by Alice Munro
Quite unwisely Juliet says, “But do you not get paid?”
“Certain I am paid. But it is more than a job. Also the other kind of help from a woman, he needs that. Do you understand what I am saying? Not a woman with a hussband, I do not believe in that, it is not nice, that is a way to have fights. First Eric had Sandra, then she has moved away and he has Christa. There was a little while both Christa and Sandra, but they were good friends, it was all right. But Sandra has her kids, she wants to move away to bigger schools. Christa is an artist. She makes things out of wood that you find on the beach. What is it you call that wood?”
“Driftwood,” says Juliet unwillingly. She is paralyzed by disappointment, by shame.
“That is it. She takes them to places and they sell them for her. Big things. Animals and birds but not realist. Not realist?”
“Not realistic?”
“Yes. Yes. She has never had any children. I don’t think she will want to be moving away. Eric has told you this? Would you like more coffee? There is still some in the pot.”
“No. No thanks. No he hasn’t.”
“So. Now I have told you. If you have finish I will take the cup to wash.”
She detours to nudge with her shoe the yellow dog lying on the other side of the refrigerator.
“You got to get up. Lazy girl. Soon we are going home.
“There is a bus goes back to Vancouver, it goes through at ten after eight,” she says, busy at the sink with her back to the room. “You can come home with me and when it is time my hussband will drive you. You can eat with us. I ride my bike, I ride slow so you can keep up. It is not far.”
The immediate future seems set in place so firmly that Juliet gets up without a thought, looks around for her bag. Then she sits down again, but in another chair. This new view of the kitchen seems to give her resolve.
“I think I’ll stay here,” she says.
“Here?”
“I don’t have anything much to carry. I’ll walk to the bus.”
“How will you know your way? It is a mile.”
“That’s not far.” Juliet wonders about knowing the way, but thinks that, after all, you just have to head downhill.
“He is not coming back, you know,” says Ailo. “Not tonight.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
Ailo gives a massive, perhaps disdainful, shrug.
“Get up, Pet. Up.” Over her shoulder she says, “Corky stays here. Do you want her in or out?”
“I guess out.”
“I will tie her up, then, so she cannot follow. She may not want to stay with a stranger.”
Juliet says nothing.
“The door locks when we go out. You see? So if you go out and want to come back in, you have to press this. But when you leave you don’t press. It will be locked. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“We did not use to bother locking here, but now there are too many strangers.”
After they had been looking at the stars, the train had stopped for a while in Winnipeg. They got out and walked in a wind so cold that it was painful for them to breathe, let alone speak. When they boarded the train again they sat in the lounge and he ordered brandy.
“Warm us up and put you to sleep,” he said.
He was not going to sleep. He would sit up until he got off at Regina, some time towards morning.
Most of the berths were already made up, the dark-green curtains narrowing the aisles, when he walked her back to her car. All the cars had names, and the name of hers was Miramichi.
“This is it,” she whispered, in the space between the cars, his hand already pushing the door for her.
“Say good-bye here, then.” He withdrew his hand, and they balanced themselves against the jolting so that he could kiss her thoroughly. When that was finished he did not let go, but held her and stroked her back, and then began to kiss her all over her face.
But she pulled away, she said urgently, “I’m a virgin.”
“Yes, yes.” He laughed, and kissed her neck, then released her and pushed the door open in front of her. They walked down the aisle till she located her own berth. She flattened herself against the curtain, turning, and rather expecting him to kiss her again or touch her, but he slid by almost as if they had met by accident.
How stupid, how disastrous. Afraid, of course, that his stroking hand would go farther down and reach the knot she had made securing the pad to the belt. If she had been the sort of girl who could rely on tampons this need never have happened.
And why virgin? When she had gone to such unpleasant lengths, in Willis Park, to insure that such a condition would not be an impediment? She must have been thinking of what she would tell him—she would never be able to tell him that she was menstruating—in the event that he hoped to carry things further. How could he have had plans like that, anyway? How? Where? In her berth, with so little room and all the other passengers very likely still awake around them? Standing up, swaying back and forth, pressed against a door, which anybody could come along and open, in that precarious space between the cars?
So now he could tell someone how he listened all evening to this fool girl showing off what she knew about Greek mythology, and in the end—when he finally kissed her good night, to get rid of her—she started screaming that she was a virgin.
He had not seemed the sort of man to do that, to talk like that, but she could not help imagining it.
She lay awake far into the night, but had fallen asleep when the train stopped at Regina.
Left alone, Juliet could explore the house. But she does no such thing. It is twenty minutes, at least, before she can be rid of the presence of Ailo. Not that she is afraid that Ailo might come back to check up on her, or to get something she has forgotten. Ailo is not the sort of person who forgets things, even at the end of a strenuous day. And if she had thought Juliet would steal anything, she would simply have kicked her out.
She is, however, the sort of woman who lays claim to space, particularly to kitchen space. Everything within Juliet’s gaze speaks of Ailo’s occupation, from the potted plants (herbs?) on the windowsill to the chopping block to the polished linoleum.
