by Alice Munro
“I know,” she said. But the fact was that with so much going on and present events grabbing so much of her attention, she found it hard to take any view at all.
“This is Helen,” Neal said. “This is who is going to look after us from now on. She won’t stand for any nonsense, either.”
“Good for her,” said Jinny. She put out her hand, once she was sitting down. But the girl might not have seen it, low down between the two front seats.
Or she might not have known what to do. Neal had said that she came from an unbelievable situation, an absolutely barbaric family. Things had gone on that you could not imagine going on in this day and age. An isolated farm, a dead mother and a mentally deficient daughter and a tyrannical, deranged incestuous old father, and the two girl children. Helen the older one, who had run away at the age of fourteen after beating up on the old man. She had been sheltered by a neighbor who phoned the police, and the police had come and got the younger sister and made both children wards of the Children’s Aid. The old man and his daughter—that is, their mother and their father—were both placed in a Psychiatric Hospital. Foster parents took Helen and her sister, who were mentally and physically normal. They were sent to school and had a miserable time there, having to be put into the first grade. But they both learned enough to be employable.
When Neal had started the van up the girl decided to speak. “You picked a hot enough day to be out in,” she said. It was the sort of thing she might have heard people say to start a conversation. She spoke in a hard, flat tone of antagonism and distrust, but even that, Jinny knew by now, should not be taken personally. It was just the way some people sounded—particularly country people—in this part of the world.
“If you’re hot you can turn the air conditioner on,” Neal said. “We’ve got the old-fashioned kind—just roll down all the windows.”
The turn they made at the next corner was one Jinny had not expected.
“We have to go to the hospital,” Neal said. “Don’t panic. Helen’s sister works there and she’s got something Helen wants to pick up. Isn’t that right, Helen?”
Helen said, “Yeah. My good shoes.”
“Helen’s good shoes.” Neal looked up at the mirror. “Miss Helen Rosie’s good shoes.”
“My name’s not Helen Rosie,” said Helen. It seemed as if she was saying this not for the first time.
“I just call you that because you have such a rosy face,” Neal said.
“I have not.”
“You do. Doesn’t she, Jinny? Jinny agrees with me, you’ve got a rosy face. Miss Helen Rosie-face.”
The girl did have a tender pink skin. Jinny had noticed as well her nearly white lashes and eyebrows, her blond baby-wool hair, and her mouth, which had an oddly naked look, not just the normal look of a mouth without lipstick. A fresh-out-of-the-egg look was what she had, as if there was one layer of skin still missing, and one final growth of coarser grown-up hair. She must be susceptible to rashes and infections, quick to show scrapes and bruises, to get sores around the mouth and sties between her white lashes. Yet she didn’t look frail. Her shoulders were broad, she was lean but large-framed. She didn’t look stupid, either, though she had a head-on expression like a calf’s or a deer’s. Everything must be right at the surface with her, her attention and the whole of her personality coming straight at you, with an innocent and—to Jinny—a disagreeable power.
They were going up the long hill to the hospital—the same place where Jinny had had her operation and undergone the first bout of chemotherapy. Across the road from the hospital buildings there was a cemetery. This was a main road and whenever they used to pass this way—in the old days when they came to this town just for shopping or the rare diversion of a movie—Jinny would say something like “What a discouraging view” or “This is carrying convenience too far.”
Now she kept quiet. The cemetery didn’t bother her. She realized it didn’t matter.
Neal must realize that too. He said into the mirror, “How many dead people do you think there are in that cemetery?”
Helen didn’t say anything for a moment. Then—rather sullenly—“I don’t know.”
“They’re all dead in there.”
“He got me on that too,” said Jinny. “That’s a Grade Four–level joke.”
Helen didn’t answer. She might never have made it to Grade Four.
They drove up to the main doors of the hospital, then on Helen’s directions swung around to the back. People in hospital dressing gowns, some trailing their IV’s, had come outside to smoke.
“You see that bench,” said Jinny. “Oh, never mind, we’re past it now. It has a sign—THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING. But it’s out there for people to sit down on when they wander out of the hospital. And why do they come out? To smoke. Then are they not supposed to sit down? I don’t understand it.”
“Helen’s sister works in the laundry,” Neal said. “What’s her name, Helen? What’s your sister’s name?”
“Lois,” said Helen. “Stop here. Okay. Here.”
They were in a parking lot at the back of a wing of the hospital. There were no doors on the ground floor except a loading door, shut tight. On the other three floors there were doors opening onto a fire escape.
Helen was getting out.
“You know how to find your way in?” Neal said.
“Easy.”
The fire escape stopped four or five feet above the ground but she was able to grab hold of the railing and swing herself up, maybe wedging a foot against a loose brick, in a matter of seconds. Jinny could not tell how she did it. Neal was laughing.
“Go get ’em, girl,” he said.
“Isn’t there any other way?” said Jinny.
Helen had run up to the third floor and disappeared.
“If there is she ain’t a-gonna use it,” Neal said.
“Full of gumption,” said Jinny with an effort.
“Otherwise she’d never have broken out,” he said. “She needed all the gumption she could get.”
