by Alice Munro
“We wouldn’t like to disturb your supper,” Neal said.
“We had it already,” said Matt. “We eat early.”
“But all kinds of chili left,” said June. “You have to come in and help clean up that chili.”
Jinny said, “Oh, thank you. But I don’t think I could eat anything. I don’t feel like eating anything when it’s this hot.”
“Then you better drink something instead,” June said. “We got ginger ale, Coke. We got peach schnapps.”
“Beer,” Matt said to Neal. “You like a Blue?”
Jinny waved Neal to come close to her window.
“I can’t do it,” she said. “Just tell them I can’t.”
“You know you’ll hurt their feelings,” he whispered. “They’re trying to be nice.”
“But I can’t. Maybe you could go.”
He bent closer. “You know what it looks like if you don’t. It looks like you think you’re too good for them.”
“You go.”
“You’d be okay once you got inside. The air-conditioning really would do you good.”
Jinny shook her head.
Neal straightened up.
“Jinny thinks she better just stay and rest here where it’s in the shade.”
June said, “But she’s welcome to rest in the house—”
“I wouldn’t mind a Blue, actually,” Neal said. He turned back to Jinny with a hard smile. He seemed to her desolate and angry. “You sure you’ll be okay?” he said for them to hear. “Sure? You don’t mind if I go in for a little while?”
“I’ll be fine,” said Jinny.
He put one hand on Helen’s shoulder and one on June’s shoulder, walking them companionably towards the trailer. Matt smiled at Jinny curiously, and followed.
This time when he called the dogs to come after him Jinny could make out their names.
Goober. Sally. Pinto.
The van was parked under a row of willow trees. These trees were big and old, but their leaves were thin and gave a wavering shade. But to be alone was a great relief.
Earlier today, driving along the highway from the town where they lived, they had stopped at a roadside stand and bought some early apples. Jinny got one out of the bag at her feet and took a small bite—more or less to see if she could taste and swallow and hold it in her stomach. She needed something to counteract the thought of chili, and Matt’s prodigious navel.
It was all right. The apple was firm and tart, but not too tart, and if she took small bites and chewed seriously she could manage it.
She’d seen Neal like this—or something like this—a few times before. It would be over some boy at the school. A mention of the name in an offhand, even belittling way. A mushy look, an apologetic yet somehow defiant bit of giggling.
But that was never anybody she had to have around the house, and it could never come to anything. The boy’s time would be up, he’d go away.
So would this time be up. It shouldn’t matter.
She had to wonder if it would have mattered less yesterday than it did today.
She got out of the van, leaving the door open so that she could hang on to the inside handle. Anything on the outside was too hot to hang on to for any length of time. She had to see if she was steady. Then she walked a little in the shade. Some of the willow leaves were already going yellow. Some were lying on the ground. She looked out from the shade at all the things there were around the yard.
A dented delivery truck with both headlights gone and the name on the side painted out. A baby’s stroller that the dogs had chewed the seat out of, a load of firewood dumped but not stacked, a pile of huge tires, a great number of plastic jugs and some oil cans and pieces of old lumber and a couple of orange plastic tarpaulins crumpled up by the wall of the shed. In the shed itself there was a heavy GM truck and a small beat-up Mazda truck and a garden tractor, as well as implements whole or broken and loose wheels, handles, rods that would be useful or not useful depending on the uses you could imagine. What a lot of things people could find themselves in charge of. As she had been in charge of all those photographs, official letters, minutes of meetings, newspaper clippings, a thousand categories that she had devised and was putting on disk when she had to go into chemo and everything got taken away. It might end up being thrown out. As all this might, if Matt died.
The cornfield was the place she wanted to get to. The corn was higher than her head now, maybe higher than Neal’s head—she wanted to get into the shade of it. She made her way across the yard with this one thought in mind. The dogs thank God must have been taken inside.
There was no fence. The cornfield just petered out into the yard. She walked straight ahead into it, onto the narrow path between two rows. The leaves flapped into her face and against her arms like streamers of oilcloth. She had to remove her hat so they would not knock it off. Each stalk had its cob, like a baby in a shroud. There was a strong, almost sickening smell of vegetable growth, of green starch and hot sap.
What she’d thought she’d do, once she got in here, was lie down. Lie down in the shade of these large coarse leaves and not come out till she heard Neal calling her. Perhaps not even then. But the rows were too close together to permit that, and she was too busy thinking about something to take the trouble. She was too angry.
It was not about anything that had happened recently. She was remembering how a group of people had been sitting around one evening on the floor of her living room—or meeting room— playing one of those serious psychological games. One of those games that were supposed to make a person more honest and resilient. You had to say just what came into your mind as you looked at each of the others. And a white-haired woman named Addie Norton, a friend of Neal’s, had said, “I hate to tell you this, Jinny, but whenever I look at you all I can think of is—Nice Nellie.”