And when she has managed to push Ailo back, not out of the room but perhaps back beside the old-fashioned refrigerator, Juliet comes up against Christa. Eric has a woman. Of course he has. Christa. Juliet sees a younger, a more seductive Ailo. Wide hips, strong arms, long hair—all blond with no white—breasts bobbing frankly under a loose shirt. The same aggressive—and in Christa, sexy—lack of chic. The same relishing way of chewing up and then spitting out her words.
Two other women come into her mind. Briseis and Chryseis. Those playmates of Achilles and Agamemnon. Each of them described as being “of the lovely cheeks.” When the professor read that word (which she could not now remember), his forehead had gone quite pink and he seemed to be suppressing a giggle. For that moment, Juliet despised him.
So if Christa turns out to be a rougher, more northerly version of Briseis/Chryseis, will Juliet be able to start despising Eric as well?
But how will she ever know, if she walks down to the highway and gets on the bus?
The fact is that she never intended to get on that bus. So it seems. With Ailo out of the way, it is easier to discover her own intentions. She gets up at last and makes more coffee, then pours it into a mug, not one of the cups that Ailo has put out.
She is too keyed up to be hungry, but she examines the bottles on the counter, which people must have brought for the wake. Cherry brandy, peach schnapps, Tia Maria, sweet vermouth. These bottles have been opened but the contents have not proved popular. The serious drinking has been done from the empty bottles ranged by Ailo beside the door. Gin and whisky, beer and wine.
She pours Tia Maria into her coffee, and takes the bottle with her up the steps into the big living room.
This is one of the longest days of the year. But the trees around here, the big bushy evergreens and the red-lim
bed arbutus, shut out the light from the descending sun. The skylight keeps the kitchen bright, while the windows in the living room are nothing but long slits in the wall, and there the darkness has already begun to accumulate. The floor is not finished—old shabby rugs are laid down on squares of plywood—and the room is oddly and haphazardly furnished. Mostly with cushions, lying about on the floor, a couple of hassocks covered in leather, which has split. A huge leather chair, of the sort that leans back and has a rest for your feet. A couch covered by an authentic but ragged patchwork quilt, an ancient television set, and brick-and-plank bookshelves—on which there are no books, only stacks of old National Geographics, with a few sailing magazines and issues of Popular Mechanics.
Ailo obviously has not got around to cleaning up this room. There are smudges of ashes where ashtrays have been upset onto the rugs. And crumbs everywhere. It occurs to Juliet that she might look for the vacuum cleaner, if there is one, but then she thinks that even if she could get it to work it is likely that some mishap would occur—the thin rugs might get scrunched up and caught in the machine, for instance. So she just sits in the leather chair, adding more Tia Maria as the level of her coffee goes down.
Nothing is much to her liking on this coast. The trees are too large and crowded together and do not have any personality of their own—they simply make a forest. The mountains are too grand and implausible and the islands that float upon the waters of the Strait of Georgia are too persistently picturesque. This house, with its big spaces and slanted ceilings and unfinished wood, is stark and self-conscious.
The dog barks from time to time, but not urgently. Maybe she wants to come in and have company. But Juliet has never had a dog—a dog in the house would be a witness, not a companion, and would only make her feel uncomfortable.
Perhaps the dog is barking at exploring deer, or a bear, or a cougar. There has been something in the Vancouver papers about a cougar—she thinks it was on this coast—mauling a child.
Who would want to live where you have to share every part of outdoor space with hostile and marauding animals?
Kallipareos. Of the lovely cheeks. Now she has it. The Homeric word is sparkling on her hook. And beyond that she is suddenly aware of all her Greek vocabulary, of everything which seems to have been put in a closet for nearly six months now. Because she was not teaching Greek, she put it away.
That is what happens. You put it away for a little while, and now and again you look in the closet for something else and you remember, and you think, soon. Then it becomes something that is just there, in the closet, and other things get crowded in front of it and on top of it and finally you don’t think about it at all.
The thing that was your bright treasure. You don’t think about it. A loss you could not contemplate at one time, and now it becomes something you can barely remember.
That is what happens.
And even if it’s not put away, even if you make your living from it, every day? Juliet thinks of the older teachers at the school, how little most of them care for whatever it is that they teach. Take Juanita, who chose Spanish because it goes with her Christian name (she is Irish) and who wants to speak it well, to use it in her travels. You cannot say that Spanish is her treasure.
Few people, very few, have a treasure, and if you do you must hang on to it. You must not let yourself be waylaid, and have it taken from you.
The Tia Maria has worked in a certain way with the coffee. It makes her feel careless, but powerful. It enables her to think that Eric, after all, is not so important. He is someone she might dally with. Dally is the word. As Aphrodite did, with Anchises. And then one morning she will slip away.
She gets up and finds the bathroom, then comes back and lies down on the couch with the quilt over her—too sleepy to notice Corky’s hairs on it, or Corky’s smell.
When she wakes it is full morning, though only twenty past six by the kitchen clock.
