Alice Munros Best

what would he get out of it?”
    Grant didn’t think he should mention Fiona again.
    “It’d make more sense to take him to the mall,” she said. “Where he could see kids and whatnot. If it didn’t make him sore about his own two grandsons he never gets to see. Or now the lake boats are starting to run again, he might get a charge out of going and watching that.”
    She got up and fetched her cigarettes and lighter from the window above the sink.
    “You smoke?” she said.
    He said no thanks, though he didn’t know if a cigarette was being offered.
    “Did you never? Or did you quit?”
    “Quit,” he said.
    “How long ago was that?”
    He thought about it.
    “Thirty years. No – more.”
    He had decided to quit around the time he started up with Jacqui. But he couldn’t remember whether he quit first, and thought a big reward was coming to him for quitting, or thought that the time had come to quit, now that he had such a powerful diversion.
    “I’ve quit quitting,” she said, lighting up. “Just made a resolution to quit quitting, that’s all.”
    Maybe that was the reason for the wrinkles. Somebody – a woman – had told him that women who smoked developed a special set of fine facial wrinkles. But it could have been from the sun, or just the nature of her skin – her neck was noticeably wrinkled as well. Wrinkled neck, youthfully full and up-tilted breasts. Women of her age usually had these contradictions. The bad and good points, the genetic luck or lack of it, all mixed up together. Very few kept their beauty whole, though shadowy, as Fiona had done.
    And perhaps that wasn’t even true. Perhaps he only thought that because he’d known Fiona when she was young. Perhaps to get that impression you had to have known a woman when she was young.
    So when Aubrey looked at his wife did he see a high-school girl full of scorn and sass, with an intriguing tilt to her robin’s-egg blue eyes, pursing her fruity lips around a forbidden cigarette?
    “So your wife’s depressed?” Aubrey’s wife said. “What’s your wife’s name? I forget.”
    “It’s Fiona.”
    “Fiona. And what’s yours? I don’t think I ever was told that.”
    Grant said, “It’s Grant.”
    She stuck her hand out unexpectedly across the table.
    “Hello, Grant. I’m Marian.”
    “So now we know each other’s name,” she said, “there’s no point in not telling you straight out what I think. I don’t know if he’s still so stuck on seeing your – on seeing Fiona. Or not. I don’t ask him and he’s not telling me. Maybe just a passing fancy. But I don’t feel like taking him back there in case it turns out to be more than that. I can’t afford to risk it. I don’t want him getting hard to handle. I don’t want him upset and carrying on. I’ve got my hands full with him as it is. I don’t have any help. It’s just me here. I’m it.”
    “Did you ever consider – it
is
very hard for you –” Grant said – “did you ever consider his going in there for good?”
    He had lowered his voice almost to a whisper, but she did not seem to feel a need to lower hers.
    “No,” she said. “I’m keeping him right here.”
    Grant said, “Well. That’s very good and noble of you.”
    He hoped the word “noble” had not sounded sarcastic. He had not meant it to be.
    “You think so?” she said. “Noble is not what I’m thinking about.”
    “Still. It’s not easy.”
    “No, it isn’t. But the way I am, I don’t have much choice. If I put him in there I don’t have the money to pay for him unless I sell the house. The house is what we own outright. Otherwise I don’t have anything in the way of resources. I get the pension next year, and I’ll have his pension and my pension, but even so I could not afford to keep him there and hang on to the house. And it means a lot to me, my house does.”
    “It’s very nice,” said Grant.
    “Well, it’s all right. I put a lot into it. Fixing it up and keeping it up.”
    “I’m sure you did. You do.”
    “I don’t want to lose it.”
    “No.”
    “I’m not
going
to lose it.”
    “I see your point.”
    “The company left us high and dry,” she said. “I don’t know all the ins and outs of it, but basically he got shoved out. It ended up with them saying he owed them money and when I tried to find out what was what he just went on saying it’s none of my business. What I think is he did something pretty stupid. But I’m not supposed to ask, so I