The Progress of Love

by Alice Munro

  “Well. That’s him’s and your business,” Wyck said affably. The only sign he gave that he might be shaken was in saying “him’s” and not noticing.

  “Theo. Yes,” said Violet. “That is hard to tell.”

  This was in the little two-bedroom house on the edge of town that Violet moved to after she retired from the phone company. Wyck had moved in with her after his wife died and they were able to marry. The house was one of a row of very similar houses strung out along a country road in front of a cornfield. Wyck’s things were moved in on top of Violet’s, and the low-ceilinged rooms seemed crowded, the arrangement temporary and haphazard. The moss-green sofa looked bulky and old-fashioned under an afghan made by Wyck’s wife. A large black velvet painting, belonging to Wyck, took up most of one living-room wall. It depicted a bull and a bullfighter. Wyck’s old sporting trophies and the silver tray presented to him by the insurance company sat on the mantel beside Violet’s old shell and tippling Scotsman.

  All those old dust catchers, Violet calls them.

  But she kept Wyck’s things there even after Wyck himself was gone. He died during the Grey Cap game, at the end of November. Violet phoned Dane, who listened to her at first with his eyes on the television screen.

  “I went down to the church,” Violet said. “I took some things down for the rummage sale, and then I went and got us a bottle of whiskey, and when I got back, as soon as I opened the door, I said, ‘Wyck,’ and he didn’t answer. I saw the back of his head in a funny position. It was bent towards the arm of his chair. I went around in front of him and turned off the television.”

  “What do you mean?” said Dane. “Aunt Violet? What’s the matter?”

  “Oh, he’s dead,” said Violet, as if Dane had been questioning it. “He would have to be dead to let me turn off the football game.” She spoke in a loud, emphatic voice with an unnatural joviality—as if she was covering up some embarrassment.

  When he drove into town, he found her sitting on the front step.

  “I’m a fool,” she said. “I can’t go inside. What an idiot I am, Dane.” Her voice was still jarring, loud and bright.

  Theo said later that many old people were like that when someone close to them died. “They get past grief,” he said. “Or it’s a different kind.”

  All winter, Violet seemed to be all right, driving her car when the weather permitted, going to church, going to the senior citizens’ club to play cards. Then, just when the hot months were starting and you’d think she would most enjoy getting out, she announced to Dane that she didn’t intend to drive anymore.

  He thought the trouble might be with her eyesight. He suggested an appointment to see if she needed stronger glasses.

  “I see well enough,” she said. “My trouble is not being sure of what I see.”

  What did she mean by that?

  “I see things I know aren’t there.”

  How did she know they were not there?

  “Because I still have enough sense that I can tell. My brain gets the message through and tells me that’s ridiculous. But what if it doesn’t get through all the time? How am I going to know? I can get my groceries delivered. Most old people get their groceries delivered. I am an old person. They are not going to miss me that much at the A.&P.”

  But Dane knew how much she enjoyed going to the A.&P., and he thought that he or Theo would have to try to get her there once a week. That was where she got the special strong coffee that Wyck had drunk, and she usually liked to look at the smoked meats and back bacon—both favorite things of Wyck’s—though she seldom bought any.

  “For instance,” said Violet. “The other morning, I saw King Billy.”

  “You saw my granddaddy?” Dane said, laughing. “Well. How was he?”

  “I saw King Billy the horse,” said Violet shortly. “I came out of my room and there he was poking his head in at the dining-room window.”

  She said she had known him right away. His familiar, foolish, dapple-gray head. She told him to go on, get out of there, and he lifted his head over the sill and moved off in a leisurely kind of way. Violet went on into the kitchen to start her breakfast, and then several things occurred to her.

  King Billy the horse had been dead for about sixty-five years.

  That couldn’t have been the milkman’s horse, either, because milkmen hadn’t driven horses since around 1950. They drove trucks.

  No. They didn’t drive anything, because milk was not delivered anymore. It didn’t even come in bottles. You picked it up at the store in cartons or in plastic bags.

