Dear Life

by Alice Munro

  During those years when the new shopping mall was built on the south edge of town, and Krebs’s folded (no problem for me, I had enough to do without them), there seemed to be more and more people from town taking winter holidays, and that meant going to Mexico or the West Indies or someplace we never used to have anything to do with. The result, in my opinion, was to bring back diseases we never used to have anything to do with either. For a while, this happened. There would be Disease of the Year, with a special name on it. Maybe these are still going around, but nobody notices them so much anymore. Or it could be that people my age have got beyond noticing. You can be sure you’re not going to be carried off by anything dramatic, or it would have happened by now.

  One evening I got up at the end of a television show to make us a cup of tea before Oneida was to go home. I walked towards the kitchen and suddenly I felt terrible. I stumbled and went down on my knees, then onto the floor. Oneida grabbed me and got me up into a chair and the blackout passed. I told her I sometimes had spells and not to worry. This was a lie, and I don’t know why I told it, but she didn’t believe me anyway. She got me into the downstairs room where I slept, and she took off my shoes. Then somehow together, and with a bit of protest on my part, we got me out of my clothes and into pajamas. I could only realize things by fits and starts. I told her to get a taxi and go home, but she didn’t pay any attention.

  She slept that night on the living-room couch, and upon exploring the house the next day she settled into my mother’s bedroom. She must have gone back to her apartment in the daytime for such things as she needed, and maybe also to the mall for such groceries as she thought would round out my supplies. She also talked to the doctor and got a prescription from the drugstore that I swallowed whenever she held it to my lips.

  I was in and out of consciousness and sick and feverish for the better part of a week. Occasionally I told her that I was feeling recovered, and that I could manage by myself, but this was nonsense. Mostly I just obeyed her and came to depend on her in the matter-of-fact way that you would on a nurse in a hospital. She was not as skilled at dealing with a fevered body as a nurse might be, and sometimes if I had the energy I would complain like a six-year-old. She would apologize then and not take offense. In between telling her I was better, and she should think about getting back to her own place, I was selfish enough to be calling her name for no reason but to reassure myself that she was there.

  Then I was well enough to worry about her catching whatever it was that I had.

  “You should have a mask on.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “If I was going to get it I think I’d have got it by now.”

  When I first really felt better I was too lazy to acknowledge the fact that I had spells of feeling like a small child again.

  But of course she was not my mother, and I had to wake up one morning and realize that. I had to think about all the things she had done for me, and that embarrassed me considerably. As it would any man, but me especially because of remembering how I looked. I had more or less forgotten that, and now it seemed to me that she had not been embarrassed, that she had been able to do things so matter-of-factly because I was a neuter to her, or an unfortunate child.

  I was polite now, and worked in, between my expressions of gratitude, my by now very genuine wish that she would go home.

  She got that message, she wasn’t offended. She must have been tired out from all the broken sleep and unaccustomed care. She did a last bit of shopping for what I’d need and took my temperature for the final time and went off, as I thought, in the satisfied mood of somebody who has finished a job well done. Just before doing that she had waited in the front room to see if I could get my clothes on without assistance and had been satisfied that I could. She was barely out of the house when I got some accounts out and set into doing the work I had been doing on the day I fell sick.

  My mind was slower, but accurate, and that was a great relief to me.

  She left me alone until the day—or evening, rather—when we were accustomed to watch television. Then she arrived with a can of soup. Not enough to make a meal in itself, and not something she had made, but nevertheless a contribution to a meal. And she was early, to make time for that. She opened it, too, without questioning me. She knew her way around my kitchen. She heated it and got out the soup bowls and we ate together. Her behavior seemed to remind me that I had been a sick man needing immediate nourishment. And that was true, in a way. That day at noon I had been unable, for shakiness, to use the can opener myself.

  There were two shows we watched, back-to-back. But on that evening we never got to see the second one. She could not wait until the second one had its turn before starting a conversation that was very unsettling to me.

  The gist of it was that she was prepared to move in.

  For one thing, she said, she was not happy living in her apartment. That had been a big mistake. She liked houses. But that did not mean that she regretted leaving the house that she was born in. She would have gone batty living in that house by herself. The mistake was simply in thinking that an apartment could be the answer. She had never been happy in that place and never could be. What made her realize this was the time she had spent in my house. When I was sick. She should have realized it long ago. Long ago, when she was a little girl and looked at certain houses, she would wish that she was living there.

  Another thing she said was that we were not entirely capable of looking after ourselves. What if I had got sick and been all alone? What if such a thing should happen again? Or should happen to her?

  We had a certain feeling for each other, she said. We had a feeling which was not just the usual thing. We could live together like brother and sister and look after each other like brother and sister and it would be the most natural thing in the world. Everybody would accept it as so. How could they not?

  All the time she was speaking I felt terrible. Angry, scared, appalled. The worst was towards the end, when she was talking about how nobody would think a thing about it. At the same time, I could see what she meant, and maybe agree with her that people would get used to it. A dirty joke or two we might not even get to hear.

