Clara Callan (16 page)

So my only love life at the moment will be on “Chestnut Street.” Evy has decided to give Alice a beau, so next month listeners are going to meet Cal Harper, a handsome young doctor who is just starting up a practice in Meadowvale. What happens is that Effie has an attack of appendicitis and after the operation she wakes up to see this terrific-looking guy who’s been caring for her. Of course, Effie falls instantly for him. The business teacher is long gone in case you’re wondering and you probably aren’t. But it looks as if Dr. Cal is more interested in Alice. So you can imagine the conversations that will take place around the kitchen table in the Dale household. I don’t know if I’ll get to marry
the guy, Evy isn’t saying. Anyway, I think it’s an interesting wrinkle in our little story of American life and it should help to keep the listeners tuned in and our sponsor happy. The Sunrise people say that sales have increased over forty percent in the last three
months.

How about you? Is everything the same up there? Would you consider coming down here for Christmas? Apparently the Amazon will have a week off and is going back to Texas. Evelyn is after me to go to her mother’s. But I just don’t feel comfortable there. Yet I don’t like the idea of being alone here either. What about coming down for a few days? I would really love to have you, so think about it, okay?

Love, Nora

Went with the Brydens yesterday to the Royal Winter Fair hoping that I might see Charlie cleaning out a cattle stall or feeding someone’s prize hens. The foolishness of that idea was soon evident: the stern-looking farmers at the fair would never entrust their livestock to the likes of my Charlie.

Dear Nora,

I suppose a fictional romance is better than nothing, and you will obviously be doing very well for yourself. Handsome young doctors certainly don’t grow on trees. The closest I have been to doctors recently was yesterday. And they were veterinarians. Several were standing around Betsy, a lovely little Jersey cow who, from her mournful gaze, was evidently costive. The vets were solemn, wondering what syrup to administer or whether more dramatic treatment was necessary. The worried owner looked on. All this drama took place at the Royal Winter Fair where I found myself in the company of the
Brydens. “A little outing,” in Mrs. Bryden’s words, and it was very good of them to take me along. Proximity to animals (except poor Betsy who was mooing most piteously) can induce a kind of bovine calm, and I felt something like that as I walked around the flanks of those great beasts with their warm homely smells. It made me think that perhaps I could have had a kind of happiness married to Randall Wilmott.
Do you remember him at all? A tall, bony youth who had a crush on me in high school. His father farmed two hundred acres south of the village and, of course, Randall is there now. He married a girl from the township and they have five or six children. I see him and his wife sometimes in the village on Saturday afternoons; she is fingering the bolts of cloth at the Mercantile and pale bony Randall is studying the jackknives in the glass case by the cash register. He still looks at me with his goofy grin. “Hello there, Clara!” A pleasant gentleman. In those days I thought myself far too grand for such a humble ploughman, but now I think maybe I could have been contented frying Randall’s eggs and going out to the barn with scraps on a winter afternoon to feed the hogs. Maybe, but maybe not too. Anyway, I had a pleasant time yesterday at the fair and we got back before the weather turned around. It started to sleet in the night and I was glad to be home.

I don’t think I can make it down to New York for Christmas. It gets complicated at this time of year because of the furnace. I could probably get Joe Morrow to look after it for me, but I don’t think I want Joe tramping through the house when I’m away. I gather there is no possibility of your coming up here for the holiday. I suppose you don’t get enough time off from your program with Christmas in the middle of the week this year. Well, perhaps next year. Say hello to Evelyn Dowling for me. For a while there we were exchanging letters, but I suppose she is too busy to keep up a correspondence. Take care of yourself, Nora.

Clara

Dear Clara,

I sent off your Christmas present yesterday and hope you like it. You better!!! The store guaranteed delivery in two weeks, so let me know if it doesn’t arrive by then. Also make sure that
everything
works and nothing has been damaged in transit. The store
guaranteed
safe shipment and I want to hold them to that.

