Runaway

by Alice Munro

  Nancy asked what was meant by these cases.

  The Matron said that people had been here for years who perhaps didn’t belong here.

  “You must understand that I am new here,” she said, “but I will tell you what I know.”

  According to her the place had been a catchall, literally, for those who were genuinely mentally ill, or senile, or those who would never develop normally, one way or another, or people whose families could not or would not cope with them. There had always been, and still was, a wide range. The serious problems were all in the north wing, under security.

  Originally this had been a private hospital, owned and run by a doctor. After he died, the family—the doctor’s family—took it over, and it turned out that they had their own ways of doing things. It had been partly turned into a charity hospital and there were some unusual arrangements made to get subsidies for charity patients who were not proper charity cases at all. Some of those still on the books had actually passed away and some did not have the proper claim or records to be here. Many of those, of course, worked for their keep and this may have been—it was—usually good for their morale, but it was nevertheless all irregular and against the law.

  And now, the thing was that there had been a thorough investigation and the whole place was being closed down. The building was antiquated anyway. Its capacity was too small, this was not the way things were done now. The serious cases were going to a big facility in Flint or Lansing—it wasn’t quite definite yet—and some could go into sheltered housing, group homes, as the new trend was, and then there were some who could manage if they were placed with relatives.

  Tessa was considered to be one of these. It seemed that she had needed some electrical treatments when she came in, but for a long time now she had been on just the mildest medication.

  “Shock treatments?” Nancy said.

  “Perhaps shock therapy,” the Matron said, as if that made some special difference. “You say you are not a relative. That means you don’t intend to take her.”

  “I have a husband—” said Nancy. “I have a husband who is—he would be in a place like this, I guess, but I am looking after him at home.”

  “Oh. Really,” the Matron said, with a sigh that was not disbelieving, but not sympathetic either. “And a problem is that apparently she is not even a citizen. She herself does not think she is—so I suppose you are not interested now in seeing her?”

  “Yes,” said Nancy. “Yes, I am. That’s what I came for.”

  “Oh. Well. She is just around the corner, in the bakery. She’s been baking here for years. I think there was a baker hired at first, but when he left they never hired anybody else, they didn’t have to, with Tessa.”

  As she stood up she said, “Now. You may want me to look in, after a while, and say there is something I’d like to speak to you about. Then you can make your getaway. Tessa is quite smart and she knows the way the wind is blowing and she could be upset to see you leave without her. So I’ll give you an opportunity just to slip away.”

  Tessa wasn’t entirely gray. Her curls were held back in a tight net, showing her forehead unwrinkled, shining, even broader and higher and whiter than it used to be. Her figure had broadened, too. She had big breasts that looked as stiff as boulders, sheathed in her white baker’s garb, and in spite of this burden, in spite of her position at the moment—bent over a table, rolling out a great flap of dough—her shoulders were square and stately.

  She was alone in the bakery, except for a tall, thin, fine-featured girl—no, a woman—whose pretty face was constantly twitching into bizarre grimaces.

  “Oh, Nancy. It’s you,” said Tessa. She spoke quite naturally, though with the gallant catch of breath, the involuntary intimacy, of those who carry a noble load of flesh on their bones. “Stop that, Elinor. Don’t be silly. You go get my friend a chair.”

  Seeing that Nancy meant to embrace her, as people did now, she was flustered. “Oh, I’m all over flour. And for another thing, Elinor might bite you. Elinor doesn’t like when people get too friendly with me.”

  Elinor had returned in a hurry with a chair. Nancy made a point then of looking into her face and speaking nicely.

  “Thank you very much, Elinor.”

  “She doesn’t talk,” said Tessa. “She’s my good helper, though. I couldn’t manage without her, could I, Elinor?”

  “Well,” said Nancy. “I am surprised you knew me. I’ve withered quite a bit since olden times.”

  “Yes,” said Tessa. “I wondered if you would come.”

