Here are the facts. F. is a forty-six-year-old businessman who lives in Toronto. He is married and the father of four (ages eleven to twenty-three). He is also a Roman Catholic. How we met is neither here nor there, but we have been seeing one another, mostly on weekends, since April. This, of course, has resulted in intimacy. How could it not? So F. and I seemed to be in a kind of love (I write these words with diffidence and uncertainty because I am far from clear about what love between a man and a woman really is). That was a terrible sentence, but never mind. We both seemed to have enjoyed the physical side of it, though I am no longer even certain about that. F. has strange urges and I wonder if I am too reserved for him. You would never know it to look at him. He is rather small and fair (my hands are bigger than his), and in his suit and homburg, he looks like and is in fact a respectable businessman. There is even a faint resemblance to that movie actor Richard (?) Ronald (?) Colman. I am just wondering if there is more to this than afternoons in bed. I am not sure, but I think so. I know that I miss him. Even now as I write these words to you.
Because of his family, our times together have been so brief that it’s difficult for me to know how I truly feel about him. These last few months seem to have gone by in a blur, a matter mostly of waiting from Monday on for the weekend. The abysmal disappointment when he can’t see me. What a dreadful business it all is, Nora! But surely you have been through this kind of thing. Now there is more. A month ago I received an extraordinary letter from F.’s oldest daughter. She knew of our affair; in fact, she seemed to know a good deal about her father’s adulterous life. According to this girl (young woman — she is twenty-one years old), F. has had many such affairs, and I am just another one of his floozies. She warned me against him. Yet, as I read her letter, I couldn’t escape the feeling that she was in some way disturbed. There seemed to be an unhealthy intensity in the way she wrote about her father. It was a frightening letter.
I wrote F. about all this and his reply seemed to make sense. If anything makes sense in all this. But he did not deny that he had known other women. Apparently he and his wife have not been intimate in years. F. also cautioned me not to trust his daughter’s word. According to him, she suffers from a nervous condition (confirming my suspicions) and she has been seeing various doctors. She is, however, far too headstrong to stick with any treatment. In F.’s view, the girl has an overactive imagination. She has dabbled in painting and novel writing. It all sounds a bit sordid, doesn’t it? And I suppose it is; certainly F. and I have met in some doubtful places.
Nora, it’s difficult for me to write to you about all this, but I needed to talk to someone. There is really no one around here whom I can confide in; Marion is a good friend in many ways, but her entire notion of what a man and a woman do together is a schoolgirl’s fantasy of romance and earnest feeling. She would only be embarrassed if I told her any of this. Mrs. Bryden and Milton McKay have gently hinted that I am endangering my reputation by seeing a married man in Toronto. There has also been some talk apparently about my suitability as a teacher in the community. So there you have it.
I wrote F. a week ago (I no longer trust the telephone), but I haven’t heard from him. Perhaps he has decided to end this, though it seems so callous not to say goodbye. Perhaps, however, when you grow tired of someone, you don’t say anything. You just walk out of a life. I don’t know what to think any more. Could you drop me a line with your thoughts on all this? Please don’t telephone.
Clara
135 East 33rd Street
New York
November 14, 1937
Dear Clara,
Whew! When I read your letter I had to sit down and make myself a strong cup of coffee. Is this really my sister? I said to myself. It sounds more like something in the movies, or even on our program. It’s really funny, but at this moment Effie is also having trouble with a married man. Brother, what a coincidence!!! But in a way it shows how programs like ours are not just the fluff that smart-alec critics say they are. Shows like “Chestnut Street” really do reflect real-life situations, and believe you me, I get the mail to prove it. Anyway, what to do? You are going to have to write your own script for this one, Clara, but here are my thoughts.
First of all, stay away from married men!!! I know, I know, the pot addressing the kettle, etc., but I’ll come to that in a minute. You don’t stand a chance with a married guy, Clara, especially a Catholic. They don’t believe in divorce, and to get a marriage annulled, or whatever they call it, I think you have to go all the way to Rome and ask the Pope or something. But even if this F. weren’t Catholic, you probably aren’t going to get anywhere with him in the marriage department. Men may hate their marriages, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they want to get out of them, especially if they have kids. Men really feel guilty about leaving their kids. Les is like that. He’s always going on about his son and daughter. So I would say, give him up, Clara. I can tell that you really like this guy, and it’s going to hurt, but in the long run, it’s the only move you’ve got. Now you might think, How can she say that when she’s seeing a married man herself? Well, down here it’s a little different. You better make that a whole lot different! In the first place, I don’t live in a village where everybody knows what I do with my life. I say hello to my neighbours and go out in the morning to work and that’s that. If I want to have somebody over for the evening, that’s my business. But look at your situation! You said yourself that everybody in Whitfield knows about you and this F. Why so coy, by the way? Doesn’t he have a name? So now even your job could be affected. Your job, Clara!!!
