Friend of My Youth

by Alice Munro

  On Saturday afternoon Margot drove to Kincardine. She was gone only a couple of hours, so she let Joe and his girlfriend take Debbie to the beach. In Kincardine she rented another car—a van, as it happened, an old blue crock pot of a thing like what the hippies drove. She also bought a few cheap clothes and a rather expensive, real-looking wig. She left them in the van, parked in a lot behind a supermarket. On Sunday morning she drove her car that far, parked it in the lot, got into the van, and changed her clothes and donned the wig, as well as some extra makeup. Then she continued driving north.

  The wig was a nice light-brown color, ruffled up on top and long and straight in the back. The clothes were tight pink denim pants and a pink-and-white striped top. Margot was thinner then, though not thin. Also, buffalo sandals, dangly earrings, big pink sunglasses. The works.

  “I didn’t miss a trick,” said Margot. “I did my eyes up kind of Cleopatra-ish. I don’t believe my own kids could’ve recognized me. The mistake I made was those pants—they were too tight and too hot. Them and the wig just about killed me. Because it was a blazing hot day. And I was kind of awkward at parking the van, because I’d never driven one before. Otherwise, no problems.”

  She drove up Highway 21, the Bluewater, with the window down to get a breeze off the lake, and her long hair blowing and the van radio tuned to a rock station, just to get her in the mood. In the mood for what? She had no idea. She smoked one cigarette after another, trying to steady her nerves. Men driving along kept honking at her. Of course the highway was busy, of course Wasaga Beach was jammed, a bright, hot Sunday like this, in June. Around the beach the traffic was just crawling, and the smell of French fries and noon-hour barbecues pressed down like a blanket. It took her a while just to find the campground, but she did, and paid her day fee, and drove in. Round and round the parking lot she drove, trying to spot Reuel’s car. She didn’t see it. Then it occurred to her that the lot would be just for day visitors. She found a parking place.

  Now she had to reconnoitre the entire grounds, on foot. She walked first all through the campground part. Trailer hookups, tents, people sitting out beside the trailers and tents drinking beer and playing cards and barbecuing lunch—more or less just what they would have been doing at home. There was a central playground, with swings and slides kept busy, and kids throwing Frisbees, and babies in the sandbox. A refreshment stand, where Margot got a Coke. She was too nervous to eat anything. It was strange to her to be in a family place yet not part of any family.

  Nobody whistled or made remarks to her. There were lots of long-haired girls around showing off more than she did. And you had to admit that what they had was in better condition to be shown.

  She walked the sandy paths under the pines, away from the trailers. She came to a part of the grounds that looked like an old resort, probably there long before anybody ever thought of trailer hookups. The shade of the big pines was a relief to her. The ground underneath was brown with their needles—hard dirt had turned to a soft and furry dust. There were double cabins and single cabins, painted dark green. Picnic tables beside them. Stone fireplaces. Tubs of flowers in bloom. It was nice.

  There were cars parked by some of the cabins, but Reuel’s wasn’t there. She didn’t see anybody around—maybe the people who stayed in cabins were the sort who went down to the beach. Across the road was a place with a bench and a drinking fountain and a trash can. She sat down on the bench to rest.

  And out he came. Reuel. He came out of the cabin right across from where she was sitting. Right in front of her nose. He was wearing his bathing trunks and he had a couple of towels slung over his shoulders. He walked in a lazy, slouching way. A roll of white fat sloped over the waistband of his trunks. “Straighten up, at least!” Margot wanted to yell at him. Was he slouching like that because he felt sneaky and ashamed? Or just worn out with happy exercise? Or had he been slouching for a long time and she hadn’t noticed? His big strong body turning into something like custard.

  He reached into the car parked beside the cabin, and she knew he was reaching for his cigarettes. She knew, because at the same moment she was fumbling in her bag for hers. If this was a movie, she thought—if this was only a movie, he’d come springing across the road with a light, keen to assist the stray pretty girl. Never recognizing her, while the audience held its breath. Then recognition dawning, and horror—incredulity and horror. While she, the wife, sat there cool and satisfied, drawing deep on her cigarette. But none of this happened, of course none of it happened; he didn’t even look across the road. She sat sweating in her denim pants, and her hands shook so that she had to put her cigarette away.

