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appeared in The New Yorker in August of 1998. How

1:00

do you think I didn't know? It was

1:03

right in front of my eyes all the time. If

1:06

I had gone to school here, I'd surely

1:08

have known. If I'd had friends. There's

1:10

no way one of the high school girls, one of

1:12

the older girls wouldn't have made sure I knew. The

1:16

story was chosen by Andrea Alexis, whose works

1:18

of fiction include the novels 15 Dogs, which

1:21

won the Giller Prize, and Days by Moonlight,

1:24

and the story collection The Nightpiece, which was published

1:26

in 2020. Hi,

1:29

Andre. Welcome. Hello, Bro. I'm

1:32

glad we could do this. Let's

1:34

start with why we are here

1:36

taping a podcast about Alice Monroe's

1:38

work today. You are

1:41

a fellow writer who grew up, I

1:43

think, less than 100 miles away from

1:45

the small town in southwestern Ontario where

1:47

Monroe grew up. The

1:50

territory is familiar to you,

1:52

though in a later time. What

1:55

has her work meant to you and for

1:57

how long? Oh.

2:01

It's not a difficult question, but

2:03

it's one of those questions that's

2:05

like, well, when did you start

2:07

breathing hair And since the time

2:09

I wanted to be a writer,

2:11

Alice Munro has been part of

2:13

my landscape. and I should. But

2:15

I want to preface this by

2:17

saying that as a Canadian rider,

2:19

because I am also Trinidadian and

2:21

Canadian, but mostly Canadian, the landscape

2:23

for me as to what six

2:25

in one's was largely the province

2:27

of women. Margaret Lawrence, Margaret Atwood,

2:29

Margaret, Amazon and a Wiseman. Mavis

2:31

commands Alice Munro. I was very

2:34

aware as a writer that I

2:36

was entering into a province that

2:38

was best done by women. I

2:40

was talking to a friend of

2:42

mine, Catherine Bus, and she said

2:45

that when she started writing for

2:47

her she thought of these as

2:49

her for mothers and there's of

2:51

that I think for all of

2:53

us have our generation. So when

2:56

I'm talking about Alice Munro, there

2:58

are times when I'm talking about

3:00

specific stories. but mostly. Or just

3:02

as minds I'm talking about

3:05

the climate, the literary miss,

3:07

the way that generation of

3:09

women directed and determine what

3:11

literature and literary riding was

3:13

for me until I feel

3:15

very much like I'm writing.

3:18

Asked her. When

3:20

when you say than a mouse monroe

3:22

for someone of my generation it's more

3:24

than just there are handful of and

3:26

stories it something else. Yeah but

3:28

I don't. I think for you to it's.

3:31

more localized and being Canadians

3:33

it seeing. Here in Ontario as

3:35

being and Southwestern Ontario it's thing in

3:38

a small town. Yes, when

3:40

I read her descriptions of the

3:42

landscape, I know where I am, and

3:44

I suppose you could argue that That's

3:46

helpful, not helpful. I don't know, but

3:49

I'm burrowed into the stories because I

3:51

know exactly what Southern Ontario looks

3:53

like. You know, the flatness have some

3:55

of those towns I know how it

3:58

feels to be in. Does. And

4:01

see those and almost

4:03

frightening rendition of them.

4:06

But. Also strangely a comforting rendition of

4:08

them because they are in doctor a

4:10

kind of restitution of my taunted as

4:12

well at the same time as that

4:15

kind of our a confirmation that yes

4:17

where you grew up on strange. Suazo.

4:21

Before the change came up and conversation

4:23

between us because I haven't been reading

4:25

it and noticed a parallel with a

4:27

moment. And your recent story consolation.

4:31

You hadn't read before the change at that point and

4:33

then you did and you asked to read it on.

4:35

The podcast. What Is it

4:37

that? Most hits you about

4:39

this story. And

4:42

whether there are parallels with

4:44

consolation especially the father being

4:47

a doctor and the intimacy

4:49

of doctor to community just

4:51

feels absolutely right. And so

4:53

I felt very close to

4:55

that, even know her father

4:57

is a difficult man and

4:59

was mine to some extent.

5:01

I feel very connected to

5:03

that ideas growing up. As

5:05

the child of a doctor

5:07

I don't know see did

5:09

not. Alice did not hear. The

5:12

news? Interesting I'm she gets it

5:14

pretty good here. And so there's

5:16

that intimacy. Too young. it's on

5:19

all levels at something that hits

5:21

me. Do

5:24

you think it's represented as as minerals? Where

5:26

it's to think it's an outlier. I

5:29

see, we'll we'll talk. Asked

5:32

her about some of it's

5:34

brutal isms, but there is

5:36

a strain in her work

5:38

of such a frankness about

5:40

the body that I adore.

5:42

Frankly, it's not polite, it's

5:44

not a cozy, and it's

5:46

something else. And I really

5:48

do think that this is

5:50

in that sense in it's

5:52

concentration on the body. It's

5:54

very like a lot of

5:56

her other works, the female

5:58

body. But. Also in

6:01

it's thoughtfulness about the world and about

6:03

what things mean and what it means

6:05

when somebody looks at you this way

6:08

or when you see something over there

6:10

that's meaningful beauty don't know how those

6:12

are very much part of her as

6:15

panic trying to figure out what's going

6:17

on. Walker Brothers cowboy with his first

6:19

probably the stories of hers that has

6:22

met the most to me is a

6:24

daughter trying to piece what's going on,

6:26

has she's going out for a drive

6:29

with her father. Who goes

6:31

to a former lovers house

6:33

and there's everything suggested? and

6:35

also the kind of strangeness

6:37

of that, the strangeness of

6:39

how adults relate and that

6:41

goes through a lot of

6:43

her work. You know, the

6:45

sexual but also the emotionally

6:47

strange. Yeah. Everything

6:50

is sad is characteristic as before

6:52

the change and analysis Other stories

6:54

let's interesting. To. Me and

6:56

this honest. That. Says

7:00

so consists in tire li. Internal

7:02

my spend the whole story.

7:05

In the internal thoughts as

7:07

the main character. It's

7:10

in salt with the internal mind

7:12

and himself that he body. And.

7:15

And. These

7:17

two things. Are it such

7:19

extremes? And. The story and we

7:21

should. Probably. In a warn

7:23

people that there are. Quite.

7:26

Vividly described medical procedures

7:28

is and as you're

7:30

squeamish or. Don't.

7:33

Term. Don't feel you can

7:35

listen to that uncommon for his this is

7:37

Not the Podcast episode. For you know

7:39

how to get out. Cyan

7:43

M B S because it is

7:45

incredibly vivid like to say to

7:47

of as the descriptions of a

7:49

medical procedure that I've been I've

7:51

ever read and I think the

7:54

first time you go through in

7:56

it might make you feel that

7:58

the story is about that. But

8:00

it really isn't So much

8:02

more is going on there

8:04

and starts in mystery and

8:06

it the mystery deepens. A

8:08

lot of the seems of

8:10

not being sure who is

8:12

who, what's in authority, and

8:14

even who you're addressing his

8:16

part of the cloud of

8:18

unknowing that is this story.

8:22

Yeah. We'll talk some

8:24

more after the reading. And now here's

8:26

Andrea Lexus Meeting before the Change

8:28

by Alice Munro. Before.

8:32

The change. Deer.

8:35

Are. My father and

8:37

I watched Kennedy debate mixes. He's

8:40

got a television since you were here, a

8:42

small screen and rabbit ears. It's it's out

8:45

in front of the sideboard in the dining

8:47

room, so that there's no easy way now

8:49

to get a good silver on the table.

8:51

In and. Even if anybody wanted

8:53

to. Why? In

8:55

the dining room where there's not one

8:58

really comfortable chair? Because

9:00

it's a while since they remembered they have a

9:02

living room. Do. You

9:04

remember this room. heavy side curtains

9:06

with wine colored leaves on a

9:09

base ground and the net curtains

9:11

in between. Picture of Sir Galahad

9:13

leading his horse and picture of

9:15

Glencoe was a heard of Red

9:17

Deer and of the massacre. The

9:21

old filing cabinet moved in years

9:23

ago from my father's office, but still

9:25

no place bound for it, so

9:27

it just sits there, not even pushed

9:29

back against the wall. And

9:32

my mother's close sewing machine. The

9:35

only time he ever mentions her when

9:37

he says your mother's sewing machine. with

9:40

the same or what looks like

9:42

the same array of plants in

9:44

clay pot so tin cans not

9:47

flourishing. And not die. so

9:51

i'm home now nobody has broach the

9:53

question as to how long for i

9:55

just asked the many with all my

9:57

books and papers and clothes and drove

10:00

here from Ottawa in one day. I had

10:03

told my father on the phone that I was

10:05

finished with my thesis. I've

10:07

actually given it up, but I didn't bother telling

10:09

him that, and that I thought I

10:11

needed a break. Break, he

10:14

said, as if he'd never heard of such a

10:16

thing. Well, as long as it

10:18

isn't a nervous break. That's

10:21

the way he still refers to panic

10:23

attacks and depression and personal collapse. Nervous

10:27

breakdown. There

10:29

wasn't any big welcome when I got

10:31

here, but no consternation either. I'd

10:34

thought of kissing him, more bravado than

10:36

an upsurge of affection, more,

10:39

this is the way I do things now.

10:42

But by the time my shoes hit the gravel

10:44

I knew I couldn't. There

10:46

was Mrs. B. standing halfway between

10:48

the drive and the kitchen door.

10:51

So I went and threw my arms around

10:53

her instead and nuzzled the

10:55

bizarre black hair cut in a

10:57

Chinese sort of bob around her

10:59

small withered face. I

11:02

could smell her stuffy cardigan and bleach on

11:04

her apron and feel her

11:06

old toothpick bones. She

11:09

hardly came up to my collarbone. Flustered,

11:12

I said, it's a beautiful day, it's

11:14

been the most beautiful drive. So

11:16

it was, so it had been.

11:18

The trees not turned yet, just

11:21

rusting at the edges and

11:23

the stubble-fields like gold. So

11:25

why does this benevolence of landscape fade

11:27

in my father's presence and

11:30

in his territory? When

11:32

the debate was over, my father got

11:34

up and turned off the television. He

11:37

won't watch commercials unless Mrs. B. is

11:39

there and speaks up in favor. Whatever

11:42

she enjoys is permitted, and

11:45

dancing cornflakes, and he may

11:47

even say, well, in its own way it's

11:49

clever. This,

11:51

I think, is a kind of warning to

11:53

me. What did

11:56

he think about Kennedy and Nixon? Ah,

11:58

they're just a couple of Americans. I

12:01

tried to open the conversation up a bit. How

12:03

do you mean?" "'Just a couple

12:05

of Americans,' he said, as if

12:07

the words might have got by me the first time. So

12:11

we sit there, not talking, but

12:13

not in silence, because, as you may

12:15

recall, he is a noisy

12:17

breather." Ah! The

12:21

waiting-room walls are scuffed all round,

12:24

where generations of patients have leaned

12:26

their chairs back against them. The

12:29

reader's digests are in rags on the table,

12:32

the patient's files are in cardboard

12:34

boxes under the examining table, and

12:36

in the house it's no better. I

12:39

asked what color paint he'd like for the

12:41

office walls. Light green, I said, or light

12:43

yellow. He said, Who's

12:45

going to paint them? I am. I

12:49

never knew you were a painter. I've

12:51

painted places I've lived in. Maybe

12:54

so, but I haven't seen them. What

12:56

are you going to do about my patients while you're painting? I'll

12:59

do it on a Sunday. Some

13:01

of them wouldn't care for that when they heard about it.

13:05

Are you kidding? In this day and age?

13:08

It may not be quite the same day and age

13:10

you think it is, not around here.

13:14

All I got to do in the end

13:16

was throw out the reader's digests and put

13:19

out some copies of Maclean's and Time and

13:21

Saturday Night. And

13:23

then he mentioned there'd been complaints. They

13:25

missed looking up the jokes they remembered in

13:28

the reader's digests. Too bad,

13:30

I said, and I couldn't believe that

13:32

my voice was shaking. Then

13:35

I tried to tackle the filing cabinet in the

13:37

dining room. I thought it was probably

13:39

full of the files of patients who were long dead.

13:42

Mrs. B saw what I was doing and went

13:45

and got my father. Not a word

13:47

to me. He said, Who

13:50

told you you could go poking around in

13:52

there? I didn't. Are

13:58

The two days you were here last night? Dear Mrs.

14:00

Be was off for Christmas with

14:02

her family. She has a husband

14:04

who's been sick with emphysema it

14:07

seems for half his life and

14:09

no children but a horde of

14:11

nieces and nephews and connections. I

14:13

don't think you saw her at all. But.

