The Bear Came Over the Mountain Summary & Analysis

Fiona lives with her parents in a large house that is at once “luxurious and disorderly.” Her father is an important cardiologist while Fiona’s mother is a politically left-wing woman from Iceland. Fiona does not care about politics, which are a “joke” to her; so too are sororities, though she owns “her own little car and a pile of cashmere sweaters.” Fiona is being courted by several young men, including Grant, and while she makes fun of them all, she proposes to Grant during a day at the beach. Grant thinks she’s joking at first, but never wanting “to be away from her,” accepts, thinking to himself that “she had the spark of life.”

Grant, now much older, remembers this as he and Fiona are leaving their home. Fiona notices a scuff on the floor from her shoes and cleans it up, musing while she does so about what she would wear where she is going and figuring that she will be “dressed up all the time.” Grant admires Fiona’s tasteful and stylish outfit, while also observing her long white hair, which she wears in the same style as Fiona’s mother, and remembers how this had alarmed Grant’s own small-town mother as an indication of their difference in values.

Grant then remembers how, a year ago, he had started noticing Fiona leaving yellow post-it notes around the house. While Fiona often left herself little notes, such as titles of books she wanted to read, these more recent notes were labels to help her remember what various household drawers contained. Then, Fiona forgot how to get home from town or from her walks in the woods. Fiona did not seem overly concerned about these lapses in memory, and simply wondered if she needed to take vitamins. Her mental state, however, continued to deteriorate.

In one instance, Fiona thought she and Grant had only recently moved into the house in which they had lived for twelve years. They visited a doctor who was reticent about labeling the issue but acknowledged that Fiona’s memory was deteriorating. Speaking to the doctor, Grant tried to explain that Fiona has always been flighty and ironic; at first, he thought that her forgetfulness is part of a “private amusement” or a “joke.”

Fiona continued to get worse until she could no longer function on her own. Once, she disappeared from the supermarket and was picked up by the police walking down the middle of the road. She’d then asked the officers about her long-dead Russian wolfhounds Boris and Natasha. Thinking of the dogs in the present, Grant remembers how Fiona may have adopted them after finding out that she couldn’t have children, though he can not remember exactly why as he “avoided thinking about all that female apparatus.” Unsure of the timeline, however, Grant wonders if she actually adopted them after Fiona’s mother died.

Many people, Grant assumed, might have seen Boris and Natasha as one of Fiona’s “eccentric whims,” just as they might have viewed him in the early days of their marriage. Some of this, he acknowledges, is contributed to by the fact that Fiona’s father’s money helped secure his position as a professor of Anglo-Saxon and Nordic literature at the local university.

The care facility where Fiona is moving has a rule that no one can be admitted during December, due to the high emotional strain of the holiday season. So, in January, she and Grant drive there together. On the way, Fiona reminisces about a time they went cross-country skiing in a nearby hollow. Grant wonders to himself how she can still hold such memories “so vividly” while losing aspects of basic functionality, and struggles with the desire to turn around and go home.

Another rule at Meadowlake is that new residents cannot receive visitors for the first thirty days in order to ease their settling in. The supervisor assures Grant that “if they’re left on their own the first month they usually end up happy as clams.” Grant remembers visiting their neighbor, a bachelor farmer named Mr. Farquhar, several years prior at Meadowlake. The facility has since been renovated, but Grant cannot help from picturing Fiona in the old Meadowlake as he calls the nurses daily for updates on her.

Grant speaks most frequently with a nurse named Kristy. Kristy lets him know that Fiona catches a cold, comparing this incident to “kids at school” getting sick, but Fiona gets better after a round of antibiotics and seems “less confused” than when she first arrived. She also starts to make friends. While he waits to visit, Grant refrains from socializing with their friends or even picking up the phone, instead skiing and quietly preparing his supper while remembering when he and Fiona shared this intimate ritual.