  The car wasn’t his. What kind of car did Dorothy Slut drive?

  Maybe he was with somebody else, somebody totally unknown to Margot, a stranger. Some stranger who figured she knew him as well as his wife.

  No. No. Not unknown. Not a stranger. Not in the least a stranger. The door of the cabin opened again, and there was Lana Slote. Lana, who was supposed to be in Toronto with the band. Couldn’t baby-sit Debbie. Lana, whom Margot had always felt sorry for and been kind to because she thought the girl was slightly lonesome, or unlucky. Because she thought it showed, that Lana was brought up mostly by old grandparents. Lana seemed old-fashioned, prematurely serious without being clever, and not very healthy, as if she were allowed to live on soft drinks and sugared cereal and whatever mush of canned corn and fried potatoes and macaroni-and-cheese loaf those old people dished up for supper. She got bad colds with asthmatic complications, her complexion was dull and pale. But she did have a chunky, appealing little figure, well developed front and back, and chipmunk cheeks when she smiled, and silky, flat, naturally blond hair. She was so meek that even Debbie could boss her around, and the boys thought she was a joke.

  Lana was wearing a bathing suit that her grandmother might have chosen for her. A shirred top over her bunchy little breasts and a flowered skirt. Her legs were stumpy, untanned. She stood there on the step as if she was afraid to come out—afraid to appear in a bathing suit or afraid to appear at all. Reuel had to go over and give her a loving little spank to get her moving. With numerous lingering pats he arranged one of the towels around her shoulders. He touched his cheek to her flat blond head, then rubbed his nose in her hair, no doubt to inhale its baby fragrance. Margot watched it all.

  They walked away, down the road to the beach, respectably keeping their distance. Father and child.

  Margot observed now that the car was a rented one. From a place in Walkerton. How funny, she thought, if it had been rented in Kincardine, at the same place where she rented the van. She wanted to put a note under the windshield wiper, but she didn’t have anything to write on. She had a pen but no paper. But on the grass beside the trash can she spied a Kentucky Fried Chicken bag. Hardly a grease spot on it. She tore it into pieces, and on the pieces she wrote—or printed, actually, in capital letters—these messages:

  YOU BETTER WATCH YOURSELF,

  YOU COULD END UP IN JAIL.

  •

  THE VICE SQUAD WILL GET YOU IF

  YOU DON’T WATCH OUT.

  •

  PERVERTS NEVER PROSPER.

  •

  LIKE MOTHER LIKE DAUGHTER.

  •

  BETTER THROW THAT ONE BACK IN

  THE FRENCH RIVER, IT’S NOT FULL GROWN.

  •

  SHAME.

  •

  SHAME.

  She wrote another that said “BIG FAT SLOB WITH YOUR BABY-FACED MORON,” but she tore that up—she didn’t like the tone of it. Hysterical. She stuck the notes where she was sure they would be found—under the windshield wiper, in the crack of the door, weighed down by stones on the picnic table. Then she hurried away with her heart racing. She drove so badly, at first, that she almost killed a dog before she got out of the parking lot. She did not trust herself on the highway, so she drove on back roads, gravel roads, and kept reminding herself to keep her speed down. She wanted to go fast. She wa
nted to take off. She felt right on the edge of blowing up, blowing to smithereens. Was it good or was it terrible, the way she felt? She couldn’t say. She felt that she had been cut loose, nothing mattered to her, she was as light as a blade of grass.

  But she ended up in Kincardine. She changed her clothes and took off the wig and rubbed the makeup off her eyes. She put the clothes and the wig in the supermarket trash bin—not without thinking what a pity—and she turned in the van. She wanted to go into the hotel bar and have a drink, but she was afraid of what it might do to her driving. And she was afraid of what she might do if any man saw her drinking alone and came up with the least remark to her. Even if he just said, “Hot day,” she might yelp at him, she might try to claw his face off.

