by Alice Munro
Except perhaps for Sonje. Sonje didn’t say anything. But Sonje drew on Cottar; he was her certainty. She got up to offer more curry, she spoke into one of the brief angry silences.
“It looks as if nobody wanted any coconut.”
“Oh, Sonje, are you going to be the tactful hostess?” the older woman said. “Like somebody in Virginia Woolf?”
So it seemed Virginia Woolf was at a discount too. There was so much Kath didn’t understand. But at least she knew it was there; she wasn’t prepared to say it was nonsense.
Nevertheless she wished her water would break. Anything to deliver her. If she scrambled up and puddled the floor in front of them, they would have to stop.
Afterwards Kent did not seem perturbed about the way the evening had gone. For one thing, he thought he had won. “They’re all pinkos, they have to talk that way,” he said. “It’s the only thing they can do.”
Kath was anxious not to talk anymore about politics so she changed the subject, telling him that the older couple had lived with Sonje and Cottar in the communal house. There was also another couple who had since moved away. And there had been an orderly exchange of sexual partners. The older man had an outside mistress and she was in on the exchange part of the time.
Kent said, “You mean young guys would go to bed with that old woman? She’s got to be fifty.”
Kath said, “Cottar’s thirty-eight.”
“Even so,” said Kent. “It’s disgusting.”
But Kath found the idea of those stipulated and obligatory copulations exciting as well as disgusting. To pass yourself around obediently and blamelessly, to whoever came up on the list—it was like temple prostitution. Lust served as your duty. It gave her a deep obscene thrill, to think of that.
It hadn’t thrilled Sonje. She had not experienced sexual release. Cottar would ask her if she had, when she came back to him, and she had to say no. He was disappointed and she was disappointed for his sake. He explained to her that she was too exclusive and too much tied up in the idea of sexual property and she knew he was right.
“I know he thinks that if I loved him enough I’d be better at it,” she said. “But I do love him, agonizingly.”
For all the tempting thoughts that came into her mind, Kath believed that she could only, ever, sleep with Kent. Sex was like something they had invented between them. Trying it with somebody else would mean a change of circuits—all of her life would blow up in her face. Yet she could not say she loved Kent agonizingly.
—
AS SHE WALKED along the beach from Monica’s house to Sonje’s, she saw people waiting for the party. They stood around in small groups or sat on logs watching the last of the sunset. They drank beer. Cottar and another man were washing out a garbage tin in which they would make the punch. Miss Campo, the head librarian, was sitting alone on a log. Kath waved to her vivaciously but didn’t go over to join her. If you joined somebody at this stage, you were caught. Then there were two of you alone. The thing to do was to join a group of three or four, even if you found the conversation—that had looked lively from a distance—to be quite desperate. But she could hardly do that, after waving at Miss Campo. She had to be on her way somewhere. So she went on, past Kent talking to Monica’s husband about how long it took to saw up one of the logs on the beach, she went up the steps to Sonje’s house and into the kitchen.
Sonje was stirring a big pot of chili, and the older woman from the communal house was setting out slices of rye bread and salami and cheese on a platter. She was dressed just as she had been for the curry dinner—in a baggy skirt and a drab but clinging sweater, the breasts it clung to sloping down to her waist. This had something to do with Marxism, Kath thought—Cottar liked Sonje to go without a brassiere, as well as without stockings or lipstick. Also it had to do with unfettered unjealous sex, the generous uncorrupted appetite that did not balk at a woman of fifty.
A girl from the library was there too, cutting up green peppers and tomatoes. And a woman Kath didn’t know was sitting on the kitchen stool, smoking a cigarette.
“Have we ever got a bone to pick with you,” the girl from the library said to Kath. “All of us at work. We hear you’ve got the darlingest baby and you haven’t brought her in to show us. Where is she now?”
Kath said, “Asleep I hope.”
This girl’s name was Lorraine, but Sonje and Kath, recalling their days at the library, had given her the name Debbie Reynolds. She was full of bounce.
