FIONA lived in her parents’ house,in the town where she and Grantwent to university. It was a big,

bay-windowed house that seemed toGrant both luxurious and disorderly,with rugs crooked on the floors and cup rings bitten into the table varnish.Her mother was Icelandic—a powerful woman with a froth of white hair andindignant far-left politics. The fatherwas an important cardiologist, reveredaround the hospital but happily subser-vient at home, where he would listen tohis wife’s strange tirades with an absent-minded smile. Fiona had her own lit-tle car and a pile of cashmere sweaters,but she wasn’t in a sorority, and hermother’s political activity was probablythe reason. Not that she cared. Sorori-ties were a joke to her, and so was poli-tics—though she liked to play “The FourInsurgent Generals” on the phonograph,and sometimes also the “Internationale,”very loud, if there was a guest she thoughtshe could make nervous. A curly-hairedgloomy-looking foreigner was courtingher—she said he was a Visigoth—andso were two or three quite respectableand uneasy young interns. She made funof them all and of Grant as well. Shewould drolly repeat some of his small-town phrases. He thought maybe shewas joking when she proposed to him,on a cold bright day on the beach at PortStanley. Sand was stinging their facesand the waves delivered crashing loadsof gravel at their feet.

“Do you think it would be fun—”Fiona shouted. “Do you think it wouldbe fun if we got married?”

He took her up on it, he shouted yes.He wanted never to be away from her.She had the spark of life.

JUST before they left their house Fionanoticed a mark on the kitchen floor.

It came from the cheap black houseshoes she had been wearing earlier inthe day.

“I thought they’d quit doing that,”she said in a tone of ordinary annoy-ance and perplexity, rubbing at the graysmear that looked as if it had beenmade by a greasy crayon.

She remarked that she’d never haveto do this again, since she wasn’t takingthose shoes with her.

“I guess I’ll be dressed up all thetime,” she said. “Or semi-dressed up.It’ll be sort of like in a hotel.”

She rinsed out the rag she’d beenusing and hung it on the rack inside thedoor under the sink. Then she put onher golden-brown, fur-collared ski jacket,over a white turtleneck sweater and tai-lored fawn slacks. She was a tall, narrow-shouldered woman, seventy years old butstill upright and trim, with long legs andlong feet, delicate wrists and ankles, andtiny, almost comical-looking ears. Herhair that was as light as milkweed fluffhad gone from pale blond to whitesomehow without Grant’s noticing ex-actly when, and she still wore it down toher shoulders, as her mother had done.(That was the thing that had alarmedGrant’s own mother, a small-town widowwho worked as a doctor’s receptionist.The long white hair on Fiona’s mother,even more than the state of the house,had told her all she needed to knowabout attitudes and politics.) But other-wise Fiona, with her fine bones andsmall sapphire eyes, was nothing like hermother. She had a slightly crookedmouth, which she emphasized now withred lipstick—usually the last thing shedid before she left the house.

She looked just like herself on thisday—direct and vague as in fact shewas, sweet and ironic.

OVER a year ago, Grant had started no-ticing so many little yellow notes

stuck up all over the house. That was notentirely new. Fiona had always writtenthings down—the title of a book she’dheard mentioned on the radio or the jobs

FICTION

THE BEAR CAME OVER

THE MOUNTAIN6

BY ALICE MUNRO

110

CH

RIST

OPH

ER B

URK

ETT,

“FI

R A

ND

SN

OW

”/A

ND

REW

SM

ITH

GA

LLER

Y, S

AN

TA F

E

112 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 27 & JANUARY 3, 2000

she wanted to make sure she got donethat day. Even her morning schedulewas written down. He found it mystifyingand touching in its precision: “7 A.M.yoga. 7:30–7:45 teeth face hair. 7:45–8:15 walk. 8:15 Grant and breakfast.”

The new notes were different. Stuckonto the kitchen drawers—Cutlery, Dish-towels, Knives. Couldn’t she just openthe drawers and see what was inside?

Worse things were coming. She wentto town and phoned Grant from a boothto ask him how to drive home. She wentfor her usual walk across the field intothe woods and came home by the fenceline—a very long way round. She saidthat she’d counted on fences always tak-ing you somewhere.

It was hard to figure out. She’d saidthat about fences as if it were a joke,and she had remembered the phonenumber without any trouble.

“I don’t think it’s anything to worryabout,” she said. “I expect I’m just losingmy mind.”

He asked if she had been taking sleep-ing pills.

“If I am I don’t remember,” she said.Then she said she was sorry to sound soflippant. “I’m sure I haven’t been takinganything. Maybe I should be. Maybevitamins.”

Vitamins didn’t help. She wouldstand in doorways trying to figure outwhere she was going. She forgot to turnon the burner under the vegetables orput water in the coffeemaker. She askedGrant when they’d moved to this house.

“Was it last year or the year before?”“It was twelve years ago,” he said.“That’s shocking.”“She’s always been a bit like this,”

Grant said to the doctor. He tried with-out success to explain how Fiona’s sur-prise and apologies now seemed some-how like routine courtesy, not quiteconcealing a private amusement. As ifshe’d stumbled on some unexpected ad-venture. Or begun playing a game thatshe hoped he would catch on to.

“Yes, well,” the doctor said. “It mightbe selective at first. We don’t know, dowe? Till we see the pattern of the dete-rioration, we really can’t say.”

In a while it hardly mattered whatlabel was put on it. Fiona, who no longerwent shopping alone, disappeared fromthe supermarket while Grant had hisback turned. A policeman picked her upas she was walking down the middle ofthe road, blocks away. He asked her nameand she answered readily. Then he askedher the name of the Prime Minister.

“If you don’t know that, young man,you really shouldn’t be in such a respon-sible job.”

He laughed. But then she made themistake of asking if he’d seen Boris and Natasha. These were the now deadRussian wolfhounds she had adoptedmany years ago, as a favor to a friend,then devoted herself to for the rest of their lives. Her taking them over might have coincided with the discoverythat she was not likely to have chil-dren. Something about her tubes beingblocked, or twisted—Grant could notremember now. He had always avoidedthinking about all that female appara-tus. Or it might have been after hermother died. The dogs’ long legs andsilky hair, their narrow, gentle, intransi-gent faces made a fine match for herwhen she took them out for walks.And Grant himself, in those days, land-ing his first job at the university (his father-in-law’s money welcome there in spite of the political taint), mighthave seemed to some people to havebeen picked up on another of Fiona’s ec-centric whims, and groomed and tendedand favored—though, fortunately, hedidn’t understand this until much later.

THERE was a rule that nobody could be admitted to Meadowlake dur-

ing the month of December. The holi-day season had so many emotional pit-falls. So they made the twenty-minutedrive in January. Before they reachedthe highway the country road dippedthrough a swampy hollow now com-pletely frozen over.

