Free Open Secrets by Alice Munro Page A

a gray gum on the tines of a fork or among the grapes round the rim of the wedding teapot. All day Sunday, Millicent was torn between pleasure and agony, hope and suspense. The things that could go wrong multiplied. The Bavarian cream might not set (they had no refrigerator yet and hadto chill things in summer by setting them on the cellar floor). The angel food cake might not rise to its full glory. If it did rise, it might be dry. The biscuits might taste of tainted flour or a beetle might crawl out of the salad. By five o’clock she was in such a state of tension and misgiving that nobody could stay in the kitchen with her. Muriel had arrived early to help out, but she had not chopped the potatoes finely enough, and had managed to scrape her knuckles while grating carrots, so she was told off for being useless, and sent to play the piano.
    Muriel was dressed up in turquoise crêpe and smelled of her Spanish perfume. She might have written off the minister but she had not seen his visitor yet. A bachelor, perhaps, or a widower, since he was travelling alone. Rich, or he would not be travelling at all, not so far. He came from England, people said. Someone had said no, Australia.
    She was trying to get up the “Polovtsian Dances.”
    Dorrie was late. It threw a crimp in things. The jellied salad had to be taken down cellar again, lest it should soften. The biscuits put to warm in the oven had to be taken out, for fear of getting too hard. The three men sat on the veranda—the meal was to be eaten there, buffet style—and drank fizzy lemonade. Millicent had seen what drink did in her own family—her father had died of it when she was ten—and she had required a promise from Porter, before they married, that he would never touch it again. Of course he did—he kept a bottle in the granary—but when he drank he kept his distance and she truly believed the promise had been kept. This was a fairly common pattern at that time, at least among farmers—drinking in the barn, abstinence in the house. Most men would have felt there was something the matter with a woman who didn’t lay down such a law.
    But Muriel, when she came out on the veranda in her high heels and slinky crêpe, cried out at once, “Oh, my favorite drink! Gin and lemon!” She took a sip and pouted at Porter.“You did it again. You forgot the gin again!” Then she teased the minister, asking if he didn’t have a flask in his pocket. The minister was gallant, or perhaps made reckless by boredom. He said he wished he had.
    The visitor who rose to be introduced was tall and thin and sallow, with a face that seemed to hang in pleats, precise and melancholy. Muriel did not give way to disappointment. She sat down beside him and tried in a spirited way to get him into conversation. She told him about her music-teaching and was scathing about the local choirs and musicians. She did not spare the Anglicans. She twitted the minister and Porter, and told about the live chicken that walked onto the stage during a country school concert.
    Porter had done the chores early, washed and changed into his suit, but he kept looking uneasily toward the barnyard, as if he recalled something that was left undone. One of the cows was bawling loudly in the field, and at last he excused himself to go and see what was wrong with her. He found that her calf had got caught in the wire fence and managed to strangle itself. He did not speak of this loss when he came back with newly washed hands. “Calf caught up in the fence” was all he said. But he connected the mishap somehow with this entertainment, with dressing up and having to eat off your knees. He thought that was not natural.
    “Those cows are as bad as children,” Millicent said. “Always wanting your attention at the wrong time!” Her own children, fed earlier, peered from between the bannisters to watch the food being carried to the veranda. “I think we will have to commence without Dorrie. You men must be