Jinny didn’t remember making any response at the time. Maybe you weren’t supposed to. What she said, now, in her head, was “Why do you say you hate to say that? Haven’t you noticed that whenever people say they hate to say something, they actually love to say it? Don’t you think since we’re being so honest we could at least start with that?”
It was not the first time she had made this mental reply. And mentally pointed out to Neal what a farce that game was. For when it came Addie’s turn, did anyone dare say anything unpleasant to her? Oh, no. “Feisty,” they said or “Honest as a dash of cold water.” They were scared of her, that was all.
She said, “Dash of cold water,” out loud, now, in a stinging voice.
Other people had said kinder things to her. “Flower child” or “Madonna of the springs.” She happened to know that whoever said that meant “Manon of the Springs,” but she offered no correction. She was outraged at having to sit there and listen to people’s opinions of her. Everyone was wrong. She was not timid or acquiescent or natural or pure.
When you died, of course, these wrong opinions were all there was left.
While this was going through her mind she had done the easiest thing you could do in a cornfield—got lost. She had stepped over one row and then another and probably got turned around. She tried going back the way she had come, but it obviously wasn’t the right way. There were clouds over the sun again so she couldn’t tell where west was. And she had not known which direction she was going when she entered the field, so that would not have helped anyway. She stood still and heard nothing but the corn whispering away, and some distant traffic.
Her heart was pounding just like any heart that had years and years of life ahead of it.
Then a door opened, she heard the dogs barking and Matt yelling and the door slammed shut. She pushed her way through stalks and leaves in the direction of that noise.
And it turned out that she had not gone far at all. She had been stumbling around in one small corner of the field all the time.
Matt waved at her and warned off the dogs.
“Don’t be scairt of them, don’t be scairt,” he called.
He was going towards the car just as she was, though from another direction. As they got closer to each other he spoke in a lower, perhaps more intimate voice.
“You shoulda come and knocked on the door.”
He thought that she had gone into the corn to have a pee.
“I just told your husband I’d come out and make sure you’re okay.”
Jinny said, “I’m fine. Thank you.” She got into the van but left the door open. He might be insulted if she closed it. Also, she felt too weak.
“He was sure hungry for that chili.”
Who was he talking about?
Neal.
She was trembling and sweating and there was a hum in her head, as on a wire strung between her ears.
“I could bring you some out if you’d like it.”
She shook her head, smiling. He lifted up the bottle of beer in his hand—he seemed to be saluting her.
“Drink?”
She shook her head again, still smiling.
“Not even drink of water? We got good water here.”
“No thanks.”
If she turned her head and looked at his purple navel, she would gag.
“You know, there was this fellow,” he said, in a changed voice. A leisurely, chuckling voice. “There was a fellow going out the door and he’s got a jar of horseradish in one hand. So his dad says to him, Where you goin’ with that horseradish?
“Well I’m goin’ to get a horse, he says.
“You’re not goin’ to catch a horse with no horseradish.
“Comes back next morning, nicest horse you ever want to see. Lookit my horse here. Puts it in the barn.”
I do not wish to give the wrong impression. We must not get carried away with optimism. But it looks as if we have some unexpected results here.
“Next day the dad sees him goin’ out again. Roll of duct tape under his arm. Where you goin’ now?
“Well I heard my mom say she’d like a nice duck for dinner.
“You damn fool, you didn’t think you’re goin’ to catch a duck with duct tape?
“Wait and see.
“Comes back next morning, nice fat duck under his arm.”
It looks as if there has been a very significant shrinkage. What we hoped for of course but frankly we did not expect it. And I do not mean that the battle is over, just that this is a favorable sign.
“Dad don’t know what to say. Just don’t know what to say about it.
“Next night, very next night, sees his son goin’ out the door with big bunch of branches in his hand.”
Quite a favorable sign. We do not know that there may not be more trouble in the future but we can say we are cautiously optimistic.
“What’s them branches you got in your hand?
“Them’s pussy willows.
“Okay, Dad says. You just hang on a minute.
“You just hang on a minute, I’m gettin’ my hat. I’m gettin’ my hat and I’m comin’ with you!”
“It’s too much,” Jinny said out loud.
Talking in her head to the doctor.
“What?” said Matt. An aggrieved and babyish look had come over his face while he was still chuckling. “What’s the matter now?”
Jinny was shaking her head, squeezing her hand over her mouth.
“It was just a joke,” he said. “I never meant to offend you.”
Jinny said, “No, no. I— No.”
“Never mind, I’m goin’ in. I’m not goin’ to take up no more of your time.” And he turned his back on her, not even bothering to call to the dogs.
She had not said anything like that to the doctor. Why should she? Nothing was his fault. But it was true. It was too much. What he had said made everything harder. It made her have to go back and start this year all over again. It removed a certain low-grade freedom. A dull, protecting membrane that she had not even known was there had been pulled away and left her raw.
Matt’s thinking she had gone into the cornfield to pee had made her realize that she actually wanted to. She got out of the van, stood cautiously, and spread her legs and lifted her wide cotton skirt. She had taken to wearing big skirts and no panties this summer because her bladder was no longer under perfect control.
