Читать книгу A Celibate Season - Carol Shields - Страница 6
ОглавлениеThe Château Laurier
Ottawa, Ont.
Sept. 2
I bet you didn’t expect me to pick up pen and Château L. stationery ten minutes after your phone call. Surprise! Here I am, huddled on one of their oversize beds, which makes me feel as though I were drifting around the Strait of Georgia in our leaky old dinghy. When I think of all the times you’ve spent alone in hotel rooms—Regina, Victoria, Edmonton—and how I used to envy your freedom, your adventure! It never occurred to me that it might feel this empty.
What do I do now? A man, I suppose, would head for the bar. (I can’t—I’ll drown.) I’ll have to pour my own. Damn! I just remembered. You know that little bottle of medicinal Scotch you tucked into my briefcase? (Sweet you—oh God!) Well, at the last minute I decided to bring yet another legal tome and there wasn’t room for the Scotch so I took it out. All I have is a miniature bottle of gin supplied by Air Canada—I suppose I could mix it with mouthwash. I deserve to crawl drinkless across the Sahara—which, incidentally, the dimensions of this room are beginning to remind me of.
Ingratitude! It was classy of the Commission to put me in such a room, so royally maroon! Heavy maroon quilts, maroon drapes tied back over white sheers that hide what turns out to be two old-fashioned windows (with wooden sills!) that actually open, reluctantly, from the bottom and have to be propped up. But I’d have felt less bereft if the room had been little, with, instead of two big double beds, one modest, cell-like single covered with chaste white cotton—why two doubles, anyway? Are there people so sexually athletic that, having worn out the resilience of bed number one, they roll—not coming unstuck—onto bed number two…I’d better get off that line of thought.
I got off to a great country-bumpkin start—tripped getting out of the taxi. There’s a step up to the revolving doors here at the Château, and I missed and would have fallen on my face (falling on my face—a hidden message from the psyche?) if the doorman hadn’t had the reflexes of Rambo. I’ve got the jitters, no use pretending otherwise—about tomorrow, I mean. There I’ll be, all got up in that great grey suit from Chapman’s—Mother tried her damnedest to wheedle the price out of me, but I refused to blow my cover—in my suitable navy-blue blouse, navy-blue pumps (and matching soul)—clutching my leather Lady Executive Briefcase, stumbling in and introducing myself to Senator Pierce—oh Lord! How do you address a senator? I forgot to find out.
I keep remembering how sceptical Mr. Enright seemed when I told him I was taking a leave of absence. “Women’s issues—“was all he said, and then sort of shook his head and grinned.
Tell me I won’t blow it. This is high-powered stuff. I need you. To reassure me. In person, not over a disembodied electronic gadget. And I’ve got the guilts again about leaving you to cope.
Happy about Greg’s two goals! I keep thinking of him skating out onto the ice and tossing his head back like Wayne Gretzky. That little head toss—I don’t know why—keeps swamping me with tenderness. Imprinting the hero. Seeing oneself as a glorious hunter/warrior/pilot—maybe it’s the male way of blocking any suspicion that ploughing around in muddy trenches or being impaled on a lance or tumbling in flames into the Atlantic isn’t that much fun. I guess invading space must be next, that’s what little boys dream of now. (Little girls? I notice no one ever cleans space up.)
I’m trying not to worry about Greg. Or Mia. Or about you, volunteering for this house-husband thing. No vestigial role-model anywhere, is there?Your father’s ashes would ignite, and as for your mother, I did think she sounded a mite snappish when we told her, didn’t you?
I’ll write after tomorrow’s meeting. It’s only nine o’clock Vancouver time (midnight here), but maybe if I tunnel under the maroon covers my mind will shut down. Why didn’t I steal two little gins?
Much, much love, and even to the rotten teenagers. Tell them I called them that—perversely, it’ll make them feel loved.
Love,
Jock
P.S. My God, the lentils! I bought two jars; I was going to learn to make lentil soup. They’re on the top shelf, seems a shame to waste them.
P.P.S. Sequins! Mia has to have them for her ballet costume. Don’t worry, I’ll think of something.
29 Sweet Cedar
Drive North Vancouver, B.C.
4 September
Dear Jock,
I’m sitting here by the kitchen window, which is where I moved my old drafting table and typewriter yesterday. Greg came out of his sulks for a whole ten minutes and gave me a hand carrying it up from the basement (my God it’s heavy—you can’t beat good solid oak), while Mia stood by and exclaimed in that shrill piping way she has that it’s a campy old thing and that it makes the kitchen look “unbalanced.” Tell me, what do thirteen-year-old girls know about balance? “Never mind,” I told her, “this is where it stays.”
You wouldn’t believe what this simple shift of furniture has done for my morale, which was draggier than usual after a weekend of heavy parenting—more about that later. Here I sit, king of the kitchen, in that wasted space between the fridge and the kitchen table. (We moved your bamboo plant stand into the dining room where your mother’s old tea trolley used to be, and as for the tea trolley—more about that later too.)
At any rate, I feel this dreary morning like a man reborn. The sun is not pouring in—you wouldn’t believe me if I said it was—but there is definitely something about the sight of tall, dark dripping trees that makes for a minor-chord melancholy that’s one step up from basement-iris. God only knows why I put up with that basement room all this time. One more year of strip lighting and cinder-block walls and mildewed straw matting might have destroyed me totally. And so, despite the non-balancing kitchen and the sticky jam jar someone’s left on my drafting table, I feel installed, ensconced, magisterial even.
Of course it’s helped that your letter arrived this morning. I’ve read it through three times and feel a real pang, whatever the hell a pang is, reading about your snug maroon cocoon at the Chateau Laurier and that wasted width of empty bed. In retrospect it seems somewhat wacky to me that, when this Ottawa job came up, we didn’t stop to discuss or even consider the problems that might accompany ten months of celibate life. Does this seem odd to you? A little suspect in fact? I suppose, like a pair of fools, we thought we could just shut down for a spell, the way we disconnect the pool in winter or turn off the furnace for the summer.
Speaking of the furnace, it appears we need a new thermal valve which is going to set us back—with labour—two hundred and fifty whopping bucks. When I flicked on the heat and got a series of little cheeping noises and then a crumpling sound and, finally, silence, I called our speedy twenty-four-hour emergency serviceman, who said he was awfully sorry but this was the busiest time of the year and he wouldn’t be able to make it up here until Friday. “Well, that’s just great,” I said.”What are we supposed to do till then—freeze?” There was a pause, and then he said that maybe he could get over here on Wednesday if I could promise that the lady of the house would be in. “I am the lady of the house,” I told him, “and I will be in.” There followed another pause, longer this time, and then he said, finally, something that sounded like, “Yeah?” So it looks as if we only have to stay chilly for a couple more days. Which is another good thing about moving my table to the kitchen—I can open the oven door and bask in its fierce kilowatt-eating coil, never mind what the hydro bill’s going to look like at the end of the month. (You didn’t say, Jock, whether you are on the gov’t payroll yet or not.)
Can’t wait to hear how you made out with your senator. Put it in writing so I can savour it. Lord, I miss you!
Love,
Chas
P.S. Glad we agreed on the letter writing. I think it’ll keep us sane. Greg says he could get us on e-mail if I’d just install a modem, but do we want the kids accessing our private disclosures? I think not. Besides, it costs money.
Château Laurier
Sept. 4
Dear Chas,
Well, reni, vidi, vici—except that I didn’t conquer. In fact I think I came a bit unstuck. I was half an hour early leaving the Château Laurier, and after a leisurely stroll to the East Block I was still twenty minutes early. I was tempted to just hang around, but the guards aren’t great on hangers-around so I walked over to the Centre Block and pretended intense interest in the portraits of ex-prime ministers. One of the guards told me to notice how Mr. Diefenbaker’s eyes followed me around wherever I moved, a thought that did more to unnerve than to uplift. But finally the clock in the Peace Tower bonged eleven, so back I went. A guard phoned ahead and gave me directions to Senator Pierce’s office. He hadn’t arrived yet, but five minutes later he came bustling in and I introduced myself. He looked quite uncomprehending.