14:15

He saw you. She. Said to

14:17

me yesterday, where's that mister So and so

14:20

you were supposed to be engaged to. She'd.

14:23

Noticed I wasn't wearing my ring. I.

14:25

Imagine in Toronto I said. I

14:28

was up. Met my nieces last christmas and

14:31

we see new and him walk and up

14:33

by the standpipe and my niece said i

14:35

wonder where them to are going. This.

14:38

Is exactly how she talks and it

14:40

already sounds quite normal to me except

14:42

if I write it down. I

14:44

guess the implication is that we were

14:46

going somewhere to carry on back if

14:48

you remember, we were just getting outside

14:51

so we could continue our site, which

14:53

could only be bottled up for so

14:55

long. Mrs.

14:57

Be started to work for my father

14:59

about the same time I went away

15:01

to school. Before that we had some

15:04

young women I liked, but they left

15:06

to get married or to work and

15:08

war plans. When I was nine or

15:10

ten and had been to some of

15:12

my school friends' houses, I said to

15:14

my father, why does he says Barry

15:16

have to eat with us other people's

15:18

maids only with them. My.

15:20

Father said if you don't like to

15:23

eat with Mrs. Barry hidden go uneaten

15:25

woodshed. Then.

15:27

I took the hanging around and getting

15:29

her to talk. She wouldn't much but

15:31

when she did it could be rewarding.

15:33

I had a fine time imitating her

15:36

at school. Me: To.

15:38

Tears really black Mrs. Barry. Mrs

15:41

Be. everyone in my family as got

15:43

black hair. they all got black hair

15:45

and it never ever gets gray. That's

15:47

on my mother's side. When my grandpa

15:49

died they kept him in the place

15:51

in the cemetery all winter while the

15:53

ground was froze to come spring he

15:55

was going to put him in the

15:57

ground and one or other us says.

16:00

Let's take a look see how he made it through

16:02

the winter. So. We got

16:04

the fell into lift the lid to their

16:06

he was with his face not dark or

16:08

caved in or anything and his hair was

16:11

back. I

16:13

could even do the little less he

16:15

does. Little box not indicate that anything

16:17

is funny, but as a kind of

16:19

punctuation. by the time I met you,

16:21

I got sick of myself doing this.

16:25

After Mrs. Be told me all about

16:27

her hair, her mentor one day Coming

16:29

out of the upstairs bathroom, she was

16:31

hurrying to get the phone, which I

16:34

wasn't allowed to answer. Her hair was

16:36

bundled up in a town and a

16:38

dark purplish trickle was running down the

16:40

side of her face. Your

16:43

heads bleeding I said can see settled. Get

16:45

out of my road, can scramble past get

16:47

the phone. I went

16:50

on into the bathroom and saw purple

16:52

streaks in the basin and the hair

16:54

dye on the south. Not

16:56

a word was said about this and he

16:58

continued to talk about how everybody on her

17:00

mother's side of the family had black hair

17:03

in their coffins and see would to. My.

17:07

Father had an odd way of noticing

17:09

mean those years he might be passing

17:11

through a rumor I was and he'd

17:13

say is if he hadn't seen me

17:15

there a t defective. Henry King was

17:18

chewing little bits of stream. Or

17:20

Solomon Grundy born on a

17:22

Monday. And then he'd

17:24

jabber finger at me to taken up

17:26

christened on Tuesday. Married on

17:28

Wednesday to kill on Thursday

17:31

or some Friday died on

17:33

Saturday. Buried on Sunday. Then

17:35

both the thunderously and that

17:37

was the end of Solomon

17:39

Grundy. Never.

17:41

An introduction and know com and have to

17:44

work. For. Drug I

17:46

tried calling him Solomon Grundy a fourth

17:48

or fifth time. He said that's enough.

17:51

That's not my name on your father. After

17:54

that, we probably didn't do the rhyme anymore.

17:58

The first time I met you are. The campus in

18:00

you were alone and I was alone.

18:03

You looked as if you remembered me

18:05

but weren't sure about acknowledging it. You

18:07

had just taught that one class, filling

18:09

in when our regular man was sick

18:12

and you had to do the lecture

18:14

on logical positivism. He joked about it

18:16

being a funny thing to bring somebody

18:18

over from the theological college to do.

18:22

You seem to hesitate about saying hello.

18:24

so I said the former King of

18:26

France is both. That.

18:29

Was example you given us have a

18:31

statement that makes no sense because the

18:34

subject doesn't exist. But.

18:36

You gave me a truly startled and

18:38

cornered look fat he then covered up

18:40

with a professional smile. What?

18:42

Did you think of me? Smart.

18:45

Alec. Are.

18:49

My stomach is still a little passing. There

18:52

are no marks on it but I can

18:54

been set up in my hands. Otherwise, I'm

18:56

okay. I weighed his back

18:59

to normal are a little below. I

19:01

think I look older, though I think

19:03

I looked older than twenty four. Anyway,

19:06

have started going on long walks

19:08

around town for exercise. The

19:11

horse barn to been torn down and

19:13

there are new suburbs that could be

19:15

suburbs anywhere, which is what everybody likes

19:17

about them. Nobody

19:19

walks now, everybody drives. The

19:21

suburbs don't have sidewalks and

19:23

the sidewalks along the old

19:25

back streets are unused and

19:27

crack up, tilted by frost

19:29

and disappearing and a curse

19:31

and grass along dirt pass

19:33

under the pine trees along

19:35

our lane. His last now

19:37

hundred drifts of pine needles

19:39

and rogue saplings and wilde

19:42

raspberry canes. People have walked

19:44

up that pass for decades

19:46

to see the Doctor. Because.

19:48

There's been a doctor living in this house

19:50

since the end of the last century. All.

19:54

sorts of noisy grubby patients

19:56

children and mothers and old

19:58

people all afternoon and

20:00

quieter patients coming singly in the evenings.

20:03

I used to sit out where there was a

20:06

pear tree trapped in a clump of lilac bushes,

20:08

and I'd spy on them, because young

20:10

girls like to spy. I'd

20:12

spy on the ladies who got dressed up at

20:14

that time for a visit to the doctor. I

20:17

remember the clothes from soon after the war. Long

20:21

full skirts and cinch belts

20:23

and puffed-up blouses and sometimes

20:25

short white gloves, for

20:27

gloves were worn then in summer and not just

20:29

to church. Hats not

20:31

just to church either. Pastel

20:33

straw hats that framed the face. Not

20:37

having a mother may have had something to do with

20:39

how I felt, but I didn't know

20:41

anybody who had a mother who looked the way they

20:43

did. I'd crouch under

20:45

the bushes, eating with spotty yellow pears

20:48

and worshipping. One

20:51

of our teachers had got us reading

20:53

old ballads like Patrick Spence and the

20:55

Trae Corbis. And there'd

20:57

been a rash of ballad-making at school. I'm

21:00

going down the corridor, my good friend fought

21:02

to see. I'm going through

21:04

the lavatory to have myself a pee.

21:08

So with my mouth full of mushy pear I made

21:10

up more. A lady walks

21:12

on a long, long path. She's

21:14

left the town behind. She's

21:16

left her home and her father's

21:19

wrath, her destiny fortified. When

21:22

the wasp started bothering me too much I

21:24

went into the house. Mrs.

21:27

Barry would be in the kitchen smoking a

21:29

cigarette and listening to the radio until my

21:31

father called her. She

21:33

stayed till the last patient had left and the

21:35

place had been tidied up. If

21:38

there was a yelp from the office she might give

21:40

her own little yelping laugh and say, Go ahead and

21:42

holler. I

21:44

never bothered describing to her the clothes

21:46

or the looks of the women I'd

21:48

seen because I knew she'd never admire

21:51

anybody for being beautiful or well dressed.

21:54

She more than she'd admire them for

21:56

knowing something nobody needed to know, like

21:58

a foreign language. Good

22:00

card players she admired, and fast

22:02

knitters, that was about all. Many

22:05

people she had no use for. My

22:08

father said that, too, he had no use.

22:11

That made me want to ask, if they did have

22:13

a use, what would the use be? But

22:16

I knew neither one would tell me. Instead,

22:18

they'd tell me not to be so smart.

22:22

His uncle came on Franklin Hyde,

22:24

carousing in the dirt. He

22:26

shook him hard from side to side,

22:28

and hid him till it hurt. If

22:32

I decided to send all this to you, where would I

22:34

send it? When

22:37

I think of writing the whole address

22:39

on the envelope, I'm paralyzed. It's

22:41

too painful to think of you in the same place

22:44

with your life going on in the

22:46

same way, minus me. And

22:49

to think of you not there, you

22:51

somewhere else but I don't know where, is

22:54

worse. Dear

22:57

Robin, how do you think

22:59

I didn't know? It was right in

23:01

front of my eyes all the time. If

23:04

I had gone to school here, I'd surely have known.

23:06

If I'd had friends, there's no

23:08

way one of the high school girls, one of the

23:11

older girls, wouldn't have made sure I knew. Now

23:14

that I think of it, I knew that

23:16

some of those evening patients, those ladies,

23:18

came on the train. I

23:21

associated them in their beautiful clothes with

23:23

the evening train. And

23:25

there was a late night train they must have left

23:27

off. Of course, there

23:30

could just as easily have been a car that dropped them

23:32

off at the end of the lane. And

23:35

I was told, by Mrs. B., I think, not by

23:37

him, that they came to my

23:39

father for vitamin shots. I knew

23:41

that because I would think, now she's getting

23:44

a shot whenever we heard a woman make

23:46

a noise. And I would

23:48

be a little surprised that women

23:50

so sophisticated and self-controlled were not

23:52

more stoical about needles. Even

23:55

now it has taken me weeks, through

23:57

all this time spent getting used to them.

24:00

ways of the house to the point

24:02

where I would never dream of picking

24:04

up a paintbrush, and would hesitate to

24:06

straighten a drawer or throw out an

24:09

old grocery receipt without consulting Mrs. B.,

24:11

who can never make up her mind about it

24:14

anyway. At

24:16

lunch today, Sunday, my father laid a

24:18

check beside my plate. Mrs.

24:21

Barry is never here on Sundays. We

24:23

have a cold lunch of sliced meat

24:25

and bread and tomatoes and pickles and

24:27

cheese, which I fix when my father

24:29

gets back from church. He

24:32

never asks me to go to church with

24:34

him, probably thinking that would just give me a

24:36

chance to air some views. He

24:38

doesn't care to hear. The

24:41

check was for five thousand dollars. That's

24:45

for you, he said. So you'll have something.

24:47

You can put it in the bank or invest it how you

24:50

like. See how the rates are. I

24:52

don't keep up. Of course, you'll

24:54

get the house, too. All

24:56

in the fullness of time, as they say. A

25:00

bribe, I thought. Money

25:02

to start a little business with, go on a trip

25:04

with. Money for the down payment

25:07

on a little house of my own, or to go

25:09

back to university to get some more of what he

25:11

has called my unnegotiable

25:13

degrees. Five

25:17

thousand dollars to get rid of me. I

25:20

thanked him, and more or less for conversation's sake,

25:22

I asked him what he did with his money.

25:25

He said that was neither here nor there. Asked

25:28

Billy Snyder if you're looking for advice.

25:30

Then he remembered that Billy Snyder was

25:33

no longer in the accounting business. He

25:35

had retired. There's

25:37

some new fellow there with a queer name, said.

25:41

It's like Ypsilanti, but it's not Ypsilanti.

25:44

Ypsilanti's a town in Michigan, I said. It's

25:47

a town in Michigan, but it was a man's

25:49

name before it was a town in Michigan, my

25:52

father said. It seems it was the name of

25:54

a Greek leader who fought against the Turks early

25:56

in the eighteen hundreds. I

25:58

said, oh. Byron's war." "'Byron's

26:02

war,' said my father, "'what makes you call

26:04

it that? Byron didn't fight in

26:06

any war. He died at Typhus. Then,

26:09

once he's dead, he's the big hero. He died for

26:11

the Greeks and so on.' He

26:14

said this contentiously, as if I had

26:16

been one of those responsible for this

26:18

mistake, this big fuss over Byron. But

26:21

then he calmed down and recounted for me,

26:23

or recalled for himself the progress

26:26

of the war against the Ottoman Empire.

26:29

It's always best not to interrupt. When

26:31

he starts to talk like this there's the sense

26:34

of a truce, or breathing

26:36

spell, in an undeclared underground war.

