Free Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro Page A

girlfriends.
    The woman who sold Joyce the book recognizes her.
    “Good to see you back,” she says. “Did you read the review in the
Globe?
Wow.”
    Joyce is bewildered, actually trembling a little. She finds it hard to speak.
    The woman passes along the lineup, explaining that only books bought in this store can be autographed here and that a certain anthology in which one of Christie O’Dell’s stories appears is not acceptable, she is sorry.
    The woman in front of Joyce is both tall and broad, so she does not get a look at Christie O’Dell until this woman bends forward to place her book on the autographing table. Then she sees a young woman altogether different from the girl on the poster and the girl at the party. The black outfit is gone, also the black hat. Christie O’Dell wears a jacket of rosy-red silk brocade, with tiny gold beads sewn to its lapels. A delicate pink camisole is worn underneath. There is a fresh gold rinse in her hair, gold rings in her ears, and a gold chain fine as a hair around her neck. Her lips glisten like flower petals and her eyelids are shaded with umber.
    Well-who wants to buy a book written by a grouch or a loser?
    Joyce has not thought out what she will say. She expects it to come to her.
    Now the saleswoman is speaking again.
    “Have you opened your book to the page where you wish it to be signed?”
    Joyce has to set her box down to do that. She can actually feel a flutter in her throat.
    Christie O’Dell looks up at her, smiles at her-a smile of polished cordiality, professional disengagement.
    “Your name?”
    “Just Joyce will be fine.”
    Her time is passing so quickly.
    “You were born in Rough River?”
    “No,” says Christie O’Dell with some slight displeasure, or at least some diminishing of cheer. “I did live there for a time. Shall I put the date?”
    Joyce retrieves her box. At Le Bon Chocolatier they did sell chocolate flowers, but not lilies. Only roses and tulips. So she had bought tulips, which were not actually unlike lilies. Both bulbs.
    “I want to thank you for
‘Kindertotenlieder,’
” she says so hastily that she almost swallows the long word. “It means a great deal to me. I brought you a present.”
    “Isn’t that a wonderful story.” The saleswoman takes the box. “I’ll just hang on to this.”
    “It isn’t a bomb,” says Joyce with a laugh. “It’s chocolate lilies. Actually tulips. They didn’t have lilies so I got tulips, I thought they were the next best thing.”
    She notices that the saleswoman is not smiling now but taking a hard look at her. Christie O’Dell says, “Thank you.”
    There is not a scrap of recognition in the girl’s face. She doesn’t know Joyce from years ago in Rough River or two weeks ago at the party. You couldn’t even be sure that she had recognized the title of her own story. You would think she had nothing to do with it. As if it was just something she wriggled out of and left on the grass.
    Christie O’Dell sits there and writes her name as if that is all the writing she could be responsible for in this world.
    “It’s been a pleasure to chat with you,” says the saleswoman, still looking at the box which the girl at Le Bon Chocolatier has fixed with a curly yellow ribbon.
    Christie O’Dell has raised her eyes to greet the next person in line, and Joyce at last has the sense to move on, before she becomes an object of general amusement and her box, God knows, possibly an object of interest to the police.
    Walking up Lonsdale Avenue, walking uphill, she feels flattened, but gradually regains her composure. This might even turn into a funny story that she would tell someday. She wouldn’t be surprised.

Wenlock Edge
    My mother had a bachelor cousin who used to visit us on the farm once a summer. He brought along his mother, Aunt Nell Botts. His own name was Ernie Botts. He was a tall florid man with a good-natured expression, a big square face, and fair curly hair springing straight up