“Jocelyn Selby,”I repeated. “The legal counsel from Vancouver. For the Commission?”
“You’re the legal counsel?” he asked, with just the right degree of astonishment. He managed—now this is subtle—to imply that such a dish couldn’t be such a heavy, but if indeed he should be so fortunate then he would personally get down on his knees and thank le bon Dieu. (In spite of the anglo name his mother tongue is French. I’d never noticed the slight and charming—what else?—accent on TV.) I felt like a combination emancipated new-look career woman and Playboy bunny.
“Well,” he said, and flashed me a Robert Redford smile, including dimple, “this Commission is going to be more interesting than I’d thought.” Injustice! The man must be fifty if he’s a day, yet I’ll bet he looks, if anything, better than he did at thirty. The blue eyes, the slightly silvering and perfectly styled (blow-dried) hair, the perfect suit, the trace of accent—and to top it off, he’s not just another beau visage.
He went into a kind of crouch, and, with a sort of fascinated horror, I saw he was about to kiss my hand, when suddenly my eardrums were shattered by a raucous female voice behind me. “Still charming them, you old goat? Christ, you must be some kind of Dorian Gray. Where’s the real you? Hidden in the bowels of the Peace Tower?”
I wheeled around to face the most unlikely looking woman—unlikely in that setting, I mean. She was—is—immensely broad in the beam and wearing brown cords that stretch tightly over her thighs and a faded blue plaid shirt, not tucked in. Long black greasy hair. Striped headband. Thick, eye-distorting glasses. Senator Pierce swept past me in my neat get-up and perfect hair, threw his arms around her, and said, “Jess, you old cuss, you still look like a leftover hippie.”
That is Jessica Slattery. She’s actually ON THE COMMISSION! Appointed at the last minute after the women’s groups got so mad that there wasn’t a woman commissioner on a commission to look into the feminization of poverty. (I suppose my sex got me my appointment too—a nice reversal on the usual theme.)
I’ve found out since that Jessica is the president of the Canadian Social Welfare Council (which I didn’t know existed), that she’s been riding the poverty horse for years, and that she believes in farting when she feels like it. Unfortunately she felt like it just as Senator Pierce was introducing us, and I didn’t handle it with aplomb. I had managed my most gracious how do you do? when she let go, and the Senator guffawed and I would gladly have disappeared into a fourth-dimensional time-warp. (What I did was turn red and mutter, “Excuse me.” And then I was mortified that the Senator might think I’d done it.)
Sept. 5
Sorry, got interrupted. I’ve been hunting for a place to stay, but so far no luck.
I haven’t told you about the third commissioner, Dr. Grey. (Grey by name and grey by nature, my first impression.) He’ll take some getting to know. He’s a skinny grey man in a grey flannel suit with a grey voice. I was—am—astonished! Mother babbled on and on about Austin Grey—McGill University, economist, statistician, Rhodes Scholar, poet—and I don’t know exactly what I expected, but I thought he’d be, well, not-grey. He’s even greyer lined up against unbelievable Jessica and beautiful Vance. (Vance has asked me to call him Vance, but it isn’t easy. Makes me think I’m talking to a movie star.) Jessica controlled her sphincter in Dr. Grey’s presence—does natural dignity impose restraint on others, as Mother is always preaching? I’ll watch, or rather listen, and let you know.
Love,
Jock
29 Sweet Cedar Drive
North Vancouver, B.C.
9 September
Dear Jock,
Your letter just arrived and it bucked me up no end, which makes two pluses this Monday morning.
I’m feeling more or less buoyant because I’ve had a lead on a possible job opening. You remember Sanderson and Sanderson Associates? Talbot Sanderson is the cretin who wore the black cape and eye patch at the Ticknows’ New Year’s Eve bash last year, and his wife is the one who trounced me in Trivial Pursuit the same night. If you’ll remember, she couldn’t get over the fact that I didn’t know what Lassie’s master’s name was. The two of them run a fair-sized design company that puts out decent work, though nothing earth-shattering. They were big on urban development for a time, but like Robertson’s they’ve had to lay off half their architects. Now they’ve landed that big harbour-development contract that was in the papers last summer—remember?—and will probably be taking on staff.
The unlikely person who put the bug in my ear was that old grump Gil Grogan, all sotto voce through the hedge Saturday morning when I was out hacking back the alder. There hasn’t been anything public, he said, but the word was out that they’d be taking on two or possibly three temporary staff. Naturally I tried to find out how he’d heard the rumour, but he just stood there swaying and looking smug and mumbling about keeping the old ear to the old ground. (Now there’s a man who seems to thrive on celibacy. Since Meg’s died he’s taken up jogging and other primordial sins such as grouchiness and neighbourhood vigilance.) Still I was grateful and told him so.
I heard the same happy rumour about Sanderson, etc., from—guess who?—your mother. (By the way, her cold is better. She specifically asked me to tell you, since she’s too busy to write, she says, until after the Fall Fair.) She stopped by on her way over to the church hall to bring us a coffee cake and an eggplant casserole. In some ways it was unfortunate we didn’t hear her pulling into the driveway. She let herself in the front door and caught us in the middle of carrying the drafting table up the basement stairs. Greg had the top end and I had the bottom and we were negotiating that narrow spot by the landing, Greg his usual grunting, unaccommodating self, Mia screaming at us from the top of the stairs to move to the right, move to the left, and me blustering away, I’m afraid, in my loudest sergeant-major voice and turning the air a smokey blue—in all, not exactly a Walton family picnic. Suddenly your mother appeared over Mia’s shoulder, looking pale and puzzled and asking what in sweet heaven we were doing and were we sure that Jocelyn would approve. (I hope you do, my beauty, because I’d sooner dynamite the thing before moving it another inch.)
To smooth things over I asked her if she’d care for a sherry, and true to form and to no one’s surprise’ she said, “Well, maybe just a teeny-weeny one.” I also offered Greg a cold beer. (After all, that drafting table weighs a ton, and he is seventeen years old, and I was having a beer myself.) I wish you’d been here to hear the curtness with which your firstborn refused this kindly meant offer. “No thanks,” he said (sneered), and walked over to the fridge and poured himself a large, wholesome glass of milk, which he drank eyeing me and my beer all the time with a look so pious it made me wonder if you and I maybe overdid the puritan principles. Your mother chimed in with, “I don’t think a teeny-weeny bit of beer’s all that harmful”—this while I topped up her glass.
The rain stopped for a whole ten minutes or so, and we were able to take our drinks out on the deck. (It’s so green here right now. God, even the air is green. Do you suppose it’s healthy breathing green air?) Your mother wiped off one of the deck chairs with a tea towel and settled down. She’d been talking to some friends, she said, and just happened to hear something about a firm called Sanderson and Something—had I heard of them?—that they were about to take on half a dozen new architects. Naturally I asked her precisely who had given her that information, but she just waved her glove in the air and murmured something or other about keeping an ear to the ground. (Do you think, now I’ve emerged from my cinder-block cellar, that I too will acquire an aptitude for crucial ear-to-ground skills? I can only hope.)
Sunday afternoon, after a lunch composed entirely of pecan coffee cake, Mia went roller blading with the Finsteads, those new people across the way, who have, they told me when they picked her up, a series of family outings planned—bowling next week, hiking the following Sunday, and perhaps an excursion to Squamish in November. Greg disappeared too, saying he had “plans.” I pressed him. What plans? Well, he might go down to the rink. Was there a practice on? Not exactly. Who was going to be there? Coupla guys. When would he be back? Dunno. (I loved this kid once.)
I must revise and type my CV for Sanderson et al. and catch today’s mail. We all miss you!
Love,
Chas
P.S. Quit worrying about how you’ll do in the big time. My experience with bureaucracy is that anything above mediocre is considered brilliant. You’ll do fine.
Château Laurier
Sept. 11
Dear Chas,
I’ve phoned down to the desk three times hoping for a letter from you (pretending an urgent message), so will give you an update on my adventures with the Commission while waiting.
