The Progress of Love

by Alice Munro

  Here come two new people down the aisle, changing their seats, evidently, creating problems with the drinks cart. Another stewardess comes fussing behind them. She and the woman of the pair are carrying shopping bags, a travelling bag, an umbrella. The man walks ahead and doesn’t carry anything. They take the seats directly across from Mary Jo, beside the Greek family. They try to stow their paraphernalia under the seat, but it won’t go.

  The stewardess says that there is lots of room in the overhead bins.

  No. Low growls of protest from the man, muttered apologies from the woman. The stewardess is given to understand that they intend to keep an eye on all their belongings. Now that the drinks cart has moved on, they can see a place where things might go—in front of Mary Jo, and behind the little jump seat used by a stewardess at takeoff and landing.

  The stewardess says she hopes that won’t be too much in the lady’s way. Her bright voice suggests a certain amount of difficulty already undergone with these passengers. Mary Jo says no, it will be quite all right. The couple settle down then, the man in the aisle seat. He gives another growl, peremptory but not ill-humored, and the stewardess brings two whiskeys. He raises his glass slightly, in Mary Jo’s direction. A lordly gesture that might be a thank-you. It is certainly not an apology.

  He is a corpulent man, probably older than Dr. Streeter, but more buoyant. An incautious, unpredictable-looking man, with rather long gray hair and new, expensive clothes. Sandals over brown socks, rust-colored trousers, bright yellow shirt, a handsome gold suede jacket with many little tabs and pleats and pockets. His skin is brown and his eyes are slightly slanted. Not Japanese or Chinese—what is he? Mary Jo has a feeling that she has seen him before. Not as a patient, not in the office. Where?

  The woman peers around his shoulder, smiling with her lips closed, pleasantly creasing her broad face. Her eyes have a more definite slant than his, and her skin is paler. Her black hair is parted in the middle and held with an elastic band in a childish ponytail. Her clothes are cheap and decent and maybe fairly new—brown slacks, flowered blouse—but not in keeping with his. When she came along the aisle with the shopping bags, she looked middle-aged—thick-waisted and round-shouldered. But now, smiling at Mary Jo around the man’s bulky shoulder, she looks quite young. There is something odd about the smile itself. What that is becomes apparent when she opens her mouth and says something to the man. Her front teeth are missing, all across the top. That is what gives the smile such a secretive yet innocent look—a look of sly, durable merriment such as an old woman’s smile might have, or a baby’s.

  Now Mary Jo thinks she has an idea about where she might have seen the man across the aisle before. A few weeks ago, she watched a television program about a tribe that lived in one of the high valleys of Afghanistan, near the Tibetan border. The film had been shot a few years ago, before the Russians came in. The people of the tribe lived in skin houses, and their wealth was in herds of sheep and goats and in fine horses. One man seemed to have cornered most of this wealth, and had become the ruler of the tribe, not through hereditary right but through force of personality and financial power. He was called “the Khan.” He had beautiful rugs in his skin house, and a radio, and several wives or concubines.

  That’s who this man reminds her of—the Khan. And isn’t it possible, isn’t it really possible, that that’s who he might be? He might have left his country, got out before the Russians came, with his rugs and women and perhaps a horde of gold, though not likely his goats and sheep and horses. If you travel the world in great airliners, aren’t you bound to see, sooner or later, somebody you have seen on television? And it could easily be an exotic ruler, just as easily as an entertainer or a politician or a faith healer. In these days of upheaval, it could be somebody who had been photographed as a curiosity, a relic even, in a shut-off country, and is now turned loose like everybody else.

  The woman must be one of his wives. The youngest, maybe the favorite, to be taken on a trip like this. He has taken her to Canada or the United States, where he has put his sons in school. He has taken her to a dentist to get her fitted with false teeth. Perhaps she has the teeth in her handbag, is just getting used to them, doesn’t wear them yet all the time.