One night during this period, Grant dreams that he receives a letter from the roommate of a girl with whom he once had an affair. He shows this letter to a colleague, who reacts with consternation, advising Grant to prepare Fiona. In the dream, Grant then enters a lecture hall full of young women in mourning and glaring at him, while Fiona, sitting in the front, dismisses their emotional distress, saying “oh phooey, girls that age are always going around talking about how they’ll kill themselves.”

When he wakes up from this dream, Grant reviews what actually happened and what was a part of his dream. While he did not really consult his colleague, he did receive such a letter (as well as the word “rat” written on his office door). He told Fiona simply that the girl had a crush on him, rather than acknowledging the affair, and Fiona responded much as she had in the dream. While Grant did not face any direct ramifications in his job, after the incident became well known, he stopped being invited to social events held by colleagues and other university professors. This motivated Grant to promise Fiona “a new life.”

Grant thinks to himself that his life as a philanderer, though he disputes this label, had actually included generosity, in in the sense that he emotionally catered to the women with whom he became involved. While he acknowledges that he deceived Fiona, he wonders whether it would have been better for him to leave her instead of continuing to support her emotionally and financially.

Grant acknowledges, however, that their life had been affected by his affairs. After the incident with the girl, he retired, and the two moved to Fiona’s father’s farmhouse in Georgian Bay, which Fiona inherited after his death.

This move precipitated a “new life” for Grant and Fiona. They kept socializing to a minimum, though they did make some friends, and occupied their time skiing and working on the house. Grant stopped having affairs. Though at first he felt a sense of injustice about this change, Grant then became grateful, recognizing that it might have come just in time to salvage his marriage and ensure that he did not lose Fiona.

Grant again recalls his many affairs as he prepares to visit Fiona at Meadowlake after her first month. He feels a sense of anticipation that reminds him of the first meeting with a new lover. He buys Fiona an ostentatious bouquet, which Kristy, the nurse, notes he must have “spent a fortune on” when he arrives. Grant assesses Kristy’s appearance critically, thinking that she “looked as if she had given up on her looks in every department except her hair [...] all the puffed-up luxury of a cocktail waitress’s style, or a stripper’s, on top of such a workaday face and body.”

Kristy shows Grant to Fiona’s room, which is devoid of personal décor. Fiona is not there, so Kristy shows Grant to the main common area, where Fiona is sitting with a group of patients playing cards. Grant notes that her face looks heavier than before. Fiona is sitting very close to one man, helping him with his cards. When Grant arrives, she greets him with friendly chatter and offers him a cup of tea. This alerts Grant to her mental state, as Fiona clearly does not remember that Grant does not drink tea. Grant comments on the man Fiona was sitting with, and she introduces him as Aubrey, whom she knew when she was a teenager from a visit to the farm. Grant realizes that Fiona has also forgotten that they lived in this farmhouse together.

 Fiona is distracted from her conversation with Grant by Aubrey, who clearly wants her to return to the table. Grant notices “a blush spotting her newly fattened face.” Fiona goes back to Aubrey and taps his hand with hers.

Grant speaks to Kristy, who brushes this relationship off as normal, saying that many new patients form these kind of close attachments. She advises that Grant learn to take Fiona’s mental state—and potential memory of him— “day by day.”

Grant continues to visit, but Fiona simply treats him with polite distance. Grant learns from Kristy that Aubrey does not have dementia, but rather got sick on holiday and went into a coma, resulting in some neurological damage.

Fiona and Aubrey spend most of their time together at the card table, though they also walk to halls together or sit in the conservatory speaking to each other lovingly. When Fiona spends time with Grant Aubrey expresses his distaste through dropping his cards.

Grant makes an effort to respect their relationship, reducing his visits to twice a week. Because Aubrey does not receive visitors, however, he and Fiona often disappear during this time, sometimes to their rooms, a fact about which Grant feels “a truly malignant dislike.”

