Alice Munros Best

him of his voice – he spoke in a rough whisper. But everybody paid attention. At dinner once in the stone house – where all the dining-room furniture was enormous, darkly glowing, palatial – I asked him a question. I think it had to do with Whittaker Chambers, whose story was then appearing in the
Saturday Evening Post.
The question was mild in tone, but he guessed its subversive intent and took to calling me Mrs. Gromyko, referring to what he alleged to be my “sympathies.” Perhaps he really craved an adversary, and could not find one. At that dinner, I sawAndrew’s hand tremble as he lit his mother’s cigarette. His Uncle Roger had paid for Andrew’s education, and was on the board of directors of several companies.
    “He is just an opinionated old man,” Andrew said to me later. “What is the point of arguing with him?”
    Before we left Vancouver, Andrew’s mother had written,
Roger seems quite intrigued by the idea of your buying a small car!
Her exclamation mark showed apprehension. At that time, particularly in Ontario, the choice of a small European car over a large American car could be seen as some sort of declaration – a declaration of tendencies Roger had been sniffing after all along.
    “It isn’t that small a car,” said Andrew huffily.
    “That’s not the point,” I said. “The point is, it isn’t any of his business!”
    WE SENT THE second night in Missoula. We had been told in Spokane, at a gas station, that there was a lot of repair work going on along Highway 2, and that we were in for a very hot, dusty drive, with long waits, so we turned onto the interstate and drove through Coeur d’Alene and Kellogg into Montana. After Missoula, we turned south toward Butte, but detoured to see Helena, the state capital. In the car, we played Who Am I?
    Cynthia was somebody dead, and an American, and a girl. Possibly a lady. She was not in a story. She had not been seen on television. Cynthia had not read about her in a book. She was not anybody who had come to the kindergarten, or a relative of any of Cynthia’s friends.
    “Is she human?” said Andrew, with a sudden shrewdness.
    “No! That’s what you forgot to ask!”
    “An animal,” I said reflectively.
    “Is that a question? Sixteen questions!”
    “No, it is not a question. I’m thinking. A dead animal.”
    “It’s the deer,” said Meg, who hadn’t been playing.
    “That’s not fair!” said Cynthia. “She’s not playing!”
    “What deer?” said Andrew.
    I said, “Yesterday.”
    “The day before,” said Cynthia. “Meg wasn’t playing. Nobody got it.”
    “The deer on the truck,” said Andrew.
    “It was a lady deer, because it didn’t have antlers, and it was an American and it was dead,” Cynthia said.
    Andrew said, “I think it’s kind of morbid, being a dead deer.”
    “I got it,” said Meg.
    Cynthia said, “I think I know what morbid is. It’s depressing.”
    Helena, an old silver-mining town, looked forlorn to us even in the morning sunlight. Then Bozeman and Billings, not forlorn in the slightest – energetic, strung-out towns, with miles of blinding tinsel fluttering over used-car lots. We got too tired and hot even to play Who Am I? These busy, prosaic cities reminded me of similar places in Ontario, and I thought about what was really waiting there – the great tombstone furniture of Roger and Caroline’s dining room, the dinners for which I must iron the children’s dresses and warn them about forks, and then the other table a hundred miles away, the jokes of my father’s crew. The pleasures I had been thinking of – looking at the countryside or drinking a Coke in an old-fashioned drugstore with fans and a high, pressed-tin ceiling – would have to be snatched in between.
    “Meg’s asleep,” Cynthia said. “She’s so hot. She makes me hot in the same seat with her.”
    “I hope she isn’t feverish,” I said, not turning around.
    What are we doing this for, I thought, and the answer came – to show off. To give Andrew’s mother and my father the pleasure of seeing their grandchildren. That was our duty. But beyond that we wanted to show them something. What strenuous children we were, Andrew and I, what relentless seekers of approbation. It was as if at some point we had received an unforgettable, indigestible message – that we were far from satisfactory, and that the most commonplace success in life was probably beyond us. Roger dealt out such messages, of course –