistaken.”

“Maybe so,” he agreed and left the newspapers in the receiving parlor for the other lodgers.

But it has aggrieved me the way he is around Ofelia. Unseasonably cold then unseasonably warm. Both of them have come to me with their weather reports.

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