by Alice Munro
What did bring their display to an end was the loud wailing of Penelope, who had wakened wet and had complained softly for a while, then complained more vigorously, and finally given way to fury. Sara heard her first, and tried to attract their attention.
“Penelope,” she said faintly, then, with more effort, “Juliet. Penelope.” Juliet and the minister both looked at her distractedly, and then the minister said, with a sudden drop in his voice, “Your baby.”
Juliet hurried from the room. She was shaking when she picked Penelope up, she came close to stabbing her when she was pinning on the dry diaper. Penelope stopped crying, not because she was comforted but because she was alarmed by this rough attention. Her wide wet eyes, her astonished stare, broke into Juliet’s preoccupation, and she tried to settle herself down, talking as gently as she could and then picking her child up, walking with her up and down the upstairs hall. Penelope was not immediately reassured, but after a few minutes the tension began to leave her body.
Juliet felt the same thing happening to her, and when she thought that a certain amount of control and quiet had returned to both of them, she carried Penelope downstairs.
The minister had come out of Sara’s room and was waiting for her. In a voice that might have been contrite, but seemed in fact frightened, he said, “That’s a nice baby.”
Juliet said, “Thank you.”
She thought that now they might properly say good-bye, but something was holding him. He continued to look at her, he did not move away. He put his hand out as if to catch hold of her shoulder, then dropped it.
“Do you know if you have—,” he said, then shook his head slightly. The have had come out sounding like hab.
“Jooze,” he said, and slapped his hand against his throat. He waved in the direction of the kitchen.
Juliet’s first thought was that he must be drunk. His head was wagging slightly back and forth, his eyes seemed to be filmed over. Had he come here drunk, had he brought something in his pocket? Then she remembered. A girl, a pupil at the school where she had once taught for half a year. This girl, a diabetic, would suffer a kind of seizure, become thick-tongued, distraught, staggering, if she had gone too long without food.
Shifting Penelope to her hip, she took hold of his arm and steadied him along towards the kitchen. Juice. That was what they had given the girl, that was what he was talking about.
“Just a minute, just a minute, you’ll be all right,” she said. He held himself upright, hands pressed down on the counter, head lowered.
There was no orange juice—she remembered giving Penelope the last of it that morning, thinking she must get more. But there was a bottle of grape soda, which Sam and Irene liked to drink when they came in from work in the garden.
“Here,” she said. Managing with one hand, as she was used to doing, she poured out a glassful. “Here.” And as he drank she said, “I’m sorry there’s no juice. But it’s the sugar, isn’t it? You have to get some sugar?”
He drank it down, he said, “Yeah. Sugar. Thanks.” Already his voice was clearing. She remembered this too, about the girl at the school—how quick and apparently miraculous the recovery. But before he was quite recovered, or quite himself, while he was still holding his head at a slant, he met her eyes. Not on purpose, it seemed, just by chance. The look in his eyes was not grateful, or forgiving—it was not really personal, it was just the raw look of an astounded animal, hanging on to whatever it could find.
And within a few seconds the eyes, the face, became the face of the man, the minister, who set down his glass and without another word fled out of the house.
Sara was either asleep or pretending to be, when Juliet went to pick up the tea tray. Her sleeping state, her dozing state, and her waking state had now such delicate and shifting boundaries that it was hard to identify them. At any rate, she spoke, she said in little more than a whisper, “Juliet?”
Juliet paused in the doorway.
“You must think Don is—rather a simpleton,” Sara said. “But he isn’t well. He’s a diabetic. It’s serious.”
Juliet said, “Yes.”
“He needs his faith.”
“Foxhole argument,” said Juliet, but quietly, and perhaps Sara did not hear, for she went on talking.
“My faith isn’t so simple,” said Sara, her voice all shaky (and seeming to Juliet, at this moment, strategically pathetic). “I can’t describe it. But it’s—all I can say—it’s something. It’s a—wonderful—something. When it gets really bad for me—when it gets so bad I—you know what I think then? I think, all right. I think—Soon. Soon I’ll see Juliet.”
