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

“Cut the angel food with a string, you know that, and I’ll tell you how many sherbet and how many maple mousse. Plain vanilla for Mr. Gannett, it’s in the freezer—There’s plenty of either for your own dessert—Oh, Derek, you monster!” Mrs. Gannett ran out to the patio, crying, “Derek, Derek!” in tones of shrill and happy outrage. Alva, who knew that Derek was Mr. Vance, a stockbroker, just remembered in time not to peer out the top of the Dutch door to see what was happening. That was one of her difficulties on Sundays, when they were all drinking, and becoming relaxed and excited; she had to remember that it was not permissible for her to show a little relaxation and excitement too. Of course, she was not drinking, except out of the bottoms of glasses when they were brought back to the kitchen—and then only if it was gin, cold, and sweetened.

But the feeling of unreality, of alternate apathy and recklessness, became very strong in the house by the middle of afternoon. Alva would meet people coming from the bathroom, absorbed and melancholy, she would glimpse women in the dim bedrooms swaying towards their reflections in the mirror, very slowly applying their lipstick, and someone would have fallen asleep on the long chesterfield in the den. By this time the drapes would have been drawn across the glass walls of living room and dining room, against the heat of the sun; those long, curtained and carpeted rooms, with their cool colours, seemed floating in an underwater light. Alva found it already hard to remember that the rooms at home, such small rooms, could hold so many things; here were such bland unbroken surfaces, such spaces—a whole long, wide passage empty, except for two tall Danish vases standing against the farthest wall, carpet, walls and ceiling all done in blue variants of grey; Alva, walking down this hallway, not making any sound, wished for a mirror, or something to bump into; she did not know if she was there or not.

Before she carried the lunch out to the patio she combed her hair at a little mirror at the end of the kitchen counter, pushing curls up around her face. She retied her apron, pulling its wide band very tight. It was all she could do; the uniform had belonged to Jean, and Alva had asked, the first time she tried it on, if maybe it was too big; but Mrs. Gannett did not think so. The uniform was blue, the predominant kitchen colour; it had white cuffs and collar and scalloped apron. She had to wear stockings too, and white Cuban-heeled shoes that clomped on the stones of the patio—making, in contrast to the sandals and pumps, a heavy, purposeful, plebian sound. But nobody looked around at her, as she carried plates, napkins, dishes of food to a long wrought-iron table. Only Mrs. Gannett came, and rearranged things. The way Alva had of putting things down on a table always seemed to lack something, though there, too, she did not make any real mistakes.

While they were eating she ate her own lunch, sitting at the kitchen table, looking through an old copy of Time . There was no bell, of course, on the patio; Mrs. Gannett called, “All right, Alva!” or simply, “Alva!” in tones as discreet and penetrating as those of the bell. It was queer to hear her call this, in the middle of talking to someone, and then begin laughing again; it seemed as if she had a mechanical voice, even a button she pushed, for Alva.

At the end of the meal they all carried their own dessert plates and coffee cups back to the kitchen. Mrs. Vance said the potato salad was lovely; Mr. Vance, quite drunk, said lovely, lovely. He stood right behind Alva at the sink, so very close she felt his breath and sensed the position of his hands; he did not quite touch her. Mr. Vance was very big, curly-haired, high-coloured; his hair was grey, and Alva found him alarming, because he was the sort of man she was used to being respectful to. Mrs. Vance talked all the time, and seemed, when talking to Alva, more unsure of herself, yet warmer, than any of the other women. There was some instability in the situation of the Vances; Alva was not sure what it was; it might have been just that they had not so much money as the others. At any rate they were always being very entertaining, very enthusiastic, and Mr. Vance was always getting too drunk.

“Going up north, Alva, up to Georgian Bay?” Mr. Vance said, and Mrs. Vance said, “Oh, you’ll love it, the Gannetts have a lovely place,” and Mr. Vance said, “Get some sun on you up there, eh?” and then they went away. Alva, able to move now, turned around to get some dirty plates and noticed that Mr. Gannett’s cousin, or whoever he was, was still there. He was thin and leathery-looking, like Mrs. Gannett, though dark. He said, “You don’t happen to have any more coffee here, do you?” Alva poured him what there was, half a cup. He stood and drank it, watching her stack the dishes. Then he said, “Lots of fun, eh?” and when she looked up, laughed, and went out.

Alva was free after she finished the dishes; dinner would be late. She could not actually leave the house; Mrs. Gannett might want her for something. And she could not go outside; they were out there. She went upstairs; then, remembering that Mrs. Gannett had said she could read any of the books in the den, she went down again to get one. In the hall she met Mr. Gannett, who looked at her very seriously, attentively, but seemed about to go past without saying anything; then he said, “See here, Alva—see here, are you getting enough to eat?”

It was not a joke, since Mr. Gannett did not make them. It was, in fact, something he had asked her two or three times before. It seemed that he felt a responsibility for her, when he saw her in his house; the important thing seemed to be, that she should be well fed. Alva reassured him, flushing with annoyance; was she a heifer? She said, “I was going to the den to get a book. Mrs. Gannett said it would be all right—”

“Yes, yes, any book you like,” Mr. Gannett said, and he unexpectedly opened the door of the den for her and led her to the bookshelves, where he stood frowning. “What book would you like?” he said. He reached toward the shelf of brightly jacketed mysteries and historical novels, but Alva said, “I’ve never read King Lear. ”

“ King Lear, ” said Mr. Gannett. “Oh.” He did not know where to look for it, so Alva got it down herself. “Nor The Red and the Black, ” she said. That did not impress him so much, but it was something she might really read; she could not go back to her room with just King Lear . She went out of the room feeling well-pleased; she had shown him she did something besides eat. A man would be more impressed by King Lear than a woman. Nothing could make any difference to Mrs. Gannett; a maid was a maid.

But in her room, she did not want to read. Her room was over the garage, and very hot. Sitting on the bed rumpled her uniform, and she did not have another ironed. She could take it off and sit in her slip, but Mrs. Gannett might call her, and want her at once. She stood at the window, looking up and down the street. The street was a crescent, a wide slow curve, with no sidewalks; Alva had felt a little conspicuous, the once or twice she had walked along it; you never saw people walking. The houses were set far apart, far back from the street, behind brilliant lawns and rockeries and ornamental trees; in this area in front of the houses, no one ever spent time but the Chinese gardeners; the lawn furniture, the swings and garden tables were set out on the back lawns, which were surrounded by hedges, stone walls, pseudo-rustic fences. The street was lined with parked cars this afternoon; from behind the houses came sounds of conversation and a great deal of laughter. In spite of the heat, there was no blur on the day, up here; everything—the stone and white stucco houses, the flowers, the flower-coloured cars—looked hard and glittering, exact and perfect. There was no haphazard thing in sight. The street, like an advertisement, had an almost aggressive look of bright summer spirits; Alva felt dazzled by this, by the laughter, by people whose lives were relevant to the street. She sat down on a hard chair in front of an old-fashioned child’s desk—all the furniture in this room had come out of other rooms that had been redecorated; it was the only place in the house where you could find things unmatched, unrelated to each other, and wooden things that were not large, low and pale. She began to write a letter to her family.