Runaway

by Alice Munro

  He honored her feelings about the movie. Indeed, now that he had listened to her angry struggles to explain, he struggled to tell her something in turn. He said that he saw now that it was not anything so simple, so feminine, as jealousy. He saw that. It was that she would not stand for frivolity, was not content to be like most girls. She was special.

  Grace always remembered what she was wearing on that night. A dark-blue ballerina skirt, a white blouse, through whose eyelet frills you could see the tops of her breasts, a wide rose-colored elasticized belt. There was a discrepancy, no doubt, between the way she presented herself and the way she wanted to be judged. But nothing about her was dainty or pert or polished in the style of the time. A bit ragged round the edges, in fact, giving herself gypsy airs, with the very cheapest silver-painted bangles, and the long, wild-looking curly dark hair that she had to put into a snood when she waited on tables.

  Special.

  He had told his mother about her and his mother had said, “You must bring this Grace of yours to dinner.”

  It was all new to her, all immediately delightful. In fact she fell in love with Mrs. Travers, rather as Maury had fallen in love with her. It was not in her nature, of course, to be so openly dumbfounded, so worshipful, as he was.

  Grace had been brought up by her aunt and uncle, really her great-aunt and great-uncle. Her mother had died when she was three years old, and her father had moved to Saskatchewan, where he had another family. Her stand-in parents were kind, even proud of her, though bewildered, but they were not given to conversation. The uncle made his living caning chairs, and he had taught Grace how to cane, so that she could help him, and eventually take over as his eyesight failed. But then she had got the job at Bailey’s Falls for the summer, and though it was hard for him—for her aunt as well—to let her go, they believed she needed a taste of life before she settled down.

  She was twenty years old, and had just finished high school. She should have finished a year ago, but she had made an odd choice. In the very small town where she lived—it was not far from Mrs. Travers’ Pembroke—there was nevertheless a high school, which offered five grades, to prepare you for the government exams and what was then called senior matriculation. It was never necessary to study all the subjects offered, and at the end of her first year—what should have been her final year, Grade Thirteen—Grace tried examinations in History and Botany and Zoology and English and Latin and French, receiving unnecessarily high marks. But there she was in September, back again, proposing to study Physics and Chemistry, Trigonometry, Geometry, and Algebra, though these subjects were considered particularly hard for girls. When she had finished that year, she would have covered all Grade Thirteen subjects except Greek and Italian and Spanish and German, which were not taught by any teacher in her school. She did creditably well in all three branches of mathematics and in the sciences, though her results were nothing like so spectacular as the year before. She had even thought, then, of teaching herself Greek and Spanish and Italian and German so that she could try those exams the next year. But the principal of the school had a talk with her, telling her this was getting her nowhere since she was not going to be able to go to university, and anyway no university course required such a full plate. Why was she doing it? Did she have any plans?

  No, said Grace, she just wanted to learn everything you could learn for free. Before she started her career of caning.

  It was the principal who knew the manager of the inn, and said he would put in a word for her if she wanted to try for a summer waitressing job. He too mentioned getting a taste of life.

  So even the man in charge of all learning in that place did not believe that learning had to do with life. And anybody Grace told about what she had done—she told it to explain why she was late leaving high school—had said something like you must have been crazy.

  Except for Mrs. Travers, who had been sent to business college instead of a real college because she was told she had to be useful, and who now wished like anything—she said—that she had crammed her mind instead, or first, with what was useless.

  “Though you do have to earn a living,” she said. “Caning chairs seems like a useful sort of thing to do anyway. We’ll have to see.”

  See what? Grace didn’t want to think ahead at all. She wanted life to continue just as it was now. By trading shifts with another girl, she had managed to get Sundays off, from breakfast on. This meant that she always worked late on Saturdays. In effect, it meant that she had traded time with Maury for time with Maury’s family. She and Maury could never see a movie now, never have a real date. But he would pick her up when her work was finished, around eleven o’clock, and they would go for a drive, stop for ice cream or a hamburger—Maury was scrupulous about not taking her into a bar, because she was not yet twenty-one—then end up parking somewhere.

