by Alice Munro
Wilf showed us all over the house. The dining room is on one side of the hall and living room on the other and the kitchen has built-in cabinets and a double sink and the latest electric stove. There is a new washroom off the back hall and a streamlined bathroom and the closets are big enough to walk into and fixed up with full-length mirrors in the door. Golden oak floors everywhere. When I got home this place looked so poky and the wainscoting so dark and old-fashioned. I got on to Father at breakfast about how we could build a sunroom off the dining room to at least have one room bright and modern. (I forgot to mention that Wilf has a sunroom built out from the opposite side of the house to his office and it makes a good balance.) Father said what do we need that for when we have two verandahs to get the sun in the morning and the evening? So I see it’s not likely I’m going to get anywhere with my home improvement scheme.
Apr. 1. First thing when I waked up I fooled Father. I ran out into the hall screaming that a bat had come down the chimney into my room and he came tearing out of the bathroom with his braces down and lather all over his face and told me to stop hollering and being hysterical and go and get the broom. So I got it, and then I hid on the back stairs pretending I was terrified while he went thumping around without his glasses on trying to find the bat. Eventually I took pity on him and yelled out, “April Fool!”
So the next thing was Ginny phoned up and said, “Nancy, what am I going to do? My hair is falling out, it’s all over the pillow, big clumps of my beautiful hair all over the pillow and now I’m half bald, I can never leave this house again, will you run over here and see if we can make a wig out of it?”
So I said quite coolly, “Just mix up some flour and water and paste it back on. And isn’t it funny it happened the morning of April Fool’s?”
Now comes the part I am not so anxious to record.
I walked over to Wilf’s house without even waiting for my breakfast because I know he goes to the Hospital early. He opened the front door himself in his vest and shirtsleeves. I hadn’t bothered with the office figuring it would still be shut. That old woman he has keeping house—I don’t even know her name—was banging around in the kitchen. I suppose she should have opened the door, but he was right there in the hall just getting ready to go. “Why Nancy,” he said.
I never said a word, just made a suffering face and clutched at my throat.
“What’s the matter with you, Nancy?”
More clutching and a miserable croaking and shaking my head to indicate I couldn’t tell him. Oh, pitiful.
“In here,” says Wilf, and leads me through the side hall through the house door to the office. I saw that old woman having a peek but I didn’t let on I saw her, just kept up my charade.
“Now then,” he says, pushing me down on the patient’s chair and turning on the lights. The blinds were still down on the windows and the place stank of antiseptic or something. He got out one of the sticks that flattens your tongue and the instrument he has for looking down and lighting up your throat.
“Now, open as wide as you can.”
So I do, but just as he is about to press the stick down on my tongue I shout, “April Fool!”
There was not a flicker of a smile on his face. He whipped the stick out of the way and snapped off the light on the instrument and never said a word till he yanked open the outside door of the office. Then he said, “I happen to have sick people to see to, Nancy. Why don’t you learn to act your age?”
So I just scurried out of there with my tail between my legs. I didn’t have the nerve to ask him why couldn’t he take a joke. No doubt that nosey female in his kitchen will spread it all over town how mad he was and how I had to slink off humiliated. I have felt terrible all day. And the worst stupid coincidence is that I have even felt sick, feverish and with a slightly sore throat, so I just sat in the front room with a blanket over my legs reading old Dante. Tomorrow night is the meeting of the Reading Club so I should be way ahead of all the rest of them. The trouble is none of it stuck in my head, because all the time I was reading I was also thinking, what a silly stupid thing I did, and I could hear him telling me in such a cutting voice to act my age. But then I would find myself arguing in my head with him that it is not such an awful thing to have a little fun in your life. I believe his father was a minister, does that account for him? Ministers’ families move so much that he would never have time to get in with a gang that grows up together to understand and fool around with each other.
I can see him right now holding the door open in his vest and his starchy shirt. Tall and thin as a knife. His neat parted hair and strict moustache. What a disaster.
I wonder about writing him a note to explain that a joke is not a major offense in my opinion? Or should I just write a dignified sort of apology?
I can’t consult with Ginny because he proposed to her and that means he thinks of her as a worthier person than I am. And I am in such a mood that I would wonder if she was secretly holding that over me. (Even if she turned him down.)
Apr. 4. Wilf did not show up at the Reading Club because some old fellow had a stroke. So I wrote him a note. Tried to make it apologetic but not too humble. This nags at me like anything. Not the note but what I did.
Apr. 12. I got the surprise of my stupid young life answering the door at noon today. Father had just got home and had sat down to dinner and there was Wilf. He never answered the note I wrote him and I had resigned myself that he intended to be disgusted with me forever and all I could do in future was snoot him because I had no choice.
He asked if he had interrupted my dinner.
He could not have done that because I have decided to give up eating dinner until I lose five pounds. While Father and Mrs. Box eat theirs I just shut myself up and have a go at Dante.
I said, no.