“Aww,” she said.
The low-slung woman gave her, and Kath, a look of thoughtful distaste.
Kath opened a bottle of beer and handed it to Sonje, who said, “Oh, thanks, I was so concentrated on the chili I forgot I could have a drink.” She worried because her cooking wasn’t as good as Cottar’s.
“Good thing you weren’t going to drink that yourself,” the girl from the library said to Kath. “It’s a no-no if you’re nursing.”
“I guzzled beer all the time when I was nursing,” the woman on the stool said. “I think it was recommended. You piss most of it away anyhow.”
This woman’s eyes were lined with black pencil, extended at the corners, and her eyelids were painted a purplish blue right up to her sleek black brows. The rest of her face was very pale, or made up to look so, and her lips were so pale a pink that they seemed almost white. Kath had seen faces like this before, but only in magazines.
“This is Amy,” said Sonje. “Amy, this is Kath. I’m sorry, I didn’t introduce you.”
“Sonje, you’re always sorry,” the older woman said.
Amy took up a piece of cheese that had just been cut, and ate it.
Amy was the name of the mistress. The older woman’s husband’s mistress. She was a person Kath suddenly wanted to know, to be friends with, just as she had once longed to be friends with Sonje.
—
THE EVENING had changed into night, and the knots of people on the beach had become less distinct; they showed more disposition to flow together. Down at the edge of the water women had taken off their shoes, reached up and pulled off their stockings if they were wearing any, touched their toes to the water. Most people had given up drinking beer and were drinking punch, and the punch had already begun to change its character. At first it had been mostly rum and pineapple juice, but by now other kinds of fruit juice, and soda water, and vodka and wine had been added.
Those who were taking off their shoes were being encouraged to take off more. Some ran into the water with most of their clothes on, then stripped and tossed the clothes to catchers on shore. Others stripped where they were, encouraging each other by saying it was too dark to see anything. But actually you could see bare bodies splashing and running and falling into the dark water. Monica had brought a great pile of towels down from her house, and was calling out to everyone to wrap themselves up when they came out, so they wouldn’t catch their death of cold.
The moon came up through the black trees on top of the rocks, and looked so huge, so solemn and thrilling, that there were cries of amazement. What’s that? And even when it had climbed higher in the sky and shrunk to a more normal size people acknowledged it from time to time, saying “The harvest moon” or “Did you see it when it first came up?”
“I actually thought it was a great big balloon.”
“I couldn’t imagine what it was. I didn’t think the moon could be that size, ever.”
Kath was down by the water, talking to the man whose wife and mistress she had seen in Sonje’s kitchen earlier. His wife was swimming now, a little apart from the shriekers and splashers. In another life, the man said, he had been a minister.
“ ‘The sea of faith was once too at the full,’ ” he said humorously. “ ‘And round earth’s shore, lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled’—I was married to a completely different woman then.”
He sighed, and Kath thought he was searching for the rest of the verse.
“ ‘But now I only hear,’ ” she said
, “ ‘its melancholy long withdrawing roar, down the vast edges drear and naked shingles of the world.’ ” Then she stopped, because it seemed too much to go on with “Oh love let us be true—”
His wife swam towards them, and heaved herself up where the water was only as deep as her knees. Her breasts swung sideways and flung drops of water round her as she waded in.
Her husband opened his arms. He called, “Europa,” in a voice of comradely welcome.
“That makes you Zeus,” said Kath boldly. She wanted right then to have a man like this kiss her. A man she hardly knew, and cared nothing about. And he did kiss her, he waggled his cool tongue inside her mouth.
“Imagine a continent named after a cow,” he said. His wife stood close in front of them, breathing gratefully after the exertion of her swim. She was so close that Kath was afraid of being grazed by her long dark nipples or her mop of black pubic hair.
Somebody had got a fire going, and those who had been in the water were out now, wrapped up in blankets or towels, or crouched behind logs struggling into their clothes.
