Alice Munros Best

becausehe wasn’t used to our way of talking and we weren’t used to his. The first morning, my father said to Mr. Florence, “Well, I hope you got some kind of a sleep on that old bed in there.” (The spare-room bed was heavenly, with a feather tick.) This was Mr. Florence’s cue to say that he had never slept better.
    Mr. Florence twitched. He said, “I slept on worse.”
    His favorite place to be was in his car. His car was a royal-blue Chrysler, from the first batch turned out after the war. Inside it, the upholstery and floor covering and roof and door padding were all pearl gray. Mr. Florence kept the names of those colors in mind and corrected you if you said just “blue” or “gray.”
    “Mouse skin is what it looks like to me,” said Beryl rambunctiously “I tell him it’s just mouse skin!”
    The car was parked at the side of the house, under the locust trees. Mr. Florence sat inside with the windows rolled up, smoking, in the rich new-car smell.
    “I’m afraid we’re not doing much to entertain your friend,” my mother said.
    “I wouldn’t worry about him,” said Beryl. She always spoke about Mr. Florence as if there was a joke about him that only she appreciated. I wondered long afterward if he had a bottle in the glove compartment and took a nip from time to time to keep his spirits up. He kept his hat on.
    Beryl herself was being entertained enough for two. Instead of staying in the house and talking to my mother, as a lady visitor usually did, she demanded to be shown everything there was to see on a farm. She said that I was to take her around and explain things, and see that she didn’t fall into any manure piles.
    I didn’t know what to show. I took Beryl to the icehouse, where chunks of ice the size of dresser drawers, or bigger, lay buried in saw dust. Every few days, my father would chop off a piece of ice and carry it to the kitchen, where it melted in a tin-lined box and cooled the milk and butter.
    Beryl said she had never had any idea ice came in pieces that big. She seemed intent on finding things strange, or horrible, or funny.
    “Where in the world do you get ice that big?”
    I couldn’t tell if that was a joke.
    “Off of the lake,” I said.
    “Off of the lake! Do you have lakes up here that have ice on them all summer?”
    I told her how my father cut the ice on the lake every winter and hauled it home, and buried it in sawdust, and that kept it from melting.
    Beryl said, “That’s amazing!”
    “Well, it melts a little,” I said. I was deeply disappointed in Beryl.
    “That’s really amazing.”
    Beryl went along when I went to get the cows. A scarecrow in white slacks (this was what my father called her afterward), with a white sun hat tied under her chin by a flaunting red ribbon. Her fingernails and toenails – she wore sandals – were painted to match the ribbon. She wore the small, dark sunglasses people wore at that time. (Not the people I knew – they didn’t own sunglasses.) She had a big red mouth, a loud laugh, hair of an unnatural color and a high gloss, like cherry wood. She was so noisy and shiny, so glamorously got up, that it was hard to tell whether she was good-looking, or happy, or anything.
    We didn’t have any conversation along the cowpath, because Beryl kept her distance from the cows and was busy watching where she stepped. Once I had them all tied in their stalls, she came closer. She lit a cigarette. Nobody smoked in the barn. My father and other farmers chewed tobacco there instead. I didn’t see how I could ask Beryl to chew tobacco.
    “Can you get the milk out of them or does your father have to?” Beryl said. “Is it hard to do?”
    I pulled some milk down through the cow’s teat. One of the barn cats came over and waited. I shot a thin stream into its mouth. The cat and I were both showing off.
    “Doesn’t that hurt?” said Beryl. “Think if it was you.”
    I had never thought of a cow’s teat as corresponding to any part of myself, and was shaken by this indecency. In fact, I could never grasp a warm, warty teat in such a firm and casual way again.

    BERYL SLEPT IN a peach-colored rayon nightgown trimmed with écru lace. She had a robe to match. She was just as careful about the word
écru
as Mr. Florence was about his royal blue and pearl gray.
    I managed to get undressed and put on my nightgown without any part of me being exposed at any time. An awkward business. I left my underpants on, and hoped that