The Moons of Jupiter

by Alice Munro

  “Everything,” Ted said confidently. “It’s all right.”

  “The janitor.”

  “It’s all right. He’s finished here.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I asked him to finish up so I could work here.”

  “Work,” said Frances, giggling, struggling out of her blouse and her brassiere. He had undone the buttons down the front, but there were still six buttons on each of the sleeves. She liked the idea of his planning it, she liked to think of determined lustfulness working in him this afternoon while he was busy directing his class. And in another way she did not like it at all; she giggled to cover some dismay or disappointment that she would not listen to. She kissed the straight line of hairs that ran like a stem up his belly, from the pubic roots to the fine symmetrical bush on his chest. His body was a great friend of hers, no matter what. There was the dark, flat mole, tear-shaped, probably more familiar to her (and to Greta?) than it was to him. The discreet bellybutton, the long stomach-ulcer scar, the appendectomy scar. The wiry pubic bush and the ruddy cheerful penis, upright and workmanlike. The little tough hairs in her mouth.

  Then came some knocking at the door.

  “Ssh. It’s all right. They’ll go away.”

  “Mr. Makkavala!”

  It was the secretary.

  “Ssh. She’ll go away.”

  The secretary was standing out in the hall wondering what to do.

  She was fairly sure that Ted was in there, and that Frances was with him. Like almost everybody else in town, she had known about them for sometime. (Among the few people who apparently did not know were Ted’s wife, Greta, and Frances’ mother. Greta was such an unsociable woman that nobody had found a way to tell her. People had tried in various ways to tell old Mrs. Wright, but she did not seem to take it in.)

  “Mr. Makkavala!”

  Directly in front of Frances’ eyes that workman was losing color, was drooping, and looking gentle and forlorn.

  “Mr. Makkavala! I’m sorry. Your son’s been killed!”

  TED’S SON Bobby, who was twelve years old, had not been killed, but the secretary did not know that. She had been told that there had been an accident, a terrible accident in front of the post office; the O’Hare boy and the Makkavala boy killed. Bobby was very badly hurt and was taken to London, by ambulance, immediately. It took nearly four hours to get there, because of the snowstorm. Ted and Greta followed in their car.

  They sat in the waiting room of Victoria Hospital. Ted noticed the old queen, the grumpy widow, in a stained-glass window. Like a saint, and what an unsatisfactory one. Rival, he supposed, for the plaster St. Joseph they had in the other hospital, stretching out his arms ready to topple on you. One as bad as the other. He thought of telling Frances. When something amused or enraged him—a number of things did both, and at the same time—he thought of telling Frances. That seemed to satisfy him, as another man might be satisfied by writing a letter to the editor.

  He thought of phoning her, not to tell her about Queen Victoria, not now, but to let her know what had happened, that he was in London. He had not told her, either, that he would not be able to see her on Wednesday night. He had meant to tell her afterward. Afterward. It didn’t matter now. Everything was changed. And he couldn’t phone her from here; the phones were in plain view of the waiting room.

  Greta said that she had noticed a cafeteria, or a sign with arrows pointing to a cafeteria. It was after nine o’clock, and they had not had any supper.

  “You have to eat,” said Greta, not addressing Ted in particular, but speaking out of her fund of general principles. Probably at this moment she would like to have spoken Finnish. She did not speak Finnish to Ted. He knew only a few words, had grown up in a home where there was an insistence on English. Greta’s home was the opposite. There was no one in Hanratty she could speak Finnish to; that was one of her problems. The phone bill was their main extravagance, because Ted did not feel that he could object to her long, dreary-sounding but apparently revitalizing conversations with her mother and sisters.

  They picked up ham and cheese sandwiches, and coffee. Greta took a piece of raisin pie. Her hand hovered over it a minute before picking it up, maybe just in hesitation about what kind of pie she wanted. Or maybe she was shy about eating pie at this time, and in front of her husband. When they were sitting down it occurred to Ted that now was the time to excuse himself, go back to the phones, call Frances.

