Clara Callan (36 page)

Dear Clara,

I thought I should drop you a note (seeing as I was supposed to have been properly brung up) to thank you for the hospitality. I enjoyed my little visit to the “True North strong and free.” A little quaint in places but, in most respects, not unlike our own fair republic. Toronto reminded me a bit of, say, Hartford, Conn. You don’t have your own Wallace Stevens in one of those insurance buildings, do you? You don’t expect much to happen in such places, just folks getting on with their dull, decent lives. But that village of yours? Are you sure I didn’t invent it? It seemed to me that I had pictured just such a place when I sat down to imagine “Chestnut Street.” All those Uncle Jims and Aunt Marys behind their curtains, and I’ll bet they are nearly as nice as mine! Just plain folks with all their bitchiness, nosiness, guilt tremors, backbiting gossip and general all-round orneriness. In other words, the salt of the earth. I’m not saying we don’t have such
people in this city of ours. We do, a few million of them as a matter of fact. It’s just that you’re not bumping into them all the time. You can safely ignore your neighbours and get on with your life. I suppose an intelligent woman like you learns how to handle all that rancorous intimacy, but it would drive me nuts. I suppose you have to be born into it.

I expect you have been talking to Nora by now about the cute little tykes and the souvenir shops up in that town we visited. Speaking of carnivals, I really enjoyed Niagara Falls. That place is wonderful, and as I walked around and looked at the jumbo waterfall and everything, I was reminded of what Oscar Wilde said about the place. Something about the falls being the second biggest disappointment of the honeymoon.

“Chestnut Street” continues to roll along as does my little nighttime mystery show. Our Nora is in the swing of things, standing by that
microphone with script in hand, “enduring the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” Anyway, I’ve got her doctor back to her. Poor Dr. Harper does have the worst luck. And so he had this nasty car accident on the way to the wedding. But Alice is now by his side at the hospital. And we are left only with a nagging question these days? Was the doctor’s car tampered with? Did Alice’s sister Effie have something to do with that? Will Alice and Dr. Harper ever find true happiness in the wedded state? Will I ever win an Irish sweepstake? Stay tuned and buy some of our soap!

In “real” life, Nora and her announcer friend are having some problems too. He doesn’t know whether to divorce his wife or go back to her. The wife is a nasty piece of work, believe me, and Nora will have her work cut out for her with this dame. Les just doesn’t know which way to turn these days, and you can see the look of puzzled distress on his big handsome mug. All the girls around the place are crazy about him. He’s a bit of a chump, but nice enough. Les can wear a suit and he’s got a cute little Don Ameche moustache. He’ll never win any prizes for brains, but I don’t think Nora is exactly interested in his brain.

I just hope Les treats her better than Lewis Mills, whom I saw yesterday by the way. This was in a swanky restaurant on Fifty-fourth Street and he was “dining” and “hand-holding” with his latest conquest, a young, pretty Vassar type (maybe Hunter College). Short dark hair and very shapely legs. She’s supposed to be the latest hotshot poet around. She has at least twenty years on Lewis Mills, who really is an old goat, God bless him. Someone once told me that he’d had an operation somewhere (Switzerland) for monkey glands. I don’t think I believe that, but I do remember Nora saying that he wore her out with his “demands.” Well, I certainly wouldn’t mind having a little Hunter College hotshot of my own. Ah well, perhaps in due course.

It was great seeing you again, my dear, and I hope that in the not-too-distant future you will find your way down here to wicked old Gotham.

Best always, Evelyn

In less than twelve hours I will see Frank again. It seems ages since we were together though it’s only three weeks. I’ve told him to phone after ten o’clock when the lines are generally free and so he called two hours ago to say how much he’s looking forward to tomorrow. As we began to speak, I distinctly heard a click on the line. I can’t bear the thought of those Caldwell girls listening and giggling over Frank’s expressions of love. It makes everything ludicrous and shameful. It will be awkward, but this telephone will have to be removed.

