Read Alice Munro's Best: Selected Stories for Free Online Page B

grows younger, and he holds up his hand this time to silence Flo.
    “All right,” he says, meaning that’s enough, more than enough, this part is over, things can proceed. He starts to loosen his belt.
    Flo has stopped anyway. She has the same difficulty Rose does, a difficulty in believing that what you know must happen really will happen, that there comes a time when you can’t draw back.
    “Oh, I don’t know, don’t be too hard on her.” She is moving around nervously as if she has thoughts of opening some escape route. “Oh, you don’t have to use the belt on her. Do you have to use the belt?”
    He doesn’t answer. The belt is coming off, not hastily. It is being grasped at the necessary point. All right you. He is coming over to Rose. He pushes her off the table. His face, like his voice, is quite out of character. He is like a bad actor, who turns a part grotesque. As ifhe must savor and insist on just what is shameful and terrible about this. That is not to say he is pretending, that he is acting, and does not mean it. He is acting, and he means it. Rose knows that, she knows everything about him.
    She has since wondered about murders, and murderers. Does the thing have to be carried through, in the end, partly for the effect, to prove to the audience of one – who won’t be able to report, only register, the lesson – that such a thing can happen, that there is nothing that can’t happen, that the most dreadful antic is justified, feelings can be found to match it?
    She tries again looking at the kitchen floor, that clever and comforting geometrical arrangement, instead of looking at him or his belt. How can this go on in front of such daily witnesses – the linoleum, the calendar with the mill and creek and autumn trees, the old accommodating pots and pans?
    Hold out your hand!
    Those things aren’t going to help her, none of them can rescue her. They turn bland and useless, even unfriendly. Pots can show malice, the patterns of linoleum can leer up at you, treachery is the other side of dailiness.
    At the first, or maybe the second, crack of pain, she draws back. She will not accept it. She runs around the room, she tries to get to the doors. Her father blocks her off. Not an ounce of courage or of stoicism in her, it would seem. She runs, she screams, she implores. Her father is after her, cracking the belt at her when he can, then abandoning it and using his hands. Bang over the ear, then bang over the other ear. Back and forth, her head ringing. Bang in the face. Up against the wall and bang in the face again. He shakes her and hits her against the wall, he kicks her legs. She is incoherent, insane, shrieking. Forgive me! Oh please, forgive me!
    Flo is shrieking too. Stop, stop!
    Not yet. He throws Rose down. Or perhaps she throws herself down. He kicks her legs again. She has given up on words but is letting out a noise, the sort of noise that makes Flo cry, Oh, what if people can hear her? The very last-ditch willing sound of humiliation and defeat it is, for it seems Rose must play her part in this with the same grossness, the sameexaggeration, that her father displays, playing his. She plays his victim with a self-indulgence that arouses, and maybe hopes to arouse, his final, sickened contempt.
    They will give this anything that is necessary, it seems, they will go to any lengths.
    Not quite. He has never managed really to injure her, though there are times, of course, when she prays that he will. He hits her with an open hand, there is some restraint in his kicks.
    Now he stops, he is out of breath. He allows Flo to move in, he grabs Rose up and gives her a push in Flo’s direction, making a sound of disgust. Flo retrieves her, opens the stair door, shoves her up the stairs.
    “Go on up to your room now! Hurry!”
    Rose goes up the stairs, stumbling, letting herself stumble, letting herself fall against the steps. She doesn’t bang her door because a gesture like that could still bring