After our initial meeting, the four of us had a get-acquainted luncheon at the Parliamentary Restaurant, which I found a tremendously glamorous thing to do. (Maybe, despite all our Vancouver years, I’m still just a Williams Lake gal.) It’s a beautiful room with arched colonnades and windows looking out on the Ottawa River, and round tables, and all sorts of important people, and less-important people watching the important people and feeling important doing it. (I am among the latter category.)
I nearly yelped as we went in to find myself right behind the environmental minister (I never dreamed he was that tall!) and then noticed that his companion was the Minister of Justice (I never dreamed he was that short).
As soon as we sat down Jessica clawed around in a pocket of the awful pants and produced a rumpled pack of cigarettes (oh Lord! My sinuses!) and Senator Pierce—Vance—was rude to her about it.
“Where’s your character, woman? I thought you were quitting.”
“Yer not smokin’ any more, Van?” she drawled. “Whatsa matter? Lose yer nerve?”
“No, found my senses.”
Dr. Grey and I smiled weakly at one another and he said, “The buffet is rather good. I would recommend it.”
In the end we all went to the buffet—which was superb!—and drank a couple of carafes of white wine. I noticed that Vance didn’t look around or wave to anyone, and since everyone else seemed to spend a lot of time leaping up and trying to catch the eyes of others, I wondered who it was he was ashamed of. I mean, I’m still wearing my navy and grey uniform, but I blend in pretty well here, clothes-wise. (Matter of fact, I’ve become sufficiently de-dazzled to recognize that Ottawa is not the haute couture capital of the western world.)
Okay, I can sympathize with Vance for being a tad reluctant to draw attention to Jessica.
Not that Jessica was about to let him get away with it. “Hey, Van,” she bawled, at one point. “Don’t you know anyone? What’s yer name—you, the legal counsel—”
“Jocelyn,” I said weakly
“Jocelyn—she’d probably like to meet some heavies.”
“She’s met you.”
“Shit, Van, you’ll have to do better than that—” and just then who should walk in with the Minister of Finance but Senator Kennedy—yes! U.S. Senator Kennedy. Up here to look (enviously, I presume) at Canadian medicare. You can imagine the stir that rippled through our hallowed eatery! And who do you think he recognized? Jessica.
“Well, well, surely not Jess Slattery. You turn up everywhere, just like a bad penny, don’t you?” he said. “How come you’re eating subsidized food?”
“I helped pay for it, didn’t I?” Jessica shot back, and then she introduced him to Dr. Grey and to me (I stood up. Should I have?) and pretended to forget Vance, who was doing a knee-bend halfway between standing and sitting and said, in French, “Oh, et un faux senator, M. Pierce,” and Kennedy smiled and murmured, “Enchanté!”
Everyone, even Jessica, speaks fluent French—how I wish mine were better! At that point I forgot how to say anything but oui, which is why I drank too much wine, I guess.
Sept. 12
Still no letter. The hotel clerk no longer answers with, “Yes, may I help you?” He just murmurs, “Nothing.” Regretfully.
Must finish this. Not much more to tell. When we finished lunch Vance shot back the silver-clasped cuffs of his elegant French shirt and looked at his watch and said he had a three-o’clock appointment, but maybe we could get together a little earlier tomorrow before the hearings started.
“Where you rushing off to, Van? Got a new flame?”
In a voice that would have frozen Hawaiian rain, Vance said, “Catherine is the only flame I’ll ever need.” Catherine? Must be his wife.
Jessica was not frozen. “Lucky Catherine,” she drawled, “and unlucky all the rest of them. Let’s get the hell out of here. Slurping up the government booze isn’t helping the godamn starving women of Canada.”
“Surely no one is starving,” I said, sounding about as assertive as talking Jello.
Jessica turned and glared—or no, she didn’t exactly glare. I’ve been trying to analyse that look. I’d expected accusing or hostile or contemptuous, but that wasn’t it. It was some sort of challenge, as though she were testing me to see if I was a fellow woman. I don’t think I am. She scares the hell out of me.
She asked me where I was staying, and when I said I was still at the Chateau Laurier but was looking for a bedsitter she said, “I live in a group home—always room for one more.” I told her I had a line on a place.
“Suit yerself,” she said. “Holler if you change your mind.”
When hell freezes over, I thought—but didn’t say. (I do have a line on a bedsitter. Keep your fingers crossed.)
Know what? Writing letters is turning out to be therapeutic as well as economical. It helps me feel closer to home and also to sort out my own impressions. The phone just isn’t a substitute. God, I’m lonesome! I wish we hadn’t decided against Thanksgiving—is it too late to change? Although I haven’t got the moola for a ticket at the moment. Have you?
Anyway, I’ll look forward to talking to you this weekend—maybe you’ll have my letter by then. They say the postal service is improving. They lie. At the moment I feel low. Why did it have to be Jessica on the Commission?
Much love,
Jock
P.S. Your letter just arrived. The hotel clerk phoned me! He sounded so excited I thought maybe he’d opened it. Thrilled about the Sanderson thing—what’s happening? Phone if you get work.
29 Sweet Cedar Drive
North Vancouver, B.C.
15 September
Dear Jock,
Nothing yet on the Sanderson thing. A week since I sent the application—typed it on the drafting table, which I have in the down position to accommodate the computer. I spent two hours revising and typing the CV, shaping it along the lines you suggested, puffing up that bit about the airport job and playing down the university gold medal, which, all things considered, is now more of an embarrassment than anything else. I then wrote a long, obsequious, and painfully composed letter about how extraordinarily electrified I was by urban harbour projects—this will surprise you, Jock, as much as it did me—and how wonderful and competent and original an architect I am. All I needed was a young, aggressive, and modern-minded firm to hitch myself to and thereby channel my abilities. On and on, yards of it.
I think, to tell the truth, I got the right formula: about three-fifths self-congratulation and two-fifths professional grovel. At the age of forty-seven I don’t suppose I should find it this easy to grovel, but it seems I have a knack for it, especially after nine months full time in the basement. I mentioned, of course, my fourteen years with Bettner’s, disclaiming all connection with the Broadway-Peterkin lawsuit, and I also detailed my last eight years with Robertson’s (note how cunningly I omitted mention of the free-lance year in the middle—what the hell) and pointed to “harsh economic realities” as the reason for my termination. I thought that sounded more forceful than “the recession” or “the present financial climate.”What do you think? “Harsh economic realities” seems to me to have a slightly embittered tone but one that is moderated by the brand of pragmatism suitable for the New Unemployed Me I’m trying so hard to sell. God, I hope this works out. Even a temporary contract, six months or a year, could lead to something permanent, and even if it doesn’t, we can get caught up on the household bills. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything definite.
I made the mistake of leaving the computer on, and when Greg came whistling in at suppertime he read it. “Are you really going to send this?” he asked me. “Or is this just the rough draft?”
“What’s wrong with it?” I asked. I was in the middle of serving up the eggplant casserole your mother brought.
“Oh, nothing.” He said this in that maddening airy way that you surely remember. “It’s okay, I guess.”
I could tell he didn’t think it was okay. He slunk out of the kitchen and into the family room with his plate. I asked myself, what does a seventeen-year-old kid know about business letters? Nevertheless, I pursued him. “What exactly is wrong with the letter?” I demanded.
“That jazz about ‘harsh realities,’“he said. “It’s sort of, you know, sort of—”
I had to prod him. “Sort of what?”
“Well,” he said, “sort of like begging.”
I told him as calmly as I could that I had considered the phrase carefully, weighed it, and decided it was the best possible choice. “Suit yourself,” he said, and settled down to watch a re-run of Archie Bunker, whom I am sure, if he had a choice, he would prefer for an old man.
Anyway, the letter must be there by now, the die is cast, and now all I have to do is sit back and see what happens next. Waiting around is the worst—the walls seem to press closer and closer, and often I think of how you must have sat in this kitchen and waited for the kids to grow up and go to school and then waited around to hear if you’d been accepted for law school. What did you do with yourself all day?