Fiona said, “Oh, remember.”Grant said, “I was thinking about

that, too.”“Only it was in the moonlight,” she

said.She was talking about the time that

they had gone out skiing at night un-

“I think what I miss most is robbing people.”

• •

ALICE MUNRO 113

der the full moon and over the black-striped snow, in this place that youcould get into only in the depths ofwinter. They had heard the branchescracking in the cold.

If she could remember that, sovividly and correctly, could there reallybe so much the matter with her? It wasall he could do not to turn around anddrive home.

There was another rule that the su-pervisor explained to him. New residentswere not to be visited during the firstthirty days. Most people needed thattime to get settled in. Before the rule had been put in place, there had beenpleas and tears and tantrums, even fromthose who had come in willingly. Aroundthe third or fourth day they would startlamenting and begging to be taken home.And some relatives could be susceptibleto that, so you would have people beingcarted home who would not get on thereany better than they had before. Sixmonths or sometimes only a few weekslater, the whole upsetting hassle wouldhave to be gone through again.

“Whereas we find,” the supervisorsaid, “we find that if they’re left on theirown the first month they usually end uphappy as clams.”

THEY had in fact gone over to Mead-owlake a few times several years

ago to visit Mr. Farquhar, theold bachelor farmer who hadbeen their neighbor. He hadlived by himself in a draftybrick house unaltered sincethe early years of the century,except for the addition of arefrigerator and a televisionset. Now, just as Mr. Far-quhar’s house was gone, re-placed by a gimcrack sort ofcastle that was the weekendhome of some people fromToronto, the old Meadow-lake was gone, though it haddated only from the fifties.The new building was a spa-cious, vaulted place, whose airwas faintly, pleasantly pine-scented. Profuse and genu-ine greenery sprouted out ofgiant crocks in the hallways.

Nevertheless, it was theold Meadowlake that Grantfound himself picturing Fi-ona in, during the long month

he had to get through without seeingher. He phoned every day and hoped toget the nurse whose name was Kristy.She seemed a little amused at his con-stancy, but she would give him a fullerreport than any other nurse he got stuckwith.

Fiona had caught a cold the firstweek, she said, but that was not unusualfor newcomers. “Like when your kidsstart school,” Kristy said. “There’s awhole bunch of new germs they’re ex-posed to and for a while they just catcheverything.”

Then the cold got better. She was off the antibiotics and she didn’t seemas confused as she had been when shecame in. (This was the first Grant hadheard about either the antibiotics or theconfusion.) Her appetite was prettygood and she seemed to enjoy sitting inthe sunroom. And she was makingsome friends, Kristy said.

If anybody phoned, he let the ma-chine pick up. The people they saw socially, occasionally, were not closeneighbors but people who lived aroundthe country, who were retired, as theywere, and who often went away with-out notice. They would imagine that he and Fiona were away on some suchtrip at present.

Grant skied for exercise. He skiedaround and around in the field behind

the house as the sun went down and leftthe sky pink over a countryside thatseemed to be bound by waves of blue-edged ice. Then he came back to thedarkening house, turning the televi-sion news on while he made his sup-per. They had usually prepared suppertogether. One of them made the drinksand the other the fire, and they talkedabout his work (he was writing a studyof legendary Norse wolves and par-ticularly of the great wolf Fenrir, whichswallows up Odin at the end of theworld) and about whatever Fiona wasreading and what they had been think-ing during their close but separate day.This was their time of liveliest inti-macy, though there was also, of course,the five or ten minutes of physical sweetness just after they got into bed—something that did not often end in sex but reassured them that sex was not over yet.

IN a dream he showed a letter to one of his colleagues. The letter was

from the roommate of a girl he had notthought of for a while and was sanc-timonious and hostile, threatening in a whining way. The girl herself wassomeone he had parted from decentlyand it seemed unlikely that she wouldwant to make a fuss, let alone try to killherself, which was what the letter was

“We believe that in a former life she was an editor.”

114

elaborately trying to tell him she haddone.

He had thought of the colleague asa friend. He was one of those hus-bands who had been among the firstto throw away their neckties and leavehome to spend every night on a floormattress with a bewitching young mis-tress—coming to their offices, theirclasses, bedraggled and smelling ofdope and incense. But now he took adim view.

“I wouldn’t laugh,” he said to Grant—who did not think he had been laugh-ing. “And if I were you I’d try to pre-pare Fiona.”

So Grant went off to find Fiona inMeadowlake—the old Meadowlake—and got into a lecture hall instead. Ev-erybody was waiting there for him toteach his class. And sitting in the last,highest row was a flock of cold-eyedyoung women all in black robes, all inmourning, who never took their bitterstares off him, and pointedly did notwrite down, or care about, anything hewas saying.

Fiona was in the first row, untrou-bled. “Oh phooey,” she said. “Girls thatage are always going around talkingabout how they’ll kill themselves.”

He hauled himself out of the dream,took pills, and set about separating whatwas real from what was not.

There had been a letter, and theword “rat” had appeared in black painton his office door, and Fiona, on be-ing told that a girl had suffered from a bad crush on him, had said prettymuch what she said in the dream.The colleague hadn’t come into it,and nobody had committed suicide.Grant hadn’t been disgraced. In fact,he had got off easy when you thoughtof what might have happened just acouple of years later. But word gotaround. Cold shoulders became con-spicuous. They had few Christmas invitations and spent New Year’s Evealone. Grant got drunk, and without itsbeing required of him—also, thankGod, without making the error of aconfession—he promised Fiona a newlife.

Nowhere had there been any ac-knowledgment that the life of a philan-derer (if that was what Grant had tocall himself—he who had not had halfas many conquests as the man who hadreproached him in his dream) involved

acts of generosity, and even sacrifice.Many times he had catered to a wom-an’s pride, to her fragility, by offeringmore affection—or a rougher passion—than anything he really felt. All so thathe could now find himself accused of wounding and exploiting and de-stroying self-esteem. And of deceivingFiona—as, of course, he had. But wouldit have been better if he had done asothers had done with their wives, andleft her? He had never thought of sucha thing. He had never stopped mak-ing love to Fiona. He had not stayedaway from her for a single night. Nomaking up elaborate stories in order tospend a weekend in San Francisco or ina tent on Manitoulin Island. He hadgone easy on the dope and the drink,and he had continued to publish papers,serve on committees, make progress

in his career. He had never had any intention of throwing over work andmarriage and taking to the country topractice carpentry or keep bees.

But something like that had hap-pened, after all. He had taken early retirement with a reduced pension.Fiona’s father had died, after some be-wildered and stoical time alone in thebig house, and Fiona had inherited boththat property and the farmhouse whereher father had grown up, in the countrynear Georgian Bay.

It was a new life. He and Fionaworked on the house. They got cross-country skis. They were not very so-ciable but they gradually made somefriends. There were no more hectic flirtations. No bare female toes creep-ing up under a man’s pants leg at a din-ner party. No more loose wives.

