Clara Callan

by Richard B. Wright

  I was in the hospital for five days so Margery had to do some fancy footwork with the script. What she did in fact was simple but brilliant in my opinion. Alice too has an attack of appendicitis, only hers is much more serious. In fact, she is now at “death’s door” and has this ever created a fuss with our listeners!!! Everyone is praying for my recovery and, of course, we are getting bushels of letters and phone calls. But the real me feels like a million.

  How about you? How are things in old Whitfield? I can’t imagine you’re coming down here for Easter, or I would have heard from you by now, right? Oh well, maybe another year. I’ve had a couple of letters from Evelyn. She doesn’t sound all that happy to me. I don’t think California is everything she thought it might be. But I guess you have to take your chances when you make a move like that. Things between Les and me are just the same. Some days I feel like we’re just an old married couple. Especially on Wednesday nights and Sunday afternoons. Funny how routine kind of breaks in on romance, isn’t it? Well, I hope everything is okay with you in that department. How about dropping me a line?

  Love, Nora

  345 King Street

  Toronto

  March 16, 1938

  Dear Clara,

  What a nice surprise to hear from you! I thought you were finished with me, though, of course, I always hoped this wasn’t true. I have missed you too, believe me, and isn’t it wonderful to learn that you have been missed? So many people we meet in this life could walk out the door and we would never care, would we? Not for a second. And then there are special people. Like you, for instance. Oh, I thought you had given up on me, Clara, and here I have been thinking about you all these weeks, but I was afraid to get in touch with you because you sounded so angry with me in your last letter. Well, I am happy to hear from you now.

  I have been “alone” all winter and have “buried myself” in work here at the office. Things are much the same at home though Theresa has moved out and now has a place of her own. She has a job at Simpson’s but also wanted to get on with her novel writing. I can’t believe anything will come of it. She is just too flighty to stick with anything for very long. She has these sudden enthusiasms and then they just fizzle to nothing. Edith and I are both worried about her but there is little we can do. After all, she is twenty-one. It’s certainly time she settled down to something, but just what, I can’t imagine. Michael seldom comes home. He’s a strange young man and seems to have drifted away from us somehow. I worry about his drinking. Kathleen will soon be finishing her novitiate and will have to decide whether or not she wants to become a nun. She is coming home for Easter. Patrick thinks of little else these days but the Maple Leaf hockey team. I have taken him to some of their matches on Saturday nights, though I am not much interested in the game, but he gets such happiness from going that I look forward to it.

  I would like to see you again and wonder if perhaps we couldn’t meet for lunch some Saturday. I tried to reach you by telephone, but you have been disconnected. You never liked the telephone much, did you? I suppose we’ll just have to keep in touch by writing. I was so happy to get your letter, Clara. Please write again.

  Love, Frank

  Sunday, March 20

  Last night I wrote Frank asking him if he would meet me at Uxbridge station next Saturday. The car is still laid up for the winter, so it will have to be the train for now. I tried not to sound too eager, but I wanted him to know that I have missed him these past months. I loved writing the letter. It was raining and I was sitting at my bedroom desk, the white page before me in its circle of yellow light, all rain and darkness on the other side of the window. I told him all this and said I wished he were with me. Not too eager? What a foolish woman I am and yet I don’t care. Let fall what may!

  Marion came by on her way home from church. The minister’s wife was again not at the service and this is attracting attention. She has now missed the last three Sundays and apparently seldom ventures out of the house. Marion thinks there is trouble in the marriage. She wanted me sober and thoughtful, listening to this news of Helen Jackson, but I fear I was playful. Marion settled herself into a chair, adjusting the heavy shoe to ease her leg. Those beautiful tragic eyes beneath the dark bangs. I thought what a shame she will never be touched by a man. She was pouting a little at my flippant mood.

  “What’s got into you, Clara? You’re awfully gay this morning.”

  I made some reference to the draughts of pagan air I was inhaling. It was all nonsense and understandably met with a puzzled frown, a sigh. More adjusting of her leg for comfort.

  “Darn old boot!”

  She wants me to go to Toronto with her on the seventh of next month to hear Marian Anderson at Eaton Auditorium. Some of the ladies are organizing the trip. Wrote Nora this afternoon.

  Whitfield, Ontario

  Sunday, March 20, 1938

  Dear Nora,

  A thousand apologies for not being in touch sooner, but I have been in the “slough of despond” for the past several weeks, just dragging myself through the days. Alas, alas, poor lady! Anyway, the clouds seem to be lifting (metaphorically at least); it happens to be showery today, and I’m feeling less beleagured.

  I was sorry to hear about your appendicitis. Like you, I had no idea it was still considered a serious medical condition. You must take better care of yourself in that big wicked city. I wrote Evelyn a note a while back and wished her well. I think she will be all right though she sounded lonesome in her last letter to me. Spring seems to have arrived up here and it is surely welcome. I feel almost giddy from the soft mild air.

