Clara Callan (35 page)

As we drove through the empty Sunday morning streets of Toronto, I reminded myself that this was how it would always be, and that I must not give in to self-pity. I am not eighteen years old. I am thirty-four and I have chosen to become involved with a married man. And so there will always be this hurrying from one place to another, with a run in my stocking and that look from the desk clerk as we go out the door. These things will always be and I must accept them or stop seeing him.

On the train I sat across from Hazel McConkey, who was returning from a week of looking after her grandchildren while “Mel and Ebbie have a little holiday.” She fanned herself with some kind of pamphlet and talked about the “kiddies.” Did she notice how swollen my mouth was from kisses? How my throat was still flushed? But I don’t think Hazel McConkey is capable of imagining me naked beneath a man in a motor court. She did, however, want to know what I was doing on the train on Sunday morning. I told her I had been visiting an old friend from Normal School days. Those imaginary friends from long ago do come in handy.

Another trip to Dr. Watts and another driving lesson after supper. Joe says that in two weeks or so, I should be ready for my test. “You’ll have to give her a try then, Clara.” In years to come, I think I shall always remember these long, summer evenings in the little Chevrolet
on the gravel roads south of the village. I shall remember Joe’s large hand on the steering wheel, his tobacco juice spurting out the window, his patience and kindness.

Frank has just phoned me to tell me how much he enjoyed the weekend. “I did too,” I said. We have agreed to meet again on the seventeenth.

As I write this, it is warm and still, with a good deal of heat lightning and distant thunder. I had a supper of cold cuts and potato salad ready when Nora and Evelyn arrived about six o’clock (they are now sleeping). E. arrived in trousers and lavender shirt. On her head, a white cotton cap with a little green window in its peak. She looked like a yachtsman at the wheel of her Packard, which now sits in the driveway and has been a cause for wonder all evening among the village children. Both guests were hot and tired and a little cranky after their drive up from Buffalo where they stayed last night. Dispositions improved, however, after E. made some of her famous gin concoctions.

Yesterday we motored up here with “Captain Dowling” at the wheel while “Nora the Navigator” sat by her side studying the road map. I had the entire back seat to myself and felt like Cleopatra on her barge. “Fetch me my adulteress’s robe, Charmion!” Evelyn kept up a steady patter about the countryside: the rocks, the lakes, the endless forest. It does look like the land God gave to Cain. Nora excited about the quints and she talked too much about the death of the American woman who had been trying to fly around the world. We are staying in a cabin on a lake near the town. Evelyn is entertaining company with droll and sardonic observations on nearly everything. Yesterday evening, she got a little tight and took snapshots of Nora and me with
her Kodak. I hate having my picture taken, but you can’t refuse Evelyn, and so Nora and I stood next to the big car and on the steps of the cabin.

As we lay in our bunks last night, Evelyn said she was reminded of boarding school and she told us stories about old classmates and teachers. I lay there watching the lightning across the lake. Someone nearby was playing a car radio and I thought of Frank and wondered what he was doing at that moment. Then Nora and Evelyn began talking more about people from their pasts who had been close to them. Evelyn mentioned a girl at her school whom she had secretly been in love with; she had been bridesmaid at the girl’s wedding years later and still wrote to her in Australia. But never did she reveal her heart and she sounded unhappy about that. Then Nora talked about a man in Toronto whom she thought she once loved, but he went out west before she could tell him how she felt. It was someone I had never heard of and this surprised me, for I thought she had told me everything on those Saturday nights when she came home on the train. It was as if they had forgotten I was there, or perhaps they thought I was asleep.
For a brief moment, I wanted to tell them about Frank, but I’m glad now that I didn’t.

In the middle of the night, there was a tremendous storm with several fierce strikes close by. We all got up to watch. The sky was filled with lightning and the thunder was deafening. I think Evelyn was a little frightened by it all though she joked about it. “You Canadians sure know how to put on a show for a New York girl.” Perhaps we were all a little shaken by the tumult and relieved to see it pass.

