Too much happiness_ stories - Alice Munro [77]
I was not worried by the thought that had troubled Roxanne. I did not stop to consider it, because I believed that it would be quite absurd for a person with only a short time to live to commit suicide. It could not happen.
All the same, I was nervous. I ate two of the macaroons that were still sitting on the kitchen table. I ate them hoping that pleasure would bring back normalcy, but I barely tasted them. Then I shoved the box into the refrigerator so I would not hope to turn the trick by eating more.
Old Mrs. Crozier was still outside when Sylvia got home. And she didn’t come in then.
I got the key from between the pages of the book as soon as I heard the car and I gave it to Sylvia as soon as she was in the house. I just told her quickly what had happened, leaving out most of the fuss. She would not have waited to listen to that, anyway. She went running upstairs.
I stood at the bottom of the stairs to hear what I could hear.
Nothing. Nothing.
Then Sylvia’s voice, surprised and upset but in no way desperate, and too low for me to make out what she was saying. Within about five minutes she was downstairs, saying it was time to get me home. She was flushed as if the spots in her cheeks had spread all over her face, and she looked shocked but unable to resist her happiness.
Then, “Oh. Where is Mother Crozier?”
“In the flower garden, I think.”
“Well, I suppose I better speak to her, just for a moment.”
After she had done that, she no longer looked quite so happy.
“I suppose you know,” she said as she backed out the car, “I suppose you can imagine Mother Crozier is upset. Not that I am blaming you. It was very good and loyal of you. Doing what Mr. Crozier asked you to do. You weren’t scared of anything happening? With Mr. Crozier? Were you?”
I said no.
Then I said, “I think Roxanne was.”
“Mrs. Hoy? Yes. That’s too bad.”
As we were driving down what was known as Croziers’ Hill she said, “I don’t think he wanted to be mean and frighten them. You know when you’re sick, sick for a long time, you can get not to appreciate other people’s feelings. You can get turned against people even when they’re so good and doing what they can to help you. Mrs. Crozier and Mrs. Hoy were certainly trying their best, but Mr. Crozier just didn’t feel that he wanted them around anymore. He’d just had enough of them. You understand?”
She did not seem to know she was smiling when she said this.
Mrs. Hoy.
Had I ever heard that name before?
And spoken so gently and respectfully, yet with light-years’ condescension.
Did I believe what Sylvia had said?
I believed it was what he had told her.
I did see Roxanne again that day. I saw her at the very time that Sylvia was talking to me and introducing to me this new name. Mrs. Hoy.
She—Roxanne—was in her car and she had stopped at the first cross street at the bottom of Croziers’ Hill to watch us drive by. I didn’t turn to look at her because it was all too confusing, with Sylvia talking to me.
Of course Sylvia would not know whose car that was. She wouldn’t know that Roxanne must have come back to get an idea of what was going on. Or that maybe she had kept driving around the block—could she have done that?—all the time since she had left the Croziers’ house.
Roxanne would recognize Sylvia’s car, probably. She would notice me. She would know that things must be all right, from the kindly, serious, faintly smiling way that Sylvia was talking to me.
She didn’t turn the corner and drive back up the hill to the Croziers’ house. Oh no. She drove across the street—I watched in the rearview mirror—towards the east part of town where the wartime houses had been put up. That was where she lived.
“Feel the breeze,” said Sylvia. “Maybe those clouds are going to bring us rain.”
The clouds were high and white, glaring; they looked nothing like rain clouds; and the breeze was because we were in a moving car with the windows rolled down.
· · ·
I understood pretty well the winning and losing that had taken place, between Sylvia and Roxanne, but it