FICTION THE BEAR CAME OVER THE MOUNTAIN - …

1 FIONA lived in her parents house,in the town where she and Grantwent to university. It was a big,bay-windowed house that seemed toGrant both luxurious and disorderly,with rugs crooked on the floors and cup rings bitten into the table mother was Icelandic a powerful woman with a froth of white hair andindignant far-left politics. The fatherwas an important cardiologist, reveredaround the hospital but happily subser-vient at home, where he would listen tohis wife s strange tirades with an absent-minded smile. Fiona had her own lit-tle car and a pile of cashmere sweaters,but she wasn t in a sorority, and hermother s political activity was probablythe reason.

2 Not that she cared. Sorori-ties were a joke to her, and so was poli-tics though she liked to play The FourInsurgent Generals on the phonograph,and sometimes also the Internationale, very loud, if there was a guest she thoughtshe could make nervous. A curly-hairedgloomy-looking foreigner was courtingher she said he was a Visigoth andso were two or three quite respectableand uneasy young interns. She made funof them all and of Grant as well. Shewould drolly repeat some of his small-town phrases. He thought maybe shewas joking when she proposed to him,on a cold bright day on the beach at PortStanley. Sand was stinging their facesand the waves delivered crashing loadsof gravel at their feet.

3 Do you think it would be fun Fiona shouted. Do you think it wouldbe fun if we got married? He took her up on it, he shouted wanted never to be away from had the spark of they left their house Fionanoticed a mark on the kitchen came from the cheap black houseshoes she had been wearing earlier inthe day. I thought they d quit doing that, she said in a tone of ordinary annoy-ance and perplexity, rubbing at the graysmear that looked as if it had beenmade by a greasy remarked that she d never haveto do this again, since she wasn t takingthose shoes with her. I guess I ll be dressed up all thetime, she said.

4 Or semi-dressed ll be sort of like in a hotel. She rinsed out the rag she d beenusing and hung it on the rack inside thedoor under the sink. Then she put onher golden-brown, fur-collared ski jacket, over a white turtleneck sweater and tai-lored fawn slacks. She was a tall, narrow-shouldered woman, seventy years old butstill upright and trim, with long legs andlong feet, delicate wrists and ankles, andtiny, almost comical-looking ears. Herhair that was as light as milkweed fluffhad gone from pale blond to whitesomehow without Grant s noticing ex-actly when, and she still wore it down toher shoulders, as her mother had done.

5 (That was the thing that had alarmedGrant s own mother, a small-town widowwho worked as a doctor s long white hair on Fiona s mother,even more than the state of the house,had told her all she needed to knowabout attitudes and politics.) But other-wise Fiona, with her fine bones andsmall sapphire eyes, was nothing like hermother. She had a slightly crookedmouth, which she emphasized now withred lipstick usually the last thing shedid before she left the looked just like herself on thisday direct and vague as in fact shewas, sweet and year ago, Grant had started no-ticing so many little yellow notesstuck up all over the house.

6 That was notentirely new. Fiona had always writtenthings down the title of a book she dheard mentioned on the radio or the jobs FICTIONTHE bear CAME OVERTHE MOUNTAIN6BY ALICE MUNRO110 CHRISTOPHER BURKETT, FIR AND SNOW /ANDREW SMITH GALLERY, SANTA FE112 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 27 & JANUARY 3, 2000she wanted to make sure she got donethat day. Even her morning schedulewas written down. He found it mystifyingand touching in its precision: 7:30 7:45 teeth face hair. 7:45 8:15 walk. 8:15 Grant and breakfast. The new notes were different. Stuckonto the kitchen drawers Cutlery, Dish-towels,Knives. Couldn t she just openthe drawers and see what was inside?

7 Worse things were coming. She wentto town and phoned Grant from a boothto ask him how to drive home. She wentfor her usual walk across the field intothe woods and came home by the fenceline a very long way round. She saidthat she d counted on fences always tak-ing you was hard to figure out. She d saidthat about fences as if it were a joke,and she had remembered the phonenumber without any trouble. I don t think it s anything to worryabout, she said. I expect I m just losingmy mind. He asked if she had been taking sleep-ing pills. If I am I don t remember, she she said she was sorry to sound soflippant. I m sure I haven t been takinganything.

8 Maybe I should be. Maybevitamins. Vitamins didn t help. She wouldstand in doorways trying to figure outwhere she was going. She forgot to turnon the burner under the vegetables orput water in the coffeemaker. She askedGrant when they d moved to this house. Was it last year or the year before? It was twelve years ago, he said. That s shocking. She s always been a bit like this, Grant said to the doctor. He tried with-out success to explain how Fiona s sur-prise and apologies now seemed some-how like routine courtesy, not quiteconcealing a private amusement. As ifshe d stumbled on some unexpected ad-venture. Or begun playing a game thatshe hoped he would catch on to.

9 Yes, well, the doctor said. It mightbe selective at first. We don t know, dowe? Till we see the pattern of the dete-rioration, we really can t say. In a while it hardly mattered whatlabel was put on it. Fiona, who no longerwent shopping alone, disappeared fromthe supermarket while Grant had hisback turned. A policeman picked her upas she was walking down the middle ofthe road, blocks away. He asked her nameand she answered readily. Then he askedher the name of the Prime Minister. If you don t know that, young man,you really shouldn t be in such a respon-sible job. He laughed. But then she made themistake of asking if he d seen Boris and Natasha.

10 These were the now deadRussian wolfhounds she had adoptedmany years ago, as a favor to a friend,then devoted herself to for the rest of their lives. Her taking them over might have coincided with the discoverythat she was not likely to have chil-dren. Something about her tubes beingblocked, or twisted Grant could notremember now. He had always avoidedthinking about all that female appara-tus. Or it might have been after hermother died. The dogs long legs andsilky hair, their narrow, gentle, intransi-gent faces made a fine match for herwhen she took them out for Grant himself, in those days, land-ing his first job at the university (his father-in-law s money welcome there in spite of the political taint), mighthave seemed to some people to havebeen picked up on another of Fiona s ec-centric whims, and groomed and tendedand favored though, fortunately, hedidn t understand this until much a rule that nobody could be admitted to Meadowlake dur-ing the month of December.