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Who Do You Think You Are

Who Do You Think You Are

Titel: Who Do You Think You Are Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Alice Munro
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how she could do without.
    In the middle of the night she phoned him, from her hotel to his. “Please talk to me.”
    “That’s okay,” said Clifford, after a moment’s silence. “That’s okay, Joss.”
    He must have a roommate, whom the phone might have wakened. He was pretending to talk to Jocelyn. Or else he was so sleepy he really thought she was Jocelyn.
    “Clifford, it’s me.”
    “That’s okay,” Clifford said. “Take it easy. Go to sleep.” He hung up the phone.
    J OCELYN AND CLIFFORD are living in Toronto. They are not poor anymore. Clifford is successful. His name is seen on record jackets, heard on the radio. His face and more frequently his hands have appeared on television as he labors at his violin. Jocelyn has dieted and become slender, has had her hair cut and styled; it is parted in the middle and curves away from her face, with a wing of pure white rising from each temple.
    They live in a large brick house on the edge of a ravine. There are bird-feeders in the back yard. They have installed a sauna. Clifford spends a good deal of time sitting there. He thinks that will keep him from becoming arthritic, like his father. Arthritis is his greatest fear.
    Rose used to go to see them sometimes. She was living in the country by herself. She taught at a community college and liked to have a place to stay overnight when she came in to Toronto. They seemed glad to have her. They said she was their oldest friend.
    One time when Rose was visiting them Jocelyn told a story about Adam. Adam had an apartment in the basement of the house. Jerome lived downtown, with his girlfriend. Adam brought his girls here.
    “I was reading in the den,” said Jocelyn, “when Clifford was out. I heard this girl, down in Adam’s apartment, saying no, no! The noise from his apartment comes straight up into the den. We warned him about that, we thought he’d be embarrassed—”
    “I didn’t think he’d be embarrassed,” said Clifford.
    “But he just said, we should put on the record player. So, I kept hearing the poor unknown girl bleating and protesting, and I didn’t know what to do. I thought these situations are really new, there are no precedents, are you supposed to stop your son from raping some girl if that’s what he’s doing, right under your nose or at least under your feet? I went downstairs eventually and I started getting all the family skis out of the closet that backs on his bedroom, I stayed there slamming those skis around, thinking I’d say I was going to polish them. It was July. Adam never said anything to me. I wish he’d move out.”
    Rose told about how much money Patrick had and how he had married a sensible woman even richer than he was, who had made a dazzling living room with mirrors and pale velvet and a wire sculpture like blasted bird cages. Patrick did not mind Modern Art any more.
    “Of course it isn’t the same,” said Rose to Jocelyn, “it isn’t the same house. I wonder what she has done with the Wedgwood vases.”
    “Maybe she has a campy laundry room. She keeps the bleach in one and the detergent in the other.”
    “They sit perfectly symmetrically on the shelf.”
    But Rose had her old, old, twinge of guilt.
    “Just the same, I like Patrick.”
    Jocelyn said, “Why?”
    “He’s nicer than most people.”
    “Silly rot,” said Jocelyn. “And I bet he doesn’t like you.”
    “That’s right,” Rose said. She started to tell them about her trip down on the bus. It was one of the times when she was not driving her car, because too many things were wrong with it and she could not afford to get it fixed.
    “The man in the seat across from me was telling me about how he used to drive big trucks. He said we never seen trucks in this country like they got in the States.” She put on her country accent. “In the Yewnited States they got these special roads what they call turnpikes, and only trucks is allowed to go on them. They get serviced on these roads from one end of the country to the other and so most people never sees them at all. They’re so big the cab is half the size of a bus and they got a driver in there and an assistant driver and another driver and another assistant driver havin a sleep. Toilet and kitchen and beds and all. They go eighty, ninety miles an hour, because there is never no speed limit on them turnpikes.”
    “You are getting very weird,” said Clifford. “Living up there.” “Never mind the trucks,” Jocelyn said.

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