The other thing about Les and me that makes it different from your situation is that we have come to this arrangement. We’re not really in love with one another. We’re just, well, close. We like going to the movies and the clubs and the other stuff too. We have a lot of fun together. But I now know that it’s not going anywhere and that’s okay. I’ve accepted that. Sooner or later, we’ll call it quits and just be friends. Now and then I get a nasty phone call from his wife, but so what? Women like me will always get nasty phone calls from wives. So what I’m involved in is nothing half as complicated and crazy as this affair with your Canadian version of Ronald Colman. You say that he has “strange urges.” I don’t like the sounds of it. I put up with some of that with Mr. Mills. What is it with these guys anyway? They want you to put on black underwear and sit in a rocking chair while they do it to you. I don’t get it.
As for this daughter of his, she sounds nuts to me. Has it occurred to you that there could be something between her and the father? It’s been known to happen, Clara. Remember the Pollits who used to live down near the old sawmill? All those girls were supposed to have done it with old Nathan Pollit. Disgusting when you think about it, but it probably happens in well-to-do families too. For your own sake, you better start forgetting this guy and consider yourself lucky that you’re not coming out of it with another problem. You don’t want to go through all that again.
Listen, I have a suggestion. Why not come down here for Christmas? A change of scenery can do wonders. Evy is always asking about you. It will take your mind off all this. So think about it, okay?
Love, Nora
Whitfield, Ontario
Sunday, November 21, 1937
Dear Nora,
Thanks for your letter. I’m sure you are right; it would certainly make things less complicated if I just forgot about Frank. There! That is his name. But isn’t forgetting someone you really care about easier said than done? The trouble is that every time the phone rings, I jump. And, of course, with this damn party line, it rings all the time. But then I think to myself, What if he calls some day? What will I say to him? The truth is that I’m afraid that what I will say will be, “When and where do you want to meet?” Of course, it makes little sense to feel this way about someone who can never be a permanent part of your life. But how do you turn off feelings? Tell me that and I will die a happy woman. At least twenty times a day I see his
face: I see him when I’m washing the supper dishes or reading the Herald or staring out at my pupils. His face just swims up out of nowhere before my eyes. It’s probably a kind of sickness and perhaps time will cure me.
I don’t think I feel like coming to New York for Christmas. You’re right. It would be a change of scenery and probably good for me. But even the idea of packing a bag or changing trains leaves me bewildered and gloomy. I’m afraid I would be terrible company. So thank you anyway, but I don’t think so. Maybe next year.
Do you remember Henry Hill, the old man who lived for years in that abandoned boxcar down near the trestle bridge? Some boys found him dead last Sunday by the side of the road. Heart failure or too much drink, no one really knows. Poor old Henry, alone in that boxcar winter and summer, stealing vegetables from gardens. Such a strange way to live! When Henry was sober, he was gentle, almost courtly in manner. I went down to McDermott’s on Tuesday night to pay my respects. Only three or four old men in attendance, and I’m sure they must have wondered what I was doing there. It will be bruited about the village as another example of my eccentric character, I suppose. But I liked Henry and often wondered how he came to live in that boxcar and have stones thrown at him by village children. And there he was, peaceful at last in his casket, wearing Father’s old blue suit. I don’t know if I told you, but after Father died I gave his clothes to the church rummage and Henry got most of them. I once wrote a poem about him wearing Father’s overcoat, the one he bought months before he died, but wouldn’t wear because he thought it made him look too much like a dandy. Do you remember? Anyway, Henry is gone and will no longer have to endure the derision and the stones. Thanks again for your letter, Nora.
Clara
135 East 33rd Street
New York
November 28, 1937
Dear Clara,
I just think you’re making a terrible mistake staying in that house over the holidays. All you are going to do is brood over this guy. Are you sure you won’t change your mind and come down here? Honestly, Clara, you sound so morbid. Going on about Henry Hill. He was just a dirty old man who used to get drunk and show his thing to children. Why on earth you would go to the funeral parlour to see a man like that is beyond me. When you do things like that, you can’t blame people for thinking you’re odd. You have to pull yourself together, Clara, and get out of that gloomy mood. Frankly, I don’t want to hear about Henry Hill lying in a casket wearing Father’s blue suit. It’s just too morbid for words. You could come down here and have some fun. We could go to Radio City and see the Christmas show. It would cheer you up. Instead, you are going to sit around that big house for two weeks and mope. It’s unhealthy, Clara. I’m sorry to sound so cross, but your letter upset me. I suppose I’m not in a very good humour myself these days. On Friday at the script meeting, Evelyn told us that she will be leaving the program at the end of January. She’s been offered a job out in Hollywood. I am going to miss her so much. She’s been a wonderful friend to me. I don’t know what I’ll do without her. So I guess that’s why I am a little testy. It’s been a bad week all around. I’ll phone you next Sunday.
Love, Nora
Sunday, December 19
To Toronto on the train yesterday with Marion who wanted to see the store windows and buy Christmas presents. I went along reluctantly. Eaton’s and Simpson’s were so crowded, but everyone made way for us as Marion, ungainly but steadfast, lurched from counter to counter. People are generally kind and accommodate the crippled. It is perhaps their singular advantage over the rest of us. Marion displays the patience of the ages in choosing gifts, and she seemed to be buying for the entire village: a scarf for a fellow chorister, a hockey puck for the boy who delivers the Herald. She can spend fifteen minutes fingering handkerchiefs before selecting one worth ten cents. And amid all this cheerful commerce and goodwill, my dreadful, stony heart. Overcome finally, nearly maddened in fact by impatience, I concocted a story about seeing a friend in a music shop and arranged to meet Marion for lunch in the tea room at Simpson’s. She agreed but only after I promised to go with her afterwards to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
“I know it’s supposed to be for children, Clara, but grown-ups are going too. I’m told it’s wonderful.”
