by Alice Munro
Everyone believed he could have been a judge if he had played his cards right. He could have been a senator. But he was too honorable. He wouldn’t kowtow. He was a man in a million.
Maureen sat down on the hassock near him to write shorthand. His name for her, in the office, had been the Jewel, because she was intelligent and dependable, in fact quite able to draw up documents and write letters on her own. Even in the household, his wife and the two children, Helena and Gordon, had used that name for her. The children still used it sometimes, though they were grown up and lived away. Helena used it affectionately and provocatively, Gordon with a solemn, self-congratulatory kindness. Helena was an unsettled single woman who came home seldom and got into arguments when she did. Gordon was a teacher at a military college, who liked to bring his wife and children back to Carstairs, making rather a display of the place, and of his father and Maureen, their backwater virtues.
Maureen could still enjoy being the Jewel. Or at least she found it comfortable. Part of her thoughts could slip off on their own. She was thinking now of the way the night’s long adventure began, at camp, with Miss Johnstone’s abdicating snores, and its objective—staying awake till dawn, and all the strategies and entertainments that were relied on to achieve that, though she had never heard that they were successful. The girls played cards, they told jokes, they smoked cigarettes, and around midnight began the great games of Truth or Dare. Some Dares were: take off your pajama top and show your boobs; eat a cigarette butt; swallow dirt; stick your head in the water pail and try to count to a hundred; go and pee in front of Miss Johnstone’s tent. Questions requiring Truth were: Do you hate your mother? Father? Sister? Brother? How many peckers have you seen and whose were they? Have you ever lied? Stolen? Touched anything dead? The sick and dizzy feeling of having smoked too many cigarettes too quickly came back to Maureen, also the smell of the smoke under the heavy canvas that had been soaking up the day’s sun, the smell of girls who had swum for hours in the river and run and hidden in the reeds along the banks and had to burn leeches off their legs.
She remembered how noisy she had been then. A shrieker, a dare-taker. Just before she hit high school, a giddiness either genuine or faked or half-and-half became available to her. Soon it vanished, her bold body vanished inside this ample one, and she became a studious, shy girl, a blusher. She developed the qualities her husband would see and value when hiring and proposing.
I dare you to run away. Was it possible? There are times when girls are inspired, when they want the risks to go on and on. They want to be heroines, regardless. They want to take a joke beyond where anybody has ever taken it before. To be careless, dauntless, to create havoc—that was the lost hope of girls.
From the chintz-covered hassock at her husband’s side she looked out at the old copper-beech trees, seeing behind them not the sunny lawn but the unruly trees along the river—the dense cedars and shiny-leaved oaks and glittery poplars. A ragged sort of wall with hidden doorways, and hidden paths behind it where animals went, and lone humans sometimes, becoming different from what they were outside, charged with different responsibilities, certainties, intentions. She could imagine vanishing. But of course you didn’t vanish, and there was always the other person on a path to intersect yours and his head was full of plans for you even before you met.
When she went to the Post Office that afternoon to send off her husband’s letters, Maureen heard two new reports. A light-haired young girl had been seen getting into a black car on the Bluewater Highway north of Walley at about one o’clock on Sunday afternoon. She might have been hitchhiking. Or waiting for just one car. That was twenty miles away from the Falls, and it would take about five hours to walk it, across the country. It could be done. Or she could have got a ride in another car.
But some people tidying up family graves in a forsaken country churchyard in the swampy northeastern corner of the country had heard a cry, a scream, in the middle of the afternoon. Who was that? they remembered saying to each other. Not what but who. Who was that? But later on they thought that it might have been a fox.
Also, the grass was beaten down in a spot close to the camp, and there were fresh cigarette butts lying around. But what did that prove—people were always out there. Lovers. Young boys planning mischief.
And maybe some man did meet her there
That was carrying a gun or a knife
He met her there and he didn’t care
He took that young girl’s life.
But some will say it wasn’t that way
That she met a stranger or a friend
In a big black car she was carried far
And nobody knows the end.
On Tuesday morning, while Frances was getting breakfast and Maureen was helping her husband to finish dressing, there was a knock at the front door, by someone who did not notice or trust the bell. It was not unheard-of for people to drop by this early, but it made difficulties, because Lawyer Stephens was apt to have more trouble with his speech early in the morning, and his mind, too, took a little time to get warmed up.
Through the pebbled glass in the front door Maureen saw the blurry outlines of a man and a woman. Dressed up, at least the woman was—wearing a hat. That meant serious business. But serious business, to the people involved, might still seem humdrum to others. Death threats had been issued over the ownership of a chest of drawers, and a property owner could pop a blood vessel over a six-inch overlap of a driveway. Missing firewood, barking dogs, a nasty letter—all that could fire people up and bring them knocking. Go and ask Lawyer Stephens. Go and ask about the Law.
Of course there was a slim chance this pair might be peddling religion.
Not so.
“We’ve come to see the Lawyer,” the woman said.
“Well,” said Maureen. “It’s early.” She did not know who they were right away.
