Alice Munros Best

they would sing all the way home like crazy hillbillies.
    But after a while all outings came to be seen as a waste of time and money. They were what people did before they understood the realities of their lives.
    She was crying now, her eyes had filled up without her realizing it. She set herself to thinking about Toronto, the first steps ahead. The taxi, the house she had never seen, the strange bed she would sleep in alone. Looking in the phone book tomorrow for the addresses of riding stables, then getting to wherever they were, asking for a job.
    She could not picture it. Herself riding on the subway or streetcar, caring for new horses, talking to new people, living among hordes of people every day who were not Clark.
    A life, a place, chosen for that specific reason – that it would not contain Clark.
    The strange and terrible thing coming clear to her about that world of the future, as she now pictured it, was that she would not exist there. She would only walk around, and open her mouth and speak, and do this and do that. She would not really be there. And what was strange about it was that she was doing all this, she was riding on this bus in the hope of recovering herself. As Mrs. Jamieson might say – and as she herself might with satisfaction have said –
taking charge of her own life
. With nobody glowering over her, nobody’s mood infecting her with misery.
    But what would she care about? How would she know that she was alive?
    While she was running away from him – now – Clark still kept his place in her life. But when she was finished running away, when she just went on, what would she put in his place? What else – who else – could ever be so vivid a challenge?
    She had managed to stop crying, but she had started to shake. She was in a bad way and would have to take hold, get a grip on herself. “Get a grip on yourself,” Clark had sometimes told her, passing through a room where she was scrunched up, trying not to weep, and that indeed was what she must do.
    They had stopped in another town. This was the third town away from the one where she had got on the bus, which meant that they had passed through the second town without her even noticing. The bus must have stopped, the driver must have called out the name, and she had not heard or seen anything in her fog of fright. Soon enough they would reach the major highway, they would be tearing along towards Toronto.
    And she would be lost.
    She would be lost. What would be the point of getting into a taxi and giving the new address, of getting up in the morning and brushing her teeth and going into the world? Why should she get a job, put food in her mouth, be carried by public transportation from place to place?
    Her feet seemed now to be at some enormous distance from her body. Her knees, in the unfamiliar crisp pants, were weighted with irons. She was sinking to the ground like a stricken horse who will never get up.
    Already the bus had loaded on the few passengers and the parcels that had been waiting in this town. A woman and a baby in its stroller were waving somebody good-bye. The building behind them, the cafe that served as a bus stop, was also in motion. A liquefying wave passed through the bricks and windows as if they were about to dissolve. In peril of her life, Carla pulled her huge body, her iron limbs, forward. She stumbled, she cried out, “Let me off.”
    The driver braked, he called out irritably, “I thought you were going to Toronto?” People gave her casually curious looks, nobody seemed to understand that she was in anguish.
    “I have to get off here.”
    “There’s a washroom in the back.”
    “No. No. I have to get off.”
    “I’m not waiting. You understand that? You got luggage underneath?”
    “No. Yes. No.”
    “No luggage?”
    A voice in the bus said, “Claustrophobia. That’s what’s the matter with her.”
    “You sick?” said the driver.
    “No. No. I just want off.”
    “Okay. Okay. Fine by me.”
    “ COME AND GET ME. Please. Come and get me.
”
    “I will.”
    SYLVIA HAD FORGOTTEN to lock her door. She realized that she should be locking it now, not opening it, but it was too late, she had it open.
    And nobody there.
    Yet she was sure, sure, the knocking had been real.
    She closed the door and this time she locked it.
    There was a playful sound, a tinkling tapping sound, coming from the wall of windows. She switched the light on, but saw nothing there, and switched it off again. Some