Clara Callan (28 page)

“It’s a terrible thing to receive anonymous letters,” he said. “I once had some poison pen letters sent to me. It was my first school in Pine Falls. I found out they came from a girl I gave a bad grade to. It’s always girls who do these things, isn’t it? You would never get a boy writing anonymous letters. It’s just not something boys do.”

Milton frowned, irritated at that moment perhaps by the very presence of females in the world: spiteful schoolgirls, nagging mothers, capricious teachers, wealthy socialites who turn the heads of kings. He
mumbled something about exercising more caution in the future and left it at that. Returned to his radio news. Milton’s primary strategy in dealing with problems is to do nothing, hoping that in time they will go away or be forgotten. It used to annoy Father who said that Milton would never make a satisfactory principal for that very reason. Yet, I was grateful. Perhaps all this will pass over.

Listened to the King announcing his abdication but turned him off after a few minutes. Couldn’t stand the sound of his tinny little English voice going on about “the woman I love.”

Dear Clara,

I’m sorry not to have answered your letter sooner, but I’ve been fighting a cold and feeling generally lousy. I seem to be on the mend now, getting back to my old self. That’s not a particularly appealing sight, but at least it’s me.

It’s too bad you’re plagued with those letters, sent no doubt by some rotten little girls. Or maybe they are not so little? My goodness, the things that go on in idyllic villages like yours! I am sure you’ll forgive me if one of these days, our Alice starts receiving poison pen letters. So you started laughing in the middle of this talk you gave to the Women’s Club or whatever you call it? Hell, that isn’t a sign of craziness, it’s a display of sanity. In the middle of it all, you realized the entire absurdity of the situation. Sometimes all we can do is laugh, right? They should have been on their feet, applauding you. In any case, I wouldn’t worry about these notes. Why not just throw them in the garbage? Don’t even read them. Whoever is responsible will get tired of the game in time. They always do. Speaking of writing, I just finished the Christmas week episodes of “Chestnut Street.” (Your
sister has decided to visit an old woman who is alone and friendless
at Christmas and so she is out of the script, visiting you, I understand). And so Uncle Jim, played by that merry old drunk Graydon Lott (I believe you met him last summer at my place) will give his annual peroration around the stuffed turkey to Effie and Aunt Mary. How we should all be grateful for the good Lord and everything he gives us in this little corner of America where folks know the meaning of love and trust and neighbourliness. “And seldom is heard a discouraging word/And the skies are not cloudy all day.”

So what do you think of England’s Eddie taking off with our American babe? She’s a high-stepper that one and the little prince may have his hands full. Your sister is all broken up about this, but I think it’s hilarious. Little England seduced by America. I see a lapdog being climbed on by a big mongrel bitch. How is your love life? Do you have a love life? I myself am going through a dry spell. Bah humbug as old Scrooge would say. Happy 1937!

Evelyn

Bought a Christmas tree this afternoon and left it in the backyard for Nora. She will want to decorate it when she arrives and so I got out the old boxes of tinsel and coloured balls. Christmas concert this evening. Ella Myles read a poem about the three wise men. She was pretty and nervous, in a blue dress. Very severe, but she read well. I watched her mother in the audience and then walked home under a star-filled sky. Nora will be here this time next week.

Nora now asleep in Father’s room. She arrived yesterday afternoon in a brilliant-green coat and matching hat. Perfumed. Very smart. Joe Morrow brought her up from the station in his truck and carried her
luggage into the house, casting glances at this marvel, scarcely believing, I’m sure, that such wonders could step off the afternoon train. She is not the Nora he remembers and he told me so. Still in her coat, Nora walked through the house as though she were buying the place.

“Oh, Clara, you haven’t changed a thing! It’s just as it used to be when I would come home on Saturday nights.”

Nora wanted snow falling through the yellow light of the street lamps and the music of sleigh bells. But it was not to be. Not this year. Just a mild cloudy evening with coal smoke in the air. A green Christmas, I’m afraid. “Oh, well,” she said. “We can’t have everything. So let’s have a drink.”

We sat at the kitchen table and she poured herself a little whiskey. “What would poor Father think,” she said. “His youngest daughter drinking whiskey at this kitchen table.” I didn’t tell her, but I don’t think he would be as surprised as she might imagine.