HOUR

The extra hour given back to eternityThe hour gained by travelling westThe hour of the imagined empireThe deepest hour of the darkest seaThe guilty hour that precedes catastropheThe hour that it takes to go from here to thereThe haunted hour of the knowledge of deathThe hour in which the moon darkensThe hour that moves through the mind like cloud shadowThe blue hour that rests on the roof of the houseThe hour that is the mother of minutes and grandmother of seconds The swollen hour of pain, enough, enoughThe hour when mice run in the wallsThe bronze hour of electrical weatherThe cloistered hour of the nun’s great momentThe necklace of hours the widow wearsThe numbing hours of a night in NomeThe sound of hours in the breathing of plantsThe central hour that exists without youThe hour in which the universe begins to dieThe hallucinatory hour that hangs foreverThe hour of excess that equals two of self-examinationThe hour that flashed on the skinThe hour of final musicThe hour of painless solitudeThe hour of moonlight upon her body

—MARK STRAND

ALICE MUNRO 115

Just in time, Grant was able to think,when the sense of injustice had worndown. The feminists and perhaps thesad silly girl herself and his cowardlyso-called friends had pushed him outjust in time. Out of a life that was infact getting to be more trouble than itwas worth. And that might eventuallyhave cost him Fiona.

ON the morning of the day when he was to go back to Meadowlake,

for the first visit, Grant woke early. Hewas full of a solemn tingling, as in theold days on the morning of his firstplanned meeting with a new woman.The feeling was not precisely sexual.(Later, when the meetings had becomeroutine, that was all it was.) There wasan expectation of discovery, almost aspiritual expansion. Also timidity, hu-mility, alarm.

There had been a thaw. Plenty ofsnow was left, but the dazzling hardlandscape of earlier winter had crum-bled. These pocked heaps under a graysky looked like refuse in the fields.In the town near Meadowlake he founda florist’s shop and bought a large bou-quet. He had never presented flow-ers to Fiona before. Or to anyone else.He entered the building feeling like ahopeless lover or a guilty husband in a cartoon.

“Wow. Narcissus this early,” Kristysaid. “You must’ve spent a fortune.” Shewent along the hall ahead of him andsnapped on the light in a sort of pantry,where she searched for a vase. She was aheavy young woman who looked as ifshe had given up on her looks in everydepartment except her hair. That wasblond and voluminous. All the puffed-up luxury of a cocktail waitress’s style, ora stripper’s, on top of such a workadayface and body.

“There now,” she said, and noddedhim down the hall. “Name’s right onthe door.”

So it was, on a nameplate decoratedwith bluebirds. He wondered whetherto knock, and did, then opened the doorand called her name.

She wasn’t there. The closet doorwas closed, the bed smoothed. Nothingon the bedside table, except a box ofKleenex and a glass of water. Not a sin-gle photograph or picture of any kind,not a book or a magazine. Perhaps youhad to keep those in a cupboard.

He went back to the nurses’ station.Kristy said, “No?” with a surprise thathe thought perfunctory. He hesitated,holding the flowers. She said, “O.K.,O.K.—let’s set the bouquet down here.”Sighing, as if he were a backward childon his first day at school, she led himdown the hall toward a large centralspace with skylights which seemed tobe a general meeting area. Some peoplewere sitting along the walls, in easychairs, others at tables in the middle ofthe carpeted floor. None of them lookedtoo bad. Old—some of them incapaci-tated enough to need wheelchairs—butdecent. There had been some unnervingsights when he and Fiona visited Mr.Farquhar. Whiskers on old women’schins, somebody with a bulged-out eyelike a rotted plum. Dribblers, head wag-glers, mad chatterers. Now it looked asif there’d been some weeding out of theworst cases.

“See?” said Kristy in a softer voice.“You just go up and say hello and trynot to startle her. Just go ahead.”

He saw Fiona in profile, sitting closeup to one of the card tables, but notplaying. She looked a little puffy in theface, the flab on one cheek hiding thecorner of her mouth, in a way it hadn’tdone before. She was watching the playof the man she sat closest to. He heldhis cards tilted so that she could seethem. When Grant got near the tableshe looked up. They all looked up—allthe players at the table looked up, withdispleasure. Then they immediatelylooked down at their cards, as if to wardoff any intrusion.

But Fiona smiled her lopsided,abashed, sly, and charming smile andpushed back her chair and came roundto him, putting her fingers to her mouth.

“Bridge,” she whispered. “Deadly serious. They’re quite rabid about it.”She drew him toward the coffee table,chatting. “I can remember being likethat for a while at college. My friendsand I would cut class and sit in thecommon room and smoke and play likecutthroats. Can I get you anything? Acup of tea? I’m afraid the coffee isn’t upto much here.”

Grant never drank tea.He could not throw his arms around

her. Something about her voice andsmile, familiar as they were, somethingabout the way she seemed to be guard-ing the players from him—as well as

116 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 27, 1999 & JANUARY 3, 2000

him from their displeasure—made thatimpossible.

“I brought you some flowers,” hesaid. “I thought they’d do to brightenup your room. I went to your room butyou weren’t there.”

“Well, no,” she said. “I’m here.” Sheglanced back at the table.

Grant said, “You’ve made a newfriend.” He nodded toward the manshe’d been sitting next to. At this mo-ment that man looked up at Fiona and she turned, either because of whatGrant had said or because she felt thelook at her back.

“It’s just Aubrey,” she said. “Thefunny thing is I knew him years andyears ago. He worked in the store. Thehardware store where my grandpa usedto shop. He and I were always kiddingaround and he couldn’t get up the nerveto ask me out. Till the very last week-end and he took me to a ballgame. Butwhen it was over my grandpa showedup to drive me home. I was up visitingfor the summer. Visiting my grandpar-ents—they lived on a farm.”

“Fiona. I know where your grand-parents lived. It’s where we live. Lived.”

“Really?” she said, not paying her fullattention because the cardplayer wassending her his look, which was one notof supplication but of command. Hewas a man of about Grant’s age, or alittle older. Thick coarse white hair fellover his forehead and his skin wasleathery but pale, yellowish-white likean old wrinkled-up kid glove. His longface was dignified and melancholy andhe had something of the beauty of apowerful, discouraged, elderly horse.But where Fiona was concerned he wasnot discouraged.

“I better go back,” Fiona said, a blushspotting her newly fattened face. “Hethinks he can’t play without me sit-ting there. It’s silly, I hardly know thegame anymore. If I leave you now,you can entertain yourself ? It must allseem strange to you but you’ll be sur-prised how soon you get used to it.You’ll get to know who everybody is.Except that some of them are prettywell off in the clouds, you know—youcan’t expect them all to get to knowwho you are.”