He said, well then, how about coming for a drive with him? We could see the ice go out on the river, he said. He went on and explained that he had been up most of the night and had to open the office at one o’clock, which didn’t give him time for a snooze, and the fresh air would revive him better. He didn’t say why he had been up during the night so I figured it was a baby being born and he thought that might embarrass me if he told me.
I said I was just getting started on my day’s stint of reading.
“Give Dante a rest for a while,” he said.
So I got my coat and told Father and we went out and got in his car. We drove out to the North Bridge where several people, mostly men and boys on their lunch hour, had collected to look at the ice. Not such big chunks of it this year with the winter being so late getting started. Still it was knocking up against the bridge supports and grinding away and making a racket the way it usually does with the little streams of water running in between. There was nothing to do but stand and look at this as if you were mesmerized, and my feet got cold. The ice may be breaking but the winter does not seem to have given up yet and spring seems pretty far away. I wondered how on earth some people could stand there and find this entertaining enough to watch for hours.
It didn’t take Wilf long to get tired of it either. We got back in the car and were stumped for conversation, till I took the bull by the horns and asked, did he get my note?
He said yes he had.
I said I really felt like a fool for what I had done (that was true but perhaps more contrite-sounding than I had meant).
He said, “Oh, never mind that.”
He backed the car and we headed into town and he said, “I was hoping to ask you to marry me. Only I wasn’t going to do it like this. I was going to lead up to it more. In a more suitable sort of situation.”
I said, “Do you mean you were hoping to but now you’re not? Or do you mean that you actually are?”
I swear that when I said that I was not egging him on. I really just wanted it clarified.
“I mean I am,” he said.
“Yes” was out of my mouth before I even got over my shock. I don’t know how to explain it. I said
yes in a nice polite way but not too eagerly. More like yes, I’d like a cup of tea. I didn’t even act surprised. It seemed as if I had to get us quickly through this moment and then we could just be relaxed and normal. Though the fact was that I had never been exactly relaxed and normal with Wilf. At one time I was rather mystified by him and thought he was both intimidating and comical, and then since my unlucky April Fool’s I have been just stricken with embarrassment. I hope I am not saying that I said yes I’d marry him to get over the embarrassment. I do remember thinking I should take yes back and say I needed time to think it over, but I could hardly do that without landing us both in a worse muddle of embarrassment than ever. And I don’t know what there is for me to think over.
I am engaged to Wilf. I can’t believe it. Is this the way it happens to everybody?
Apr. 14. Wilf came and talked to Father and I went over and talked to Ginny. I came right out and confessed that I felt awkward telling her, then said I hoped she would not feel awkward being my maid of honour. She said of course she wouldn’t and we both got rather emotional and put our arms around each other and had a bit of a sniffle.
“What are fellows compared to friends?” she said.
And I got in one of my devil-may-care moods and told her it was all her fault anyway.
I said I couldn’t stand for the poor man to have had two girls turn him down.
May 30. I have not written in here for so long because I am in a whirlwind of things that have to be done. The wedding is scheduled for July 10. I am getting my dress made by Miss Cornish who drives me crazy standing in my underclothes all stuck together with pins and her barking at me to stay still. It is white marquisette and I am not having a train because I am afraid I would somehow find a way to trip over it. Then a trousseau with half a dozen summer nightgowns and a watered-silk lily-patterned Japanese kimono and three pairs of winter pyjamas, all bought at Simpson’s in Toronto. Apparently pyjamas are not the ideal for your trousseau but nightgowns are no good to keep you warm and I hate them anyway, because they always end up getting tangled around your middle. A bunch of silk slips and other stuff, all peach or “nude.” Ginny says I should stock up while I have the chance, because if there is a War coming in China a lot of silk things will get scarce. She is as usual all up on the news. Her maid of honour’s dress is powder blue.
Yesterday Mrs. Box made the cake. It is supposed to have six weeks to ripen so we are just getting in under the wire. I had to stir it for good luck and the dough was so heavy with fruit I thought my arm would drop off. Ollie was here so he took over and stirred a bit for me when Mrs. B. wasn’t looking. What kind of luck that will bring I do not know.
Ollie is Wilf’s cousin and is visiting here for a couple of months. As Wilf has no brother he—Ollie, that is—is going to be best man. He is seven months older than I am, so it seems as if he and I are still kids in a way Wilf isn’t (I can’t imagine he ever was). He—Ollie—has been in a T. B. Sanatorium for three years but is now better. They collapsed one of his lungs when he was in there. I had heard about this and believed you had to function then with one lung but apparently not. They just collapse it so it can be out of use while they treat it with medication and encyst (not insist) the infection so that it is dormant. (See how I am getting to be quite the medical authority now, being engaged to marry a doctor!) While Wilf explained this Ollie put his hands over his ears. He says he prefers not to think about what was done and pretends to himself he is hollow like a celluloid doll. He is a very opposite person to Wilf but they seem to get along just fine.
We are going to have the cake professionally iced at the bakery, thank God. I don’t think Mrs. Box could stand the strain otherwise.
