Clara Callan (2 page)

Nora left for New York City today. I think she is taking a terrible chance going all the way down there but, of course, she wouldn’t listen. You can’t tell Nora anything. You never could. Then came the last-minute jitters. Tears in that huge station among strangers and loudspeaker announcements.

“I’m going to miss you, Clara.”

“Yes. Well, and I’ll miss you too, Nora. Do be careful down there!”

“You think I’m making a mistake, don’t you? I can see it in your face.”

“We’ve talked about this many times, Nora. You know how I feel about all this.”

“You must promise to write.”

“Well, of course, I’ll write.”

The handkerchief, smelling faintly of violets, pressed to an eye. Father used to say that Nora’s entire life was a performance. Perhaps she will make something of herself down there in the radio business, but it’s just as likely she’ll return after Christmas. And then what will
she do? I’m sure they won’t take her back at the store. It’s a foolish time to be taking chances like this. A final wave and a gallant little smile. But she did look pretty and someone on the train will listen. Someone is probably listening at this very moment.

Prayed for solitude on my train home but it was not to be. Through the window I could see the trainman helping Mrs. Webb and Marion up the steps. Then came the sidelong glances of the whole and hale as Marion came down the aisle, holding onto the backs of the seats, swinging her bad foot outward and forward and then, by endeavour and the habit of years, dropping the heavy black boot to the floor. Settled finally into the seat opposite, followed by Mother Webb and her parcels. Routine prying from Mrs. W.

“Well now, Clara, and what brings you to the city? Aren’t the stores crowded and Christmas still weeks off? I like to get my buying out of the way. Have you started the practices for the concert? Ida Atkins and I were talking about you the other day. Wouldn’t it be nice, we said, if Clara Callan came out to our meetings. You should think about it, Clara. Get you out of the house for an evening. Marion enjoys it, don’t you dear?”

Plenty more of this all the way to Uxbridge station when she finally dozed off, the large head drooping beneath the hat, the arms folded across the enormous chest. Marion said hello, but stayed behind her magazine (movie starlet on the cover). We quarrelled over something a week ago. I can’t exactly remember what, but Marion has since refused to speak to me at any length and that is just as well.

On the train my gaze drifting across the bare grey fields in the rain. Thinking of Nora peering out another train window. And then I found myself looking down at Marion’s orthopedic boot, remembering how I once stared at a miniature version of it in the schoolyard. Twenty-one Septembers ago! I was ten years old and going into Junior Third. Marion had been away all summer in Toronto and returned with the cumbersome shoe. In Mrs. Webb’s imagination, Marion and I are conjoined by birth dates and therefore mystically
united on this earth. We were born on the same day in the same year, only hours apart. Mrs. W. has never tired of telling how Dr. Grant hurried from our house in the early-morning hours to assist her delivery with the news that Mrs. Callan had just given birth to a fine daughter. And then came Marion, but her tiny foot “was not as God intended.” And on that long-ago September morning in the schoolyard, Mrs. Webb brought Marion over to me and said, “Clara will look after you,
dear. She will be your best friend. Why you were born on the same day!”

Marion looked bewildered. I remember that. And how she clung to my side! I could have screamed and, in fact, may have done. At the end of the day we fought over something and she had a crying spell under a tree on our front lawn. How she wailed and stamped that boot, which drew my eye as surely as the bulging goitre in old Miss Fowley’s throat. Father saw some of this and afterwards scolded me. I think I went to bed without supper and I probably sulked for days. What an awful child I was! Yet Marion forgave me; she always forgives me. From time to time, this afternoon, I noticed her smiling at me over her magazine. Mr. Webb was at the station with his car, but I told him I preferred to walk. It had stopped raining by then. No offence was taken.