  Mary Jo feels cheered up by her own invention, and perhaps also by the vodka. In her head, she starts to compose a letter describing these two, and mentioning the television program. Of course the letter is to Dr. Streeter, who was sitting on the couch beside her—but had fallen asleep—while she watched it. She mentions the woman’s teeth and the possibility that they might have been removed on purpose, to comply with some strange notion of improving a female’s appearance.

  “If he asks me to join his harem, I promise I won’t agree to any such weird procedures!”

  The movie screen is being lowered. Mary Jo obediently turns out her light. She thinks of ordering another drink but decides against it. Alcohol is more potent at this altitude. She tries to watch the movie, but the images are much elongated from this angle. They seem doleful and absurd. There is murder in the first two minutes—some girl with marvellous silvery hair is being stalked through empty corridors and apparently shot, right behind the credits. Mary Jo almost immediately loses interest, and after a while takes off her headphones. When she does so, she becomes aware of some sort of argument going on across the aisle.

  The woman, or girl, seems to be trying to get up. The man pushes her down. He grumbles at her. She replies in a voice that wanders from complaint to reassurance and back to complaint. He appears to lose interest, tilts his head back to watch the figures on the screen. The girl eases her way out of the seat and stumbles over him. He growls in earnest now, and grabs her leg. To Mary Jo’s surprise, the girl speaks to him in English.

  “I am not,” she says stubbornly. “I am not. Drunk.” She says this in the passionate, hopeless tone that drunk people will often use when arguing that they are not.

  The man releases her with a sound of disgust.

  “You can’t boss me,” she says, and there are tears now in her voice and eyes. “You’re not my father.” Instead of going down the aisle to the washroom—if that was what she had in mind—she remains standing within his reach, looking mournfully down at him. He makes a feint to grab at her again, a swift, brutal movement, as if this time, next time, he intends really to hurt her. She stumbles aside. He turns his attention back to the screen.

  Still the girl doesn’t move off down the aisle. She leans over Mary Jo.

  “Excuse me,” she says. She smiles with her eyes full of tears. Her baffled, offended face is creased with this wide, closed-mouthed smile, of apology or conspiracy. “Excuse me.”

  “That’s all right,” says Mary Jo, thinking the girl is apologizing for the quarrel. Then she sees that “Excuse me” means “May I get past?” The girl wants to step over Mary Jo’s legs, which are stretched out for comfort, crossed at the ankles. She wants to sit down in the window seat.

  Mary Jo makes way. The girl sits down, wipes her eyes with a straight-across movement of her forefinger, and gives a loud snuffle that sounds businesslike and conclusive. What now?

  “Don’t tell nobody,” the girl says. “Don’t tell nobody.”

  She lays her broad hand on Mary Jo’s knee, then takes it away.

  “No,” says Mary Jo. But who would she tell and why would she tell about such a formless bit of a quarrel?

  “Don’t tell nobody. I am Eskimo.”

  Of course Mary Jo has known ever since the girl got into the aisle and opened her mouth that it was all nonsense about the Khan and the favorite wife. She nods, but the word “Eskimo” bothers her more than the fact. That isn’t the word to use anymore, is it?“Inuit.” That’s the word they use now.

  “He is Metis. I am Eskimo.”

  All right, then. Métis and Eskimo. Fellow-Canadians. A joke on me, thinks Mary Jo. In her head, shell have to start a different sort of letter.

  “Don’t tell nobody.”

 
The girl behaves as if she is confessing something—a shameful secret, a damaging mistake. She is frightened but trying to be dignified. She says again, “Don’t tell nobody,” and she puts her fingers for a few seconds across Mary Jo’s mouth. Mary Jo can feel the heat of her skin and the tremor that runs through the girl’s fingers and her whole body. She is like an animal in an entirely uncommunicable panic.

  “No. No, I won’t,” says Mary Jo again. The best thing to do, she thinks, is to pretend to understand everything contained in this request.

  “Are you going to Tahiti?” she says conversationally. She knows how an ordinary question at a moment like this can provide a bridge over somebody’s terror.

  The girl’s smile breaks open as if she appreciates the purpose of the question, its kindness, though in her case it can hardly be enough. “He’s going to Hawaii,” the girl says. “Me, too.”