26:38

I was sitting

26:40

facing the window and I could see through

26:43

the net curtains the heaps of

26:45

yellow-brown leaves on the ground in

26:47

the rich, generous sunlight. Maybe

26:50

the last of those days we'll get for a

26:52

long time by the sound of the wind tonight.

26:55

And it brought to mind my relief as

26:58

a child my secret pleasure whenever

27:00

I could get him going, by asking

27:02

a question or by accident, on

27:05

a spiel like this. Last

27:08

night I came in about ten o'clock. I'd

27:10

been out at a meeting of the Historical

27:13

Society, or rather had a meeting to try

27:15

and organize one. Five people

27:17

showed up and two of them walked with canes.

27:20

When I opened the kitchen door I saw Mrs.

27:22

B. framed in the doorway to the back hall,

27:25

the hall that leads from the office to the

27:27

washroom and the front part of the house. She

27:30

had a covered basin in her hands. She

27:33

was on her way to the washroom and she could

27:35

have gone on, passing the kitchen as I came in.

27:37

I would hardly have noticed her,

27:39

but she stopped in her tracks and stood

27:42

there, partly turned towards me. She

27:44

made a grimace of dismay. Uh-oh,

27:47

caught out. Then she

27:49

scurried away toward the toilet. This

27:52

was an act. The surprise,

27:54

the dismay, the hurrying away. Even

27:57

the way she held the basin out so that I had to

27:59

notice it. That was

28:01

all. deliberate. I can

28:04

hear the rumble of my father's voice

28:06

in the office talking to a patient.

28:08

I had seen the office lights on.

28:10

Anyway, I had seen the patient car

28:12

parked outside. I

28:15

took off my coat and went on

28:17

upstairs. All I seem to be concerned

28:19

about was not letting Mrs be habit

28:22

her way. No questions. So shocked realization.

28:24

Know what is that you have in

28:26

the Mace and Mrs B O would

28:28

have you and my daddy been up

28:30

to. Monterey of called him my

28:33

daddy. I got busy

28:35

at once, rooting around in one of

28:37

the boxes of books I still hadn't

28:39

unpacked. I was looking for The Journal

28:41

Savannah Jamison I had promised to the

28:44

other person under seventy who had been

28:46

at the meeting a man who was

28:48

a photographer know something about the history

28:50

of Upper Canada. He

28:52

would like to have been a history teacher,

28:54

but has a stammer that prevented him. He.

28:57

Told me this in the half hour

28:59

we stood out on the sidewalk talking

29:01

instead of taking the more decisive step

29:04

of going for coffee. Has.

29:06

We said goodnight. He told me that he'd like

29:08

to have asked me for coffee, but he had

29:11

to get home and spell his wife because the

29:13

baby had collect. High

29:16

Impact. The whole box. a book. Before

29:18

I was through it was like looking

29:20

at relics from a bygone age. I

29:22

look through them till the patient was

29:24

gone and my father had taken Mrs.

29:26

Be home and had come upstairs and

29:28

use the bathroom and don't mad I

29:30

read till I was so groggy I

29:32

almost fell asleep on the floor. At

29:36

lunch today I finally said. I

29:39

think I know what's going on here. His

29:41

head reared up and he snorted. He

29:44

really did like an old horse. He

29:46

do, do you? Think you know what? I

29:49

said, i'm not accusing you my don't disapprove.

29:52

That so. I. Believe

29:54

in abortion. I said I believe it should

29:57

be legal. I. don't

29:59

want to to use word again in this house."

30:01

"'Why not? Because

30:03

I'm the one who says what words are used

30:06

in this house.' "'You

30:08

don't understand what I'm saying. I

30:10

understand that you've got too loose

30:12

a tongue. You've got too

30:14

loose a tongue and not enough sense, too

30:17

much education and not

30:19

enough ordinary brains.' "'I

30:22

still did not shut up. I said,

30:24

people must know.' "'Must

30:26

they? There's a difference between

30:28

knowing and yapping. Get that through

30:31

your head once and for all.' We

30:34

did not speak for the rest of the day. I

30:37

don't think he finds this difficult at all. I

30:39

cooked the usual roast for dinner and we ate it

30:42

and did not speak. It's

30:44

obviously time that I got out of

30:46

here. The

30:49

young man last night told me

30:51

that when he felt relaxed his

30:53

stammer practically disappeared. Like

30:55

when I'm talking to you, he said. I

30:58

could probably make him fall in love with me

31:00

to a certain extent. I could

31:02

do that just for recreation. That's

31:05

the sort of life I could get into here. Dear

31:10

R, I haven't left.

31:12

The meaning wasn't fit for it. I took

31:14

it in to be overhauled. Also, the

31:17

weather has changed. The wind has got

31:19

into an autumn rampage, scooping up the

31:21

lake and battering the beach. It

31:25

caught Mrs. Barry on her own front steps,

31:27

the wind did, and knocked her

31:29

sideways and shattered her elbow. It's

31:31

her left elbow, and she said she could work

31:34

with her right arm, but my father told her

31:36

it was a complicated fracture and he wanted her

31:38

to rest for a month. He

31:40

asked me if I would mind postponing my departure.

31:43

Those were his words. Pasponing

31:46

your departure. He hasn't asked

31:48

where I'm planning to go, and I

31:50

don't know. I said all

31:52

right. I'd stay while I could

31:54

be useful. So we're on

31:56

decent speaking terms. In fact, it's fairly

31:58

comfortable. I try to do

32:01

just about what Mrs. B. would do in the

32:03

house. I cook the meat and

32:05

the vegetables in her way, and never think

32:07

about bringing home an avocado or a jar

32:09

of artichoke hearts or a garlic bulb, though

32:11

I see all those things are now for

32:14

sale in the supermarket. I

32:16

hold the oven door shut the way Mrs.

32:18

B. does, with a couple of heavy medical

32:20

textbooks set on a stool pushed up against

32:23

it. I make the coffee from

32:25

the powder in the jar. I'm

32:28

allowed to answer the phone, but if

32:30

it's a woman asking for my father

32:32

and not volunteering details, I'm supposed

32:34

to take the number and say that the doctor

32:37

will phone back. So I do, and

32:39

sometimes the woman just hangs up. When

32:42

I tell my father this he says, she'll

32:44

likely call again. There

32:47

aren't many of those patients, the one he

32:49

calls the specials, maybe one a

32:51

month. Usually he's dealing

32:54

with sore throats and cramped colons and beeling

32:57

ears and so on, jumpy

32:59

hearts, kidney stones, sour digestions.

33:04

Ah! Tonight he knocked

33:06

on my door. He knocked, though it

33:08

wasn't all the way closed. I was reading. He

33:11

asked, not in a supplicating way,

33:13

of course, but I would say with

33:15

reasonable respect, if I could give him

33:18

a hand in the office. The

33:20

first special since Mrs. B has been away.

33:24

I asked what he wanted me to do. Just

33:27

more or less to keep her steady, he said. She's

33:29

young and she's not used to it yet. Give

33:32

your hands a good scrub, too. Use

33:35

the soap in the bottle in the toilet downstairs.

33:39

The patient was lying flat on the examining table

33:41

with a sheet over her from the waist down.

33:44

The top part of her was fully

33:46

dressed in a dark blue buttoned-up cardigan

33:48

and a white blouse with a lace-trimmed

33:50

collar. These clothes

33:52

lay loosely over her sharp collarbone and

33:55

nearly flat chest. Her

33:57

hair was black, pulled tightly back from

33:59

her face. and braided and pinned

34:01

on top of her head. This

34:04

prim and severe style made her neck

34:06

look long and emphasized the

34:08

regal bone structure of her white face

34:10

so that from a distance she could

34:12

be taken for a woman of forty-five.

34:15

Close up you could see that she

34:17

was quite young, probably around twenty. Her

34:20

pleated skirt was hung up on the back of the

34:22

door. I could see the

34:24

rim of white panties that she had thoughtfully

34:26

hung underneath. She

34:29

was shivering hard, though the office wasn't cold.

34:32

Now, Madeline, my father said, the first

34:34

thing is, we've got to get your knees up.

34:38

I wondered if he knew her, or did

34:40

he just ask for a name and use whatever the

34:42

woman gave him. Easy,

34:45

he said. Easy, easy. He

34:48

got the stirrups in place and her feet into them.

34:51

She was still wearing her loafers. Her

34:53

knees shook so much in this new position

34:55

that they clapped together. You'll

34:58

have to hold steadier than that, my father said.

35:00

You know, now I can't do my

35:03

job unless you do yours. Do you

35:05

want a blanket over you? He

35:07

said to me, get her a blanket off the

35:09

bottom shelf there. I

35:12

arranged the blanket to cover the top part

35:14

of Madeline's body. She didn't look at

35:16

me. Her teeth rattled. She

35:18

clenched her mouth shut. Now,

35:21

just slide down this way a bit, my

35:23

father said, and to me, hold her knees,

35:25

get them apart. Just hold her easy.

35:29

I put my hands on the knobs of the

35:31

girl's knees and moved them apart as gently as

35:33

I could. My father's

35:35

breathing filled the room with its

35:37

busy, unintelligible comments. I had

35:40

to hold Madeline's knees quite firmly to

35:42

keep them from jerking together. Where's

35:45

that old woman, she said? I

35:48

said, she's at home. She's had a fall.

35:50

I'm here instead. So she

35:52

had been here before. She's

35:54

rough, she said. Her

35:56

voice was matter-of-fact, almost a growl, not

35:58

so nervous as I— I would have expected

36:00

from the agitation of her body. My

36:03

father had picked up a thin rod like a

36:05

knitting needle. "'Now,

36:07

this is the hard part,' he said. He

36:10

spoke in a conversational tone, milder,

36:13

I think, than any I have ever heard from him.

36:16

And the more you tighten up the harder

36:18

it will be. So just easy.

36:21

There. Easy. Good

36:24

girl. Good girl.' I

36:28

was trying to think of something to say that would

36:30

ease her or distract her. I

36:32

could see, now, what my father was

36:34

doing. Laid out on

36:36

a white cloth on the table beside him,

36:39

he had a series of rods, all

36:41

of the same length, but of

36:43

a graduated thickness. These

36:46

were what he would use, one after

36:48

the other, to open and stretch the

36:50

cervix. From my

36:52

station behind the sheeted barrier beyond the

36:54

girl's knees, I could not

36:57

see the actual intimate progress of

36:59

these instruments, but I

37:01

could feel it from the arriving waves

37:03

of pain in her body that beat

37:05

down the spasms of apprehension and

37:08

actually made her quieter. "'Where

37:11

are you from? Where did you go to

37:13

school? Do you have a job?' I

37:15

had noticed her wedding ring, but quite

37:18

possibly they all wore wedding rings. Do

37:20

you have any brothers or sisters?" Why

37:24

would she want to answer any of that, even

37:26

if she weren't in vain? She

37:28

sucked her breath back through her teeth and

37:30

widened her eyes at the ceiling. "'I

37:33

know,' I said. I know. Getting

37:36

there, my father said. You're a good

37:38

girl, good, quiet girl. Won't be long

37:40

now." I said,

37:42

"'I was going to paint this room, but I

37:44

never got around to it. If you

37:46

were going to paint it, what color would you choose?' "'Oh,'

37:50

said Madeline. A

37:53

sudden startled expulsion of breath. "'Oh,

37:59

yellow.' I thought a

38:01

light young for a light breeze. By.

38:04

The time we got to the

38:06

sickest rod Madeline had trust her

38:08

head back into the slapped cushion

38:11

stretching out her long neck and

38:13

stretching her mouth to lips wide

38:15

take over teeth. Think.

38:17

Of your favorite movie. What's your favorite

38:19

movie? A

38:21

nurse said that to me just

38:24

as I read to the unbelievable,

38:26

interminable plateau of pain and was

38:28

convinced that relief would not come,

38:30

not just. How.

38:32

Could movies exist anymore? And world.

38:35

Now. I'd said the same thing

38:37

to Madeline, and Madeleines eyes flickered

38:39

over me with the coldly distract

38:41

an expression of someone who sees

38:44

that a human being can be

38:46

about as much use as a

38:48

stopped clock. I.

38:51

Risk taking one hand off her knee

38:53

and touched her hand. I

38:55

was surprised at how quickly and

38:57

seriously she grabbed it and mash

38:59

the singers together. Some

39:01

Usaf strong Now that my

39:03

father said. Now. Or

39:06

some place. She.