By the way, we saw your Senator Pierce being interviewed on The Fifth Estate last night. I think your Robert Redford comparison is a mite flattering considering the good Senator’s bobbling paunch and his stertorous huffing into the microphone. Mia said, all incredulity, “Is that Mom’s new boss?” and Greg said, “If that turkey doesn’t watch out he’s going to injure someone with those cufflinks of his.” He did make a certain amount of sense, though (Pierce, that is), especially that bit about the plight of widows.
We look forward to your further adventures. Yes, I agree that our letters seem to be working out better than the damn telephone. Doubtless it was our puritan mothers, bless the two of them, who plied us with guilt about the heaviness of long-distance phoning. Otherwise, why, when I pick up the phone, am I suddenly speechless or reduced to inanities about the rain and the roses?
I’m off to bed early tonight. Tomorrow I’m driving out to Capilano College to sign up for the communications course Gil Grogan recommended—might as well brush up on a few skills while waiting to hear from Sanderson, etc. And in the afternoon I’m interviewing a lady who answered my ad for cleaning help. The woman your mother found didn’t work out at all; she wanted seventy bucks for six hours’ work—robbery—and said she was uncomfortable working in a house unless the Mister and Missus (that’s you, lovey) were out. I explained that I would do my best to be inconspicuous and quiet, but she said she had more jobs than she could handle anyway. Maybe this new woman will fill the bill. She sounded cheerful on the phone, and God knows a little cheer wouldn’t hurt. We do need someone to organize things a bit. Our shoes are sticking to the kitchen floor, a most peculiar sensation.
Love,
Chas
P.S. What lentils? I can’t find them—probably because I don’t know what the hell I’m looking for.
4 Old Town Lane
Ottawa, Ont.
Sept. 18
Dear Chas,
I love getting letters from you—do you realize that we’ve been married twenty years and have never written to one another before? I feel as though I’m catching glimpses of a whole new you that’s been lurking there all along and that I didn’t even suspect. Do you feel that way? Actually it’s even a bit scary.
This is just a quick note to let you know I’ve found a place. Not grand (understatement), but not dreary either. It was advertised as a bachelor apartment, but it’s a cut above that. It has a separate bedroom—the smallest in the Western World, but separate. In it is one double bed—which takes up a lot of room, but I cherish the hope you will visit at least once—and a night table that clears the door by exactly three centimetres. Tucked into the corner by the foot of the bed—with a whole twelve inches of clearance—is a shabby, brown, scarred dresser. Clothes cannot be hung in the bedroom but must go in a tiny closet at the top of the stairs—I know that sounds unlikely, but bear with me.
The combination living room-kitchen is small, but there is a little wooden balcony off it that looks out on a tiny park. Ottawa is full of parks—remember how we noticed that when we came with the kids? Dr. Grey pointed out in his gentle way that I should enjoy them to the fullest, since it’s the taxpayers of Canada, not Ottawa, who pay for them.
In the distance, on the other side of the park, you can see City Hall, and if you were to lean way out over the balcony (only second floor, not too risky), you could see along Sussex Drive. When I mentioned to Austin—Dr. Grey—that the Prime Minister’s house is almost within spitting distance, he said he didn’t think he’d be able to resist the temptation if he were in my shoes.
He’s actually quite nice. Yesterday I really boobed—changed Jessica’s response to a brief on pay equity to conform to what I thought were the regulations. Turns out my source was two years out of date. Jessica slapped the hole in the knee of her jeans and yelled, “Christ, what kinda stuff are they passing off as law in Lotusland?” I really was mortified, felt so stupid I couldn’t eat my dinner. This morning I found Austin’s copy of the new regulations on my desk and a poem:
These rules are meant to ease the lot
Of women out for hire,
And if you say you know them all
You just might be a liar.
Anyway, just because my “pad” is close to the PM’s doesn’t mean the neighbourhood borders on posh. It doesn’t. Do you remember that wonderful market in Ottawa that we took the kids to? Well, there is an area beyond it called Old Town that has a mixture of very modest frame and brick buildings, and some of them are being restored by the National Capital Commission. Mine is in one of the unrestored two-storey frame buildings, within walking distance of Parliament Hill (about twenty minutes) and very close to Rideau Street. So, location couldn’t be better.
Back to the living room. Well, as I say, it’s small. The furniture is terrible: a shabby chesterfield that pulls out to make into a bed (maybe one of the kids will visit?) covered in a cheap brown tweed material, a matching chair, an Arborite coffee table, and—unbelievably—a bay window. With cushions and a view! Nice. And, as I said, a glass door leading out to a little wooden balcony that makes me think of Charles de Gaulle. (Don’t ask why.) The strangest thing of all is that the stairs from the front door are mine, all mine. They’re part of the apartment! On the ground floor is a door, my door, Number 4, and when I unlock it I walk up this long flight of stairs and there, without benefit of further doors, is a small landing with the clothes closet directly in front, and on the right the living room. No arch, no curtain, it’s just there. It gives me kind of a vulnerable feeling, their not being shut off like proper stairs, and I expect it will be drafty. (Also expect that I or someone else will tumble down.)
And that’s about it, except for a very small bathroom, which somebody in a psychedelic sixties freakout decorated in purple and pink. Purple tub, matching John, and every inch of counter space and walls brightly enamelled in “passion” pink.
Oh yes, kitchen is a sink, hot plate, microwave, tiny fridge, and small counter on the stairs side. I know it sounds awful (depends on your point of view; Jessica is loudly scornful—thinks it elitist), but actually it’s nice. The living room has funny little angles, and the bay window and view of the park make it seem a bit homey. Or cosy, at least. I do need a desk—there seems to be some mix-up about my pay, but maybe when I get it I can find something cheap.
Just glancing over your letter and note with some surprise that you and the children think Vance looked paunchy on TV. Actually he’s slimmed down, tells me he’s gone back to jogging along the canal every morning.
About your cleaning-woman problems, did you ever stop to figure out what seventy dollars for six hours’ work is per hour? About twelve bucks. Backs up what we keep hearing re the disparity in men’s and women’s incomes. I’ll spare you the sermon that springs trippingly to the tongue and confine myself to pointing out that cleaning women charge at least fifteen bucks an hour these days. That’s why we were getting along without one. (I’m not suggesting that you don’t need one, love.)
Am dying to hear what happens re Sanderson et al. Phone when you hear, hang the expense. Wait—I don’t have a phone. As soon as they connect it (promised for tomorrow) will call you.
Oh, I miss the kids! Do you think Greg is being especially difficult? If so, I wonder why. Would it have to do with my departure do you think? I would have thought Mia would be the one to react to that, but gather she loves being the little mother.
The mattress is lumpy on one side. Would gladly give you the good side if you were here.
Much love,
Jock
P.S. Would you ring Mother and give her my new address? She feels threatened if she can’t locate me precisely on a map.
P.P.S. We start the hearings proper next week. We’ve been going through the written briefs, but now the Commissioners will get a chance to question the groups that submitted them. Vance says I shouldn’t hesitate to ask questions, but I’m worried it might seem presumptuous. What do you think?
29 Sweet Cedar Drive
North Vancouver, B.C.
25 September
Dear Jock,
Well, kiddo mine, you’ve pulled off a real live déjà vu. Unbelievable! I’m sure it must have been unconscious on your part, but do you realize that your new Ottawa pad—except for the Charles de Gaulle gallery—is a dead ringer for the suite on Tenth and Cambie where you were living when I first met you? My God, I read your letter with dry mouth and dropped jaw. The same apartment—the bay window, the clothes closet on the landing, the missing door, and the sad little bashed-up dresser, and even (you must remember) a double bed with one lumpy side. What does all this replication mean? I ask myself this, being in a contemplative frame of mind this rainy Wednesday morning. What does it signify?