Jinny was wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat. She took it off and began to fan herself.
Neal said, “Sorry. There doesn’t seem to be any shade to park in. She’ll be out of there fast.”
“Do I look too startling?” Jinny said. He was used to her asking that.
“You’re fine. There’s nobody around here anyway.”
“The man I saw today wasn’t the same one I’d seen before. I think this one was more important. The funny thing was he had a scalp that looked about like mine. Maybe he does it to put the patients at ease.”
She meant to go on and tell him what the doctor had said, but he said, “That sister of hers isn’t as bright as she is. Helen sort of looks after her and bosses her around. This business with the shoes—that’s typical. Isn’t she capable of buying her own shoes? She hasn’t even got her own place—she still lives with the people who fostered them, out in the country somewhere.”
Jinny did not continue. The fanning took up most of her energy. He watched the building.
“I hope to Christ they didn’t haul her up for getting in the wrong way,” he said. “Breaking the rules. She is just not a gal for whom the rules was made.”
After several minutes he let out a whistle.
“Here she comes now. Here-she-comes. Headin’ down the homestretch. Will-she-will-she-will-she have enough sense to stop before she jumps? Look before she leaps? Will-she-will-she—nope. Nope. Unh-unh.”
Helen had no shoes in her hands. She jumped into the van and banged the door shut and said, “Stupid idiots. First I get up there and this asshole gets in my way. Where’s your tag? You gotta have a tag. You can’t come in here without a tag. I seen you come in off the fire escape, you can’t do that. Okay, okay, I gotta see my sister. You can’t see her now she’s not on her break. I know that, that’s why I come in off the fire escape I just need to pick something up. I don’t want to talk to her I’m not goin’ to take up her time I just gotta pick som
ething up. Well you can’t. Well I can. Well you can’t. And then I start to holler Lois. Lois. All their machines goin’ it’s two hundred degrees in there sweat runnin’ all down their faces stuff goin’ by and Lois, Lois. I don’t know where she is can she hear me or not. But she comes tearing out and as soon as she sees me—Oh, shit. Oh shit, she says, I went and forgot. She forgot to bring my shoes. I phoned her up last night and reminded her but there she is, oh, shit, she forgot. I could’ve beat her up. Now you get out, he says. Go downstairs and out. Not by the fire escape because it’s illegal. Piss on him.”
Neal was laughing and laughing and shaking his head.
“So that’s what she did? Left your shoes behind?”
“Out at June’s and Matt’s.”
“What a tragedy.”
Jinny said, “Could we just start driving now and get some air? I don’t think fanning is doing a lot of good.”
“Fine,” said Neal. He backed and turned around, and once more they were passing the familiar front of the hospital, with the same or different smokers parading by in their dreary hospital clothes with their IV’s. “Helen will just have to tell us where to go.”
He called into the back seat, “Helen?”
“What?”
“Which way do we turn now to get to those people’s place?”
“What people’s?”
“Where your sister lives. Where your shoes are. Tell us how to get to their place.”
“We’re not goin’ to their place so I’m not telling you.”
Neal turned back the way they had come.
“I’m just driving this way till you can get your directions straight. Would it work better if I went out to the highway? Or in to the middle of town? Where should I start from?”
“Not starting anywhere. Not going.”
“It’s not so far, is it? Why aren’t we going?”
“You done me one favor and that’s enough.” Helen sat as far forward as she could, pushing her head between Neal’s seat and Jinny’s. “You took me to the hospital and isn’t that enough? You don’t need to be driving all over doing me favors.”
They slowed down, turned into a side street.
“That’s silly,” Neal said. “You’re going twenty miles away and you might not get back here for a while. You might need those shoes.”
No answer. He tried again.
“Or don’t you know the way? Don’t you know the way from here?”
“I know it, but I’m not telling.”
“So we’re just going to have to drive around. Drive around and around till you get ready to tell us.”
“Well I’m not goin’ to get ready. So I’m not.”
“We could go back and see your sister. I bet she’d tell us. Must be about quitting time for her now, we could drive her home.”
“She’s on the late shift, so haw haw.”
They were driving through a part of this town that Jinny had not seen before. They drove very slowly and made frequent turns, so that hardly any breeze went through the car. A boarded-up factory, discount stores, pawnshops. CASH, CASH, CASH, said a flashing sign above barred windows. But there were houses, disreputable-looking old duplexes, and the sort of single wooden houses that were put up quickly during the Second World War. One tiny yard was full of things for sale—clothes pegged to a line, tables stacked with dishes and household goods. A dog was nosing around under a table and could have knocked it over, but the woman who sat on the step, smoking and surveying the lack of customers, did not seem to care.
In front of a corner store some children were sucking on Popsicles. A boy who was on the edge of the group—he was probably no more than four or five years old—threw his Popsicle at the van. A surprisingly strong throw. It hit Jinny’s door just below her arm and she gave a light scream.
Helen thrust her head out the back window.
“You want your arm in a sling?”
The child began to howl. He hadn’t bargained on Helen, and he might not have bargained on the Popsicle’s being gone for good.
Back in the van, Helen spoke to Neal.
“You’re just wasting your gas.”