  Mary Jo glances across the aisle. The man’s head is lolling. He may have dozed off. Even when she has turned away, she can feel the girl’s heat and quivering.

  “How old are you?” says Mary Jo. She doesn’t really know why she asks this.

  The girl shakes her head, as if her age is indeed an absurd and deplorable fact. “I am Eskimo.”

  What has that to do with it? She says it as if it might be a code word, which Mary Jo would eventually understand.

  “Yes. But how old are you?” says Mary Jo more confidently. “Are you twenty? Are you over twenty? Eighteen?”

  More headshaking and embarrassment, more smiling. “Don’t tell nobody.”

  “How old?”

  “I am Eskimo. I am sixteen.”

  Mary Jo looks across the aisle again to make sure the man isn’t listening. He seems to be asleep.

  “Sixteen?”

  The girl wags her head heavily, almost laughing. And doesn’t stop trembling.

  “Are you? No? Yes? Yes.”

  Again those thick fingers passed like feathers over Mary Jo’s mouth.

  “Do you want to go to Hawaii with him? Is it all right?”

  “He is going to Hawaii. Me, too.”

  “Listen,” says Mary Jo, speaking softly and carefully. “I am going to get up and walk to the back of the plane. I am going to where the washrooms are. The toilets. I’ll wait for you back there. After a moment, you get up and come back. You come to the back of the plane where the toilets are and we’ll talk there. It’s better to talk there. All right? Do you understand me? All right.”

  She gets up unhurriedly, retrieves her jacket, which has slipped down on the seat, rearranges it. The man rolls his head on the cushion, gives her a glazed, gloomy look, the look of a dog half-asleep. His eyes slide under the lids and his head turns away.

  “All right?” Mary Jo mouths the words at the girl without a sound.

  The girl presses her fingers over her own mouth, her smile.

  Mary Jo walks to the back of the plane. Earlier, she removed her boots and put on slippers. Now she pads along comfortably, but misses the feeling of competence and resolution that boots can give.

  She has to get in the lineup for the toilets, because there is nowhere else to stand. The line extends into the little space by the window where she intended to wait. She keeps looking around, waiting for the girl to come up behind her. Not yet. Other, taller people join the line and she has to keep peering around them, wanting to make sure the girl can see where she is. She has to move forward with the line, and when it’s her turn she has no choice but to go in. It’s time she went, anyway.

  She gets out as quickly as possible. The girl is still not there. Not in the lineup. Not hanging around the galley or sitting in any of the back seats. The line is shorter now and there is room for Mary Jo to stand by the window. She waits there, shivering, wishing she had brought her jacket.

  In the washroom, she didn’t take time to put on fresh lipstick. She does so now, looking at her reflection in the dark window. Suppose she decided to speak to somebody about the girl—what would they think of her? She could speak to somebody now—that older, rather grim-looking stewardess with the coppery eye makeup, who seems to be in charge, or the steward, who looks distracted but more approachable. She could tell them what the girl had said, and about her trembling. She could voice her suspicions. But what do those amount to? The girl has not really said anything that suspicions can be firmly based on. She is Eskimo, she is sixteen, she is going to Hawaii with a much older man who is not her father. Is sixteen underage? Is taking a girl to Hawaii a crime? She may be more than sixteen after all; she certainly looks it. She may be drunk and lying. She may be his wife, though she doesn’t wear a ring. He may certainly be some sort of relative. If Mary Jo says anything now, she will be seen as a meddling woman, who has had one drink and may have had more. She may be seen as someone trying to get hold of the girl for her own purposes.

  The girl herself will have to say more if anything is to be done.

  You can’t be helped if you don’t ask for it.

  You will have to say what you want.

  You will have to say.

  Mary Jo walks slowly back to her seat, checking on the way to see if the girl has moved, if she is sitting somewhere else. She looks for the large docile head with its black ponytail.

  Nowhere.

  But when she is nearly back to her seat she sees that the girl has moved. She has moved back to where she was sitting before beside the man. They have been provided with two more whiskeys.