Yes, the rain continues and continues. We’re setting some kind of record, apparently. Good for us. A government plot, no doubt, to keep our minds off “harsh economic realities.” But despite cold winds and grey skies, the kitchen is one hundred per cent brighter since I took down those heavy old curtains of ours—you’ll be amazed when you see the difference it makes. On the other hand, it leaves me more or less open to Gil Grogan’s steady scrutiny. Every time I look up (contemplatively) from my drafting table I see the old bugger standing at his kitchen window, looking daft and lonely and waving a coffee cup at me. Your mother was sceptical about my letting Sue take down the curtains, but I told her you’d thank me for doing it. I gave them (the curtains) to her (your mother) to sell at her Fall Fair, though Sue says she can’t imagine anyone going for that particular shade of purply-green.
Sue—Sue Landis, that is—is our new treasure and salvation. We no longer stick to the floor around here or kick up dust balls when we cross the living room rug. She even changes the sheets (first time since you left) and throws out the rotten oranges and cheese rinds and empty cereal boxes. The four-hour dynamo we call her, and worth every bit of seventy bucks—you were right, lovey, about the current pay scale for cleaning help.
She’s been here twice now, and the place shines. Even Greg is looking somewhat shinier since she’s started coming, but that’s probably because she’s taught him a new chord on his guitar—a bar chord I think it’s called.
I have to admit that she wasn’t quite what I had in mind when I put that ad up on the notice board at Cap College. Lord only knows what I expected, but when she turned up at the house last week I thought there’d been some kind of misunderstanding. She’s young for one thing—well, thirty-two—and wears jeans and a sweater Mia would kill for, and has a head of crazy red hair. And she’s intelligent! (Now, Jock, for crissake don’t go and write me a Jessica-inspired sermonette about feminine stereotypes and male perceptions. Spare me this once, since I’m already chastened.)
Well, we sat down in the kitchen for a couple of Red Zingers (Sue carries her own teabags, feels caffeine is definitely carcinogenic and has some impressive statistics to prove it), and she told me a little about her background. This cleaning thing is just temporary, she says, just bread and butter until she gets her old job reinstated or finds something new. Until last August 15th she worked for the Department of Education as part of something called a Sexual Abuse Team that went into city schools and put on dramatizations of situations that kids apparently run into. At any rate, the gov’t. decided it was nothing but an expensive social frill and cancelled the whole program. Sue maintains that the province will have to pay the real cost down the road. She gets fairly heated on these themes, and we’ve had a couple of lively discussions, downright arguments in fact, all of which is a hell of a lot more entertaining than analysing the stock market with Gil. (God, that man makes rotten coffee. Boils it I think.)
Sue was interested in hearing about what you are doing in Ottawa. She asked all kinds of questions, says it’s about time someone took a good hard look at the economic burden on women and on single mothers in particular. But all the time she was talking I had a funny feeling that she was simultaneously eyeing our laser printer, the Toni Onley in the dining room, the Chinese carpet in the hall, etc., etc., and wondering what the hell a couple of bourgeois schmucks like you and me know about poverty.
Speaking of which, your good senator seems to be something of a stranger to the down-and-out set too, at least according to that cryptic profile in Maclean’s last week (p. 52). Upper Canada College! Harvard, yet! A BMW! Good God, does he really “collect” rare burgundies and nineteenth-century sheet music? The kids were disappointed that the article didn’t mention the people working for the Commission by name, but the bit about “Senator Pierce’s unique ability to surround himself with dedicated hard-headed realists” was nice, and we all basked in the reflected glow of it.
Still no word from Sanderson’s, just a letter saying they had received my letter and would be in touch soon. I hope they mean this week or next—I’d like to get that furnace bill taken care of, not that they’re pressing me yet. The furnace repairs came to more than the original estimate—what else is new? Afraid that scratches a Thanksgiving reunion.
The communications course at Cap College didn’t work out either. By the time I got there to register, after spending an entire morning standing in line and feeling like Old Man Time in my tweed jacket and necktie, I was told the class was filled. There was one other course open, they said—Creative Connections—so I decided I might as well give it a whirl. First session, so gotta run.
With love,
Chas
P.S. It’s all right about the tea trolley. The white shoe polish did the trick.
P.P.S. If Vance says it’s okay to ask questions, can’t see why you shouldn’t,
4 Old Town Lane
Ottawa, Ont.
Sept. 30
Dear Chas,
Yes, Vance does collect rare burgundies—I’ve actually been treated to a sip! He invited us back to his office after today’s hearings, dusted off the bottle, opened it with a bit of joking ceremony, and handed around the wine in delicate long-stemmed crystal glasses that he just happens to have in his desk. It was so dry it took all my sang-froid not to make a face. But Dr. Grey—Austin—held up his glass to the light, squinted, and said admiringly, “Formidable!”
Vance preened a bit and allowed as how it was a nice little burgundy, and when Jessica and I said nothing (my lips puckered), Vance couldn’t resist a dig. “No praise from either of the fairer sex? Not up to B.C. standards, Jock? Could I offer Baby Duck?”
He was trying to get a rise out of me, of course. I think I’ve been less than a barrel of fun lately, because, to tell the truth, I am feeling somewhat down, and besides we’d just heard a brief from a single mother whose home consists of two roach-infested rooms, and whose baby suffers from malnutrition!
“Ignore him, Jock,” Dr. Grey—Austin (can’t get used to it)—said. “Just because he’s a senator doesn’t mean he knows anything.” He then remarked that it had certainly been a wrenching brief.
“Nobody ever said poverty would be fun,”Vance said. “On the other hand, you have to remember that it is, to some extent, a state of mind.”
I snapped at him. “Meaning those poor women should pull up their socks and snap out of it?”
Austin, who seems to be a bit of a peacemaker, said Vance was partly right, although poverty isn’t a curable state of mind. “A state of mind that you, Jock, for instance, don’t share.”
“She isn’t poor,” Vance said. “How could she?”
“I’ve been poor,” I said.
God, remember that first year I went to law school? When we just had the one car, and it took me an hour and a half on the bus to UBC? And how we’d count our pennies to come up with bus fare, and sometimes I’d have to skip lunch?
Vance sneered that I didn’t know the meaning of the word, at which point Jessica, who had been remarkably silent, drawled, “Tell me, Jock, what would you do if What’s-his-name—your husband—”
“Chas.”
“Chas! What kind of a name is that?”
“A nickname,” I said, a bit huffily. “For Charles.”
“Oh. Where I come from he’d be called Chuck. So like I said, what would you do if Chuck—”
“Chas.”
Jessica blew out cigarette smoke and looked sideways at me through the thick glasses and grinned very slightly. “Okay, Chas—if he walked out—or…No. What if he had walked out when the kids were little? Before you got your law degree, say?”
Funny, I suddenly felt as though heavy cold air had wafted in from the Gatineau and was flowing over my body, the way they say you feel if a ghost enters the room. I hadn’t known I harboured such phantoms.
I told her I probably would have taken my capital, and—
“Capital?” she said (sneered).
“Savings,” I amended. “I would have taken my savings and done exactly what I did—go to law school.”
“Poor people don’t have savings.” Still glaring.
“Chas and I weren’t exactly in clover,” I pointed out, feeling somewhat defensive by then. (She has that effect on me.) I explained about how we made do on a lot of beans and tuna casseroles and the occasional chuck roast and powdered skim milk, and how during the eighties recession when you were laid off we got along on as little as some people do on welfare.
“You weren’t poor,” Jessica said, maddeningly.
“We damn well were!”
I’m learning to stand up to Jessica. If you don’t she bullies you; but if you do she treats you with grudging respect.
“We once figured out that we were ten per cent below the poverty line,” I told her, and I went on about how we shivered through one winter with the thermostat set at sixty, and how I used to get my clothes at the Thrift Shop when I went to university.
“My dear,”Vance said, “hand-woven jute would look good on you—or, even better, no hand-woven jute.”
I groaned I was so frustrated, and Austin said there was a difference between being cash poor and poverty. “You knew you were smart enough to study law, and even though it used to be a man’s prerogative you didn’t sit still for that.”
“And,”Vance said, rather smugly, “no doubt you were able to make arrangements for your children.”
I started to say that their grandmothers had helped, but Vance interrupted before I could get the words out.
