She would stay up late, cleaning her kitchen cupboards, watching television, arguing with herself about whether there was still a chance.
What conceit on his part. She was above all things a sensible woman. She would go to bed at her regular time thinking that he didn’t look as if he’d be a decent dancer anyway. Too stiff, too professorial.
He stayed near the phone, looking at magazines, but he didn’t pick it up when it rang again.
“Grant. This is Marian. I was down in the basement putting the wash in the dryer and I heard the phone and when I got upstairs whoever it was had hung up. So I just thought I ought to say I was here. If it was you and if you are even home. Because I don’t have a machine obviously, so you couldn’t leave a message. So I just wanted. To let you know.
“Bye.”
The time was now twenty-five after ten.
He would say that he’d just got home. There was no point in bringing to her mind the picture of his sitting here, weighing the pros and cons.
Drapes. That would be her word for the blue curtains — drapes. And why not? He thought of the ginger cookies so perfectly round that she’d had to announce they were homemade, the ceramic coffee mugs on their ceramic tree. A plastic runner, he was sure, protecting the hall carpet. A high-gloss exactness and practicality that his mother had never achieved but would have admired — was that why he could feel this twinge of bizarre and unreliable affection? Or was it because he’d had two more drinks after the first?
The walnut-stain tan — he believed now that it was a tan — of her face and neck would most likely continue into her cleavage, which would be deep, crepey-skinned, odorous and hot. He had that to think of, as he dialled the number that he had already written down. That and the practical sensuality of her cat’s tongue. Her gemstone eyes.
FIONA WAS IN her room but not in bed. She was sitting by the open window, wearing a seasonable but oddly short and bright dress. Through the window came a heady, warm blast of lilacs in bloom and the spring manure spread over the fields.
She had a book open in her lap.
She said, “Look at this beautiful book I found, it’s about Iceland. You wouldn’t think they’d leave valuable books lying around in the rooms. The people staying here are not necessarily honest. And I think they’ve got the clothes mixed up. I never wear yellow.”
“Fiona…,” he said.
“You’ve been gone a long time. Are we all checked out now?”
“Fiona, I’ve brought a surprise for you. Do you remember Aubrey?”
She stared at him for a moment, as if waves of wind had come beating into her face. Into her face, into her head, pulling everything to rags.
“Names elude me,” she said harshly.
Then the look passed away as she retrieved, with an effort, some bantering grace. She set the book down carefully and stood up and lifted her arms to put them around him. Her skin or her breath gave off a faint new smell, a smell that seemed to him like that of the stems of cut flowers left too long in their water.
“I’m happy to see you,” she said, and pulled his earlobes.
“You could have just driven away,” she said. “Just driven away without a care in the world and forsook me. Forsooken me. Forsaken.”
He kept his face against her white hair, her pink scalp, her sweetly shaped skull. He said, Not a chance.
Copyright
Copyright © 2006 by Alice Munro
Introduction copyright © 2006 by Margaret Atwood
First published in the U.S. in the Everyman’s Library by Alfred A. Knopf, 2006
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher — or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency — is an infringement of the copyright law.
The stories in this collection originally appeared in the following works published by
Alfred A. Knopf:
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Munro, Alice, 1931–
Alice Munro’s best : a selection of stories.
eISBN: 978-1-55199-393-5
I. Title.
PS8576.U57A6 2008 C813?.54 C2008-900944-4
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.
This book was produced using ancient-forest friendly papers.
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