Runaway

by Alice Munro

  You can take the elevator up to the third floor in the usual way, but it’s more difficult to get down. The nurse behind the desk has to push a hidden button to release you. This is the Psychiatric Ward, though it is seldom called that. It looks west over the lake, like Robin’s apartment, and so it is often called Sunset Hotel. And some older people refer to it as the Royal York. The patients there are short-term, though with some of them the short terms keep recurring. Those whose delusions or withdrawals or miseries become permanent are housed elsewhere, in the County Home, properly called the Long Term Care Facility, just outside of town.

  In forty years the town has not grown a great deal, but it has changed. There are two shopping malls, though the stores on the square struggle on. There are new houses—an adult community—out on the bluffs, and two of the big old houses overlooking the lake have been converted to apartments. Robin has been lucky enough to get one of these. The house on Isaac Street where she and Joanne used to live has been smartened up with vinyl and turned into a real estate office. Willard’s house is still the same, more or less. He had a stroke a few years ago but made a good recovery, though he has to walk with two canes. When he was in the hospital Robin saw quite a lot of him. He talked about what good neighbors she and Joanne had been, and what fun they had playing cards.

  Joanne has been dead for eighteen years, and after selling the house Robin has moved away from old associations. She doesn’t go to church anymore, and except for those who become patients in the hospital, she hardly ever sees the people she knew when she was young, the people she went to school with.

  The prospects of marriage have opened up again, in a limited way, at her time of life. There are widowers looking around, men left on their own. Usually they want a woman experienced at marriage—though a good job doesn’t come amiss either. But Robin has made it clear that she isn’t interested. The people she has known since she was young say she never has been interested, that’s just the way she is. Some of the people she knows now think she must be a lesbian, but that she has been brought up in an environment so primitive and crippling that she can’t acknowledge it.

  There are different sorts of people in town now, and these are the people she has made friends with. Some of them live together without being married. Some of them were born in India and Egypt and the Philippines and Korea. The old patterns of life, the rules of earlier days, persist to some extent, but a lot of people go their own way without even knowing about such things. You can buy almost any kind of food you want, and on a fine Sunday morning you can sit at a sidewalk table drinking fancy coffee and enjoying the sound of church bells, without any thought of worship. The beach is no longer surrounded by railway sheds and warehouses—you can walk on a boardwalk for a mile along the lake. There is a Choral Society and a Players Society. Robin is still very active in the Players Society, though not onstage so much as she once was. Several years ago she played Hedda Gabler. The general response was that it was an unpleasant play but that she played Hedda splendidly. An especially good job as the character—so people said—was so much the opposite of herself in real life.

  Quite a number of people from here go to Stratford these days. She goes instead to see plays at Niagara-on-the-Lake.

  Robin notes the three cots lined up against the opposite wall.

  “What’s up?” she says to Coral, the nurse at the desk.

  “Temporary,” says Coral, in a dubious tone. “It’s the redistribution.”

  Robin goes to hang her coat and bag up in the closet behind the desk, and Coral tells her that these cases are from Perth County. It’s some kind of switch on account of overcrowding there, she says. Only somebody got their wires crossed and the county facility here isn’t ready for them yet, so it’s been decided to park them here for the time being.

  “Should I go over and say hello?”

  “Up to you. Last I looked they were all out of it.”

  The three cots have their sides up, the patients lying flat. And Coral was right, they all seem to be sleeping. Two old women and one old man. Robin turns away, and then turns back. She stands looking down at the old man. His mouth is open and his false teeth, if he has any, have been removed. He has his hair yet, white and cropped short. Flesh fallen away, cheeks sunken, but still a face broad at the temples, retaining some look of authority and—as when she last saw it—of perturbation. Patches of shrivelled, pale, almost silvery skin, probably where cancerous spots have been cut away. His body worn down, legs almost disappearing under the covers, but still some breadth in the chest and shoulders, very much as she remembers.

  She reads the card attached to the foot of his bed.

  Alexander Adzic.

  Danilo. Daniel.

  Perhaps that is his second name. Alexander. Or else he has lied, taken the precaution of telling a lie or half a lie, right from the start and nearly to the end.

  She goes back to the desk and speaks to Coral.

  “Any info on that man?”

  “Why? Do you know him?”

  “I think I might.”

  “I’ll see what there is. I can call it up.”

  “No hurry,” Robin says. “Just when you have time. It’s only curiosity. I better go now and see my people.”

  It is Robin’s job to talk to these patients twice a week, to write reports on them, as to how their delusions or depressions are clearing up, whether the pills are working, and how their moods are affected by the visits they have had from their relatives or their partners. She has worked on this floor for years, ever since the practice of keeping psychiatric patients close to home was introduced back in the seventies, and she knows many of the people who keep coming back. She took some extra courses to qualify herself for treating psychiatric cases, but it’s something she had a feeling for anyway. Sometime after she came back from Stratford, not having seen As You Like It, she had begun to be drawn to this work. Something—though not what she was expecting—had changed her life.