39:08

Had closed her eyes. I

39:11

thought I was going to be afraid

39:13

of dying because of my mother nine

39:15

that way in childbirth, but once I

39:17

got onto that plateau, I found that

39:20

die and living for both irrelevant notions

39:22

like favorite movies. I

39:24

was stretched to the limit and convince

39:26

and I couldn't do a thing to

39:28

move. flex up like a giant egg

39:30

or a flaming planet, not make a

39:32

baby at all. It

39:34

was stuck and I was stuck

39:36

in a place and time that could

39:39

just go on forever. There was

39:41

no reason than I should ever

39:43

get out and all my protests

39:45

had already been annihilated. Now

39:48

I need to. My father said, I

39:50

need you around here. Get the basin.

39:54

i held in place the same base in

39:56

that i had seen mrs barely holding i

39:58

held it while he's I'd shaped out the

40:00

girl's womb with a clever sort of kitchen

40:03

implement. I don't mean that

40:05

it was a kitchen implement, but that

40:07

it had a slightly homely look to me.

40:11

The lower part of even a thin

40:13

young girl can look large and meaty

40:16

in this raw state. In

40:18

the days after my labor in

40:21

the maternity ward, women lay carelessly,

40:23

even defiantly, with their

40:25

fiery cuts or tears exposed,

40:28

their black-stitched wounds and sorry

40:30

flaps and big helpless haunches.

40:33

It was a sight to see. Out

40:37

of the womb now came plops of

40:39

wine, jelly, and blood, and somewhere in

40:41

there the fetus, like the

40:43

bobble in the cereal box or the prize

40:45

in the popcorn, a tiny

40:48

plastic doll as negligible as a

40:50

fingernail. I didn't look for it.

40:53

I held my head up, away from the smell. Bathroom,

40:56

my father said. There's a cover. He

40:59

meant the folded cloth that lay beside

41:01

the soiled rods. I

41:04

carried the basin along the hall to

41:06

the downstairs toilet, dumped the

41:08

contents, flushed twice, rinsed

41:10

the basin and brought it back. My

41:13

father by this time was bandaging up

41:15

the girl and giving her some instructions.

41:19

He's good at this job, I thought. My father does it

41:21

well. But his face

41:23

looked heavy, weary enough to

41:25

drop off the bones. It

41:27

occurred to me that he had wanted me here,

41:30

all through the procedure, in case

41:32

he should collapse. If

41:34

he had collapsed, I don't know what I'd have done. He

41:38

patted Madeline's legs and told her she should lie

41:40

flat. Don't try to get up for

41:42

a few minutes, he said. Have you got

41:44

your ride arranged for her? He's

41:46

supposed to have been out there all the time,

41:49

she said, in a weak but spiteful voice. He

41:51

wasn't supposed to have gone anyplace. My

41:55

father took off his smock and walked to the

41:57

window of the waiting room. You

41:59

bet he's good. He said, right there. He

42:01

let out a complicated groan, and said, Where's

42:05

the laundry basket? remembered

42:07

that it was back in the bright room where he'd been

42:09

working, came back and deposited the

42:11

smock and said to me, I'd

42:13

be very obliged if you could tidy this up.

42:17

Tidy up meant doing the sterilizing and mopping

42:19

up in general. Good,

42:21

he said, I'll say good night now. My

42:24

daughter will see you out when you're ready to go. I

42:28

was somewhat surprised to hear him say, my

42:30

daughter, instead of my name. Of

42:33

course, I'd heard him say that before, if

42:35

he had to introduce me, for instance. Still,

42:38

I was surprised. Madeline

42:41

swung her legs off the table the minute he was

42:43

out of the room. Then

42:46

she staggered and I went to help her. She said,

42:48

okay, okay. Just got off of the table

42:50

too quick. Where'd I put my skirt?

42:52

I don't want to stand around looking like this. I

42:56

got her the skirt and panties off the back

42:58

of the door, and she put them on without

43:00

help, but very shankily. I

43:03

said, you could rest a minute. Your husband will

43:05

wait. My

43:07

husband's working in the bush up near Kenora, she

43:09

said. I'm going there next week. He

43:12

found a place we can stay. Now

43:14

I laid my coat down somewhere, she said.

43:18

My favorite movie, as you ought to know, and

43:21

if I could have thought of it when the nurse asked me,

43:24

is Wild Strawberries. I

43:26

remember the moldy little theater where we used

43:28

to see all those Swedish and Japanese and

43:30

Indian and Italian movies, and

43:33

I remember that it had recently

43:35

switched over from showing carry-on movies

43:37

and Martin and Lewis, but

43:39

the name of it I can't remember. Since

43:43

you were teaching philosophy to future ministers,

43:45

your favorite movie should have been The

43:47

Seventh Seal. But was it? I

43:51

think it was Japanese, and I forget what it was

43:53

about. Do you remember those

43:55

perfect conversations we used to have when we

43:57

walked home from the theater, those couple of

43:59

months? miles, about human

44:01

love and selfishness and God and

44:04

faith and desperation. When

44:06

we got to my rooming house we had to shut up.

44:09

We had to go softly, softly up

44:11

the stairs to my room. Ah,

44:14

you would say gratefully and wonderingly as you

44:16

got in. I

44:19

would have been very nervous about bringing you here

44:21

last Christmas if we hadn't already been deep into

44:23

our fright. I would

44:26

have felt too protective of you to expose you to

44:28

my father. But in fact,

44:30

you've gone along pretty well together. You

44:33

had a discussion about some great conflict

44:35

between different orders of monks in the

44:38

seventh century, wasn't that it? The

44:40

row those monks had was about how they

44:42

should shave their heads. A

44:45

curly-headed beanpole was what he called you.

44:49

Coming from him, that was almost complimentary.

44:53

When I told him on the phone that you and I

44:55

would not be getting married after all, he said, Uh-oh, do

44:58

you think you'll ever manage to get another one? If

45:01

I'd objected to his saying that, he would

45:03

naturally have said it was a joke. Mrs.

45:08

Barry is back. She's

45:10

back in less than three weeks, though it was supposed

45:12

to have been a month. But

45:15

she has to work shorter days than she

45:17

did before. It takes her so long to

45:19

get dressed and to do her own housework

45:21

that she seldom gets here delivered by her

45:23

nephew or her nephew's wife until

45:25

around ten o'clock in the morning. Your

45:28

father looks poorly, was the first thing she said to

45:30

me. I think she's right.

45:34

Maybe he should take a rest, I said. Too

45:36

many people bothering him, she said. The

45:40

mini is out of the garage and the money is in my

45:42

bank account. What I should do

45:45

is take off, but I think, what

45:47

if we get another special? How

45:49

can Mrs. B help him? She can't use her

45:51

left hand yet, and she could never

45:53

hold on to the basin with just her right hand.

46:00

This day was after the first big snowfall.

46:03

It all happened overnight, and in the morning

46:05

the sky was clear blue, there

46:07

was no wind, and the brightness was

46:09

preposterous. I went for an

46:12

early walk under the pine trees. The

46:14

highway had already been plowed, and so had

46:16

our lane. Some cars went

46:18

by, in and out of town, as

46:21

on any other morning. Before

46:23

I went back into the house I just wanted to see

46:25

if the mini would start, and it did. I

46:28

stomped my boots free of snow outside the

46:30

back door and reminded myself that

46:32

I must put a broom out. The

46:35

kitchen had filled up with the day's blast of

46:37

light. I thought I

46:39

knew what my father would say. Out,

46:41

contemplating nature? He

46:44

was sitting at the table with his hat and coat on. Usually

46:48

by this time he had left to see his patients in

46:50

the hospital. He said, have

46:52

they got the road plowed yet? What

46:54

about the lane? I

46:56

said that both were plowed and clear. I

46:59

put the kettle on and asked if he'd like another cup

47:01

of coffee before he went out. All

47:04

right, he said, just so long as it's plowed so

47:06

I can get out. What

47:08

a day, I said. All right,

47:10

if you don't have to shovel yourself out of it. I

47:14

made the two cups of coffee, and then I

47:16

sat down, facing the window and the incoming light.

47:19

He sat at the end of the table. He'd

47:21

shifted his chair so that the light was at

47:23

his back. I couldn't see

47:25

what the expression on his face was, but

47:27

his breathing kept me company as usual. I

47:31

started to tell my father about myself. I

47:34

hadn't intended to do this at all. I

47:37

had meant to say something about my going away.

47:40

But I opened my mouth and things began

47:42

to come out that I heard with equal

47:44

amounts of dismay and satisfaction. The

47:47

way you hear things you say when you're drunk. You

47:51

never knew I had a baby, I said. I

47:53

had it on the 7th of July in Ottawa. I'd

47:56

been thinking how ironical that was. Hold

48:00

him that the baby had been adopted right

48:02

away and I didn't know whether it had

48:04

been a boy or girl that I had

48:06

asked not to be towed. Nice not to

48:09

have to see if. I

48:11

stayed with. Just said you member me

48:13

Speaking about my friend Yossi. Seasonings

48:16

and now. But she was all

48:18

alone than in her parents' house.

48:20

Her parents had been posted to

48:22

South Africa Cows a godsend. I

48:25

told him you were the father of the

48:27

baby in case you wondered. And it, since

48:29

you and I were already engaged, Steven officially

48:32

engage. I thought that all we had to

48:34

do was get married. But.

48:36

You thought differently. He

48:39

sent to we had to find a

48:41

doctor a doctor who would give me

48:43

an abortion. He.

48:45

Did not remind me, but I was never supposed

48:47

to say that word in his house. I

48:50

told him the you had said we

48:52

could not just go ahead and get

48:54

married because anybody who can count would

48:56

know that I'd been pregnant before the

48:58

wedding. We. Could not get

49:01

married until I was definitely not pregnant

49:03

anymore. Otherwise, you

49:05

might lose your job at the

49:07

Theological college. They can bring you

49:09

up before a committee that my

49:11

drugs he was morally unset. Morally

49:14

unfit for the job of teaching and

49:16

ministers. And even supposing this

49:18

did not happen, that you are

49:20

only reprimanded or we're not even

49:22

reprimanded, he would still never be promoted.

49:25

It would be a stain on

49:27

your record. Even if nobody said

49:29

anything to you, Can. Would have

49:31

something on you can. You could not

49:33

stand that the new students coming in

49:35

would hear about you from the older

49:37

ones. Can be jokes passed off. Surely

49:40

not, I'd said. Oh

49:43

yes, never underestimate the mean this

49:45

there isn't people's souls and for

49:47

me to it would be devastating.

49:49

The wives controlled so much the

49:52

older professors wives they'd never let

49:54

me forget, even when they were

49:56

being kind, especially. When. They were

49:58

being kind. But.

50:00

We could just pick up and go somewhere

50:03

else. I said somewhere where nobody would know.

50:06

They'd. Know there's always somebody who

50:08

make sure that people know. Besides.

50:11

That would mean you'd have to start at

50:13

the bottom. Again, you'd have to start at

50:16

a lower salary. A pitiful salary. And how

50:18

could we manage with the baby? In that

50:20

case, I was

50:22

astonished at these arguments which did not

50:24

seem to be consistent with the ideas

50:27

of the person. I loved, the books

50:29

we had read, the movies, we had

50:31

seen, the things we have talked about.

50:33

I asked if that meant nothing to

50:35

set. Of course it. This

50:38

was life. Whose

50:40

went like Now January or February. We

50:43

were walking away from the rooming house.

50:45

I threw my diamond ring on the

50:47

street and rolled under a parked car.

50:50

But the battle dragged on. After that.

50:52

I was supposed to find out about

50:54

an abortion from a friend who had

50:56

a friend who is rumored to have

50:59

had one. Had given and

51:01

I said I'd do it. but then I

51:03

lied I said the doctor moved away. Then

51:05

I admitted line i can't do an accent.

51:09

But. Was at because of the baby. Never

51:12

was because I believed I was right in

51:14

the argument. At content

51:16

at contempt on us are scrambling to

51:18

get under the parked car with details

51:21

of your overcoat slapping around your buttocks,

51:23

you're climbing in the snow to find

51:25

the ring in the were. So relieved

51:27

when you found you were ready to

51:30

hug me In last thinking I'd be

51:32

relieved to and we'd make up on

51:34

the spot. I told

51:36

you you would never do anything

51:39

admirable in your whole life. Past

51:43

sniffs, Thought

51:48

that was the end for we did

51:50

pick up but we didn't forgive each

51:52

other. and we didn't take steps

51:54

and then it got to be too late

51:56

and we just walk away from each other

51:58

and that was a relief us both, and

52:01

also a kind of victory." So,

52:04

isn't that ironic, I said to my

52:07

father, considering? I

52:10

could hear Mrs. Barry outside, stomping her boots, so

52:12

I said this in a hurry. My

52:14

father had sat all the time

52:16

rigid with embarrassment, so I thought,

52:19

or with profound distaste. Mrs.