I’m still undecided about the holiday (you’re right, we are only off two days, Christmas and Boxing days), but I am definitely not going with Evelyn to her mother’s in Conn. I love Evy dearly, but she is too sour for my taste this time of year. She is forever going on about how Christmas is just a pain in the keester, but I don’t see it that way at all. I have always loved Christmas and I refuse to be cynical about it. On Friday after work I walked over to Macy’s and looked at their windows. I saw all the people standing there staring at the decorations and I thought, sure it’s commercial and all that, but it’s also giving people a real lift. Of course, the funny thing is that for all of Evelyn’s griping about the holidays, she has written the most beautiful Christmas episode for “Chestnut Street.” She showed me the script. Alice has invited Dr. Cal for Christmas dinner because he hasn’t any family in town, and at the end of the dinner, Uncle Jim
gives this little talk about family and Christmas and how important they are. It is truly inspiring and that is from our cynical old Evy!

I met an interesting man this past week. His name is Lewis Mills. I don’t know if that name means anything to you, but he is an author. Evelyn knows about him and says he is a big-shot intellectual who writes for magazines like
Harper’s
and the
New Republic
. I don’t read them so I don’t know, but she described him as a literary and social critic. He certainly loves to criticize, and he doesn’t seem to think much of radio. He was in the studio last week watching us do our show. He’s writing an article and said he was interested in “the
phenomenon of daytime serials.” He wanted to ask me some questions, so we went out for lunch. We didn’t agree on one thing, but in a way, I think we like one another. The next thing you know, he invited me to dinner. Took me to the dining room of the Plaza. Talk about swanky!!! To tell you the truth, I found him kind of scary (he’s so intelligent), but nice in a way too. He is quite a bit older than me and a very sophisticated
man. Not really my type at all, but you never know about these things, I guess. Anyway, we’re having dinner again tomorrow night. Nice change from my usual hot-plate cutlet!!!

Love, Nora

Yesterday I had a kind of seizure in Toronto. It could have been more embarrassing than it was, but I must try to get a better grip on myself in crowds. And there were such crowds in the Toronto stores yesterday. I had finished my shopping and the last thing I bought was a copy of
True Detective
and I now believe that the magazine may have had something to do with my spell there on Yonge Street. Yet how could I resist the cover with its advertising of one of the stories: “’
I shot him and I’m glad.’
Rapist’s Victim Faces Electric Chair After Fatal Shooting in Cold Blood.”

I was saving that for the train ride home. And then I don’t quite know how it happened. I had come out of a United Cigar Store and was walking south. I wanted a cup of tea, but the restaurants were all so busy. I found myself looking at men’s faces on Yonge Street. I was looking intently at the faces beneath the caps and fedoras. I was studying them, but I had to be careful because I didn’t want them to notice. Was Charlie somewhere among those faces, wandering the streets of the city? And so I looked at those faces on Yonge Street, wondering how many of those men had entered women against their wills. In the back seats of cars after the Saturday night dances, the pint bottles of liquor half-filled with ginger ale passed back and forth. Then the
kisses and the pawing. Or the Sunday afternoon walk through the woods, the embraces in the cool shade under that big tree, the glimpse of the garter belt and the bare thigh, the hand pushed away from her underwear again and again.

“Come on now, Mary, please! You know you want to. Come on now, damn it!”

At the corner of Yonge and Richmond (I think) I stopped, overcome and a little dizzied from all those pictures in my head. I had this little spell or seizure there on the street, leaning against a store window. I felt sick to my stomach. Dropped one of my parcels. I must have looked a sight. A woman stopped and picked up my package. A middle-aged woman with a kind, homely face. She had a faint moustache and the buttons of her coat were oddly mismatched. I noted that.

“Are you all right, dear? You look all in.”

“Yes, I’m fine,” I said. “I’ll be all right, thank you.”

“You should sit down and have a cup of tea, dear. There’s a Child’s just up the street. Would you like me to take you?”

“No, no thank you, I’m fine.”

Others were staring at us as they passed and a few feet away a Salvation Army woman took no notice of us whatsoever. She was busy shaking her tambourine by the glass kettle half-filled with coins. I thanked the moustached woman and walked on shamefaced. Found refuge finally in a movie theatre where I sat in darkness, looking up at the lighted screen, watching the blonde-haired woman in her evening gown and her skinny little cohort in his tuxedo dance together on top of a piano. Or maybe several pianos. All that jazzy footwork and those sprightly tunes helped, and I was soon feeling myself again.

