Clara Callan (14 page)

Allow me one last word. I was only too glad to help out last month and not for a moment should you feel indebted. As kindly old Aunt Mary says, “What are friends for after all?” Keep in touch, Clara Callan.

Love, Evelyn

P.S. I don’t know if your sister has told you, but we’ll be on the Canadian airwaves next month. Further evidence (as if we needed it) of the decline of Western civilization.

The first week of school in, and as I left, Milton was whistling in his office, happy to have the first few days over and done with. Milton is looking tanned and robust from his summer at the cottage, and he seems altogether more confident than he did this time last year.

Met Ella Miles who was moping in the schoolyard. She has not been happy in Milton’s classes these past two years, and now it seems customary for her to begin each September with a litany of complaints about Milton’s teaching, followed by a carol to those rapturous days when she sat at the front of my Senior Second row. Those days, of course, were not as blissful as Ella remembers, and she often tried my patience. Ella has a nasty side, a cruel spirit, though I chose to overlook it most of the time because she loved words and she wanted so much to please me. Perhaps I felt sorry for her and her mother working at McDermott’s, dusting those coffins and throwing out the dead flowers. There is no doubt about it; Ella was a favourite and I let her get away with things.

“Do you remember, Miss Callan, when I won the Recitation Prize?”

“Indeed I do, Ella.” And I did.

Whither, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding,
Leaning against the bosom of the urgent West,
That fearest nor sea rising, nor sky clouding
Whither away, fair rover, and why thy quest?

Twenty-four such lines delivered with proper emphasis and without error in the town hall on a hot June night. No mean feat for a ten-year-old, and she has never forgotten the excitement of winning something.

“I liked your classes so much, Miss Callan. I wish you taught the senior forms instead of Mr. McKay.”

But Ella is no longer the blonde little girl with the scruffy ears who likes reading poems and writing stories about animals. Behind the simple dress, a girl is turning into a woman. I could see it too in her pale bitter look, that power to bestow or withhold. Already a little sexual creature. She will be a handful for Milton this year.

Dear Evelyn,

It was good to hear from you. I suppose you are right. I have always treated Nora a little too disdainfully, in the manner of older sisters everywhere, but perhaps because of my nature which leans towards the judgemental. I always thought Nora’s work in radio shops and so on was not as high-minded as teaching. I’m afraid I always saw her as a shopgirl and amateur actress, and I was wrong to look at her that way. She worked much harder than I ever have and has been more successful than I could ever hope to be. As you rightly point out, she has succeeded in a difficult and competitive business, and lately I have begun to wonder if all along I wasn’t just jealous. I always thought Nora took too many chances and was riding for a fall. Perhaps I was too influenced by my father who was also not terribly sympathetic to Nora’s ambitions. To be honest, Father didn’t care for Nora as much as he did for me. I was his favourite and I saw that from very early on. Now, however, I could be just jealous
of her
confidence and accomplishments. This innocence you mention often put me on the wrong track. I think that’s what you may have been referring to, and you’re probably right. I suppose that kind of close observation of another person is part of what makes you a writer, isn’t it?

You’re correct too about my being a bit fussy. I can’t seem to help it and it sometimes worries me a little. I doubt that I will every marry. To begin with, there is no one within shouting distance. I can’t see myself married to some young farmer in the township, bearing a brood of six sons and daughters, baking pies and canning fruit on September afternoons. I shouldn’t say I can’t see myself doing all that. In fact I can, but I don’t think it will happen. Of course, there is a side of me that would like that, but on my own terms. More fussiness, I suppose. I think I can make a good life for myself here with my teaching and my house. But there are things that tear away at me sometimes. Longings for I know not what. Well, enough of that.

