Read Online Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You by Alice Munro - Free Book Online Page A

directions. Sometimes I thought about the way we lived out at home and the way we lived here and how one way was so hard to imagine when you were living the other way. But I thought it was still a lot easier, living the way we lived at home, to picture something like this, the painted flamingoes and the warmth and the soft mat, than it was for anybody knowing only things like this to picture how it was the other way. And why was that?
    I was through my jobs in no time, and had the vegetables peeled for supper and sitting in cold water besides. Then I went into Mrs. Peebles’ bedroom. I had been in there plenty of times, cleaning, and I always took a good look in her closet, at the clothes she had hanging there. I wouldn’t have looked in her drawers, but a closet is open to anybody. That’s a lie. I would have looked in drawers, but I would have felt worse doing it and been more scared she could tell.
    Some clothes in her closet she wore all the time, I was quite familiar with them. Others she never put on, they were pushed to the back. I was disappointed to see no wedding dress. But there was one long dress I could just see the skirt of, and I was hungering to see the rest. Now I took note of where it hung and lifted it out. It was satin, a lovely weight on my arm, light bluish-green in color, almost silvery. It had a fitted, pointed waist and a full skirt and an off-the-shoulder fold hiding the little sleeves.
    Next thing was easy. I got out of my own things and slipped it on. I was slimmer at fifteen than anybody would believe who knows me now and the fit was beautiful. I didn’t, of course, have a strapless bra on, which was what it needed, I just had to slide my straps down my arms under the material. Then I tried pinning up my hair, to get the effect. One thing led to another. I put on rouge and lipstick and eyebrow pencil from her dresser. The heat of the day and the weight of the satin and all the excitement made me thirsty, and I went out to the kitchen, got-up as I was, to geta glass of ginger ale with ice cubes from the refrigerator. The Peebles drank ginger ale, or fruit drinks, all day, like water, and I was getting so I did too. Also there was no limit on ice cubes, which I was so fond of I would even put them in a glass of milk.
    I turned from putting the ice tray back and saw a man watching me through the screen. It was the luckiest thing in the world I didn’t spill the ginger ale down the front of me then and there.
    â€œI never meant to scare you. I knocked but you were getting the ice out, you didn’t hear me.”
    I couldn’t see what he looked like, he was dark the way somebody is pressed up against a screen door with the bright daylight behind them. I only knew he wasn’t from around here.
    â€œI’m from the plane over there. My name is Chris Watters and what I was wondering was if I could use that pump.”
    There was a pump in the yard. That was the way the people used to get their water. Now I noticed he was carrying a pail.
    â€œYou’re welcome,” I said. “I can get it from the tap and save you pumping.” I guess I wanted him to know we had piped water, didn’t pump ourselves.
    â€œI don’t mind the exercise.” He didn’t move, though, and finally he said, “Were you going to a dance?”
    Seeing a stranger there had made me entirely forget how I was dressed.
    â€œOr is that the way ladies around here generally get dressed up in the afternoon?”
    I didn’t know how to joke back then. I was too embarrassed.
    â€œYou live here? Are you the lady of the house?”
    â€œI’m the hired girl.”
    Some people change when they find that out, their whole way of looking at you and speaking to you changes, but his didn’t.
    â€œWell, I just wanted to tell you you look very nice. I was so surprised when I looked in the door and saw you. Just because you looked so nice and beautiful.”
    I