She slipped back into her chair andsaid something into Aubrey’s ear. Shetapped her fingers across the back of hishand.

Grant went in search of Kristy andmet her in the hall. She was pushing acart with pitchers of apple juice andgrape juice.

“Well?” she said.Grant said, “Does she even know who

I am?” He could not decide. She couldhave been playing a joke. It would not be unlike her. She had given herself awayby that little pretense at the end, talkingto him as if she thought perhaps he wasa new resident. If it was a pretense.

Kristy said, “You just caught her atsort of a bad moment. Involved in thegame.”

“She’s not even playing,” he said.“Well, but her friend’s playing. Aubrey.”“So who is Aubrey?”“That’s who he is. Aubrey. Her friend.

Would you like a juice?”Grant shook his head.“Oh look,” said Kristy. “They get

these attachments. That takes over for a while. Best buddy sort of thing. It’skind of a phase.”

“You mean she really might not knowwho I am?”

“She might not. Not today. Then tomorrow—you never know, do you?You’ll see the way it is, once you’ve beencoming here for a while. You’ll learn notto take it all so serious. Learn to take itday by day.”

DAY by day. But things really didn’t change back and forth and he

didn’t get used to the way they were.Fiona was the one who seemed to getused to him, but only as some persis-tent visitor who took a special interestin her. Or perhaps even as a nuisancewho must be prevented, according toher old rules of courtesy, from realiz-ing that he was one. She treated himwith a distracted, social sort of kind-ness that was successful in keeping him from asking the most obvious, themost necessary question: did she re-member him as her husband of nearlyfifty years? He got the impression thatshe would be embarrassed by such aquestion—embarrassed not for herselfbut for him.

Kristy told him that Aubrey had beenthe local representative of a company thatsold weed killer “and all that kind of stuff ”to farmers. And then when he was notvery old or even retired, she said, he hadsuffered some unusual kind of damage.

“His wife is the one takes care of

ALICE MUNRO 117

him, usually at home. She just put himin here on temporary care so she couldget a break. Her sister wanted her to goto Florida. See, she’s had a hard time,you wouldn’t ever have expected a manlike him—they just went on a holidaysomewhere and he got something, likesome bug that gave him a terrible highfever? And it put him in a coma andleft him like he is now.”

Most afternoons the pair could befound at the card table. Aubrey hadlarge, thick-fingered hands. It was diffi-cult for him to manage his cards. Fionashuffled and dealt for him and some-times moved quickly to straighten acard that seemed to be slipping from hisgrasp. Grant would watch from acrossthe room her darting move and quicklaughing apology. He could see Au-brey’s husbandly frown as a wisp ofher hair touched his cheek. Aubrey preferred to ignore her, as long as shestayed close.

But let her smile her greeting atGrant, let her push back her chair andget up to offer him tea—showing thatshe had accepted his right to be there—and Aubrey’s face took on its look ofsombre consternation. He would let thecards slide from his fingers and fall onthe floor to spoil the game. And Fionathen had to get busy and put thingsright.

If Fiona and Aubrey weren’t at thebridge table they might be walkingalong the halls, Aubrey hanging on tothe railing with one hand and clutchingFiona’s arm or shoulder with the other.The nurses thought that it was a mar-vel, the way she had got him out of hiswheelchair. Though for longer trips—to the conservatory at one end of thebuilding or the television room at theother—the wheelchair was called for.

In the conservatory, the pair wouldfind themselves a seat among the mostlush and thick and tropical-lookingplants—a bower, if you liked. Grantstood nearby, on occasion, on the otherside of the greenery, listening. Mixed inwith the rustle of the leaves and thesound of plashing water was Fiona’s softtalk and her laughter. Then some sort ofchortle. Aubrey could talk, though hisvoice probably didn’t sound as it usedto. He seemed to say something now—a couple of thick syllables.

Take care. He’s here. My love.Grant made an effort, and cut his

visits down to Wednesdays and Satur-days. Saturdays had a holiday bustle andtension. Families arrived in clusters.Mothers were usually in charge; theywere the ones who kept the conversa-tion afloat. Men seemed cowed, teen-agers affronted. No children or grand-children appeared to visit Aubrey, andsince they could not play cards—the ta-bles being taken over for ice-cream par-ties—he and Fiona stayed clear of theSaturday parade. The conservatory wasfar too popular then for any of their in-timate conversations. Those might begoing on, of course, behind Fiona’sclosed door. Grant could not manage toknock when he found it closed, thoughhe stood there for some time staring atthe Disney-style nameplate with an in-tense, a truly malignant dislike.

Or they might be in Aubrey’s room.But he did not know where that was.The more he explored this place themore corridors and seating spaces andramps he discovered, and in his wan-derings he was still apt to get lost. OneSaturday he looked out a window andsaw Fiona—it had to be her—wheelingAubrey along one of the paved pathsnow cleared of snow and ice. She waswearing a silly wool hat and a jacketwith swirls of blue and purple, the sortof thing he had seen on local women atthe supermarket. It must be that theydidn’t bother to sort out the wardrobesof the women who were roughly thesame size and counted on the womennot to recognize their own clothes any-way. They had cut her hair, too. Theyhad cut away her angelic halo.

On a Wednesday, when everythingwas more normal and card games weregoing on again and the women in theCrafts Room were making silk flowersor costumed dolls—and when Aubreyand Fiona were again in evidence, sothat it was possible for Grant to haveone of his brief and friendly and mad-dening conversations with his wife—hesaid to her, “Why did they chop offyour hair?”

Fiona put her hands up to her head,to check.

“Why—I never missed it,” she said.

WHEN Grant had first started teach-ing Anglo-Saxon and Nordic

literature he got the regular sort of stu-dents in his classes. But after a few yearshe noticed a change. Married women

118 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 27, 1999 & JANUARY 3, 2000

had started going back to school. Notwith the idea of qualifying for a betterjob, or for any job, but simply to givethemselves something more interestingto think about than their usual house-work and hobbies. To enrich their lives.And perhaps it followed naturally thatthe men who taught them these thingsbecame part of the enrichment, thatthese men seemed to these women moremysterious and desirable than the menthey still cooked for and slept with.

Those who signed up for Grant’scourses might have a Scandinavianbackground or they might have learnedsomething about Norse mythology fromWagner or historical novels. There werealso a few who thought he was teachinga Celtic language and for whom every-thing Celtic had a mystic allure. Hespoke to such aspirants fairly roughlyfrom his side of the desk.

“If you want to learn a pretty lan-guage go and learn Spanish. Then youcan use it if you go to Mexico.”

Some took his warning and driftedaway. Others seemed to be moved in apersonal way by his demanding tone.They worked with a will and broughtinto his office, into his regulated sat-isfactory life, the great surprising bloomof their mature female compliance, theirtremulous hope of approval.