  Grace’s memories of these parking sessions—which might last till one or two in the morning—proved to be much hazier than her memories of sitting at the Traverses’ round dining table or—when everybody finally got up and moved, with coffee or fresh drinks—sitting on the tawny leather sofa, the rockers, the cushioned wicker chairs, at the other end of the room. (There was no fuss about doing the dishes and cleaning up the kitchen—a woman Mrs. Travers called “my friend the able Mrs. Abel” would come in the morning.)

  Maury always dragged cushions onto the rug and sat there. Gretchen, who never dressed for dinner in anything but jeans or army pants, usually sat cross-legged in a wide chair. Both she and Maury were big and broad-shouldered, with something of their mother’s good looks—her wavy caramel-colored hair, and warm hazel eyes. Even, in Maury’s case, a dimple. Cute, the other waitresses called Maury. They whistled softly. Hubba hubba. Mrs. Travers, however, was barely five feet tall, and under her bright muumuus she seemed not fat but sturdily plump, like a child who hasn’t stretched up yet. And the shine, the intentness, of her eyes, the gaiety always ready to break out, had not or could not be imitated or inherited. No more than the rough red, almost a rash, on her cheeks. That was probably the result of going out in any weather without taking thought of her complexion, and like her figure, like her muumuus, it showed her independence.

  There were sometimes guests, besides family, on these Sunday evenings. A couple, maybe a single person as well, usually close to Mr. and Mrs. Travers’ age, and usually resembling them in the way the women would be eager and witty and the men quieter, slower, tolerant. People told amusing stories, in which the joke was often on themselves. (Grace has been an engaging talker for so long now that she sometimes gets sick of herself, and it’s hard for her to remember how novel these dinner conversations once seemed to her. Where she came from, most of the lively conversation took the form of dirty jokes, which of course her aunt and uncle did not go in for. On the rare occasions when they had company, there was praise of and apology for the food, discussion of the weather, and a fervent wish for the meal to be finished as soon as possible.)

  After dinner at the Traverses’, if the evening was cool enough, Mr. Travers lit a fire. They played what Mrs. Travers called “idiotic word games,” at which, in fact, people had to be fairly clever, even if they thought up silly definitions. And here was where somebody who had been rather quiet at dinner might begin to shine. Mock arguments could be built up around claims of great absurdity. Gretchen’s husband Wat did this, and so after a bit did Grace, to Mrs. Travers’ and Maury’s delight (Maury calling out, to everyone’s amusement but Grace’s own, “See? I told you. She’s smart”). And it was Mrs. Travers herself who led the way in this making up of words with outrageous defenses, insuring that the play should not become too serious or any player too anxious.

  The only time there was a problem of anyone’s being unhappy with a game was when Mavis, who was married to Mrs. Travers’ son Neil, came to dinner. Mavis and her two children were staying not far away, at her parents’ place down the lake. That night there was only family, and Grace, as Mavis and Neil had been expected
to bring their small children. But Mavis came by herself—Neil was a doctor, and it turned out that he was busy in Ottawa that weekend. Mrs. Travers was disappointed but she rallied, calling out in cheerful dismay, “But the children aren’t in Ottawa, surely?”

  “Unfortunately not,” said Mavis. “But they’re not being particularly charming. I’m sure they’d shriek all through dinner. The baby’s got prickly heat and God knows what’s the matter with Mikey.”

  She was a slim suntanned woman in a purple dress, with a matching wide purple band holding back her dark hair. Handsome, but with little pouches of boredom or disapproval hiding the corners of her mouth. She left most of her dinner untouched on her plate, explaining that she had an allergy to curry.

  “Oh, Mavis. What a shame,” said Mrs. Travers. “Is this new?”

  “Oh no. I’ve had it for ages but I used to be polite about it. Then I got sick of throwing up half the night.”

  “If you’d only told me—What can we get you?”