And there was music playing. The people who lived next door to Monica had a dock and a boathouse. A record player had been brought down, and people were starting to dance. On the dock and with more difficulty on the sand. Even along the top of a log somebody would do a dance step or two, before stumbling and falling or jumping off. Women who had got dressed again, or never got undressed, women who were feeling too restless to stay in one place—as Kath was—went walking along the edge of the water (nobody was swimming anymore, swimming was utterly past and forgotten) and they walked in a different way because of the music. Swaying rather self-consciously, jokingly, then more insolently, like beautiful women in a movie.
Miss Campo was still sitting in the same place, smiling.
The girl Kath and Sonje called Debbie Reynolds was sitting in the sand with her back against a log, crying. She smiled at Kath, she said, “Don’t think I’m sad.”
Her husband was a college football player who now ran a body-repair shop. When he came into the library to pick up his wife he always looked like a proper football player, faintly disgusted with the rest of the world. But now he knelt beside her and played with her hair.
“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s the way it always takes her. Isn’t it, honey?”
“Yes it is,” she said.
Kath found Sonje wandering around the fire circle, doling out marshmallows. Some people were able to fit them on sticks and toast them; others tossed them back and forth and lost them in the sand.
“Debbie Reynolds is crying,” Kath said. “But it’s all right. She’s happy.”
They began to laugh, and hugged each other, squashing the bag of marshmallows between them.
“Oh I will miss you,” Sonje said. “Oh, I will miss our friendship.”
“Yes. Yes,” Kath said. Each of them took a cold marshmallow and ate it, laughing and looking at each other, full of sweet and forlorn feeling.
“This do in remembrance of me,” Kath said. “You are my realest truest friend.”
“You are mine,” said Sonje. “Realest truest. Cottar says he wants to sleep with Amy tonight.”
“Don’t let him,” said Kath. “Don’t let him if it makes you feel awful.”
“Oh, it isn’t a question of let,” Sonje said valiantly. She called out, “Who wants some chili? Cottar’s dishing out the chili over there. Chili? Chili?”
Cottar had brought the kettle of chili down the steps and set it in the sand.
“Mind the kettle,” he kept saying in a fatherly voice. “Mind the kettle, it’s hot.”
He squatted to serve people, clad only in a towel that was flapping open. Amy was beside him, giving out bowls.
Kath cupped her hands in front of Cottar.
“Please Your Grace,” she said. “I am not worthy of a bowl.”
Cottar sprang up, letting go of the ladle, and placed his hands on her head.
“Bless you, my child, the last shall be first.” He kissed her bent neck.
“Ahh,” said Amy, as if she was getting or giving this kiss herself.
Kath raised her head and looked past Cottar.
“I’d love to wear that kind of lipstick,” she said.
Amy said, “Come along.” She set down the bowls and took Kath lightly by the waist and propelled her to the steps.
“Up here,” she said. “We’ll do the whole job on you.”
In the tiny bathroom behind Cottar and Sonje’s bedroom Amy spread out little jars and tubes and pencils. She had nowhere to spread them but on the toilet seat. Kath had to sit on the rim of the bathtub, her face almost brushing Amy’s stomach. Amy smoothed a liquid over her cheeks and rubbed a paste into her eyelids. Then she brushed on a powder. She brushed and glossed Kath’s eyebrows and put three separate coats of mascara on her lashes. She outlined and painted her lips and blotted them and painted them again. She held Kath’s face up in her hands and tilted it towards the light.
Someone knocked on the door and then shook it.
“Hang on,” Amy called out. Then, “What’s the matter with you, can’t you go and take a leak behind a log?”
She wouldn’t let Kath look in the mirror until it was all done.
“And don’t smile,” she said. “It spoils the effect.”
Kath let her mouth droop, stared sullenly at her reflection. Her lips were like fleshy petals, lily petals. Amy pulled her away. “I didn’t mean like that,” she said. “Better not look at yourself at all, don’t try to look any way, you’ll look fine.