52:22

Barry opened the door, saying, ought to get a

52:24

broom out there. Then she cried

52:26

out, What are you doing sitting there? What's the

52:29

matter with you? Can't you see the man's dead?

52:32

He wasn't dead. What she had

52:35

seen, and what I would have seen, even

52:37

against the light, if I had not been

52:39

avoiding looking at him, whilst I told my

52:41

tale, was that he

52:43

had suffered a blinding and paralyzing stroke.

52:46

He sat tilted slightly forward, the

52:48

table pressing into the firm curve

52:50

of his stomach. When

52:53

we tried to move him from his chair, we

52:55

managed only to jar him, so that

52:57

his head came down on the table

52:59

with a majestic reluctance. His

53:01

hat stayed on, and his coffee

53:04

cup stayed in place a couple of

53:06

inches from his unseeing eye. It

53:08

was still about half full. I

53:11

said we couldn't do anything with him. He was too heavy.

53:14

I went to the phone and called the hospital to get

53:16

one of the other doctors to drive out. There's

53:19

no ambulance yet in this town. Mrs.

53:21

B paid no attention to what I said. She

53:24

gave me the look of a spitting cat and

53:26

kept pulling at my father's clothes, undoing

53:28

buttons and yanking at the overcoat and

53:30

grunting and whimpering with the exertion. A

53:34

doctor came. He and I together were

53:36

able to pull my father out to the car

53:38

and get him into the back seat. I

53:40

got in beside him to keep him from toppling

53:42

over. The sound of his breathing

53:45

was more pre-emptory than ever, and

53:47

seemed to be criticizing whatever we did. But

53:50

you could take hold of him now and shove him

53:52

around and manage his body as you

53:54

had to, and this seemed very

53:56

odd. Mrs.

53:59

B had fallen. fallen back and quieted down as

54:01

soon as she saw the other doctor. She

54:04

didn't even follow us out of the house to see

54:06

my father loaded into the car. This

54:09

afternoon he died at about five o'clock.

54:12

I was told it was very lucky for

54:14

all concerned. I

54:17

was full of other things to say just when

54:19

Mrs. Barry came in. I was going

54:21

to say to my father, what if the law

54:24

should change? The law might change soon, I was

54:26

going to say maybe not, but it might. He'd

54:29

be out of business then, or out of one

54:31

part of his business. Would that make a great

54:33

difference to him? Would he find

54:35

some other risk, some other not to

54:37

make in his life, some other underground

54:39

and problematic act of mercy? What

54:42

could I expect him to answer? Speaking

54:45

of business, that is none of yours.

54:49

But if that law could change, other

54:51

things could change. I'm thinking about

54:53

you now, it could happen that

54:56

you wouldn't be ashamed to marry a pregnant woman.

54:58

There'd be no shame to it. Move

55:00

ahead a few years, just a few years, and it

55:02

could be a celebration. The pregnant bride

55:05

is garlanded and led to the altar,

55:07

even in the chapel, of

55:09

the theological college. R.

55:14

There's enough money in my father's bank account

55:16

to cover his funeral expenses. Enough

55:19

to bury him, as they say, but there isn't

55:21

much more. There are no

55:23

stock certificates in his safe deposit box

55:25

and no record of investments. Nothing.

55:28

No bequest to the hospital or to his

55:30

church. Most shocking of all,

55:32

there is no money left to Mrs. Barry.

55:35

The house and its contents are mine, and

55:38

that's all there is. I have my

55:40

five thousand dollars. My

55:43

father's lawyer seems embarrassed, painfully embarrassed,

55:45

and worried about this state of

55:47

affairs. Perhaps he thinks I

55:50

might suspect him of misconduct. Try

55:52

to blacken his name, he wants to

55:54

know if there's a safe in my

55:57

father's house, any

55:59

hiding place. at all for a large

56:01

amount of cash. I

56:03

say there isn't. He tries to suggest

56:05

to me, in such a discreet

56:07

and roundabout way that I don't know at first

56:10

what he's talking about, that there

56:12

might be reasons for my father's wanting

56:14

to keep the amount of his earnings

56:16

a secret. A large amount

56:19

of cash hold away somewhere is therefore a possibility.

56:23

Perhaps he could go home and take a very good look,

56:25

he said. Don't neglect the obvious places,

56:28

to be in a cookie tin or in

56:30

a box under the bed, surprising

56:32

the places people can pick, even

56:34

the most sensible and intelligent people.

56:38

Or in a pillow slip, he's saying as I go out

56:40

the door. A

56:43

woman on the phone wants to speak to the doctor.

56:46

I'm sorry, he's dead. Have

56:49

I got the right doctor? Yes, but

56:51

I'm sorry, he's dead. Is

56:53

there anyone? Does he by any chance

56:56

have a partner I could talk to? Is

56:58

there anybody else there? No,

57:00

no partner. Could

57:02

you give me any other number I could call? Isn't

57:05

there some other doctor that can know? I

57:07

haven't any number. There isn't anybody that

57:10

I know of. You must

57:12

know what this is about, it's very crucial. There

57:14

are very special circumstances, I'm sorry.

57:17

There isn't any problem about money. Please

57:20

try to think of somebody. If you do

57:22

think of somebody later on, could you give me a call?

57:24

I'll leave you my number. You

57:26

shouldn't do that. I don't

57:28

care, I trust you. Anyway, it's not for

57:30

myself. I know everybody must say

57:32

that, but really it's not. It's for my

57:35

daughter who's in a very bad condition. Mentally,

57:37

she's in a very bad condition. I'm

57:41

sorry. If you knew what I

57:43

went through to get this number, you would try to help me.

57:46

Sorry. Please. I'm

57:48

sorry. Perhaps

57:51

you didn't always charge, I say to the

57:53

lawyer. Perhaps you worked for nothing sometimes. The

57:56

lawyer's getting used to me now, he says, perhaps.

58:00

Or possibly an actual charity, I say, a

58:03

charity he supported without keeping any record

58:05

of it. The

58:07

lawyer holds my eyes for a moment. Well,

58:10

I haven't dug up the cellar floor yet, I say, and

58:13

he smiles wincingly at this levity. Mrs.

58:18

Barry hasn't given her notice. She just hasn't shown

58:20

up. There was nothing in

58:22

particular for her to do since the funeral was

58:25

in the church and the reception was in the

58:27

church hall. She didn't come

58:29

to the funeral. None of her family came. So

58:32

many people were there that I wouldn't have noticed if

58:34

somebody hadn't said to me, I didn't

58:36

see any of the Barry connections, did you? I phoned

58:39

her several days afterwards and she said I never went to

58:42

the church because I had to about a cold. I

58:45

said that that wasn't why I'd called. I

58:47

said I could manage quite well, but wondered what she

58:50

planned to do. Oh, I

58:52

don't see no need for me to come back there now. I

58:55

said that she should come and get something from the house, a

58:57

keepsake. I wanted to tell her

58:59

I felt bad about the money, but I didn't know how

59:02

to say that. She said I got

59:04

some stuff I left there. I'll come out when

59:06

I can. She

59:08

came out the next morning. The

59:10

things she had to collect were mops and

59:12

pails and scrub brushes and a clothes basket.

59:15

It was hard to believe she would care about

59:18

retrieving articles like these, and hard

59:20

to believe she wanted them for sentimental reasons, but

59:22

maybe she did. They were things

59:24

she had used for years, during all her years in

59:26

this house. Is there anything

59:28

else I said for a keepsake? She

59:31

looked around the kitchen chewing on her bottom lip.

59:33

She might have been chewing back a smile. I don't

59:36

think there's nothing here I'd have much use for,

59:38

she said. I

59:40

had a check ready for her. I just needed to write

59:42

the amount. I hadn't been able to

59:44

decide how much of the $5,000 to share with her. A

59:47

thousand? Now

59:49

that seemed shameful. I thought I'd better

59:51

double it. I got out

59:53

the check, which I had hidden in a drawer. I

59:55

found a pen. I made it out for $4,000. This

59:59

is for you. you," I said, and thank you for everything. She

1:00:03

took the check in her hand and glanced at it

1:00:05

and stuffed it in her pocket. I

1:00:07

thought maybe she hadn't been able to read how much

1:00:09

it was for. Then

1:00:11

I saw the darkening flush, the

1:00:13

tide of embarrassment, the difficulty

1:00:16

of being grateful. She

1:00:18

managed to pick up all the things she was

1:00:20

taking, using her one good arm. I

1:00:23

opened the door for her. I was so

1:00:25

anxious for her to say something more, that

1:00:27

I almost said, sorry, that's all. Instead

1:00:30

I said, your elbow's not better yet. He'll

1:00:34

never be better, she said. She

1:00:36

ducked her head as if she were afraid of

1:00:38

another of my kisses. She said, well, thanks very

1:00:40

much, goodbye. I

1:00:43

watched her making her way to the car. But

1:00:46

it was not the usual car. The

1:00:49

thought crossed my mind that she might have a

1:00:51

new employer, bad arm or not. A

1:00:54

new and rich employer. That

1:00:56

would account for her haste, her cranky

1:00:58

embarrassment. But it was

1:01:00

the nephew's wife who got out to help with the load. I

1:01:03

waved, but she was too busy stowing the mops

1:01:06

and bails. Gorgeous

1:01:08

car, I called out, because I thought

1:01:10

that was a compliment both women would

1:01:12

appreciate. I didn't

1:01:14

know what make it was, but it was new

1:01:16

and large and glamorous. A

1:01:18

silvery lilac color. Shivering

1:01:21

in my indoor clothes, I stood there and

1:01:23

waved to the car out of sight. I

1:01:26

couldn't settle down to do anything after that. I

1:01:30

decided to go out skiing. I

1:01:33

put on the old wooden skis that my father

1:01:35

used to wear in the days when the back

1:01:37

roads were not plowed out in winter, and

1:01:40

he might have to go across the fields to

1:01:42

deliver a baby or take out an appendix. There

1:01:45

were only cross straps to hold your feet in place.

1:01:48

I skied back to the gravel pits at the

1:01:50

back of our property. The slopes

1:01:53

had been padded with grass over the years,

1:01:55

and now they're covered with snow. There

1:01:57

were dog tracks and bird tracks, but no

1:01:59

snow. sign of humans. I

1:02:02

went up and down, up and down. I

1:02:04

fell now and then on the fresh, plentiful

1:02:06

snow, and between one moment of

1:02:09

falling and the next of getting to my feet,

1:02:11

I found out that I knew something.

1:02:15

I knew where the money had gone. Gorgeous

1:02:18

car. A charity.

1:02:22

And four thousand dollars out of five.

1:02:27

At that moment, I've been happy.

1:02:29

I have the

1:02:31

feeling of seeing money thrown over a bridge

1:02:33

or high up into the air. Money,

1:02:36

hopes, love letters. All

1:02:38

such things can be tossed into the air. The

1:02:41

thing I can't imagine is my father caving

1:02:44

into blackmail. Particularly not

1:02:46

to people who wouldn't be very credible

1:02:48

or clever. Not when

1:02:50

the whole town seems to be on his side. Or

1:02:52

at least, on the side of silence. What

1:02:56

I can imagine, though, is a grand,

1:02:59

perverse gesture. The forestall

1:03:01

demand, maybe, or just a show

1:03:03

he didn't care. Looking forward

1:03:05

to the lawyer's shock and to my trying

1:03:07

even harder to figure him out, once

1:03:10

he was dead. No,

1:03:12

I don't think he'd be thinking of that. I

1:03:15

don't think I'd have come into his thoughts so much. Never

1:03:18

so much as I'd like to believe. What

1:03:22

I've been shying away from is that

1:03:24

it could have been done for love. Never

1:03:27

rule that out. I

1:03:30

climbed out of the gravel pit, and as soon as

1:03:32

I came out on the fields, the

1:03:34

wind hit me. Wind was

1:03:37

blowing snow over the resolute dog tracks

1:03:40

and the faint circles made by a

1:03:42

skittering vole and the trail

1:03:44

that will likely be the last ever to

1:03:46

be broken by my father's skis. Dear

1:03:49

Robin, what

1:03:52

should be the last thing I say to you? Goodbye

1:03:55

and good luck. I

1:03:57

send you my love. What

1:04:00

if people really did that, sent

1:04:02

their love through the mail to get rid of it? What

1:04:05

would it be that they sent? A

1:04:07

heap of roses still more fragrant than

1:04:09

rotten, a package wrapped

1:04:12

in bloody newspaper that nobody would

1:04:14

want to open. Take

1:04:16

care of yourself. Remember,

1:04:19

the present King of France is bald."