“Sorry, but we got something to tell him,” the woman said, and somehow she had stepped into the front hall and Maureen had stepped backward. The man shook his head as if in discomfort or apology, indicating that he had no choice but to follow his wife.
The hall filled up with the smell of shaving soap, paste deodorant, and a cheap drugstore cologne. Lily of the Valley. And now Maureen recognized them.
It was Marian Hubbert. Only, she looked different in a blue suit—which was too heavy for this weather—and her brown cloth gloves, and a brown hat made of feathers. Usually you saw her in town wearing slacks or even what looked like men’s work pants. She was a husky woman of about Maureen’s age—they had been in high school together, though a year or two apart. Marian’s body was clumsy but quick, and her graying hair was cut short, so that bristles showed on her neck. She had a loud voice, most of the time a rather rambunctious manner. She was toned down now.
The man with her was the man she had married not so long ago. Maybe a couple of years ago. He was tall and boyish-looking, in a cheap, cream-colored jacket with too much padding in the shoulders. Wavy brown hair, fixed with a wet comb. “Excuse us,” he said in a soft voice—perhaps one that his wife was not intended to hear—as Maureen took them into the dining room. Close up, his eyes were not so young—there was a look of strain and dryness, or bewilderment. Perhaps he was not very bright. Maureen remembered now some story about Marian’s getting him from an advertisement. Woman with farm, clear title. Businesswoman with farm, it could have been, for Marian Hubbert’s other name was the Corset Lady. For years and years she had sold made-to-measure corsets and perhaps she still did, to the dwindling number of ladies who wore them. Maureen imagined her taking measurements, prodding like a nurse, bossy and professionally insulting. But she had been kind to her old parents, who lived out on the farm until they were a great age and had any number of things wrong with them. And now another story surfaced, a less malicious one, about her husband. He had driven the bus that took old folks to their therapeutic swimming session, at Walley, in the indoor pool—that was how they had met. Maureen had another pictu
re of him, too—carrying the old father in his arms, into Dr. Sands’ office. Marian charging ahead, swinging her purse by its strap, ready to open the door.
She went to tell Frances about breakfast in the dining room, and to ask her to bring extra coffee cups. Then she went to warn her husband.
“It’s Marian Hubbert, or she used to be,” she said. “And whatever that man’s name is that she’s married to.”
“Slater,” her husband said, the way he would dryly bring forth the particulars of a sale or lease that you wouldn’t have thought he could know so readily. “Theo.”
“You’re more up-to-date than I am,” Maureen said.
He asked if his porridge was ready. “Eat and listen,” he said.
Frances brought in the porridge, and he fell to at once. Slathered with cream and brown sugar, porridge was his favorite food, winter and summer.
When she brought the coffee, Frances tried to hang about, but Marian gave her a steady look that turned her back to the kitchen.
There, thought Maureen. She can manage better than I can.
Marian Hubbert was a woman without one visible advantage. She had a heavy face, a droop to the cheeks—she reminded Maureen of some sort of dog. Not necessarily an ugly dog. Not an ugly face, really. Just a heavy and determined one. But everywhere Marian went, as now in Maureen’s dining room, she would present herself as if she had absolute rights. She had to be taken account of.
She had put on a quantity of makeup, and perhaps that was another reason Maureen hadn’t immediately recognized her. It was pale and pinkish and unsuited to her olive skin, her black, heavy eyebrows. It made her look odd but not pathetic. It seemed she might have put it on, like the suit and hat, to demonstrate that she could get herself up the way other women did, she knew what was expected. But perhaps she intended to look pretty. Perhaps she saw herself transformed by the pale powder that was hanging on her cheeks, the thick pink lipstick—perhaps she turned when she finished and coyly showed herself to her husband. Answering for his wife in regard to sugar for her coffee, he almost giggled when he said lumps.
He said please and thank you as often as possible. He said, “Thank you very much, please. Thank you. The same for me. Thank you.”
“Now, we didn’t know anything about this girl until after it seems like everybody else knew,” Marian was saying. “I mean, we didn’t even know anybody was missing or anything. Not until yesterday when we came into town. Yesterday? Monday? Yesterday was Monday. I have got my days all mixed up, because I’ve been taking painkiller pills.”
Marian was not the sort to tell you she had been taking pills and let it go at that. She would tell you what for.
“So I had a terrible big boil on my neck, right there?” She said. She scrunched her head around, trying to show them the dressing on it. “It was giving me pain and I started getting a headache, too, and I think it was something connected. So I was feeling so bad on Sunday I just took a hot cloth and put it to my neck and I swallowed a couple of painkillers and I went and laid down. He was off work that day, but now he’s working he’s always got lots to do when he’s home. He’s working at the Atomic Energy.”
“Douglas Point?” said Lawyer Stephens, with a brief look up from his porridge. There was a certain interest or respect all men showed—even Lawyer Stephens had to show it—at the mention of the new Atomic Energy Station at Douglas Point.
