The Moslem Wife and Other Stories by Mavis Gallant, Mordecai Richler Page A

the part of Canada I come from. Besides, my family never had that kind of leisure.”
    “Heavens,” said Sheilah, as if her family had every kind.
    I’ll bet they had, thought Peter. On the dole.
    Sheilah was wasting her act. He had a suspicion that Agnes knew it was an act but did not know it was also a joke. If so, itmade Sheilah seem a fool, and he loved Sheilah too much to enjoy it.
    “The Burleighs have been wonderful to me,” said Agnes. She seemed to have divined why she was here, and decided to give them all the information they wanted, so that she could put on her coat and go home to bed. “They had me out to their place on the lake every weekend until the weather got cold and they moved back to town. They’ve rented a chalet for the winter, and they want me to come there, too. But I don’t know if I will or not. I don’t ski, and, oh, I don’t know – I don’t drink, either, and I don’t always see the point. Their friends are too rich and I’m too Canadian.”
    She had delivered everything Sheilah wanted and more: Agnes was on the first guest list and didn’t care. No, Peter corrected; doesn’t know. Doesn’t care and doesn’t know.
    “I thought with you Norwegians it was in the blood, skiing. And drinking,” Sheilah murmured.
    “Drinking, maybe,” said Agnes. She covered her mouth and said behind her spread fingers, “In our family we were religious. We didn’t drink or smoke. My brother was in Norway in the war. He saw some cousins. Oh,” she said, unexpectedly loud, “Harry said it was just terrible. They were so poor. They had flies in their kitchen. They gave him something to eat a fly had been on. They didn’t have a real toilet, and they’d been in the same house about two hundred years. We’ve only recently built our own home, and we have a bathroom and two toilets. I’m from Saskatchewan,” she said. “I’m not from any other place.”
    Surely one winter here had been punishment enough? In the spring they would remember him and free him. He wrote Lucille, who said he was lucky to have a job at all. The Burleighs had sent the Fraziers a second-guest list Christmas card. It showed a Moslem refugee child weeping outside a tent. They treasured the card and left it standing long after theothers had been given the children to cut up. Peter had discovered by now what had gone wrong in the friendship – Sheilah had charged a skirt at a dressmaker to Madge’s account. Madge had told her she might, and then changed her mind. Poor Sheilah! She was new to this part of it – to the changing humors of independent friends. Paris was already a year in the past. At Mardi Gras, the Burleighs gave their annual party. They invited everyone, the damned and the dropped, with the prodigality of a child at prayers. The invitation said “in costume,” but the Fraziers were too happy to wear a disguise. They might not be recognized. Like many of the guests they expected to meet at the party, they had been disgraced, forgotten, and rehabilitated. They would be anxious to see one another as they were.
    On the night of the party, the Fraziers rented a car they had never seen before and drove through the first snowstorm of the year. Peter had not driven since last summer’s blissful trips in the Fiat. He could not find the switch for the windshield wiper in this car. He leaned over the wheel. “Can you see on your side?” he asked. “Can I make a left turn here? Does it look like a one-way?”
    “I can’t imagine why you took a car with a right-hand drive,” said Sheilah.
    He had trouble finding a place to park; they crawled up and down unknown streets whose curbs were packed with snow-covered cars. When they stood at last on the pavement, safe and sound, Peter said, “This is the first snow.”
    “I can see that,” said Sheilah. “Hurry, darling. My hair.”
    “It’s the first snow.”
    “You’re repeating yourself,” she said. “Please hurry, darling. Think of my poor shoes.