Dreaded (Dearest) Eric,
Where to begin? I am fine and Penelope is fine. Considering. She walks confidently now around Sara’s bed but is still leery of striking out with no support. The summer heat is amazing, compared with the west coast. Even when it rains. It’s a good thing it does rain because Sam is going full-tilt at the market garden business. The other day I rode around with him in the ancient vehicle delivering fresh raspberries and raspberry jam (made by a sort of junior Ilse Koch person who inhabits our kitchen) and newly dug first potatoes of the season. He is quite gung-ho. Sara stays in bed and dozes or looks at out-dated fashion magazines. A minister came to visit her and he and I got into a big stupid row about the existence of God or some such hot topic. The visit is going okay though …
This was a letter that Juliet found years later. Eric must have saved it by accident—it had no particular importance in their lives.
She had gone back to the house of her childhood once more, for Sara’s funeral, some months after that letter was written. Irene was no longer around, and Juliet had no memory of asking or being told where she was. Most probably she had married. As Sam did again, in a couple of years. He married a fellow teacher, a good-natured, handsome, competent woman. They lived in her house—Sam tore down the house where he and Sara had lived, and extended the garden. When his wife retired, they bought a trailer and began to go on long winter trips. They visited Juliet twice at Whale Bay. Eric took them out in his boat. He and Sam got along well. As Sam said, like a house afire.
When she read the letter, Juliet winced, as anybody does on discovering the preserved and disconcerting voice of some past fabricated self. She wondered at the sprightly cover-up, contrasting with the pain of her memories. Then she thought that some shift must have taken place, at that time, which she had not remembered. Some shift concerning where home was. Not at Whale Bay with Eric but back where it had been before, all her life before.
Because it’s what happens at home that you try to protect, as best you can, for as long as you can.
But she had not protected Sara. When Sara had said, soon I’ll see Juliet, Juliet had found no reply. Could it not have been managed? Why should it have been so difficult? Just to say Yes. To Sara it would have meant so much—to herself, surely, so little. But she had turned away, she had carried the tray to the kitchen, and there she washed and dried the cups and also the glass that had held grape soda. She had put everything away.
SILENCE
On the short ferry ride from Buckley Bay to Denman Island, Juliet got out of her car and stood at the front of the boat, in the summer breeze. A woman standing there recognized her, and they began to talk. It is not unusual for people to take a second look at Juliet and wonder where they’ve seen her before, and, sometimes, to remember. She appears regularly on the Provincial Television channel, interviewing people who are leading singular or notable lives, and deftly directing panel discussions, on a program called Issues of the Day. Her hair is cut short now, as short as possible, and has taken on a very dark auburn color, matching the frames of her glasses. She often wears black pants—as she does today—and an ivory silk shirt, and sometimes a black jacket. She is what her mother would have called a striking-looking woman.
“Forgive me. People must be always bothering you.”
“It’s okay,” Juliet says. “Except when I’ve just been
to the dentist or something.”
The woman is about Juliet’s age. Long black hair streaked with gray, no makeup, long denim skirt. She lives on Denman, so Juliet asks her what she knows about the Spiritual Balance Centre.
“Because my daughter is there,” Juliet says. “She’s been on a retreat there or taking a course, I don’t know what they call it. For six months. This is the first time I’ve got to see her, in six months.”
“There are a couple of places like that,” the woman says. “They sort of come and go. I don’t mean there’s anything suspect about them. Just that they’re generally off in the woods, you know, and don’t have much to do with the community. Well, what would be the point of a retreat if they did?”
She says that Juliet must be looking forward to seeing her daughter again, and Juliet says yes, very much.
“I’m spoiled,” she says. “She’s twenty years old, my daughter—she’ll be twenty-one this month, actually—and we haven’t been apart much.”
The woman says that she has a son of twenty and a daughter of eighteen and another of fifteen, and there are days when she’d pay them to go on a retreat, singly or all together.
