Family Furnishings

by Alice Munro

  Doree was not sure that she could handle this, but it turned out that the Department of Education had guidelines, and lesson plans that you could get from your local school. Sasha was a bright boy who practically taught himself to read, and the other two were still too little to learn much yet. In evenings and on weekends Lloyd taught Sasha about geography and the solar system and the hibernation of animals and how a car runs, covering each subject as the questions came up. Pretty soon Sasha was ahead of the school plans, but Doree picked them up anyway and put him through the exercises right on time so that the law would be satisfied.

  There was another mother in the district doing homeschooling. Her name was Maggie, and she had a minivan. Lloyd needed his car to get to work, and Doree had not learned to drive, so she was glad when Maggie offered her a ride to the school once a week to turn in the finished exercises and pick up the new ones. Of course they took all the children along. Maggie had two boys. The older one had so many allergies that she had to keep a strict eye on everything he ate—that was why she taught him at home. And then it seemed that she might as well keep the younger one there as well. He wanted to stay with his brother and he had a problem with asthma, anyway.

  How grateful Doree was then, comparing her healthy three. Lloyd said it was because she’d had all her children when she was still young, while Maggie had waited until she was on the verge of the menopause. He was exaggerating how old Maggie was, but it was true that she had waited. She was an optometrist. She and her husband had been partners, and they hadn’t started their family until she could leave the practice and they had a house in the country.

  Maggie’s hair was pepper-and-salt, cropped close to her head. She was tall, flat-chested, cheerful, and opinionated. Lloyd called her the Lezzie. Only behind her back, of course. He kidded with her on the phone but mouthed at Doree, “It’s the Lezzie.” That didn’t really bother Doree—he called lots of women Lezzies. But she was afraid that the kidding would seem overly friendly to Maggie, an intrusion, or at least a waste of time.

  “You want to speak to the ole lady? Yeah. I got her right here. Workin at the scrub board. Yeah, I’m a real slave driver. She tell you that?”

  —

  DOREE AND MAGGIE got into the habit of shopping for groceries together after they’d picked up the papers at the school. Then sometimes they’d get takeout coffees at Tim Hortons and drive the children to Riverside Park. They sat on a bench while Sasha and Maggie’s boys raced around or hung from the climbing contraptions, and Barbara Ann pumped on the swing and Dimitri played in the sandbox. Or they sat in the mini, if it was cold. They talked mostly about the children and things they cooked, but somehow Doree found out how Maggie had trekked around Europe before training as an optometrist, and Maggie found out how young Doree had been when she got married. Also about how easily she had become pregnant at first, and how she didn’t so easily anymore, and how that made Lloyd suspicious, so that he went through her dresser drawers looking for birth-control pills—thinking she must be taking them on the sly.

  “And are you?” Maggie asked.

  Doree was shocked. She said she wouldn’t dare.

  “I mean, I’d think that was awful to do, without telling him. It’s just kind of a joke when he goes looking for them.”

  “Oh,” Maggie said.

  And one time Maggie said, “Is everything all right with you? I mean in your marriage? You’re happy?”

  Doree said yes, without hesitation. After that she was more careful about what she said. She saw that there were things that she was used to that another person might not understand. Lloyd had a certain way of looking at things: that was just how he was. Even when she’d first met him, in the hospital, he’d been like that. The head nurse was a starchy sort of person, so he’d call her Mrs. Bitch-out-of-Hell, instead of her name, which was Mrs. Mitchell. He said it so fast that you could barely catch on. He’d thought that she picked favorites, and he wasn’t one of them. Now there was someone he detested at the ice-cream factory, somebody he called Suck-Stick Louie. Doree didn’t know the man’s real name. But at least that proved that it wasn’t only women who provoked him.