  She might be right. It might make sense.

  At this I felt as if I had been thrown down into a cellar and a flat door slammed on my head.

  I wouldn’t for anything let her know about that.

  I said it was an interesting idea, but one thing made it impossible.

  What was that?

  I had neglected to tell her. With all the sickness and fuss and everything. But I had put this house on the market. This house was sold.

  Oh. Oh. Why had I not told her this?

  I had no inkling, I said then, truthfully. I had no inkling that she had such a plan in her head.

  “So it just didn’t come to me soon enough,” she said. “Like a lot of things in my life. Something must be the matter with me. I don’t get around to thinking about things. I always think there’s plenty of time.”

  I had rescued myself, but not without a cost. I had to put the house—this house—up for sale and sell it as quickly as I could. Almost the same as she had done with hers.

  And I sold it almost that quickly, though I was not forced to accept such a ridiculous offer as she had. And then I had to face the job of dealing with all that had been accumulating since my parents moved in on their honeymoon, not having the money for any kind of a trip.

  The neighbors were amazed. They weren’t longtime neighbors, they hadn’t known my mother, but they said they had got so used to my coming and going, my regularity.

  They wanted to know what my plans were now, and I realized that I didn’t have any. Beyond doing the work I’d always done, and I had already been cutting down on that, looking forward to a careful old age.

  * * *

  I began scouting around town for a place to live, and it turned out that of all the places that came near to suiting me, only one was vacant. And that one was an a
partment in the building on the site of Oneida’s old house. Not on the top floor, with the view, where she was, but on the bottom. I had never been much for views, anyhow, and I took it. Not knowing what else I could do.

  Of course I meant to tell her. But the word got out before I could bring myself round to it. She had her own plans, anyway. It was summer by this time, our programs were off the air. It was a time when we did not regularly see each other. And I didn’t think, when it came right down to it, that I should have to apologize or ask her permission. When I went up to look at the place and sign the lease she hadn’t been anywhere in sight.

  One thing I came to understand on that visit, or when I thought about it afterwards. A man I didn’t quite recognize spoke to me, and after a minute I realized he was somebody I’d known for years and greeted on the street for half my life. If I’d seen him there I might have known him, in spite of certain ravages of age. But here I hadn’t, and we laughed about that, and he wanted to know if I was moving into the boneyard.

  I said I hadn’t realized they called it that, but yes, I guessed I was.

  Then he wanted to know whether I played euchre, and I said I did, up to a point.

  “That’ll be good,” he said.

  And I thought then, Just living long enough wipes out the problems. Puts you in a select club. No matter what your disabilities may have been, just living till now wipes them out, to a good measure. Everybody’s face will have suffered, never just yours.

  That made me think of Oneida, and how she looked while she was talking to me about moving in. She was not slender anymore but gaunt, tired, no doubt, from the nights of getting up with me, but her age was telling, beyond that. Her beauty had been delicate all along. A blond woman’s easily flushing kind of looks, with that strange mixture of apology and high-class confidence about it was what she’d had, and lost. When she set out to make her proposal to me, she looked strained and her expression was peculiar.

  Of course if I had ever had the right to choose, I would naturally, according to my height, have picked a smaller girl. Like the college girl, dainty and dark-haired, who was related to the Krebses and worked there for a summer.

  One day that girl had said to me in a friendly way that I could get a better job done on my face, nowadays. I’d be amazed, she said. And it wouldn’t cost, with OHIP.

  She was right. But how could I explain that it was just beyond me to walk into some doctor’s office and admit that I was wishing for something I hadn’t got?

  Oneida was looking better than formerly when she showed up in the midst of my packing and discarding. She’d had her hair done, and the color changed somewhat, maybe browner.

  “You mustn’t throw everything out in one fell swoop,” she said. “All you’d collected for that town history.”

  I said I was being selective, though that was not entirely true. It seemed to me that both of us were pretending to care about what happened, more than we really did. When I thought about the town history now, it seemed as if one town must after all be much like another.

  We did not mention my going into the apartment building. As if that had all been discussed and taken for granted long ago.

  She said that she was going off on one of her trips, and this time she named the place. Savary Island, as if that was enough.

  I asked politely where that was and she said, “Oh, it’s off the coast.”

  As if that answered the question.

  “Where an old friend of mine lives,” she said.

  Of course that might be true.

  “She’s on e-mail. She says that’s what I should do. I’m not keen on it somehow. But I might as well try it.”

  “I suppose you never know till you try.”

  I felt as if I should say something more. Ask about the weather there, or something, out where she was going. But before I could think of what to say she gave a most unusual little shriek or cry, and then put her hand to her mouth and moved with large cautious steps to my window.

  “Careful, careful,” she said. “Look. Look.”

  She was laughing almost soundlessly, a laugh that might even indicate that she was in pain. She moved one hand behind her back to hush me as I got to my feet.

