Clara Callan

by Richard B. Wright

  On Friday evening I went with “the ladies of the village” to a performance of The Merry Widow at the Royal Alexandra. I don’t know why I went; I don’t really care for Lehar’s pretty tunes and I felt a little misplaced travelling with a dozen older women and their husbands. Three carloads of us! Ida Atkins is after me to join the Missionary Society. “Dear Clara, it would be so good for you to get out. All alone in that big house now. And we do need some young blood.” That’s true, I suppose. Except for poor Marion, the “ladies” are all in their forties, fifties and onwards. Am I now at thirty-one perceived as a member of this group? I expect I am, though I can’t help thinking that I’ll grow old before my time if I join the M.S. The thought of setting aside Tuesday evening for the next thirty years is dispiriting, to say the least.

  I shall miss you coming home on Saturday evenings this winter. I always listened for the sound of the train whistle and so did Father. I know that you used to get on one another’s nerves, but he really did look forward to your coming home. The fact that you were often at one another’s throats within fifteen minutes is not as important as the fact that he cared about you. After one of your arguments when you’d stay away for weeks, he would say, “I wonder how Nora is getting on.” Of course he could never have admitted such feelings to you. It was not his way. I can well imagine how he would worry if he were still alive and with you now in New York City.

  I’m very happy to learn that you are making your way in the radio business, Nora. Do be careful crossing the streets.

  Clara

  Tatham House

  138 East 38th Street

  New York

  December 9, 1934

  Dear Clara,

  Thanks for your letter. Honestly, I can’t see you with all those old ladies like Mrs. Atkins. I can picture Marion Webb, but she seemed “old” to me in high school and she’s lame, poor thing. It’s just too bad there aren’t more people your age around the village, but I guess they’re all married by now, aren’t they? And here we are, both still on the shelf! Sometimes I’m glad to be on my own like this. I’ve always enjoyed going out to work and having my own money, but there are times when I think it would be nice to have a home and kids. The other day I saw this family. They were looking at Macy’s windows which are all decorated for Christmas. The woman was about my age and pretty enough, but her husband!!! Was he a doll! He could easily have been in the movies. And they had these two cute youngsters, a boy and a girl. I have to admit I envied that woman. Oh well! Maybe Prince Charming is out there somewhere among these millions.

  Do you remember me telling you about Marty and Ida Hirsch who run a theatre group? They asked me to read for a part in a play they’ve written, and a week ago I went down to this place on Houston Street. It’s just a big hall on the third floor of this old factory, but they’ve made it into a kind of auditorium with a stage and a lot of chairs. There were about thirty people there and they call themselves the New World Players. They are planning to put on a series of one-act plays this winter on what they call social realism. They are nice enough people but very serious about politics. Before we started reading for the parts, there was a meeting and this guy gave a talk on how things are done in Russia. I didn’t catch his name but he writes for a newspaper called The Daily Worker. He talked about capitalism and Communism and how there is no unemployment in Russia because the people there are looked after by the government.

  Do you follow these things? History and civics were never my strong points in school. Anyway, I read for the part and I got it. I play this rich man’s daughter-in-law. He owns a big factory where the workers are so poorly paid that they go on strike. His son has an argument with him because he thinks his father is being unfair and so he joins the strikers on the picket line and he’s killed by a gang of thugs hired by the father to break the strike. I have a big speech over his dead body about exploiting the workers and so on. To me, the play is awfully preachy, but everyone else seems to think it’s wonderful.

  I’m keeping busy with the doctor show and more commercial work. The Wintergreen Toothpowder people really like me when I say, “Wintergreen makes your teeth shine, shine, shine!” There’s a cute little tune that goes with that. You would HATE it!! Evelyn is worried that my voice might become a little too familiar on the air so she’s after me to be choosy about what I do. “Fair enough, Evelyn,” I tell her, “but I have to eat and pay the rent.” Evelyn lives in this swanky apartment overlooking Central Park (Jessica Dragonette lives in the same building, for goodness’ sake), so E. tends to forget that poor working girls like me have got to earn a living. Jack and Doris have been terrific about inviting me to dinner, but I don’t want to wear out my welcome. I don’t think I could have survived without the Halperns.

  What a fuss they made down here last week over that little French-Canadian doctor who delivered the quints! His mug was in all the papers and last Sunday night he gave a talk in Carnegie Hall. Carnegie Hall!!! They put him up at the Ritz-Carlton and practically gave him the keys to the city. Of course, when you tell people you’re a Canadian, they think you lived in a cabin like Madame Dionne. Personally I think that having five kids at a time is too much like a dog having a litter of pups, but people down here just think it’s the cutest thing and Doc Dafoe came across as a kindly old gent full of folksy wisdom. I’m beginning to sound like Evelyn. You should hear her go on about Shirley Temple.

  I think I’ll buy a radio with the money you sent, a nice little table model. It’s funny. Here I am working in radio and I don’t even own one. So I’ll say goodbye for now and take care of yourself.