  She saves Mr. Wray till the last, because he generally wants the most time. She isn’t always able to give him as much as he would like—it depends on the problems of the others. Today the rest of them are generally on the mend, thanks to their pills, and all they do is apologize about the fuss they have caused. But Mr. Wray, who believes that his contributions to the discovery of DNA have never been rewarded or acknowledged, is on the rampage about a letter to James Watson. Jim, he calls him.

  “That letter I sent Jim,” he says. “I know enough not to send a letter like that and not keep a copy. But yesterday I went looking through my files and guess what? You tell me what.”

  “You better tell me,” says Robin.

  “Not there. Not there. Stolen.”

  “It could be misplaced. I’ll have a look around.”

  “I’m not surprised. I should have given up long ago. I’m fighting the Big Boys and who ever wins when you fight Them? Tell me the truth. Tell me. Should I give up?”

  “You have to decide. Only you.”

  He begins to recite to her, once more, the particulars of his misfortune. He has not been a scientist, he has worked as a surveyor, but he must have followed scientific progress all his life. The information he has given her, and even the drawings he has managed with a dull pencil, are no doubt correct. Only the story of his being cheated is clumsy and predictable, and probably owes a lot to the movies or television.

  But she always loves the part of the story where he describes how the spiral unzips and the two strands float apart. He shows her how, with such grace, such appreciative hands. Each strand setting out on its appointed journey to double itself according to its own instructions.

  He loves that too, he marvels at it, with tears in his eyes. She always thanks him for his explanation, and wishes that he could stop there, but of course he can’t.

  Nevertheless, she believes he’s getting better. When he begins to root around in the byways of the injustice, to concentrate on something like the stolen letter, it means he�
�s probably getting better.

  With a little encouragement, a little shift in his attention, he could perhaps fall in love with her. This has happened with a couple of patients, before now. Both were married. But that did not keep her from sleeping with them, after they were discharged. By that time, however, feelings were altered. The men felt gratitude, she felt goodwill, both of them felt some sort of misplaced nostalgia.

  Not that she regrets it. There’s very little now that she regrets. Certainly not her sexual life, which has been sporadic and secret but, on the whole, comforting. The effort she put into keeping it secret was perhaps hardly necessary, seeing how people had made up their minds about her—the people she knew now had done that just as thoroughly and mistakenly as the people she knew long ago.

  Coral hands her a printout.

  “Not much,” she says.

  Robin thanks her and folds it and takes it to the closet, to put it into her purse. She wants to be alone when she reads it. But she can’t wait till she gets home. She goes down to the Quiet Room, which used to be the Prayer Room. Nobody was in there being quiet at the moment.

  Adzic, Alexander. Born July 3, 1924, Bjelojevici, Yugoslavia. Emigrated Canada, May 29, 1962, care of brother Danilo Adzic, born Bjelojevici, July 3, 1924, Canadian citizen.

  Alexander Adzic lived with his brother Danilo until the latter’s death Sept 7, 1995. He was admitted to Perth County Long Term Care Facility Sept 25, 1995, and has been a patient there since that date.

  Alexander Adzic apparently has been deaf-mute since birth or from illness shortly after. No Special Education Facilities available as a child. I.Q. never determined but he was trained to work at clock repairs. No training in sign language. Dependent on brother and to all appearances emotionally inaccessible otherwise. Apathy, no appetite, occasional hostility, general regression since admission.

  Outrageous.

  Brothers.

  Twins.

  Robin wants to set this piece of paper in front of someone, some authority.

  This is ridiculous. This I do not accept.

  Nevertheless.

  Shakespeare should have prepared her. Twins are often the reason for mix-ups and disasters in Shakespeare. A means to an end, those tricks are supposed to be. And in the end the mysteries are solved, the pranks are forgiven, true love or something like it is rekindled, and those who were fooled have the good grace not to complain.

  He must have gone out on an errand. A brief errand. He would not leave that brother in charge for very long. Perhaps the screen door was hooked—she had never tried to push it open. Perhaps he had told his brother to hook it and not open it while he himself was giving Juno a walk around the block. She had wondered why Juno wasn’t there.

  If she had come a little later. A little earlier. If she had stayed till the play was over or skipped the play altogether. If she had not bothered with her hair.

  And then? How could they have managed, he with Alexander and she with Joanne? By the way Alexander behaved on that day, it did not look as if he would have put up with any intrusion, any changes. And Joanne would certainly have suffered. Less perhaps from having the deaf-mute Alexander in the house than from Robin’s marriage to a foreigner.

  Hard now to credit, the way things were then.

  It was all spoiled in one day, in a couple of minutes, not by fits and starts, struggles, hopes and losses, in the long-drawn-out way that such things are more often spoiled. And if it’s true that things are usually spoiled, isn’t the quick way the easier way to bear?

  But you don’t really take that view, not for yourself. Robin doesn’t. Even now she can yearn for her chance. She is not going to spare a moment’s gratitude for the trick that has been played. But she’ll come round to being grateful for the discovery of it. That, at least—the discovery which leaves everything whole, right up to the moment of frivolous intervention. Leaves you outraged, but warmed from a distance, clear of shame.

