Alice Munro - Too Much Happiness

Or to hear confessions. But then you would never know when they were there. Didn’t they enter and leave their grilled stalls by a private door?

I would have to ask somebody. The man who had distributed the baskets seemed to be here for reasons that were not purely private, though he was apparently not an usher. Nobody needed an usher. People chose where they wanted to sit-or kneel-and sometimes decided to get up and choose another spot, perhaps being bothered by the glare of the jewel-inflaming sun. When I spoke to him I whispered, out of old habit in a church-and he had to ask me to speak again. Puzzled or embarrassed, he nodded in a wobbly way towards one of the confessionals. I had to become very specific and convincing.

“No, no. I just want to talk to a priest. I’ve been sent to talk to a priest. A priest called Father Hofstrader.”

The basket man disappeared down the more distant side aisle and came back in a little while with a briskly moving stout young priest in ordinary black costume.

He motioned me into a room I had not noticed-not a room, actually, we went through an archway, not a doorway-at the back of the church.

“Give us a chance to talk, in here,” he said, and pulled out a chair for me.

“Father Hofstrader-”

“Oh no, I must tell you, I am not Father Hofstrader. Father Hofstrader is not here. He is on vacation.”

For a moment I did not know how to proceed.

“I will do my best to help you.”

“There is a woman,” I said, “a woman who is dying in Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto-”

“Yes, yes. We know of Princess Margaret Hospital.”

“She asks me-I have a note from her here-she wants to see Father Hofstrader.”

“Is she a member of this parish?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if she is a Catholic or not. She is from here. From Guelph. She is a friend I have not seen for a long time.”

“When did you talk with her?”

I had to explain that I hadn’t talked with her, she had been asleep, but she had left the note for me.

“But you don’t know if she is a Catholic?”

He had a cracked sore at the corner of his mouth. It must have been painful for him to talk.

“I think she is, but her husband isn’t and he doesn’t know she is. She doesn’t want him to know.”

I said this in the hope of making things clearer, even though I didn’t know for sure if it was true. I had an idea that this priest might shortly lose interest altogether. “Father Hofstrader must have known all this,” I said.

“You didn’t speak with her?”

I said that she had been under medication but that this was not the case all the time and I was sure she would have periods of lucidity. This too I stressed because I thought it necessary.

“If she wishes to make a confession, you know, there are priests available at Princess Margaret’s.”

I could not think of what else to say. I got out the note, smoothed the paper, and handed it to him. I saw that the handwriting was not as good as I had thought. It was legible only in comparison with the letters on the envelope.

He made a troubled face.

“Who is this C.?”

“Her husband.” I was worried that he might ask for the husband’s name, to get in touch with him, but instead he asked for Charlene’s. This woman’s name, he said.

“Charlene Sullivan.” It was a wonder that I even remembered the surname. And I was reassured for a moment, because it was a name that sounded Catholic. Of course that meant that it was the husband who could be Catholic. But the priest might conclude that the husband had lapsed, and that would surely make Charlene’s secrecy more understandable, her message more urgent.

“Why does she need Father Hofstrader?”

“I think perhaps it’s something special.”

“All confessions are special.”

He made a move to get up, but I stayed where I was. He sat down again.

“Father Hofstrader is on vacation but he is not out of town. I could phone and ask him about this. If you insist.”

“Yes. Please.”

“I do not like to bother him. He has not been well.”

I said that if he was not well enough to drive himself to Toronto I could drive him.

“We can take care of his transportation if necessary.”

He looked around and did not see what he wanted, unclipped a pen from his pocket, and then decided that the blank side of the note would do to write on.

“If you’ll just make sure I’ve got the name. Charlotte-”

“Charlene.”

Was I not tempted, during all this palaver? Not once? You’d think that I might break open, be wise to break open, glimpsing that vast though tricky forgiveness. But no. It’s not for me. What’s done is done. Flocks of angels, tears of blood, not withstanding.

I sat in the car without thinking to turn the motor on, though it was freezing cold by now. I didn’t know what to do next. That is, I knew what I could do. Find my way to the highway and join the bright everlasting flow of cars towards Toronto. Or find a place to stay overnight, if I did not think I had the strength to drive. Most places would provide you with a toothbrush, or direct you to a machine where you could get one. I knew what was necessary and possible but it was beyond my strength, for the moment, to do it.

The motorboats on the lake were supposed to stay a good distance out from the shore. And especially from our camping area, so that the waves they raised would not disturb our swimming. But on that last morning, that Sunday morning, a couple of them started a race and circled close in-not as close as the raft, of course, but close enough to raise waves. The raft was tossed around and Pauline’s voice was lifted in a cry of reproach and dismay. The boats made far too much noise for their drivers to hear her, and anyway they had set a big wave rolling towards the shore, causing most of us in the shallows either to jump with it or be tumbled off our feet.

Charlene and I both lost our footing. We had our backs to the raft, because we were watching Verna come towards us. We were standing in water about up to our armpits, and we seemed to be lifted and tossed at the same moment that we heard Pauline’s cry. We may have cried out as many others did, first in fear and then in delight as we regained our footing and that wave washed on ahead of us. The waves that followed proved to be not as strong, so that we could hold ourselves against them.

At the moment we tumbled, Verna had pitched towards us. When we came up, with our faces streaming, arms flailing, she was spread out under the surface of the water. There was a tumult of screaming and shouting all around, and this increased as the lesser waves arrived and people who had somehow missed the first attack pretended to be knocked over by the second. Verna’s head did not break the surface, though now she was not inert, but turning in a leisurely way, light as a jellyfish in the water. Charlene and I had our hands on her, on her rubber cap.

This could have been an accident. As if we, in trying to get our balance, grabbed on to this nearby large rubbery object, hardly realizing what it was or what we were doing. I have thought it all out. I think we would have been forgiven. Young children. Terrified.

Yes, yes. Hardly knew what they were doing.

Is this in any way true? It is true in the sense that we did not decide anything, in the beginning. We did not look at each other and decide to do what we subsequently and consciously did. Consciously, because our eyes did meet as the head of Verna tried to rise up to the surface of the water. Her head was determined to rise, like a dumpling in a stew. The rest of her was making misguided feeble movements down in the water, but the head knew what it should do.

We might have lost our grip on the rubber head, the rubber cap, were it not for the raised pattern that made it less slippery. I can recall the color perfectly, the pale insipid blue, but I never deciphered the pattern-a fish, a mermaid, a flower-whose ridges pushed into my palms.