I was going to drive down to Port Hope and meet Frank there, but I became a little nervous at the prospect. Perhaps next time. So we made our usual arrangements at the Uxbridge station. And what a joy to be again in our little motor court by Lake Ontario. We were both so consumed in our need for one another that I feared others might hear us. There was a family in the next cabin and we could hear them talking and moving about with their young children; the usual family fussing over what to do. Should they go down the road to the lake or into town? Should they bring bathing suits or not? Could they buy a brick of ice cream somewhere? “I want an Eskimo Pie,” said a small voice. We went into Port Hope for supper and then saw a movie about the Irish politician, Charles Parnell (Clark Gable), and his paramour Kitty O’Shea (Myrna Loy). Parnell’s affair with O’Shea brings about his political ruin, and on the way back to the cabin, Frank kidded me about the seductive power of women. He called
me his Kitty O’Shea, but I don’t think our passion for one another will bring down a government. At which he laughed, “You never know, Clara.”

He was in such a good humour all evening and when we returned, the cabins were all in darkness. I am afraid, however, that the people next door may have been kept awake by our cries in the night. We couldn’t help ourselves and after a while we decided we didn’t care. Is
this not what tourists courts are made for? And if they make them with such flimsy walls, will strangers then not hear sounds in the night? Certainly the woman gave me a good looking-over this morning while we were putting our bags into the car. I thought I could detect the following: curiosity, envy, resentment, perhaps a kind of guarded admiration. I noticed her eyes scanning my hand for a ring. It felt quite wonderful standing there in the morning sunlight after a night of love, feeling the woman’s eyes upon me. Each day I seem to be getting better at playing the “fallen woman.” On the way to the station, Frank told me that we can’t be together next weekend because he must again go up to the cottage. This provoked
a quarrel between us. It was my fault really, because I mildly protested that our time together was so far apart. This seemed to set him off. “I can do nothing about that, Clara,” he said. “In the summer I have to spend my weekends up there. You know that. It’s expected of me. You have no idea what I had to go through to arrange this weekend. The damnedest lies I had to tell.” I was surprised by his outburst. He had been so happy all weekend and now this sudden exasperation. Still I foolishly persisted.

“But when can we see one another again?”

“I’m not sure,” he said.

We left it at that and then I mentioned the possibility that someone might be listening to my telephone while we were on the line and this set him off again.

“Why not get a private line, Clara?” he said. “Good heavens, it only makes sense. Do you want me to help you pay for it? Is that it?”

“No, no, of course not,” I said, but I was stung by his implication that I am close with money. Perhaps because it’s true.

At the station he was affectionate again and murmured apologies into my shoulder. I told him about my driving licence and this seemed to cheer him up. We parted on good terms and so I am glad that our little storm cloud has passed. I must get used to the idea that lovers sometimes exchange harsh words. It’s just that I hate quarrelling so much.

Nora sent me a copy of Lewis Mills’s
The Temper of Our Times
with a note.

“It’s pretty good, I guess. I only read parts of it. If only the guy hadn’t been such a crumb!!!

Chapters on Roosevelt, the union boss, John L. Lewis, the radio priest, Coughlin. An interview with George Santayana. A profile of Italy under Mussolini (no mention of the Callan sisters, thank goodness), a chapter on French Fascism and one on Hitler’s Germany (the weakest, I think, a little haphazard and hurried sounding). But overall, it’s an intelligent and informative book. Picture of L.M. on the dust cover, staring at the camera. Wearing his bulldog look.

Yesterday I drove to Toronto to be with Frank. It came about this way. Late Wednesday night he phoned to tell me how sorry he was about last Sunday in the car. Said he “needed to be with me desperately” before he faced another weekend at the cottage. I was nervous driving into the city, but I persevered. We met at Loew’s in the late afternoon and then had sandwiches and tea at Child’s. Then we went to his office building on King Street.

It was nearly eight o’clock and everyone had left for the day. We made love, first on a sofa in a corner of his office, but that was unsatisfactory; the couch was too hard and narrow and so we put some clothes and rugs together on the floor. I remember looking up at the fading light of the August sky through the window. As he released himself, Frank bit me on the shoulder and that is still very sore. To be honest, I didn’t enjoy his rough and anxious lovemaking though I didn’t say anything. We parted with many kisses and agreed to meet again next Wednesday. At first I was frightened driving home by myself at night, but out in the countryside I began to enjoy the experience. It became exhilarating. With the windows of the coupe rolled
down, I could smell the cropped hayfields. I was totally dishevelled and sodden, rank with the smell of sex and returning from my lover. The car lights blazed a narrow yellow path along the dark road homeward. Intensely happy.