  Doree was pretty sure that these people weren’t as bad as Lloyd thought, but it was no use contradicting him. Perhaps men just had to have enemies, the way they had to have their jokes. And sometimes Lloyd did make the enemies into jokes, just as if he was laughing at himself. She was even allowed to laugh with him, as long as she wasn’t the one who started the laughing.

  She hoped he wouldn’t get that way about Maggie. At times she was afraid she saw something of the sort coming. If he prevented her from riding to the school and the grocery store with Maggie it would be a big inconvenience. But worse would be the shame. She would have to make up some stupid lie to explain things. But Maggie would know—at least she would know that Doree was lying, and she would interpret that probably as meaning that Doree was in a worse situation than she really was. Maggie had her own sharp way of looking at things.

  Then Doree asked herself why she should care what Maggie might think. Maggie was an outsider, not even somebody Doree felt comfortable with. It was Lloyd said that, and he was right. The truth of things between them, the bond, was not something that anybody else could understand and it was not anybody else’s business. If Doree could watch her own loyalty it would be all right.

  —

  IT GOT WORSE, GRADUALLY. No direct forbidding, but more criticism. Lloyd coming up with the theory that Maggie’s boys’ allergies and asthma might be Maggie’s fault. The reason was often the mother, he said. He used to see it at the hospital all the time. The overcontrolling, usually overeducated mother.

  “Some of the time kids are just born with something,” Doree said, unwisely. “You can’t say it’s the mother every time.”

  “Oh. Why can’t I?”

  “I didn’t mean you. I didn’t mean you can’t. I mean, couldn’t they be born with things?”

  “Since when are you such a medical authority?”

  “I didn’t say I was.”

  “No. And you’re not.”

  Bad to worse. He wanted to know what they talked about, she and Maggie.

  “I don’t know. Nothing really.”

  “That’s funny. Two women riding in a car. First I heard of it. Two women talking about nothing. She is out to break us up.”

  “Who is? Maggie?”

  “I’ve got experience of her kind of woman.”

  “What kind?”

  “Her kind.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “Careful. Don’t call me silly.”

  “What would she want to do that for?”

  “How am I supposed to know? She just wants to do it. You wait. You’ll see. She’ll get you over there bawling and whining about what a bastard I am. One of these days.”

  —

  AND IN FACT it turned out as he had said. At least it would certainly have looked that way, to Lloyd. She did find herself at around ten o’clock one night in Maggie’s kitchen, sniffling back her tears and drinking herbal tea. Maggie’s husband had said, “What the hell?” when she knocked—she heard him through the door. He hadn’t known who she was. She’d said, “I’m really sorry to bother you—” while he stared at her with lifted eyebrows and a tight mouth. And then Maggie had come.

  Doree had walked all the way there in the dark, first along the gravel road that she and Lloyd lived on, and then on the highway. She headed for the ditch every time a car came, and that slowed her down considerably. She did take a look at the cars that passed, thinking that one of them might be Lloyd. She didn’t want him to find her, not yet, not till he was scared out of his craziness. Other times she had been able to scare him out of it herself, by weeping and howling and even banging her head on the floor, chanting, “It’s not true, it’s not true, it’s not true” over and over. Finally he would back down. He would say, “Okay, okay. I’ll believe you. Honey, be quiet. Think of the kids. I’ll believe you, hon
est. Just stop.”

  But tonight she had pulled herself together just as she was about to start that performance. She had put on her coat and walked out the door, with him calling after her, “Don’t do this. I warn you!”

  Maggie’s husband had gone to bed, not looking any better pleased about things, while Doree kept saying, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, barging in on you at this time of night.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Maggie said, kind and businesslike. “Do you want a glass of wine?”

  “I don’t drink.”

  “Then you’d better not start now. I’ll get you some tea. It’s very soothing. Raspberry-chamomile. It’s not the kids, is it?”

  “No.”

  Maggie took her coat and handed her a wad of Kleenex for her eyes and nose. “Don’t tell me anything yet. We’ll soon get you settled down.”

