Clara Callan (10 page)

Just back from Linden where I spent the day shopping for New York. I’m sure by the standards of the great city I will look quite dowdy. Phoned Nora from a booth near the public library. Listened to her breathless, worried voice. “Clara! Heavens, it’s good to hear from you. How are you feeling?”

“I’m sick every morning just as the book says I’m supposed to be.”

“You said you saw a doctor. Where was that? Toronto?”

“Yes. I visited him as Mrs. Donaldson. I got the name from that doctor show of yours.”

A bark of laughter. “Mrs. Donaldson? You didn’t.”

“I did.”

“Oh, Clara, you are something. And is everything okay?”

“Everything seems normal according to Dr. Allan of Sherbourne Street.”

“How far along are you anyway?”

“It will be eight weeks on Saturday.”

“Ouch. You left it long enough.”

“I know I was foolish. Worried. Didn’t know what to do. I dithered.”

“Well, it’ll work out. You’ll see.”

“You didn’t have to get me a berth, Nora. That’s such an expense. I’ll pay you back for this.”

“Don’t worry about that. Just get on that train Friday night.”

“I will, Nora. Thank you.”

Told Mrs. Bryden I was going to New York on Friday to spend some time with Nora, and she said she would keep an eye on things for me. So now I feel better. Somehow this must all work out.

I have brought along a book of Chekhov’s stories and on the train down to Toronto this morning read these words.

A week had passed since they had struck up an acquaintance. It was a holiday. It was close indoors, while in the street the wind whirled the dust about and blew people’s hats off. One was thirsty all day, and Gurov often went into the restaurant and offered Anna Sergeyerna a soft drink or ice cream. One did not know what to do with oneself.

How perfectly the writer captures the lassitude in the air of that idle summer day by the Black Sea! The reader understands at once that all that heated air and boredom will draw the man and woman together, and their lives will never be the same again.

Then an unpleasant experience at Union Station. I had bought some magazines and was sitting on a bench wondering how to fill the rest of the day. I was looking through one of the magazines when I noticed a man staring at me. Or rather smiling. He was across from me with his newspaper, which he had set aside. He was middle-aged and respectable-looking, but I was unnerved by his smile. I fancied he was looking at my legs and it made me very uncomfortable. After a few minutes of this, I had to leave. I gathered up my magazines and purse (I had checked my valise) and walked out of the station onto the street. I walked hurriedly, glancing back several times to see if the man was following me. Of course, he wasn’t and I can see now how foolish I was. Nevertheless, my fear was real at the time and I walked as far as the cathedral on King Street.

Sat in the cool empty church for nearly an hour. I say empty, but that is not entirely accurate. Now and then a person would enter to pray or sit alone and think, just as I was doing. It was restful and it calmed my nerves. At one point a young woman (she could not have been twenty) entered. She was plain and wearing a simple housedress with a kerchief on her head. I thought she could be a maid or a factory girl. She chose a pew nearby and knelt to pray as the Catholics do with their hands in front of them. She was troubled; that was easy to see and I wondered what burdens weighed upon her. Was there illness in the
family? Had she lost someone? Was she also pregnant and alone? And now she was asking God to help her. She didn’t stay long and as she left I caught a glimpse of a pale and anxious face.

When I returned to the station, I chose another part of the waiting room and, of course, there was no sign of the smiling man. Then I cashed in the Pullman ticket. I can sit up all night on a train. I would rather do that, in fact, than climb into a berth surrounded by half-naked strangers.

Passing hundreds of orchards with figures standing around bonfires. The smell of smoke in the coach. Children are chasing one another among the trees and men are loading crates onto trucks in the darkness. A man holds a lantern to help them see. The fruit pickers must live like gypsies.

At Buffalo a guard walked through the coach and asked us questions about our birthplace and our citizenship. When the train started up again, I stared at my reflection in the lighted window. Saw a serious, haggard face. I thought about the secrets in my life and the awful mystery of a world without God. I thought too of the young woman praying in the cathedral, and the man who had frightened me, and the dark lives of people in detective magazines. I thought of Chekhov writing in a room over thirty years ago, dipping his pen into the inkwell and pausing to imagine what would happen next to Gurov and Anna. After a while they turned out the lights and people began to settle into sleep. Or like me, stare out at the night.

