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

It being Wednesday the wickets in the Post Office were closed, but I had my key. I unlocked our box and took out the Jubilee paper, in Momma’s name, the phone bill and a postcard I very nearly missed. I looked at the picture on it first and it showed me palm trees, a hot blue sky, the front of a motel with a sign out front in the shape of a big husky blonde creature, lit up with neon I suppose at night. She was saying Sleep at my place— that is, a balloon with those words in it came out of her mouth. I turned it over and read, I didn’t sleep at her place though it was too expensive. Weather could not be better. Mid-seventies. How is the winter treating you in Jubilee? Not bad I hope. Be a good girl. Clare . The date was ten days back. Well, sometimes postcards are slow, but I bet what happened was he carried this around in his pocket a few days before he remembered to mail it. It was my only card since he left for Florida three weeks ago, and here I was expecting him back in person Friday or Saturday. He made this trip every winter with his sister Porky and her husband, Harold, who lived in Windsor. I had the feeling they didn’t like me, but Clare said it was my imagination. Whenever I had to talk to Porky I would make some mistake like saying something was irrevelant to me when I know the word is irrelevant, and she never let on but I thought about it afterwards and burned. Though I know it serves me right for trying to talk the way I never would normally talk in Jubilee. Trying to impress her because she’s a MacQuarrie, after all my lecturing Momma that we’re as good as them .

I used to say to Clare, write me a letter while you’re away, and he would say, what do you want me to write about? So I told him to describe the scenery and the people he met, anything would be a pleasure for me to hear about, since I had never been further away from home than Buffalo, for pleasure (I won’t count that train trip when I took Momma to Winnipeg to see relatives). But Clare said, I can tell you just as well when I get back. He never did, though. When I saw him again I would say, well, tell me all about your trip and he would say, what do you want me to tell? That just aggravated me, because how would I know?

I saw Momma waiting for me, watching through the little window in the front door. She opened the door when I turned in our walk and called out, “Watch yourself, its slippery. The milkman nearly took a header this morning.”

“There’s days when I think I wouldn’t mind breaking a leg,” I said, and she said, “Don’t say things like that, its just asking for punishment.”

“Clare sent you a postcard,” I said.

“Oh, he did not!” She turned it over and said, “Addressed to you, just as I thought.” But she was smiling away. “I don’t care for the picture he picked but maybe you don’t get much choice down there.”

Clare was probably a favourite with old ladies from the time he could walk. To them he was still a nice fat boy, so mannerly, not stuck-up in spite of being a MacQuarrie, and with a way of teasing that perked them up and turned them pink. They had a dozen games going, Momma and Clare, that I could never keep up with. One was him knocking at the door and saying something like, “Good-evening, ma’am, I just wondered if I could interest you in a course in body development I’m selling to put myself through college.” And Momma would swallow and put on a stern face and say, “Look here, young man do I look like I need a course in body development?” Or he would look doleful and say, “Ma’am, I’m here because I’m concerned about your soul.” Momma would roar laughing. “You be concerned about your own,” she said, and fed him chicken dumplings and lemon meringue pie, all his favourites. He told her jokes at the table I never thought she’d listen to. “Did you hear about this old gentleman married a young wife and he went to the doctor? Doctor he says I’m having a bit of trouble—” “Stop it,” Momma said—but she waited till he was through—“you are just embarrassing Helen Louise.” I have got rid of the Louise on the end of my name everywhere but at home. Clare picked it up from Momma and I told him I didn’t care for it but he went right on. Sometimes I felt like their child, sitting between him and Momma with both of them joking and enjoying their food and telling me I smoked too much and if I didn’t straighten up I’d get permanent round shoulders. Clare was—is—twelve years older than I am and I don’t ever remember him except as a grown-up man.

I used to see him on the street and he seemed old to me then, at least old the way almost everybody grown-up did. He is one of those people who look older than they are when they’re young and younger than they are when they’re old. He was always around the Queen’s Hotel. Being a MacQuarrie he never had to work too hard and he had a little office and did some work as a notary public and a bit of insurance and real estate. He still has the same place, and the front window is always bleary and dusty and there’s a light burning in the back, winter and summer, where a lady about eighty years old, Miss Maitland, does his typing or whatever he gives her to do. If he’s not in the Queen’s Hotel he has one or two of his friends sitting around the space heater doing a little card playing, a little quiet drinking, mostly just talking. There’s a certain kind of men in Jubilee and I guess every small town that you might call public men. I don’t mean public figures , important enough to run for Parliament or even for mayor (though Clare could do that if he wanted to be serious), just men who are always around on the main street and you get to know their faces. Clare and those friends of his are like that.

“He down there with his sister?” Momma said, as if I hadn’t told her. A lot of my conversations with Momma are replays. “What is that name they call her?”

“Porky,” I said.

“Yes, I remember thinking, that’s some name for a grown woman. And I remember her being baptized and her name was Isabelle. Way back before I was married, I was still singing in the choir. They had one of these long, fangle-dangle christening robes on her, you know them.” Momma had a soft spot for Clare but not for the MacQuarrie family. She thought they were being stuck-up when they just breathed. I remember a year or two ago, us going past their place, and she said something about being careful not to step on the grass of the Mansion , and I told her, “Momma, in a few years’ time I am going to be living here, this is going to be my house , so you better stop calling it the Mansion in that tone of voice.” She and I both looked up at the house with all its dark green awnings decorated with big, white, old-English Ms, and all the verandahs and the stained-glass window set in the side wall, like in a church. No sign of life, but upstairs old Mrs. MacQuarrie was lying, and is still, paralyzed down one side and not able to speak, Willa Montgomery tending her by day and Clare by night. Strange voices in the house upset her, and every time Clare took me in we could only whisper so she wouldn’t hear me and throw some kind of paralytic fit. After her long look Momma said, “It’s a funny thing but I can’t imagine your name MacQuarrie.”

“I thought you were so fond of Clare.”

“Well I am, but I just think of him coming to get you Saturday night, him coming to dinner Sunday night, I don’t think of you and him married.”

“You wait and see what happens when the old lady passes on.”

“Is that what he told you?”

“It’s understood.”

“Well imagine,” Momma said.

“You don’t need to act like he’s doing me a favour because I can tell you there are plenty of people would consider it the other way round.”