  Even when she was partly settled down, Doree didn’t want to blurt out the whole truth and let Maggie know that she herself was at the heart of the problem. More than that, she didn’t want to have to explain Lloyd. No matter how worn out she got with him, he was still the closest person in the world to her, and she felt that everything would collapse if she were to bring herself to tell someone exactly how he was, if she were to be entirely disloyal.

  She said that she and Lloyd had got into an old argument and she was so sick and tired of it that all she’d wanted was to get out. But she would get over it, she said. They would.

  “Happens to every couple sometime,” Maggie said.

  The phone rang then, and Maggie answered.

  “Yes. She’s okay. She just needed to walk something out of her system. Fine. Okay then, I’ll deliver her home in the morning. No trouble. Okay. Good night.

  “That was him,” she said. “I guess you heard.”

  “How did he sound? Did he sound normal?”

  Maggie laughed. “Well, I don’t know how he sounds when he’s normal, do I? He didn’t sound drunk.”

  “He doesn’t drink either. We don’t even have coffee in the house.”

  “Want some toast?”

  —

  IN THE MORNING, early, Maggie drove her home. Maggie’s husband hadn’t left for work yet, and he stayed with the boys.

  Maggie was in a hurry to get back, so she just said, “Bye-bye. Phone me if you need to talk,” as she turned the minivan around in the yard.

  It was a cold morning in early spring, snow still on the ground, but there was Lloyd sitting on the steps without a jacket on.

  “Good morning,” he said, in a loud, sarcastically polite voice. And she said good morning, in a voice that pretended not to notice his.

  He did not move aside to let her up the steps.

  “You can’t go in there,” he said.

  She decided to take this lightly.

  “Not even if I say please? Please.”

  He looked at her but did not answer. He smiled with his lips held together.

  “Lloyd?” she said. “Lloyd?”

  “You better not go in.”

  “I didn’t tell her anything, Lloyd. I’m sorry I walked out. I just needed a breathing space, I guess.”

  “Better not go in.”

  “What’s the matter with you? Where are the kids?”

  He shook his head, as he did when she said something he didn’t like to hear. Something mildly rude, like “holy shit.”

  “Lloyd. Where are the kids?”

  He shifted just a little, so that she could pass if she liked.

  Dimitri still in his crib, lying sideways. Barbara Ann on the floor beside her bed, as if she’d got out or been pulled out. Sasha by the kitchen door—he had tried to get away. He was the only one with bruises on his throat. The pillow had done for the others.

  “When I phoned last night?” Lloyd said. “When I phoned, it had already happened.

  “You brought it all on yourself,” he said.

  —

  THE VERDICT WAS that he was insane, he couldn’t be tried. He was criminally insane—he had to be put in a secure institution.

  Doree had run out of the house and was stumbling around the yard, holding her arms tight across her stomach as if she had been sliced open and was trying to keep herself together. This was the scene that Maggie saw, when she came back. She had had a premonition, and had turned the van around in the road. Her first thought was that Doree had been hit or kicked in the stomach by her husband. She could understand nothing of the noises Doree was making. But Lloyd, who was still sitting on the steps, moved aside courteously for her, without a word, and she went into the house and found what she was now expecting to find. She phoned the police.

  For some time Doree kept stuffing whatever she could grab into her mouth. After the dirt and grass it was sheets or towels or her own clothing. As if she were trying to stifle not just the howls that rose up but the scene in her head. She was given a shot of something, regularly, to quiet her down, and this worked. In fact she became very quiet, though not catatonic. She was said to be stabilized. When she got out of the hospital and the social worker brought her to this new place, Mrs. Sands took over, found her somewhere to live, found her a job, established the routine of talking with her once a week. Maggie would have come to see her, but she was the one person Doree could not stand to see. Mrs. Sands said that that feeling was natural—it was the association. She said that Maggie would understand.

