The Progress of Love

by Alice Munro

  I was walking down the main street and I heard a rap on a window. It was the window of the insurance agent’s office, and the person rapping was MaryBeth, who worked there. During her last year in high school, she had taken the typing and bookkeeping course. She lived with Beatrice and Beatrice’s husband, who soon had a barbershop of his own. She didn’t try to be friends with me during that year. We would cross the street or look into a store window when we saw each other coming—though that was from awkwardness more than real enmity. Then she got the job in the insurance agent’s office.

  The Crydermans were gone before that. They shut up the house and went away to Toronto before the baby was born. It was a boy—quite normal, as far as anybody knew. Aunt Ena was disgusted with them for not closing the house down properly. She said there would be rats in it. But they sold it. They sold the newspaper They were completely gone.

  MaryBeth motioned for me to come inside.

  “It’s been ages since I saw you,” she said, as if we had parted most amicably. She plugged the electric kettle in, to make us instant coffee. The insurance agent was out.

  She was fatter than she used to be, but still pretty, with her look of a bruised nestling. Dressed as nicely as ever, a flattering soft blue sweater, brushed wool over the tender breasts. She kept chocolates in a desk drawer and jam tarts in a tin. She offered me marzipan fruit wrapped in foil. She asked me if I was still going to school and what courses I was taking. I told her a little bit about my studies and ambitions.

  “That’s wonderful,” she said, without malice. “I always knew you were smart.” Then she said she had been sorry to hear about my Aunt Ena and she thought it was nice about Floris. She had heard that Floris’s little fellows were really cute.

  Beatrice had girls. They were cute, too, but rather spoiled.

  We both said how lucky it was that she had spotted me, and we vowed to get together sometime for a real visit—something I knew she did not intend any more than I did. She admired my angora scarf and tarn, asked if I had got them in the city.

  I said yes, and the only problem was they shed terribly.

  “Keep them in the fridge overnight,” she said. “I don’t know why, but it works.”

  I opened the door, and the wind blew in from the street.

  “Remember how crazy we used to be?” said MaryBeth, in a voice full of plaintive surprise. She had to turn this way and that, grabbing papers.

  I thought of Mr. Cryderman and all my lies, and my abysmal confusion in the summerhouse.

  “Those days will never come again,” said MaryBeth, flinging herself across the desk to hold things down.

  I laughed and said just as well, and quickly shut the door. I waved from outside.

  I felt such changes then—from fifteen to seventeen, from seventeen to nineteen—that it didn’t occur to me how much I had been myself, all along. I saw MaryBeth shut in, with her treats and her typewriter, growing sweeter and fatter, and the Crydermans fixed, far away, in their everlasting negotiations, but myself shedding dreams and lies and vows and errors, unaccountable. I didn’t see that I was the same one, embracing, repudiating. I thought I could turn myself inside out, over and over again, and tumble through the world scot free.

  ESKIMO

  Mary Jo can hear what Dr. Streeter would have to say.

  “Regular little United Nations back here.”

  Mary Jo, knowing how to handle him, would remark that there was always first class.

  He would say that he didn’t propose paying an arm and a leg for the privilege of swilling free champagne.

  “Anyway, you know what’s up in first class? Japs. Japanese businessmen on their way home from buying up some more of the country.”

  Mary Jo might say then that Japanese hardly seemed foreign to her anymore. She would say this thoughtfully, as if she was wondering about it, almost talking to herself.

  “I mean, they hardly seem like a foreign race.”

  “Well, you seem foreign to them, and you better not forget it.”

  When he had got these remarks off his chest, Dr. Streeter would not be displeased. He would settle down beside her, glad they had these front seats where there was room for his legs. A tall, bulky man, florid and white-haired, he would stand out here—a slightly clumsy but noble-headed giant—among the darker skins, the more compact and fine-boned races, in their flashy or picturesque clothes. He would settle down as if he had a right to be here, as if he had a right to be on this earth—which only other men of his age and race, dressed and thinking like him, could really match. But he isn’t stretching his legs out beside her, grumbling and content. She is off to Tahiti by herself. His Christmas present to her, this holiday. She has an aisle seat, and the window seat is empty.