So where did I flee if not to King Street and the building where Quinlan Fuels has its offices? Standing across the street in the cold, brittle air, I stared up at the third-floor window, the very window I looked out from as I lay beneath him watching the evening sky darken last August. It now seems a lifetime ago. And what did I expect yesterday morning? After all, it was Saturday. Would he not be at home? Or Christmas shopping like the rest of Toronto? Or taking another woman by the arm into the lobby of that hotel?
Walking back towards Yonge Street, I asked myself these questions. Was the experience worth all this vague sadness that will not go away? Was it like this too for the Englishwoman in Rome when her lothario grew tired of that pale flesh and returned to his Anna or Maria? Perhaps women like us should leave well enough alone; perhaps we should never engage in the carnal wars which always end with ransacked hearts and the marauder’s departure. Perhaps such adventures suit more fiery spirits, and women like us should settle for the afternoon hour at the piano, the evening service, the Sunday drive, the rituals of a homely passage towards senescence. Marion Webb and I hand in hand in the county home.
Took refuge from these sober reflections in a used bookstore where among the encyclopedias and heartless romances I found a novel whose title intrigues me. The Postman Always Rings Twice. From the looks of it, a mystery, but better handled than most if the first few pages are anything to go by. The main character’s name is Frank. On the inside cover the words, “Gotham Book Market, 155 Broadway.” How did the book find its way from New York to Toronto? In any case, I bought it for twenty cents.
After lunch Marion and I sat with hundreds of children and watched the dwarf movie. Entrancing in its own way and the colour is extraordinary. Yet I wonder if children who see it will ever again read Snow White in quite the same way and with quite the same magic?
Have just now finished some Christmas cards including one to Frank. “I hope you have a happy Christmas and best wishes for 1938. Love, Clara.” The innocuous and banal words of the defeated who hopes to stir just a spoonful of guilt in the heart of the marauder.
Saturday, December 25
A year ago the house was filled with Nora’s chatter. People dropped in to see Alice Dale in the flesh. “Can it really be you I hear every afternoon, Nora? My goodness, I wouldn’t miss ‘The House on Chestnut Street’ for the world.” This year, the solitude of the grey day enclosed and comforted me. There are worse fates than being alone, especially when accompanied by a good book. I spent the day in a roadside diner in California where the discontented young wife and the handsome drifter are planning to murder her husband. This is what happens when you no longer believe in the divine origins of the day. Once upon a time I could summon forth the wonder of the old narrative: the weary carpenter and his wife struggling through the narrow crooked streets of Bethlehem, turned away by surly innkeepers, arriving finally at a stable; the shepherds coming down from the hills to pay homage to the child in the straw. Today, I settled for adultery and murder in California. Sat all afternoon in my yellow and purple dressing gown, eating crackers and drinking tea, the voluptuary at home. At four o’clock Mrs. Bryden came to the door to invite me to dinner.
“You can’t spend Christmas all alone, Clara. We have a huge goose. More than enough.”
I begged off, hinting darkly at the fluids that gather within a woman and upset her equilibrium! As the Negro man said to his lady friend on a New York street, “Don’t you understand, woman? I got to get back my equilibrium.” To each his equilibrium!
Looking around the house, Mrs. B. uttered a small cry of distress.
“Not even a tree this year, Clara!”
“Not this year, I’m afraid. I suppose I’m not feeling very f
estive.”
Mrs. B., however, was not to be denied. “I’m going to bring you over something later. You have to eat. It’s Christmas Day, for heaven’s sake. You can’t just have crackers and tea on Christmas Day.” Yet I sensed her relief that I am no longer returning from trysts at ungodly hours of the morning. She now regards me as a repentant sinner who is slowly and painfully recovering from the errors of her past. This notion provides her with the licence to indulge me. Frowning over my slovenly habits, but feeding me on feast days. Later she brought over a plate of goose and turnips and potatoes, and I ate it all ravenously, turning the pages of Mr. Cain’s book with greasy fingers, reading right through until Frank gets the hot seat.
Nora phoned around ten o’clock. She was at a party; I could hear the laughter and jazz music. But Nora was penitent and teary, going on about how cruel she must have seemed in her last letter. Drink brings out the worst in her and she was a little tight. She is also upset about Evelyn’s leaving for California next month. “She got your Christmas card and is writing you. She thinks the world of you, Clara. You do forgive me for writing that mean letter, don’t you?”
“Yes, Nora. I do. I deserved every word.”
“Oh, don’t say that.”
“It’s true.”
“Are you happy, Clara? I mean, with your life.”
“Not very.”
“Neither am I.”
Clara Callan Page 32
