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Authors: Alice Munro
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about. If she had known about that, or thought of it, it would have seemed to her even more of a joke, even more outlandish, more incomprehensible, than the regular carrying-on. It was love she sickened at. It was the enslavement, the self-abasement, the self-deception. That struck her. She saw the danger, all right; she read the flaw. Headlong hopefulness, readiness, need.
“What is so wonderful about her?” asked Flo, and immediately answered herself. “Nothing. She is a far cry from good-looking. She is going to turn out a monster of fat. I can see the signs. She is going to have a mustache, too. She has one already. Where does she get her clothes from? I guess she thinks they suit her.”
Rose did not reply to this and Flo said further that Cora had no father, you might wonder what her mother worked at, and who was her grandfather? The honey-dumper!
Flo went back to the subject of Cora, now and then, for years. “There goes your idol!” she would say, seeing Cora go by the store after she had started to high school.
Rose pretended to have no recollection.
“You know her!” Flo kept it up. “You tried to give her the candy! You stole that candy for her! Didn’t I have a laugh.”
Rose’s pretense was not altogether a lie. She remembered the facts, but not the feelings. Cora turned into a big dark sulky-looking girl with round shoulders, carrying her high school books. The books were no help to her, she failed at high school. She wore ordinary blouses and a navy blue skirt, which did make her look fat. Perhaps her personality could not survive the loss of her elegant dresses. She went away, she got a war job. She joined the air force, and appeared home on leave, bunched into their dreadful uniform. She married an airman.
Rose was not much bothered by this loss, this transformation. Life was altogether a series of surprising developments, as far as she could learn. She only thought how out-of-date Flo was, as she went on recalling the story and making Cora sound worse and worse— swarthy, hairy, swaggering, fat. So long after, and so uselessly, Rose saw Flo trying to warn and alter her.
T HE SCHOOL CHANGED with the war. It dwindled, lost all its evil energy, its anarchic spirit, its style. The fierce boys went into the Army. West Hanratty changed too. People moved away to take war jobs and even those who stayed behind were working, being better paid than they had ever dreamed. Respectability took hold, in all but the stubbornest cases. Roofs got shingled all over instead of in patches. Houses were painted, or covered with imitation brick. Refrigerators were bought and bragged about. When Rose thought of West Hanratty during the war years, and during the years before, the two times were so separate it was as if an entirely different lighting had been used, or as if it was all on film and the film had been printed in a different way, so that on the one hand things looked clean-edged and decent and limited and ordinary, and on the other, dark, grainy, jumbled, and disturbing.
The school itself got fixed up. Windows replaced, desks screwed down, dirty words hidden under splashes of dull red paint. The Boys’ Toilet and the Girls’ Toilet were knocked down and the pits filled in. The Government and the School Board saw fit to put flush toilets in the cleaned-up basement.
Everybody was moving in that direction. Mr. Burns died in the summertime and the people who bought his place put in a bathroom. They also put up a high fence of chicken wire, so that nobody from the schoolyard could reach over and get their lilacs. Flo was putting in a bathroom too, she said they might as well have the works, it was wartime prosperity.
Cora’s grandfather had to retire, and there never was another honey-dumper.
Half a Grapefruit
Rose wrote the Entrance, she went across the bridge, she went to high school.
There were four large clean windows along the wall. There were new fluorescent lights. The class was Health and
“What is so wonderful about her?” asked Flo, and immediately answered herself. “Nothing. She is a far cry from good-looking. She is going to turn out a monster of fat. I can see the signs. She is going to have a mustache, too. She has one already. Where does she get her clothes from? I guess she thinks they suit her.”
Rose did not reply to this and Flo said further that Cora had no father, you might wonder what her mother worked at, and who was her grandfather? The honey-dumper!
Flo went back to the subject of Cora, now and then, for years. “There goes your idol!” she would say, seeing Cora go by the store after she had started to high school.
Rose pretended to have no recollection.
“You know her!” Flo kept it up. “You tried to give her the candy! You stole that candy for her! Didn’t I have a laugh.”
Rose’s pretense was not altogether a lie. She remembered the facts, but not the feelings. Cora turned into a big dark sulky-looking girl with round shoulders, carrying her high school books. The books were no help to her, she failed at high school. She wore ordinary blouses and a navy blue skirt, which did make her look fat. Perhaps her personality could not survive the loss of her elegant dresses. She went away, she got a war job. She joined the air force, and appeared home on leave, bunched into their dreadful uniform. She married an airman.
Rose was not much bothered by this loss, this transformation. Life was altogether a series of surprising developments, as far as she could learn. She only thought how out-of-date Flo was, as she went on recalling the story and making Cora sound worse and worse— swarthy, hairy, swaggering, fat. So long after, and so uselessly, Rose saw Flo trying to warn and alter her.
T HE SCHOOL CHANGED with the war. It dwindled, lost all its evil energy, its anarchic spirit, its style. The fierce boys went into the Army. West Hanratty changed too. People moved away to take war jobs and even those who stayed behind were working, being better paid than they had ever dreamed. Respectability took hold, in all but the stubbornest cases. Roofs got shingled all over instead of in patches. Houses were painted, or covered with imitation brick. Refrigerators were bought and bragged about. When Rose thought of West Hanratty during the war years, and during the years before, the two times were so separate it was as if an entirely different lighting had been used, or as if it was all on film and the film had been printed in a different way, so that on the one hand things looked clean-edged and decent and limited and ordinary, and on the other, dark, grainy, jumbled, and disturbing.
The school itself got fixed up. Windows replaced, desks screwed down, dirty words hidden under splashes of dull red paint. The Boys’ Toilet and the Girls’ Toilet were knocked down and the pits filled in. The Government and the School Board saw fit to put flush toilets in the cleaned-up basement.
Everybody was moving in that direction. Mr. Burns died in the summertime and the people who bought his place put in a bathroom. They also put up a high fence of chicken wire, so that nobody from the schoolyard could reach over and get their lilacs. Flo was putting in a bathroom too, she said they might as well have the works, it was wartime prosperity.
Cora’s grandfather had to retire, and there never was another honey-dumper.
Half a Grapefruit
Rose wrote the Entrance, she went across the bridge, she went to high school.
There were four large clean windows along the wall. There were new fluorescent lights. The class was Health and
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