  He watched Greta’s heavy white face, her pale eyes, as she applied herself devoutly, perhaps hopefully, to the food. She ate to keep her panic down, just as he thought about Queen Victoria and St. Joseph. He was just going to excuse himself, and get up, when he received out of nowhere the idea that if he went to phone Frances, his son would die. By not phoning her, by not even thinking about her, by willing her to stop existing in his life, he could increase Bobby’s chances, hold off his death. What a flood of nonsense this was, what superstition, coming over him when he didn’t expect it. And it was impossible to stop, impossible to disregard. What if worse was coming? What if the next idea to present itself was one of those senseless bargains? Believe in God, the Lutheran God, promise to go back to church, do it at once, now, and Bobby would not die. Give up Frances, give her up for good, and Bobby would not die.

  Give up Frances.

  How stupid and unfair it was, and yet how easy, to set Frances on one side, tainted, and on the other his hurt child, his poor crushed child whose look, the one time he had opened his eyes, had shown a blinded question, the claim of his twelve-year-old life. Innocence and corruption; Bobby; Frances; what simplification; what nonsense. What powerful nonsense.

  Bobby died. His ribs were crushed, a lung was punctured. The main puzzle to the doctors was why he had not died sooner. But before midnight, he died.

  Much later, Ted told Frances, not only about the idiotic queen but about the meal in the cafeteria, about his thoughts of phoning her, and why he had not done so; his thoughts of bargains; everything. He did not tell her as a confession, but as a matter of interest, an illustration of the way the most rational mind could relapse and grovel. He did not imagine that what he was telling her could be upsetting, when he had, after all, decided so thoroughly in her favor.

  FRANCES WAITED a few moments, alone in the supply room, dressed, buttoned, booted, with her coat on. She didn’t think about anything. She looked at the skeletons. The human skeleton looked smaller than a man, while the cat’s skeleton looked larger, longer than a cat.

  She got out of the school without meeting anybody. She got into her car. Why had she taken her coat and boots out of the cloakroom, so that it would look as if she had gone home, when anybody could see her car still sitting here?

  Frances drove an old car, a 1936 Plymouth. A picture that surfaced in many people’s minds, after she was gone, was of Frances at the wheel of her stalled car, trying one thing after another (she would already be late for somewhere) while it coughed and stuttered and refused her. Or—as now—with the window down, her bare head stuck out in the falling snow, trying to get her spinning wheels out of a drift, with an expression on her face that said she had never expected that car to do anything but balk and confound her, but would fight it just the same to her last breath.

  She did get out, at last, and drove down the hill toward the main street. She didn’t know what had happened to Bobby, what sort of accident. She had not heard what was said, after Ted had left her. On the main street the stores were warmly lighted. There were horses as well as cars along the street (at this time the township roads were not plowed out); they clouded the air with their comforting breath. More people than usual, it seemed to her, were standing around talking, or not talking, just unwilling to separate. Some storekeepers had come outside and were standing there, too, in their shirtsleeves, in the snow. The post office corner seemed to be blocked off, and that was the direction people were looking in.

  She parked behind the hardware store, and ran up the long outdo
or steps, which she had shovelled free of snow and ice that morning, and was going to have to shovel again. She felt as if she was running to a hiding place. But she wasn’t; Adelaide was there.

  “Frances, is that you?”

  Frances took off her coat in the back hall, checked her blouse buttons. She put her boots on the rubber mat.

  “I was just telling Grandma. She never knew anything about it. She never heard the ambulance.”

  There was a basket of clean laundry on the kitchen table, an old pillowcase over it to keep off the snow. Frances came into the kitchen prepared to cut Adelaide short but knew she couldn’t when she saw that laundry. At the times when Frances was busiest, around Christmas, or spring recital, Adelaide would come and take their laundry to her house, and come back with everything pressed and bleached and starched. She had four children, but she was always helping other people out, baking and shopping for them, looking after extra babies, running in and out of houses where there was trouble. Pure generosity. Pure blackmail.

  “Fred Beecher’s car was full of blood,” Adelaide said, turning to Frances. “He had the trunk open, he had the baby buggy in it that he was taking over to his sister-in-law’s, and the trunk of his car was full of blood. It was full of blood.”