1:04:26

That was Andrea Lexus reading Before the

1:04:28

Change by Alice Monroe. The

1:04:30

story was published in The New Yorker in August of 1998

1:04:33

and was included in Monroe's collection, The Love of

1:04:35

a Good Woman, which came out later that year.

1:04:41

I'm Richard Lawson. I'm Chris Murphy. And

1:04:43

I'm Hillary Busev. We are from Vanity

1:04:45

Fair's Still Watching podcast, a weekly television

1:04:47

podcast that obsesses over all things TV.

1:04:50

Chris, Hillary and I are at your service to

1:04:52

recap and analyze the best stuff out there and

1:04:54

what you should be watching. Plus, we're talking to

1:04:56

the stars and showrunners about how exactly it all

1:04:58

got made. New episodes of Still Watching

1:05:01

Drop weekly wherever you listen to podcasts. So

1:05:08

Andre, maybe we

1:05:10

can just start with the form of

1:05:13

the story, you know, this epistolary structure.

1:05:16

I mean, Monroe wrote quite a few

1:05:18

epistolary stories actually, but

1:05:20

this is, I don't think it's

1:05:22

unique, but it's one of very few in which

1:05:25

all the letters are from one person. It's not

1:05:27

an exchange of letters. What

1:05:29

do you think is the appeal for a writer

1:05:31

of this kind of narrative structure? Well,

1:05:34

I can speak in general. It's

1:05:37

great to be able to assume a voice

1:05:40

and to have a character

1:05:44

that knows and doesn't know at the same

1:05:46

time. And

1:05:49

usually it's progressive knowledge, June 15th, 1962,

1:05:51

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And

1:05:55

then August 16th, 1962. Oh,

1:05:58

actually I was wrong. you get to progress

1:06:01

a narrative through a

1:06:03

kind of enlightenment that happens.

1:06:06

This one is tricky, tricky, tricky,

1:06:08

right from the start. Dear

1:06:11

R, we don't know who R is. And

1:06:15

then we basically discover

1:06:17

that this isn't epistolary in

1:06:19

the sense that this is going to

1:06:21

be sent. She knows

1:06:24

she's not sending it. She

1:06:26

doesn't know where to send it if she wanted to send

1:06:28

it. So this is very

1:06:30

much faux epistolary in the

1:06:32

sense that this is someone writing a diary

1:06:35

by other means. So it's

1:06:38

incredibly clever to choose dear

1:06:40

R, not knowing the name,

1:06:43

all of this not knowing, including

1:06:46

in fact, it's not being a real letter. Yeah,

1:06:49

and we never know the narrator's name. No,

1:06:52

which is extraordinary. She never finds her

1:06:54

letters. This is a voice talking

1:06:57

to a voice but is in fact talking to

1:06:59

herself. And writing

1:07:02

to herself. So writing to herself, you're

1:07:04

right. By it being letters, these are

1:07:06

written documents. She's not

1:07:09

just thinking. The thoughts

1:07:11

are more organized. And by

1:07:13

sticking dear R at the beginning, she's

1:07:16

telling us that these things are written with a

1:07:18

reader in mind, even if he's never going to

1:07:20

read them. They're written

1:07:23

to someone and for someone and

1:07:26

might not be exactly the same things that she

1:07:28

would write if she were writing in a diary

1:07:30

or to herself. On

1:07:33

one level, I find it also fascinating

1:07:35

that there are two sets

1:07:38

of ignorance here in some ways

1:07:40

because we know that

1:07:42

the narrator doesn't know certain things and

1:07:44

is only made aware of them as

1:07:46

we go along. But then

1:07:48

we're also aware, I think, of an

1:07:51

authorial voice, like when

1:07:54

she repeats the Bertrand Russell quote,

1:07:56

when she's insisting on this culture and

1:07:59

that culture. It feels like there's

1:08:01

an Alice Monroe tussling with whoever this

1:08:03

narrator is at the same time. It's

1:08:06

a strange feeling that I got that there

1:08:08

are dual minds at work in this story,

1:08:10

but it's a deeply unsettling story. I mean,

1:08:12

I said to you that the

1:08:15

way that you don't know what is

1:08:17

going on is very much like a

1:08:19

Henry James story for me. You

1:08:22

know, I have a problem with people calling

1:08:24

her, you know, our check-up because

1:08:26

I frankly feel that she's as much

1:08:28

our Kafka or our Henry

1:08:30

James or our Borges in

1:08:32

how she deals with ideas. Actually,

1:08:35

she probably talked about the Monroevian in

1:08:38

fact, because it is very sui generis.

1:08:41

Yeah, yeah. You

1:08:43

know what we have going on

1:08:45

in terms of ignorance or knowing,

1:08:47

it's complicated on so many levels

1:08:50

because there's the moment first

1:08:52

when she says, how could I not have known

1:08:54

this? You know, how could I have never

1:08:58

realized and maybe on some level she didn't realize

1:09:00

who knows? And then

1:09:02

we have the level of, you know, knowing

1:09:04

is different from yapping, what her father has.

1:09:08

But I think what one thing that

1:09:12

we never know and never will

1:09:14

know is what is

1:09:16

driving the father. You know,

1:09:18

we hear about this letter

1:09:20

writer, the narrator's experience. We hear

1:09:22

her opinion that she feels abortion

1:09:25

should be legalized. And

1:09:30

yet she refused to have one because he's, Robin

1:09:33

suggested that she did and she did

1:09:35

not. It seems she refused to have it

1:09:38

simply to tell him that he was wrong

1:09:40

and what he was asking, you

1:09:42

know, almost to prove a point

1:09:44

that he was being absurd

1:09:46

or inhuman. But

1:09:50

I think we never know why the father does this. And

1:09:56

there are so many possible reasons. We

1:09:58

don't know if it's humanitarian. We don't know if

1:10:00

it's because he lost his wife to childbirth,

1:10:03

he wants to spare other women that pain,

1:10:05

we don't know if it's benevolent

1:10:07

in that way. In

1:10:10

one letter, the narrator says something about if

1:10:12

he didn't have this, he might have found

1:10:14

another way to put

1:10:16

a knot in his life or assume

1:10:18

risk. But

1:10:21

it's an awfully strange way to deal

1:10:23

with his wife's death in childbirth by

1:10:27

aborting children for women

1:10:29

in dire situations. So

1:10:32

is that constantly saying, my

1:10:34

wife was worth more than these things that come

1:10:36

out? It's a

1:10:39

very, very odd dynamic if that's the

1:10:41

case, if he's aborting these

1:10:43

women as a kind of testimony for his

1:10:45

love for his wife. Very strange. Yeah,

1:10:47

well he doesn't really have much love for his daughter. No.

1:10:51

He seems to resent her presence

1:10:53

and so on, and he hasn't forgiven her

1:10:55

for in a sense killing her mother, his

1:10:57

wife. But do we know

1:11:00

that or do we just know that she

1:11:02

doesn't feel his affection for her? Yeah, well

1:11:04

that's a good question. Is

1:11:06

she interpreting the father for us? Was

1:11:08

the father like that? It's

1:11:11

hard to say. We're very much

1:11:13

stuck in her perspective

1:11:15

vis-a-vis the father and also, although

1:11:18

I think Mrs. Berry would be

1:11:20

universally accepted as a problematic

1:11:23

character to put it politely, she's

1:11:26

probably problematic as described by our

1:11:28

narrator. Is the narrator

1:11:30

suspicious immediately of Mrs.

1:11:33

Berry's relationship to her father and therefore

1:11:35

jealous? What's going on

1:11:37

in her descriptions of Mrs. Berry? It's

1:11:40

very, very shaky ground and I feel sort

1:11:42

of, if you go online and read

1:11:45

people's response to the

1:11:48

story, mostly they're looking for

1:11:50

ways to make it grounded. So

1:11:52

it's about Anna Jameson, not

1:11:56

a suffragette but a woman's writer, that is

1:11:58

mentioned here. Or it's about Bertie. Russell.

1:12:00

You know, you want to find some anchor

1:12:02

to make it a

1:12:04

story that, well, is it feminist

1:12:07

or is it philosophical? But

1:12:09

I don't think that it's a story that

1:12:11

allows itself to be read with any kind

1:12:13

of sureness. Even when we

1:12:15

talk about something as primary as

1:12:18

abortion, you could take the

1:12:20

story in the horror of how the abortion is

1:12:23

described as a plea

1:12:25

for a legalization and a

1:12:27

regularization of abortion. But

1:12:29

she refuses to have one. Even

1:12:31

that is kind of not given to us.

1:12:33

And I think it's appropriate because what the

1:12:35

story does in a way is it

1:12:38

reproduces this feeling that you have when

1:12:40

a child is coming. You don't know

1:12:42

the child. You haven't decided the child's

1:12:44

name. You don't know if the child

1:12:46

will be born with heads, hands, and

1:12:48

feet. You are just in

1:12:51

a state of unknowing. And this story,

1:12:53

in a way, is

1:12:55

a very good objectification of

1:12:57

that state of anticipation,

1:13:00

anxiety, and unknowing that precedes the

1:13:02

coming of the child. Yeah.

1:13:06

I think you're right to say the story

1:13:08

is not a political story. It's not a

1:13:11

story with an agenda. It's not trying to

1:13:13

convince the reader of anything. As a

1:13:17

reader, you walk away from it

1:13:19

feeling, you know, of course,

1:13:21

that this situation is appalling. No girls

1:13:23

would have to go through this in

1:13:25

this way. At least, that's how I

1:13:28

walk away from it. But

1:13:30

you can't say that there is

1:13:32

an argument being made.

1:13:35

No. It's very specific. It's about

1:13:38

this specific doctor, this

1:13:40

specific daughter, and her

1:13:42

specific experience. Right. And

1:13:44

we don't even know who's the father of Madeleine's

1:13:46

child is, by the way. Her

1:13:48

husband's in Kenora, preparing a place for them.

1:13:51

But who's the guy that's waiting to pick

1:13:53

her up? Yeah, exactly. Whose child has just

1:13:55

been aborted? Don't know. It's

1:13:57

really about the uncertainty.

1:14:00

We were talking about the

1:14:03

father's sort of seeming distaste for

1:14:05

the daughter, which we don't know what's

1:14:07

driving it. We don't know what he's actually feeling. But

1:14:10

it does raise a long-lasting

1:14:12

Monroe theme, which is

1:14:15

this absolute hatred

1:14:17

of pretension, of what seems like pretension,

1:14:20

how one's supposed to be down

1:14:22

to earth and real and not

1:14:24

have these highfalutin thoughts or

1:14:27

ambitions. Really he

1:14:30

disapproves of the fact that she's gone

1:14:32

off to get

1:14:34

college degrees, which he says are

1:14:36

unnegotiable. He says she has

1:14:38

too much education and not enough ordinary

1:14:40

brains. And

1:14:44

he just thinks she puts on airs. He

1:14:46

just doesn't like her. That's what

1:14:48

comes through or that's what she feels. And

1:14:52

then there's this moment when

1:14:54

he gives her the check, which

1:14:56

is actually a significant some $5,000. Yes.

1:14:59

Yeah, it would have been a lot. Today's dollars is about $50,000. And

1:15:03

she interprets that as him basically paying her

1:15:05

to go away. We

1:15:08

never get a moment of affection between

1:15:10

them. She doesn't feel she can give him

1:15:12

a kiss when she arrives home. She's

1:15:14

just come from an intensely

1:15:17

traumatic experience, not only

1:15:19

losing her relationship with

1:15:22

her fiance, but going

1:15:25

through pregnancy and childbirth alone, giving

1:15:27

up the child. She's

1:15:30

fresh from that. It's early fall,

1:15:32

I think when she arrives and this happened

1:15:34

in July. She's

1:15:36

in a very vulnerable state and

1:15:38

yet there's just nothing. There's no warmth

1:15:41

for her in that

1:15:43

household at all. But there

1:15:45

is a counter to that. And

1:15:47

it's in the mention of wild strawberries,

1:15:50

the Bergman. It's Victor Shustrum,

1:15:53

another film director that acted beautifully in

1:15:55

it, but he's old and

1:15:57

beautifully an old man going back

1:15:59

to... a place in the woods

1:16:01

where he had spent summers and

1:16:04

remembering that past life.

