Alice Munros Best

“he” even when he was right there – “you notice how he always keeps a straight face? That reminds me of Mama. I mean of our mama, Marietta’s and mine. Daddy, when he made a joke you could see it coming a mile away – he couldn’t keep it off his face – but Mama was another story. She could look so sour. But she could joke on her deathbed. In fact, she did that very thing. Marietta, remember when she was in bed in the front room the spring before she died?”
    “I remember she was in bed in that room,” my mother said. “Yes.”
    “Well, Daddy came in and she was lying there in her clean nightgown, with the covers off, because the German lady from next door had just been helping her take a wash, and she was still there tidying up the bed. So Daddy wanted to be cheerful, and he said, ‘Spring must be coming. I saw a crow today.’ This must have been in March. And Mama said quick as a shot, ‘Well, you better cover me up then, before it looks in that window and gets any ideas!’ The German lady – Daddy said she just about dropped the basin. Because it was true, Mama was skin and bones; she was dying. But she could joke.”
    Mr. Florence said, “Might as well when there’s no use to cry.”
    “But she could carry a joke too far, Mama could. One time, one time, she wanted to give Daddy a scare. He was supposed to be interested in some girl that kept coming around to the works. Well, he was a big good-looking man. So Mama said, ‘Well, I’ll just do away with myself, and you can get on with her and see how you like it when I come back and haunt you.’ He told her not to be so stupid, and he went off downtown. And Mama went out to the barn and climbed on a chair and puta rope around her neck. Didn’t she, Marietta? Marietta went looking for her and she found her like that!”
    My mother bent her head and put her hands in her lap, almost as if she was getting ready to say another grace.
    “Daddy told me all about it, but I can remember anyway. I remember Marietta tearing off down the hill in her nightie, and I guess the German lady saw her go, and she came out and was looking for Mama, and somehow we all ended up in the barn – me too, and some kids I was playing with – and there was Mama up on a chair preparing to give Daddy the fright of his life. She’d sent Marietta after him. And the German lady starts wailing, ‘Oh, missus, come down missus, think of your little
kindren
’
– ‘kindren’
is the German for ‘children’ – ‘think of your
kindren
,’ and so on. Until it was me standing there – I was just a little squirt, but I was the one noticed that rope. My eyes followed that rope up and up and I saw it was just hanging over the beam, just flung there – it wasn’t tied at all! Marietta hadn’t noticed that, the German lady hadn’t noticed it. But I just spoke up and said, ‘Mama, how are you going to manage to hang yourself without that rope tied around the beam?’”
    Mr. Florence said, “That’d be a tough one.”
    “I spoiled her game. The German lady made coffee and we went over there and had a few treats, and, Marietta, you couldn’t find Daddy after all, could you? You could hear Marietta howling, coming up the hill, a block away.”
    “Natural for her to be upset,” my father said.
    “Sure it was. Mama went too far.”
    “She meant it,” my mother said. “She meant it more than you give her credit for.”
    “She meant to get a rise out of Daddy. That was their whole life together. He always said she was a hard woman to live with, but she had a lot of character. I believe he missed that, with Gladys.”
    “I wouldn’t know,” my mother said, in that particularly steady voice with which she always spoke of her father. “What he did say or didn’t say.”
    “People are dead now,” said my father. “It isn’t up to us to judge.”
    “I know,” said Beryl. “I know Marietta’s always had a different view.”
    My mother looked at Mr. Florence and smiled quite easily and radiantly. “I’m sure you don’t know what to make of all these family matters.”
    The one time that I visited Beryl, when Beryl was an old woman, all knobby and twisted up with arthritis, Beryl said, “Marietta got all Daddy’s looks. And she never did a thing with herself. Remember her wearing that old navy-blue crêpe dress when we went to the hotel that time? Of course, I know it was probably all she had, but did it have to be all she had? You know, I was scared