  “Don’t worry about it, I’m fine. I don’t have any appetite anyway, what with the heat and the joys of motherhood.”

  She lit a cigarette.

  Afterwards, in the game, she got into an argument with Wat over a definition he used, and when the dictionary proved it acceptable she said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I guess I’m just outclassed by you people.” And when it came time for everybody to hand in their own word on a slip of paper for the next round, she smiled and shook her head.

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Oh, Mavis,” said Mrs. Travers. And Mr. Travers said, “Come on, Mavis. Any old word will do.”

  “But I don’t have any old word. I’m so sorry. I just feel stupid tonight. The rest of you just play around me.”

  Which they did, everybody pretending nothing was wrong, while Mavis smoked and continued to smile her determined, sweetly hurt, unhappy smile. In a little while she got up and said she was awfully tired, and she couldn’t leave her children on their grandparents’ hands any longer, she’d had a lovely and instructive visit, and she must now go home.

  “I have to give you an Oxford dictionary next Christmas,” she said to nobody in particular as she went out with a bitter tinkle of a laugh.

  The Traverses’ dictionary that Wat had used was an American one.

  When she was gone none of them looked at each other. Mrs. Travers said, “Gretchen, do you have the strength to make us all a pot of coffee?” And Gretchen went off to the kitchen, muttering, “What fun. Jesus wept.”

  “Well. Her life is trying,” said Mrs. Travers. “With the two little ones.”

  During the week Grace got a break, for one day, between clearing breakfast and setting up dinner, and when Mrs. Travers found out about this she started driving up to Bailey’s Falls to bring her down to the lake for those free hours. Maury would be at work then—he was working for the summer with the road gang repairing Highway 7—and Wat would be in his office in Ottawa and Gretchen would be swimming with the children or rowing with them on the lake. Usually Mrs. Travers herself would announce that she had shopping to do, or preparations to make for supper, or letters to write, and she would leave Grace on her own in the big, cool, shaded living-dining room, with its permanently dented leather sofa and crowded bookshelves.

  “Read anything that takes your fancy,” Mrs. Travers said. “Or curl up and go to sleep if that’s what you’d like. It’s a hard job, you must be tired. I’ll make sure you’re back on time.”

  Grace never slept. She read. She barely moved, and below her shorts her bare legs became sweaty and stuck to the leather. Perhaps it was because of the intense pleasure of reading. Quite often she saw nothing of Mrs. Travers until it was time for her to be driven back to work.

  Mrs. Travers would not start any sort of conversation until enough time had passed for Grace’s thoughts to have got loose from whatever book she had been in. Then she might mention having read it herself, and say what she had thought of it—but always in a way that was both thoughtful and lighthearted. For instance she said, about Anna Karenina, “I don’t know how many times I’ve read it, but I know that first I identified with Kitty, and then it was Anna—oh, it was awful, with Anna, and now, you know, the last time I found myself sympathizing all the time with Dolly. Dolly when she goes to the country, you know, with all those children, and she has to figure out how to do the washing, there’s the problem about the washtubs—I suppose that’s just how your sympathies change as you get older. Passion gets pushed behind the washtubs. Don’t pay any attention to me, anyway. You don’t, do you?”

  “I don’t know if I pay much attention to anybody.” Grace was surprised at herself and wondered if she sounded conceited or juvenile. “But I like listening to you talk.”

  Mrs. Travers laughed. “I like listening to myself.”

  Somehow, around this time, Maury had begun to talk about their being married. This would not happen for quite a while—not until after he was qualified and working as an engineer—but he spoke of it as of something that she as well as he must be taking for granted. When we are married, he would say, and instead of questioning or contradicting him, Grace would listen curiously.

  When they were married they would have a place on Little Sabot Lake. Not too close to his parents, not too far away. It would be just a summer place, of course. The rest of the time they would live wherever his work as an engineer should take them. That might be anywhere—Peru, Iraq, the Northwest Territories. Grace was delighted by the idea of such travels—rather more than she was delighted by the idea of what he spoke of, with a severe pride, as our own home. None of this seemed at all real to her, but then, the idea of helping her uncle, of taking on the life of a chair caner, in the town and the very house where she had grown up, had never seemed real either.