1:16:07

And there's a great deal of

1:16:10

sadness as well as

1:16:12

a remembering of the beauty of the

1:16:14

past. And if

1:16:16

we think of the one old

1:16:18

man that's in this story, it

1:16:21

would be the father. And

1:16:24

so very obliquely, if you know

1:16:26

wild strawberries and you think of

1:16:28

the father as being like the

1:16:30

Victor Shostram character, then there

1:16:33

is affection there. But

1:16:36

also if in her

1:16:38

looking back, if she's actually like

1:16:41

the Victor Shostram character in wild strawberries,

1:16:44

she's anticipating and looking back on

1:16:46

her own life, perhaps ultimately with

1:16:48

some tenderness. And at the end

1:16:50

that begins to

1:16:52

happen. There is the freedom

1:16:54

after she has given away the

1:16:56

money. There is the possibility that

1:16:58

love is at issue

1:17:00

in terms of what the father's relationship

1:17:03

to Mrs. Berry is. There

1:17:05

is the possibility of love to

1:17:07

cool, just love as a guiding force,

1:17:09

which of course it is in wild

1:17:11

strawberries. Yeah, I

1:17:14

mean interestingly she is the one who has just

1:17:16

come home for summers. She's sent away to school

1:17:18

at nine or ten and

1:17:20

a home sitting by

1:17:22

the path watching patients arrive

1:17:25

in the summers. I

1:17:28

do note that the one

1:17:31

moment of kindness the

1:17:33

father expresses is with

1:17:35

Madeline. It's not with his daughter.

1:17:37

It's when he says she's a good girl,

1:17:39

she's a good quiet girl, he's encouraging her.

1:17:41

And there is

1:17:44

never, never a moment of tenderness

1:17:46

like that with his own daughter.

1:17:48

Even that is

1:17:51

a double-edged sword

1:17:53

because he may be shushing her, given

1:17:56

the procedure and not wanting her to

1:17:58

scream out. And so calling

1:18:01

her a good girl for being quiet

1:18:03

is rather pointed in that situation. I

1:18:06

take it as a kindness. I take it as a kind

1:18:08

of you're all right, everything is going to be all right,

1:18:10

you're a good girl. But it's very

1:18:13

possible to take it as trying to

1:18:15

get her to be quiet so that

1:18:17

they are not discovered. Right.

1:18:21

That's another strain that's threaded throughout

1:18:23

this story, which is this hypocrisy.

1:18:28

The hypocrisy of Robin saying, I

1:18:30

can't marry you because we've

1:18:33

clearly had premarital sex and I'll be

1:18:35

judged immoral and I'll never have a

1:18:37

career. And in saying this

1:18:39

and doing this, this is the most immoral

1:18:41

thing he's done in his life, you

1:18:44

know, and you know, by his standards

1:18:46

with the church suggesting that he has to have

1:18:48

an abortion is even

1:18:51

worse. For him to

1:18:53

do that at that

1:18:55

time is incredibly

1:18:58

perverse given his

1:19:00

professed religiousness. The

1:19:03

church is of course anti-abortion and

1:19:06

he, as someone who wants to look as

1:19:08

if he's a good human, a proper

1:19:11

person to teach at a theological

1:19:13

college, is doing something that

1:19:15

would be akin to evil in

1:19:17

that environment. So it's a really weird

1:19:20

moment with Robin. Robin is, she's

1:19:22

right about him. I don't think

1:19:24

he's ever going to amount to

1:19:26

much because he's pusillanimous. Yeah, yeah,

1:19:28

he's weak. He's morally weak. He

1:19:31

can't stand up to his own actions. So

1:19:35

when we look at it in terms of the

1:19:37

morality, Mrs. Barry, is she

1:19:39

good? Does she provide tenderness

1:19:41

to the father? Is she the

1:19:43

father's lover or is

1:19:45

she simply someone who's potentially a

1:19:48

blackmailer of the father, someone who

1:19:50

has her hooks in him? Whether

1:19:53

someone is good or bad, it's

1:19:56

very shifting sands throughout the story.

1:19:58

I think Robin is probably the only one that you

1:20:00

would say, you know what, you're a dick. I

1:20:05

mean, the father can be, but, and

1:20:07

Mrs. Berry, I mean, she's quite, quite

1:20:09

evil in her own way.

1:20:12

Yes, yes. I mean, what do you think of her? What is

1:20:14

going on there? Part

1:20:16

of my initial reaction to the

1:20:18

reading was such a revulsion

1:20:21

with that woman, the way she grabs

1:20:23

the check, the way you see the

1:20:25

new car and you know exactly what's

1:20:27

going on with the new car. And

1:20:30

yet she still grasps at the $4,000 that are given to her. As

1:20:34

you say, it's a lot of money in 1960. Yeah,

1:20:38

I think she's dastardly. And actually

1:20:40

Madeline says, you know, the old woman is

1:20:42

rough. So she

1:20:44

feels like a very

1:20:46

unpleasant character. But then

1:20:49

I asked myself, well, is the

1:20:51

narrator jealous of the closeness that

1:20:53

the father has with her? There

1:20:56

is an element of wanting to be in

1:20:58

the office, of wanting to do this with

1:21:01

her father. And it

1:21:03

doesn't mean that I, in the end, think

1:21:05

Mrs. Berry is nicer than

1:21:07

she's been presented. But it

1:21:09

makes me question the

1:21:11

nature of the narrator's view

1:21:14

of Mrs. Berry and

1:21:16

whether she's being entirely honest about the

1:21:18

woman or not. Right. I

1:21:20

mean, there's the childhood moment where she says, why other

1:21:23

people don't eat with their maids. Mrs. Berry

1:21:25

eating with us. Yes,

1:21:27

that's true. That's true.

1:21:29

It's very clear that Mrs. Berry has a complicated

1:21:32

standing in the household. That

1:21:35

is not the expected one. You

1:21:37

would suspect, would you not, that

1:21:39

the relationship between Mrs.

1:21:41

Berry and her father is

1:21:44

sexual. You know, when

1:21:46

Mrs. Berry reports that she's moving around

1:21:49

drawers and stuff in the living room and

1:21:51

her father says nobody told you to move

1:21:54

anything around. There's

1:21:56

a complicity between Mrs. Berry and the

1:21:58

father that feels. like

1:22:00

their intimates. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But

1:22:03

why do you think Mrs. Berry does this

1:22:05

whole act with the basin and grimacing and

1:22:07

running away, which the daughter assumes is

1:22:10

an act, is fake, and that she

1:22:12

actually really made a point of

1:22:14

making it clear what was happening? Perhaps,

1:22:16

you know, it's a power struggle between these two

1:22:19

women in the household over who

1:22:21

is more important than who has dominance,

1:22:24

and so perhaps it's Mrs. Berry showing

1:22:26

off. Yes, but

1:22:28

there's another moment that is very significant

1:22:30

between the two, which is Mrs.

1:22:32

Berry saying that, you know, all

1:22:35

of her relatives have died with dark

1:22:37

hair. Even in the coffin, their

1:22:39

hair is still black. And then

1:22:41

you discover she's dyeing her hair. Yeah.

1:22:44

So there is a

1:22:46

moment of Mrs. Berry

1:22:48

being aware of

1:22:50

her appearance that

1:22:52

is also kind of puzzling.

1:22:54

On the one hand, okay, she's

1:22:57

being hypocritical, but

1:22:59

there's also who is she being

1:23:01

hypocritical for? Who is she

1:23:03

dyeing her hair for? It

1:23:05

does feel like there's a very odd dynamic

1:23:08

between the three of them once

1:23:10

the narrator comes back to her home,

1:23:13

which is not her home, although she manages to get

1:23:15

the house out of the father. Yeah. Well,

1:23:18

she didn't try for it. Let's

1:23:20

jump to that ending, because,

1:23:23

you know, Mrs. Berry's triumph, she's gotten all the

1:23:25

money for whatever reasons,

1:23:28

for reasons we'll never know for

1:23:30

sure. And suddenly

1:23:32

the narrator is the happiest she's ever

1:23:35

been. You know, she's free, she's liberated.

1:23:38

Why does she feel that euphoria? For

1:23:42

me, if I had to guess, and I guess, you

1:23:44

know, the whole thing about this story is that you

1:23:46

are guessing, it's that

1:23:48

the weight of the secrecy,

1:23:51

the weight of the resentment,

1:23:54

the weight of the

1:23:56

feeling, no love from the

1:23:58

father. and also

1:24:01

the weight of the money. She's liberated

1:24:03

from the things that

1:24:05

the father represents, abortion,

1:24:08

money, concern for how others

1:24:11

are viewing her, even in

1:24:13

the end as she tells the father about

1:24:15

her having given up the baby for adoption,

1:24:19

even that she's liberated from

1:24:21

because he's dead. You

1:24:23

know how people talk about how horrible

1:24:25

it is to have your home catch

1:24:28

fire and to lose everything, and

1:24:30

at the same time, the next minute they'll

1:24:32

tell you, yes, but God, what a liberation.

1:24:35

All these things are no longer

1:24:37

an anchor to me. And

1:24:39

it feels a little bit like one of those moments. With

1:24:41

the death of the father comes the

1:24:43

death of all of the concerns and

1:24:45

the pettiness and the worry about

1:24:47

whether he loves her or not. There's just a going

1:24:49

away. And it's accompanied by skiing,

1:24:51

which is, you know, like this freedom. Let's

1:24:55

look at the title of the story, Before the

1:24:57

Change, which on a

1:24:59

literal level comes up in the sense

1:25:01

of this is before the law changed and

1:25:03

before abortion became legal. But

1:25:06

so many changes in this story. She's

1:25:09

changed from being engaged to being

1:25:11

single. She's changed from being pregnant

1:25:13

to being not pregnant. She's changed

1:25:16

from living a

1:25:18

somewhat independent student life

1:25:20

to living with her father and Mrs.

1:25:22

Barry and city

1:25:24

to country. And I

1:25:27

suppose maybe the change

1:25:29

at the end is she's gone from having

1:25:31

her life dominated by men to being able

1:25:33

to choose her own future. Yes,

1:25:37

that's quite possible. But the last

1:25:39

thing she says, ironically, is remember.

1:25:41

The present King of France is bald,

1:25:44

which is referring to who? Amen. Bertrand

1:25:47

Russell and the notion of

1:25:49

the truth content of a

1:25:51

statement or not. So

1:25:54

she's going explicitly back to

1:25:57

the manly, the reasonable, the rational

1:25:59

as a joke. But

1:26:02

the ending of the story

1:26:04

puts the emphasis on trying

1:26:08

to determine the truth

1:26:10

quotient within a phrase and

1:26:13

the falseness of it. She

1:26:15

may be saying it in an amusing way,

1:26:17

in an amused way, but

1:26:19

I don't know. It's the thing that she remembered

1:26:21

of Robin. Like the first time

1:26:23

that she met him at a lecture that he was

1:26:26

given, this is what she held from

1:26:28

him. And the last thing

1:26:30

that she says to him. Very tricky. Because

1:26:32

it's as knotted up as his wanting her to

1:26:35

abort the child so that he can be seen

1:26:37

as moral. It's

1:26:39

as conflicted and the opposite

1:26:41

is also bad. I

1:26:45

think she's saying goodbye to statements

1:26:48

that are self-contradicting. It's

1:26:52

a farewell to that kind of

1:26:54

argument. So

1:26:58

you would say that last phrase, the present

1:27:00

king of France is bald, is part

1:27:03

of the feeling of liberation. That belongs

1:27:05

to you Robin, but no longer to

1:27:07

me. This is a goodbye to Robin.

1:27:10

It's a separating of herself from

1:27:13

him. And yes,

1:27:16

it comes at a time when she feels

1:27:18

empowered. She feels oddly

1:27:20

empowered by having given away the money,

1:27:23

lost her father. She

1:27:25

can lose him too. In the beginning, she's wondering

1:27:27

where she could send the letters. She doesn't even

1:27:29

want to think of him going

1:27:31

through what was their life together.

1:27:35

And now she doesn't care. I

1:27:39

think that's probably the right reading, isn't it?

1:27:41

That she's throwing this back at him because

1:27:43

it belongs to him, not her. Yeah,

1:27:46

it's not her argument. No.

1:27:49

I think it's telling that she goes out skiing,

1:27:51

she falls down, and she gets up. She falls

1:27:53

a few times, and she gets up. I

1:27:56

feel that this story does what so

1:27:59

many... Alice Munro stories do, which

1:28:01

is there

1:28:03

isn't one climactic scene. Things

1:28:07

happen. They're shocking. You think that

1:28:09

is the moment in the story. That's

1:28:12

the revelation. That's what we're going to take

1:28:14

away from this. And then

1:28:16

there's another one. And then there's another one.

1:28:18

Yes. Yes. Saying goodbye

1:28:21

to Robin. Finally, as she has said

1:28:23

goodbye to her father and his money

1:28:25

and all of the stuff

1:28:27

that means, you know, the small town

1:28:29

that she's living in. It's gone now.

