Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You: 13 Stories

by Alice Munro

Bloated, opinionated, untidy men, that is how I see them, cosseted by the academic life, the literary life, by women. People will go to hear them say that such and such a writer is not worth reading any more, and that some writer must be read; to hear them dismiss and glorify and argue and chuckle and shock. People, I say, but I mean women, middle-aged women like me, alert and trembling, hoping to ask intelligent questions and not be ridiculous; soft-haired young girls awash in adoration, hoping to lock eyes with one of the men on the platform. Girls, and women too, fall in love with such men, they imagine there is power in them.

I lived with my little daughter, Clea. Hugo’s daughter too, of course, but he had to let go of her. Hugo had grants, he traveled, he married again and his wife had three children; he divorced and married again, and his next wife, who had been his student, had three more children, the first born to her while he was still living with his second wife. In such circumstances a man can’t hang onto everything.

He was mysterious to me. Long after he became my lover and after he became my husband he remained, remains, mysterious to me. In spite of all the things I know about him, daily and physical things.

Do you call your girl students fond exasperated dirty names, are there phone calls from insulted parents, does the Dean or somebody have to explain that no harm is meant, that writers are not as other men are? Probably not, probably no one minds. Outrageous writers may bounce from one blessing to another nowadays, bewildered, as permissively reared children are said to be, by excess of approval.

Hugo’s is a very good story, as far as I can tell, and I think I can tell. How honest this is and how lovely, I had to say as I read. I had to admit. I was moved by Hugo’s story; I was, I am, glad of it, and I am not moved by tricks. Or if I am, they have to be good tricks. Lovely tricks, honest tricks.

at dinner, looking at my husband Gabriel, I decided that he and Hugo are not really so unalike. Both of them have managed something. Both of them have decided what to do about everything they run across in this world, what attitude to take, how to ignore or use things. In their limited and precarious ways they both have authority. They are not at the mercy. Or think they are not. I can’t blame them, for making whatever arrangements they can make.

I thought, all these things don’t seem that much like life, when you’re doing them, they’re just what you do, how you fill up your days, and you think all the time something is going to crack open, and you’ll find yourself, then you’ll find yourself, in life. It’s not even that you particularly want this to happen, this cracking open, you’re comfortable enough the way things are, but you do expect it. Then you’re dying, Mother is dying, and it’s just the same plastic chairs and plastic plants and ordinary day outside with people getting groceries and what you’ve had is all there is, and going to the Library, just a thing like that, coming back up the hill on the bus with books and a bag of grapes seems now worth wanting, O God doesn’t it, you’d break your heart wanting back there.

Forgiveness in families is a mystery to me, how it comes or how it lasts.

If I could kindle love then and take it now there was less waste than I had thought. Much less than I had thought. My life did not altogether fall away in separate pieces, lost.

I do think of you I suppose as a warm and sentient flood, you wrote one time to me, and I have the normal human concerns with being overwhelmed, which is what floods do.

Half my concern in love became how to disguise love, to make it harmless and merry. What humiliating charades those were.

You would look over your glasses at me like some mild inflexible schoolmaster, put out by my extremity. We would have to consider my being in love, the way I am in love, as if it were a curable extravagance, a highhanded assumption in an essay.

She makes a little bitter face, a swallowing face, ending with a humorous line of the mouth, that would dispose of you. I turn away almost in time not to see it.

Anything would do for her to look at; beautiful or ugly had ceased to matter, because there was in everything something to be discovered.

Why is it a surprise to find that people other than ourselves are able to tell lies?

By majoring in psychology June had tried to get round the problem of their mother, just as Eileen had tried to do by the study of English literature. June had been more successful. Eileen was gratified by the high incidence of crazy mothers in books, but failed to put this discovery to any use. June, on the other hand, was able to present their mother to her friends with no apologies but plenty of prior explanation and post-discussion. She made people feel privileged.

While Eileen’s life took shape any way at all, blown apart by crises, deflected by pleasures, June’s life was built, planned, lived deliberately, filled. There was a lack of drifting and moping. Occasions were made the most of.

Like many rich people he seemed to be full of a sincere and puzzled, almost heavy-hearted, hope that he had got what he should.

They were not lazy but they broke things anyway; they were always darting and grabbing; and, of course, they were all liars, even the little ones, brilliant, instinctive liars who lied even when it was not necessary, just for the practice, and maybe the pleasure, of it. They were always telling and concealing, making and breaking alliances; they had the most delicate and ruthless political instincts.