wasn’t. In fact it was about the farthest thought from my mind.
“But I sure as hell wasn’t eating at Maxim’s,” she went on. Ha! Would Maxim’s have let Jessica in? Even with money? Not bloody likely. (Although I didn’t say so.)
In some ways I suppose we’ve led sheltered lives, Chas. Contemplating my bedsitter, I’ve been feeling kind of—noble, I suppose, or self-sacrificing—being willing to live like this. Temporarily. But what if this was it, for the rest of my life? With no escape?
God, we are incredibly lucky to more or less own our nice cedar house. Glad you got a cleaning woman, but sorry she didn’t like the kitchen curtains. I hope she doesn’t start redecorating. Aren’t you getting a bit chummy with the hired help? I thought you were the one who always made it a point to stay out of office politics and thought it strange that I knew all about my secretary’s rather inspired love life. Anyway, I know the curtains were too heavy, but they were there precisely because of Gil. Unnerving, isn’t it? I used to drink the fixed regard was focused lustfully on that sexy grey jogging suit I wear around the house. But if you’re getting it too, he must be just plain lonely.
I’ve finally found the perfect way to lose weight. When I couldn’t eat today I thought I might be getting flu, and then realized it was just like the time thirty-five years ago when I went to camp and couldn’t eat. Homesick—can you believe it? At my age? Let’s look into cheap fares if you get the Sanderson thing.
Much love,
Jock
P.S. I guess Thanksgiving is a little soon.
P.P.S. Tell the kids to write! Those grunts on the phone aren’t doing anything for me.
P.P.P.S. You do think we’re doing the right thing, don’t you? Today we heard a brief from a woman whose mother deserted her when she was thirteen, and she never got over it.
29 Sweet Cedar Drive
North Vancouver, B.C.
30 September
Dear Jock,
Couldn’t wait to sharpen the old quill and tell you about Creative Connections. (Remember, the substitute communications course?) I may say that after one session I’m having second thoughts.
We sat around a seminar table, about eight of us, in a little room with no windows (goddamn architects!), and I can’t remember when I’ve felt more ill at ease. The teacher is a blowsy and frowsy woman who lost no time telling us she was a published poet with a number of awards to her credit. Davina Flowering’s her name—do you know anything about her? She’s one of those women—you know the type—who manages to make an art form out of ebullience. She stabs the air, shrieks, curses, clutches her hair, yanks her sweatshirt—yes, Jock, her sweatshirt, and not from Chapman’s either—and pounds on the table. The resonance soon had my teeth chattering. Two hours of this and I was frazzled—and so were the others, I think. Each of us sat there, dazed—and looking ashamed of ourselves for having come, but Davina assured us that within a mere week or two we would know the inside scrapings of each other’s souls. (If I decide to drop the course after next week I can still get my money back; and maybe my soul too.) She gave us an assignment for the next class—to write a poem, Xerox it, and bring it for “workshopping,” whatever that is. I thought I might dig out that parody I wrote for the firm banquet when Bill Bettner retired. You remember the one.
If you can keep a shaky firm together
Despite slow-paying clients all around,
If you can wangle contractors’ agreements
Who for their fees are not ashamed to hound Etc., etc.
Anyway it got a good laugh at the dinner, and Bill even asked me for a copy if you recall.
In my spare time (laugh please) I’ve been doing some drawings, partly to pass the days while I wait for Sanderson’s to come through and partly because I think I might have a workable concept for the west side of the house. It occurred to me that maybe we’re beyond the idea of a separate dining room, and if we knocked out that wall between the living and dining rooms and went out a couple of feet with glass panels—double, of course—we could get a kind of solarium effect, maybe even try some solar heating. I’ve got a good book from the library about it and it sounds feasible. What do you think?
October 8
Sorry if I sounded a bit glum, as well as fuzzy, when you phoned Thanksgiving night. The fact was that the festive family gathering I’d planned gradually disintegrated as the day wore on, and by evening there was no one in the house but me and an eighteen-pound turkey. First my mother phoned (at least she had the grace to call early in the morning) to say she was feeling a bit shaky and not up to driving over the bridge. I said I would come over and get her, but you know what she’s like; said she didn’t want to be a burden and a bother, she’d just make do with a Swanson’s frozen dinner in front of the TV” even though there was never anything to watch but foul-mouthed gangsters and young women with hair in their eyes, etc.
Around noon the phone rang again, this time your mother. She’d been decorating the hall at St. George’s for the Fall Fair and was “all tuckered out.” Would I mind if she passed up Thanksgiving dinner this year? She thought she’d make an early night of it, crawl into bed with a hot toddy and a good book. Not a word about the kids, or about the cauliflower casserole she’d promised to bring.
An hour later it was Mrs. Finstead on the phone—she’s the mother of Laurie, that little friend of Mia’s across the way (the one who looks as though she popped out of an ad for fresh milk). Mrs. Finstead—Marjorie—asked if it was all right if Mia came over for Thanksgiving dinner. They would just “love to have her aboard,” she said. They were all “nutty about her.” I didn’t know what to say, but then Mrs. Finstead said—or whispered, rather—how sorry she was about, well…about…well, she didn’t really know what to say, but she was just so very, very sorry.
I interrupted at this point and made it clear to her that Mia’s mother was only away temporarily on a government contract, that we were not separated, that Mia was not a victim of a broken and uncaring family, and that I had just that minute been basting our own perfectly respectable turkey. At the same time, I could see that Mia was dying to go to the Finsteads, so what could I do without playing the part of the ogre?
That left Greg and me to tackle our golden beast. The phone rang, and Greg tore into the den to get it. Emerging a mere one-quarter of an hour before dinner, he announced that he had to go out. Naturally I asked why. Something had come up, he said, something he couldn’t get out of. We stood in the kitchen facing each other for a good minute or two; I was reminded of a scene in High Noon. Neither of us said a word. Just how far can you press a seventeen-year-old kid on an issue like this? I could hardly say, given the circumstances, that he was disrupting a sacred family occasion. I shrugged and waved a weak hand in the direction of the oven, but I didn’t want to get into my mother’s brand of self-pity. Greg made a dash for the door. I yelled after him, “How about a turkey sandwich at least?” but I don’t think he even heard me.
For about ten minutes I sat in the kitchen and listened to the countdown of the oven timer. Then the dinger went and everything was ready, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce—my least-favourite dinner in the world, and there was a mountain of it. I happened at that moment to glance out the window and see Gil Grogan’s smiling