  “Was it Fred Beecher?” said Frances, because there was no getting away from it now, she would have to be told. “Did Fred Beecher hit— the Makkavala boy?” She knew Bobby’s name, of course, she knew all Ted’s children’s names and faces, but she had developed an artificial vagueness in speaking of any of them—of Ted, too—so that even now she had to say the Makkavala boy.

  “Don’t you know about it either?” Adelaide said. “Where were you? Weren’t you at the high school? Didn’t they come and get him?”

  “I heard they did,” said Frances. She saw that Adelaide had made tea. She badly wanted a cup, but was afraid to touch the cups or the teapot, because her hands were shaking. “I heard his son was killed.”

  “He wasn’t the one killed, it was the other one was killed. The O’Hare boy. It was two of them in it. The O’Hare boy was instantly killed. It was awful. The Makkavala boy won’t live. They took him to London in the ambulance. He won’t live.”

  “Oh, oh,” said Frances’ mother, seated at the table, her book open in front of her. “Oh, oh. Think of the poor mother.” But she had heard it all once.

  “It wasn’t Fred Beecher hit them, that wasn’t it at all,” said Adelaide to Frances in rather a scolding way. “They tied their sled on to the back of his car. He didn’t even know they done it. They must’ve tied it on when he was slowed down in front of the school with all the kids just let out and then on the hill a car was coming behind and it skidded and run into them. It run the sled right under Fred’s car.”

  Old Mrs. Wright made an assenting, moaning noise.

  “They must’ve been warned. All the kids been warned and they been doing it for years and it was just bound to happen. It was so awful,” Adelaide said, staring at Frances as if to will more reaction out of her. “All the ones that saw it says they will never forget. Fred Beecher went and threw up in the snow. Right in front of the post office. Oh, the blood.”

  “Terrible,” said Frances’ mother. Her interest had quite faded. She was probably thinking about supper. From about three o’clock in the afternoon on, her interest in supper mounted. When Frances was late, as she was tonight, or when somebody dropped in during the late afternoon, thinking, no doubt, that she would be glad of a visitor, she would become more and more agitated, thinking that supper was going to be delayed. She would try to control herself, she would become very affable, eager to respond, rummaging in her collection of social phrases, tossing them out one after another, in her hope that the visitor would soon be satisfied and would go away.

  “Did you get the pork chops?” she said to Frances.

  Of course, Frances had forgotten. She had promised breaded pork chops and she had not gone to the butcher shop, she had forgotten. “I’ll go back.”

  “Oh, don’t bother.”

  “She had too much on her mind with the accident,” Adelaide said.

  “We had a pork-chop casserole last night, it was one you do in the oven with creamed corn, and was it ever good.”

  “Well. Frances does them in bread crumbs.”

  “Oh, I do that, too. That way’s good, too. Sometimes you feel like a change. I saw the O’Hare boy’s father coming out of the undertaker’s. It was awful to see him. He looked sixty years old.”

  “Viewing the body,” said Frances’ mother. “An omelette would do just as good.”

  “Would it?” said Frances, who could not bear to think of going back out on the street.

  “Oh, yes. And save on the ration coupons.”

  “Aren’t they the devil, the ration coupons? He wouldn’t be viewing it yet. Not with the work that’ll have to be done on it. He’d be picking out the casket.”

  “Oh. Likely.”

  “No, he wouldn’t be fixed up yet. He’d still be on the slab.”

  The way Adelaide said that, on the slab, was so emphatic, so full of energy, it was just as if she had slapped a big wet fish down in front of them. She had an uncle who was an undertaker, in another town, and she was proud of this connection, of her insider’s knowledge. Sure enough, she began to talk about this uncle’s work with accident victims, of a boy who had been scalped and how her uncle had restored his appearance, going to the barbershop and getting snips of hair from the wastebasket, mixing to get exactly the right color, working all night. The boy’s family couldn’t believe he could look so natural. It’s an art, said Adelaide, when they know their business like he does.

  Frances thought she must tell Ted about this. She often told Ted things Adelaide had said. Then she remembered.

  “Of course, they can have the casket closed if they want to,” said Adelaide, having explained again how inferior this undertaker was to her uncle. “Was that the Makkavalas’ only son?” she asked Frances.

  “I think he was.”