This morning we drove to Callander for a look at the five little girls. Nora was beside herself with excitement, and Evelyn took pictures of the signs and souvenir shops. There was a long lineup with crying children and mothers and men smoking. It was a grey warm day with the threat of more storms in the air and the body odour and bad breath in that lineup gave me a terrible headache. There is something fundamentally wrong with lining up to gawk at these youngsters as if they
were freaks in a carnival show. I felt foolish about it all. We saw them finally in a kind of compound. They were playing with sand pails and shovels and there were little swings and a teeter-totter. A nurse was in attendance. In the lineup, we inched forward behind a plate-glass window and gazed in at the five of them in their overalls. Around me the whispered trite expressions of wonder. “Gosh, aren’t they adorable!” “Oh, look at them! They are so cute.”

After this, Evelyn said she needed a drink though it was only eleven o’clock. We ate lunch and supper at a log cabin restaurant and went to sleep early. I think we were all a bit dispirited by the vulgarity surrounding the quintuplets. There were more thunderstorms in the night and I lay in my bunk, aching for the sound of Frank’s voice and the feel of his kisses on my throat.

A long drive home through the little towns celebrating “the glorious twelfth” with bunting and parades: elderly women in white dresses and bugle bands. We took side streets to avoid the commotion and got turned around a few times. I could not help thinking how ironic that I was desperate to phone my Catholic lover on this of all days. If poor Father only knew! Evelyn was feeling unwell (too much drink?) and after supper went right to bed. Nora and I sat on the veranda and talked until past eleven; this affair with her announcer friend is going nowhere and now she has had two or three “nasty calls” from the man’s wife. These have upset her and she doesn’t know where to go from here. She longs for marriage and children — “just a quiet normal life.” Yet I wonder if either of us will ever have that. I wanted to tell her about Frank, but I couldn’t bring myself to admit that I too am caught in this marital flytrap. It all seems a bit hopeless when looked at
late at night.

Nora and Evelyn left about ten o’clock; they plan to sightsee in Toronto and Niagara Falls over the next day or two before returning to New York. Before she left, Nora told me that Lewis Mills’s book will be out some time this month, and she will send me a copy. After they left, I phoned Frank at his office. It was so good to hear his voice. We are to meet this Saturday and then he is spending two weeks at the cottage. What shall I do for the rest of July?

Frank has just dropped me off, and I could see Mrs. Bryden at her front window watching us. Soon she will want to know who was driving me home at this hour and so on. More lies. Yesterday morning we returned to the cabins near Port Hope. We scarcely left the place all day; just two brief walks along a road by the lake and into town for something to eat. Our bodies again so slick with perspiration. It must be like this on honeymoons when newlyweds discover one another. How wonderful and frightening it all is! Last night we both awakened at the same time and became so caught up in ourselves that Frank did not bother with a rubber and I didn’t care. It was foolish of me, but I remember thinking at the time, It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. I think I said that to him in the midst of it all. But, of course, it does matter. It matters a great deal and now I am a little concerned; not much, for I think I am all right at this time of the month, but we simply must be more careful. An instant of carelessness
and my life will be turned upsidedown. How quickly it could all change! I don’t know what I would do if I became pregnant again. I could not go back to Nora for another “operation,” and I’m sure that, as a Catholic, Frank would oppose it anyway. What then? Have a child and give it up for adoption? Unimaginably complicated. We must be more careful. Yet how transporting erotic love can be! Is it because I have come to it so late in life that I feel this way? Yet the young also become unhinged by
it. What of Ella Myles and that awful Kray boy? They too must be lost in all this rapture. A man and a woman with their clothes off — it is nothing less than unconditional surrender to the senses.

Relief this morning. I was fairly certain I would be all right, but it’s good to have it confirmed. So I shall live to love another day and how childishly happy I have been through the hours of this ordinary midsummer Thursday! A mouthful of egg at breakfast, the light through my kitchen window, the clatter of a lawn mower and everything registered in a higher key.