You asked me what I do on Wednesday nights here in Whitfield? Well, let’s see. You might find me reading some awful library novel by Louis Bromfield or Pearl Buck. Or washing my hair. Sometimes I play the piano. I have spent hundreds and hundreds of lovely wasteful hours dreaming across the keyboard. I was once considered to be “quite accomplished.” What that means in these parts is moderately talented. It is the talent of the woman who is asked to accompany the soloist for “The Holy City” at a wedding or the carols at the Christmas concert. I don’t play nearly as much as I used to. So there you have my Wednesday nights and something tells me that they are not that different from most people’s. Don’t most of us live out our lives in fairly quiet and simple ways?

I used to go to church, and I miss that. I wasn’t active in church things like the Women’s Auxiliary and the Missionary Society, but I always looked forward to the Sunday service. I used to go with my father and we sat four rows from the front and I liked everything about it except the mingling at the end by the church door. I always
wanted to get away from that. But during the service I enjoyed the hymns and the readings and even Mr. Cameron’s gentle sermons. I loved all that since childhood, and believed that God was listening to us there each Sunday morning in Whitfield, Ontario. Then one Sunday last winter, I just stopped believing, and this has been a great loss to me. Far greater than I might have imagined. And I can’t retrieve my faith. It has vanished as surely as one’s belief in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy. Do you still believe in God, by the way?

When I look back on this letter, I can see that I’ve been rambling, and I’m tempted to tear it up and start again, but I simply haven’t the energy. Some things have happened to me this year that I am still trying to deal with and some day perhaps I will find the courage to tell someone. Meantime, please forgive this rather incoherent letter. It was very good to hear from you, Evelyn, and I hope I may again soon.

Clara

P.S. Yes, I have read some of T. S. Eliot though I couldn’t make head nor tail of his poem
The Waste Land
. I suppose I’m just not smart enough. I will look for books by Pound and Stevens the next time I am in Toronto, which, since you asked, is a two-hour train ride from here.

P.P.S. Toronto is an Indian word for “meeting place.” How about Kalamazoo or Milwaukee as “funny” American place names?

Dear Clara,

How are you feeling anyway? Haven’t heard from you in a while and thought I’d drop you a note. I’m a little bleary-eyed today and didn’t even make church this morning. Last night we had a party at Evelyn’s to celebrate our first week on the network, and I had a little more
champagne than was probably good for me. It was a swell evening except at the end when Les, who insisted on bringing me home in a cab, decided to make a fool of himself outside my apartment building. First he wanted to come up for a drink, and I said no it was late and not a good idea anyway. Then he started going on about how much he loved me and couldn’t live without me. Brother! Right there on the street at two o’clock in the morning. Finally I got rid of him, but I can’t imagine how he is going to look me in the eye tomorrow morning after that performance. Give a normally nice guy a few drinks and he turns into this many-handed monster who won’t take no for an answer. I’m really
furious about this though I blame myself too. I should never have gone out with him in the first place. But I liked the guy and I thought I made it clear that it was just friendship. On Thursday night we had tickets for “The Fleischman Hour” and we went to the show and had a wonderful time. Went for a bite afterwards and it was terrific. He was a perfect gentleman. Now this!!! As you can tell, I’m really disappointed in him. And the party at Evelyn’s had been so much fun! I don’t know. It seems that men, however nice they seem to be, have only one thing on their minds. And the married ones are the worst!!!

How about you? I hope your love life is more tranquil these days and that in any case you are being “careful.” How is school with dear old Milton McKay? Is he as boring as ever? Honestly, I don’t know how you can work with somebody like that, but I guess you must be used to him by now. Well, I have to get busy and read over tomorrow’s script. This headache is just about gone. Who invented the aspirin tablet anyway? He deserves a gold medal. Big crisis coming up this week in the show. Maddy, the pregnant girl Alice caught stealing money from the church’s collection plate, disappears!!! The boy, who is probably the father of the child, has been around the house several times and it looks as if he has persuaded Maddy to run away with him. Effie is glad she’s gone because she is jealous, but Alice and Aunt Mary
and Uncle Jim are worried about her because she is so frail and vulnerable. Anybody in Whitfield caught the show?

Love, Nora

P.S. Do you remember Jack and Doris Halpern? Got a nice letter from them. They are living in Chicago now where Jack works for NBC. Doris is expecting, lucky girl.

