Selected Stories, 1968-1994 by Alice Munro
Author:Alice Munro [Munro, Alice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature, Stories
ISBN: 9780307814623
Publisher: Vintage Books; Random House
Published: 1985-01-17T16:00:00+00:00
AUNT BERYL said not to call her Aunt. âIâm not used to being anybodyâs aunt, honey. Iâm not even anybodyâs momma. Iâm just me. Call me Beryl.â
Beryl had started out as a stenographer, and now she had her own typing and bookkeeping business, which employed many girls. She had arrived with a man friend, whose name was Mr. Florence. Her letter had said that she would be getting a ride with a friend, but she hadnât said whether the friend would be staying or going on. She hadnât even said if it was a man or a woman.
Mr. Florence was staying. He was a tall, thin man with a long, tanned face, very light-colored eyes, and a way of twitching the corner of his mouth that might have been a smile.
He was the one who got to sleep in the room that my mother and I had papered, because he was the stranger, and a man. Beryl had to sleep with me. At first we thought that Mr. Florence was quite rude, because he wasnât used to our way of talking and we werenât used to his. The first morning, my father said to Mr. Florence, âWell, I hope you got some kind of a sleep on that old bed in there?â (The spare-room bed was heavenly, with a feather tick.) This was Mr. Florenceâs cue to say that he had never slept better.
Mr. Florence twitched. He said, âI slept on worse.â
His favorite place to be was in his car. His car was a royal-blue Chrysler, from the first batch turned out after the war. Inside it, the upholstery and floor covering and roof and door padding were all pearl gray. Mr. Florence kept the names of those colors in mind and corrected you if you said just âblueâ or âgray.â
âMouse skin is what it looks like to me,â said Beryl rambunctiously. âI tell him itâs just mouse skin!â
The car was parked at the side of the house, under the locust trees. Mr. Florence sat inside with the windows rolled up, smoking, in the rich new-car smell.
âIâm afraid weâre not doing much to entertain your friend,â my mother said.
âI wouldnât worry about him,â said Beryl. She always spoke about Mr. Florence as if there was a joke about him that only she appreciated. I wondered long afterward if he had a bottle in the glove compartment and took a nip from time to time to keep his spirits up. He kept his hat on.
Beryl herself was being entertained enough for two. Instead of staying in the house and talking to my mother, as a lady visitor usually did, she demanded to be shown everything there was to see on a farm. She said that I was to take her around and explain things, and see that she didnât fall into any manure piles.
I didnât know what to show. I took Beryl to the icehouse, where chunks of ice the size of dresser drawers, or bigger, lay buried in sawdust. Every
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