“North of town?” Neal said. “South of town? North south east west, Helen tell us which is best.”
“I already told you. You done all for me you are goin’ to do today.”
“And I told you. We’re going to get those shoes for you before we head home.”
No matter how strictly he spoke, Neal was smiling. On his face there was an expression of conscious, but helpless, silliness. Signs of an invasion of bliss. Neal’s whole being was invaded, he was brimming with silly bliss.
“You’re just stubborn,” Helen said.
“You’ll see how stubborn.”
“I am too. I’m just as stubborn as what you are.”
It seemed to Jinny that she could feel the blaze of Helen’s cheek, which was so close to hers. And she could certainly hear the girl’s breathing, hoarse and thick with excitement and showing some trace of asthma. Helen’s presence was like that of a domestic cat that should never be brought along in any vehicle, being too high-strung to have sense, too apt to spring between the seats.
The sun had burned through the clouds again. It was still high and brassy in the sky.
Neal swung the car onto a street lined with heavy old trees, and somewhat more respectable houses.
“Better here?” he said to Jinny. “More shade for you?” He spoke in a lowered, confidential tone, as if what was going on with the girl could be set aside for a moment, it was all nonsense.
“Taking the scenic route,” he said, pitching his voice again towards the back seat. “Taking the scenic route today, courtesy of Miss Helen Rosie-face.”
“Maybe we ought to just go on,” Jinny said. “Maybe we ought to just go on home.”
Helen broke in, almost shouting. “I don’t want to stop nobody from getting home.”
“Then you can just give me some directions,” Neal said. He was trying hard to get his voice under control, to get some ordinary sobriety into it. And to banish the smile, which kept slipping back in place no matter how often he swallowed it. “Just let’s go to the place and do our errand and head home.”
Half a slow block more, and Helen groaned.
“If I got to I guess I got to,” she said.
It was not very far that they had to go. They passed a subdivision, and Neal, speaking again to Jinny, said, “No creek that I can see. No estates, either.”
Jinny said, “What?”
“Silver Creek Estates. On the sign.”
He must have read a sign that she had not seen.
“Turn,” said Helen.
“Left or right?”
“At the wrecker’s.”
They went past a wrecking yard, with the car bodies only partly hidden by a sagging tin fence. Then up a hill and past the gates to a gravel pit that was a great cavity in the center of the hill.
“That’s them. That’s their mailbox up ahead,” Helen called out with some importance, and when they got close enough she read out the name.
“Matt and June Bergson. That’s them.”
A couple of dogs came barking down the short drive. One was large and black and one small and tan-colored, puppylike. They bumbled around at the wheels and Neal sounded the horn. Then another dog—this one more sly and purposeful, with a slick coat and bluish spots—slid out of the long grass.
Helen called to them to shut up, to lay down, to piss off.
“You don’t need to bother about any of them but Pinto,” she said. “Them other two just cowards.”
They stopped in a wide, ill-defined space where some gravel had been laid down. On one side was a barn or implement shed, tin-covered, and over to one side of it, on the edge of a cornfield, an abandoned farmhouse from which most of the bricks had been removed, showing dark wooden walls. The house inhabited nowadays was a trailer, nicely fixed up with a deck and an awning, and a flower garden behind what looked l
ike a toy fence. The trailer and its garden looked proper and tidy, while the rest of the property was littered with things that might have a purpose or might just be left around to rust or rot.
Helen had jumped out and was cuffing the dogs. But they kept on running past her, and jumping and barking at the car, until a man came out of the shed and called to them. The threats and names he called were not intelligible to Jinny, but the dogs quieted down.
Jinny put on her hat. All this time she had been holding it in her hand.
“They just got to show off,” said Helen.
Neal had got out too and was negotiating with the dogs in a resolute way. The man from the shed came towards them. He wore a purple T-shirt that was wet with sweat, clinging to his chest and stomach. He was fat enough to have breasts and you could see his navel pushing out like a pregnant woman’s. It rode on his belly like a giant pincushion.
Neal went to meet him with his hand out. The man slapped his own hand on his work pants, laughed and shook Neal’s. Jinny could not hear what they said. A woman came out of the trailer and opened the toy gate and latched it behind her.
“Lois went and forgot she was supposed to bring my shoes,” Helen called to her. “I phoned her up and everything, but she went and forgot anyway, so Mr. Lockyer brought me out to get them.”
The woman was fat too, though not as fat as her husband. She wore a pink muumuu with Aztec suns on it and her hair was streaked with gold. She moved across the gravel with a composed and hospitable air. Neal turned and introduced himself, then brought her to the van and introduced Jinny.
“Glad to meet you,” the woman said. “You’re the lady that isn’t very well?”
“I’m okay,” said Jinny.
“Well, now you’re here you better come inside. Come in out of this heat.”
“Oh, we just dropped by,” said Neal.
The man had come closer. “We got the air-conditioning in there,” he said. He was inspecting the van and his expression was genial but disparaging.
“We just came to pick up the shoes,” Jinny said.
“You got to do more than that now you’re here,” said the woman—June—laughing as if the idea of their not coming in was a scandalous joke. “You come in and rest yourself.”