  Marion Webb dropped by today and asked me to go down to Toronto with her next month to hear Marian Anderson. It will probably do me the world of good to get out of the village, though I don’t relish travelling with Ida Atkins and her gang. The big news in the village these days is the mysterious absence of the minister’s wife at Sunday service. No one seems to know what ails her; she stays indoors all day and is seldom seen. I used to see her now and again walking with her husband but not lately. Living with that man cannot be easy; one would think that she would like to get out of the house once in a while. But how do we know how things are for the poor woman? She is really a very kind little soul and I feel sorry for her. Do you remember how concerned she was about me after my little talk to the ladies? I did make a fool of myself, but she didn’t seem to judge me. It’s just too bad if that Christian tyrant she is living with is causing her nerves to go.

  I have been “attacking the keyboard” this afternoon. I had the piano tuned a couple of weeks ago. The job was done by a strange fellow from Linden — poor old Mr. Marsh has gone to his reward. Since then I have felt like playing again. So there you have the image. The woman plays her piano on a Sunday afternoon while the rain streaks the windows and Arensky’s soft notes fill the air. Such is my life. But I am not unhappy. Do take care of yourself, Nora.

  Clara

  P.S. I am so sorry I missed your birthday. Many belated happy returns!

  345 King Street

  Toronto, Ontario

  March 23, 1938

  Dearest Clara,

  Just a note that I am anxious to get into the early mail so you will get it by Friday. By all means, let us get together, though I’m afraid it can’t be this weekend. Can we make it a week later, the second of next month? I will look for you at the station at the usual time. I loved your letter. Yes, I would have enjoyed being with you on that night in your room. You made it sound so perfect. You can’t imagine how much I am looking forward to seeing you again.

  Love, Frank

  Sunday, April 3

  How quickly a day passes and is transformed into memory! Yesterday was wintery again with grey skies and snow showers. Looking out the window of the train, I felt a bit overwhelmed at the thought of seeing Frank again. It came over me suddenly, and for a few moments I considered staying on the train and going on to Toronto. A powerful impulse and it seized me just as we approached Uxbridge stat
ion. Of course, I did no such thing and Frank was waiting in his car. His hair was freshly cut and his hat looked not quite right on him, though I liked the look all the same.

  I had bought a new dress, a green thing I’ll never wear again. It didn’t suit me at all and I can’t imagine now why I ever thought it would. Still he told me I looked nice. We were both nervous; there was a terrible clumsiness between us. I think it would have been better if he had just kissed me there in the car. Instead we drove on in silence to a hotel for dinner. There was a wedding reception and the dining room was nearly full, but they found a table for us in a corner away from the others.

  The wedding guests were farm people in the middle of their meal. They all looked famished and had fallen upon their roast beef dinners with ferocious appetite. The entire room was filled with the clatter of cutlery scraping plates. Hardly anyone was speaking as the waitresses set down platters of meat and vegetables; the room seemed to be overflowing with flesh and food. The bride and groom, a homely couple, sat at the centre of a long table and they too were bent across their meal.

  I wanted to remind Frank that it was a year since we’d met, but I decided against it. Men don’t take much notice of such things and I didn’t want to appear sentimental. Instead, I picked at my dinner and looked across at the bride and groom, wondering about their wedding night and how it would be for them. They both looked shy and ill at ease as they chewed their roast beef. Yet a year from now the bride will probably be a young mother, accustomed to the jug-eared fellow in the dark suit beside her.

  After a while Frank began to talk about how things were changing in his business. It was odd. He had never talked much about this before, perhaps he had to say something; we both seemed tongue-tied. So he mentioned how he and his brothers are going to move into the oil business. Coal heating, he said, will soon be a thing of the past. I told him I would welcome anything that would relieve me from the slavery of winter nights in my cellar. He laughed at that and took my hand and squeezed it under the table. All this talk about coal and oil was only concealing our urgent nervousness with one another. What we both wanted were not words from the workaday world, but a forgetting in the flesh. At least that is what I thought and felt sitting in that ugly dining room at twelve-thirty yesterday afternoon. Did it show? I wonder. It must have, for neither of us was interested in our dinners and then Frank said, “I have an idea.” He pressed my hand again. “Why don’t I see if we can check into this place for an hour or two? We can be together again.”

  “Won’t they want to see our luggage?” I asked.

  “I’ll tell them it’s in the car and I’ll get it later. They won’t mind.”

  I watched him walk past the wedding guests, a small neat man in a grey suit. There is an authority surrounding Frank. The farm people glanced up at his passing, but they would not meet his eyes and quickly looked away. A few minutes later he was back and leaning across the table. “It’s all right,” he said. “We can go on up.”

  It crossed my mind that he had arranged all this earlier, but if he had, I didn’t care. I was happy enough to get out of that dining room and climb the stairs to the first landing, my face burning as I passed a maid with an armful of linen. I was staring at the soiled carpeting, at the cigarette burns and the old invisible footprints of salesmen and adulteresses.

  In the room all was abandonment. We undressed at once. All that fuss of removing our clothes. We didn’t even pull down the coverlet on the bed. He kissed me all over, and when he entered me, I had a kind of convulsion within. Yes, it was all there, this sexual pleasure, though now I must reckon with remorse, for we were careless. I let myself go and he had put nothing on. We were in such a state. A few moments ago I looked up Sonnet 129.

