Too much happiness_ stories - Alice Munro [7]
That was burned into Doree’s brain, and maybe when she decided to try to see him it had been with the idea of making him take it back. Making him see, and admit, how things had really gone.
“You told me to stop contradicting you or get out of the house. So I got out of the house.
“I only went to Maggie’s for one night. I fully intended to come back. I wasn’t walking out on anybody.”
She remembered perfectly how the argument had started. She had bought a tin of spaghetti that had a very slight dent in it. Because of that it had been on sale, and she had been pleased with her thriftiness. She had thought she was doing something smart. But she didn’t tell him that, once he had begun questioning her about it. For some reason she’d thought it better to pretend she hadn’t noticed.
Anybody would notice, he said. We could have all been poisoned. What was the matter with her? Or was that what she had in mind? Was she planning to try it out on the kids or on him?
She told him not to be crazy.
He had said it wasn’t him who was crazy. Who but a crazy woman would buy poison for her family?
The children had been watching from the doorway of the front room. That was the last time she’d seen them alive.
So was that what she had been thinking—that she could make him see, finally, who it was who was crazy?
When she realized what was in her head, she should have got off the bus. She could have got off even at the gates, with the few other women who plodded up the drive. She could have crossed the road and waited for the bus back to the city. Probably some people did that. They were going to make a visit and then decided not to. People probably did that all the time.
But maybe it was better that she had gone on, and seen him so strange and wasted. Not a person worth blaming for anything. Not a person. He was like a character in a dream.
She had dreams. In one dream she had run out of the house after finding them, and Lloyd had started to laugh in his old easy way, and then she had heard Sasha laughing behind her and it had dawned on her, wonderfully, that they were all playing a joke.
“You asked me if it made me feel good or bad when I saw him? Last time you asked me?”
“Yes, I did,” Mrs. Sands said.
“I had to think about it.”
“Yes.”
“I decided it made me feel bad. So I haven’t gone again.”
It was hard to tell with Mrs. Sands, but the nod she gave seemed to show some satisfaction or approval.
So when Doree decided that she would go again, after all, she thought it was better not to mention it. And since it was hard not to mention whatever happened to her—there being so little, most of the time—she phoned and cancelled her appointment. She said that she was going on a holiday. They were getting into summer, when holidays were the usual thing. With a friend, she said.
“You aren’t wearing the jacket you had on last week.”
“That wasn’t last week.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“It was three weeks ago. The weather’s hot now. This is lighter, but I don’t really need it. You don’t need a jacket at all.”
He asked about her trip, what buses she’d had to take from Mildmay.
She told him that she wasn’t living there anymore. She told him where she lived, and about the three buses.
“That’s quite a trek for you. Do you like living in a bigger place?”
“It’s easier to get work there.”
“So you work?”
She had told him last time about where she lived, the buses, where she worked.
“I clean rooms in a motel,” she said. “I told you.”
“Yes, yes. I forgot. I’m sorry. Do you ever think of going back to school? Night school?”
She said she did think about it but never seriously enough to do anything. She said she didn’t mind the cleaning work.
Then it seemed as if they could not think of anything more to say.
He sighed. He said, “Sorry. Sorry. I guess I’m not used to conversation.”
“So what do you do all the time?”
“I guess I read quite a bit. Kind of meditate. Informally.”
“Oh.”
“I appreciate your coming here. It means a lot to me. But don’t think you have to keep it up. I mean, just when you want to. If something comes