He chose a woman named JacquiAdams. She was the opposite of Fiona—short, cushiony, dark-eyed, effusive.A stranger to irony. The affair lasted fora year, until her husband was trans-ferred. When they were saying goodbyein her car, she began to shake uncon-trollably. It was as if she had hypother-mia. She wrote to him a few times, buthe found the tone of her letters over-wrought and could not decide how toanswer. He let the time for answeringslip away while he became magicallyand unexpectedly involved with a girlwho was young enough to be Jacqui’sdaughter.

For another and more dizzying de-velopment had taken place while he wasbusy with Jacqui. Young girls with longhair and sandalled feet were cominginto his office and all but declaringthemselves ready for sex. The cautiousapproaches, the tender intimations offeeling required with Jacqui were outthe window. A whirlwind hit him,as it did many others. Scandals burst wide open, with high and painful dramaall round but a feeling that somehow it was better so. There were reprisals;there were firings. But those fired wentoff to teach at smaller, more tolerantcolleges or Open Learning Centers, andmany wives left behind got over the

shock and took up the costumes, thesexual nonchalance of the girls who hadtempted their men. Academic parties,which used to be so predictable, becamea minefield. An epidemic had brokenout, it was spreading like the Spanishflu. Only this time people ran after con-tagion, and few between sixteen andsixty seemed willing to be left out.

That was exaggeration, of course.Fiona was quite willing. And Granthimself did not go overboard. What hefelt was mainly a gigantic increase inwell-being. A tendency to pudginesswhich he had had since he was twelveyears old disappeared. He ran up stepstwo at a time. He appreciated as neverbefore a pageant of torn clouds andwinter sunsets seen from his office win-dow, the charm of antique lamps glow-ing between his neighbors’ living-roomcurtains, the cries of children in thepark, at dusk, unwilling to leave the hill where they’d been tobogganing.Come summer, he learned the names offlowers. In his classroom, after beingcoached by his nearly voiceless mother-in-law (her affliction was cancer in thethroat), he risked reciting the majesticand gory Icelandic ode, the Höfudlausn,composed to honor King Erik Blood-axe by the skald whom that king hadcondemned to death.

Fiona had never learnedIcelandic and she had nevershown much respect for thestories that it preserved—thestories that Grant had taughtand written about. She re-ferred to their heroes as “oldNjal” or “old Snorri.” But inthe last few years she had developed an interest in thecountry itself and looked attravel guides. She read aboutWilliam Morris’s trip, and Auden’s. She didn’t reallyplan to travel there. She saidthere ought to be one placeyou thought about and knewabout and maybe longed forbut never did get to see.

Nonetheless, the next timehe went to Meadowlake, Grantbrought Fiona a book he’dfound of nineteenth-centurywatercolors made by a ladytraveller to Iceland. It was aWednesday. He went lookingfor her at the card tables but“Funny, funny, funny, but we’re going to pass on ‘How to Drink and Drive.’ ”

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didn’t see her. A woman called out tohim, “She’s not here. She’s sick.”

Her voice sounded self-importantand excited—pleased with herself forhaving recognized him when he knewnothing about her. Perhaps also pleasedwith all she knew about Fiona, aboutFiona’s life here, thinking it was maybemore than he knew.

“He’s not here, either,” she added.Grant went to find Kristy, who didn’t

have much time for him. She was talk-ing to a weepy woman who looked likea first-time visitor.

“Nothing really,” she said, when heasked what was the matter with Fiona.“She’s just having a day in bed today,just a bit of an upset.”

Fiona was sitting straight up in thebed. He hadn’t noticed, the few timesthat he had been in this room, that thiswas a hospital bed and could be crankedup in such a way. She was wearing oneof her high-necked maidenly gowns,and her face had a pallor that was likeflour paste.

Aubrey was beside her in his wheel-chair, pushed as close to the bed as hecould get. Instead of the nondescriptopen-necked shirts he usually wore, hewas wearing a jacket and tie. His natty-looking tweed hat was resting on the bed.He looked as if he had been out on im-portant business.

Whatever he’d been doing, he lookedworn out by it. He, too, was gray in the face.

They both looked up at Grant with a stony grief-ridden apprehension thatturned to relief, if not to welcome, whenthey saw who he was. Not who theythought he’d be. They were hanging on toeach other’s hands and they did not let go.

The hat on the bed.The jacket and tie.It wasn’t that Aubrey had been out.

It wasn’t a question of where he’d beenor whom he’d been to see. It was wherehe was going.

Grant set the book down on the bedbeside Fiona’s free hand.

“It’s about Iceland,” he said. “I thoughtmaybe you’d like to look at it.”

“Why, thank you,” said Fiona. Shedidn’t look at the book.

“Iceland,” he said.She said, “Ice-land.” The first sylla-

ble managed to hold a tinkle of inter-est, but the second fell flat. Anyway,it was necessary for her to turn her at-tention back to Aubrey, who was pull-

120 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 27, 1999 & JANUARY 3, 2000

ing his great thick hand out of hers.“What is it?” she said. “What is it,

dear heart?”Grant had never heard her use this

flowery expression before.“Oh all right,” she said. “Oh here.”

And she pulled a handful of tissuesfrom the box beside her bed. Aubreyhad begun to weep.

“Here. Here,” she said, and he gothold of the Kleenex as well as he couldand made a few awkward but luckyswipes at his face. While he was occu-pied, Fiona turned to Grant.

“Do you by any chance have any in-fluence around here?” she said in a whis-per. “I’ve seen you talking to them . . .”

Aubrey made a noise of protest orweariness or disgust. Then his upperbody pitched forward as if he wantedto throw himself against her. She scram-bled half out of bed and caught himand held on to him. It seemed improperfor Grant to help her.

“Hush,” Fiona was saying. “Oh,honey. Hush. We’ll get to see each other.We’ll have to. I’ll go and see you. You’llcome and see me.”

Aubrey made the same sound againwith his face in her chest and there wasnothing Grant could decently do butget out of the room.

“I just wish his wife would hurry upand get here,” Kristy said when he raninto her. “I wish she’d get him out ofhere and cut the agony short. We’ve gotto start serving supper before long andhow are we supposed to get her to swal-low anything with him still hangingaround?”

Grant said, “Should I stay?”“What for? She’s not sick, you know.”“To keep her company,” he said.Kristy shook her head.“They have to get over these things

on their own. They’ve got short mem-ories, usually. That’s not always so bad.”

Grant left without going back toFiona’s room. He noticed that the windwas actually warm and the crows weremaking an uproar. In the parking lot awoman wearing a tartan pants suit wasgetting a folded-up wheelchair out ofthe trunk of her car.