  Home. The children. Pay the sitter. A friend of Lana’s. Could she be the one who had phoned? Get takeout for supper. Pizza—not Kentucky Fried, which she would never be able to think of again without being reminded. Then she sat up late, waiting. She had some drinks. Certain notions kept banging about in her head. Lawyer. Divorce. Punishment. These notions hit her like gongs, then died away without giving her any idea about how to proceed. What should she do first, what should she do next, how should her life go on? The children all had appointments of one kind or another, the boys had summer jobs, Debbie was about to have a minor operation on her ear. She couldn’t take them away; she’d have to do it all herself, right in the middle of everybody’s gossip—which she’d had enough of once before. Also, she and Reuel were invited to a big anniversary party next weekend; she had to get the present. A man was coming to look at the drains.

  Reuel was so late getting home that she began to be afraid he’d had an accident. He’d had to go around by Orangeville, to deliver Lana to the home of her aunt. He’d pretended to be a high-school teacher transporting a member of the band. (The real teacher had been told, meanwhile, that Lana’s aunt was sick and Lana was in Orangeville looking after her.) Reuel’s stomach was upset, naturally, after those notes. He sat at the kitchen table chewing tablets and drinking milk. Margot made coffee, to sober herself for the fray.

  Reuel said it was all innocent. An outing for the girl. Like Margot, he’d felt sorry for her. Innocent.

  Margot laughed at that. She laughed, telling about it.

  “I said to him, ‘Innocent! I know your innocent! Who do you think you’re talking to,’ I said, ‘Teresa?’ And he said, ‘Who?’ No, really. Just for a minute he looked blank, before he remembered. He said, ‘Who?’ ”

  Margot thought then, What punishment? Who for? She thought, he’ll probably marry that girl and there’ll be babies for sure and pretty soon not enough money to go around.

  Before they went to bed at some awful hour in the morning, she had the promise of her house.

  “Because there comes a time with men, they really don’t want the hassle. They’d rather weasel out. I bargained him down to the wire, and I got pretty near everything I wanted. If he got balky about something later on, all I’d have to say was ‘Wigtime!’ I’d told him the whole thing—the wig and the van and where I sat and everything. I’d say that in front of the kids or anybody, and none of them would know what I was talking about. But he’d know! Reuel would know. Wigtime! I still say it once in a while, whenever I think it’s appropriate.”

  She fished a slice of orange out of her glass and sucked, then chewed on it. “I put a little something else in this besides the wine,” she said. “I put a little vodka, too. Notice?”

  She stretched her arms and legs out in the sun.

  “Whenever I think it’s—appropriate.”

  Anita thought that Margot might have given up on vanity but she probably hadn’t given up on sex. Margot might be able to contemplate sex without fine-looking bodies or kindly sentiments. A healthy battering.

  And what about Reuel—what had he given up on? All Margot’s hard bargaining would just be coming up against one thing—whether Reuel was ready or not.

  Bargaining. Bargaining, calculations, houses and money. Anita could not imagine that. How did you turn love and betrayal into solid goods? She had opted instead for arrivals and departures, emotions at the boiling point, a faithfulness to one kind of feeling, which often involved being faithless to almost everything else.

  “Now you,” said Margot, with an ample satisfaction. “I told you something. Time for you to tell me. Tell me how you decided to leave your husband.”

  Anita told her what had happened in a restaurant in British Columbia. Anita and her husband, on a holiday, went into a roadside restaurant, and Anita saw there a man who reminded her of a man she had been in love with—no, perhaps she had better say infatuated with—years and years ago. The man in the restaurant had a pale-skinned, heavy face, with a scornful and evasive expression, which could have been a dull copy of the face of the man she loved, and his long-legged body could have been a copy of that man’s body if it had been struck by lethargy. Anita could hardly tear herself away when it came time to leave the restaurant. She understood that expression—she felt that she was tearing herself away, she got loose in strips and tatters. All the way up the Island Highway, between the dark enclosing rows of tall fir and spruce tress, and on the ferry to Prince Rupert, she felt an absurd pain of separation. She decided that if she could feel such a pain, if she could feel more for a phantom than she could ever feel in her marriage, she had better go.

  So she told Margot. It was more difficult than that, of course, and it was not so clear.