  Th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame

  Is lust in action

  Has anyone said it better?

  We cannot meet next weekend because it is Easter and his family will be home. They attend the eleven o’clock service at St. Michael’s Cathedral. He told me this as we sat in his car waiting for the train. Listening to him talk about attending Mass with his family made me feel like some kind of spiritual outcast, a veritable heathen.

  Friday, April 9

  Helen Jackson has disappeared. Some claim that she got on the Toronto train yesterday morning; others say she was seen walking along the highway west of the village. I learned all this as we drove down to Toronto last night to hear Marian Anderson. I was squeezed into the back seat of Bert Macfarlane’s sedan next to Marion and her mother. In the front, the Macfarlanes and Ida Atkins. A great deal of clucking over this news; the secret pleasure we take at another’s plight. I thought of Mother and how the village must have talked on that long-ago summer when she disappeared.

  This gloom vanished listening to Anderson, a plain-looking Negress in a blue dress. When she sang “I Know that My Redeemer Liveth,” there was scarcely a breath in the auditorium. There was not one of us who didn’t feel chastened, humbled, enriched by this woman’s remarkable voice.

  Sunday, April 10

  Yesterday a heavy wet snowfall that coated everything. Many roads are still blocked with cars half-buried by the sides of highways all over the province. Infuriating at this time of year and last night, watching it all come down, I decided to go to Toronto. I wanted to catch a glimpse of Frank and his family. A hare-brained idea, but still irresistible at eight o’clock this morning. So I was among only a half-dozen passengers on this Easter Sunday, passing through a white world under grey skies, the snow still clinging to the village signs as we approached their stations. Men and boys were shovelling walks and driveways. The city streets were slushy and twice my winter coat was splattered by passing cars. I was wearing a kerchief for concealment, though I knew I would be careful not to let him see me. The bells of the big downtown churches, St. James, St. Michael’s, the Metropolitan, were pealing and the streets were filled with worshippers. Easter is surely the happiest of feast days for Christians, and walking up Bond Street I remembered the stirring of my own heart on this of all days.

  I stood near the hospital, and from there I could see the people entering the wide doorways of the cathedral. About ten minutes before the hour, I saw Frank and his family. Now across the street from me were the people he had talked about. His wife Edith is taller than Frank and dark-haired beneath the new spring hat. A handsome woman who had once perhaps been very close to beautiful, but now the Irish good looks have turned a little haggard. She walked behind Frank, holding onto the arm of one of her daughters, a blonde stout girl whom I took to be the nun-in-training. Frank walked ahead of them in his overcoat, white scarf and homburg, pipe in mouth; the man who had undressed me in a hotel room only a week ago. Beside him was his youngest son Patrick. The last two were the oldest of his children: a sullen-looking young man, fair like his father, and the dark-haired Theresa. I could see the mother’s intensity in her oldest daughter’s face, and I could picture this young woman filling a page with accusatory words, her fingers typing furiously. Judgemental, recriminatory, a fanatic heart; it was all there in the angry, pretty face.

  I watched them disappear through the church doorways, Frank standing aside at the last to let them enter, knocking out the pipe ash on his heel and removing his hat. Then I lost sight of him among the other dark-coated figures.

  Wednesday, April 13

  Something has happened between Frank and me. I felt it in his words and voice today. After school I drove over to Linden. It was exhilarating to be in the car again, out on the country roads with the windows down and the smell of the dark wet fields rushing at me. I was so happy driving over there and I wanted to hear his voice; I wanted him to plan another Saturday for us. But when I phoned his office from the booth near the public library, he didn’t sound himself; our conversation seemed strained and distant. I could have been exchanging words with a stranger. I asked him when we could meet again.

  “Not this weekend,” he said. “It’s impossible.” He even sounded
a little put out by my suggestion. It was as if I were suddenly interfering in his life. I asked him if I was calling at a bad time and he said, “Not particularly.”

  There followed a terrible silence as I stood there in the booth watching people carry their books into the library.

  “When can we meet then?” I asked.

  “Can you come into the city on the twenty-third?”

  “Not to that awful hotel, Frank,” I said. “I am so uncomfortable in that place.”

  More terrible silence and then he said, “Maybe we should talk about all this. I can’t go traipsing around the countryside every Saturday.”

  Traipsing around the countryside! Is this how he sees his time with me now? That word “traipsing.” I felt bewildered by the sound of it.

  “I could come into Toronto on the twenty-third. Maybe we could just have lunch or a cup of tea together. I want to see you, Frank.”

  “Yes. Well, I’ll meet your train at Union Station on the twenty-third. We can have a sandwich somewhere.”

  “Frank,” I asked. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing’s the matter. Why?”

  “You don’t sound yourself,” I said. “You sound irritated with me. As if I’m intruding.”

  “No. You’re not intruding. I’m just not having a very good time of it. Trouble at home. The usual thing.”

  I told him I was sorry about that and so we said goodbye. Yet now I wonder if it is trouble at home that made him sound the way he did or is it something else? Perhaps I have arrived at the day that awaits women like me; the day when things stop, because there is no other place for them to go. I feel ill about all this. That foolish, foolish moment of abandonment.