This afternoon a chat with Mrs. Bryden across the fence. It went like this:

“We haven’t see much of you lately, Clara.”

“Well, I’ve been rather busy.”

“Mr. Bryden tells me that you’ve finished with the dentist now. I’m sure you’re glad that’s over.”

“Yes, I am. It was something of an ordeal.”

“And what about the car? Will you be driving that soon?”

“Yes. Joe is giving me a final lesson after supper and thinks I should be ready for the test next week.”

“Well, that will be nice for you, Clara, having your own transportation like that. I see you got a ride home last Sunday night.”

“Yes, I did. An old friend from the city.”

“Isn’t that nice?”

This evening Frank phoned from a public booth up north to say that he had written me on Monday and I should get the letter by tomorrow or Saturday. He sounded so happy and full of endearments. I think, however, that someone was listening to us. Very likely Cora Macfarlane or one of the Caldwell girls.

Dear One,

How I miss my sweet Clara! Do you know that I cannot get through an hour of the day without thinking of you? This morning, for example, I took Patrick fishing. We got up at five and the lake was so beautiful and still. We could hear the loons and the sun was only a red eye rising through the mist. We rowed out several hundred yards and dropped our lines. It was a wonderful moment with my son there on the lake on a fine summer morning, and yet, my darling, I was far, far away in that little room with you and covering you with kisses. How delightful you were and what heaven it was to wake up and find you there beside me! What pleasure we took in each other! Don’t you agree? Please tell me that you were as happy as I was in that cabin last Saturday?

Can we return there on the seventh of next month? I know it is a long time away, and I hate these intervals between meeting one another, but I just don’t see any remedy for it at the moment. I can’t ignore family things, especially this coming weekend because we are having a get-together this Saturday with my brothers and their families. My daughter Anne is going off to the convent next week, and we won’t be allowed to see her for six months, so everyone will be here to celebrate her vocation. Even my oldest son, Michael, who isn’t fond of family gatherings, is coming up from Kingston. He and Anne have always been close. She is the only one in the family Michael seems to care about. Anyway, it will be a busy time, but I want you to know that my thoughts will be with you always.

I’m writing this in the car in a nearby village where I have been sent to fetch supplies. So I must now mail this and get back. Please take care of yourself, and I will see you on the seventh. I cover you with kisses, my darling Clara.

Love, Frank

This evening I sat on the veranda and thought about Frank and his family “get-together.” I wondered what he was wearing. A short-sleeved shirt probably and I pictured the fine hair on his arms. And a week ago at this time we were lying in one another’s arms.

Across the street the Reverend Jackson and his wife were taking their evening promenade. Bats were swooping in the darkening air (the days are getting shorter) and Helen Jackson was leaning against her husband’s arm. I wonder if they will make love tonight. Henry Jackson seems to be such a cold man when he isn’t in the pulpit hectoring his congregation. I can’t image him being as passionate as Frank. I think Henry Jackson would be ashamed to be ardent. He will no longer walk on this side of the street past my door; perhaps he feels that a heathen like me may contaminate his soul. The sight of the Jacksons on this summer evening left me feeling a little “blue,” to use one of Nora’s favourite words. And here is something else. Why has the urge to write poems dried up within me? I thought love inspired poetry, yet I feel emptied of any words that would make sense.

Absurdly proud of myself today. At 3:25 this afternoon in Linden, I was granted permission to operate a motor vehicle on the streets and highways of this province and presumably the rest of the Dominion. Hurrah! The test was not nearly as difficult as I had imagined, and Joe had prepared me well. He was so proud of me. “There now, Clara, you could do it. Didn’t I tell you so?” Yes, he did, bless his heart! He gave me the confidence I needed. To celebrate, I bought Joe his supper at a restaurant in Linden. Poor Joe; he appreciated the gesture, but he was plainly ill at ease in that restaurant with his hot beef sandwich and raisin pie. I drove the Chevrolet home and it is now safely stowed in the garage. In a fit of foolish pride, I phoned Nora with my news. That call will cost me.