  In the backyard of my house there was a birdbath. I had put it in years ago so that my mother could watch the birds. She was very fond of birds and could recognize them by their song as well as their appearance. I had neglected it for a good while and had just filled it up that morning.

  Now what?

  It was full of birds. Black-and-white, dashing up a storm.

  Not birds. Something larger than robins, smaller than crows.

  She said, “Skunks. Little skunks. More white in them than black.”

  But how beautiful. Flashing and dancing and never getting in each other’s way, so you could not tell how many there were, where each body started or stopped.

  While we watched, they lifted themselves up one by one and left the water and proceeded to walk across the yard, swiftly but in a straight diagonal line. As if they were proud of themselves but discreet. Five of them.

  “My Lord,” said Oneida. “In town.”

  Her face looked dazzled.

  “Have you ever seen such a sight?”

  I said no. Never.

  I thought she might say another thing, and spoil it, but no, neither of us did.

  We were as glad as we could be.

  CORRIE

  IT isn’t a good thing to have the money concentrated all in the one family, the way you do in a place like this,” Mr. Carlton said. “I mean, for a girl like my daughter Corrie here. For example, I mean, like her. It isn’t good. Nobody on the same level.”

  Corrie was right across the table, looking their guest in the eye. She seemed to think this was funny.

  “Who’s she going to marry?” her father continued. “She’s twenty-five.”

  Corrie raised her eyebrows, made a face.

  “You missed a year,” she said. “Twenty-six.”

  “Go ahead,” her father said. “Laugh all you like.”

  She laughed out loud, and, indeed, what else could she do? the guest thought. His name was Howard Ritchie, and he was only a few years older than she was, but already equipped with a wife and a young family, as her father had immediately found out.

  Her expressions changed very quickly. She had bright-white teeth and short, curly, nearly black hair. High cheekbones that caught the light. Not a soft woman. Not much meat on the bone, which was the sort of thing her father might find to say next. Howard Ritchie thought of her as the type of girl who spent a lot of time playing golf and tennis. In spite of her quick tongue, he expected her to have a conventional mind.

  He was an architect, just getting started on a career. Mr. Carlton insisted on referring to him as a church architect, because he was at present restoring the tower of the town’s Anglican church. A tower that had been on the verge of toppling until Mr. Carlton came to its rescue. Mr. Carlton was not an Anglican—he had pointed that out several times. His church was the Methodist, and he was Methodist to the core, which was why he kept no liquor in the house. But a fine church like the Anglican ought not be let go to rack and ruin. No hope looking to the Anglicans to do anything—they were a poor class of Irish Protestants who would have taken the tower down and put up something that was a blemish on the town. They didn’t have the shekels, of course, and they wouldn’t understand the need for an architect, rather than a carpenter. A church architect.

  The dining room was hideous, at least in Howard’s opinion. This was the mid-fifties, but everything looked as if it had been in place before the turn of the century. The food was barely all right. The man at the head of the table never stopped talking. You’d think the girl would be exhausted by it, but she seemed mostly to be on the verge of laughing. Before she was done with her dessert, she lit a cigarette. She offered Howard one, saying, quite audibly, “Don’t mind Daddy.” He accepted, but didn’t think the better of her.
/>   Spoiled rich miss. Unmannerly.

  Out of the blue, she asked him what he thought of the Saskatchewan premier, Tommy Douglas.

  He said that his wife supported him. Actually, his wife didn’t think Douglas was far left enough, but he wasn’t going to get into that.

  “Daddy loves him. Daddy’s a Communist.”

  This brought a snort from Mr. Carlton that didn’t squelch her.

  “Well, you laugh at his jokes,” she told her father.

  Shortly after that, she took Howard out to look at the grounds. The house was directly across the street from the factory which made men’s boots and work shoes. Behind the house, however, were wide lawns and the river that curled halfway around the town. There was a worn path down to its bank. She led the way, and he was able to see what he hadn’t been sure of before. She was lame in one leg.

  “Isn’t it a steep climb back up?” he asked.

  “I’m not an invalid.”

  “I see you’ve got a rowboat,” he said, meaning that as a partway apology.

  “I’d take you out in it but not right now. Now we’ve got to watch the sunset.” She pointed out an old kitchen chair that she said was for watching the sunset, and demanded that he sit there. She herself sat on the grass. He was about to ask if she would be able to get up all right, but thought better of it.

  “I had polio,” she said. “That’s all it is. My mother had it too, and she died.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “I suppose so. I can’t remember her. I’m going to Egypt next week. I was very keen on going, but now I don’t seem to care so much. Do you think it’d be fun?”

  “I have to earn a living.”

  He was amazed at what he’d said, and of course it set her off giggling.

  “I was speaking in general terms,” she said grandly, when the giggling finished.

  “Me too.”

  Some creepy fortune hunter was bound to snap her up, some Egyptian or whatever. She seemed both bold and childish. At first, a man might be intrigued by her, but then her forwardness, her self-satisfaction, if that was what it was, would become tiresome. Of course, there was money, and to some men that never became tiresome.