FIONA did not get over her sorrow.She didn’t eat at mealtimes, though

she pretended to, hiding food in hernapkin. She was being given a supple-mentary drink twice a day—someone

stayed and watched while she swal-lowed it down. She got out of bed anddressed herself, but all she wanted to dothen was sit in her room. She wouldn’thave had any exercise at all if Kristy,or Grant during visiting hours, hadn’twalked her up and down in the corri-dors or taken her outside. Weeping hadleft her eyes raw-edged and dim. Hercardigan—if it was hers—would bebuttoned crookedly. She had not got tothe stage of leaving her hair unbrushedor her nails uncleaned, but that mightcome soon. Kristy said that her mus-cles were deteriorating, and that if shedidn’t improve they would put her on a walker.

“But, you know, once they get awalker they start to depend on it andthey never walk much anymore, just getwherever it is they have to go,” she saidto Grant. “You’ll have to work at herharder. Try to encourage her.”

But Grant had no luck at that. Fionaseemed to have taken a dislike to him,though she tried to cover it up. Perhapsshe was reminded, every time she sawhim, of her last minutes with Aubrey,when she had asked him for help andhe hadn’t helped her.

He didn’t see much point in men-tioning their marriage now.

The supervisor called him in to heroffice. She said that Fiona’s weight wasgoing down even with the supplement.

“The thing is, I’m sure you know, wedon’t do any prolonged bed care on thefirst floor. We do it temporarily if some-one isn’t feeling well, but if they get tooweak to move around and be responsi-ble we have to consider upstairs.”

He said he didn’t think that Fionahad been in bed that often.

“No. But if she can’t keep up herstrength she will be. Right now she’sborderline.”

Grant said that he had thought thesecond floor was for people whose mindswere disturbed.

“That, too,” she said.

THE street Grant found himselfdriving down was called Black-

hawks Lane. The houses all looked tohave been built around the same time,perhaps thirty or forty years ago. The street was wide and curving and there were no sidewalks. Friends of Grant and Fiona’s had moved to places some-thing like this when they began to have

ALICE MUNRO 121

their children, and young families stilllived here. There were basketball hoopsover garage doors and tricycles in thedriveways. Some of the houses hadgone downhill. The yards were markedby tire tracks, the windows plasteredwith tinfoil or hung with faded flags.But a few seemed to have been kept upas well as possible by the people whohad moved into them when they werenew—people who hadn’t had the moneyor perhaps hadn’t felt the need to moveon to some place better.

The house that was listed in thephone book as belonging to Aubrey andhis wife was one of these. The frontwalk was paved with flagstones andbordered by hyacinths that stood as stiffas china flowers, alternately pink andblue.

He hadn’t remembered anything aboutAubrey’s wife except the tartan suit hehad seen her wearing in the parking lot.The tails of the jacket had flared openas she bent into the trunk of the car. Hehad got the impression of a trim waistand wide buttocks.

She was not wearing the tartan suittoday. Brown belted slacks and a pinksweater. He was right about the waist—the tight belt showed she made a pointof it. It might have been better if shedidn’t, since she bulged out considerablyabove and below.

She could be ten or twelve yearsyounger than her husband. Her hair was short, curly, artificially reddened.She had blue eyes—a lighter blue thanFiona’s—a flat robin’s-egg or turquoiseblue, slanted by a slight puffiness. And agood many wrinkles, made more no-ticeable by a walnut-stain makeup. Orperhaps that was her Florida tan.

He said that he didn’t quite knowhow to introduce himself.

“I used to see your husband at Mead-owlake. I’m a regular visitor there myself.”

“Yes,” said Aubrey’s wife, with an ag-gressive movement of her chin.

“How is your husband doing?”The “doing” was added on at the last

moment.“He’s O.K.,” she said.“My wife and he struck up quite a

close friendship.”“I heard about that.”“I wanted to talk to you about some-

thing if you had a minute.”“My husband did not try to start

anything with your wife if that’s what

you’re getting at,” she said. “He did notmolest her. He isn’t capable of it and hewouldn’t anyway. From what I heard itwas the other way round.”

Grant said, “No. That isn’t it at all. Ididn’t come here with any complaintsabout anything.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, I’m sorry. Ithought you did. You better come inthen. It’s blowing cold in through thedoor. It’s not as warm out today as itlooks.”

So it was something of a victory forhim even to get inside.

She took him past the living room,saying, “We’ll have to sit in the kitchen,where I can hear Aubrey.”

Grant caught sight of two layers offront-window curtains, both blue, onesheer and one silky, a matching bluesofa and a daunting pale carpet, variousbright mirrors and ornaments. Fionahad a word for those sort of swoopingcurtains—she said it like a joke, thoughthe women she’d picked it up from usedit seriously. Any room that Fiona fixedup was bare and bright. She would havedeplored the crowding of all this fancystuff into such a small space. From aroom off the kitchen—a sort of sun-room, though the blinds were drawnagainst the afternoon brightness—hecould hear the sounds of television.

The answer to Fiona’s prayers sat afew feet away, watching what soundedlike a ballgame. His wife looked in at him.

She said, “You O.K.?” and partlyclosed the door.

“You might as well have a cup ofcoffee,” she said to Grant. “My son gothim on the sports channel a year agoChristmas. I don’t know what we’d dowithout it.”

On the kitchen counters there wereall sorts of contrivances and appliances—coffeemaker, food processor, knife sharp-ener, and some things Grant didn’tknow the names or uses of. All lookednew and expensive, as if they had justbeen taken out of their wrappings, orwere polished daily.

He thought it might be a good ideato admire things. He admired the cof-feemaker she was using and said that heand Fiona had always meant to get one.This was absolutely untrue—Fiona hadbeen devoted to a European contrap-tion that made only two cups at a time.

“They gave us that,” she said. “Our

124 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 27, 1999 & JANUARY 3, 2000

son and his wife. They live in Kam-loops. B.C. They send us more stuffthan we can handle. It wouldn’t hurt ifthey would spend the money to comeand see us instead.”

Grant said philosophically, “I sup-pose they’re busy with their own lives.”

“They weren’t too busy to go toHawaii last winter. You could under-stand it if we had somebody else in the family, closer at hand. But he’s theonly one.”

She poured the coffee into twobrown-and-green ceramic mugs thatshe took from the amputated branchesof a ceramic tree trunk that sat on the table.

“People do get lonely,” Grant said.He thought he saw his chance now. “Ifthey’re deprived of seeing somebodythey care about, they do feel sad. Fiona,for instance. My wife.”

“I thought you said you went andvisited her.”

“I do,” he said. “That’s not it.”Then he took the plunge, going on

to make the request he’d come to make.Could she consider taking Aubrey backto Meadowlake, maybe just one day aweek, for a visit? It was only a drive of afew miles. Or if she’d like to take the timeoff—Grant hadn’t thought of this be-fore and was rather dismayed to hearhimself suggest it—then he himself couldtake Aubrey out there, he wouldn’t mindat all. He was sure he could manage it.While he talked she moved her closedlips and her hidden tongue as if shewere trying to identify some dubiousflavor. She brought milk for his coffeeand a plate of ginger cookies.

