Free Alice Munros Best by Alice Munro Page A

had always thought this would happen, that somebody would look at her and love her totally and helplessly. At the same time she had thought that nobody would, nobody would want her at all, and up until now nobody had. What made you wanted was nothing you did, it was something you had, and how could you ever tell whether you had it? She would look at herself in the glass and think: Wife, sweetheart. Those mild lovely words. How could they apply to her? It was a miracle; it was a mistake. It was what she had dreamed of; it was not what she wanted.
    She grew very tired, irritable, sleepless. She tried to think admiringly of Patrick. His lean, fair-skinned face was really very handsome. He must know a number of things. He graded papers, presided at examinations, he was finishing his thesis. There was a smell of pipe tobacco and rough wool about him that she liked. He was twenty-four. No other girl she knew who had a boyfriend had one as old as that.
    Then without warning she thought of him saying, “I suppose I don’t seem very manly.” She thought of him saying, “Do you love me? Do you really love me?” He would look at her in a scared and threatening way. Then when she said yes he said how lucky he was, how lucky they were; he mentioned friends of his and their girls, comparing their love affairs unfavorably to his and Rose’s. Rose would shiver with irritation and misery. She was sick of herself as much as him, she was sick of the picture they made at this moment, walking across a snowy downtown park, her bare hand snuggled in Patrick’s, in his pocket. Some outrageousand cruel things were being shouted inside her. She had to do something, to keep them from getting out. She started tickling and teasing him.
    Outside Dr. Henshawe’s back door, in the snow, she kissed him, tried to make him open his mouth, she did scandalous things to him. When he kissed her his lips were soft; his tongue was shy; he collapsed over rather than held her, she could not find any force in him.
    “You’re lovely. You have lovely skin. Such fair eyebrows. You’re so delicate.”
    She was pleased to hear that, anybody would be. But she said warningly, “I’m not so delicate, really. I’m quite large.”
    “You don’t know how I love you. There’s a book I have called
The White Goddess.
Every time I look at the title it reminds me of you.”
    She wriggled away from him. She bent down and got a handful of snow from the drift by the steps and clapped it on his head.
    “My White God.”
    He shook the snow out. She scooped up some more and threw it at him. He didn’t laugh; he was surprised and alarmed. She brushed the snow off his eyebrows and licked it off his ears. She was laughing, though she felt desperate rather than merry. She didn’t know what made her do this.
    “Dr.
Hen
-shawe,” Patrick hissed at her. The tender poetic voice he used for rhapsodizing about her could entirely disappear, could change to remonstrance, exasperation, with no steps at all between.
    “Dr. Henshawe will hear you!”
    “Dr. Henshawe says you are an honorable young man,” Rose said dreamily. “I think she’s in love with you.” It was true; Dr. Henshawe had said that. And it was true that he was. He couldn’t bear the way Rose was talking. She blew at the snow in his hair. “Why don’t you go in and deflower her? I’m sure she’s a virgin. That’s her window. Why don’t you?” She rubbed his hair, then slipped her hand inside his overcoat and rubbed the front of his pants. “You’re hard!” she said triumphantly. “Oh, Patrick! You’ve got a hard-on for Dr. Henshawe!” She had never said anything like this before, never come near behaving like this.
    “Shut up!” said Patrick, tormented. But she couldn’t. She raised her head and in a loud whisper pretended to call toward an upstairs window,“Dr. Henshawe! Come and see what Patrick’s got for you!” Her bullying hand went for his fly.
    To stop her, to keep her quiet, Patrick