  “I could even have been dead, I suppose. Do you remember Ginny Ross? She’s dead.”

  “Yes.”

  Piecrust, was what Tessa was making. She cut out a round of dough and slapped it into a tin pie plate, and held it aloft, expertly turning it on one hand and cutting it with a knife held in the other. She did this rapidly several times.

  She said, “Wilf’s not dead?”

  “No, he’s not. But he’s gone a bit round the bend, Tessa.” Too late, Nancy realized that this had not been a tactful thing to say, and she tried to insert a lighter note. “He’s taken up some strange ways, poor Wolfie.” Years ago she had tried calling Wilf Wolfie, thinking that the name suited his long jaw and thin moustache and bright stern eyes. But he did not like it, he suspected mockery, so she had stopped. Now he didn’t mind, and just to say the name made her feel more bright and tender towards him, which was a help under the present circumstances.

  “For instance, he’s taken a scunner against rugs.”

  “Rugs?”

  “He walks around the room like this,” said Nancy, drawing a rectangle in the air. “I had to move the furniture away from the walls. Around and around and around.” Unexpectedly and somehow apologetically, she laughed.

  “Oh, there’s some in here that do that,” said Tessa with a nod, an insider’s air of confirmation. “They don’t want anything to get between them and the wall.”

  “And he’s very dependent. It’s Where’s Nancy? all the time. I’m the only one he trusts these days.”

  “Is he violent?” Tessa spoke again, as a professional, a connoisseur.

  “No. He’s suspicious, though. He thinks people are coming in and hiding things on him. He thinks somebody goes around changing the clocks and even the day on the newspaper. Then he’ll snap out of it when I mention somebody’s medical problem and do a spot-on diagnosis. The mind’s a weird piece of business.”

  There. Another nice lapse of tact.

  “He’s mixed up, but he’s not violent.”

  “That’s good.”

  Tessa set the pie plate down and began to ladle filling into it from a large, no-brand tin labelled Blueberry. The filling looked rather thin and glutinous.

  “Here. Elinor,” she said. “Here’s your scraps.”

  Elinor had been standing just behind Nancy’s chair—Nancy had been careful not to turn around and look. Now Elinor slid around the bake table without glancing up and began to mold together the pieces of dough that the knife had cut away.

  “That man is dead, though,” Tessa said. “I know that much.”

  “What man are you talking about?”

  “That man. That friend of yours.”

  “Ollie? You mean Ollie’s dead?”

  “Don’t you know that?” Tessa said.

  “No. No.”

  “I thought you would’ve known. Didn’t Wilf know?”

  “Doesn’t Wilf know,” said Nancy in an automatic way, defending her husband by placing him amongst the living.

  “I thought he would,” said Tessa. “Weren’t they related?”

  Nancy did not answer. Of course she should have thought of Ollie’s being dead if Tessa was here.

  “I guess he kept it to himself then,” Tessa said.

  “Wilf was always good at that,” said Nancy. “Where did this happen? Were you with him?”

  Tessa wagged her head to say No, or that she didn’t know.

  �
�Well when? What did they tell you?”

  “Nobody told me. They never would tell me anything.”

  “Oh, Tessa.”

  “I had a hole in my head. I had it for a long time.”

  “Is it like you used to know things?” said Nancy. “You remember the way?”

  “They gave me gas.”

  “Who?” said Nancy sternly. “What do you mean they gave you gas?”

  “The ones in charge here. They gave me the needles.”

  “You said gas.”

  “They gave me the needles and the gas too. It was to cure my head. And to make me not remember. Certain things I do remember, but I have trouble with telling how long ago. There was that hole in my head for a very long time.”

  “Did Ollie die before you came in here or after? You don’t remember how he died?”

  “Oh, I saw him. He had his head wrapped up in a black coat. Tied with a cord around the neck. Somebody did it to him.” Her lips for a moment were clamped together. “Somebody should have gone to the electric chair.”

  “Maybe that was a bad dream you had. You might have got your dream mixed up with what really happened.”

