by Alice Munro
The cost.
As they stepped off a curb he brushed her arm—perhaps he had stumbled a little—and he said, “Excuse me.” And she thought he gave the least shiver.
AIDS. Why had that never occurred to her before?
“No,” he said, though she had certainly not spoken aloud. “I’m quite well at present. I’m not HIV positive or anything like that. I contracted malaria years ago, but it’s under control. I may be a bit rundown at present but nothing to worry about. We turn here, we’re right in this block.”
“We” again.
“I’m not psychic,” he said. “I just figured out something that Savanna was trying to get at and I thought I’d put you at rest. Here we are then.”
It was one of those houses whose front doors open only a few steps from the sidewalk.
“I’m celibate, actually,” he said, holding open the door.
A piece of cardboard was tacked up where one of its panes should be.
The floorboards were bare and creaked underfoot. The smell was complicated, all pervasive. The street smell of smoke had got in here, of course, but it was mixed with smells of ancient cooking, burnt coffee, toilets, sickness, decay.
“Though ‘celibate’ might be the wrong word. That sounds as if there’s something to do with willpower. I guess I should have said ‘neuter.’ I don’t think of it as an achievement. It isn’t.”
He was leading her around the stairs and into the kitchen. And there a gigantic woman stood with her back to them, stirring something on the stove.
Kent said, “Hi, Marnie. This is my mom. Can you say hello to my mom?”
Sally noticed a change in his voice. A relaxation, honesty, perhaps a respect, different from the forced lightness he managed with her.
She said, “Hello, Marnie,” and the woman half turned, showing a squeezed doll’s face in a loaf of flesh but not focusing her eyes.
“Marnie is our cook this week,” said Kent. “Smells okay, Marnie.”
To his mother he said, “We’ll go and sit in my sanctum, shall we?” and led the way down a couple of steps and along a back hall. It was hard to move there because of the stacks of newspapers, flyers, magazines neatly tied.
“Got to get these out of here,” Kent said. “I told Steve this morning. Fire hazard. Jeez, I used to just say that. Now I know what it means.”
Jeez. She had been wondering if he belonged to some plainclothes religious order, but if he did, he surely wouldn’t say that, would he? Of course it could be an order of some faith other than Christian.
His room was down some further steps, actually in the cellar. There was a cot, a battered, old-fashioned desk with cubbyholes, a couple of straight-backed chairs with rungs missing.
“The chairs are perfectly safe,” he said. “Nearly all our stuff is scavenged from somewhere, but I draw the line at chairs you can’t sit on.”
Sally seated herself with a feeling of exhaustion.
“What are you?” she said. “What is it you do? Is this one of those halfway houses or something like that?”
“No. Not even quarter-way. We take in anybody that comes.”
“Even me.”
“Even you,” he said without smiling. “We aren’t supported by anybody but ourselves. We do some recycling with stuff we pick up. Those newspapers. Bottles. We make a bit here and there. And we take turns soliciting the public.”
“Asking for charity?”
“Begging,” he said.
“On the street?”
“What better place for it? On the street. And we go in some pubs that we have an understanding with, though it is against the law.”
“You do that too?”
“I could hardly ask them to do it if I wouldn’t. That’s something I had to overcome. Just about all of us have something to overcome. It can be shame. Or it can be the concept of ‘mine.’ When somebody drops in a ten-dollar bill or even a loonie, that’s when the private ownership kicks in. Whose is it, huh? Mine or—skip a beat—ours? If the answer comes mine it usually gets spent right away and we have the person coming back smelling of booze and saying, I don’t know what’s the matter with me today I couldn’t get a bite. Then they might start to feel bad later and confess. Or not confess, never mind. We see them disappear for days—weeks—then show up back here when the going gets too rough. And sometimes you’ll see them working the street on their own, never letting on they recognize you. Never come back. And that’s all right. They’re our graduates, you could say. If you believe in the system.”
“Kent—”
“Around here I’m Jonah.”
“Jonah?”
“I just chose it. I thought of Lazarus, but it’s too self-dramatizing. You can call me Kent if you like.”
“I want to know what’s happened in your life. I mean, not so much these people—”
“These people are my life.”
“I knew you’d say that.”
“Okay, it was kind of smart-arse. But this—this is what I’ve been doing for—seven years? Nine years. Nine years.”
She persisted. “Before that?”
“What do I know? Before that? Before that. Man’s days are like grass, eh? Cut down and put into the oven. Listen to me. Soon as I meet you again I start the showing off. Cut down and put in the oven—I’m not interested in that. I live each day as it happens. Really. You wouldn’t understand that. I’m not in your world, you’re not in mine—you know why I wanted to meet you here today?”
“No. I didn’t think of it. I mean, I thought naturally maybe the time had come—”
“Naturally. When I saw about my father’s death in the paper I naturally thought, Well, where is the money? I thought, Well, she can tell me.”
“It went to me,” said Sally, with flat disappointment but great self-control. “For the time being. The house as well, if you’re interested.”
“I thought likely that was it. That’s okay.”
“When I die, to Peter and his boys and Savanna.”