“That’s where he works now,” Marian said. Like many country women and Carstairs women, too, she referred to her husband as he—it was spoken with a special emphasis—rather than calling him by his name. Maureen had caught herself doing it a few times, but had corrected the habit without anybody’s having to point it out to her.
“He had to take the salt out for the cows,” Marian said, “and then he went back and worked on the fence. He had to go quarter of a mile, maybe, so he took the truck. But he left Bounder. He went off in the truck without him. Bounder our dog. Bounder won’t go any distance unless that he can ride. He left him on guard sort of because he knew I had went and laid down. I had taken a couple of 222s, and I went into a kind of doze more than a regular sleep, and then I heard Bounder barking. It woke me right up. Bounder barking.”
She got up then, and she put on her wrapper and went downstairs. She had been lying down just in her underclothing. She looked out the front door, out the lane, and there was nobody. She didn’t see Bounder, either, and by that time he had quit his barking. He quit when it was somebody he recognized. Or somebody just going by on the road. But still she wasn’t satisfied. She looked out the kitchen windows, which gave on the side yard but not the back. Still nobody. She couldn’t see the backyard from the kitchen—to do that, you had to go right out through what they called the back kitchen. It was just a sort of catchall room, like a shed tacked onto the house, all jumbled up with everything. It had a window looking out back, but you couldn’t get near that or see out of it because of cardboard boxes piled up and the old couch springs standing on end. You had to go right and open the back door to see out. And now she thought she could hear something at that door like a kind of clawing. Maybe Bounder. Maybe not.
It was so hot in that shut-up back kitchen packed with junk that she could barely breathe. Under her wrapper she was all sticky with sweat. She said to herself, Well, at least you haven’t got a fever, you are sweating like a pig.
She was more interested in getting air to breathe than she was scared of what might be out there, so she thrust the door open. It opened outward, pushing the fellow back that was up against it. He staggered back but didn’t fall. And she saw who it was. Mr. Siddicup, from town.
Bounder knew him, of course, because he often went by and sometimes cut across the property on his walks and they never stopped him. He came right through the yard, sometimes—it was just because he didn’t know any better anymore. She never yelled at him, the way some people did. She had even invited him to sit on the steps and rest if he was tired, she had offered him a cigarette. He would take the cigarette, too. But he would never sit down.
Bounder was just nosing around and fawning on him. Bounder was not particular.
Maureen knew Mr. Siddicup, as everybody did. He used to be the piano tuner at Douds. He used to be a dignified, sarcastic little Englishman, with a pleasant wife. They read books from the library and were noted for their garden, especially strawberries and roses. Then, a few years ago, misfortunes started arriving. Mr. Siddicup had an operation on his throat—it must have been for cancer—and after that he could not talk, just make wheezing and growling noises. He had already retired from Douds—they had some electronic way of tuning pianos now, better than the human ear. His wife died suddenly. Then the changes came in a hurry—he deteriorated from a decent old man into a morose and rather disgusting old urchin, in a matter of months. Dirty whiskers, dribbles on his clothes, a sour smoky smell, and a look in his eyes of constant suspicion, sometimes of loathing. In the grocery store if he could not find what he wanted, or if they had changed the places of things, he would knock canned goods and boxes of cereal over on purpose. He was not welcome anymore in the café, and never went near the library. Women from his wife’s church group kept going to see him for a while, bringing a meat dish or some baking. But the smell of the house was dreadful and the disorder perverse—even for a man living alone it was inexcusable—and he was the opposite of grateful. He would toss the remainders of pies and casseroles out on his front walk, breaking the dishes. No woman wanted the joke going round that even Mr. Siddicup wouldn’t eat her cooking. So they left him alone. Or when you were driving along, you might spot him standing still, standing in the ditch, mostly hidden in tall weeds and grass, while cars whizzed by him. You could also run into him in a town miles away from home, and there a strange thing would happen. His face would take on something of its old expression, ready for the genial obligatory surprise, the greeting of people who lived in one place meeting in another. It did look as if he had a hope then that the moment would open ou
t, that words would break through, in fact that perhaps the changes would be wiped out, here in a different place—his voice and his wife and his old stability in life might all be returned to him.
People were not unkind, usually. They were patient up to a point. Marian said she would never have chased him off.
She said he looked pretty wild, this time. Not just as he looked when he was trying to get his meaning out and it would not come, or when he was mad at some kids who were teasing him. His head was bobbing back and forth and his face looked swollen up, like a bawling baby’s.
Now then, she said. Now, Mr. Siddicup, what’s the matter? What are you trying to tell me? Do you want a cigarette? Are you telling me it’s Sunday and you’re all out of cigarettes?
Shook his head back and forth, then bobbed it up and down, then shook it back and forth again.
Come on, now. Make up your mind, said Marian.
Ah, ahh was all he said. He put both hands to his head, knocking off his cap. Then he backed farther off and started zigzagging around the yard in between the pump and the clothesline, still making these noises—ah, ahh—that would never turn into words.
