The Moons of Jupiter - Alice Munro [72]
She must get away, live alone, wear sleeves.
VALERIE CALLS TO THEM from a darkened window under the vines, “Go on in, go in. I’m just putting on my panty hose.”
“Don’t put on your panty hose!” cry George and Roberta together. You would think from the sound of their voices that all the way over here they had been engaged in tender and lively conversation.
“Don’t put on your panty hose,” wail Angela and Eva.
“Oh, all right, if there’s all that much prejudice against panty hose,” says Valerie behind her window. “I won’t even put on a dress. I’ll come as I am.”
“Not that!” cries George, and staggers, holding the lawn chairs up in front of his face.
But Valerie, appearing in the doorway, is dressed beautifully, in a loose gown of green and gold and blue. She doesn’t have to worry about George’s opinion of long dresses. She is absolved of blame anyway, because you could never say that Valerie is looking to be courted or admired. She is a tall, flat-chested woman, whose long, plain face seems to be crackling with welcome, eager understanding, with humor and intelligence and appreciation. Her hair is thick, gray-black, and curly. This summer she recklessly cut it off, so that all that is left is a curly crewcut, revealing her long, corded neck and the creases at the edge of her cheeks, and her large, flat ears.
“I think it makes me look like a goat,” she has said. “I like goats. I love their eyes. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have those horizontal pupils. Bizarre!”
Her children tell her she is bizarre enough already.
Here come Valerie’s children now, as George and Roberta and Angela and Eva crowd into the hall, Roberta saying that she is dripping ice and must get this pretentious concoction into the freezer. First Ruth, who is twenty-five and nearly six feet tall and looks a lot like her mother. She has given up wanting to be an actress and is learning to teach disturbed children. Her arms are full of goldenrod and Queen Anne’s lace and dahlias—weeds and flowers all mixed up together—and she throws them on the hall floor with a theatrical gesture and embraces the bombe.
“Dessert,” she says lovingly. “Oh, bliss! Angela, you look incredibly lovely! Eva, too. I know who Eva is. She’s the Bride of Lammermoor!”
Angela will allow, even delight in, such open praise from Ruth, because Ruth is the person she admires most in the world—possibly the only person she admires.
“The Bride of who?” Eva is asking happily. “The Bride of who?” David, Valerie’s twenty-one-year-old son, a history student, is standing in the living-room doorway, smiling tolerantly and affectionately at the excitement. David is tall and lean, dark-haired and dark-skinned, like his mother and sister, but he is deliberate, low-voiced, never rash. In this household of many delicate checks and balances it is noticeable that the lively, outspoken women defer to David in some ceremonial way, seeming to ask for the gesture of his protection, though protection itself is something they are not likely to need.
When the greetings die down David says, “This is Kimberly,” and introduces them each in turn to the young woman standing under his arm. She is very clean and trim, in a white skirt and a short-sleeved pink shirt. She wears glasses and no makeup; her hair is short and straight and tidy, and a pleasant light-brown color. She shakes hands with each of them and looks each of them in the eye, through her glasses, and though her manner is entirely polite, even subdued, there is a slight feeling of an official person greeting the members of an unruly, outlandish delegation.
Valerie