  There was glass in the dining-room window that had not been broken.

  “I was never especially fond of that horse, either,” said Violet. “I was never un-fond of it, but if I had my choice of anything or anyone I wanted to see that’s gone, it wouldn’t be that horse.”

  “What would it be?” said Dane, trying to keep the conversation on a light level, though he wasn’t at all happy about what he heard. “What would be your choice?”

  But Violet made an unpleasant sound—a balky sort of grunt, annhh—as if his question angered and exasperated her. A look of deliberate, even ill-natured stupidity—the visual equivalent of that grunt—passed over her face.

  It happened that a few nights later Dane was watching a television program about people in South America—mostly women—who believe themselves to be invaded and possessed, from time to time and in special circumstances, by spirits. The look on their faces reminded him of that look on Violet’s. The difference was that they courted this possession, and he was sure Violet didn’t. Nothing in her wanted to be overtaken by a helpless and distracted, dull and stubborn old woman, with a memory or imagination out of control, bulging at random through the present scene. Trying to keep that old woman in check was bound to make her short-tempered. In fact, he had seen her—now he remembered, he had seen her tilt her head to the side and give it a quick slap, as people do to get rid of a buzzing, unwelcome presence.

  A week or so further into the summer, she phoned him. “Dane. Did I tell you about this pair I see, going by my house?”

  “Pair of what, Aunt Violet?”

  “Girls. I think so. Boys don’t have long hair anymore, do they? They’re dressed in army clothes, it looks like, but I don’t know whether that means anything. One is short and one is tall. I see them go by this house and look at it. They walk out the road and back.”

  “Maybe they’re collecting bottles. People do.”

  “They don’t have anything to put bottles in. It’s this house. They have some interest in it.”

  “Aunt Violet? Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I know, I ask myself, too. But they’re not anybody I’ve ever known. They’re not anybody I know that’s dead. That’s something.”

  He thought he should get around to see her, find out what was going on. But before he got there, she phoned again.

  “Dane. I just wanted to tell you. About those girls I noticed walking by the house. They are girls. They’re just dressed up in army outfits. They came and knocked on my door. They said they were looking for a Violet Thoms. I said there was no such person living here, and they looked very downcast. Then I said there was a Violet Tebbutt, and would she do?”

  She seemed in high spirits. Dane was busy; he had a meeting with some town councillors in half an hour. He also had a toothache. But he said, “You were right, then. So who are they?”

  “That’s the surprise,” said Violet. “They are not just any girls. One of them is your cousin. I mean, the daughter of your cousin. Donna Collard’s daughter. Do you know who I’m talking about? Your cousin Donna Collard? Her married name is McNie.”

  “No,” said Dane.

  “Your Aunt Bonnie Hope, out in Edmonton, she was married to a man named Collard, Roy Collard, and she had three daughters. Elinor and Ruth and Donna. Now do you know who I mean?”

  “I never met them,” he said.

  “No. Well, Donna Collard married a McNie, I fo
rget his first name, and they live in Prince George, British Columbia, and this is their daughter. Heather. This is their daughter Heather that has been walking past my house. The other girl is her friend. Gillian.”

  Dane didn’t say anything for a minute, and Violet said, “Dane? I hope you don’t think that I’m confused about this?”

  He laughed. He said, “I’ll have to come around and see them.”

  “They are very polite and good-hearted,” said Violet, “in spite of how they might look.”

  He was fairly sure that these girls were real, but everything was slightly out of focus to him at the time. (He had a low-grade fever, though he didn’t know it yet, and eventually would have to have a root-canal job done on his tooth.) He actually thought that he should ask around town to find out if anybody else had seen them. When he did get around to doing this, sometime later, he found out that a couple of girls of that description had been staying at the hotel, that they owned a beat-up blue Datsun but walked a lot, in town and out, and were generally thought to be woman’s libbers. People didn’t think much of their outfits, but they didn’t cause any trouble, except for getting into some sort of argument with the exotic dancer at the hotel.