She has spent today among her admirers. The whole village knows she is spending Christmas with me and so she has gone forth to receive their praises, stopping in at the Brydens’ and the Macfarlanes’, at the post office and the Mercantile, to chat about Alice and Effie and Aunt Mary. After supper we decorated the tree while she went on about Edward and Mrs. Simpson. What did he see in her? She wasn’t even pretty, etc., etc. I kept waiting for questions about the church hall episode, but so far nothing; she is still too caught up in her triumphant return.

Nora’s visit has not been the success she wanted it to be. She came up here ostensibly to see if I still had all my marbles, and I don’t think she has entirely made up her mind about that yet. Today, before she left, we had our talk. For a moment, I was tempted to tell her what really happened, but then Joe was at the back door and we had to get Nora’s things into the truck. I watched Joe carefully take her arm and escort
her down the driveway, Nora stepping carefully through the snow that was finally falling at the end of her holiday. Waving from the doorway, I thought of how little we understand one another. Thought too of her comment about my muttering in the kitchen this morning. She said she could hear me upstairs. I wasn’t aware that I muttered in the morning, but I suppose I do.

A blustery day and I spent a good part of the afternoon visiting Marion who is ill with a grippe. When I got home about four o’clock, Ella Myles was waiting on the veranda, shivering in a thin jacket, a little tam on her head, but no stockings or mittens. She wanted to show me her essay for the competition. Silently I cursed her mother for allowing the child out on such a day, half-dressed like that. Stoked the furnace and then made some cocoa. We had that with biscuits, seated near the heating vent in the front room. While I read “What Makes a Good Citizen,” Ella wandered about the room, stopping by the window to stare out at the snow and the bare trees, turning then to inspect my furniture, touching a lamp here, an armchair there, the piano. It was as if she were delighted to be here in the tidy comfort of Miss Callan’s house on a winter afternoon.

Her composition was lazily written and full of errors, but when I suggested ways to improve things, Ella merely shrugged. I could see that she was tired of the whole enterprise and would settle for nothing but approval. She will very likely throw it into the wastebasket when
she gets home and that would not be a bad idea. There is an undisciplined side to Ella, and I probably overvalued her sentimental verses in the Senior Second form. Milton has told me how poorly she is doing in the entrance class.

She asked me to play something for her, and so I did the best I could with Dvorřák’s
Humouresque
and one or two of Mendelssohn’s songs. She loves MacDowell’s “To a Wild Rose.” The dreamy little tunes seemed to entrance her as she stood by the window. I think she was just bored and lonely today. Letter from Nora who has taken up with another man. Or the same one she was seeing a year ago. I am losing track of her various encounters.

Dear Clara,

Happy New Year, and for a start, let me apologize for grilling you like I did that last day before I caught the train. I’m sorry, really I am. How you choose to live your life is really none of my business. It’s just that I worry so about you. I can’t help that, can I? After all, I’m your sister and I love you. I know we don’t talk much about love in our family. We never have. I don’t think I ever heard Father use the word. But we do love one another, don’t we? And when you love someone, you worry when they are unhappy or troubled. So really it was love that was behind my questions that day, but I could see you were getting annoyed with me and so I’m sorry. I just want you to be happy, Clara.

Do you remember Les Cunningham, the announcer on our show? He’s always been a little sweet on me and we went out together for a while. It was all strictly kosher, as they say down here. But now Les is thinking of getting a divorce, and so we have more or less drifted back together again. He told me how much he missed me over the holidays and so we’ve started dating again. Nothing serious, but it’s sure nice
to have a fellow on your arm when you go to the movies. I just wish you could find someone too. Evy sends her love and so do I.

Nora

Dear Nora,

Thanks for your New Year’s wishes which I hereby return tenfold. Don’t concern yourself unduly about the “grilling” you gave me on the day you left. Perhaps I deserved it. When all is said and done, I am a peculiar cuss, and there doesn’t seem to be much I can do about it. It’s my disposition to be morbidly curious about certain things and that can sometimes make life awkward and uneasy. Can’t be helped, I’m afraid. I just have to live with my temperament and do the best I can.