Greetings from Gotham,

Hope this finds you well. Are you a Christmas person, by the way? I’m not. Can’t stand the forced jollity and spurious goodwill demanded by the season. Of course, this may have to do with the fact that I spend the hallowed day with my Ma out in Connecticut. We usually manage to get through it, but just barely and with the help of a pailful of martinis. What do you do up there anyway? Ski? Skate? Skedaddle about? What? Since you’ve given up on church, you must find it all a bit tedious.

I cannot resist a little gossip. Your sister is now moving in some fairly sophisticated company. Has she written to you about Lewis Mills? I understand you don’t have a telephone and all I can say is how wonderfully eccentric of you! So has she written yet about Mills? He’s been hanging around the studio for the past couple of weeks watching us “put on our show” and making notes for an article he’s writing on radio serials. When Howard Friessen asked me about this last month, I was skeptical, to say the least. Howard doesn’t know Mills’s work, but I do. He has a sharp eye for nonsense and writes “feelingly” about the excesses of American public life. He did a commendable job on the Fascist radio priest, Coughlin, for the
New Republic
, but nobody in the agency except me has read it. Howard and the others just think it will be great publicity for our program, but I am not so sure. He may do a hatchet job. What they don’t seem to get is the fact that Mills
hates
radio: thinks it’s the beginning of the end of civilization. I’m inclined to agree with him, but I keep a zippered lip. After all, it’s “me bread and butter.” Anyway, Mills has been sniffing around the studio these past couple of weeks and seems to enjoy the company of our Nora who, I must say, looks absolutely ravishing these days. She’s had her hair cut even shorter and she now looks about twenty years old. Just
the way Mr. Mills likes them, I’m told. I understand the great man was taking her to the “theeaytuh” last night. I’m afraid to tell her, since it’s a good way to lose a friend, but Mr. Mills is reputed to be quite the ladies’ man. He has been twice married and the consort of many. Word has it that he’s bedded most of the lady poets in town. Personally, I can’t see the attraction. He is three years older than yours truly (I looked it up) and is most assuredly no Adonis. Mr. Mills looks more like a two-legged version
of your English bulldog with a face that is (I admit) unmistakably masculine, even though he is always scowling. He has this absolutely massive head (all brains, I guess) and he is as bald as our famous eagle. On the other hand, I am told that he can be quite the charmer. There has to be something. In any case, Nora seems very taken with L. Mills. I only hope the poor child doesn’t fall too hard and end up badly bruised.

Have you ever read Pepys’s diary? It’s been a favourite of mine for years, and I saw this edition in Scribner’s the other day and thought of you. The old gent’s comments make for great reading on long winter nights, and I think this is a rather handsome edition. So, I’m sending it along with my very best wishes for the new year, Clara Callan.

Love, Evelyn

Dear Clara,

I just felt like dropping you a note so I hope this reaches you before the twenty-fifth. Gee, I wish we could be together at Christmas. I really miss you, sister of mine. Has your present arrived yet, I wonder? You better like it.

I think I mentioned a week ago that I met this man Lewis Mills. He is a journalist and author, and he’s writing an article about our show. Well, the long and the short of it is we’ve become “good friends” and
have gone out a few times together. On Saturday night he took me to
Porgy and Bess,
the new Gershwin show. The entire cast was coloured and boy could they sing! Then we went out for a late supper. It was quite the evening.

Lewis is a fascinating man, Clara. You would really like him. He seems to have read every book that was ever printed, and he can talk about everything from opera to baseball. I told him right off the bat that I am no intellectual, and he needn’t expect me to keep up with him, but he just laughed and told me not to worry about such things. But of course, I do. I feel so dumb around him. So I guess you are wondering what’s the attraction? To be honest, I don’t know. He’s not handsome, that’s for sure. He’s nearly fifty years old and about as tall as me but heavy-set. Not exactly overweight, but just kind of packed together tightly. He would make a good wrestler. He has no hair to speak of and he’s nearly always frowning and kind of grumpy. You should see the waiters in these restaurants hop to it when Lewis walks in. But he has a wonderful smile (on the rare occasions when he decides to use it), and his manners are impeccable. I suppose I would describe him as impressive.
The funny thing is there is a kind of sexiness to him too.