Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro Read Free Book Online

fights— they would all gang up on someone and tickle her till she shrieked for mercy and agreed to pull her pajama pants down to show if she had hair. They told stories about girls at boarding school who did things with hairbrush handles, toothbrush handles. Ugga-ugga . Once a couple of cousins put on a show—one girl got on top of the other and pretended to be the boy and they wound their legs around each other and groaned and panted and carried on.
    Uncle Clark’s sister and her husband came to visit on their honeymoon, and he was seen to put his hand inside her swimsuit.
    “They really loved each other, they were at it day and night,” said Sabitha. She hugged a cushion to her chest. “People can’t help it when they’re in love like that.”
    One of the cousins had already done it with a boy. He was one of the summer help in the gardens of the resort down the road. He took her out in a boat and threatened to push her out until she agreed to let him do it. So it wasn’t her fault.
    “Couldn’t she swim?” said Edith.
    Sabitha pushed the cushion between her legs. “Oooh,” she said. “Feels so nice.”
    Edith knew all about the pleasurable agonies Sabitha was feeling, but she was appalled that anybody would make them public. She herself was frightened of them. Years ago, before she knew what she was doing, she had gone to sleep with the blanket between her legs and her mother had discovered her and told her about a girl she had known who did things like that all the time and had eventually been operated on for the problem.
    “They used to throw cold water on her, but it didn’t cure her,” her mother had said. “So she had to be cut.”
    Otherwise her organs would get congested and she might die.
    “Stop,” she said to Sabitha, but Sabitha moaned defiantly and said, “It’s nothing. We all did it like this. Haven’t you got a cushion?”
    Edith got up and went to the kitchen and filled her empty iced-coffee glass with cold water. When she got back Sabitha was lying limp on the couch, laughing, the cushion flung on the floor.
    “What did you think I was doing?” she said. “Didn’t you know I was kidding?”
    “I was thirsty,” Edith said.
    “You just drank a whole glass of iced coffee.”
    “I was thirsty for water.”
    “Can’t have any fun with you.” Sabitha sat up. “If you’re so thirsty why don’t you drink it?”
    They sat in a moody silence until Sabitha said, in a conciliatory but disappointed tone, “Aren’t we going to write Johanna another letter? Let’s write her a lovey-dovey letter.”
    Edith had lost a good deal of her interest in the letters, but she was gratified to see that Sabitha had not. Some sense of having power over Sabitha returned, in spite of Lake Simcoe and the breasts. Sighing, as if reluctantly, she got up and took the cover off the typewriter.
    “My darlingest Johanna—” said Sabitha.
    “No. That’s too sickening.”
    “She won’t think so.”
    “She will so,” said Edith.
    She wondered whether she should tell Sabitha about the danger of congested organs. She decided not to. For one thing, that information fell into a category of warnings she had received from her mother and never known whether to wholly trust or distrust. It had not fallen as low, in credibility, as the belief that wearing foot-rubbers in the house would ruin your eyesight, but there was no telling—someday it might.
    And for another thing—Sabitha would just laugh. She laughed at warnings—she would laugh even if you told her that chocolate eclairs would make her fat.
    “Your last letter made me so happy—”
    “Your last letter filled me with rapture—” said Sabitha.
    “—made me so happy to think I did have a true friend in the world, which is you—”
    “I could not sleep all night because I was longing to crush you in my arms—” Sabitha wrapped her arms around herself and rocked back and forth.
    “ No . Often I have felt so lonely in spite of a