  Tessa lifted her chin as if to settle something. “Not that. I haven’t got that mixed up.”

  The shock treatments, Nancy thought. Shock treatments left holes in the memory? There would have to be something in the records. She would go and talk to the Matron again.

  She looked at what Elinor was doing with the discarded bits of dough. She had molded them cleverly, sticking heads and ears and tails onto them. Little dough mice.

  With a sharp swift motion, Tessa made air slits in the top crusts of the pies. The mice went into the oven with them, on their own tin plate.

  Then Tessa held out her hands, and stood waiting while Elinor got a small damp towel to wipe away any sticky dough or dusting of flour.

  “Chair,” said Tessa in an undertone, and Elinor brought a chair and placed it at the end of the table, near Nancy’s, so that Tessa could sit down.

  “And maybe you could go and make us a cup of tea,” Tessa said. “Don’t worry, we’ll keep an eye on your treats. We’ll watch your mousies.

  “Let’s forget all we were talking about,” she said to Nancy. “Weren’t you going to have a baby, the last I heard from you? Was it a boy or a girl?”

  “A boy,” said Nancy. “That was years and years ago. And after that I had two girls. They’re all grown-up now.”

  “You don’t notice in here how time goes by. That may be a blessing or it may not, I don’t know. What are they doing then?”

  “The boy—”

  “What did you call him?”

  “Alan. He went in for medicine too.”

  “He’s a doctor. That’s good.”

  “The girls are both married. Well, Alan’s married too.”

  “So what are their names? The girls’?”

  “Susan and Patricia. They both took up nursing.”

  “You chose nice names.”

  Tea was brought—the kettle must be kept on the boil here all the time—and Tessa poured.

  “Not the best china in the world,” she said, reserving for herself a slightly chipped cup.

  “It’s fine,” said Nancy. “Tessa. Do you remember what you used to be able to do? You used to be able to—you used to know things. When people lost things, you used to be able to tell them where they were.”

  “Oh no,” Tessa said. “I just pretended.”

  “You couldn’t have.”

  “It bothers my head to talk about it.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  The Matron had appeared in the doorway.

  “I don’t want to disturb you having your tea,” she said to Nancy. “But if you wouldn’t mind popping into my room for just a minute when you’re finished—”

  Tessa hardly waited until the woman was out of earshot.

  “That’s so you won’t have to say good-bye to me,” she said. She seemed to be settling into appreciation of a familiar joke. “It’s that trick of hers. Everybody knows about it. I knew you hadn’t come to take me away. How could you?”

  “It’s not anything to do with you, Tessa. It’s just that I’ve got Wilf.”

  “That’s right.”

  “He deserves something. He’s been a good husband to me, just as good as he could be. I made a vow to myself that he wouldn’t have to go into an institution.”

  “No. Not into an institution,” Tessa said.

  “Oh. What a stupid thing to say.”

  Tessa was smiling, and Nancy saw in that smile the same thing that had puzzled her years ago. Not exactly superiority, but an extraordinary, unwarranted benevolence.

  “You were good to come to see me, Nancy. You can see I’ve kept my health. That’s something. You better pop in and see the woman.”

  “I don’t have any intention of popping in to see her,” said Nancy. “I’m not going to sneak out. I fully intend to say good-bye to you.”

  So now there was no way she could ask the Matron anything about what Tessa had told her, and she didn’t know if she should ask, anyway—it seemed like sneaking around behind Tessa’s back, and it might bring some reprisal. What could bring reprisals, in a place like this, you could never know.

  “Well, don’t say good-bye till you’ve had one of Elinor’s mice. Elinor’s blind mice. She wants you to. She likes you now. And don’t worry—I make sure she keeps her hands good and clean.”

  Nancy ate the mouse, and told Elinor that it was very good. Elinor consented to shake hands with her, and then Tessa did the same.