1:28:31

And I do feel it's also the oppressiveness

1:28:33

of the community, you know. It

1:28:35

is the father, but I think the

1:28:37

father and the community are explicitly tied

1:28:39

together. The community knows what the father

1:28:42

does, but tolerates it. He

1:28:44

is part of that community. And

1:28:46

so it's a freedom from that

1:28:48

community as well. When, you know, Mrs. Barry

1:28:50

leaves and the father is dead, I think

1:28:53

the next step for her is going.

1:28:56

If you had to project into the future, you can't

1:28:58

see her staying there and becoming, you

1:29:00

know, a happy community member and

1:29:02

selling butter tarts at the fair.

1:29:05

And having tea with Mrs. Barry. No,

1:29:08

that doesn't seem a possibility at all. Do

1:29:12

you know, while I have you, I want

1:29:14

to ask you some questions because I know

1:29:17

normally it's talking exclusively about the story, but

1:29:19

I'd really love to ask you about

1:29:21

your relationship to Alice. When did you first

1:29:23

meet her? That's

1:29:26

a good question. I don't know what

1:29:29

year exactly. I met her. I

1:29:31

was at the Harbourfront Festival in Toronto. I

1:29:33

met her in New York. We

1:29:35

definitely had a lunch probably

1:29:38

in the early or mid-2000s. Was

1:29:42

that before you started editing her or

1:29:45

after? No, no, no. I

1:29:47

started editing her. It's

1:29:49

funny. I don't know the year. I know the

1:29:52

story. You

1:29:55

know, I do know I worked on about

1:29:57

two dozen stories with her. Most

1:30:00

of that working with her was

1:30:02

conducted by telephone. She

1:30:04

would send her stories and often I

1:30:06

would read one and

1:30:10

decide we were going to publish

1:30:12

this. And then, but

1:30:15

think, oh, there's something a

1:30:17

little wrong in this ending and there's something she's

1:30:20

not quite getting at in

1:30:22

this spot. And before I even

1:30:24

talked to her, there would be a

1:30:26

fax saying, I've redone this ending, you

1:30:28

know, where I've redone that. She

1:30:30

was always, always working on her

1:30:32

stories and it shows also in

1:30:35

the fact that she often went

1:30:37

on working on them after they were published

1:30:39

in magazine form and changed things by the

1:30:41

time they came out in book form. Was

1:30:44

she a person that you would

1:30:46

make suggestions about diction, word choices?

1:30:49

Was she amenable to those kinds

1:30:51

of changes? Or once you were

1:30:53

presented with the text, was

1:30:55

it fairly settled in terms of its language?

1:30:59

Well, her voice is her voice, but yeah, there was a

1:31:01

lot of fair amount of editing.

1:31:04

And sometimes it was pointing out

1:31:06

that something wasn't quite working and she

1:31:08

would fix it. Sometimes it was making

1:31:10

suggestions, but no good

1:31:12

editor inserts their

1:31:14

own diction or their own chosen voice

1:31:17

into a story. So it was never, it was

1:31:19

never editing in that sense. But she

1:31:21

was very receptive to being told that the

1:31:23

sentence needed work. I'm more curious about

1:31:25

the state at which you received the

1:31:28

story, so did you get her fiction almost

1:31:30

done, but then you would just go through

1:31:32

a fine tuning or did she

1:31:35

prefer to go through that fine tuning with

1:31:37

you? I mean, I know sometimes for myself,

1:31:39

I love the idea of when

1:31:42

I'm with an editor, leaving enough there

1:31:44

so that the editing process is a

1:31:46

creative one as opposed to,

1:31:48

you hear about Nabokov, for instance,

1:31:52

being withering if somebody suggests that a

1:31:54

comma should be moved. I don't feel that that's the

1:31:56

case with her, but I don't know. No, not

1:31:58

at all. She often made some cuts.

1:32:04

She was very open to it. She

1:32:07

didn't feel threatened because she was always still working

1:32:09

on a story. So it

1:32:11

was a work in progress for her. I

1:32:14

mean, I would send her

1:32:16

proofs by FedEx. And

1:32:18

then when she got the proof with all the

1:32:20

notes, she wanted to go through

1:32:22

it page by page on the phone. It

1:32:25

wasn't just a matter of checking it off and

1:32:27

sending it back. And

1:32:29

so we would talk through some of the changes. A

1:32:32

lot of it was me sitting on the phone while she looked

1:32:34

at a page and she would say, yes, yes.

1:32:37

Oh, much better, much better. Yes.

1:32:41

I think I'm going to keep this one. And

1:32:46

when she got to the bottom of the page, I

1:32:48

think she would like throw it over her shoulder

1:32:51

onto the floor. So

1:32:54

sometimes, you know, we'd be close

1:32:56

to the end of the story and something would come

1:32:58

up that related to something on an

1:33:00

earlier page. And she would say, I'm just going

1:33:02

to put the phone down for a minute. And then she would scrabble

1:33:04

around on the floor trying to find that

1:33:06

page. It was very funny. A

1:33:09

strange question. Was

1:33:12

she aware of herself as Alice Munro? This is

1:33:14

a very strange question I know. But you know,

1:33:16

as a Canadian, we're so used

1:33:19

to like going, no, no, it's okay.

1:33:21

Don't look at me. And I

1:33:23

kind of wondered if she had any idea

1:33:25

of how good a writer she was or whether it

1:33:27

was just something something that she did and

1:33:30

the less about who she was and her

1:33:32

reputation about her. Well,

1:33:34

it was something that she did. I think

1:33:36

she could not have been aware that she

1:33:39

did it well. I

1:33:41

know she was painfully

1:33:43

aware of the reporters

1:33:45

who would camp outside her house

1:33:48

the night before the Nobel announcement.

1:33:52

That was sort of excruciating to her. But she, you

1:33:54

know, she chose to live in a small town. She

1:33:56

didn't choose to live in Toronto or Vancouver

1:33:58

or any of the other. you know, cities

1:34:01

she might have lived in. So

1:34:03

she was, in a sense,

1:34:05

choosing to be out of the public eye. But

1:34:08

she had confidence. Often

1:34:11

if people are squeamish about editing

1:34:13

and feel nervous about changing

1:34:15

a comma, that's a lack

1:34:17

of confidence. It's

1:34:20

not confidence in the work. She

1:34:22

knew what was good about

1:34:25

what she was doing. So

1:34:28

did she know she was a good writer? Yes, she knew she

1:34:31

was a good writer, I would say. You

1:34:33

know, I do remember having a conversation with her.

1:34:37

New Yorker didn't take every story that

1:34:39

Alice wrote. And

1:34:43

she admitted probably, you know, I

1:34:46

suppose she would have been in her 70s, she said

1:34:48

it hurts. You know, the

1:34:50

rejection still hurts. And

1:34:54

maybe you can speak to that as a writer. Maybe

1:34:57

you never outgrow that even if you have confidence in

1:34:59

what you do. Well,

1:35:03

I think it shatters your confidence,

1:35:05

you know, you sort of think.

1:35:08

Well, I mean, every time you come to the end of

1:35:10

a draft and you want to show somebody else, it's always

1:35:12

like, this is almost done. And then you find out, no,

1:35:15

it's not almost done. No, it's far from

1:35:17

done. And so you do for that

1:35:19

moment question whether you know what done

1:35:22

means, which is exactly what you're saying

1:35:24

about Alice. I mean, she goes on

1:35:26

rewriting them until they're in the book

1:35:28

and then basically they're forcibly removed from

1:35:30

her hands. The thing is, our

1:35:34

stories are living documents and they

1:35:37

don't die even when they're published in

1:35:39

the pages of the New Yorker or even in

1:35:41

a book, you know, they go on haunting you.

1:35:43

And they call up questions that you answer with

1:35:45

the stories that come after, I suppose. I

1:35:48

think everyone is different. Some people almost

1:35:50

forget their stories once they're published. They've

1:35:53

moved on and, you

1:35:55

know, you can cite lines at them and

1:35:57

they cannot recognize them if

1:35:59

she wasn't like that. I feel like

1:36:01

these characters went on living. For

1:36:05

her afterwards. Yeah. And I'll

1:36:07

say the one place where she was

1:36:09

self-critical was feeling unable to really write

1:36:11

a novel. She would send

1:36:13

me a story and it would be 40 pages

1:36:15

and I'd say, Alice, you can't do 40 pages

1:36:17

of the magazine. I don't get

1:36:19

that much space for fiction. And she'd

1:36:21

say, well, I just thought I was writing a novel. And

1:36:24

then it turned out not

1:36:27

to be one. So

1:36:29

she would embark on what

1:36:32

she thought was a novel. And it turned

1:36:34

out really just to be a story. You know, I think

1:36:36

she wasn't interested in the filler that

1:36:38

you have in novels, in the obligation

1:36:40

of getting the reader

1:36:43

from one place to another. She just jumped.

1:36:46

It's such an interesting thing that happens

1:36:49

to some writers. I

1:36:51

think a Philip Larkin writer, despite

1:36:53

his problems, I admire deeply.

1:36:56

But it was a surprise to hear

1:36:58

that he started off wanting to be a

1:37:01

novelist and then does poetry because that's a

1:37:03

thing that he can do. I mean, it's

1:37:05

not like it's the second drawer. It's

1:37:07

something that he obviously worked on and it was

1:37:09

brilliant. But to find that

1:37:11

he wanted to write novels, he wanted to be

1:37:14

more like Kingsley and I guess in the end,

1:37:17

is the same thing as finding out that

1:37:19

Alice wants to be a novelist. Like who

1:37:21

did she want to be like? William

1:37:24

Faulkner or James Joyce or

1:37:27

Jane Austen? Is that her ideal? It's

1:37:30

kind of interesting that she's not able to

1:37:32

reach that version of the literary, but the

1:37:34

version of the literary that comes easily to

1:37:36

her, that comes to her, is,

1:37:40

well, it's magnificent. It's really

1:37:42

lasting. And it will have a

1:37:44

lasting influence on Canadian literature from now on,

1:37:47

Reverend Deverer, as long as there is a

1:37:49

Canada, I think. Yeah. I

1:37:51

think she's a great writer for the rest of the world too, but

1:37:54

it has a special kind of significance

1:37:56

for a Canadian that I'm... I'm

1:38:00

really grateful for her. I'm grateful for her

1:38:02

life. Thank

1:38:05

you, Andre. Alice

1:38:12

Monroe, who died at age 92 in May of 2024, was the author

1:38:14

of more than a dozen short

1:38:17

story collections, including Dear Life, The View from

1:38:19

Castle Rock, and The Love of a Good

1:38:21

Woman. Among other awards,

1:38:23

she won the Giller Prize, the Man

1:38:25

Booker International Prize, the Ray Award for

1:38:28

the Short Story, and the Nobel Prize

1:38:30

in Literature. She published more than

1:38:32

50 stories in The New Yorker between 1977 and 2012.

1:38:38

Andrea Lexus, a playwright and fiction writer,

1:38:40

received the Wyndham Campbell Prize in fiction

1:38:42

in 2017. His novels

1:38:44

include 15 Dogs, which won the Giller

1:38:47

Prize, Days by Moonlight, and Ring. His

1:38:50

story collection The Nightpiece was published in 2020. A

1:38:53

new collection of stories, Other Worlds, will

1:38:55

be published next year. You can download

1:38:57

more than 200 previous episodes

1:38:59

of The New Yorker fiction podcast or subscribe

1:39:02

to the podcast for free in Apple Podcasts.

1:39:05

On the Writer's Voice podcast, you can hear short

1:39:07

stories from the magazine read by their authors. You

1:39:10

can find The Writer's Voice and other New Yorker podcasts

1:39:12

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1:39:14

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1:39:18

Podcasts. This episode of The

1:39:20

New Yorker fiction podcast was produced by Michelle

1:39:22

Moses. I'm Deborah Treisman. Thanks

1:39:25

for listening. Hi,

1:39:37

I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor of The New

1:39:39

Yorker. Each week on The

1:39:41

Writer's Voice podcast, New Yorker fiction writers

1:39:43

read their newly published stories from the

1:39:45

magazine. You can hear from

1:39:48

authors like Colson Whitehead, Turner nudged

1:39:50

Ellwood, who had a look of horror on

1:39:52

his face. They saw it. Griff

1:39:55

wasn't going down. He was

1:39:58

going to go for it. No matter what. what

1:40:00

happened to her. Or

1:40:02

Joy Williams. Her father was

1:40:04

silent. Slowly he passed his

1:40:07

hand over his hair. This

1:40:09

usually meant that he was traveling to

1:40:11

a place immune to her presence. A

1:40:14

place that indeed contradicted her presence.

1:40:17

She might as well go to lunch. Listen

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