One day, Grant sees Fiona wheeling Aubrey outside. He registers that she is wearing a “silly” wool hat and a jacket that looks like something worn by “local women at the supermarket.” He wonders if the Meadowlake workers do not bother to sort out the wardrobes of the female residents. More alarming to Grant, however, is the fact that the staff have cut off Fiona’s trademark long hair. When he asks her about the haircut, Fiona remarks with surprise, stating that she did not notice it.

Grant flashes back to his teaching career. At the beginning, he remembers, he gets “the regular sort” of students (i.e. male), but soon married women start to go back to school in order to “enrich their lives.” Women join his courses, for example, if they have a Scandinavian background or enjoy historical novels about the Nordic or Anglo-Saxon eras which Grant specializes in. The relationships they form with their professors, Grant muses, often are part of this “enrichment,” as many start to have affairs. While Grant speaks to many of these women harshly, some, he thinks, are attracted to his tone and continue to visit his office.

Grant’s first lover, one of these women, is named Jacqui Adams. She is the opposite of Fiona in both appearance and personality. Their affair lasts a year, until her husband’s transfer. While Jacqui writes him letters after her move, Grant quickly loses interest, repelled by the intensity of her emotions for him. He is also distracted, because now, women are starting to join the university as undergraduates, and Grant begins to sleep with students, stating “young girls with long hair and sandalled feet were coming into his office and all but declaring themselves ready for sex.”

The arrival of young women at the university and the larger shifting attitudes towards sex taking place in the sixties creates a great deal of drama at Grant’s university. “Scandals burst wide open” and some of Grant’s colleagues receive reprisals and firings, though this does not stop the new sexual openness between academics themselves as well as their students.

While it seems to Grant that most people in his social world are involved in this sexual revolution, he acknowledges that Fiona remained disinterested in it. However, as a result of his affairs, Grant begins to feel more confident in himself and more appreciative of his life.

On his next visit to Meadowlake, Grant brings Fiona a book of watercolors illustrating Iceland, as she had developed a recent interest in the country. He finds her and Aubrey distracted and distressed, however, as Aubrey is leaving Meadowlake to go home, as Aubrey’s wife has returned from her vacation in Florida. Fiona comforts Aubrey, who is crying, using affectionate phrases such as “dear heart” which Grant had not heard her use before, and asks Grant to intervene. Grant asks Kristy if he should stay. Kristy asks, “What for? She’s not sick, you know.” When Grant clarifies that he thinks he might need to keep her company, Kristy assures him that “they have to get over these things on their own,” so he leaves, seeing a woman he assumes is Aubrey’s wife in the parking lot.

Although Kristy says that Fiona will recover from her grief, she does not, refusing to eat or get out of bed. After the staff start to talk about putting her on a walker or moving her to a more intensive care section of Meadowlake, Grant decides to visit Aubrey’s wife and see if he can negotiate a visit.

Grant remembers the neighborhood as a place where their friends had moved with young children, and notices that some young families still live there, though some houses are more run down. Aubrey’s house, though, is well-kept. Aubrey’s wife, Marian, assumes that Grant is there with a grievance about Aubrey and Fiona’s relationship, and treats him coldly. Once Grant clarifies that he does not have any issues on this front, however, Marian invites him in. Grant looks at Marian’s “trim waist and wide buttocks,” judging her makeup and her wrinkles.

Grant notices the care that Marian has taken with the home, conveyed by the living room’s curtains, matching sofa and carpet, and various ornaments. He reflects that Fiona would have scorned this type of interior design, preferring simpler and bright rooms; in particular she had a joking “word for those sort of swooping curtains.”

Grant and Marian share a cup of coffee in the kitchen. Grant compliments the coffeemaker, seeking a point of connection, which Marian states was a gift from her and Aubrey’s son. She expresses dissatisfaction with her son’s lack of involvement with Aubrey’s care and the fact that he rarely visits them, despite having time for holidays in places like Hawaii.