Juliet laughs. “Well. I’ve only the one. Of course, I won’t guarantee that I won’t be all for shipping her back, given a few weeks.”
This is the kind of fond but exasperated mother-talk she finds it easy to slip into (Juliet is an expert at reassuring responses), but the truth is that Penelope has scarcely ever given her cause for complaint, and if she wanted to be totally honest, at this point she would say that one day without some contact with her daughter is hard to bear, let alone six months. Penelope has worked at Banff, as a summer chambermaid, and she has gone on bus trips to Mexico, a hitchhiking trip to Newfoundland. But she has always lived with Juliet, and there has never been a six-month break.
She gives me delight, Juliet could have said. Not that she is one of those song-and-dance purveyors of sunshine and cheer and looking-on-the-bright-side. I hope I’ve brought her up better than that. She has grace and compassion and she is as wise as if she’d been on this earth for eighty years. Her nature is reflective, not all over the map like mine. Somewhat reticent, like her father’s. She is also angelically pretty, she’s like my mother, blond like my mother but not so frail. Strong and noble. Molded, I should say, like a caryatid. And contrary to popular notions I am not even faintly jealous. All this time without her—and with no word from her, because Spiritual Balance does not allow letters or phone calls—all this time I’ve been in a sort of desert, and when her message came I was like an old patch of cracked earth getting a full drink of rain.
Hope to see you Sunday afternoon. It’s time.
Time to go home, was what Juliet hoped this meant, but of course she would leave that up to Penelope.
Penelope had drawn a rudimentary map, and Juliet shortly found herself parked in front of an old church—that is, a church building seventy-five or eighty years old, covered with stucco, not as old or anything like as impressive as churches usually were in the part of Canada where Juliet had grown up. Behind it was a more recent building, with a slanting roof and windows all across its front, also a simple stage and some seating benches and what looked like a volleyball court with a sagging net. Everything was shabby, and the once-cleared patch of land was being reclaimed by juniper and poplars.
A couple of people—she could not tell whether men or women—were doing some carpentry work on the stage, and others sat on the benches in separate small groups. All wore ordinary clothes, not yellow robes or anything of that sort. For a few minutes no notice was taken of Juliet’s car. Then one of the people on the benches rose and walked unhurriedly towards her. A short, middle-aged man wearing glasses.
She got out of the car and greeted him and asked for Penelope. He did not speak—perhaps there was a rule of silence—but nodded and turned away and went into the church. From which there shortly appeared, not Penelope, but a heavy, slow-moving woman with white hair, wearing jeans and a baggy sweater.
“What an honor to meet you,” she said. “Do come inside. I’ve asked Donny to make us some tea.”
She had a broad fresh face, a smile both roguish and tender, and what Juliet supposed must be called twinkling eyes. “My name is Joan,” she said. Juliet had been expecting an assumed name like Serenity, or something with an Eastern flavor, nothing so plain and familiar as Joan. Later, of course, she thought of Pope Joan.
“I’ve got the right place, have I? I’m a stranger on Denman,” she said disarmingly. “You know I’ve come to see Penelope?”
“Of course. Penelope.” Joan prolonged the name, with a certain tone of celebration.
The inside of the church was darkened with purple cloth hung over the high windows. The pews and other church furnishings had been removed, and plain white curtains had been strung up to form private cubicles, as in a hospital ward. The cubicle into which Juliet was directed had, however, no bed, just a small table and a couple of plastic chairs, and some open shelves piled untidily with loose papers.
“I’m afraid we’re still in the process of getting things fixed up in here,” Joan said. “Juliet. May I call you Juliet?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I’m not used to talking to a celebrity.” Joan held her hands together in a prayer pose beneath her chin. “I don’t know whether to be informal or not.”
“I’m not much of a celebrity.”
“Oh, you are. Now don’t say things like that. And I’ll just get it off my chest right away, how I admire you for the work you do. It’s a beam in the darkness. The only television worth watching.”