  That was another world they had been in, surely. As much as any world concocted on the stage. Their flimsy arrangement, their ceremony of kisses, the foolhardy faith enveloping them that everything would sail ahead as planned. Move an inch this way or that, in such a case, and you’re lost.

  Robin has had patients who believe that combs and toothbrushes must lie in the right order, shoes must face in the right direction, steps must be counted, or some sort of punishment will follow.

  If she has failed in that department, it would be in the matter of the green dress. Because of the woman at the cleaners, the sick child, she wore the wrong green dress.

  She wished she could tell somebody. Him.

  POWERS

  GIVE DANTE A REST

  March 13, 1927. Now we get the winter, just when we are supposed to be in sight of spring. Big storms closing off the roads, schools shut down. And some old fellow they say went for a walk out the tracks and is likely frozen. Today I went in my snowshoes right down the middle of the street and there was not a mark but mine on the snow. And by the time I got back from the store my tracks were entirely filled in. This is because of the lake not being frozen as usual and the wind out of the west picking up loads of moisture and dumping down on us as snow. I went to get coffee and one or two other necessities. Who should I see in the store but Tessa Netterby whom I hadn’t seen for maybe a year. I felt badly I’d never got out to see her, because I used to try to keep up a sort of friendship after she dropped out of school. I think I was the only one that did. She was all wrapped up in a big shawl and she looked like something out of a storybook. Top-heavy, actually, because she has that broad face with its black curly mop and her broad shoulders, though she can’t be much over five feet tall. She just smiled, the same old Tessa. And I asked how she was—you always do that when you see her, seriously, because of her long siege of whatever it was that took her out of school when she was around fourteen. But also you ask that because there isn’t much else to think of to say, she is not in the world that the rest of us are in. She is not in any clubs and can’t take part in any sports and she does not have any normal social life. She does have a sort of life involving people and there is nothing wrong with it, but I wouldn’t know how to talk about it and maybe neither would she.

  Mr. McWilliams was there helping Mrs. McWilliams out in the store because the clerks had not been able to get in. He is a dreadful tease and he started teasing Tessa, asking her if she didn’t get word of this storm coming and why she couldn’t have let the rest of us know about it, etc. and Mrs. McWilliams told him to stop it. Tessa just looked as if she never heard and asked for a can of sardines. It made me feel suddenly awful, to think of her sitting down for supper to a can of sardines. Which is hardly likely, I don’t know any reason she can’t cook a meal like anybody else.

  The big news I heard at the store was that the roof of the Knights of Pythias Hall has caved in. There goes our stage for The Gondoliers, which was supposed to go on at the end of March. The Town Hall stage is not big enough and the old Opera House is now being used to store coffins from Hay’s Furniture. So tonight we are supposed to have a rehearsal but I don’t know who will get there or what will be the outcome.

  Mar. 16. Decision to shelve The Gondoliers for this year, only six of us out to rehearsal in the Sunday School Hall so we gave up and went over to Wilf’s house for coffee. Wilf also announced that he had meant this to be his last performance because his practice was getting too busy, and we would have to find another tenor. That will be a blow because he is the best.

  I still feel funny calling a doctor by his first name even if he is only around thirty. His house used to be Dr. Coggan’s and a lot of people still call it that. It was built specially to be a doctor’s house with the office wing out to one side. But Wilf has had it all done over, some partitions knocked down altogether so that it is very roomy and bright and Sid Ralston was kidding him about getting it all ready for a wife. That was rather a touchy subject with Ginny right there but probably Sid did not know. (Ginny has had
three proposals. First one from Wilf Rubstone, then Tommy Shuttles, then Euan McKay. A doctor, then an optometrist, then a minister. She is eight months older than I am but I don’t suppose I have a hope of catching up. I think she does lead them on a bit, though she always says she can’t understand it and that every time they asked her to marry them it came like a bolt out of the blue. What I think is that there are ways you can turn everything into a joke and let them know you wouldn’t welcome a proposal, before you let them go and make a fool of themselves.)

  If ever I am seriously ill I hope I am able to destroy this diary or go through and stroke out any mean things in it, in case I die.

  We all got talking in a rather serious way, I don’t know why, and the conversation got on to the things we learned at school and how much we had already forgotten. Somebody mentioned the Debating Club that used to be in town and how that all got scrapped after the War when everybody got cars to run around in and the movies to go to and started playing golf. What serious subjects they used to talk about. “Is Science or Literature more important in forming Human Character?” Can anybody imagine getting people out nowadays to listen to that? We’d feel silly even sitting around in an unorganized way and talking about it. Then Ginny said we should at least form a Reading Club and that got us on to the important books we always meant to read but never got down to it. The Harvard Classics that just sit there on the shelf behind glass doors in the living room year after year. Why not War and Peace, I said, but Ginny claimed she had already read it. So it came down to a vote between Paradise Lost and The Divine Comedy and the Divine Comedy won out. All we know about it is that it is not much of a comedy and written in Italian, though we will naturally be reading it in English. Sid thought it was in Latin and said he had read enough of that in Miss Hurt’s class to last him all his life and we all roared at him, then he pretended he knew all along. Anyway now that The Gondoliers is on hold we should be able to find some time and will meet every couple of weeks to encourage each other.