You say you want me to be happy? Fine! How? When? For how long? We all have happy moments, and these depend, I suppose, on our tastes and inclinations. Emily Dickinson made much of her happiness out of the careful observance of small daily events: a bird on a winter branch, the colour of a morning sky. The Marquis de Sade was otherwise stimulated. Isn’t it largely a matter of this disposition I referred to? Whether, in general, we feel hopeful or despairing, confident or faint-hearted? Look at you! Off you went to New York and made a success of yourself! You were confident and hopeful because it is in your nature to be that way. I would have perished in a week down there. Does that make you a happy person? I don’t know, but I would guess that you may be inclined to be happier or more optimistic than I am. But in my own way, I am happy enough, Nora, so you musn’t fret about me. Say hello to Evelyn.

Clara

After weeks, I thought it was over, but today this — wedged beneath the front door. The night’s snowfall had covered the writer’s footsteps.

Miss C
A little winter bird has told us that your phantom lover has returned, and so we peeked in your front window the other night. The things we saw! The two of you running around the house naked and playing hide-and-go-seek. We saw you crouched behind the armchair by the piano. We saw him creeping across the rug towards you. What embraces there on the rug in front of the piano! How he covered you with kisses, Miss C! Aren’t you the lucky one.

Bystanders

It came to me upon awakening a half-hour ago. Perhaps I dreamt it, I’m not sure. But lying there in the darkness, I knew. Knew, as I know I’m alive, that the writer of those notes is Ella Myles. I was foolish to think that a dull creature like Jean Patterson has the erotic imagination to write such things. Ella is the author of this perfidy. But she grew too bold, wanted details: “the armchair by the piano,” “the rug in front of the piano.” It was clever to use the plural of
bystander
. Make it look as if more than one person were involved. Since Ella has no friends at all, the trail would lead to others. What a little dissembler she is, and I thought she liked me! I think now of the Saturday before last when she took everything in, as she drank her cocoa and walked about the front room. I wonder why she hates me so, or is it just a thirst for narrative invention, the creation of something beyond her dismal little world? Whatever her motives, it was wicked of her to create these
preposterous fantasies in which I am made to look so pathetic. She must have typed them on the office machine at McDermott’s while her mother
dusted the coffins. No point in going back to bed now. I am as wide awake as I can ever hope to be. But it will be a long day.

Ella has just left and I hope that is the end of it. Perhaps coming back to the house and doing what we did was a little self-serving on my part, but I wanted to show the girl that I am not the pitiful specimen she portrayed in her notes, but someone who also has an inner life. Perhaps I was mistaken in doing so. I wanted to have it out with her about these notes, and so I asked her to see me after school in my classroom. She came at four-thirty. The school was empty. She stood before my desk, and I think she knew what our conversation would be about, though she displayed no feelings whatsoever about being there; just the usual, lame, washed-out look. Sleep-crust still along her eyelids. Did she never wash her face? I could see the weakness of her drunken father in the habitual slouch.

“Stand up straight, for goodness’ sake, Ella!”

Oh, the hectoring teacher in me and I felt ashamed of my temper! She straightened her spine a little then, but stared out the window. The light of the winter day was pale as water.

“Have you been writing notes about me, Ella? Leaving them on the veranda or even here, in this dictionary, on my desk?”

She turned and gave me a narrow shifty look. I had seen this look many times before.

“Notes, Miss Callan? No. Why would I write notes about you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Perhaps because you don’t really like me. Or maybe because you didn’t win the essay competition in June. Maybe no reason at all. Maybe just for something to do. To amuse yourself.”

She said nothing but returned again to looking out the window.

“I can prove you wrote these notes, Ella. You wrote them on the office typewriter at McDermott’s while your mother was busy working.
How would you like it if I showed these notes to your mother?”

A shrug. Infuriating.

“I may show them to Mr. McKay too. You could be expelled for this. You could lose your year.” That, of course, was nonsense; I could never bring myself to show such notes to Milton. “I thought we were friends, Ella. And then you write these notes in which I am made to look foolish and pathetic.”

The wretched child continued to gaze out the window. With a decent haircut and a good scrubbing, she might be presentable enough to entice a boy to hold her hand and walk her home from school. Take her skating.

“Have you nothing to say about any of this?” I asked.