  Love, Nora

  P.S. Why would you write a poem about that dirty old Henry Hill and Father’s overcoat? Aren’t there nicer things to write about?

  Whitfield, Ontario

  Sunday, December 16, 1934

  Dear Nora,

  Just back from church and thought I’d drop you a line. Mr. Cameron introduced our new minister this morning and he delivered the sermon. All fire and brimstone! He sounds more like a Baptist preacher than a United Church man. His name is Jackson and he preached here for two or three Sundays in July. I didn’t like him then and I don’t like him now. Zealots just get my back up; I suppose I just don’t like being reminded of my many spiritual imperfections every Sunday morning. Jackson would certainly not have been my choice, but many appear to like his old-fashioned evangelical style. His wife is a shy, pretty little woman and was sitting with the Atkins. I can see her being bullied by the likes of Ida Atkins and Cora Macfarlane.

  After a mild spell, it’s cold again up here and thank goodness I have mastered the art of keeping “the monster in the cellar” happy. I know now just how much to feed him and when to leave him alone to grumble away and digest his coals and keep me warm. That is our bargain: my labour for his heat. As I go about all this, I can’t help thinking of those who are unable to afford a ton of good coal and who will have to make do this winter with green wood or lumberyard scraps. Many families are really up against it and I see it more and more every day now that the weather has turned around. This week a number of the children came to school wearing only light dresses and without coats or leggings. The Kray brothers are always half-dressed, though I suppose they would be in the best of times. Others are evidently without the means to clothe themselves. On Friday Clayton Tunney arrived, late as usual, in a pelting rain, wearing only a sweater and short pants. His hands were so chapped he could barely turn the pages of his reader. It’s all very worrying and yesterday’s Herald had a story about a man over in Linden who hanged himself in a railway shed last Sunday morning, leaving a wife and six children. Apparently he’d been laid off by the railway and couldn’t bear the thought of going on relief. According to the paper, there was thirty-five cents in the house on the day he died. I keep wondering what was going through the poor fellow’s mind as he fastened the rope around his neck and kicked away the bench. Or however he did it. They are taking up a collection for the family and I�
��m going to send a couple of dollars. I imagine there must be many such stories in that city of yours. I sometimes wonder if the politicians will ever sort out this problem of getting men back to work.

  At least the Christmas concert can take people’s minds off things, though I’m glad it’s over for another year. On Saturday night as I played “Away in a Manger” for perhaps the hundredth time, I wondered if I would still be doing this in twenty years. In my mind’s eye I could see a spare, dry woman of fifty-one in a black dress playing the piano while she watched the children of these children in bathrobes gathering by the doll in the crib. Behind the curtain on the stepladder, a spry sixty-year-old Alice Campbell was still throwing handfuls of confetti onto the sacred scene. I have always wondered about that “snow” in Palestine. It’s startling, however, to realize that I’ve been playing for these concerts since I was sixteen. Do you remember when I took over from Mrs. Hamilton? You were in your entrance year and played one of the ghosts in a scene from A Christmas Carol. George Martin played Scrooge and forgot practically all his lines. This year his little boy Donald was one of the shepherds. Who says time isn’t fleeting?

  Last week I sent a little Christmas package, which I hope will reach you before the holiday. Please don’t bother with anything for me. I’m sure that you are busy these days and of course money can’t be all that plentiful. So nothing, please. I mean that, Nora.

  All the best, Clara

  P.S. Henry Hill and Father’s overcoat are perfectly good subjects for a poem. The “niceness” of something, whatever that means, has nothing to do with it.

  Monday, December 17 (1:30 a.m.)

  Notes for a poem entitled To a Thirty-Eight-Year-Old Father of Six Who Hanged Himself One Sunday Morning in a Railway Shed.

  It happened a week ago perhaps as I was walking to church, enjoying the freakishly mild weather. Your final Sunday felt almost like a late-September morning with its pale sunlit sky. There are things I would like to know. Were the children still sleeping when you closed the kitchen door a final time? Had you looked in on them before you left or is that just sentimental invention? When you think of it, who could bear to? Much better to walk away without a backward glance. But then perhaps you had not yet decided. When are such decisions made anyway? Are they thought through the night before or seized upon in some despairing moment? Your mind was unsettled after a sleepless night. You felt tired, a little dazed. There had been only minutes when you slept (or so it seemed). Between the hours of staring at the darkened shapes (the ceiling, the dresser, the chair, your wife’s sleeping body), you lay half-listening to her troubled dream-words, the sighs and whispers born of worry and exhaustion. Perhaps before she slept you talked and the house with its tarpaper sides and cold hallways listened to the murmur of your long-married voices in a back bedroom.

  “What are we going to do now Bert?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’ll have to go down Monday morning and see the relief people.”

  You are about to say something but the baby stirs and whimpers, and your wife must get up and attend to the child. It’s her job and you watch her bend across the crib or perhaps you don’t. After all, you’ve seen her do it so many times over the years. Then bedsprings creak again as she settles in beside you.