  Maury kept asking her what she had told her aunt and uncle about him, when she was going to take him home to meet them. Even his easy use of that word—home—seemed slightly off kilter to her, though surely it was one she herself had used. It seemed more fitting to say my aunt and uncle’s house.

  In fact she had said nothing in her brief weekly letters, except to mention that she was “going out with a boy who works around here for the summer.” She might have given the impression that he worked at the hotel.

  It wasn’t as if she had never thought of getting married. That possibility—half a certainty—had been in her thoughts, along with the life of caning chairs. In spite of the fact that nobody had ever courted her, she had thought that it would happen, someday, and in exactly this way, with the man making up his mind immediately. He would see her—perhaps he would have brought a chair to be fixed—and seeing her, he would fall in love. He would be handsome, like Maury. Passionate, like Maury. Pleasurable physical intimacies would follow.

  This was the thing that had not happened. In Maury’s car, or out on the grass under the stars, she was willing. And Maury was ready, but not willing. He felt it his responsibility to protect her. And the ease with which she offered herself threw him off balance. He sensed, perhaps, that it was cold. A deliberate offering which he could not understand and which did not fit in at all with his notions of her. She herself did not understand how cold she was—she believed that her show of eagerness must be leading to the pleasures she knew about, in solitude and imagining, and she felt it was up to Maury to take over. Which he would not do.

  These sieges left them both disturbed and slightly angry or ashamed, so that they could not stop kissing, clinging, using fond words, to make it up to each other as they said good night. It was a relief to Grace to be alone, to get into bed in the dormitory and blot the last couple of hours out of her mind. And she thought it must be a relief to Maury to be driving down the highway by himself, rearranging his impressions of his Grace so that he could stay wholeheartedly in love with her.

  Most of the waitresses left after Labour Day to go back to school or college. But the hotel was staying open till Thanksgiving with a reduced staff—Grace amon
g them. There was talk, this year, about opening again in early December for a winter season, or at least a Christmas season, but nobody amongst the kitchen or dining-room staff seemed to know if this would really happen. Grace wrote to her aunt and uncle as if the Christmas season was a certainty. In fact she did not mention any closing at all, unless possibly after New Year’s. So they should not expect her.

  Why did she do this? It was not as if she had any other plans. She had told Maury that she thought she should spend this one year helping her uncle, maybe trying to find somebody else to learn caning, while he, Maury, was taking his final year at university. She had even promised to have him visit at Christmas so that he could meet her family. And he had said that Christmas would be a good time to make their engagement formal. He was saving from his summer wages to buy her a diamond ring.

  She too had been saving her wages. So she would be able to take the bus to Kingston, to visit him during his school term.

  She spoke of this, promised it, so easily. But did she believe, or even wish, that it would happen?

  “Maury is a sterling character,” said Mrs. Travers. “Well, you can see that for yourself. He will be a dear uncomplicated man, like his father. Not like his brother. His brother Neil is very bright. I don’t mean that Maury isn’t, you certainly don’t get to be an engineer without a brain or two in your head, but Neil is—he’s deep.” She laughed at herself. “Deep unfathomable caves of ocean bear—what am I talking about? A long time Neil and I didn’t have anybody but each other. So I think he’s special. I don’t mean he can’t be fun. But sometimes people who are the most fun can be melancholy, can’t they? You wonder about them. But what’s the use of worrying about your grown-up children? With Neil I worry a bit, with Maury only a tiny little bit. And Gretchen I don’t worry about at all. Because women always have got something, haven’t they, to keep them going? That men haven’t got.”

  The house on the lake was never closed up till Thanksgiving. Gretchen and the children had to go back to Ottawa, of course, because of school. And Maury, whose job was finished, had to go to Kingston. Mr. Travers would come out only on weekends. But usually, Mrs. Travers had told Grace, she stayed on, sometimes with guests, sometimes by herself.