Then she turned to me and the words rushed forth. “You’re wrong about last June, Miss Callan. Who cares about writing compositions anyway? I don’t. I don’t care about any of it. Go ahead and kick me out of school. See if I care!”

“But why did you write those notes about me, Ella? That’s all I’d like to know.”

A shrug. “It was something to do,” she muttered.

“Something to do,” I said. “Just that?”

“I guess so.”

It was then that I had my little inspiration. I suppose I wanted to impress upon her the idea that people aren’t necessarily what they appear to be; that it’s a mistake to make assumptions about people you think you know. So I asked her to come home with me. Of course, she frowned at the suggestion. Puzzled. “Why?”

“I want you to do something for me,” I said.

“What?”

“Come along and you’ll see. Oh, don’t worry, Ella, I’m not going to punish you.”

And so the two of us walked through the cold afternoon to this house, wordless and alone with our thoughts. In the kitchen I handed her the envelope of notes.

“Sometimes,” I said, “I write poems, but there is always something wrong with them. They never quite say what I mean them to say, and then I think of how many good poems there already are in the world, and I realize that what I’ve written doesn’t add very much to what’s already been said. So I just throw the poems in this stove. That way, at least, they will be useful. In their own small way they will help to keep me warm. So I try to make use out of something useless. Now I want you to do the same thing. I want you to think of these notes, Ella, as your own dark and rather hateful little poems and get rid of them.”

I said something like that, something confessional and perhaps I shouldn’t have. Children don’t like adults to uncover their feelings and they are right. It looks eccentric and weak, self-indulgent. I may have done exactly the opposite of what I intended. Well, it’s done and she did as she was told. I took the lid off the stove and we stood there side by side as Ella fed the notes one by one into the fire. We watched together as the paper curled and browned, the words disappearing in smoke. The flames were leaping from the mouth of the stove as she finished. But not a word of apology from the girl for what she did to me.

Went to Toronto today on the train and bought half a dozen detective magazines. Then I went to a movie theatre and watched a story about a woman who survives a train wreck. She suffers from amnesia, however, and is cared for by a handsome doctor who falls in love with her. The woman tries to remember her former life, but she can’t recall a single hour and so she marries the handsome doctor and goes off to Europe on a honeymoon. Then her memory suddenly returns. This happens while she and the doctor are walking one afternoon in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. She sees a small boy playing with a boat by the edge of a pond and her past life comes flooding back to her. She remembers her own son, only six years old when last she saw him,
and a daughter and, of course, another husband. Her life of romance and adventure with the handsome doctor has been shattered by the sight of the little boy and the boat.

In the darkened theatre a hundred or so of us watched this woman’s life unfold. The moving pictures have a life of their own; they draw you in and transport you to another world. When you are watching them, you are scarcely aware of your own existence. Of course, you must deal with all that when you come out of the movie theatre; there you see it again: the soiled snow underfoot, the candy wrapper, the crying child tugged along by its mother.

Last night I read this in one of the magazines. There were two sisters who lived on a farm in Arkansas. After their mother died of influenza, the father arranged for a neighbour woman to come in to look after the house and the two little girls who were only seven or eight years old at the time. After a while the father began to have relations with this woman. In the night the sisters could hear them in the next room. This went on for several years, and then the father began to bother his daughters, one after the other. In time, a child was born to one of them, but it was so badly deformed that it lasted only a few hours and then was buried in the woods nearby. The father looked after that.

When the sisters were eighteen or nineteen, they murdered their father and the neighbour woman. They killed them one night with an axe while they slept. After the sisters were arrested, there was some dispute about who actually wielded the axe, but it didn’t matter to the authorities. Both sisters were electrocuted. For the longest time, I lay awake thinking of the horror of that night in Arkansas: the sisters making their way towards the sleepers, the first blow from the axe, the half-awakened cries, the second blow severing life. The mess of it all: the blood-soaked bedclothes and splattered walls.

The sisters dragged the bodies to the farmyard for burial. Their
father weighed over two hundred and fifty pounds and the neighbour woman was also immense. Shovelling dirt over the bodies behind the barn and then cleaning everything up and going to bed. Or maybe they sat at the kitchen table and drank some coffee. Sat there in silence until daybreak. It happened while the rest of us went about our lives. It is happening now somewhere.