  “I feel sorry for them. And they haven’t got any family here. She doesn’t even speak too good English, does she? Of course the O’Hares being Catholics, they’ve got four or five more. You know, the priest came and did the business on him, even if he was stone dead.”

  “Oh, oh,” said Frances’ mother disapprovingly. There was not much hostility to Catholics in this disapproval, really; it was a courtesy Protestants were bound to pay to each other.

  “I won’t have to go to the funeral parlor, will I?” A worried, stubborn look settled on Frances’ mother’s face whenever there was a chance she might have to go near sick or dead people. “What were their names?”

  “O’Hare.

  “Oh, yes. Catholics.” “And Makkavala.”

  “I don’t know them. Do I? Are they foreigners?”

  “Finnish. From Northern Ontario.”

  “I thought so. I thought it sounded foreign. I don’t have to go.”

  FRANCES DID HAVE to go out again. She had to go to the library, in the evening, to get her mother’s books. Every week she brought her mother three new books from the library. Her mother liked the sight of a good thick book. A lot of reading in that one, she would say, just as she would say there was a lot of wear in a coat or blanket. Indeed, the book was just like a warm, thick eiderdown that she could pull over herself, snuggle into. When she got toward the end, and her covering was getting thinner and thinner, she would count the pages left and say, “Did you get me another book? Oh, yes. There it is. I remember. Well, I still have that one when I finish this one.”

  But there always came the time when she had finished the last book and had to wait while Frances went to the library and got three more. (Fortunately, Frances was able to repeat the same book after a short interval, say three or four months; her mother would sink in all over again, even giving out bits of information about the setting and the characters, as if she had never met them before.)

  Frances wo
uld tell her mother to listen to the radio while she was waiting, but although her mother never refused to do anything she was told, the radio did not seem to comfort her. While she was coverless, so to speak, she might go into the living room and pull an old book out of the bookcase—Jacob Faithful, it might be, or Lorna Doone—and sit crouched over on the low stool, hanging on to and reading it. Other times she might just shuffle around from room to room. Never lifting her feet except for a threshold, hanging on to the furniture, and blundering against the walls, blind because she hadn’t turned the light on, weak because she never walked now, overtaken by a fearful restlessness, a sort of slow-motion frenzy, that could get her when she didn’t have books or food or sleeping pills to keep it away.

  Frances was disgusted with her mother tonight for saying, “How about my library books?” She was disgusted with her mother’s callousness, her self-absorption, her feebleness, her survival, her wretched little legs and her arms on which the skin hung like wrinkled sleeves. But her mother was not more callous than she was herself. She went past the post office corner where there was no sign of an accident now, just fresh snow, snow blowing up the street from the south, from London (he would have to come back, no matter what happened he would have to come back). She felt fury at that child, at his stupidity, his stupid risk, his showing off, his breaking through into other people’s lives, into her life. She could not stand the thought of anybody right now. The thought of Adelaide, for instance. Adelaide, before she left, had followed Frances into the bedroom where Frances was taking off her satin blouse, because she could not cook supper in it. She had it open in front, she was undoing the sleeve buttons; she was standing in front of Adelaide just as she had stood in front of Ted a while before.

  “Frances,” said Adelaide in a tense whisper, “are you feeling all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t think it was paying back for you and him?”

  “What?”

  “God paying him back,” said Adelaide. Excitement, satisfaction, self-satisfaction shone out of her. Before her marriage to Frances’ stubborn and innocent younger brother, she had enjoyed a year or two of sexual popularity, or notoriety, puns being frequently made on her name. Her figure was stocky and maternal, her eyes slightly crossed. Frances could not understand what had driven her into such a friendship, or alliance, or whatever it could be called. Sitting in Adelaide’s kitchen on the nights when Clark was out coaching the junior hockey team, spiking their coffee with Clark’s precious whiskey (they watered what was left), with the diapers drying beside the stove, some cheap metal toy-train tracks and a hideous, eyeless, armless doll on the table in front of them, they had talked about sex and men. A shameful relief, a guilty indulgence, a bad mistake. God had not entered into Adelaide’s conversation at that time. She had never heard the word penis, tried it but couldn’t get used to it. Pecker, she said. Whipped out his pecker, she said, with the same disturbing gusto as she said on the slab.