I suppose I slept an hour or two, but I awakened at first light. Everyone else sleeping as we passed through green wooded hills and valleys, past farms and small towns. The clanging of bells at roadway
crossings and the colourful American flag in front of post offices. The morning brightened and a highway ran alongside the tracks. I saw families in sedans and trucks and beyond the highway a broad river lay glittering in the sunlight. As we drew closer to the great city, we passed freight yards and apartment buildings that were so close to the tracks you could look in on people’s lives. In one apartment an enormous Negro woman, her fat bare arms on the sill, leaned out a window to watch us pass. Behind her was a man in an undershirt and suspenders. He was seated at a table, wearing a hat and eating his breakfast. The train had slowed down and we moved slowly past these people. But now we are just pulling into Pennsylvania Station, and I must put this away and find Nora among all these people.

Nora has left for church. She attends a Presbyterian church a few blocks away and was a little put out that I didn’t go along with her. But I said I was still too tired. In spite of her kindness and goodwill, Nora is in a state and from time to time I catch her looking at me in a peculiarly guarded way. It’s as if she is trying to understand how she could have been so wrong. In her eyes, I am not now what I had seemed to be, and for anyone that can be unsettling. Of course, she must think that I have a lover and she is waiting for me to talk about him. I’m not sure I can bring myself to tell her the truth.

It is good to be alone for a while. Everything about this visit is charged with a peculiar and understandable anxiety, but at the best of times, Nora gets on my nerves and leaves me longing for escape. She met me at the railroad station yesterday morning in her yellow dress and white shoes. How confidently she carries herself among all these strangers! Joking with the taxi driver as she gave him her address. Bare legs flashing, I watched a man looking at her legs as she climbed into the taxi. Her blonde hair is much shorter now. She looks younger and prettier than she did when she left Toronto.

After the hugs and sticky kisses she said, “We’ll have to get you some lighter things, Clara. My God, you’ll cook to death in that suit. It’s going to be ninety today.” It was already hot as we hurtled along in that taxi through the shadowy streets. At intersections there were bursts of sunlight and a glimpse of the sky.

Nora’s apartment is tiny but comfortable. She has three small fans going all the time in this heat. They hum away, a background noise along with sounds from the street. I suppose one gets used to all this. We talked until nearly midnight, but I was too tired even to be civil at times. Nora knew better than to press me for details surrounding my predicament. Our talk was mostly harmless reminiscences, recalling other nights when we lay awake as girls and worried over things I have long forgotten. Nora is growing increasingly sentimental about her childhood and the imaginary simplicities and virtues of village life. Another time I might have been impatient with this fondness for nostalgia, but last night I was too tired. Nora’s little bed, by the way, is a novelty. It’s called a Murphy bed and folds up into the wall of a closet. It is quite the contraption. At breakfast Nora told me that we are going to Evelyn Dowling’s for dinner tonight. Apparently we will then learn what arrangements have
been made by her friend.

Nora left for the studio around ten, and I again have the apartment to myself. I have been feeling a little off in the mornings, and so I enjoy sitting by the window and watching the people pass on the street below. So many different lives with all their attendant joys and woes! Nora’s street is mostly small apartment houses (brownstones, she calls them) with cement steps leading up the front doors. They are only three stories high. Her street is busy enough but much quieter than the next one (Thirty-fourth Street) which is a shopping area.

Last evening we went to Evelyn Dowling’s for dinner. She lives in what Nora would call “a swanky part of town.” Her place overlooks
the big park in the centre of the city. It’s a spacious apartment with paintings on the walls and hundreds of books. Physically Evelyn is oddly put together: she is short and heavy-set but not fat. She looks solid enough to batter down a door. She has a large handsome head and intelligent lively dark eyes. Her hair is short as a man’s and she appraises you instantly with a shrewd look. She was wearing an expensive-looking linen suit.