“Ha! Now picture Granny—”
“She goes ape if you call her Granny.”
“Whatever. But I want you to picture her in a welfare line-up.”
My mother? In a welfare line-up? I had to laugh. “I can’t get her mink jacket off,” I said.
They all laughed and I cheered up a bit, and then Jessica bawled, “Here’s to the poor!” and swilled down the rare burgundy in one gulp. She smacked her lips and pronounced, “Excellent appearance, not too faithful, maybe just a mite pretentious—no wonder you find it appealing, Vance. Well, thank God there’s money in poverty so we can drink world-class.”
With that she wheeled around, wound up like a big-league pitcher, and hurled the glass against the wall where it shattered and left splats of red dribbling down the white.
“You never could hold your booze, could you Jess?” Vance said in a steely voice.
The two of them squared off as though they were about to dive for their six-guns. Austin and I looked at the floor—a mistake; glass and dribbles of wine were scattered all over the pale-blue carpet—and in weird unison we shifted our gazes to the ceiling and started an inane conversation about the Third World that was interrupted by a loud belch from Jessica. She then swooped down on me and grabbed my arm—in a moment of madness I’d accepted an invitation to supper at her place—and as we left I turned and saw Vance and Austin looking thoughtfully at the second bottle of vintage burgundy. I’d have killed to join them.
“I get the feeling you didn’t approve of my toast,” Jessica yelled as she wheeled her rusted-out Volkswagen (beetle, formerly yellow) at breakneck speed down Rideau Street.
“I think you go out of your way to antagonize Vance,” I answered, sounding hideously prim. (I have scary glimpses of myself turning into Mother.) “He’s loaded, but that’s not exactly a crime.”Then I mumbled something about compassion not being a function of money, or a prerogative of the less-rich, either. I do believe all this, dearest Chas, but it sounds incredibly self-righteous written down, especially when, what with one thing and another, I haven’t given an awful lot of drought to “women and poverty” in recent years.
Now, suddenly, it’s all I’m thinking about. I think of it all day and half the night, and I’m grateful that something seems to be getting addressed. I told Jess that I’d been impressed by Vance’s response to the Single Mothers’ Association, that he seemed really concerned about poor women.
“Yeah, Van has some good points,” Jessica said, sounding surprisingly conciliatory. “Just don’t be dazzled by his fancy footworK, that’s all.”
Before I could ask her what the hell she meant by that she parked the car in front of the group home. As we got out she shot at me, “Well? Did you learn anything?”
Sometimes Jessica gets a bit tiresome, although I do enjoy a good discussion with her. I know I’ve painted you a pretty sordid picture, but Jessica’s not just an uprooted bag-lady. She has a brain. And loves a good argument. On the other hand, I think she thinks it’s good for me to see “real life”—this is twice now that she’s dragged me to her place, an ancient brick house in Sandy Hill where we wallow in Group Home Modern. Pandemonium, what with eight mothers and kids of every age, a common living room dominated by TV, common eating areas, and common God knows what else—I could never live like that. (Why not? I ask myself.)
We parked ourselves on benches at the kitchen table and she ladled up nourishing stew and baking-powder biscuits—good, but I wasn’t terribly hungry. She started in again about poverty being a state of mind. “During the Depression—”
I groaned.
“You got something against the Depression, Jock?”
“Sorry. It’s just that everyone hauls it out when they want to make a point.”
“That’s called learning from hi6tory.”
“Okay, okay.”
Her point was well taken, even by me. Intelligent, educated people then were poorer than plenty of welfare cases today, but according to Jessica they didn’t feel poor. “They never thought of themselves as belonging to a social class defined by poverty, any more than you thought that when you went to law school.” I have to admit that Jessica can be intellectually challenging, which was about the last thing I expected her to be when I first met (and heard) her. She went on about how I might be broke but would never be poor, “Because, one, you haven’t got the negative social conditioning, two, you’re educated, and three, even if your husband walked out tomorrow you’d manage very nicely.”
No I wouldn’t, Chas. I would not manage at all nicely.
“Your state of mind isn’t poor,” Jessica forged on, “ergo you aren’t poor.”
Ergo? I don’t get Jessica. I mean, she affects this awful speech and those terrible clothes, but if she gets wound up she can’t hide the fact that she’s educated. I’ve tried to find out something about her background, but she isn’t talking. I asked her if she’d ever been poor.
“Oh, I once went for a week without eating because I didn’t have any money, and in the sixties I hitched through Europe and managed on a hundred bucks. Without selling my bod, in case that’s what yer thinkin’.”
It wasn’t. In fact it was about the farthest thought from my mind.
“But I sure as hell wasn’t eating at Maxim’s,” she went on. Ha! Would Maxim’s have let Jessica in? Even with money? Not bloody likely. (Although I didn’t say so.)
In some ways I suppose we’ve led sheltered lives, Chas. Contemplating my bedsitter, I’ve been feeling kind of—noble, I suppose, or self-sacrificing—being willing to live like this. Temporarily. But what if this was it, for the rest of my life? With no escape?
God, we are incredibly lucky to more or less own our nice cedar house. Glad you got a cleaning woman, but sorry she didn’t like the kitchen curtains. I hope she doesn’t start redecorating. Aren’t you getting a bit chummy with the hired help? I thought you were the one who always made it a point to stay out of office politics and thought it strange that I knew all about my secretary’s rather inspired love life. Anyway, I know the curtains were too heavy, but they were there precisely because of Gil. Unnerving, isn’t it? I used to drink the fixed regard was focused lustfully on that sexy grey jogging suit I wear around the house. But if you’re getting it too, he must be just plain lonely.
I’ve finally found the perfect way to lose weight. When I couldn’t eat today I thought I might be getting flu, and then realized it was just like the time thirty-five years ago when I went to camp and couldn’t eat. Homesick—can you believe it? At my age? Let’s look into cheap fares if you get the Sanderson thing.
Much love,
Jock
P.S. I guess Thanksgiving is a little soon.
P.P.S. Tell the kids to write! Those grunts on the phone aren’t doing anything for me.
P.P.P.S. You do think we’re doing the right thing, don’t you? Today we heard a brief from a woman whose mother deserted her when she was thirteen, and she never got over it.
29 Sweet Cedar Drive
North Vancouver, B.C.
30 September
Dear Jock,
Couldn’t wait to sharpen the old quill and tell you about Creative Connections. (Remember, the substitute communications course?) I may say that after one session I’m having second thoughts.
We sat around a seminar table, about eight of us, in a little room with no windows (goddamn architects!), and I can’t remember when I’ve felt more ill at ease. The teacher is a blowsy and frowsy woman who lost no time telling us she was a published poet with a number of awards to her credit. Davina Flowering’s her name—do you know anything about her? She’s one of those women—you know the type—who manages to make an art form out of ebullience. She stabs the air, shrieks, curses, clutches her hair, yanks her sweatshirt—yes, Jock, her sweatshirt, and not from Chapman’s either—and pounds on the table. The resonance soon had my teeth chattering. Two hours of this and I was frazzled—and so were the others, I think. Each of us sat there, dazed—and looking ashamed of ourselves for having come, but Davina assured us that within a mere week or two we would know the inside scrapings of each other’s souls. (If I decide to drop the course after next week I can still get my money back; and maybe my soul too.) She gave us an assignment for the next class—to write a poem, Xerox it, and bring it for “workshopping,” whatever that is. I thought I might dig out that parody I wrote for the firm banquet when Bill Bettner retired. You remember the one.
If you can keep a shaky firm together
Despite slow-paying clients all around,
If you can wangle contractors’ agreements
Who for their fees are not ashamed to hound Etc., etc.
Anyway it got a good laugh at the dinner, and Bill even asked me for a copy if you recall.
In my spare time (laugh please) I’ve been doing some drawings, partly to pass the days while I wait for Sanderson’s to come through and partly because I think I might have a workable concept for the west side of the house. It occurred to me that maybe we’re beyond the idea of a separate dining room, and if we knocked out that wall between the living and dining rooms and went out a couple of feet with glass panels—double, of course—we could get a kind of solarium effect, maybe even try some solar heating. I’ve got a good book from the library about it and it sounds feasible. What do you think?
