Floating Bridge
This story was first published in the STORYCUTS series by Vintage Digital 2011
Taken from the collection Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage.
Copyright © Alice Munro 2001
Alice Munro has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Cover
Copyright
Floating Bridge
Backmatter
We hope you enjoyed this story. If you want to read more stories by Alice Munro, try her other contributions to the Storycuts series such as
Nettles 9781448128464
Post and Beam 9781448128471
Family Furnishings 9781448128389
Alternatively, read the original parent collection, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage 9780099422747.
Floating Bridge
ONE TIME SHE had left him. The immediate reason was fairly trivial. He had joined a couple of the Young Offenders (Yo-yos was what he called them) in gobbling up a gingerbread cake she had just made and intended to serve after a meeting that evening. Unobserved—at least by Neal and the Yo-yos—she had left the house and gone to sit in a three-sided shelter on the main street, where the city bus stopped twice a day. She had never been in there before, and she had a couple of hours to wait. She sat and read everything that had been written on or cut into those wooden walls. Various initials loved each other 4 ever. Laurie G. sucked cock. Dunk Cultis was a fag. So was Mr. Garner (Math).
Eat Shit H. W. Gange rules. Skate or Die. God hates filth. Kevin S. is Dead Meat. Amanda W. is beautiful and sweet and I wish they did not put her in jail because I miss her with all my heart. I want to fuck V.P. Ladies have to sit here and read this disgusting dirty things what you write.
Looking at this barrage of human messages—and puzzling in particular over the heartfelt, very neatly written sentence concerning Amanda W., Jinny wondered if people were alone when they wrote such things. And she went on to imagine herself sitting here or in some similar place, waiting for a bus, alone, as she would surely be if she went ahead with the plan she was set on now. Would she be compelled to make statements on public walls?
She felt herself connected at present with the way people felt when they had to write certain things down—she was connected by her feelings of anger, of petty outrage (perhaps it was petty?), and her excitement at what she was doing to Neal, to pay him back. But the life she was carrying herself into might not give her anybody to be angry at, or anybody who owed her anything, anybody who could possibly be rewarded or punished or truly affected by what she might do. Her feelings might become of no importance to anybody but herself, and yet they would be bulging up inside her, squeezing her heart and breath.
She was not, after all, somebody people flocked to in the world. And yet she was choosy, in her own way.
The bus was still not in sight when she got up and walked home.
Neal was not there. He was returning the boys to the school, and by the time he got back somebody had already arrived, early for the meeting. She told him what she’d done when she was well over it and it could be turned into a joke. In fact, it became a joke she told in company—leaving out or just describing in a general way the things she’d read on the walls—many times.
“Would you ever have thought to come after me?” she said to Neal.
“Of course. Given time.”
The oncologist had a priestly demeanor and in fact wore a black turtle-necked shirt under a white smock—an outfit that suggested he had just come from some ceremonial mixing and dosing. His skin was young and smooth—it looked like butterscotch. On the dome of his head there was just a faint black growth of hair, a delicate sprouting, very like the fuzz Jinny was sporting herself. Though hers was brownish-gray, like mouse fur. At first Jinny had wondered if he could possibly be a patient as well as a doctor. Then, whether he had adopted this style to make the patients more comfortable. More likely it was a transplant. Or just the way he liked to wear his hair.
You couldn’t ask him. He came from Syria or Jordan or some place where doctors kept their dignity. His courtesies were frigid.
“Now,” he said. “I do not wish to give a wrong impression.”
She went out of the air-conditioned building into the stunning glare of a late afternoon in August in Ontario. Sometimes the sun burned through, sometimes it stayed behind thin clouds—it was just as hot either way. The parked cars, the pavement, the bricks of the other buildings, seemed positively to bombard her, as if they were all separate facts thrown up in ridiculous sequence. She did not take changes of scene very well these days, she wanted everything familiar and stable. It was the same with changes of information.
I KNOW I DRIVE A WRECK, BUT YOU SHOULD SEE MY HOUSEHONOUR THY MOTHER—EARTHUSE PESTICIDE, KILL WEEDS, PROMOTE CANCER