  “He has the mind of a dinosaur, that’s all,” said Dr. Streeter’s daughter, Rhea, not long ago, talking to Mary Jo about what seems to be her favorite subject—her father. She has a list of favorite subjects, favorite serious subjects—nuclear proliferation, acid rain, unemployment, as well as racial bigotry and the situation of women—but the road into them always appears to be through her father. Her father is not far from being the cause of all this, in Rhea’s mind. He is behind bombs and pollution and poverty and discrimination. And Mary Jo has to admit that there are things he says that would lead you to this conclusion.

  “That’s just his opinions,” Mary Jo said. She pictured a certain kind of dinosaur, the one with the frill of bony plates along its spine—a showy armor, almost like decoration. “Men have to have their opinions.”

  What a stupid thing to say, especially to Rhea. Rhea is twenty-five years old, unemployed, a fat, breezy, pretty girl who rides around on a motorcycle. When Mary Jo said that, Rhea just stared at her for a minute, smiling her fat leisurely smile. Then she said softly, “Why, Mary Jo? Why do men have to have their opinions? So women can sit around clicking their tongues while men wreck the world?”

  She had taken off her motorcycle helmet and set it down, wet from the rain, on Mary Jo’s desk. She was shaking out her long, dark, tangled hair.

  “No man is wrecking my world,” said Mary Jo spiritedly, picking up the helmet and setting it on the floor. She didn’t feel as equal to this conversation as she sounded. What was it Rhea wanted, really, when she came into her father’s office and started up on these rambling complaints? She surely didn’t expect Mary Jo to agree with her. No. She wanted and expected Mary Jo to defend her father, so that she could be amused and scornful (Oh, sure, Mary Jo, you think he’s God!), and at the same time reassured. Mary Jo was supposed to do the work this girl’s mother should have done—making her understand her father, and forgive and admire him. But Dr. Streeter’s wife is not one for forgiving or admiring anybody, least of all her husband. She is a drinker, and thinks herself a wit. Sometimes she will phone the office and ask if she may speak to the Great Healer. A big, loud, untidy woman, with wild white hair, who likes to spend her time with actors—she is on the board of the local theater—and so-called poet—English professors from the university, where she has been working on her Ph.D. for the last several years.

  “A man like your father, who saves lives every day,” said Mary Jo to Rhea—making a point she had often made before—“can hardly be said to be wrecking the world.” Mary Jo did not defend Dr. Streeter just because he was a man, and a father, not at all; it was not for those reasons she thought his wife should have instilled some respect for him in his children. It was because he was the best cardiologist in that part of the country, because he gave himself over every day to the gray-faced people in his waiting room, the heart cases, people living in fear, in pain. His life was given over.

  In spite of the helmet, some of Rhea’s hair had got wet, and she was shaking raindrops over Mary Jo’s desk.

  “Rhea, watch it, please.”

  “What is your world, Mary Jo?”

  “I haven’t got time to tell you.”

  “You’re so busy helping my dad.”

  M
ary Jo has been working for Dr. Streeter for twelve years, living in the apartment upstairs for ten. When Rhea was younger—a boisterous, overweight, strenuous, but likable teenager—she used to like to visit Mary Jo in the apartment, and Mary Jo would have to be sure that all signs of Dr. Streeter’s regular, though not lengthy, times there were out of the way. Now Rhea must know all about that, but does not make direct investigations. She often seems to be probing, skirting the subject. Mary Jo remains bland and unforthcoming, but sometimes the effort tires her.

  “It’s nice you’re going to Tahiti, though,” said Rhea, still smiling in her dangerous way, her hair and eyes sparkling. “Have you always wanted to go there?”

