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

“I heard your car,” I said. “I thought for a minute maybe it was Clare but I’m not expecting him for another couple of days.”

“Helen. Can you sit down? Come in your room where you can sit down. Are you prepared to get a shock? I wish I wasn’t the one had to tell you. Hold yourself steady.”

I saw Momma right behind her and I said, “Momma, is this some joke?”

Alma said, “Clare MacQuarrie has gotten married.”

“What are you two up to?” I said. “Clare MacQuarrie is in Florida and I just today got a postcard from him as Momma well knows.”

“He got married in Florida. Helen, be calm.”

“How could he get married in Florida, he’s on his holidays?”

“They’re on their way to Jubilee right now and they’re going to live here.”

“Alma, wherever you heard that its a lot of garbage. I just had a postcard from him. Momma—”

Then I saw that Momma was looking at me like I was eight years old and had the measles and a temperature of a hundred and five degrees. She was holding the paper and she spread it out for me to read. “It’s in there,” she said, probably not realizing she was whispering. “It’s written up in the Bugle-Herald. ”

“I don’t believe it any more than fly,” I said, and I started to read and read all the way through as if the names were ones I’d never heard of before, and some of them were. A quiet ceremony in Coral Gables, Florida, uniting in marriage Clare Alexander MacQuarrie, of Jubilee, son of Mrs. James MacQuarrie of this town and the late Mr. James MacQuarrie, prominent local businessman and long-time Member of Parliament, and Mrs. Margaret Thora Leeson, daughter of the late Mrs. and Mrs. Clive Tibbutt of Lincoln, Nebraska. Mr. and Mrs. Harold Johnson, sister and brother-in-law of the bridegroom, were the only attendants. The bride wore a sage green dressmaker suit with dark brown accessories and a corsage of bronze orchids. Mrs. Johnson wore a beige suit with black accessories and green orchids. The couple were at present travelling by automobile to their future home in Jubilee.

“Do you still think its garbage?” Alma said severely.

I said I didn’t know.

“Are you feeling all right?”

All right.

Momma said we would all feel better if we went downstairs and had a cup of tea and something to eat, instead of staying cooped up in this little bedroom. It was about supper time, anyway. So we all trooped down, me still in my dressing gown, and Momma and Alma together prepared the sort of meal you might eat to keep your strength up when there is sickness in the house and you can’t really bother too much about food. Cold meat sandwiches and little dishes of different pickles and sliced cheese and date squares. “Smoke a cigarette if you want to,” Momma said to me—the first time she ever said that in her life. So I did, and Alma did, and Alma said, “I brought some tranquillizers along in my purse, they’re not very strong and you’re welcome to one or two.” I said no thanks, not yet, anyway. I said I couldn’t seem to take it in yet.

“He goes to Florida every year, right?”

I said yes.

“Well what I think is this, that he’s met this woman before—widow or divorcee or whatever she is—and they have been corresponding and planning this all along.”

Momma said it was awfully hard to think that of Clare.

“I’m only saying how it looks to me. And she’s his sister’s friend, I’ll bet. The sister engineered it. They were the attendants, the sister and her husband. She wasn’t any friend of yours, Helen, I remember you telling me.”

“I didn’t hardly know her.”

“Helen Louise you told me you and him were just waiting for the old lady to pass on,” Momma said. “Isn’t that what he said to you? Clare?”

“Using her for an excuse,” Alma said briskly.

“Oh, he wouldn’t,” Momma said. “Oh, it’s so hard to understand it— Clare! ”

“Men are always out for what they can get,” Alma said. There was a pause, both of them looking at me. I couldn’t tell them anything. I couldn’t tell them what I was thinking, which was about the last Saturday night up at his place, before he went away, him naked as a baby pulling my hair across his face and through his teeth and pretending he was going to bite it off. I didn’t relish anybody’s saliva in my hair but I let him, just warning him that if he did bite it off he would have to pay for me going to the hairdresser’s to get it evened. He didn’t act that night like anybody that is going off to be married .

Momma and Alma went on talking and speculating and I got sleepier and sleepier. I heard Alma say, “Worse things could happen. I had four years of living hell.” And Momma say, “He was always the soul of kindness and he doted on that girl.” I wondered how I could possibly be so sleepy, this early in the evening and after having a nap in the afternoon. Alma said, “Its very good you’re sleepy, its nature’s way. Nature’s way, just like an anaesthetic.” They both got me upstairs and into bed and I never heard them go down.

I didn’t wake up early, either. I got up when I usually did and got my own breakfast. I could hear Momma stirring but I yelled to her to stay put, like any other morning. She called down, “Are you sure you want to go to work? I could phone Mr. Hawes you’re sick.” I said, “Why should I give any of them the satisfaction?” I did my makeup at the hall mirror without a light and went out and walked the two and a half blocks to King’s, not noticing what kind of a morning it was, beyond the fact that it hadn’t turned into spring overnight. Inside the store they were waiting, oh, how nice, good morning Helen, good morning Helen, such quiet kind hopeful voices waiting to see if I’m going to fall flat on the floor and start having hysterics. Mrs. McCool, Beryl Allen with her engagement ring, Mrs. Kress that got jilted herself twenty-five years ago and then took up with somebody else—Kress—and he vanished. What’s she looking at me for? Old Hawes chewing his tongue when he smiles. I said good morning perfectly cheerfully and went on upstairs thanking God I have my own washroom and thinking, I bet this will be a big day for Children’s Wear. It was, too. I never had a morning with so many mothers in to buy a hair ribbon or a little pair of socks, willing to climb that stairs for it.

I phoned Momma I wouldn’t be home at noon. I thought I’d just go over to the Queen’s Hotel and have a hamburger, with all the radio people I hardly know. But at a quarter to twelve in comes Alma. “I wouldn’t let you eat by yourself this day!” So we have to go to the Queen’s Hotel together. She was going to make me eat an egg sandwich, not a hamburger, and a glass of milk not coke, because she said my digestion was probably in a state, but I vetoed that. She waited till we got our food and were settled down to eating before she said, “Well, they’re back.”

It took a minute for me to know who. “When?” I said.

“Last night around supper time. Just when I was driving over to your place to break you the news. I might’ve run into them.”

“Who told you?”

“Well Beechers live next to MacQuarries, don’t they?” Mrs. Beecher teaches Grade Four, Alma Grade Three. “Grace saw them. She had already read the paper so she knew who it was.”

“What is she like?” I said in spite of myself.

“She’s no juvenile, Grace said. His age, anyway. What did I tell you it was his sister’s friend? And she won’t win any prizes in the looks department. Mind you she’s all right .”

“Is she big or little?” I couldn’t stop now. “Dark or fair?”

“She had a hat on so Grace couldn’t see the colour of her hair but she thought dark. She’s a big woman. Grace said she had a rear end on her like a grand piano. Maybe she has money.”