Dear Clara,

Thanks for your letter about life in Whitfield, Ontario. I have been unable to locate it exactly on the map of the world, but I’ll take your word that it exists and is, in fact, a two-hour train ride from Toronto. And touché about American place names!

You asked if I believed in God? Well, it’s not a question you are asked every day. Only certain types of people want to know the answers to such questions and it would seem that you are one of them. Anyway, your question set the memory wheels in motion and I thought of when I was a girl at this Episcopalian boarding school for well-to-do young ladies in the green hills of Connecticut. I had what you might call a religious experience there. I had another kind of experience too, but maybe we’ll leave the recollection of that for another day. Both of these momentous events occurred when I was an overweight and very serious thirteen-year-old.

On the faculty of Eden Hall was this wonderful old dame, Miss Barrett. She looked exactly like your standard-issue girls’ schoolteacher of the time: a tall henna-haired spinster with glasses on a chain across her flat chest. Eden Hall was a very religious school in those days; we
had chapel every day and twice on Sundays. We also had a regular class in Scripture taught by Miss Barrett. She talked about God as if He lived next door. One winter night I was walking back from Study Hall to my dormitory. It was one of those clear mid-winter nights and I stopped to look up at all these stars. I was the kind of fat, sensitive kid who would do that. I was standing there admiring all that celestial glory when Miss Barrett arrived from behind a tree. She was wrapped up in her long coat and tam and gloves and carrying binoculars.

“You enjoy looking at the heavens, do you, Dowling?” she asked.
Looking at the heavens!
I really liked the sound of that expression. I can’t remember what I said, but I recall Miss Barrett saying, “Did you know, Dowling, that great men have looked at such skies through the ages and have been both consoled and terrified by what they saw.”

Good old Barrett. She had this terrific voice and there in that icy clear night it was coming through to me. This is what she quoted to me.

Within its deep infinity I saw
ingathered and bound by love in
one volume the scattered leaves
of all the universe.
   — Dante Alighieri, 1265–1321
The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me.
   — Blaise Pascal, 1623–1662

“There you have it, Dowling,” she said. “Nearly four hundred years separate the observations of two men who looked at much the same sky. Binding the scattered leaves of all the universe into one volume. There you have the medieval mind, Dowling. But Pascal sees only a vast loneliness. And there you have the difference between the medieval and the modern mind.”

How that stuck with me. That stuff about the scattered leaves bound by love and then the vast loneliness that followed. I remember
looking up those old guys, Dante and Pascal, in the library and memorizing those quotations. It started me thinking about God and all the rest of it. I am not quite as sure as you seem to be. I’m sitting on the fence and giving Him the benefit of the doubt.

You ask what consoles me. A bottle of Gordon’s gin helps at times, though it’s not really to be recommended in the long run. Good books, of course, and music and all the rest of that art stuff.

There’s a poem by Wallace Stevens called “Sunday Morning.” I was thinking of it when I read your letter. The woman in his poem sounds a bit like you. I think it’s in a book called
Harmonium
, but I can’t find my copy. I may have loaned it to someone. I’ll look for one in the bookstores on Fourth Avenue and if I find a copy, I’ll send it along.

Love, Evelyn

Dear Nora,

Yesterday I received your dramatic account of how you thwarted the advances of Mr. Cunningham. Clearly he is smitten. I noticed his adoring gaze on the day I visited the studio. Well, I suppose you are lucky that he came to his senses.

You have become quite the celebrity up here. People have been stopping me on the street to say, “Was it really Nora I heard the other day on that radio show? What a lovely program and she sounds so real.” Or this, “And to think that the little girl with the blonde curls I used to see going off to school is now on the radio in New York,” etc., etc.

I want you to know, Nora, that I have to endure a fair amount of this guff, and I am holding you personally responsible for my actions on that day when I lose all patience and throttle a fellow citizen who is wondering whether Uncle Jim’s spell is serious, or when Effie is going to ruin her life by running away with the business college teacher.