Grant uses this topic to try and steer the conversation towards Fiona, asking if Marian wouldn’t mind bringing Aubrey back to Meadowlake to visit her. He also offers to provide transportation, if Marian doesn’t have the time, though he surprises himself when he offers this.

Marian serves him homemade ginger cookies while Grant poses this question, then says no, stating that she doesn’t want to upset or confuse Aubrey through this change in his routine, as well as the inconvenience for her. Grant repeats his offer to take Aubrey himself, which Marian also rejects, saying that Grant wouldn’t know how to take care of him. Marian gets a cigarette and offers Grant one, telling him that she has “quit quitting.” Grant remembers quitting when he started his affair with Jacqui. He wonders if Marian has so many wrinkles because she smokes, musing on the contrast between her aged skin and “youthfully full and uptilted breasts.” He sees this contradiction as typical for women of Marian’s age, whereas Fiona “kept [her] beauty whole, though shadowy,” though Grant acknowledges he might simply have this perception because he knew Fiona when she was young.

Grant asks if Marian ever considered putting Aubrey in Meadowlake full-time. When Marian says no, he assumes this is out of a sense of nobility. She quickly corrects him, however, explaining that it makes more sense for Aubrey to live with her until she can get both their pensions, in order to hold on to the house. She explains that Aubrey was actually fired (and accused of owing his company money) before he got sick, and that the illness at least helped them evade his debts. Marian comments that Grant must think she is “a mercenary type of person,” which he denies.

Grant is depressed by his conversation with Marian, which reminds Grant of his mother and the small-town world in which he grew up, exemplified by their “money first” attitude. He wonders if Marian sees him and his quest to ensure Fiona’s happiness as out of touch with reality due to their relative wealth, thinking that she must see him as “a silly person [...] protected by some fluke from the truth about life. A person who didn’t have to worry about holding on to his house and could go around dreaming up the fine generous schemes that he believed would make another person happy.” Grant muses that he would probably have married someone like Marian—who, he thinks, must have been a “small-town flirt” when she was young—if he had “stayed back where he belonged.”

Grant acknowledges that Marian must have had some hopes of a better life when she married Aubrey, with his white-collar job, and wonders if she is disappointed with her life. He does not afford her too much empathy, however, quickly criticizing these “practical people” for their financially-based calculations about life.

When Grant returns home, he has two voicemails from Marian asking him to attend a singles dance with her. While she clarifies that she understands that neither of them is really single, she adds that she thought it would be a nice activity. Grant is intrigued, wondering what had changed in Marian’s mind to make her call him. He begins to fantasize about Marian’s experience of the situation, feeling satisfied that he had brought out her vulnerability. He feels like “anything is possible,” even imagining that he could convince her to bring Aubrey to meet Fiona.

Grant continues to imagine Marian waiting for him to call, calculating the distance of his drive, before he reminds himself that Marian is too sensible to wait by the phone for him. The phone rings again, and Grant does not pick up, but listens to Marian’s third message. She had heard the phone ring while she was downstairs, and was wondering if Grant had called.

While drinking, Grant remembers that the word for the curtains that Fiona mocked by Marian decorated her house with is “drapes.” He remembers her ginger cookies and coffee mugs on a ceramic tree, thinking that Grant’s mother would have admired the “high-gloss exactness and practicality” of Marian’s home. He then fantasizes about her cleavage, almost forcing himself to think of Marian in a sexual light as he drunkenly returns her call.

Later, Grant visits Fiona at Meadowlake again. He notes that she is wearing a short dress, which Fiona also comments on, seemingly aware that she is not dressed in her own clothes. Grant tells her that he has brought Aubrey to visit her. Fiona does not remember Aubrey. Instead, she hugs Grant and thanks him for visiting her, saying that he could have driven away and left her in Meadowlake. Grant holds Fiona and responds, “not a chance.”