Alice Munro - Dear Life

I noticed that he had a little trouble saying the name Gwen, having to push aside Dolly.

I said I had been joking.

He asked if he could make me any breakfast and I said no.

“How she keeps her figure,” Gwen said. And somehow even this compliment turned into a thing they could laugh at together.

Neither gave any sign of knowing how I felt, though it seemed to me I was behaving oddly, with every remark I made coming out like some brittle kind of mockery. They are so full of themselves, I thought. It was an expression that came from I don’t know where. When Franklin went out to prepare the car to be towed she followed, as if she didn’t want to lose sight of him for a moment.

As she left she called back that she could never thank me enough.

Franklin tooted the horn to wish me good-bye, a thing he never did normally.

I wanted to run after them, pound them to pieces. I walked up and down as this grievous excitement got more and more of a hold on me. There was no doubt at all about what I should do.

In a fairly short time I went out and got into my car, having dropped my house key through the slot in the front door. I had a suitcase beside me, though I had already more or less forgotten what I’d put in it. I had written a terse note saying that I had to check some facts about Martha Ostenso and then I started to write a longer note which I intended to address to Franklin but did not want Gwen to see when she came back with him as she surely would. It said that he must be free to do as he wished and that the only thing that was unbearable to me was the deception or perhaps it was self-deception. There was nothing for it but for him to admit what he wanted. It was ridiculous and cruel to make me watch it and so I would just get out of the way.

I went on to say that no lies, after all, were as strong as the lies we tell ourselves and then unfortunately have to keep telling to make the whole puke stay down in our stomachs, eating us alive, as he would find out soon enough. And so on, a berating that became in even so short a space somewhat repetitive and rambling and more and more without dignity or grace. I understood now that it would have to be rewritten before I could let it go to Franklin so I had to take it with me and send it through the mail.

At the end of our driveway I turned in the other direction from the village and the garage, and in no time, as it seemed, I was driving east on a major highway. Where was I going? If I didn’t make up my mind soon I was going to find myself in Toronto, and it seemed to me that far from getting into a hiding place there I was bound to run into places and people all tied up with my former happiness, and Franklin.

To keep this from happening I turned and headed for Cobourg. A town that we had never been in together.

It wasn’t even noon yet. I got a room in a downtown motel. I passed the maids who were cleaning up the rooms that had been occupied last night. My room, having been unoccupied, was very cold. I turned the heat on and decided to go for a walk. Then when I opened the door I couldn’t do it. I was shivering and shaking. I locked the door and got into bed with all my clothes on and I still shook so I pulled the covers up to my ears.

When I woke up it was well into a bright afternoon and my clothes were plastered to me with sweat. I turned the heat off and found a few clothes in the suitcase, which I changed into, and I went out. I walked very fast. I was hungry but felt that I could never slow down, or sit down, to eat.

What had happened to me was not uncommon, I thought. Not in books or in life. There should be, there must be, some well-worn way of dealing with it. Walking like this, of course. But you had to stop, even in a town this size you have to stop for cars and red lights. Also there were people going round in such clumsy ways, stopping and starting, and hordes of schoolchildren like the ones I used to keep in order. Why so many of them and so idiotic with their yelps and yells and the redundancy, the sheer un-necessity of their existence. Everywhere an insult in your face.

As the shops and their signs were an insult, and the noise of the cars with their stops and starts. Everywhere the proclaiming, this is life. As if we needed it, more of life.

Where the shops finally did peter out there were some cabins. Empty, boards nailed across their windows, waiting to be demolished. Where people used to stay on humbler holidays, before the motels. And then I remembered that I too had stayed there. Yes, in one of those places when they were reduced—maybe it was the off-season—reduced to taking in afternoon sinners and I had been one of them. I was still a student teacher and I would not even have remembered that it was in this town if it wasn’t for something about those now boarded-up cabins. The man a teacher, older. A wife at home, undoubtedly children. Lives to be tampered with. She mustn’t know, it would break her heart. I didn’t care in the least. Let it break.

I could remember more if I tried, but it wasn’t worth it. Except that it slowed me down to a more normal pace and turned me back towards the motel. And there on the dresser was the letter I’d written. Sealed but without a stamp. I went out again, found the post office, bought a stamp, dropped the envelope where it should go. Hardly any thought and no misgiving. I could have left it on the table, what did it matter? All is over.

On the walk I had noticed a restaurant, down some steps. I found it again, and looked at the posted menu.

Franklin did not like eating out. I did. I walked some more, at a normal pace this time, waiting for the place to open. I saw a scarf I liked in a window, and I thought that I should go in and buy it, that it would be good for me. But when I picked it up I had to drop it. Its silky feel made me sick.

In the restaurant I drank wine and waited a long time for my food. There was hardly anybody there—they were just setting up the band for the evening. I went into the washroom and was surprised how much like myself I looked. I wondered if it was possible that some man—some old man—would ever think of picking me up. The idea was grotesque—not because of his possible age but because there could be no thought in my head of any man but Franklin, ever.

I could eat hardly any food when it did come. It was not the food’s fault. Just the oddity of sitting alone, eating alone, the gaping solitude, the unreality.

I had thought to bring sleeping pills, though I hardly ever used them. In fact I’d had them for so long that I wondered if they would work. But they did—I fell asleep and did not waken once, not until nearly six o’clock in the morning.

Some big trucks were already pulling out of their berths at the motel.

I knew where I was, I knew what I had done. And I knew that I had made a terrible mistake. I got dressed and, as soon as I could, got out of the motel. I could barely tolerate the friendly chat of the woman behind the desk. She said that there was snow coming later on. Take care, she told me.

The traffic was already getting heavy on the highway. And then there was an accident which slowed things down further.

I thought of Franklin maybe out looking for me. An accident could happen to him too. We might never see each other again.

I did not think of Gwen except as a person who had got in the way and created absurd problems. Her little stout legs, her foolish hair, her nest of wrinkles. A caricature you might say, somebody you could not blame and should never have taken seriously either.

Then I was home. Our house had not changed. I turned up the drive, and I saw his car. Thank God he was there.

I did notice that the car was not parked in its usual place.

The reason being that another car, Gwen’s car, was in that spot.