A dark stream trickled away from her through the gravel. The sun was down now, evening was coming on. A clear sky overhead, the clouds had vanished.
One of the dogs barked halfheartedly, to say that somebody was coming, but it was somebody they knew. They had not come over to bother her when she got out—they were used to her now. They went running out to meet whoever it was without any alarm or excitement.
It was a boy, or young man, riding a bicycle. He swerved towards the van and Jinny went round to meet him, a hand on the cooled-down but still-warm metal to support herself. When he spoke to her she did not want it to be across her puddle. And maybe to distract him from even looking on the ground for such a thing, she spoke first.
She said, “Hello—are you delivering something?”
He laughed, springing off the bike and dropping it to the ground, all in one motion.
“I live here,” he said. “I’m just getting home from work.”
She thought that she should explain who she was, tell him how she came to be here and for how long. But all this was too difficult. Hanging on to the van like this, she must look like somebody who had just come out of a wreck.
“Yeah, I live here,” he said. “But I work in a restaurant in town. I work at Sammy’s.”
A waiter. The bright white shirt and black pants were waiter’s clothes. And he had a waiter’s air of patience and alertness.
“I’m Jinny Lockyer,” she said. “Helen. Helen is—”
“Okay, I know,” he said. “You’re who Helen’s going to work for. Where’s Helen?”
“In the house.”
“Didn’t nobody ask you in, then?”
He was about Helen’s age, she thought. Seventeen or eighteen. Slim and graceful and cocky, with an ingenuous enthusiasm that would probably not get him as far as he hoped. She had seen a few like that who ended up as Young Offenders.
He seemed to understand things, though. He seemed to understand that she was exhausted and in some kind of muddle.
“June in there too?” he said. “June’s my mom.”
His hair was colored like June’s, gold streaks over dark. He wore it rather long, and parted in the middle, flopping off to either side.
“Matt too?” he said.
“And my husband. Yes.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Oh, no,” she said. “They asked me. I said I’d rather wait out here.”
Neal used sometimes to bring home a couple of his Yo-yos, to be supervised doing lawn work or painting or basic carpentry. He thought it was good for them, to be accepted into somebody’s home. Jinny had flirted with them occasionally, in a way that she could never be blamed for. Just a gentle tone, a way of making them aware of her soft skirts and her scent of apple soap. That wasn’t why Neal had stopped bringing them. He had been told it was out of order.
“So how long have you been waiting?”
“I don’t know,” Jinny said. “I don’t wear a watch.”
“Is that right?” he said. “I don’t either. I don’t hardly ever meet another person that doesn’t wear a watch. Did you never wear one?”
She said, “No. Never.”
“Me neither. Never ever. I just never wanted to. I don’t know why. Never ever wanted to. Like, I always just seemed to know what time it was anyway. Within a couple minutes. Five minutes the most. And I know where all the clocks are, too. I’m riding in to work, and I think I’ll check, you know, just be sure what time it is really. And I know the first place I can see the courthouse clock in between the buildings. Always not more than three/four minutes out. Sometimes one of the diners asks me, do you know the time, and I just tell them. They don’t even notice I’m not wearing a watch. I go and check as soon as I can, clock in the kitchen. But I n
ever once had to go in there and tell them any different.”
“I’ve been able to do that too, once in a while,” Jinny said. “I guess you do develop a sense, if you never wear a watch.”
“Yeah, you really do.”
“So what time do you think it is now?”
He laughed. He looked at the sky.
“Getting close to eight. Six/seven minutes to eight? I got an advantage, though. I know when I got off of work and then I went to get some cigarettes at the 7-Eleven and then I talked to some guys a couple of minutes and then I biked home. You don’t live in town, do you?”
Jinny said no.
“So where do you live?”
She told him.
“You getting tired? You want to go home? You want me to go in and tell your husband you want to go home?”
“No. Don’t do that,” she said.
“Okay. Okay. I won’t. June’s probably telling their fortunes in there anyway. She can read hands.”
“Can she?”
“Sure. She goes in the restaurant a couple of times a week. Tea too. Tea leaves.”
He picked up his bike and wheeled it out of the way of the van. Then he looked in through the driver’s window.
“Left the keys in,” he said. “So—you want me to drive you home or what? I can put my bike in the back. Your husband can get Matt to drive him and Helen when they get ready. Or if it don’t look like Matt can, June can. June’s my mom but Matt’s not my dad. You don’t drive, do you?”
“No,” said Jinny. She had not driven for months.
“No. I didn’t think so. Okay then? You want me to? Okay?”
“This is just a road I know. It’ll get you there as soon as the highway.”
They had not driven past the subdivision. In fact they had headed the other way, taking a road that seemed to circle the gravel pit. At least they were going west now, towards the brightest part of the sky. Ricky—that was what he’d told her his name was— had not yet turned the car lights on.
“No danger meeting anybody,” he said. “I don’t think I ever met a single car on this road, ever. See—not so many people even know this road is here.”