Read Online The Progress of Love by Alice Munro - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Alice Munro
Ads: Link
ceilings (cutting the heating costs), their paint-by-number pictures, their disinfectant—and other—smells. Out on a back porch, alone, her father sat wrapped in blankets, strapped into his wheelchair so that he wouldn’t fall out.
Her father said, “David?”
The sound seemed to come from a wet cave deep inside him, to be unshaped by lips or jaws or tongue. These could not be seen to move. Nor did he move his head.
Stella went behind the chair and put her arms around his neck. She touched him very lightly.
“Yes, it’s David, Daddy,” she said. “You knew his step!”
Her father didn’t answer. David bent to touch the old man’shands, which were not cold, as he expected, but warm and very dry. He laid the whiskey bottle in them.
“Careful. He can’t hold it,” said Stella softly. David kept his own hands on the bottle while Stella pushed up a chair, so that he could sit down opposite her father.
“Same old present,” David said.
His father-in-law made an acknowledging sound.
“I’m going to get some glasses,” Stella said. “It’s against the rules to drink outside, but I can generally get them to bend the rules a bit. I’ll tell them it’s a celebration.”
To get used to looking at his father-in-law, David tried to think of him as a post-human development, something new in the species. Survival hadn’t just preserved, it had transformed him. Bluish-gray skin, with dark-blue spots, whitened eyes, a ribbed neck with delicate deep hollows, like a smoked-glass vase. Up through this neck came further sounds, a conversational offering. It was the core of each syllable that was presented, a damp vowel barely held in shape by surrounding consonants.
“Traffic—bad?”
David described conditions on the freeway and on the secondary highways. He told his father-in-law that he had recently bought a car, a Japanese car. He told how he had not, at first, been able to get anything close to the advertised mileage. But he had complained, he had persisted, had taken the car back to the dealer. Various adjustments had been tried, and now the situation had improved and the figure was satisfactory, if not quite what had been promised.
This conversation seemed welcome. His father-in-law appeared to follow it. He nodded, and on his narrow, elongated, bluish, post-human face there were traces of old expressions. An expression of shrewd and dignified concern, suspicion of advertising and of foreign cars and car dealers. There was even a suggestion of doubt—as in the old days—that David could be trusted to handle such things well. And relief that he had done so. In his father-in-law’s eyes David would always be somebody learning how to be a man, somebody who might never learn, might never achieve the steadfastness and control, the decent narrowness of range. David, who preferredgin to whiskey, read novels, didn’t understand the stock market, talked to women, and had started out as a teacher. David, who had always driven small cars, foreign cars. But that was all right now. Small cars were not a sign of any of the things they used to be a sign of. Even here on the bluffs above Lake Huron at the very end of life, certain shifts had registered, certain changes had been understood, by a man who couldn’t grasp or see.
“Hear anything about—Lada?”
It happens luckily that David has a colleague who drives a Lada, and many boring lunch and coffee breaks have been taken up with the discussion of this car’s strengths and failings and the difficulty of getting parts. David recounted these, and his father-in-law seemed satisfied.
“Gray. Dort. Gray-Dort. First car—ever drove. Yonge Street. Sixty miles. Sixty miles. Uh. Uh. Hour”
“He certainly never drove a Gray-Dort down Yonge Street at sixty miles an hour,” said Stella when they had got her father and his bottle back to his room, had said goodbye, and were walking back through the green corridors. “Never. Whose Gray-Dort? They were out of
Her father said, “David?”
The sound seemed to come from a wet cave deep inside him, to be unshaped by lips or jaws or tongue. These could not be seen to move. Nor did he move his head.
Stella went behind the chair and put her arms around his neck. She touched him very lightly.
“Yes, it’s David, Daddy,” she said. “You knew his step!”
Her father didn’t answer. David bent to touch the old man’shands, which were not cold, as he expected, but warm and very dry. He laid the whiskey bottle in them.
“Careful. He can’t hold it,” said Stella softly. David kept his own hands on the bottle while Stella pushed up a chair, so that he could sit down opposite her father.
“Same old present,” David said.
His father-in-law made an acknowledging sound.
“I’m going to get some glasses,” Stella said. “It’s against the rules to drink outside, but I can generally get them to bend the rules a bit. I’ll tell them it’s a celebration.”
To get used to looking at his father-in-law, David tried to think of him as a post-human development, something new in the species. Survival hadn’t just preserved, it had transformed him. Bluish-gray skin, with dark-blue spots, whitened eyes, a ribbed neck with delicate deep hollows, like a smoked-glass vase. Up through this neck came further sounds, a conversational offering. It was the core of each syllable that was presented, a damp vowel barely held in shape by surrounding consonants.
“Traffic—bad?”
David described conditions on the freeway and on the secondary highways. He told his father-in-law that he had recently bought a car, a Japanese car. He told how he had not, at first, been able to get anything close to the advertised mileage. But he had complained, he had persisted, had taken the car back to the dealer. Various adjustments had been tried, and now the situation had improved and the figure was satisfactory, if not quite what had been promised.
This conversation seemed welcome. His father-in-law appeared to follow it. He nodded, and on his narrow, elongated, bluish, post-human face there were traces of old expressions. An expression of shrewd and dignified concern, suspicion of advertising and of foreign cars and car dealers. There was even a suggestion of doubt—as in the old days—that David could be trusted to handle such things well. And relief that he had done so. In his father-in-law’s eyes David would always be somebody learning how to be a man, somebody who might never learn, might never achieve the steadfastness and control, the decent narrowness of range. David, who preferredgin to whiskey, read novels, didn’t understand the stock market, talked to women, and had started out as a teacher. David, who had always driven small cars, foreign cars. But that was all right now. Small cars were not a sign of any of the things they used to be a sign of. Even here on the bluffs above Lake Huron at the very end of life, certain shifts had registered, certain changes had been understood, by a man who couldn’t grasp or see.
“Hear anything about—Lada?”
It happens luckily that David has a colleague who drives a Lada, and many boring lunch and coffee breaks have been taken up with the discussion of this car’s strengths and failings and the difficulty of getting parts. David recounted these, and his father-in-law seemed satisfied.
“Gray. Dort. Gray-Dort. First car—ever drove. Yonge Street. Sixty miles. Sixty miles. Uh. Uh. Hour”
“He certainly never drove a Gray-Dort down Yonge Street at sixty miles an hour,” said Stella when they had got her father and his bottle back to his room, had said goodbye, and were walking back through the green corridors. “Never. Whose Gray-Dort? They were out of
Similar Books