October 8
Sorry if I sounded a bit glum, as well as fuzzy, when you phoned Thanksgiving night. The fact was that the festive family gathering I’d planned gradually disintegrated as the day wore on, and by evening there was no one in the house but me and an eighteen-pound turkey. First my mother phoned (at least she had the grace to call early in the morning) to say she was feeling a bit shaky and not up to driving over the bridge. I said I would come over and get her, but you know what she’s like; said she didn’t want to be a burden and a bother, she’d just make do with a Swanson’s frozen dinner in front of the TV” even though there was never anything to watch but foul-mouthed gangsters and young women with hair in their eyes, etc.
Around noon the phone rang again, this time your mother. She’d been decorating the hall at St. George’s for the Fall Fair and was “all tuckered out.” Would I mind if she passed up Thanksgiving dinner this year? She thought she’d make an early night of it, crawl into bed with a hot toddy and a good book. Not a word about the kids, or about the cauliflower casserole she’d promised to bring.
An hour later it was Mrs. Finstead on the phone—she’s the mother of Laurie, that little friend of Mia’s across the way (the one who looks as though she popped out of an ad for fresh milk). Mrs. Finstead—Marjorie—asked if it was all right if Mia came over for Thanksgiving dinner. They would just “love to have her aboard,” she said. They were all “nutty about her.” I didn’t know what to say, but then Mrs. Finstead said—or whispered, rather—how sorry she was about, well…about…well, she didn’t really know what to say, but she was just so very, very sorry.
I interrupted at this point and made it clear to her that Mia’s mother was only away temporarily on a government contract, that we were not separated, that Mia was not a victim of a broken and uncaring family, and that I had just that minute been basting our own perfectly respectable turkey. At the same time, I could see that Mia was dying to go to the Finsteads, so what could I do without playing the part of the ogre?
That left Greg and me to tackle our golden beast. The phone rang, and Greg tore into the den to get it. Emerging a mere one-quarter of an hour before dinner, he announced that he had to go out. Naturally I asked why. Something had come up, he said, something he couldn’t get out of. We stood in the kitchen facing each other for a good minute or two; I was reminded of a scene in High Noon. Neither of us said a word. Just how far can you press a seventeen-year-old kid on an issue like this? I could hardly say, given the circumstances, that he was disrupting a sacred family occasion. I shrugged and waved a weak hand in the direction of the oven, but I didn’t want to get into my mother’s brand of self-pity. Greg made a dash for the door. I yelled after him, “How about a turkey sandwich at least?” but I don’t think he even heard me.
For about ten minutes I sat in the kitchen and listened to the countdown of the oven timer. Then the dinger went and everything was ready, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce—my least-favourite dinner in the world, and there was a mountain of it. I happened at that moment to glance out the window and see Gil Grogan’s smiling face. I waved him over, and between the two of us we made a small dent in the turkey and finished off the last two bottles of the Beaujolais your mother gave me for my birthday. It was a somewhat silent meal, just the two of us chewing and swilling, though once Gil mumbled something pious about how we had much to be thankful for. I wasn’t up to the topic, I’m afraid.
Which all goes to say, my lovely and hard-headed realist, that we miss you from time to time around here. By the way, how do you make that turkey curry you used to do?
With love,
Chas
P.S. Found the lentils. Now what?
4 Old Town Lane
Ottawa, Ont.
Oct. 10
Dear Chas,
Rotten, rottener, rottenest—that’s how I felt after reading about your Thanksgiving dinner. Quite simply, I felt the rottenest I’ve felt since I left. What in sweet heaven was wrong with The Mothers?
I’ve sat through countless harangues from mine, as you know, on the subject of dinner guests who didn’t have the manners to let one know well in advance—“Don’t they know the amount of preparation…? No regard for a person’s feelings…Nothing but a servant…” Really, I don’t know when I’ve been so goddamned mad!
In fact, Chas, I couldn’t turn off the mental harangue that circled and swirled and harped away at me in a voice suspiciously like my mother’s. As I explained to Vance, the cauliflower casserole was the last straw, and when he snorted and guffawed my first instinct was to punch him right on his aristocratic nose. Fortunately, Mother’s voice blipped off in mid-sentence and I was restored to temporary sanity. No, I don’t discuss personal matters with Vance as a rule, but when I was so obviously upset he was persistent, and Mother’s voice never needs a lot of encouragement.
He is a surprisingly warm man, considering, as you say, the BMW et al. And he did cheer me up with a rather wry account of his own Thanksgiving dinner, which was marred irreparably by the poor burgundy that his wife had chosen. What suffering!
My own Thanksgiving dinner was not lonely, although loneliness might have been preferable. I know that sounds ungrateful after Jessica was good enough to invite me to the group home turkey spree, and other than a three-year-old who rubbed cranberry sauce in his eye, a dog who choked on a turkey bone and had to be clipped smartly in the dog equivalent of the solar plexus (dislodging the bone along with other stomach contents), a baby who threw her bottle at my wine glass and scored a direct hit (there was lots more wine—that kind comes in gallon jugs)—other than that, as I say, it was not bad and I wasn’t hungry anyway.
I think my difficulty came from feeling out of place. Before dinner Jessica and I were having one of our interminable dogfights about background being a poverty determinant. She’s bound she’s going to radicalize me, but I’m not at all sure I’m ready to abandon the good old middle class, which has, after all, been good to us.
She had just launched into a tirade about power and how nobody—especially men—relinquishes it without a fight, when one of the women who lives in the house came over and asked if she could talk to Jessica for a minute, about a problem.
“Shoot,” Jessica said.
“Well, like, I hadda quit my job and I’m gonna have trouble with the rent this month, so I was wondering if it would be a hassle if I didn’t pay for a couple of weeks, just until I line something up.”
“No sweat,” Jessica said. “What happened to the job?”
The woman’s eyes slid away. She’s about twenty-five, I would guess, and quite pretty, and she was holding the baby that later spread my plonk over the tablecloth. (Plastic, fortunately.)
“Here, have a cigarette,” Jessica said, getting up and pulling a pack out of the hip pocket of her jeans.
The woman helped herself, and Jessica took the baby while she lit up. The woman looked rather shyly at me, and all at once I was conscious of how I looked, in my good wool skirt and that nice silk blouse your mother gave me last Christmas. The young woman had on jeans and a polyester blouse and very high heels…no—it wasn’t clothes that separated us. I mean, everyone wears jeans, it wasn’t that, it was something else I’m having trouble defining. Here it is. If we met at a social event I would know instantly that she wasn’t my kind and she’d know the same thing about me and in fact that was what was making her uneasy. What is it? The cut of our hair? the shade of lipstick? the jewellery or lack of it, the thousand little signals that say “different class”—God, I’m beginning to sound like Jessica.
“This here’s Jock,” Jessica said. “She won’t harm you none, I mean, you can talk in front of her. Let’s all take a load off our feet.” And, still holding the baby, she plopped back onto the grimy chesterfield beside me and the woman—Jean—sat down across from us.
Jean blew out cigarette smoke rather self-consciously and said, “Well, like, I tried to stick it out but the manager—my boss—he doesn’t own the restaurant but it’s like, a chain, eh? Anyway, he kept coming on so strong, you know? I couldn’t keep him off, so finally I just figured it wasn’t worth it, he was making my life so miserable, eh?”
I was shocked, as you can imagine. I glanced at Jessica and waited for the explosion I thought was bound to come. But she just lowered her eyes and jammed her cigarette butt into an ashtray, then handed Tricia to me (I was nervous that she would spit on my blouse, silk is not a wonder fabric and I can’t afford to get it cleaned) and said, “You don’t need to take that kind of shit you know, Jean.”
Jean looked terrified. “It’s not worth it to start trouble, Jess. I’ve been through all that when I tried to get support from the kid’s father. It just isn’t worth it. I’ll find something else, but for now I’ll be a bit tight. I got some unemployment coming, I think, except I dread going in for the separation certificate.”
