What Alice Munro Might Write
May. 15th, 2024 12:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraLong Ago Eleanor got very sullen when I told her I was pulling out.
Yet another reason why the living arrangement would never have worked, I reminded myself.
I mean, come on.
We are women in our fuckin’ seventies, Eleanor. Such interactions ought to be handled maturely, sans drama! Euphoria’s showrunner does not want to produce a show about hapless you & the multiple betrayals you are forced to bear.
Also, when you told me you were planning to kill yourself—and had actually picked a day based on the earliest time the crematorium could pick up your corpse!—I said, Hold that thought! And immediately booked a plane ticket.
So, you know.
I think I’ve been a pretty good friend.
The whole interaction put me in a not-very-good mood.
So, I ran off to my garden.
Here’s my upper plot, weeded & planted with basil & flowers—we found another beekeeper, so my pollinator garden can be utilitarian again.
Here’s my lower plot with all the tomatoes & peppers in cages. As you can see, my garlic & strawberries are thriving:
Came home & found out fromlifeinroseland's LJ that Alice Munro had died.
One of my very, very favorite writers.
Munro was 92 and had stopped writing some years back.
Still…
###
Friendship between women is a repeating theme in Alice Munro’s work.
So, naturally, I began to wonder how Alice Munro might have written the story of my friendship with Long Ago Eleanor.
###
Alice Munro would start with our first meeting—an astrology class! I was 19; Eleanor was 24.
The class was taught by a wiry, intense little guy in his early 20s named Billy Bento.
Billy Bento had this large, beautiful, but blowsy girlfriend named Grace who was in (I guess) her 30s—which, of course, seemed impossibly old at the time.
Billy Bento was just horribly rude to Grace. Bordering on abusive. Her overly large eyes had the look of a cow who didn’t quite understand how it had ended up in the abattoir.
Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. “How dare you speak to her like that?” I demanded.
And stalked out of the room.
I don’t actually remember any of this.
Eleanor does.
###
I do remember the time she & her sister came to visit me in Paris during one of my last modeling gigs there.
And how a few years later, she & Mark—whom I had hired separately to drive me from Berkeley to Danville and back four times a week before I learned how to drive—marched in together one day to announce they weren’t gonna take it anymore! (Take what? I wondered. I was paying them! And they didn’t have any other work!) They had fallen in ❤️LUV❤️
This is what precipitated my own decision to learn how to drive! 😀
Ten or 15 years later, I remember how shocked I was when Eleanor announced she would not be accompanying Mark to Portland—where presumably he was moving because Oregon is an assisted suicide state, and he had terminal MS. (Though even I was not tactless enough to put the question to Mark directly.)
Eleanor was determined to find another boyfriend! And somehow she stumbled across Bill & decided he was the one! And then she called me every day for weeks for hints about how to give the perfect blowjob! (I have no idea why Eleanor thought I was the perfect blowjob resource!) Would Alice Munro have written about this? I kind of thought not.
###
But Alice Munro would definitely have written about the dinner conversation Eleanor, Bill, & I had some years after Mark’s death. Eleanor and I were talking about how sad we were that Mark had died all alone and in such desperate need—
Bill interrupted. “Do either of you see Mother Teresa sitting at this table? Neither do I! Well, then…”
###
And Munro might have written about how a few years later, when Bill himself died of a virulent cancer, Eleanor kept every one of Bill’s possessions, including his entire closet of clothes. Didn’t get rid of a single item. Went quite mad with grief.
Is still quite mad, though it’s been 11 years now…
###
I’m not gonna write about any of those things—except here in Dear Diary-Land, where nobody reads it.
I don’t have Alice Munro’s talent.
Yet another reason why the living arrangement would never have worked, I reminded myself.
I mean, come on.
We are women in our fuckin’ seventies, Eleanor. Such interactions ought to be handled maturely, sans drama! Euphoria’s showrunner does not want to produce a show about hapless you & the multiple betrayals you are forced to bear.
Also, when you told me you were planning to kill yourself—and had actually picked a day based on the earliest time the crematorium could pick up your corpse!—I said, Hold that thought! And immediately booked a plane ticket.
So, you know.
I think I’ve been a pretty good friend.
The whole interaction put me in a not-very-good mood.
So, I ran off to my garden.
Here’s my upper plot, weeded & planted with basil & flowers—we found another beekeeper, so my pollinator garden can be utilitarian again.
Here’s my lower plot with all the tomatoes & peppers in cages. As you can see, my garlic & strawberries are thriving:
Came home & found out from
lifeinroseland's LJ that Alice Munro had died.One of my very, very favorite writers.
Munro was 92 and had stopped writing some years back.
Still…
###
Friendship between women is a repeating theme in Alice Munro’s work.
So, naturally, I began to wonder how Alice Munro might have written the story of my friendship with Long Ago Eleanor.
###
Alice Munro would start with our first meeting—an astrology class! I was 19; Eleanor was 24.
The class was taught by a wiry, intense little guy in his early 20s named Billy Bento.
Billy Bento had this large, beautiful, but blowsy girlfriend named Grace who was in (I guess) her 30s—which, of course, seemed impossibly old at the time.
Billy Bento was just horribly rude to Grace. Bordering on abusive. Her overly large eyes had the look of a cow who didn’t quite understand how it had ended up in the abattoir.
Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. “How dare you speak to her like that?” I demanded.
And stalked out of the room.
I don’t actually remember any of this.
Eleanor does.
###
I do remember the time she & her sister came to visit me in Paris during one of my last modeling gigs there.
And how a few years later, she & Mark—whom I had hired separately to drive me from Berkeley to Danville and back four times a week before I learned how to drive—marched in together one day to announce they weren’t gonna take it anymore! (Take what? I wondered. I was paying them! And they didn’t have any other work!) They had fallen in ❤️LUV❤️
This is what precipitated my own decision to learn how to drive! 😀
Ten or 15 years later, I remember how shocked I was when Eleanor announced she would not be accompanying Mark to Portland—where presumably he was moving because Oregon is an assisted suicide state, and he had terminal MS. (Though even I was not tactless enough to put the question to Mark directly.)
Eleanor was determined to find another boyfriend! And somehow she stumbled across Bill & decided he was the one! And then she called me every day for weeks for hints about how to give the perfect blowjob! (I have no idea why Eleanor thought I was the perfect blowjob resource!) Would Alice Munro have written about this? I kind of thought not.
###
But Alice Munro would definitely have written about the dinner conversation Eleanor, Bill, & I had some years after Mark’s death. Eleanor and I were talking about how sad we were that Mark had died all alone and in such desperate need—
Bill interrupted. “Do either of you see Mother Teresa sitting at this table? Neither do I! Well, then…”
###
And Munro might have written about how a few years later, when Bill himself died of a virulent cancer, Eleanor kept every one of Bill’s possessions, including his entire closet of clothes. Didn’t get rid of a single item. Went quite mad with grief.
Is still quite mad, though it’s been 11 years now…
###
I’m not gonna write about any of those things—except here in Dear Diary-Land, where nobody reads it.
I don’t have Alice Munro’s talent.
no subject
Date: 2024-05-17 08:29 am (UTC)Were Bill and Billy the same guy? Because they sound like the same kind of person :-(
no subject
Date: 2024-05-18 01:23 am (UTC)