They are used to my ways. And so I walked home on this damp grey evening. Wet leaves underfoot and darkness seeping into the sky through the bare branches of the trees. Winter will soon be upon us. My neighbours already at their suppers behind lighted kitchen windows. Felt a little melancholy remembering other Saturday evenings when I would have our supper on the stove, waiting for the sound of Father’s car in the driveway, bringing Nora up from the station. Certainly Nora would never have walked. Waiting in the kitchen for her breathless entrance. Another tale of some adventure in acting class or the charms of a new beau. Father already frowning at this commotion as he hung up his coat in the hallway. It’s nearly seven months now, and I thought I was getting used to Father being gone,
yet tonight as I walked along Church Street, I felt again the terrible finality of his absence.

Then I was very nearly knocked over by Clayton Tunney who came charging out of the darkness at the corner of Broad Street. It was startling, to say the least, and I was cross with him.

“Clayton,” I said. “For goodness’ sake, watch where you’re going!”

“Sorry, Miss Callan. I was over at the Martins’, listening to their radio with Donny, and now I’m late for supper and Ma’s going to skin me alive.”

And off he went again, that small nervous figure racing along Church Street. Poor Clayton! Always in a hurry and always late. Without fail, the last one into class after recess.

Dear Clara,

Well, I made it, and I am now at the above address. Tatham House is an apartment hotel for self-supporting women (I hope to become one soon). It’s very clean, well maintained and reasonably priced. It’s also quite convenient. I stayed with Jack and Doris Halpern for a few days and then I found this place. The Halperns live “uptown” dozens of blocks away, but the subway can get you around the city so fast that you hardly notice distances. New York is not that hard to navigate once you get the hang of it. All the streets run east and west while the avenues go north and south and they are all numbered with a few exceptions like Park and Madison and Lexington. But brother, is it noisy! The taxi drivers are always honking their horns, and you really have to be careful crossing the street. Everyone seems to be in such a blasted hurry (I thought Toronto was bad). There are so many people
out on the streets at all hours and I have to say, Clara, that I’ve never seen so many handsome men, though
so many of them are swarthy. I guess they must be Italian or Greek or maybe Jewish. Awfully good-looking though. You also see a lot of coloured people down here.

Now about work! On Thursday, Jack took me to Benjamin, Hecker and Freed (an advertising agency) and introduced me to some people, including this writer Evelyn Dowling. How can I describe Evelyn? She reminds me of that song we used to sing when we were kids.

I’m a little teapot
Short and stout
Here is my handle
Here is my spout!

Remember that? She’s only about five feet tall and nearly as wide and she has this big head of reddish hair. Wears beautifully cut tailored suits and expensive-looking shoes. She’s not going to win any beauty contests, but she’s very funny and obviously very successful. Smokes like the dickens. Just one Camel after another and her fingers are yellow with nicotine. Anyway, I did a voice test (several actually), and they liked what they heard, or at least that’s what they told me. They haven’t promised anything yet, but Jack thinks I am exactly what they are looking for with this new show that Evelyn is writing. Meantime, as I told Jack, I am in this big city and I have to pay bills for fairly important items like food and rent, but he said that he will find me some commercial work within the next week or so and I should be all right. Good Lord, I hope so! I have enough money to last about six weeks and after that I’ll have to go on the dole or, what’s more likely, they’ll
probably kick me out of their fair country. To tell you the truth though, I am pretty hopeful about all this. I had a very good feeling last Thursday when I was reading for these people. I just sensed that they liked what they heard, particularly Miss. D. So we shall see! Jack and Doris are picking me up in about an hour and we are going out to
dinner. They’ve been just wonderful to me. So, all in all, I would say it’s been a good first week and I’m not homesick yet, but
please
write.

Love, Nora

P.S. There’s a hallway telephone on my floor and I can be reached at University 5-0040 in case of an emergency. I wish you would get a phone, but we’ve been through all that, haven’t we? So I suppose you can use the Brydens’ if you have to, but I wish you’d think about it again, Clara. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could “talk” to one another once or twice a week? But what did Father used to say about saving your breath to cool your porridge?