  “Then did you go and find that other man?” said Margot.

  “No. It was one-sided. I couldn’t.”

  “Somebody else, then?”

  “And somebody else, and somebody else,” said Anita, smiling. The other night when she had been sitting beside her mother’s bed, waiting to give her mother an injection, she had thought about men, putting names one upon another as if to pass the time, just as you’d name great rivers of the world, or capital cities, or the children of Queen Victoria. She felt regret about some of them but no repentance. Warmth, in fact, spread from the tidy buildup. An accumulating satisfaction.

  “Well, that’s one way,” said Margot staunchly. “But it seems weird to me. It does. I mean—I can’t see the use of it, if you don’t marry them.” She paused. “Do you know what I do, sometimes?” She got up quickly and went to the sliding doors. She listened, then opened the door and stuck her head inside. She came back and sat down.

  “Just checking to see Debbie’s not getting an earful,” she said. “Boys, you can tell any horrific personal stuff in front of them and you might as well be speaking Hindu, for all they ever listen. But girls listen. Debbie listens.…

  “I’ll tell you what I do,” she said. “I go out and see Teresa.”

  “Is she still there?” said Anita with great surprise. “Is Teresa still out at the store?”

  “What store?” said Margot. “Oh, no! No, no. The store’s gone. The gas station’s gone. Torn down years ago. Teresa’s in the County Home. They have this what they call the Psychiatric Wing out there now. The weird thing is, she worked out there for years and years, just handing round trays and tidying up and doing this and that for them. Then she started having funny spells herself. So now she’s sometimes sort of working there and she’s sometimes just there, if you see what I mean. When she goes off, she’s never any trouble. She’s just pretty mixed up. Talk-talk-talk-talk-talk. The way she always did, only more so. All she has any idea of doing is talk-talk-talk, and fix herself up. If you come and see her, she always wants you to bring her some bath oil or perfume or makeup. Last time I went out, I took her some of that highlight stuff for her hair. I thought that was taking a chance, it was kind of complicated for her to use. But she read the directions, she made out fine. She didn’t make a mess. What I mean by mixed up is, she figures she’s on the boat. The boat with the war brides. Bringing them all out to Canada.”

  “War brides,” Anita said. She saw them crowned with white feathers, fierce and unsullied. Sh
e was thinking of war bonnets.

  She didn’t need to see him, for years she hadn’t the least wish to see him. A man undermines your life for an uncontrollable time, and then one day there’s nothing, just a hollow where he was, it’s unaccountable.

  “You know what just flashed through my mind this minute?” Margot said. “Just the way the store used to look in the mornings. And us coming in half froze. We had a hard life but we didn’t know it.”

  We had power, Anita thought. It’s a power of transformation you have, when you’re stuffed full of fear and eagerness—not a thing in your life can escape being momentous. A power you never think of losing because you never know you have it.

  “She used to come and beat on the door,” said Margot, in a flattened, disbelieving voice. “Out there. Out there, when Reuel was with me in the room. It was awful. I don’t know. I don’t know—do you think it was love?”

  From up here the two long arms of the breakwater look like floating matchsticks. The towers and pyramids and conveyor belt of the salt mine look like large floating toys. The lake is glinting like foil. Everything seems bright and distinct and harmless. Spellbound.

  “We’re all on the boat,” says Margot. “She thinks we’re all on the boat. But she’s the one Reuel’s going to meet in Halifax, lucky her.”

  Margot and Anita have got this far. They are not ready yet to stop talking. They are fairly happy.

  Alice Munro

  Alice Munro grew up in Wingham, Ontario, and attended the University of Western Ontario. She has published twelve collections of stories and two volumes of selected stories, as well as a novel. During her distinguished career she has been the recipient of many awards and prizes, including three of Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Awards and two of its Giller Prizes, the Rea Award for the Short Story, the Lannan Literary Award, England’s W. H. Smith Book Award, the United States’ National Book Critics Circle Award, the Edward MacDowell Medal in literature, and the Man Booker International Prize. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, and other publications, and her collections have been translated into thirteen languages. Alice Munro lives in Clinton, Ontario, near Lake Huron.