Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage Stories by Alice Munro

Author:Alice Munro [Alice Munro]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-03-21T22:00:00+00:00

This is stupidity, this is melodrama, this is guilt. This will not have happened.

But such things do happen. Some people founder, they are not helped in time. They are not helped at all. Some people are pitched into darkness.

— 209 —

“In the middle of the night,

Miss Clave I turned on the light.

She said, ‘Something is not right— ’ ”

“Mommy,” said Elizabeth. “Why did you stop?” Lorna said,

“I had to, for a minute. My mouth got dry.”

At Hope they had hamburgers and milkshakes. Then down the Fraser Valley, the children asleep in the back seat. Still some time left. Till they got to Chilliwack, till they got to Abbotsford, till they saw the hills of New Westminister ahead and the other hills crowned with houses, the beginnings of the city. Bridges still that they had to go over, turns they had to take, streets they had to drive along, corners they had to pass. All this in the time before.

The next time she saw any of it would be in the time after.

When they entered Stanley Park it occurred to her to pray.

This was shameless—the opportune praying of a nonbeliever.

The gibberish of let-it-not-happen, let-it-not-happen. Let it not have happened.

The day was still cloudless. From the Lion’s Gate Bridge they looked out at the Strait of Georgia.

“Can you see Vancouver Island today?” said Brendan. “You look, I can’t.”

Lorna craned her neck to look past him.

“Far away,” she said. “Quite faint but it’s there.”

And with the sight of those blue, progressively dimmer, finally almost dissolving mounds that seemed to float upon the sea, she thought of one thing there was left to do. Make a bargain. Believe that it was still possible, up to the last minute it was possible to make a bargain.

It had to be serious, a most final and wrenching promise or offer. Take this. I promise this. If it can be made not true, if it can not have happened.

— 210 —

Not the children. She snatched that thought away as if she was grabbing them out of a fire. Not Brendan, for an opposite reason. She did not love him enough. She would say she loved him, and mean it to a certain extent, and she wanted to be loved by him, but there was a little hum of hate running along beside her love, nearly all the time. So it would be reprehensible—also useless—to offer him in any bargain.

Herself? Her looks? Her health?

It occurred to her that she might be on the wrong track. In a case like this, it might not be up to you to choose. Not up to you to set the terms. You would know them when you met them. You must promise to honor them, without knowing what they are going to be. Promise.

But nothing to do with the children.

Up Capilano Road, into their own part of the city and their own corner of the world, where their lives took on true weight and their actions took on consequences. There were the uncompromising wooden walls of their house, showing through the trees.

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