Anomy

“Have you decided what you are going to do yet, Harold?” his mother said, taking off her glasses.
“No,” said Krebs.
“Don’t you think it’s about time?” His mother did not say this in a mean way. She seemed worried.
“I hadn’t thought about it,” Krebs said.
“God has some work for every one to do,” his mother said. “There can be no idle hands in His Kingdom.”
“I’m not in His Kingdom,” Krebs said.

“Don’t you love your mother, dear boy?”
“No,” Krebs said.
His mother looked at him across the table. Her eyes were shiny. She started crying.
“I don’t love anybody,” Krebs said.

“I’m your mother,” she said. “I held you next to my heart when you were a tiny baby.”
Krebs felt sick and vaguely nauseated.


--Ernest Hemingway, “Soldier’s Home,” 1925