June 11. Less than a month to go. I should not even be writing here, I should get going on the wedding present lists. I can’t believe all this stuff is going to be mine. Wilf is after me to pick out the wallpaper. I thought the rooms were all plastered and painted white because that was the way he liked them, but it seems he just left them so his wife could pick out the paper. I am afraid I just looked dumbfounded at the job but then I pulled myself together and told him I thought that was very considerate of him but I really could not imagine what I wanted until I was living there. (He must have hoped for it to be all done when we got back from the honeymoon.) So that way I got it put off.
I am still going to the Mill my two days a week. I sort of expected that would continue even after I was married but Father says of course not. He went on as if it wouldn’t be quite legal hiring a married woman unless she was a widow or in bad straits, but I pointed out it was not hiring since he didn’t pay me anyway. Then he said what he had been embarrassed to say at first, that when I was married there would be interruptions.
“Times when you won’t be going out in public,” he said.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said, and blushed like an idiot.
So he has got it into his head (Father has) that it would be nice if Ollie would take over what I am doing and he really hopes (Father) that Ollie could work himself into the business and eventually be able to take it all over. Maybe he wished I would marry somebody who could do that—though he thinks Wilf is just dandy. And Ollie being at loose ends and smart and educated (I don’t know exactly where or how much education but obviously knowing more than practically anybody around here), he might seem like an A-one choice. And for this reason I had to take him to the office yesterday and show him the books etc., and Father took him and introduced him to the men and anybody who happened to be around and it looked as if all went well. Ollie was very attentive and put on a serious business air in the office and then he was cheerful and jokey (but not too jokey) with the men, he even changed his way of talking just the right amount, and Father was so pleased and buoyed up. When I said good night to him he said, “I take it as a real stroke of luck that young fellow showing up here. He’s a fellow who is looking for a future and a place to make himself at home.”
And I didn’t contradict but I believe that there is as much chance of Ollie settling down here and running a chopping-mill as there is of me getting into the Ziegfeld Follies.
He just can’t help putting on a nice act.
I was thinking at one time that Ginny would take him off my hands. She is well-read and smokes and though she goes to church her opinions are the kind some people might take for atheistic. And she told me she didn’t think Ollie was bad-looking though he is on the short side (I would say five-eight or nine). He has the blue eyes she likes and the butterscotch-coloured hair with a wave drooping over his forehead, which seems so intentionally charming. He was very nice to her of course when they met and led her on to talk a lot, and after she had gone home he said, “Your little friend is quite the intellectual, isn’t she?”
“Little.” Ginny is at least as tall as he is and I certainly felt like telling him that. But it is pretty mean to point out something concerning height to a man who is a bit lacking in that respect so I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t know what to say about the “intellectual” part of it. In my opinion Ginny is an intellectual (for instance has Ollie read War and Peace?), but I couldn’t tell from his tone whether he meant she was or she wasn’t. All I could tell was that if she was, it wasn’t something he cared for, and if she wasn’t, then she was acting as if she was and he did not care for that either. I should have said something cool and disagreeable, such as, “You’re too deep for me,” but of course did not think of anything till later. And the worst thing was that as soon as he had said that, I had secretly, in my heart, got an inkling of something about Ginny, and while I was defending her (in my thoughts) I was also in some sly way agreeing with him. I don’t know if she will ever seem as smart to me in the future.
Wilf was right there and must have heard the whole exchange but said nothing. I could have asked him if he didn’t feel like sticking up for the girl he had once proposed to, but I have never fully let on to him what I know about that. He often just listens to Ollie and me tal
k, with his head bent forward (the way he has to do with most people, he is so tall) and a little smile on his face. I’m not even sure it’s a smile or just the way his mouth is. In the evenings they both come over and it often ends up with Father and Wilf playing cribbage and Ollie and me just fooling around talking. Or Wilf and Ollie and me playing three-handed Bridge. (Father has never taken to Bridge because he somehow thinks it’s too High-Hat.) Sometimes Wilf gets a call from the Hospital or Elsie Bainton (his housekeeper whose name I can’t remember—I just had to yell and ask Mrs. Box) and he has to go out. Or sometimes when the crib game is finished he goes and sits at the piano and plays by ear. In the dark, maybe. Father wanders out onto the verandah and sits with Ollie and me and we all rock and listen. It seems then that Wilf is just playing the piano for himself and he isn’t doing a performance for us. It doesn’t bother him if we listen or not or if we start to chat. And sometimes we do that, because it can get to be a bit too classical for Father whose favourite piece is “My Old Kentucky Home.” You can see him getting restless, that kind of music makes him feel that the world is going woozy on him, and for his sake we will start up some conversation. Then he—Father—is the one who will make a point of telling Wilf how we all enjoyed his playing and Wilf says thank-you in a polite absent-minded way. Ollie and I know not to say anything because we know that in this case he does not care about our opinions one way or the other.
One time I caught Ollie singing along very faintly with Wilf’s playing.