  In the meantime, he had heard a lot from Violet. She phoned him at home, when his mouth was so sore he could hardly talk, and said it was too bad he wasn’t feeling well—otherwise he could have got to meet Heather and Gillian.

  “Heather is the tall one,” Violet said. “She has long, fair hair and a narrow build. If she resembles Bonnie Hope at all, it is in her teeth. But Heather’s teeth suit her face better and they are beautifully white. Gillian is a nice-looking sort of girl, with curly hair and a tan. Heather has that fair skin that burns. They wear the same sort of clothes—you know, the army pants and work shirts and boys’ boots—but Gillian always has a belt on and her collar turned up, and on her it looks like more of a style. Gillian is more confident, but I think Heather is more intelligent. She is the one more genuinely interested.”

  “What in?” said Dane. “What are they, anyway—students?”

  “They’ve been to university,” Violet said. “I don’t know what they were studying. They’ve been to France and Mexico. In Mexico, they stayed on an island that was called the Isle of Women. It was a women-ruled society. They belong to a theater and they make up plays. They make up their own plays. They don’t take some writer’s plays or do plays that have been done before. It’s all women, in this theater. They made me a lovely supper. Dane, I wish you could have been here. They made a salad with artichoke hearts in it.”

  “Violet sounds as if she’s on drugs,” said Dane to Theo. “She sounds as if they’ve got her spinning.”

  When he could talk again, he called her. “What are those girls interested in, Aunt Violet? Are they interested in old china and jewellery and things?”

  “They are not,” said Violet crossly. “They are interested in family history. They are interested in our family and what I can remember about what it was like. I had to tell them what the reservoir was on a stove.”

  “What would they want to know that for?”

  “Oh. They have some idea. They have some idea about doing a play.”

  “What do they know about plays?”

  “Didn’t I tell you they’ve acted in plays? They’ve made up their own plays and acted in them, in this women’s theater.”

  “What sort of play are they going to make up?” “I don’t know. I don’t know if they’ll do it. They’re just interested in what it was like in the old days.”

  “That’s all the style now,” Dane said. “To be interested in that.”

  “They’re not just letting on to be, Dane. They really are.”

  But he thought that she didn’t sound so buoyant this time.

  “You know they change all the names,” she said. “When they do make up a play, they change all the names and places. But I think they just like finding out about things, and talking. They’re not all that young, but they seem young, they’re so curious. And lighthearted.”

  “Your face looks different,” said Dane to Violet when he finally got to visit her again. “Have you lost weight?”

  Violet said, “I wouldn’t think so.”

  Dane had lost twelve pounds himself but she did not notice. She seemed cheerful but agitated. She kept getting up and sitting down, looking out the window, moving things around on the kitchen counter for no reason.

  The girls had gone.

  “They’re not coming back?” said Dane.

  Yes, they were. Violet thought they were coming back. She didn’t know just when.

  “They’re off to find their island, I guess,” said Dane. “Their island ruled by women.”

  “I don’t know,” said Violet. “I think they’ve gone to Montreal.”

  Dane didn’t like to think that he could be made to feel so irritable and suspicious by two girls he hadn’t even met. He was almost ready to blame it on the medication he still had to take for his tooth. There was a sense he had of something concealed from him—all around him, but concealed—a tiresome, silly, malicious sort of secret.

  “You’ve cut your hair,” he said. That was why her face looked different.

  “They cut it. They said it was a Joan of Arc style.” Violet smiled ironically, much as she used to, and touched her hair. “I told them I hoped I wouldn’t end up burned at the stake.”

  She held her head in her hands, and rocked back and forth.

  “They’ve tired you,” Dane said. “They’ve tired you, Aunt Violet.”

  “It’s going through all that,” said Violet. She jerked her head toward the back bedroom. “It’s what I have to get to work on in there.”