  “Did you hear what I said, Bert? You’ll have to go down and talk to the relief people on Monday.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  The words imprisoned in your head all day are now set free. The mere thought of dealing with those people can inflame your nerves.

  “Well, you’ll just have to, that’s all. You know as well as I do, we’re up against it.”

  But perhaps there were no words in bed the night before you died. Perhaps they had been said so many times before that your wife turned on her side and quickly fell asleep.

  Now it is your last Sunday morning and she stands by the stove stirring the oatmeal. You watch her back and her bare feet in the mules. Your two oldest children are still sleeping but the other four are now at the table, tugging and pushing one another as children do awaiting breakfast. In his high chair the baby is excited and raps his spoon against the table. You see the corn syrup and the teapot and the milk bottle. When you opened the door, did your wife ask where you were going? Or were they used to you by now, accustomed to the ways of a quiet man who liked to be alone? “Daddy’s going for his walk.”

  And so you went out into the Sunday morning streets, passing the churchgoers and the idlers leaning against the bank, leaving behind at last the houses and stores to cross the tracks behind the station. For a railway man, it wasn’t hard to break the lock on that shed door. And what did you see in that place you chose for death? Pale sunlight through a cobwebbed window. Your entrance must have stirred the dust motes which settled finally on the shovels and the mattocks, on the iron wheel in the corner, and the overalls on the pegs against the wall, on the length of greasy rope and the girlie calendar. What were you thinking of as you looped the rope across the beam and made your knot? Hanging is a man’s choice for death. A woman swallows Paris green, or steps in front of a freight train’s yellow eye. What finally did you see, father of six? Were you looking at the floor or at the window with its patch of sky and cobweb? Or did you close your eyes before you kicked away that bench?

  Tatham House

  138 East 38th Street

  New York

  December 23, 1934

  Dear Clara,

  Your package arrived and, of course, I opened it. You know me! I could never wait until Christmas. The sweater is lovely and a perfect fit. Thanks so much. I’ve had so many compliments on it from the girls here. I’ve sent off a little something for you too, so there’s no point in getting mad at me. I can buy my sister a Christmas present if I want to. But I certainly didn’t get it in any swanky shop, believe me. It was just something I saw in the window of a store on Thirty-fourth Street, and as soon as I saw it, I thought, That’s Clara! So Merry Christmas. I know it will be New Year’s by the time you get it, but better late than never.

  I went to Evelyn’s last night for dinner. I felt kind of bad because earlier I’d arranged to go to the movies with a couple of girls here, but I wanted to see what kind of place Evelyn has. And you should see it! She lives in the San Remo Apartments on Central Park West. That’s just about the ritziest part of town. Did I mention before that the radio singer Jessica Dragonette is in the same building? Evelyn has a Negro maid who served us drinks and dinner. Lamb chops and these wonderful little roasted potatoes and wine. Her apartment is filled with books and paintings and she has this enormous radio and phonograph machine. We listed to Gershwin and Porter show tunes and talked about “The House on Chestnut Street.” Evelyn wanted to know all about Whitfield and what it was like growing up there. She was an only child and went to a fancy boarding school, so she was keen to find out what life was like in a small town. She wanted to know all about you and so naturally I told her that you are a schoolteacher who likes to write poetry and are obviously the brains in the family. I told her that we were raised by our father because Mother died when we were little kids. And I told her how I never really got along very well with Father, but that you seemed to know how to manage him. All kinds of family stuff. Evelyn would love to meet you and I think you’d like her. You’re similar in many ways. Very critical of things in general. Oh, you’d have to learn how to tolerate her smoking and drinking, but I bet you’d find her terrifically interesting.

  Well, this will be our first Christmas without Father and it feels kind of strange, doesn’t it? I hope you don’t find it too lonesome being there by yourself. The Halperns invited me to their place for dinner, which I thought was very considerate because being Jewish they don’t celebrate Christmas. A few of the girls here who aren’t going home for the holidays are having a little get-together on Christmas night and so maybe I’ll look in on that too. The girls here are mostly my age or maybe a little younger. Most of them are secretaries and a
few have pretty good jobs in some of the big department stores. One woman is a buyer for Gimbels and another woman named Frances is a nurse at Bellevue. That’s a big psychiatric hospital and some of the stories she tells would make your hair stand on end.

  When I look back at what I’ve written about my dinner with Evelyn in her swanky place, I can imagine you thinking, Well, there’s Nora down in New York, living the life of Riley while thousands of people haven’t got any jobs or money. I remember your story about that poor man in Linden. But I don’t want you to think that I’m unfeeling. I see a lot of people on the streets down here who don’t look too well off, but I don’t know what I can do about it. I think Mr. Roosevelt is on the right track and things are picking up. I believe we have to look on the bright side if we want to get anywhere. I’ll be thinking of you on Christmas Day, Clara. Hope you like your present.