Alice Munros Best

saying yes, that would be a lovely idea. When people said how happy she must be she did think herself happy. It was as simple as that. She dimpled and sparkled and turned herself into a fiancée with no trouble at all. Where will you live, people said, and she said, Oh, in British Columbia! That added more magic to the tale. Is it really beautiful there, they said, is it never winter?
    “Oh, yes!” cried Rose. “Oh, no!”
    SHE WOKE UP EARLY , got up and dressed, and let herself out the side door of Dr. Henshawe’s garage. It was too early for the buses to be running. She walked through the city to Patrick’s apartment. She walked across the park. Around the South African War Memorial a pair of greyhounds were leaping and playing, an old woman standing by, holding their leashes. The sun was just up, shining on their pale hides. The grass was wet. Daffodils and narcissus in bloom.
    Patrick came to the door, tousled, frowning sleepily, in his gray-and-maroon striped pajamas.
    “Rose! What’s the matter?”
    She couldn’t say anything. He pulled her into the apartment. She put her arms around him and hid her face against his chest and, in a stagy voice, said, “Please, Patrick. Please let me not marry you.”
    “Are you sick? What’s the matter?”
    “Please let me not marry you,” she said again, with even less conviction.
    “You’re crazy.”
    She didn’t blame him for thinking so. Her voice sounded so unnatural, wheedling, silly. As soon as he opened the door and she faced the fact of him, his sleepy eyes, his pajamas, she saw that what she had come to do was enormous, impossible. She would have to explain everything to him, and of course she could not do it. She could not make him see her necessity. She could not find any tone of voice, any expression of the face, that would serve her.
    “Are you upset?” said Patrick. “What’s happened?”
    “Nothing.”
    “How did you get here anyway?”
    “Walked.”
    She had been fighting back a need to go to the bathroom. It seemed that if she went to the bathroom she would destroy some of the strength of her case. But she had to. She freed herself. She said, “Wait a minute, I’m going to the john.”
    When she came out Patrick had the electric kettle going, was measuring out instant coffee. He looked decent and bewildered.
    “I’m not really awake,” he said. “Now. Sit down. First of all, are you premenstrual?”
    “No.” But she realized with dismay that she was, and that he might be able to figure it out, because they had been worried last month.
    “Well, if you’re not premenstrual, and nothing’s happened to upset you, then what is all this about?”
    “I don’t want to get married,” she said, backing away from the cruelty of
I don’t want to marry you.
    “When did you come to this decision?”
    “Long ago. This morning.”
    They were talking in whispers. Rose looked at the clock. It was a little after seven.
    “When do the others get up?”
    “About eight.”
    “Is there milk for the coffee?” She went to the refrigerator.
    “Quiet with the door,” said Patrick, too late.
    “I’m sorry,” she said, in her strange silly voice.
    “We went for a walk last night and everything was fine. You come this morning and tell me you don’t want to get married.
Why
don’t you want to get married?”
    “I just don’t. I don’t want to be married.”
    “What else do you want to do?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Patrick kept staring at her sternly, drinking his coffee. He who used to plead with her
do you love me, do you really
, did not bring the subject up now.
    “Well, I know.”
    “What?”
    “I know who’s been talking to you.”
    “Nobody has been talking to me.”
    “Oh, no. Well, I bet Dr. Henshawe has.”
    “No.”
    “Some people don’t have a very high opinion of her. They think she has an influence on girls. She doesn’t like the girls who live with her to have boyfriends. Does she? You even told me that. She doesn’t like them to be normal.”
    “That’s not it.”
    “What did she say to you, Rose?”
    “She didn’t say anything.” Rose began to cry.
    “Are you sure?”
    “Oh, Patrick, listen, please, I can’t marry you, please, I don’t know why, I can’t, please, I’m sorry, believe me, I can’t,” Rose babbled at him, weeping, and Patrick saying, “Shh! You’ll wake them up!” lifted or dragged her out of the kitchen chair and took her to his room, where she sat on the bed. He shut the