She has a headache. There is a bottle of aspirin in the bathroom—she takes two, and washes herself and combs her hair and gets her toothbrush from her bag and brushes her teeth. Then she makes a fresh pot of coffee and eats a slice of homemade bread without bothering to heat or butter it. She sits at the kitchen table. Sunlight, slipping down through the trees, makes coppery splashes on the smooth trunks of the arbutus. Corky begins to bark, and barks for quite a long time before the truck turns into the yard and silences her.
Juliet hears the door of the truck close, she hears him speaking to the dog, and dread comes over her. She wants to hide somewhere (she says later, I could have crawled under the table, but of course she does not think of doing anything so ridiculous). It’s like the moment at school before the winner of the prize is announced. Only worse, because she has no reasonable hope. And because there will never be another chance so momentous in her life.
When the door opens she cannot look up. On her knees the fingers of both hands are interwoven, clenched together.
“You’re here,” he says. He is laughing in triumph and admiration, as if at a most spectacular piece of impudence and daring. When he opens his arms it’s as if a wind has blown into the room and made her look up.
Six months ago she did not know this man existed. Six months ago, the man who died under the train was still alive, and perhaps picking out the clothes for his trip.
“You’re here.”
She can tell by his voice that he is claiming her. She stands up, quite numb, and sees that he is older, heavier, more impetuous than she has remembered. He advances on her and she feels herself ransacked from top to bottom, flooded with relief, assaulted by happiness. How astonishing this is. How close to dismay.
It turns out that Eric was not taken so much by surprise as he pretended. Ailo phoned him last night, to warn him about the strange girl, Juliet, and offered to check for him as to whether the girl had got on the bus. He had thought it somehow right to take the chance that she would do so—to test fate, maybe—but when Ailo phoned to say that the girl had not gone he was startled by the joy he felt. Still, he did not come home right away, and he did not tell Christa, though he knew he would have to tell her, very soon.
All this Juliet absorbs bit by bit in the weeks and months that follow. Some information arrives accidentally, and some as the result of her imprudent probing.
Her own revelation (of nonvirginity) is considered minor.
Christa is nothing like Ailo. She does not have wide hips or blond hair. She is a dark-haired, thin woman, witty and sometimes morose, who will become Juliet’s great friend and mainstay during the years ahead—though she will never quite forgo a habit of sly teasing, the ironic flicker of a submerged rivalry.
SOON
Two profiles face each other. One the profile of a pure white heifer, with a particularly mild and tender expression, the other that of a green-faced man who is neither young nor old. He seems to be a minor official, maybe a postman—he wears that sort of cap. His lips are pale, the whites of his eyes shining. A hand that is probably his offers up, from the lower margin of the painting, a little tree or an exuberant branch, fruited with jewels.
At the upper margin of the painting are dark clouds, and underneath them some small tottery houses and a toy church with its toy cross, perched on the curved surface of the earth. Within this curve a small man (drawn to a larger scale, however, than the buildings) walks along purposefully with a scythe on his shoulder, and a woman, drawn to the same scale, seems to wait for him. But she is hanging upside down.
There are other things as well. For instance, a girl milking a cow, within the heifer’s cheek.
Juliet decided at once to buy this print for her parents’ Christmas present.
“Because it reminds me of them,” she said to Christa, her friend who had come down with her from Whale Bay to do some shopping. They were in the gift shop of the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Christa laughed. “The green man and the cow? They’ll be flattered.”
Christa never took anything seri
ously at first, she had to make some joke about it. Juliet wasn’t bothered. Three months pregnant with the baby that would turn out to be Penelope, she was suddenly free of nausea, and for that reason, or some other, she was subject to fits of euphoria. She thought of food all the time, and hadn’t even wanted to come into the gift shop, because she had spotted a lunchroom.
She loved everything in the picture, but particularly the little figures and rickety buildings at the top of it. The man with the scythe and the woman hanging upside down.
She looked for the title. I and the Village.
It made exquisite sense.
“Chagall. I like Chagall,” said Christa. “Picasso was a bastard.”
Juliet was so happy with what she had found that she could hardly pay attention.
“You know what he is supposed to have said? Chagall is for shopgirls,” Christa told her. “So what’s wrong with shopgirls? Chagall should have said, Picasso is for people with funny faces.”
“I mean, it makes me think of their life,” Juliet said. “I don’t know why, but it does.”
She had already told Christa some things about her parents—how they lived in a curious but not unhappy isolation, though her father was a popular schoolteacher. Partly they were cut off by Sara’s heart trouble, but also by their subscribing to magazines nobody around them read, listening to programs on the national radio network, which nobody around them listened to. By Sara’s making her own clothes—sometimes ineptly—from Vogue patterns, instead of Butterick. Even by the way they preserved some impression of youth instead of thickening and slouching like the parents of Juliet’s schoolfellows. Juliet had described Sam as looking like her—long neck, a slight bump to the chin, light-brown floppy hair—and Sara as a frail pale blonde, a wispy untidy beauty.
When Penelope was thirteen months old, Juliet flew with her to Toronto, then caught the train. This was in 1969. She got off in a town twenty miles or so away from the town where she had grown up, and where Sam and Sara still lived. Apparently the train did not stop there anymore.