  Perhaps he grabbed her when she got up, and forced her to sit down with him. Mary Jo should have seen that the girl went first. But could she have persuaded her, made her understand? Did the girl really understand that help was being offered?

  Mary Jo stands in the aisle putting on her jacket. She looks down at the couple, but they don’t look at her. She sits down and snaps on her reading light, then turns it off. Nobody is watching the movie anymore. The Greek baby is crying, and the father is walking it up and down the aisle. The little Indian girls have toppled over on each other, and their brother is asleep in his mother’s narrow lap.

  Dr. Streeter would soon put Mary Jo straight about this. Some kinds of concern—he has made her admit this—are little more than frivolity and self-indulgence. With their self-indulgent good intentions, people are apt to do more harm than good. And that is what she might do in this case.

  Yes. But he could always turn to what was inside people, inside their chests. If this girl had a faulty heart, even if she was twenty years older, forty years older, than she is, even if her life was totally muddled and useless and her brain half-rotted with drink—even then he would put himself completely at her service. He withheld nothing, he used himself up in such rescues or attempted rescues. If it was a problem of the real heart, the bloody, pumping, burdened heart inside a person’s chest.

  Dr. Streeter’s voice has an underlying sadness. It’s not only his voice. His breathing is sad. An incurable, calm, and decent sadness is what he breathes out over the phone before you even hear his voice. He would be displeased if you told him that. Not that he particularly wishes to be thought jolly. But he would think it unnecessary, impertinent, for anybody to assume that he is sad.

  This sadness seems to come from obedience. Mary Jo can just recognize that, never understand it. She thinks there is an obedience about men that women can’t understand. (What would Rhea say to that?) It’s not the things he knows about—Mary Jo could manage that—but the things he accepts that make a difference. He baffles her, and compels her. She loves this man with a baffled, cautious, permanent love.

  When she pictures him, she always sees him wearing his brown three-piece suit, an old-fashioned suit that makes him look like a doctor from his classically poor and rural childhood. He has good-looking casual clothes and she has seen him in them, but she thinks he isn’t at ease in them. He isn’t at ease with being rich, she thinks, though he feels an obligation to be so and a hatred for any government that would prevent him. All obedience, acceptance, sadness.
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br />   He wouldn’t believe her if she told him that. Nobody would.

  She is shivering, even with her jacket on. She seems to have caught something of the girl’s persistent and peculiar agitation. Perhaps she really is sick, has a fever. She twists around, trying to compose herself. She closes her eyes but cannot keep them closed. She cannot stop herself from watching what is going on across the aisle.

  What is going on is something she should have the sense and decency to turn away from. But she hasn’t, and she doesn’t.

  The whiskey glasses are empty. The girl has leaned forward and is kissing the man’s face. His head is resting against the cushion and he does not stir. She leans over him, her eyes closed, or almost closed, her face broad and pale and impassive, a true moon face. She kisses his lips, his cheeks, his eyelids, his forehead. He offers himself to her; he permits her. She kisses him and licks him. She licks his nose, the faint stubble of his cheeks and neck and chin. She licks him all over his face, then takes a breath and resumes her kissing.

  This is unhurried, not greedy. It is not mechanical, either. There is no trace of compulsion. The girl is in earnest; she is in a trance of devotion. True devotion. Nothing so presumptuous as forgiveness or consolation. A ritual that takes every bit of her concentration and her self but in which her self is lost. It could go on forever.

  Even when the girl’s eyes open and she looks straight out across the aisle, with an expression that is not dazed and unaware but direct and shocking—even then, Mary Jo has to keep looking. Only with a jolting effort, and after an immeasurable amount of time, is she able to pull her own eyes away.

  If anybody was to ask her what she was feeling while she watched this, Mary Jo would have said that she felt sick. And she would have meant it. Not just sick with the beginnings of a fever or whatever it is that’s making her dull and shivery, but sick with revulsion, as if she could feel the slow journeys of the warm, thick tongue over her face. Then, when she takes her eyes away, something else is released, and that is desire—sudden and punishing as a rush of loose earth down a mountainside.