“Hold on to your precious bladder, we’re getting out,” she shouted at the new person or maybe the same person pounding on the door. She scooped her supplies into their bag and shoved it under the bathtub. She said to Kath, “Come on, beautiful.”
—
ON THE DOCK Amy and Kath danced, laughing and challenging each other. Men tried to get in between them, but for a while they managed not to let this happen. Then they gave up, they were separated, making faces of dismay and flapping their arms like grounded birds as they found themselves blocked off, each of them pulled away into the orbit of a partner.
Kath danced with a man she did not remember seeing before during the whole evening. He seemed to be around Cottar’s age. He was tall, with a thickened, softened waistline, a mat of dull curly hair, and a spoiled, bruised look around the eyes.
“I may fall off,” Kath said. “I’m dizzy. I may fall overboard.”
He said, “I’ll catch you.”
“I’m dizzy but I’m not drunk,” she said.
He smiled, and she thought, That’s what drunk people always say.
“Really,” she said, and it was true because she had not finished even one bottle of beer, or touched the punch.
“Unless I got it through my skin,” she said. “Osmosis.”
He didn’t answer, but pulled her close then released her, holding her eyes.
The sex Kath had with Kent was eager and strenuous, but at the same time reticent. They had not seduced each other but more or less stumbled into intimacy, or what they believed to be intimacy, and stayed there. If there is only to be the one partner in your life nothing has to be made special—it already is so. They had looked at each other naked, but at those times they had not except by chance looked into each other’s eyes.
That was what Kath was doing now, all the time, with her unknown partner. They advanced and retreated and circled and dodged, putting on a show for each other, and looking into each other’s eyes. Their eyes declared that this show was nothing, nothing compared to the raw tussle they could manage when they chose.
Yet it was all a joke. As soon as they touched they let go again. Close up, they opened their mouths and teased their tongues across their lips and at once drew back, pretending languor.
Kath was wearing a short-sleeved brushed-wool sweater, convenient for nursing because it had a low V neck and was buttoned down the front.
The nex
t time they came close her partner raised his arm as if to protect himself and moved the back of his hand, his bare wrist and forearm across her stiff breasts under their electric wool. That made them stagger, they almost broke their dance. But continued—Kath weak and faltering.
She heard her name being called.
Mrs. Mayberry. Mrs. Mayberry.
It was the babysitter, calling from halfway down Monica’s steps.
“Your baby. Your baby’s awake. Can you come and feed her?”
Kath stopped. She worked her way shakily through the other dancers. Out of the light, she jumped down, and stumbled in the sand. She knew her partner was behind her, she heard him jump behind her. She was ready to offer her mouth or her throat to him. But he caught her hips, turned her around, dropped to his knees, and kissed her crotch through her cotton pants. Then he rose up lightly for such a large man, they turned away from each other at the same moment. Kath hurried into the light and climbed the steps to Monica’s house. Panting, and pulling herself up by the railing, like an old woman.
The babysitter was in the kitchen.
“Oh, your husband,” she said. “Your husband just came in with the bottle. I didn’t know what the arrangement was or I could have saved myself yelling.”
Kath went on into Monica’s living room. The only light there came from the hall and the kitchen, but she could see that it was a real living room, not a modified porch like hers and Sonje’s. There was a Danish modern coffee table and upholstered furniture and draw drapes.
Kent was sitting in an armchair, feeding Noelle from her supplemental bottle.
“Hi,” he said, speaking quietly though Noelle was sucking too vigorously to be even half asleep.
“Hi,” said Kath, and sat down on the sofa.
“I just thought this would be a good idea,” he said. “In case you’d been drinking.”
Kath said, “I haven’t. Been drinking.” She raised a hand to her breasts to test their fullness, but the stir of the wool gave her such a shock of desire that she couldn’t press further.