“Homemade,” she said as she set the plate down. There was challengerather than hospitality in her tone. Shesaid nothing more until she had satdown, poured milk into her coffee, andstirred it.

Then she said no.“No. I can’t do that. And the reason

is, I’m not going to upset him.”“Would it upset him?” Grant said

earnestly.“Yes, it would. It would. That’s no

way to do. Bringing him home and tak-ing him back. That would just con-fuse him.”

“But wouldn’t he understand that itwas just a visit? Wouldn’t he get intothe pattern of it?”

“He understands everything all right.”

She said this as if he had offered an insult to Aubrey. “But it’s still an in-terruption. And then I’ve got to get himall ready and get him into the car, andhe’s a big man, he’s not so easy to man-age as you might think. I’ve got to ma-neuver him into the car and pack hischair and all that and what for? If I goto all that trouble I’d prefer to take himsomeplace that was more fun.”

“But even if I agreed to do it?” Grantsaid, keeping his tone hopeful and rea-sonable. “It’s true, you shouldn’t havethe trouble.”

“You couldn’t,” she said flatly. “Youdon’t know him. You couldn’t handlehim. He wouldn’t stand for you doingfor him. All that bother and what wouldhe get out of it?”

Grant didn’t think he should men-tion Fiona again.

“It’d make more sense to take him tothe mall,” she said. “Or now the lakeboats are starting to run again, he mightget a charge out of going and watchingthat.”

She got up and fetched her cigarettesand lighter from the window above thesink.

“You smoke?” she said.He said no, thanks, though he didn’t

know if a cigarette was being offered.“Did you never? Or did you quit?”“Quit,” he said.“How long ago was that?”He thought about it.“Thirty years. No—more.”He had decided to quit around the

time he started up with Jacqui. But hecouldn’t remember whether he quit first,and thought a big reward was comingto him for quitting, or thought that thetime had come to quit, now that he hadsuch a powerful diversion.

“I’ve quit quitting,” she said, lightingup. “Just made a resolution to quit quit-ting, that’s all.”

Maybe that was the reason for thewrinkles. Somebody—a woman—hadtold him that women who smoked developed a special set of fine facialwrinkles. But it could have been fromthe sun, or just the nature of her skin—her neck was noticeably wrinkled aswell. Wrinkled neck, youthfully full anduptilted breasts. Women of her age usually had these contradictions. Thebad and good points, the genetic luck or lack of it, all mixed up together. Veryfew kept their beauty whole, though

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shadowy, as Fiona had done. And per-haps that wasn’t even true. Perhaps he only thought that because he’dknown Fiona when she was young.When Aubrey looked at his wife did he see a high-school girl full of scornand sass, with a tilt to her blue eyes,pursing her fruity lips around a forbid-den cigarette?

“So your wife’s depressed?” Aubrey’swife said. “What’s your wife’s name? Iforget.”

“It’s Fiona.”“Fiona. And what’s yours? I don’t

think I was ever told that.”Grant said, “It’s Grant.”She stuck her hand out unexpectedly

across the table.“Hello, Grant. I’m Marian.”“So now we know each other’s names,”

she said, “there’s no point in not tellingyou straight out what I think. I don’tknow if he’s still so stuck on seeingyour—on seeing Fiona. Or not. I don’task him and he’s not telling me. Maybejust a passing fancy. But I don’t feel liketaking him back there in case it turnsout to be more than that. I can’t affordto risk it. I don’t want him upset andcarrying on. I’ve got my hands full withhim as it is. I don’t have any help. It’sjust me here. I’m it.”

“Did you ever consider—I’m sure it’svery hard for you—” Grant said. “Did youever consider his going in there for good?”

He had lowered his voice almost to awhisper but she did not seem to feel aneed to lower hers.

“No,” she said. “I’m keeping himright here.”

Grant said, “Well. That’s very goodand noble of you.” He hoped the word“noble” had not sounded sarcastic. Hehad not meant it to be.

“You think so?” she said. “Noble isnot what I’m thinking about.”

“Still. It’s not easy.”“No, it isn’t. But the way I am, I

don’t have much choice. I don’t have the money to put him in there unless Isell the house. The house is what weown outright. Otherwise I don’t haveanything in the way of resources. Nextyear I’ll have his pension and my pen-sion, but even so I couldn’t afford tokeep him there and hang on to thehouse. And it means a lot to me, myhouse does.”

“It’s very nice,” said Grant.“Well, it’s all right. I put a lot into it.

Fixing it up and keeping it up. I don’twant to lose it.”

“No. I see your point.”“The company left us high and dry,”

she said. “I don’t know all the ins andouts of it but basically he got shovedout. It ended up with them saying heowed them money and when I tried to find out what was what he just wenton saying it ’s none of my business.What I think is he did something prettystupid. But I’m not supposed to ask so I shut up. You’ve been married. You are married. You know how it is. And in the middle of me finding out aboutthis we’re supposed to go on this tripand can’t get out of it. And on the triphe takes sick from this virus you neverheard of and goes into a coma. So thatpretty well gets him off the hook.”

Grant said, “Bad luck.”“I don’t mean he got sick on purpose.

It just happened. He’s not mad at meanymore and I’m not mad at him. It’sjust life. You can’t beat life.”

She flicked her tongue in a cat’sbusinesslike way across her top lip, get-ting the cookie crumbs. “I sound likeI’m quite the philosopher, don’t I? Theytold me out there you used to be a uni-versity professor.”

“Quite a while ago,” Grant said.“I bet I know what you’re thinking,”

she said. “You’re thinking there’s a mer-cenary type of a person.”

“I’m not making judgments of thatsort. It’s your life.”

“You bet it is.”He thought they should end on a

more neutral note. So he asked her ifher husband had worked in a hardwarestore in the summers, when he wasgoing to school.

“I never heard about it,” she said. “Iwasn’t raised here.”

GRANT realized he’d failed with Aubrey’s wife. Marian. He had

thought that what he’d have to contendwith would be a woman’s natural sex-ual jealousy—or her resentment, thestubborn remains of sexual jealousy. Hehad not had any idea of the way shemight be looking at things. And yet insome depressing way the conversationhad not been unfamiliar to him. Thatwas because it reminded him of conver-sations he’d had with people in his own family. His relatives, probably even his mother, had thought the way Mar-

126 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 27, 1999 & JANUARY 3, 2000

ian thought. Money first. They had be-lieved that when other people did notthink that way it was because they hadlost touch with reality. That was howMarian would see him, certainly. A sillyperson, full of boring knowledge andprotected by some fluke from the truthabout life. A person who didn’t have toworry about holding on to his houseand could go around dreaming up thefine generous schemes that he believedwould make another person happy. Whata jerk, she would be thinking now.