This morning I awakened feeling put upon. Over the past few days the winds have blown the first storm of the winter through the village. In other years I welcomed the first snow because it covered November’s greyness. Now the snow is just a nuisance that has to be shovelled away and I have been at it off and on since Wednesday morning. Then too I have been worrying about the last hundred dollars Wilkins owes me for Father’s car. It was due on the first of the month, and all week I had made up my mind that he was going to take advantage and I would have to hire a lawyer and go through all that business to get the money. I am far too hasty in my judgement of others and probably too pessimistic about human nature. So now, look how benign a place this old world seems! An afternoon of brilliant sunlight (for November), and just as I got home from school, Mr. Wilkins came by with the hundred dollars, apologizing for the delay. God bless him! Now I must get Nora’s share off to her; she sounds as though
she could use it.

Dear Nora,

I’m glad that you have found a decent place to stay that isn’t too dear. I hope you will be careful in that city. I know it would drive me to distraction just walking out the door into such crowds. How on earth do people earn their livings, and where, I wonder, does the food come from to feed so many mouths? There must be thousands out of work down there. We are surviving in the village, though over in Linden they are really up against it. The furniture factory has laid off nearly all the men and things are very flat with many families now on relief.

School is fine though Milton and I now have to do the work of three. Because we got on so well in the spring, I think the board just assumes that the school can be run by two people. They claim they haven’t the money this year for another teacher, and that may be so, but I’m inclined to think that they are just being close about it. However there’s nothing we can do. Milton is a pleasant fellow to work for, but he dithers a good deal and he lacks Father’s authority as a principal. I suppose one can’t be too hard on him, but I find he’s not strict enough with some of the rougher children who could benefit from a good hiding now and then. I’m thinking in particular of the Kray brothers who are the bane of my existence these days.

Mr. Wilkins finally gave me the last payment for Father’s car yesterday and the enclosed money order for fifty dollars is your share. I am sure you can put it to good use. To tell you the truth, I now regret selling the car. It has occurred to me more than once over the last little while that I might have kept it and learned how to drive. I just didn’t think that way at the time of Father’s death and maybe I was just in too much of a hurry to get everything settled. Speaking of getting settled, I have also dealt with the man from Linden Monuments who finally got around to seeing me the week before last. These people certainly take
their time to conduct business; I’ve been after him since the summer. He wanted to sell me some folderol for the family headstone and showed me a catalogue which very nearly struck me dumb with amazement and horror: hundreds of dreadful little verses which attempt to reassure the living that the dead are not so badly off. Perhaps they aren’t, but in any case
I told him that plain words would have to do the job. And so alongside Mother’s and Thomas’s names and years will be Edward J. Callan, 1869–1934. I hope that’s all right with you.

I think I have now mastered the furnace. It has been worrying me all fall, but Mr. Bryden has given me several lessons on how to start it and keep it going. There is a trick to all this. You have to be careful about allowing enough flame through the coals to burn off the gas, but you can’t smother the flame or, of course, the darn thing will go out. I now appreciate the hours Father used to spend watching “this monster in the cellar.” And in a way it is a “monster” that will have to be attended to and appeased every day of the blessed week from now until April. These days I am hurrying home at lunch to make sure that “he” is still breathing and satisfied, but I am also learning how to put enough coal in after breakfast (“building the fire,” according to Mr. Bryden) so that it will last until I get home from school. I really had no idea what a chore it is just to keep warm. At the same time, there is an undeniable satisfaction in knowing how to do all this.

I was amused by your colourful description of Miss Dowling with her tobacco-stained fingers and tailored suits. You are certainly meeting some exotic creatures down there, aren’t you?

I have noted the telephone number you gave me and passed it on to Mrs. Bryden who says hello and good luck. She will get in touch with you if I fall down the cellar stairs and brain myself some evening. And no, I am not going to rent a telephone. As you say, we’ve been through all that and I still maintain that, in my case, it’s a waste of money. I doubt whether I would phone three people in a month and I
see no reason why we can’t keep in touch by letter. Do take care of yourself in that city, Nora.