Open Secrets: Stories by Alice Munro

Author:Alice Munro [Munro, Alice]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Literary, Short Stories, Fiction
ISBN: 9780679755623
Google: BRfgnIqUpA8C
Amazon: 0679755624
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 1994-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

Open Secrets

started eating the crackers herself but she shouldn't have—a couple of bites and she wanted to puke.

She took two more pills and went back upstairs. The windows up and blinds down. She wished now they'd bought a fan when the sale was on at Canadian Tire. But she slept without one, and when she woke it was nearly dark. She could hear the mower—he, her husband, was out finishing the grass at the side of the house. She went down to the kitchen and saw that he had cut up some cold potatoes and boiled an egg and pulled green onions to make a salad. He was not like some men—a hopeless case in the kitchen waiting for the woman to get out of a sickbed and make him a meal. She picked at the salad but couldn't eat. One more pill and up the stairs and dead to the world till morning.

We better get you to the doctor, he said then. He phoned them up at work. I got to take my wife to the doctor.

Marian said, What if she just boiled a needle and he could lance it? But he could not stand to hurt her, and anyway he was afraid he might do something wrong. So they got in the truck and drove in to see Dr. Sands. Dr. Sands was out, they had to wait. Other people waiting told them the news. Everybody was amazed they didn't know. But they hadn't had the radio on. She was the one who always turned it on and she couldn't stand the noise, the way she felt. And they hadn't noticed any groups of men, anything peculiar, on the road.

Dr. Sands fixed the boil but he didn't lance it. His way of dealing with a boil was to strike it a sharp blow, knock it on the head, when you thought he was just looking at it. There!

he said, that's less fuss than the needle and not so painful overall because you didn't have time to get in a sweat. He cleaned it out and put the dressing on and said she'd soon be feeling better.

And so she was, but sleepy. She was so useless and foggy in the head that she went back to bed and slept till her hus-151

band came up around four o'clock with a cup of tea. It was then she thought of those girls, coming in with Miss Johnstone on Saturday morning, wanting a drink. She had lots of Coca-Cola and she gave it to them in flowered glasses, with ice cubes. Miss Johnstone would only take water. He let them play with the hose, they jumped around and squirted each other and had a great time. They were trying to skip the streams of water, and they were a bit on the wild side when Miss Johnstone wasn't looking. He had to practically wrestle the hose away from them, and give them a few squirts of water to make them behave.

She was trying to picture which girl it was.

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