  “Of course,” said Mary Jo. “Who wouldn’t?”

  “Not that he doesn’t owe it to you. It’s about time he paid you back some of your devotion, I think.”

  Mary Jo, without answering, went on writing up her records. After a while, Rhea calmed down and began to discuss the possibility of getting some money out of her father for repairs to her motorcycle—which was what she had come into the office for in the first place.

  Why is it that Rhea always knows the tricky question to ask, in spite of her predictable mockery, lectures, and propaganda?“Have you always wanted to go there?” Tahiti is, in fact, a place where Mary Jo has never thought of going. Tahiti to her means palm trees, red flowers, curling turquoise waves, and the sort of tropical luxuriance and indolence that has never interested her. The gift has something unimaginative but touching about it, like the chocolates on St. Valentine’s Day.

  A winter holiday in Tahiti! I bet you’re excited about it!

  Well, I certainly am!

  She has told patients, and her friends, and her sisters—whom she suspects of thinking she doesn’t have much of a life—how excited she is. And she couldn’t sleep last night, if that counts for anything. Before six o’clock this morning—it seems a long time ago—she stood at the window of her apartment, wearing new clothes from the skin out, waiting for the taxi to take her to the airport. A short, bumpy flight to Toronto, a longer flight from Toronto to Vancouver, and here she is, launched over the Pacific Ocean. A stop at Honolulu, then Tahiti. She can’t go back on it.

  Greece would have been better. Or Scandinavia. Well, perhaps not Scandinavia at this time of year. Ireland. Last summer, Dr. Streeter and his wife went to Ireland. His wife is “working on” some Irish poet. Mary Jo does not for a minute suppose that they had a good time. Who could have a good time with such an unkempt, capricious, disruptive woman? She believes they drank quite a bit. He went salmon-fishing. They stayed in a castle. Their holidays—and his holidays alone, usually fishing trips—are always expensive, and seem to Mary Jo ritualized and burdensome. His house, too, his social life and family life—it’s all like that, she thinks, all prescribed, bleak, and costly.

  When Mary Jo started working for Dr. Streeter, she had had her nursing degree for three years, but she had never had any extra money, because she was paying back money borrowed for her education and helping her sisters with theirs. She came from a small town in Huron County. Her father worked on the town maintenance crew. Her mother had died of what was called “heart disease”—something Mary Jo later knew was a heart problem that Dr. Streeter could have detected and recommended surgery for.

  As soon as she had enough money, Mary Jo started getting some work done on her teeth. She was self-conscious about them; she never wore lipstick and was careful of how she smiled. She had her eyeteeth pulled and the front teeth filed. She still didn’t like the way they looked, so she got braces. She planned to lighten her hair—which was plain brown—and buy some new clothes, perhaps even move away and get a different sort of job once the braces came off. By the time they did, her life was changed without these stratagems.

  Some of the other changes came, in the course of time. From a serious-looking thick-waisted girl with an attentive manner, a gentle voice, a heavy bosom, she has become a slender well-dressed woman with short blond-streaked hair—prettier now than other women of her age who were so much prettier than she when they were all young—and an agreeable but decisive way of talking. It’s hard to tell how much difference any of this makes to Dr. Streeter. He used to tell her not to get too glamorous or somebody would spot her and grab her away from him. She was uneasy with this talk, finding a discouraging message in it. He stopped saying such things, and she was glad. Just recently he has started up again, with reference to her trip to Tahiti. But she thinks she knows better now how to deal with him, and she teases him, saying, You never know, and, Stranger things have happened.

  He liked her when the braces were still on. They were on the first time he made love to her. She turned her head aside, conscious that a mouthful of metal might not be pleasing. He shut his eyes, and she wondered if it might be for that reason. Later she learned that he always closed his eyes. He doesn’t want to be reminded of himself at such times, and probably not of her, either. His is a fierce but solitary relish.