Being up against a person like thatmade him feel hopeless, exasperated, fi-nally almost desolate. Why? Because hecouldn’t be sure of holding on to himself,against people like that? Because he wasafraid that in the end they were right?Yet he might have married her. Or somegirl like that. If he’d stayed back wherehe belonged. She’d have been appetizingenough. Probably a flirt. The fussy wayshe had of shifting her buttocks on thekitchen chair, her pursed mouth, aslightly contrived air of menace—thatwas what was left of the more or lessinnocent vulgarity of a small-town flirt.

She must have had some hopes when she picked Aubrey. His goodlooks, his salesman’s job, his white-collarexpectations. She must have believedthat she would end up better off thanshe was now. And so it often happenedwith those practical people. In spite of their calculations, their survival in-stincts, they might not get as far as they had quite reasonably expected. Nodoubt it seemed unfair.

IN the kitchen the first thing he saw wasthe light blinking on his answering

machine. He thought the samething he always thought now.Fiona. He pressed the buttonbefore he took his coat off.

“Hello, Grant. I hope Igot the right person. I justthought of something. Thereis a dance here in town at theLegion supposed to be for singles onSaturday night and I am on the lunchcommittee, which means I can bring afree guest. So I wondered whether youwould happen to be interested in that?Call me back when you get a chance.”

A woman’s voice gave a local num-ber. Then there was a beep and thesame voice started talking again.

“I just realized I’d forgotten to say

who it was. Well, you probably recog-nized the voice. It’s Marian. I’m still not so used to these machines. And Iwanted to say I realize you’re not a sin-gle and I don’t mean it that way. I’m noteither, but it doesn’t hurt to get out oncein a while. If you are interested you cancall me and if you are not you don’tneed to bother. I just thought you mightlike the chance to get out. It’s Marianspeaking. I guess I already said that.O.K. then. Goodbye.”

Her voice on the machine was dif-ferent from the voice he’d heard a shorttime ago in her house. Just a little dif-ferent in the first message, more so inthe second. A tremor of nerves there,an affected nonchalance, a hurry to getthrough and a reluctance to let go.

Something had happened to her. Butwhen had it happened? If it had beenimmediate, she had concealed it verysuccessfully all the time he was with her.More likely it came on her gradually,maybe after he’d gone away. Not neces-sarily as a blow of attraction. Just therealization that he was a possibility, aman on his own. More or less on hisown. A possibility that she might aswell try to follow up.

But she’d had the jitters when shemade the first move. She had put her-self at risk. How much of herself hecould not yet tell. Generally a woman’svulnerability increased as time went on,as things progressed. All you could tellat the start was that if there was an edgeof it then, there’d be more later. It gavehim a satisfaction—why deny it?—tohave brought that out in her. To haveroused something like a shimmer, ablurring, on the surface of her personal-

ity. To have heard in her testybroad vowels this faint plea.

He set out the eggs andmushrooms to make himselfan omelette. Then he thoughthe might as well pour a drink.

Anything was possible. Wasthat true—was anything pos-

sible? For instance, if he wanted to,would he be able to break her down, gether to the point where she might listento him about taking Aubrey back toFiona? And not just for visits but forthe rest of Aubrey’s life. And whatwould become of him and Marian afterhe’d delivered Aubrey to Fiona?

Marian would be sitting in her housenow, waiting for him to call. Or proba-

ALICE MUNRO 127

bly not sitting. Doing things to keepherself busy. She might have fed Au-brey while Grant was buying the mush-rooms and driving home. She mightnow be preparing him for bed. But all the time she would be conscious of the phone, of the silence of the phone. Maybe she would have calcu-lated how long it would take Grant to drive home. His address in the phone book would have given her a rough idea of where he lived. She would cal-culate how long, then add to that thetime it might take him to shop for sup-per (figuring that a man alone wouldshop every day). Then a certain amountof time for him to get around to lis-tening to his messages. And as the silence persisted she’d think of otherthings. Other errands he might havehad to do before he got home. Or per-haps a dinner out, a meeting that meanthe would not get home at suppertime at all.

What conceit on his part. She wasabove all things a sensible woman. Shewould go to bed at her regular timethinking that he didn’t look as if he’dbe a decent dancer anyway. Too stiff, tooprofessorial.

He stayed near the phone, lookingat magazines, but he didn’t pick it upwhen it rang again.

“Grant. This is Marian. I was downin the basement putting the wash in thedryer and I heard the phone and when Igot upstairs whoever it was had hungup. So I just thought I ought to say Iwas here. If it was you and if you areeven home. Because I don’t have a ma-chine, obviously, so you couldn’t leave amessage. So I just wanted. To let youknow.” The time was now twenty-fiveafter ten.

“Bye.”He would say that he’d just got

home. There was no point in bringingto her mind the picture of his sittinghere weighing the pros and cons.

Drapes. That would be her word forthe blue curtains—drapes. And whynot? He thought of the ginger cookiesso perfectly round that she had to an-nounce they were homemade, the ce-ramic coffee mugs on their ceramic tree,a plastic runner, he was sure, protect-ing the hall carpet. A high-gloss exact-ness and practicality that his motherhad 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 hadtwo more drinks after the first?

The walnut-stain tan—he believednow that it was a tan—of her face andneck would most likely continue intoher cleavage, which would be deep,crêpey-skinned, odorous and hot. Hehad that to think of as he dialled thenumber that he had already writtendown. That and the practical sensual-ity of her cat’s tongue. Her gemstoneeyes.

FIONA was in her room but not in bed. She was sitting by the open

window, wearing a seasonable but oddlyshort and bright dress. Through thewindow came a heady warm blast oflilacs in bloom and the spring manurespread over the fields.

She had a book open in her lap.She said, “Look at this beautiful

book I found. It’s about Iceland. Youwouldn’t think they’d leave valuablebooks lying around in the rooms. But Ithink they’ve got the clothes mixedup—I never wear yellow.”

“Fiona,” he said.“Are we all checked out now?” she

said. He thought the brightness of hervoice was wavering a little. “You’ve beengone a long time.”

“Fiona, I’ve brought a surprise foryou. Do you remember Aubrey?”

She stared at Grant for a moment, asif waves of wind had come beating intoher face. Into her face, into her head,pulling everything to rags. All rags andloose threads.

“Names elude me,” she said harshly.Then the look passed away as she

retrieved, with an effort, some banter-ing grace. She set the book down care-fully and stood up and lifted her arms to put them around him. Her skin orher breath gave off a faint new smell, asmell that seemed to Grant like greenstems in rank water.

“I’m happy to see you,” she said, bothsweetly and formally. She pinched hisearlobes, hard.

“You could have just driven away,”she said. “Just driven away without acare in the world and forsook me. For-sooken me. Forsaken.”

He kept his face against her whitehair, her pink scalp, her sweetly shapedskull.

He said, “Not a chance.” ♦