Another “amorous adventure” yesterday. Again we met in the movie house and made our way to his office building. We didn’t even bother to eat. How anxious we were to shed our clothes, casting them aside like children, embracing one another naked, beside ourselves with passion. We both seem to be in the grip of some kind of carnal delirium. I do believe that it is a form of madness. I told Frank not to be so rough and he did apologize, but he was so rushed and frantic in his lovemaking. I find it uncomfortable on the floor and there is, after all, something rather squalid about it. Things I remember: Frank’s pounding heart, the sky darkening through those high windows as I looked across his shoulder, the grinding of the trolley car wheels along King Street, the ticking of the clock by Frank’s desk.

As I left him, it began to rain, but I enjoyed being safe inside my little car, going home through the wet dark night. I felt sore and bruised, but happy. I told Frank that next week I would be having my period, but he said there was no reason why we could not still meet. “We’ll go out to dinner,” he said. “I’ll take you some place nice.”

What a wonderful idea!

Frank phoned at suppertime to say that he cannot meet me tomorrow. It has to do with Patrick, a softball game or something. I thought the family was still at the cottage, but I hardly listened, so deep was my disappointment. He wouldn’t be there. What difference did it make why? As we talked, somebody else was on the line, I am sure of it.

Later I drove into the countryside and parked by a field to watch the swallows. A late summer evening with a moon rising and the hayfields in silvery light. The days are getting shorter and I must begin to think of school. Milton has given me a copy of the new curriculum and I will have to get used to this grade system. Gone forever is Junior First. Now, it is Grade One. Senior First is Grade Two and so on. I suppose I shall get used to it.

Intense heat all over the province and in fact across the entire eastern half of the continent. Nora phoned this evening to say how stifling it is down there. Everyone she says is fleeing to air-cooled movie theatres.

Terrible news for Jack and Hilda Parsons; their youngest son, Harold, has come down with what they think is poliomyelitis. He was taken to Toronto on the weekend and is now in an iron lung. They fear paralysis. Eleven years old and he could be crippled for the rest of his life.

When we met in the movie house yesterday, Frank whispered, “I have a surprise for you today.” Throughout the picture (
The Good Earth
) we held hands and then we took a taxi to the west end of the city. I thought we might be going out for dinner, but at the corner of Dufferin and King streets, we got out and Frank told me we were going to a hotel. “No floor tonight, my darling,” he said.

Perhaps not, but what a hotel to take me to! A beverage room on the main floor with some rough-looking women going in and out; the smell of tobacco smoke and beer, the usual shifty-eyed clerk and hangers-on in the lobby looking us over. Frank didn’t seem to mind, but I felt ashamed standing there while he signed the register and those men stared at me.

The room on the second floor was small and stuffy. Frank opened a window and we sat on the bed. We could hear people walking down Dufferin Street on their way to the Exhibition, and sitting there, I felt suddenly let down by everything: the shabby hotel, the Exhibition (for I thought again of Charlie and wondered if he were working down there again), the braying female laughter from the beverage room below us. In the lobby, I had seen a woman going into the beer parlour, a woman in a red sundress with a heavy mantle of dark hair across her bare shoulders. She had thick muscular legs. I imagined it was she who was laughing.

Frank began to kiss me and we took off our clothes. He said, “I know it’s not the King Edward, darling, but you must understand. I have to be careful. Certain people in this city know me and it’s not as big a place as you might think.”

I’m afraid I was not very good at anything last night. Frank kissed my entire body and that was delicious; I wanted to give way, but I could hear that woman’s laughter from below, and I kept wondering where she lived and what she had done that afternoon. Had she gone shopping for bread and milk? Dressed a child? Was she a prostitute? Now she was in the beer parlour in her sundress with her painted mouth and the thick dark hair on her bare shoulders, surrounded by men. How unseemly and covert my life has become! Then Frank asked me to do something that I did not enjoy. I did it to please him, but I did not like it. At the end of the evening, Frank said, “We won’t come back here if you don’t want to, but we can’t use my office because my brothers will be back this weekend and they work late. It’s getting on for our busy season.”