“So you are the sister I’ve heard so much about! You’re taller than I imagined and dark-haired. Not at all like our little blonde friend here. Nora tells me you write poetry and you like to read. What are you reading these days?”

I told her that on the train I was reading a story by Chekhov, but also
Startling Detective
. Nora looked askance, but Evelyn Dowling just laughed.

“
Startling Detective!
Good for you. Something sordid once in a while can be bracing. I can’t get your sister to read anything but
Photoplay
magazine. But a rattling good account of a farmhouse murder in Kansas is better for you than some syrup about how Myrna Loy can’t get through a day without her little dogs.”

So direct and unbuttoned. Of course, she had been drinking cocktails before we arrived and I wondered if this aggressive familiarity was really her or just the drink. Nora looked nervous at first. Perhaps she was afraid that Evelyn Dowling and I would not get along; in fact, I found myself liking her very much. She drinks cocktails like water and is always smoking her Camel cigarettes. What a name for a cigarette, I thought as I examined the package! Why Camels? Why not Elephants or Buffalo?

Evelyn has a maid, but she was given the night off because, as Evelyn said later, “One has to be careful about who hears what when one is talking about these arrangements.” Nora also enjoys a drink now and so the two of them swigged their gin while they talked about the radio show. In another few weeks Effie is going to be accused of passing a bad cheque. It will all be a misunderstanding, but the police
will become involved and Uncle Jim will suffer a heart attack from all the worry and confusion. Overhearing all this, a stranger might have supposed that they were talking about real people.

During dinner (cold cuts prepared beforehand by the maid) the conversation came around finally to what is in store for me next week.

“You will be in good hands,” said Evelyn. “From what I hear, he is one of the best in New York.”

He, it turns out, is a doctor, or was. He lost his licence because of an addiction to a drug called cocaine. I had never heard of it. “What does such a drug do?” I asked. I had a picture in my mind of an old man smoking opium in a long pipe. I have no idea where such an image came from. Evelyn’s reply to my question: “It makes you happier than you have any right to be on this earth.”

Sitting there last night in Evelyn Dowling’s apartment, watching the sky darken into night and the lights coming on in the buildings across the park, I thought of how naive I am. How little I know of the world at my age! Without Nora or Evelyn, I could not navigate the streets of this enormous, glittering city; without them I would be helpless in the face of this dilemma. I am like a child whose hand must be taken and whose way must be guided and I feel so stupid about it all. I am frightened too, not so much at the thought of this so-called doctor bungling things (I have this childish faith in Evelyn’s judgement), but more at the notion that both Nora and I could get into serious trouble. At one point Evelyn said this: “Not to put too fine a point on it, ladies, but we are breaking the laws of the state of New York, and if we are found out, we could all go to jail, so you must be very careful next Friday night.”

Then I asked how much all this would cost, but Evelyn only wagged a finger at me. “You are not to worry about that, my dear. You have enough on your mind.”

What an ungodly mess I have got myself into!

Another hot night and the sound of whirring fans. Cars passing on the street below. Nora is sleeping, splayed across the pullout bed, snoring slightly. She used to sleep like that when we were children. She would push against me, throw a leg across mine. I would kick her and she would whimper in her sleep. The week has been so hot and I have stayed in the apartment reading and listening to the radio. In the evenings we go to the movies. Tonight we saw something called
Shanghai
, Evelyn snorting in disdain throughout at various plot improbabilities. I could not get my mind off tomorrow night. The best thing about going to the movies is “air conditioning.” The lineups are long and tiresome, but once you’re inside it’s like sitting in an icebox. You can feel your skin drying in the cool air. Of course, at the end of the movie, you must again encounter summer in New York. Even after dark, a thick heat still hangs over the city. Your clothes are again damp and clinging. This afternoon it rained
suddenly and violently. The skies opened in a fierce brief downpour. People were running for shelter, holding sodden newspapers over their heads or standing in doorways. I stood by the window and watched the rain beating off the pavement and across the roofs of cars. The street was clogged with taxis and delivery trucks. It was like a tap of warm water suddenly opened. Then it stopped as quickly as it began and the road and sidewalks hissed and steamed. Yellow sunlight splashed across the glistening pavement.