Dance of the Happy Shades

you ever coming out? Clare MacQuarrie for nuts-in-May, if he don’t come we’ll pull-him-away—” I was crying as well as yelling, right out in the street, and it didn’t bother me one bit.
    “Helen you want to wake everybody up in this whole town?” said Buddy Shields, sticking his head in at the window. He is the night constable and I used to teach him in Sunday school.
    “I’m just conducting a shivaree for the newly-married couple,” I said. “What is the matter with that?”
    “I got to tell you to stop that noise.”
    “I don’t feel like stopping.”
    “Oh yes you do, Helen, you’re just a little upset.”
    “I called and called him and he won’t come out,” I said. “All I want is him to come out.”
    “Well you got to be a good girl and stop honking that horn.”
    “I want him to come out.”
    “Stop it. Don’t honk that horn one more time.”
    “Will you make him come out?”
    “Helen I can’t make a man come out of his own house if he don’t want to come.”
    “I thought you were the Law, Buddy Shields.”
    “I am but there is a limit to what the Law can do. If you want to see him why don’t you come back in the daytime and knock on his door nice the way any lady would do?”
    “He is married in case you didn’t know.”
    “Well Helen he is married just as much at night as in the daytime.”
    “Is that supposed to be funny?”
    “No it’s not, it’s supposed to be true. Now why don’t you move over and let me drive you home? Lookit the lights on up and down this street. There’s Grace Beecher watching us and I can see the Holmses got their windows up. You don’t want to give them anything more to talk about, do you?”
    “They got nothing to do but talk anyway, they may as well talk about me.”
    Then Buddy Shields straightened up and moved a little away from the car window and I saw somebody in dark clothes coming across the MacQuarries’ lawn and it was Clare. He was not wearing a dressing gown or anything, he was all dressed, in shirt and jacket and trousers. He came right up to the car while I sat there waiting to hear what I would say to him. He had not changed. He was a fat, comfortable, sleepy-faced man. But just his look, his everyday easygoing look, stopped me wanting to cry or yell. I could cry and yell till I was blue in the face and it would not change that look or make him get out of bed and across his yard one little bit faster.
    “Helen, go on home,” he said, like we had been watching television and so on all evening and now was time to go home and go to bed properly. “Give my love to your Momma,” he said. “Go on home.”
    That was all he meant to say. He looked at Buddy and said, “You going to drive her?” and Buddy said yes. I was looking at Clare MacQuarrie and thinking, he is a man that goes his own way. It didn’t bother him too much how I was feeling when he did what he did on top of me, and it didn’t bother him too much what kind of ruckus I made in the street when he got married. And he was a man who didn’t give out explanations, maybe didn’t have any. If there was anything he couldn’t explain, well, he would just forget about it. Here were all his neighbours watching us, but tomorrow, if he met them on the street, he would tell them a funny story. And what about me? Maybe if he met me on the street one of these days he would just say, “How are you doing, Helen?” and tell me a joke. And if I had really thought about what he was like, Clare MacQuarrie, if I had paid attention, I would have started out a lot differently with him and maybe felt differently too, though heaven knows if that would have mattered, in the end.
    “Now aren’t you sorry you made all this big fuss?” Buddy said, and I slid over on the seat and watched Clare going back to his house, thinking, yes, that’s what I should have done, paid attention. Buddy said, “You’re not going to bother him and his wife any more now, are you Helen?”
    “What?” I said.
    “You’re not going to bother Clare and his wife any more? Because now he’s married, that’s over and done with. And you wake up tomorrow morning, you’re going to feel pretty bad over what you done tonight, you won’t see how you can go on and face people. But let me tell you things happen all the time, only thing to do is just go along, and remember you’re not the only one.” It never seemed to occur to him that it was funny for him to be lecturing me, that used to hear his