Open Secrets by Alice Munro

Author:Alice Munro [Munro, Alice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-55199-396-6
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 1994-09-23T16:00:00+00:00

“There is a poem already made up and written down,” Frances said. “I’ve got it here typed out.”

“I thought I’d make a custard,” said Maureen.

How much had Frances heard of what Marian Hubbert had said? Everything, probably. She sounded breathless with the effort of keeping all that in. She held up the typed lines in front of Maureen’s face and Maureen said, “It’s too long, I don’t have time.” She started to separate the eggs.

“It’s good,” Frances said. “It’s good enough to be put to music.”

She read it through aloud. Maureen said, “I have to concentrate.”

“So I guess I got my marching orders,” said Frances, and went to do the sunroom.

Then Maureen had the peace of the kitchen—the old white tiles and high yellowed walls, the bowls and pots and implements familiar and comforting to her, as probably to her predecessor.

What Mary Johnstone told the girls in her talk was always more or less the same thing and most of them knew what to expect. They could even make prepared faces at each other. She told them how Jesus had come and talked to her when she was in the iron lung. She did not mean in a dream, she said, or in a vision, or when she was delirious. She meant that He came and she recognized Him but didn’t think anything was strange about it. She recognized Him at once, though he was dressed like a doctor in a white coat. She thought, Well, that’s reasonable—otherwise they wouldn’t let Him in here. That was how she took it. Lying there in the iron lung, she was sensible and stupid at once, as you are when something like that hits you. (She meant Jesus, not the polio.) Jesus said, “You’ve got to get back up to bat, Mary.” That was all. She was a good Softball player, and He used language that He knew she would understand. Then He went away. And she hugged onto Life, the way He had told her to.

There was more to follow, about the uniqueness and specialness of each of their lives and their bodies, which led of course into what Mary Johnstone called “plain talk” about boys and urges. (This was where they did the faces—they were too abashed when she was going on about Jesus.) And about liquor and cigarettes and how one thing can lead to another. They thought she was crazy—and she couldn’t even tell that they had smoked themselves half sick last night. They reeked and she never mentioned it.

So she was—crazy. But everybody let her talk about Jesus in the hospital because they thought she was entitled to believe that.

But suppose you did see something? Not along the line of Jesus, but something? Maureen has had that happen. Sometimes when she is just going to sleep but not quite asleep, not dreaming yet, she has caught something. Or even in the daytime during what she thinks of as her normal life. She might catch herself sitting on stone steps eating cherries and watching a man coming up the steps carrying a parcel.

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