“I’ll go along if you like,” Jessica said.
Jean’s face lit up and she looked so pretty I could see why she might present a fetching target to that yahoo boss.
She reached over to take the baby (which had spit on me, do cleaners take Visa?), but for some reason I didn’t want to give it up, and when she took it and hugged it I felt something like envy! Do you think, Chas, that absence makes the head grow softer?
“Listen, I made a real nice dip,” Jean said. “Would you and Mrs.—Jock—like some?”
“Yer damn right. Pass it to Jock, she needs some meat on her bones.” Thanks a lot, Jessica. But I ploughed my chip into the dip anyway and waxed enthusiastic over the stirred-up onion soup and sour cream.
All the same, Chas, I can see what Jessica means—about poverty being a state of mind, I mean. If I were sexually harassed on a job I wouldn’t stand it for one minute. I’d state flatly that I was going to the Human Rights Commission if he didn’t leave me alone and I’d point out to him that no doubt the restaurant chain wouldn’t be too pleased to see its name dragged through the media. But Jean couldn’t possibly do that, she hasn’t got what it takes, the indignation, the sense of self-worth, the outrage.
I’ve surprised myself, since then, with sudden flashes of anger that attack without warning, like a minor mental blight. I can be listening attentively to a brief when a chance turn of phrase will trigger it, and I feel possessed, suddenly (as in possession, exorcist style), and I get a shaking in my limbs and a sort of blindness that blocks out my surroundings. Isn’t it odd? I mean, rationally I’ve—we’ve, you and I—long since come to terms with our masculine and feminine roles, and God knows you’re the epitome of fairness, or else why would you be back home coping with Greg and the Mothers? I don’t know—this rage must come from some primordial identification I’m not even aware of. Do you agree that this is odd?
Much love,
jock
P.S. Greg’s behaviour at Thanksgiving wasn’t too great either. What is eating him I wonder?
P.P.S. The hell with Mrs. Finstead.
29 Sweet Cedar Drive
North Vancouver, B.C.
15 October
Dear Jock,
Poverty as a state of mind, eh?
Hmmmm, yes. I can see what you mean. But have you and your snorting pal, Jessica, considered, as a poverty determinate, the effect of bodily health? One thing I’ve learned this week: a three-day bout of wrenching cramps and diarrhoea goes a long way toward diminishing your belief in your life choices or even in your viability as a human being.
Yes, dear Jock, we’ve all taken to our beds, Mia on Thursday, Greg on Friday, and I on Saturday morning. Now don’t panic, Jock, don’t reach for that phone, don’t grab a plane. We are, it seems, on the mend—at least I can now hold up a newspaper without being overcome by weakness.
The worst of it is, it seems to be my fault, and I’m being condemned on all sides as a careless parent, irresponsible citizen, etc. etc. Dr. Hopkins, who broke his physician’s oath by paying us a house call—on his way to the golf course—came out loudly and rapped me on the knuckles with: “I thought it was common knowledge that…” Not easy to take from a man with a good suntan, but easier than listening to your mother’s ringing remark that she was “taken aback” that I hadn’t known better.
Actually, it was the turkey’s fault. Foul Fowl. For several days following Thanksgiving we feasted on his glistening flesh, simply stripping away our protein needs as hunger prompted. For a brief while I thought I’d discovered a way to avoid the cooking and planning of meals—just keep a plump, roasted turkey in the fridge and grab a fistful of nourishment when necessary. Unfortunately, we also scraped away at the stuffing—delicious, if I do say so—which was rapidly building up vicious microbes and gathering strength for a full-scale salmonella attack.
But we are, as I say, recovering. Chastened and emptied out, we three shuffle around the house with our cups of steaming tea and vegetable broth. Greg has never been so civil, going so far as to inquire whether I slept well last night. Rest and liquids seem to be the standard treatment. We kept to our rooms at first, meeting only occasionally in the neighbourhood of the bathroom door, but now we’re beginning to assemble in the family room for a little passive TV viewing.
And it’s slightly surreal to be sitting snugly indoors, wrapped in dressing gowns and blankets and peering into the tube at the tumult of the universe. Well, not the universe exactly, but at what’s happening here in B.C. No doubt you’re keeping track of things from Ottawa, but I wonder if you can feel it as it really is. This strike seems to be inflaming passions from every side of the political spectrum, much more so than the myriads of strikes we’ve lived through in the past. It’s all crazy out here. Management comes on the air battering away in the chilly relentless voice that seems to go with corporate success, and then, the next minute, we get a close-up of a union leader shouting or weeping or going through a set of agit-prop calisthenics that makes you want to cringe and cry at the same time. And then the inevitable pictures of riot police wrestling some overweight, beer-guzzling, inarticulate working joe to the ground. Dogs straining on leashes for a quick snack. What the hell is happening? I mean, is this really a police state? It’s hard to believe when we sit here, insulated and safe and sipping our way back to health, that there’s a bunch of bad guys out there putting the hammer-lock on us. Down among the workers there’s a certain amount of tearful we-shall-overcome corniness, as you might guess, and some embarrassing rhetoric too, but the main “feel” of the crowd when the busloads of scabs go by seems to be numbed outrage and a sense of disbelief that this could be happening in our own beautiful rainforest.
I have a problem with the whole thing, but not Sue Landis, our Ms. Clean. She’s whole-heartedly on the side of the union. She phoned to say she wouldn’t be able to come to clean on Monday because she and her “sex squad” were rigging up a little dramatic protest, but when she heard we were all sick here she promised to drop over in the evening. Well, she whirled in about six, made us poached eggs on toast, changed the sheets, swabbed the bathroom and kitchen, and generally got us glued back together. (Your reference to “getting chummy with the household help” struck me as a little raw, lovey. This girl—whom you would like tremendously, I know—is bringing order and healing into our ailing household.)
In some ways it hasn’t been a bad few days. Relations among the three of us have grown almost weirdly congenial. Mia, the first to bounce back, mans the teapot and fluffs the pillows. Greg has thus far had the grace not to accuse me directly of poisoning him—in fact he is mainly a silent presence. I realize drat this is the first time in a couple of years that I haven’t been worried about where he was and what he was up to. A respite. All of us, despite the backdrop of Africa, international terrorism, union bashing, and the ozone layer, seem to have dropped into a sweet, peaceful pocket just outside of time. (Remember that snowfall back in ‘87, how we couldn’t move for two days and how quiet it was, just us? How we had the fire going all day long and listened to those old Dixieland records by the hour?)
Everyone’s been kind. The Finsteads sent a coffee cake, as yet untouched. My mother phones daily, inquires into our health, and then launches into the details of hers—a recital that takes us from the backs of her burning eyes to the bottoms of her stiffening ankles. Maybe you could drop her a line. She seems a little confused these days. Last night she said something about you being in Halifax. I told her it was Ottawa, and she said of course, of course—Ottawa.
Your mother’s dropped in several times—keeping a careful distance—with donations of soup as well as a tall bottle of brilliant green microbe-killer she’s invented. “It does wonders for me when I’m down,” she said. “A secret recipe.”
She always asks how you are and if you’ve phoned lately. I told her you and I had decided to write letters instead, and she seemed to think this wonderfully quaint. She wishes, she said, that she had time to write letters, and maybe after the Fall Fair…Implying that I have nothing but time—or am I being paranoid? I didn’t bother telling her we were trying to trim the phone bill.
Gil Grogan has so far made only one crack about the “turkey trots,” for which I am grateful. He’s done some shopping for us and even cut our side of the hedge Sunday, said he was glad to have something to keep him busy—a remark I found profoundly sad for some reason. And on Saturday night, when I was feeling my worst, he sat in the corner of our bedroom and read the newspaper aloud to me. You would have been surprised to hear him read—elegantly, without a pause, like silk off a spool. Clunky old Gil. He read it all, sports, editorials, even the letters to the editor. (I’m enclosing one of those letters, which I think will give you the flavour of our little backyard war.)