“Very nice.”
“He didn’t know if you were alive or dead—”
“You think I’m asking for myself? You think I’m that much of an idiot to want the money for myself? But I did make a mistake thinking how I could use it. Thinking family money, sure, I can use that. That’s the temptation. Now I’m glad, I’m glad I can’t have it.”
“I could let—”
“The thing is, though, this place is condemned—”
“I could let you borrow.”
“Borrow? We don’t borrow around here. We don’t use the borrow system round here. Excuse me, I’ve got to go get hold of my mood. Are you hungry? Would you like some soup?”
“No thanks.”
When he was gone she thought of running away. If she could locate a back door, a route that didn’t go through the kitchen. But she could not do it, because it would mean she would never see him again. And the backyard of a house like this, built before the days of automobiles, would have no access to the street.
It was maybe half an hour before he came back. She had not worn her watch. Thinking maybe a watch was out of favour in the life he lived and being right, it seemed. Right at least about that.
He seemed a little surprised or bewildered to find her still there.
“Sorry. I had to settle some business. And then I talked to Marnie, she always calms me down.”
“You wrote a letter to us?” Sally said. “It was the last we heard from you.”
“Oh, don’t remind me.”
“No, it was a good letter. It was a good attempt to explain what you were thinking.”
“Please. Don’t remind me.”
“You were trying to figure out your life—”
“My life, my life, my progress, what all I could discover about my stinking self. Purpose of me. My crap. My spirituality. My intellectuality. There isn’t any inside stuff, Sally. You don’t mind if I call you Sally? It just comes out easier. There is only outside, what you do, every moment of your l
ife. Since I realized this I’ve been happy.”
“You are? Happy?”
“Sure. I’ve let go of that stupid self stuff. I think, How can I help? And that’s all the thinking that I allow myself.”
“Living in the present?”
“I don’t care if you think I’m banal. I don’t care if you laugh at me.”
“I’m not—”
“I don’t care. Listen. If you think I’m after your money, fine. I am after your money. Also I am after you. Don’t you want a different life? I’m not saying I love you, I don’t use stupid language. Or, I want to save you. You know you can only save yourself. So what is the point? I don’t usually try to get anywhere talking to people. I usually try to avoid personal relationships. I mean I do. I do avoid them.”
Relationships.
“Why are you trying not to smile?” he said. “Because I said ‘relationships’? That’s a cant word? I don’t fuss about my words.”
Sally said, “I was thinking of Jesus. ‘Woman, what have I to do with thee?’”
The look that leapt to his face was almost savage.
“Don’t you get tired, Sally? Don’t you get tired being clever? I can’t go on talking this way, I’m sorry. I’ve got things to do.”
“So have I,” said Sally. It was a complete lie. “We’ll be—”
“Don’t say it. Don’t say, ‘We’ll be in touch.’”
“Maybe we’ll be in touch. Is that any better?”
SALLY GETS lost, then finds her way. The bank building again, the same or possibly a whole new regiment of loiterers. The subway ride, the car park, the keys, the highway, the traffic. Then the lesser highway, the early sunset, no snow yet, the bare trees, and the darkening fields.
She loves this countryside, this time of year. Must she now think herself unworthy?
The cat is glad to see her. There are a couple of messages from friends on her machine. She heats up the single serving of lasagna. She buys these separated precooked and frozen portions now. They are quite good and not too expensive when you think of no waste. She sips from a glass of wine during the seven-minute wait.
Jonah.
She is shaking with anger. What is she supposed to do, go back to the condemned house and scrub the rotten linoleum and cook up the chicken parts that were thrown out because they’re past the best-before date? And be reminded every day how she falls short of Marnie or any other afflicted creature? All for the privilege of being useful in the life somebody else—Kent—has chosen.
He’s sick. He’s wearing himself out, maybe he’s dying. He wouldn’t thank her for clean sheets and fresh food. Oh no. He’d rather die on that cot under the blanket with the burned hole in it.
But a cheque, she can write some sort of cheque, not an absurd one. Not too big or too small. He’ll not help himself with it, of course. He’ll not stop despising her, of course.
Despising. No. Not the point. Nothing personal.
THERE IS something, anyway, in having got through the day without its being an absolute disaster. It wasn’t, was it? She had said maybe. He hadn’t corrected her.
AND It was possible, too, that age could be her ally, turning her into somebody she didn’t know yet. She has seen the look on the faces of certain old people—marooned on islands of their own choosing, clear sighted, content.
Free Radicals
AT FIRST people were phoning to make sure that Nita was not too depressed, not too lonely, not eating too little or drinking too much. (She had been such a diligent wine drinker that many forgot she was now forbidden to drink at all.) She held them off, without sounding nobly grief stricken or unnaturally cheerful or absent-minded or confused. She said she didn’t need groceries, she was working through what she had on hand. She had enough of her prescription pills and enough stamps for her thank-you notes.
Her better friends probably suspected the truth—that she was not bothering to eat much and that she threw out any sympathy note she happened to get. She had not even written to people at a distance, to elicit such notes. Not even to Rich’s former wife in Arizona or his semi-estranged brother in Nova Scotia, though they might understand, perhaps better than the people near at hand, why she had proceeded with the non-funeral as she had done.