“Thank you,” said Juliet. “I had a note from Penelope—”
“I know. But I’m sorry to have to tell you, Juliet, I’m very sorry and I don’t want you to be too disappointed—Penelope is not here.”
The woman says those words—Penelope is not here—as lightly as possible. You would think that Penelope’s absence could be turned into a matter for amused contemplation, even for their mutual delight.
Juliet has to take a deep breath. For a moment she cannot speak. Dread pours through her. Foreknowledge. Then she pulls herself back to reasonable consideration of this fact. She fishes around in her bag.
“She said she hoped—”
“I know. I know,” says Joan. “She did intend to be here, but the fact was, she could not—”
“Where is she? Where did she go?”
“I cannot tell you that.”
“You mean you can’t or you won’t?”
“I can’t. I don’t know. But I can tell you one thing that may put your mind at rest. Wherever she has gone, whatever she has decided, it will be the right thing for her. It will be the right thing for her spirituality and her growth.”
Juliet decides to let this pass. She gags on the word spirituality, which seems to take in—as she often says—everything from prayer wheels to High Mass. She never expected that Penelope, with her intelligence, would be mixed up in anything like this.
“I just thought I should know,” she says, “in case she wanted me to send on any of her things.”
“Her possessions?” Joan seems unable to suppress a wide smile, though she modifies it at once with an expression of tenderness. “Penelope is not very concerned right now about her possessions.”
Sometimes Juliet has felt, in the middle of an interview, that the person she faces has reserves of hostility that were not apparent before the cameras started rolling. A person whom Juliet has underestimated, whom she has thought rather stupid, may have strength of that sort. Playful but deadly hostility. The thing then is never to show that you are taken aback, never to display any hint of hostility in return.
“What I mean by growth is our inward growth, of course,” Joan says.
“I understand,” says Juliet, looking her in the eye.
“Penelope has had such a wonderful opportunity in her life to meet interesting people—goodness, she hasn’t neede
d to meet interesting people, she’s grown up with an interesting person, you’re her mother—but you know, sometimes there’s a dimension that is missing, grown-up children feel that they’ve missed out on something—”
“Oh yes,” says Juliet. “I know that grown-up children can have all sorts of complaints.”
Joan has decided to come down hard.
“The spiritual dimension—I have to say this—was it not altogether lacking in Penelope’s life? I take it she did not grow up in a faith-based home.”
“Religion was not a banned subject. We could talk about it.”
“But perhaps it was the way you talked about it. Your intellectual way? If you know what I mean. You are so clever,” she adds, kindly.
“So you say.”
Juliet is aware that any control of the interview, and of herself, is faltering, and may be lost.
“Not so I say, Juliet. So Penelope says. Penelope is a dear fine girl, but she has come to us here in great hunger. Hunger for the things that were not available to her in her home. There you were, with your wonderful busy successful life—but Juliet, I must tell you that your daughter has known loneliness. She has known unhappiness.”
“Don’t most people feel that, one time or another? Loneliness and unhappiness?”
“It’s not for me to say. Oh, Juliet. You are a woman of marvellous insights. I’ve often watched you on television and I’ve thought, how does she get right to the heart of things like that, and all the time being so nice and polite to people? I never thought I’d be sitting talking to you face-to-face. And what’s more, that I’d be in a position to help you—”
“I think that maybe you’re mistaken about that.”
“You feel hurt. It’s natural that you should feel hurt.”
“It’s also my own business.”
“Ah well. Perhaps she’ll get in touch with you. After all.”
Penelope did get in touch with Juliet, a couple of weeks later. A birthday card arrived on her own—Penelope’s—birthday, the 19th of June. Her twenty-first birthday. It was the sort of card you send to an acquaintance whose tastes you cannot guess. Not a crude jokey card or a truly witty card or a sentimental card. On the front of it was a small bouquet of pansies tied by a thin purple ribbon whose tail spelled out the words Happy Birthday. These words were repeated inside, with the words Wishing you a very added in gold letters above them.