  In Violet’s back bedroom there were boxes of papers, and an old humpbacked trunk that had belonged to her mother. Dane thought that it was full of papers, too. Old high-school notes, normal-school notes, report cards, records and correspondence from her years with the phone company, minutes of meetings, letters, postcards. Anything that had writing on it, she had probably kept.

  She said that all these papers had to be sorted out. It had to be done before the girls got back. There were things she had promised them.

  “What things?”

  “Just things.”

  Were they coming back soon?

  Violet said yes. She expected so, yes. As she thought of this, her hands were patting and rubbing at the tabletop. She took a bite of a cookie, and crumbled what was left of it. Dane saw her sweep the crumbs into her hand and put them in her coffee.

  “That’s what they sent,” she said, and pushed in front of him a card he had noticed that was propped against her sugar bowl. It was a homemade card with childishly crayoned violets on it, and red hearts. She seemed to intend that he should read it, so he did.

  Thank you a million, million times for your help and openness. You have given us a wonderful story. It is a classic story of anti-patriarchal rage. Your gift to us, can we give it to others? What is called Female Craziness is nothing but centuries of Frustration and Oppression. The part about the creek is wonderful just by itself and how many women can identify!

  Across the bottom, in capitals, had been written: LONGING TO SEE DOCUMENTS. PLEASE NEXT TIME. LOVE AND GRATITUDE.

  “What is all this about?” said Dane. “Why do you have to sort things out for them? Why can’t they just go through the whole mess and find what they want for themselves?”

  “Because I am so ashamed!” said Violet vehemently. “I don’t want anybody to see.”

  He told her there was nothing, nothing, to be ashamed of.

  “I shouldn’t have used the word ‘mess.’ It’s just that you’ve accumulated a lot, over the years. Some of it is probably very interesting.”

  “There is more to it than anybody knows! And I am the one has to deal with it!”

  “Anti-patriarchal rage,” said Dane, taking up the card again. “What do they mean by that?” He wondered why they used capitals
for Female Craziness and Frustration and Oppression.

  “I’ll tell you,” said Violet. “I’ll just tell you. You don’t know what I’ve got to contend with. There’s things that are not so nice. I went in there and opened up that old trunk to have a look at what was inside, and what do you think I found, Dane? It was full of filth. Horse manure. Set out in rows. On purpose. Inside my trunk in my own house, that’s what I find.” She began to sniffle, in an uncharacteristic, unattractive, self-pitying way.

  When Dane told Theo this, Theo smiled, then said, “I’m sorry. What did she say then?”

  “I told her I’d go and look at it, and she said she’d cleaned it all out.”

  “Yes. Well. It looks as if something snapped, doesn’t it? I thought I could see it coming.”

  Dane remembered what else she’d said, but he didn’t mention it. It didn’t matter.

  “That’s a disgusting trick, isn’t it?” she’d said, whimpering. “That’s the trick of a stunted mind!”

  Violet’s front door was standing open at noon the next day when Dane drove down her road, heading out of town. He didn’t usually take this route. That he did today was not surprising, considering how much Violet had been on his mind in the last several hours.

  He must have come in the door just as the flames started up in the kitchen. He saw their light ahead of him on the kitchen wall. He ran back there, and caught Violet heaping papers on top of the gas stove. She had turned on the burners.

  Dane grabbed a scatter rug from the hall to shield himself so that he could turn off the gas. Burning papers flew into the air. There were heaps of paper all over the floor, some papers still in boxes. Violet was evidently intending to burn them all.

  “Oh, Jesus, Aunt Violet!” Dane was yelling. “Jesus, Jesus, what are you doing! Get out of here! Get out!”

  Violet was standing in the middle of the room, rooted there like a big dark stump, with scraps of fiery paper flying all around her.

  “Get out!” Dane yelled, and turned her around and pushed her toward the back door. Then, all of a sudden, her speed was as extraordinary as her stillness had been. She ran or lurched to the door, opened it, and crossed the back porch. Instead of going down the steps, she went off the edge, falling headfirst into some rosebushes that Wyck had planted.