Rich had called to her that he was going to the village, to the hardware store. It was around ten o’clock in the morning—he had started to paint the railing of the deck. That is, he was scraping it to prepare for the painting, and the old scraper had come apart in his hand.
She did not have time to wonder about his being late. He died bent over the sidewalk sign that stood out in front of the hardware store, offering a discount on lawn mowers. He had not even had time to get into the store. He was eighty-one years old and in fine health, aside from some deafness in his right ear. He had been checked over by his doctor only the week before. Nita was to learn that the recent checkup, the clean bill of health, cropped up in a surprising number of the sudden-death stories that she was now presented with. You would almost think such visits ought to be avoided, she said.
She should have spoken like this only to her close and bad-mouthing friends, Virgie and Carol, women close to her own age, which was sixty-two. Younger people found this sort of talk unseemly and evasive. At first they were ready to crowd in on Nita. They did not actually speak of the grieving process, but she was afraid that at any moment they might start.
As soon as she got on with the arrangements, of course, all but the tried and true fell away. The cheapest box, into the ground immediately, no ceremony of any kind. The undertaker suggested that this might be against the law, but she and Rich had their facts straight. They had got their information almost a year ago, when her diagnosis became final.
“How was I to know he’d steal my thunder?”
People had not expected a traditional service, but they had looked forward to some kind of contemporary affair. Celebrating the life. Playing his favourite music, holding hands all together, telling stories that praised Rich while touching humorously on his quirks and forgivable faults.
The sort of thing that Rich had said made him puke.
So it was dealt with immediately, and the stir, the widespread warmth around Nita, melted away, though some people, she supposed, would still be saying they were concerned about her. Virgie and Carol didn’t say that. They said only that she was a selfish bloody bitch if she was thinking of conking out now, any sooner than necessary. They would come round, they said, and revive her with Gray Goose.
She said she wasn’t, though she could see a certain logic.
Her cancer was at present in remission—whatever that really meant. It did not mean “in retreat.” Not for good, anyway. Her liver is the main theatre of operations and as long as she sticks to nibbles it is not complaining. It would only depress her friends to remind them that she can’t have wine. Or vodka.
The radiation last spring had done her some good after all. Here it is midsummer. She thinks she doesn’t look so jaundiced now—but maybe that only means she has got used to it.
She gets out of bed early and washes herself and dresses in anything that comes to hand. But she does dress, and wash, and she brushes her teeth and combs out her hair, which has grown back decently, grey around her face and dark at the back, the way it was before. She puts on lipstick and darkens her eyebrows, which are now very scanty, and out of a lifelong respect for a narrow waist and moderate hips, she checks on the achievements she has made in that direction, though she knows the proper word for all parts of her now might be scrawny.
She sits in her usual ample armchair, with piles of books and unopened magazines around her. She sips cautiously from the mug of weak herb tea that is now her substitute for coffee. At one time she thought that she could not live without coffee, but it turned out that it is really the warm large mug she wants in her hands, that is the aid to thought or whatever it is she practises through the procession of hours, or of days.
This was Rich’s house. He boug
ht it when he was with his wife, Bett. It was to be nothing but a weekend place, closed up for the winter. Two tiny bedrooms, a lean-to kitchen, half a mile from the village. But soon he was working on it, learning carpentry, building a wing for two bedrooms and bathrooms, another wing for his study, turning the original house into an open-plan living room/dining room/kitchen. Bett became interested—she had said in the beginning that she could not understand why he had bought such a dump, but practical improvements always engaged her, and she bought matching carpenter’s aprons. She needed something to become involved in, having finished and published the cookbook that had occupied her for several years. They had no children.
And at the same time that Bett was telling people how she had found her role in life becoming a carpenter’s helper, and how it had brought her and Rich much closer then before, Rich was falling in love with Nita. She worked in the Registrar’s Office of the university where he taught Medieval Literature. The first time they had made love was amid the shavings and sawn wood of what would become the central room with its arched ceiling. Nita left her sunglasses behind—not on purpose, though Bett who never left anything behind could not believe that. The usual ruckus followed, trite and painful, and ended with Bett going off to California, then Arizona, Nita quitting her job at the suggestion of the registrar, and Rich missing out on becoming dean of arts. He took early retirement, sold the city house. Nita did not inherit the smaller carpenter’s apron but read her books cheerfully in the midst of disorder, made rudimentary dinners on a hot plate, went for long exploratory walks and came back with ragged bouquets of tiger lilies and wild carrot, which she stuffed into empty paint cans. Later, when she and Rich had settled down, she became somewhat embarrassed to think how readily she had played the younger woman, the happy home wrecker, the lissome, laughing, tripping ingenue. She was really a rather serious, physically awkward, self-conscious woman—hardly a girl—who could recite all the queens, not just the kings but the queens, of England, and knew the Thirty Years’ War backwards, but was shy about dancing in front of people and was never going to learn, as Bett had, to get up on a stepladder.
