The Moons of Jupiter - Alice Munro [3]
The Moons of Jupiter
Chaddeleys and Flemings
1. CONNECTION
Cousin Iris from Philadelphia. She was a nurse. Cousin Isabel from Des Moines. She owned a florist shop. Cousin Flora from Winnipeg, a teacher; Cousin Winifred from Edmonton, a lady accountant. Maiden ladies, they were called. Old maids was too thin a term, it would not cover them. Their bosoms were heavy and intimidating— a single, armored bundle—and their stomachs and behinds full and corseted as those of any married woman. In those days it seemed to be the thing for women’s bodies to swell and ripen to a good size twenty, if they were getting anything out of life at all; then, according to class and aspirations, they would either sag and loosen, go wobbly as custard under pale print dresses and damp aprons, or be girded into shapes whose firm curves and proud slopes had nothing to do with sex, everything to do with rights and power.
My mother and her cousins were the second sort of women. They wore corsets that did up the side with dozens of hooks and eyes, stockings that hissed and rasped when they crossed their legs, silk jersey dresses for the afternoon (my mother’s being a cousin’s hand-me-down), face powder (rachel), dry rouge, eau de cologne, tortoise-shell, or imitation tortoise-shell, combs in their hair. They were not imaginable without such getups, unless bundled to the chin in quilted satin dressing-gowns. For my mother this style was hard to keep up; it required ingenuity, dedication, fierce effort. And who appreciated it? She did.
They all came to stay with us one summer. They came to our house because my mother was the only married one, with a house big enough to accommodate everybody, and because she was too poor to go to see them. We lived in Dalgleish in Huron County in Western Ontario. The population, 2,000, was announced on a sign at the town limits. “Now there’s two thousand and four,” cried Cousin Iris, heaving herself out of the driver’s seat. She drove a 1939 Oldsmobile. She had driven to Winnipeg to collect Flora, and Winifred, who had come down from Edmonton by train. Then they all drove to Toronto and picked up Isabel.
“And the four of us are bound to be more trouble than the whole two thousand put together,” said Isabel. “Where was it— Orangeville—we laughed so hard Iris had to stop the car? She was afraid she’d drive into the ditch!”
The steps creaked under their feet.
“Breathe that air! Oh, you can’t beat the country air. Is that the pump where you get your drinking water? Wouldn’t that be lovely right now? A drink of well water!”
My mother told me to get a glass, but they insisted on drinking out of the tin mug.
They told how Iris had gone into a field to answer nature’s call and had looked up to find herself surrounded by a ring of interested cows.
“Cows baloney!” said Iris. “They were steers.”
“Bulls for all you’d know,” said Winifred, letting herself down into a wicker chair. She was the fattest.
“Bulls! I’d know!” said Iris. “I hope their furniture can stand the strain, Winifred. I tell you it was a drag on the rear end of my poor car. Bulls! What a shock, it’s a wonder I got my pants up!”
They told about the wild-looking town in Northern Ontario where Iris wouldn’t stop the car even to let them buy a Coke. She took one look at the lumberjacks and cried, “We’d all be raped!”
“What is raped?” said my little sister.
“Oh-oh,” said Iris. “It means you get your pocketbook stolen.” Pocketbook: an American word. My sister and I didn’t know what that meant either but we were not equal to two questions in a row. And I knew that wasn’t what rape meant anyway; it meant something dirty.
“Purse. Purse stolen,” said my mother in a festive but cautioning tone. Talk in our house was genteel.
Now came the unpacking of