  Across the aisle from Mary Jo are two empty seats and then a young family, mother and father and baby and a little girl about two years old. Italian or Greek or Spanish, Mary Jo thinks, and she soon finds out from their conversation with the stewardess that they are Greek, but living now in Perth, Australia. Their row of seats under the movie screen is the only place on the plane that could have provided room for their equipment and family operations. Insulated bags, plastic food dishes, baby-sized pillows, the folding cot that makes into a seat, milk bottles, juice bottles, and an enormous panda bear for the consolation of the little girl. Both parents busy themselves continually with the children—changing them into pastel pajamas, feeding them, joggling them, singing to them. Yes, they tell the admiring stewardess, very close, only fourteen months between them. The baby is a boy. He has a slight teething problem. She has occasional fits of jealousy. Both are very fond of bananas. Hers whole, his mashed. Get his bib, dear, out of the blue bag. The washcloth, too, he’s drooling a bit. No, the washcloth isn’t there, it’s in the plastic. Hurry. There it is. Hurry. Good.

  Mary Jo is surprised at how ill-disposed she feels toward this harmless family. Why are you shovelling food into him? she feels like saying (for they have mixed up some cereal in a blue bowl). Solid food is a total waste at his age; it just gives you more to mop up at both ends. What a fuss, what accumulation and display and satisfaction, just because they have managed to reproduce. Also, they are delaying the stewardess when she might be serving the drinks.

  In the row behind them is another sort of young family, Indian. The mother wears a gold-embroidered red sari, the father a tight cream-colored suit. Slim, silent, gold-laden mother; well-fed, indolent-looking father, listening to the rock channel on his headphones. You can tell it’s the rock channel by the movement of his fingers on the cream cloth stretched over his full thighs. Between these two parents sit two little girls, all in red, with gold bracelets and earrings and patent-leather shoes, and a younger brother, maybe as old as the little Greek girl in front, dressed up in a suit that is a miniature copy of his father’s—vest, fly, pockets, and all. The stewardess offers crayons and coloring books, but the little girls, glistening with gold, just giggle and hide their faces. She brings them glasses of ginger ale. The little brother shakes his head at the ginger ale. He climbs on his mother’s lap, and she fetches out of her sari a shadowy, serviceable breast. He settles there, lolls and sucks, with his eyes open, looking blissful and commanding.

  This way of going on doesn’t suit Mary Jo any better. She is not used to feeling such aversion; she knows it is not reasonable. She is never like this in the office. No matter what difficulties develop there, or how tired she is, she deals easily with any sort of strange or rude behavior, with unpleasant habits, sour smells, impossible questions. Something is wrong with her. She didn’t sleep. Her throat feels slightly raw and her head heavy. There is a hum in her head. She may be getting a fever. But it’s more likely that her body is protesting its rem
oval too quickly, by ever-increasing distance, from its place of habitual attachment and rest. This morning, she could see from her window a corner of Victoria Park, the snow under the streetlights and the bare trees. The apartment and the office are in a handsome old brick house owned by Dr. Streeter, in a row of similar houses given over to such uses. Mary Jo looked at the slushy streets, the dirty February snow, the gray walls of these houses, a tall office block, with its night lights on, that she could see beyond the park. She wanted nothing so much as to stay. She wanted to cancel the taxi, change her new suède suit for her uniform, go downstairs and put on coffee and water the plants, prepare for another long day of problems and routine, fear and reassurance, dread to be held in check—some of the time—by talk about the dismal weather. She loves the office, the waiting room, the lights on in the darkening icy afternoons; she loves the challenge and the monotony. At the end of the day, Dr. Streeter sometimes comes upstairs with her; she makes supper, and he stays for part of the evening. His wife is out at meetings, classes, poetry readings; she is out drinking or has come home and gone straight to bed.

  When the stewardess gets around to asking her, Mary Jo orders a vodka martini. She always chooses vodka, hoping it’s true that you can’t smell it. For obvious reasons, Dr. Streeter dislikes the smell of liquor on a woman.