Note: The idea of envisioning Alzheimer’s disease as a fishbowl is indebted to a play I saw in Edinburgh in the Fringe 2023 about this disease and how one feels trapped in a relentless imprisoning circle from which there is no escape.
“The bear went over the other side of the mountain to see what he could see, the other side of the mountain was all that he could see.” (children’s song). Alice Munro’s deploy of a children’s song line for her story leaves readers askance. What we encounter here is very disquieting -- nothing jolly nor playful -- but memory loss, infidelity, ageing. Some reviews have revolved around the idea that this is a story about how love evolves in time: love in youth, passionate love; love in middle age, empty love; retiring age, companionate love, old age, love that starts anew (Source: here). “It is never too late to be what you might have been” fades in and out in the credits of the movie based on this short story, “Away from her” (2006) directed by Sarah Polley.
George Eliot (1819), Mary Ann Evans, Victorian writer, author of well-known novels like “Middlemarch” (1871-72) or “The Mill on the Floss” (1860) among others is the penname behind this quote: “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” The contextual significance of this quote, thinking of the times, and George Eliot’s fight for women’s rights and professional writing in a patriarchal society, very much stands for struggle and encouragement for women to start afresh away from the oppressive constructs that confined them.
In the light of this short story, and following the theory of the love evolving theme, one cannot be but startled to think whether this starting afresh is indeed shadowed by the fact that Fiona’s husband relapses into infidelity and starts the circle over again by “delivering” (the very word he uses) Aubrey to her, only to indulge himself in a relationship with Marian, Aubrey’s wife. The other side of the mountain is all that we can see. What first appeared to be an act of love seems to swerve in a totally different direction, however, with Munro, nothing is unidirectional, like human nature itself, always doublefolded and at crossways.
Notwithstanding, Grant is not to be trusted. His take on women makes him very unreliable as a self-giving spirit: “what was left of the more or less innocent vulgarity of a small-town flirt,” “a woman’s natural jealousy—resentment,” “she’d been appetizing enough. Probably a flirt,” “wrinkled neck, youthfully full and uptilted breasts. Women of her age usually had these contradictions” he says referring to Marian. He states and knows: “generally a woman’s vulnerability increased as time went on, as things progressed.”
But more than about love, the story strikes me as the painful deterioration of the mind, that Alice Munro renders very subtly: the flickering light of Fiona’s “spark of life.” First, the notes she leaves:
” 7.A.M. yoga, 7:30-7:45 teeth face hair.”
Then “the new notes are different, stuck onto kitchen drawers—Cutlery, Dish-towels ...”
“Worse things were coming”…
Worse things are coming with the institution, indeed. One has to wait thirty days so the patient may get adjusted: loneliness. Then, the symptoms: forgetfulness, oblivion, erasing, disengagement, strangeness. Names, faces elude Fiona: she treats Grant with a slightly annoying courtesy. She falls for Aubrey to whom she refers at the end as “Names elude me.” Her life comes to rags, threads ...waves of wind, loose threads.
There is a thread left, she knows she might have been forsaken, “forsaken” in all the imaginary forms of the verb, even the non - existent ones: forsook / forsooken / forsaken. “Not a chance,” one of the two men answers…