  “If he wasn’t dead,” said Tessa in quite a robust and reasonable tone, “why wouldn’t he have come here and got me? He said he would.”

  Nancy nodded. “I’ll write to you,” she said.

  And she meant to, truly, but Wilf became such a care as soon as she got home, and the whole visit to Michigan became so disturbing, and yet unreal, in her mind, that she never did.

  A SQUARE, A CIRCLE, A STAR

  One late summer day in the early seventies, a woman was walking around Vancouver, a city she had never visited before and so far as she knew would never see again. She had walked from her downtown hotel across the Burrard Street Bridge, and after a while found herself on Fourth Avenue. At this time Fourth Avenue was a street given over to small shops selling incense, crystals, huge paper flowers, Salvador Dali and White Rabbit posters, also cheap clothes, either bright and flimsy or earth-colored and as heavy as blankets, made in poor and legendary parts of the world. The music played inside these shops assaulted you—it seemed almost to knock you over—as you went by. So did the sweetish foreign smells, and the indolent presence of boys and girls, or young men and women, who had practically set up house on the sidewalk. The woman had heard and read about this youth culture, as she believed it was called. It had been in evidence for some years now and in fact was supposed to be on the wane. But she had never had to make her way through such a concentration of it or found herself, as it seemed, all on her own in the middle of it.

  She was sixty-seven years old, she was so lean that her hips and bosom had practically disappeared, and she walked with a bold gait, head thrust forward and turning from side to side in a challenging, inquisitive way.

  There did not seem to be a person within three decades of her age anywhere in sight.

  A boy and girl approached her with a solemnity that nevertheless seemed slightly goofy. They had circlets of braided ribbon around their heads. They wanted her to buy a tiny scroll of paper.

  She asked if it contained her fortune.

  “Perhaps,” the girl said.

  The boy said, reprovingly, “It contains wisdom.”

  “Oh, in that case,” said Nancy, and put a dollar into an outstretched embroidered cap.

  “Now, tell me your names,” she said, with a grin that she could not suppress and that was not returned.

  “Adam and Eve,” the girl said, as she took up the bill and tucke
d it away in some part of her drapery.

  “Adam and Eve and Pinch-me-tight,” said Nancy. “Went down to the river on Saturday night …”

  But the pair withdrew, in profound disdain and weariness.

  So much for that. She walked on.

  Is there any law against my being here?

  A hole-in-the-wall cafe had a sign in the window. She had not eaten since breakfast at the hotel. It was now after four o’clock. She stopped to read what they were advertising.

  Bless the grass. And behind these scrawled words there was an angry-looking, wrinkled-up, almost teary creature with thin hair blowing back from her cheeks and forehead. Dry-looking pale reddish-brown hair. Always go lighter than your own color, the hairdresser had said. Her own color was dark, dark brown, nearly black.

  No, it wasn’t. Her own color now was white.

  It happens only a few times in your life—at least it’s only a few times if you’re a woman—that you come upon yourself like this, with no preparation. It was as bad as those dreams in which she might find herself walking down the street in her nightgown, or nonchalantly wearing only the top of her pajamas.

  During the past ten or fifteen years she had certainly taken time out to observe her own face in a harsh light so that she could better see what makeup could do, or decide whether the time had definitely come to start coloring her hair. But she had never had a jolt like this, a moment during which she saw not just some old and new trouble spots, or some decline that could not be ignored any longer, but a complete stranger.

  Somebody she didn’t know and wouldn’t want to know.

  She smoothed out her expression immediately, of course, and there was an improvement. You could say then that she recognized herself. And she promptly began to cast around for hope, as if there was not a minute to lose. She needed to spray her hair so it wouldn’t blow off her face like that. She needed a more definite shade of lipstick. Bright coral, which you could hardly ever find now, instead of this nearly naked, more fashionable, and dreary pinkish brown. Determination to find what she needed at once turned her around—she had seen a drugstore three or four blocks back—and a desire not to have to pass by Adam-and-Eve again made her cross the street.