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

“Did Grace say that too?”

“No. I said it. Just speculating.”

“Clare doesn’t need to marry anybody with money. He has money.”

“That’s by our standards, maybe but not by his.”

I kept thinking through the afternoon that Clare would come round, or at least phone me. Then I could start asking him what did he think he had done. I made up in my mind some crazy explanations he might give me, like this poor woman had cancer and only six months to live and she had always been deadly poor (a scrub-woman in his motel) and he wanted to give her a little time of ease. Or that she was blackmailing his brother-in-law about a crooked transaction and he married her to shut her up. But I didn’t have time to think up many stories because of the steady stream of customers. Old ladies puffing up the stairs with some story about birthday presents for their grandchildren. Every grandchild in Jubilee must have a birthday in March. They ought to be grateful to me, I thought, haven’t I given their day a bit of excitement? Even Alma, she was looking better than she has all winter. I’m not blaming her, I thought, but it’s the truth. And who knows, maybe I’d be the same if Don Stonehouse showed up like he threatens to and raped her and left her a mass of purple bruises—his words not mine—from head to foot. I’d be as sorry as could be, and anything I could do to help her, I’d do, but I might think well, awful as it is its something happening and its been a long winter.

There was no use even thinking about not going home for supper, that would finish Momma. There she was waiting with a salmon loaf, cabbage and carrot salad with raisins in it, that I like, and Brown Betty. But halfway through this the tears started sliding down over her rouge. “It seems to me like I’m the one ought to do the crying if anybody has to do it,” I said. “What’s so terrible happened to you?”

“Well I was just so fond of him,” she said. “I was that fond of him. At my age there’s not too many people that you look forward to them coming all week.”

“Well I’m sorry,” I said.

“But once a man loses his respect for a girl, he is apt to get tired of her.”

“What do you mean by that, Momma?”

“If you don’t know am I supposed to tell you?”

“You ought to be ashamed,” I said, starting to cry too. “Talking like that to your own daughter.” There! And I always thought she didn’t know. Never blame Clare, of course, blame me.

“No, I’m not the one that ought to be ashamed,” she continued, weeping. “I am an old woman but I know. If a man loses respect for a girl he don’t marry her.”

“If that was true there wouldn’t be hardly one marriage in this town.”

“You destroyed your own chances.”

“You never said a word of this to me as long as he was coming here and I am not listening to it now,” I said, and went upstairs. She didn’t come after me. I sat and smoked, hour after hour. I didn’t get undressed. I heard her come upstairs, go to bed. Then I went down and watched television for a while, news of car accidents. I put on my coat and went out.

I have a little car Clare gave me a year ago Christmas, a little Morris. I don’t use it for work because driving two and a half blocks looks to me silly, and like showing off, though I know people who do it. I went around to the garage and backed it out. This was the first time I had driven it since the Sunday I took Momma to Tuppertown to see Auntie Kay in the nursing-home. I use it more in summer.

I looked at my watch and the time surprised me. Twenty after twelve. I felt shaky and weak from sitting so long. I wished now I had one of Alma’s pills. I had an idea of just taking off, driving, but I didn’t know which direction to go in. I drove around the streets of Jubilee and didn’t see another car out but mine. All the houses in darkness, the streets black, the yards pale with the last snow. It seemed to me that in every one of those houses lived people who knew something I didn’t. Who understood what had happened and perhaps had known it was going to happen and I was the only one who didn’t know.

I drove out Grove Street and on to Minnie Street and saw his house from the back. No lights on there either. I drove around to see it from the front. Did they have to sneak up the stairs and keep the television on? I wondered. No woman with a rear end like a grand piano would settle for that. I bet he took her right up and into the old lady’s room and said, “This is the new Mrs. MacQuarrie,” and that was that.

I parked the car and rolled down the window. Then without thinking what I was going to do I leaned on the horn and sounded it as long and hard as I could stand.

The sound released me, so I could yell. And I did. “Hey Clare MacQuarrie, I want to talk to you!”

No answer anywhere. “Clare MacQuarrie!” I shouted up at his dark house. “Clare come on out!” I sounded the horn again, two, three, I don’t know how many times. In between I yelled. I felt as if I was watching myself, way down here, so little, pounding my fist and yelling and leaning on the horn. Carrying on a commotion, doing whatever came into my head. It was enjoyable, in a way. I almost forgot what I was doing it for. I started honking the horn rhythmically and yelling at the same time. “Clare aren’t you ever coming out? Clare MacQuarrie for nuts-in-May, if he don’t come we’ll pull-him-away—” I was crying as well as yelling, right out in the street, and it didn’t bother me one bit.

“Helen you want to wake everybody up in this whole town?” said Buddy Shields, sticking his head in at the window. He is the night constable and I used to teach him in Sunday school.

“I’m just conducting a shivaree for the newly-married couple,” I said. “What is the matter with that?”

“I got to tell you to stop that noise.”

“I don’t feel like stopping.”

“Oh yes you do, Helen, you’re just a little upset.”

“I called and called him and he won’t come out,” I said. “All I want is him to come out.”

“Well you got to be a good girl and stop honking that horn.”

“I want him to come out.”

“Stop it. Don’t honk that horn one more time.”

“Will you make him come out?”

“Helen I can’t make a man come out of his own house if he don’t want to come.”

“I thought you were the Law, Buddy Shields.”

“I am but there is a limit to what the Law can do. If you want to see him why don’t you come back in the daytime and knock on his door nice the way any lady would do?”

“He is married in case you didn’t know.”

“Well Helen he is married just as much at night as in the daytime.”

“Is that supposed to be funny?”

“No it’s not, it’s supposed to be true. Now why don’t you move over and let me drive you home? Lookit the lights on up and down this street. There’s Grace Beecher watching us and I can see the Holmses got their windows up. You don’t want to give them anything more to talk about, do you?”

“They got nothing to do but talk anyway, they may as well talk about me.”

Then Buddy Shields straightened up and moved a little away from the car window and I saw somebody in dark clothes coming across the MacQuarries’ lawn and it was Clare. He was not wearing a dressing gown or anything, he was all dressed, in shirt and jacket and trousers. He came right up to the car while I sat there waiting to hear what I would say to him. He had not changed. He was a fat, comfortable, sleepy-faced man. But just his look, his everyday easygoing look, stopped me wanting to cry or yell. I could cry and yell till I was blue in the face and it would not change that look or make him get out of bed and across his yard one little bit faster.