Alice Munro - Dance of the Happy Shades - And Other Stories

“Oh, I can’t tonight,” she said. “Some kids are here. We’re going to play cards. You know Bill Kline? He’s here. Ross Armour—”

“I’m sick, ” I said trying to speak distinctly; it came out an inhuman croak. “I’m drunk . Joyce!” Then I fell off the stool and the receiver dropped out of my hand and banged for a while dismally against the wall.

I had not told Joyce where I was, so after thinking about it for a moment she phoned my mother, and using the elaborate and unnecessary subterfuge that young girls delight in, she found out. She and Kay and the boys—there were three of them—told some story about where they were going to Kay’s mother, and got into the car and drove out. They found me still lying on the broadloom carpet in the hall; I had been sick again, and this time I had not made it to the bathroom.

It turned out that Kay Stringer, who arrived on this scene only by accident, was exactly the person I needed. She loved a crisis, particularly one like this, which had a shady and scandalous aspect and which must be kept secret from the adult world. She became excited, aggressive, efficient; that energy which was termed wildness was simply the overflow of a great female instinct to manage, comfort and control. I could hear her voice coming at me from all directions, telling me not to worry, telling Joyce to find the biggest coffeepot they had and make it full of coffee ( strong coffee, she said), telling the boys to pick me up and carry me to the sofa. Later, in the fog beyond my reach, she was calling for a scrub-brash.

Then I was lying on the sofa, covered with some kind of crocheted throw they had found in the bedroom. I didn’t want to lift my head. The house was full of the smell of coffee. Joyce came in, looking very pale; she said that the Berryman kids had wakened up but she had given them a cookie and told them to go back to bed, it was all right; she hadn’t let them out of their room and she didn’t believe they’d remember. She said that she and Kay had cleaned up the bathroom and the hall though she was afraid there was still a spot on the rug. The coffee was ready. I didn’t understand anything very well. The boys had turned on the radio and were going through the Berrymans’ record collection; they had it out on the floor. I felt there was something odd about this but I could not think what it was.

Kay brought me a huge breakfast mug full of coffee.

“I don’t know if I can,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Sit up,” she said briskly, as if dealing with drunks was an everyday business for her, I had no need to feel myself important. (I met, and recognized, that tone of voice years later, in the maternity ward.) “Now drink,” she said. I drank, and at the same time realized that I was wearing only my slip. Joyce and Kay had taken off my blouse and skirt. They had brushed off the skirt and washed out the blouse, since it was nylon; it was hanging in the bathroom. I pulled the throw up under my arms and Kay laughed. She got everybody coffee. Joyce brought in the coffeepot and on Kay’s instructions she kept filling my cup whenever I drank from it. Somebody said to me with interest. “You must have really wanted to tie one on.”

“No,” I said rather sulkily, obediently drinking my coffee. “I only had two drinks.”

Kay laughed, “Well it certainly gets to you, I’ll say that. What time do you expect they’ll be back?” she said.

“Late, After one I think.”

“You should be all right by that time. Have some more coffee.”

Kay and one of the boys began dancing to the radio. Kay danced very sexily, but her face had the gently superior and indulgent, rather cold look it had when she was lifting me up to drink the coffee. The boy was whispering to her and she was smiling, shaking her head. Joyce said she was hungry, and she went out to the kitchen to see what there was—potato chips or crackers, or something like that, that you could eat without making too noticeable a dint. Bill Kline came over and sat on the sofa beside me and patted my legs through the crocheted throw. He didn’t say anything to me, just patted my legs and looked at me with what seemed to me a very stupid, half-sick, absurd and alarming expression. I felt very uncomfortable; I wondered how it had ever got around that Bill Kline was so good looking, with an expression like that. I moved my legs nervously and he gave me a look of contempt, not ceasing to pat me. Then I scrambled off the sofa, pulling the throw around me, with the idea of going to the bathroom to see if my blouse was dry. I lurched a little when I started to walk, and for some reason—probably to show Bill Kline that he had not panicked me—I immediately exaggerated this, and calling out, “Watch me walk a straight line!” I lurched and stumbled, to the accompaniment of everyone’s laughter, towards the hall. I was standing in the archway between the hall and the living room when the knob of the front door turned with a small matter-of-fact click and everything became silent behind me except the radio of course and the crocheted throw inspired by some delicate malice of its own slithered down around my feet and there—oh, delicious moment in a well-organized farce!—there stood the Berrymans, Mr. and Mrs., with expressions on their faces as appropriate to the occasion as any old-fashioned director of farces could wish. They must have been preparing those expressions, of course; they could not have produced them in the first moment of shock; with the noise we were making, they had no doubt heard us as soon as they got out of the car; for the same reason, we had not heard them. I don’t think I ever knew what brought them home so early—a headache, an argument—and I was not really in a position to ask.

Mr. Berryman drove me home. I don’t remember how I got into that car, or how I found my clothes and put them on, or what kind of a good-night, if any, I said to Mrs. Berryman. I don’t remember what happened to my friends, though I imagine they gathered up their coats and fled, covering up the ignominy of their departure with a mechanical roar of defiance. I remember Joyce with a box of crackers in her hand, saying that I had become terribly sick from eating—I think she said sauerkraut —for supper, and that I had called them for help. (When I asked her later what they made of this she said, “It wasn’t any use. You reeked .”) I remember also her saying, “Oh, no, Mr. Berryman I beg of you, my mother is a terribly nervous person I don’t know what the shock might do to her. I will go down on my knees to you if you like but you must not phone my mother. ” I have no picture of her down on her knees—and she would have done it in a minute—so it seems this threat was not carried out.

Mr. Berryman said to me, “Well I guess you know your behaviour tonight is a pretty serious thing.” He made it sound as if I might be charged with criminal negligence or something worse. “It would be very wrong of me to overlook it,” he said. I suppose that besides being angry and disgusted with me , he was worried about taking me home in this condition to my strait-laced parents, who could always say I got the liquor in his house. Plenty of Temperance people would think that enough to hold him responsible, and the town was full of Temperance people. Good relations with the town were very important to him from a business point of view.

“I have an idea it wasn’t the first time,” he said. “If it was the first time, would a girl be smart enough to fill three bottles up with water? No. Well in this case, she was smart enough, but not smart enough to know I could spot it. What do you say to that?” I opened my mouth to answer and although I was feeling quite sober the only sound that came out was a loud, desolate-sounding giggle. He stopped in front of our house. “Light’s on,” he said. “Now go in and tell your parents the straight truth. And if you don’t, remember I will.” He did not mention paying me for my baby-sitting services of the evening and the subject did not occur to me either.