Alice Munro - Dear Life

He’s not from around here. Even she knows that if he was he’d never talk so openly.

“I’m not from around here,” he says. “I had a friend who was, though, and when he died I came up just to get rid of the place and go.”

“Then I got hold of this land cheap because the contractor had left it just a hole in the ground and it was an eyesore.”

“I’m sorry if I seem inquisitive.”

“That’s all right. If I don’t feel like explaining something I don’t do it.”

“I haven’t been here before,” she says. “Of course I haven’t, or I’d have seen this spot. I was walking around looking for something. I thought I could find it better if I parked my car and walked. I was looking for a doctor’s office, actually.”

She explains about not being sick, just having an appointment tomorrow, and not wanting to be running around in the morning looking for the place. Then she tells him about parking her car and being surprised that the name of the doctor she wanted was not listed anywhere.

“I couldn’t look in the phone book either because you know how the phone books and the phone booths have all disappeared now. Or else you find their insides ripped out. I’m beginning to sound quite silly.”

She tells him the name of the doctor, but he says it doesn’t ring a bell.

“But I don’t go to doctors.”

“You’re probably just as smart not to.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”

“At any rate, I’d better get back to my car.”

Standing up when she does, he says he will walk with her.

“So I won’t get lost?”

“Not altogether. I always try to stretch my legs this time of the evening. Garden work can leave you cramped.”

“I’m sure there’s some sensible explanation about this doctor. Do you ever think that there used to be more sensible explanations about things than there are now?”

He does not answer. Thinking perhaps of the friend who died. The garden perhaps a memorial to the friend who died.

Instead of being embarrassed now when she has spoken and he has not answered, she feels a freshness, a peace in the conversation.

They walk along without meeting a soul.

Soon they reach the main street, with the medical building just a block away. The sight of it makes her feel somewhat less easy, and she does not know why, but after a moment she does. She has an absurd but alarming notion that the sight of the medical building has provoked. What if the right name, the name she said she could not find, has been waiting there all along. She moves more quickly, she finds that she is shaky, and then, having quite good eyesight she reads the two useless names just as before.

She pretends to have been hurrying to look at the assortment in the window, the china-headed dolls and ancient skates and chamber pots and quilts already in tatters.

“Sad,” she says.

He is not paying attention. He says that he has just thought of something.

“This doctor,” he says.

“Yes?”

“I wonder if he might be connected with the home?”

They are walking again, passing a couple of young men sitting on the sidewalk, one with his legs stretched out so they have to move around him. The man with her takes no notice of them, but his voice has dropped.

“Home?” she says.

“You wouldn’t have noticed if you came in from the highway. But if you keep going out of town towards the lake you pass it. Not more than half a mile out. You go past the gravel pile on the south side of the road and it’s just a little farther on, on the other side. I don’t know if they have a live-in doctor there or not, but it stands to reason they might have.”

“They might have,” she says. “It stands to reason.”

Then she hopes he doesn’t think she is copying him on purpose, making a silly joke. It is true that she wants to go on talking to him longer, silly jokes or whatever.

But now comes another of her problems—she has to think about the whereabouts of her keys, as she often does before getting into the car. She is regularly worried about whether she’s locked the keys inside or dropped them somewhere. She can feel the approach of familiar, tiresome panic. But then she finds them, in her pocket.

“It’s worth a try,” he says, and she agrees.

“There’s plenty of room to turn off the road and take a look. If there’s a doctor out there regularly, there’s no need for him to have his name up in town. Or her name, as the case might be.”

As if he too is not entirely anxious for them to part.

“I have you to thank.”

“Just a hunch.”

He holds the door while she gets in, and closes it, waits there until she is turned to go in the right direction, then waves good-bye.

When she is on her way out of the town she catches sight of him again in the rearview mirror. He is bending over, speaking to the couple of boys or young men who were sitting on the pavement with their backs against the wall of the store. He had ignored them in such a way that she is surprised to see him talking to them now.

Maybe a remark to be made, some joke about her vagueness or silliness. Or just her age. A mark against her, with the nicest man.

She had thought that she would come back through the village to thank him again and tell him if it was the right doctor. She could just slow down and laugh and call out the window.

But now she thinks that she will just take the lakeshore route and stay out of his way.

Forget him. She sees the gravel pile coming up, she has to pay attention to where she is going.

Just as he has said. A sign. A notice of the Lakeview Rest Home. And there really is, from here, a view of the lake, a thread of pale blue along the horizon.

A spacious parking lot. One long wing with what looks like separate compartments, or good-sized rooms at least, with their own little gardens or places to sit. A latticed fence quite high in front of every one of them for privacy, or safety. Though nobody is sitting out there now that she can see.

Of course not. Bedtime comes early in these establishments.

She likes how the lattice provides a touch of fantasy. Public buildings have been changing in the past few years, just as private houses have. The relentless, charmless look—the only one permitted in her youth—has disappeared. Here she parks in front of a bright dome that has a look of welcome, of cheerful excess. Some people would find it fakey, she supposes, but isn’t it the very thing you would want? All that glass must cheer the spirits of the old people, or even, perhaps, of some people not so old but just off kilter.

She looks for a button to push, a bell to ring, as she walks up to the door. But that is not necessary—the door opens on its own. And once she gets inside there is an even greater expression of space, of loftiness, a blue tinge to the glass. The floor is all silvery tiles, the sort that children love to slide on, and for a moment she thinks of the patients sliding and slipping for pleasure and the idea makes her lighthearted. Of course it cannot be as slippery as it looks, you wouldn’t want people breaking their necks.

“I didn’t dare try it myself,” she says in a charming voice to somebody in her head, perhaps her husband. “It wouldn’t have done, would it? I could have found myself in front of the doctor, the very one who was getting ready to test my mental stability. And then what would he have to say?”

At the moment there is no doctor to be seen.

Well, there wouldn’t be, would there? Doctors don’t sit behind desks here waiting for patients to show up.

And she isn’t even here for a consultation. She will have to explain again that she is making sure of the time and place of an appointment for tomorrow. All this has made her feel rather tired.