  Mrs. Sands said that whether or not Doree continued to visit Lloyd was up to her. “I’m not here to approve or disapprove, you know. Did it make you feel good to see him? Or bad?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Doree could not explain that it had not really seemed to be him she was seeing. It was almost like seeing a ghost. So pale. Pale loose clothes on him, shoes that didn’t make any noise—probably slippers—on his feet. She had the impression that some of his hair had fallen out. His thick and wavy, honey-colored hair. There seemed to be no breadth to his shoulders, no hollow in his collarbone where she used to rest her head.

  What he had said, afterwards, to the police—and it was quoted in the newspapers—was “I did it to save them the misery.”

  What misery?

  “The misery of knowing that their mother had walked out on them,” he said.

  That was burned into Doree’s brain, and maybe when she decided to try to see him it had been with the idea of making him take it back. Making him see, and admit, how things had really gone.

  “You told me to stop contradicting you or get out of the house. So I got out of the house.

  “I only went to Maggie’s for one night. I fully intended to come back. I wasn’t walking out on anybody.”

  She remembered perfectly how the argument had started. She had bought a tin of spaghetti that had a very slight dent in it. Because of that it had been on sale, and she had been pleased with her thriftiness. She had thought she was doing something smart. But she didn’t tell him that, once he had begun questioning her about it. For some reason she’d thought it better to pretend she hadn’t noticed.

  Anybody would notice, he said. We could have all been poisoned. What was the matter with her? Or was that what she had in mind? Was she planning to try it out on the kids or on him?

  She told him not to be crazy.

  He had said it wasn’t him who was crazy. Who but a crazy woman would buy poison for her family?

  The children had been watching from the doorway of the front room. That was the last time she’d seen them alive.

  So was that what she had been thinking—that she could make him see, finally, who it was who was crazy?

  —

  WHEN SHE REALIZED what was in her head, she should have got off the bus. She could have got off even at the gates, with the few other women who plodded up the drive. She could have crossed the road and waited for the bus back to the city. Probably some people did that. They were going to make a visit and then decided not to. People probably did that all the time.

  But maybe it was better that she had gon
e on, and seen him so strange and wasted. Not a person worth blaming for anything. Not a person. He was like a character in a dream.

  She had dreams. In one dream she had run out of the house after finding them, and Lloyd had started to laugh in his old easy way, and then she had heard Sasha laughing behind her and it had dawned on her, wonderfully, that they were all playing a joke.

  —

  “YOU ASKED ME if it made me feel good or bad when I saw him? Last time you asked me?”

  “Yes, I did,” Mrs. Sands said.

  “I had to think about it.”

  “Yes.”

  “I decided it made me feel bad. So I haven’t gone again.”

  It was hard to tell with Mrs. Sands, but the nod she gave seemed to show some satisfaction or approval.

  So when Doree decided that she would go again, after all, she thought it was better not to mention it. And since it was hard not to mention whatever happened to her—there being so little, most of the time—she phoned and cancelled her appointment. She said that she was going on a holiday. They were getting into summer, when holidays were the usual thing. With a friend, she said.

  —

  “YOU AREN’T WEARING THE JACKET you had on last week.”

  “That wasn’t last week.”

  “Wasn’t it?”

  “It was three weeks ago. The weather’s hot now. This is lighter, but I don’t really need it. You don’t need a jacket at all.”

  He asked about her trip, what buses she’d had to take from Mildmay.

  She told him that she wasn’t living there anymore. She told him where she lived, and about the three buses.

  “That’s quite a trek for you. Do you like living in a bigger place?”

  “It’s easier to get work there.”

  “So you work?”

  She had told him last time about where she lived, the buses, where she worked.

  “I clean rooms in a motel,” she said. “I told you.”

  “Yes, yes. I forgot. I’m sorry. Do you ever think of going back to school? Night school?”

  She said she did think about it but never seriously enough to do anything. She said she didn’t mind the cleaning work.