scrutiny. Every time I look up (contemplatively) from my drafting table I see the old bugger standing at his kitchen window, looking daft and lonely and waving a coffee cup at me. Your mother was sceptical about my letting Sue take down the curtains, but I told her you’d thank me for doing it. I gave them (the curtains) to her (your mother) to sell at her Fall Fair, though Sue says she can’t imagine anyone going for that particular shade of purply-green.
Sue—Sue Landis, that is—is our new treasure and salvation. We no longer stick to the floor around here or kick up dust balls when we cross the living room rug. She even changes the sheets (first time since you left) and throws out the rotten oranges and cheese rinds and empty cereal boxes. The four-hour dynamo we call her, and worth every bit of seventy bucks—you were right, lovey, about the current pay scale for cleaning help.
She’s been here twice now, and the place shines. Even Greg is looking somewhat shinier since she’s started coming, but that’s probably because she’s taught him a new chord on his guitar—a bar chord I think it’s called.
I have to admit that she wasn’t quite what I had in mind when I put that ad up on the notice board at Cap College. Lord only knows what I expected, but when she turned up at the house last week I thought there’d been some kind of misunderstanding. She’s young for one thing—well, thirty-two—and wears jeans and a sweater Mia would kill for, and has a head of crazy red hair. And she’s intelligent! (Now, Jock, for crissake don’t go and write me a Jessica-inspired sermonette about feminine stereotypes and male perceptions. Spare me this once, since I’m already chastened.)
Well, we sat down in the kitchen for a couple of Red Zingers (Sue carries her own teabags, feels caffeine is definitely carcinogenic and has some impressive statistics to prove it), and she told me a little about her background. This cleaning thing is just temporary, she says, just bread and butter until she gets her old job reinstated or finds something new. Until last August 15th she worked for the Department of Education as part of something called a Sexual Abuse Team that went into city schools and put on dramatizations of situations that kids apparently run into. At any rate, the gov’t. decided it was nothing but an expensive social frill and cancelled the whole program. Sue maintains that the province will have to pay the real cost down the road. She gets fairly heated on these themes, and we’ve had a couple of lively discussions, downright arguments in fact, all of which is a hell of a lot more entertaining than analysing the stock market with Gil. (God, that man makes rotten coffee. Boils it I think.)
Sue was interested in hearing about what you are doing in Ottawa. She asked all kinds of questions, says it’s about time someone took a good hard look at the economic burden on women and on single mothers in particular. But all the time she was talking I had a funny feeling that she was simultaneously eyeing our laser printer, the Toni Onley in the dining room, the Chinese carpet in the hall, etc., etc., and wondering what the hell a couple of bourgeois schmucks like you and me know about poverty.
Speaking of which, your good senator seems to be something of a stranger to the down-and-out set too, at least according to that cryptic profile in Maclean’s last week (p. 52). Upper Canada College! Harvard, yet! A BMW! Good God, does he really “collect” rare burgundies and nineteenth-century sheet music? The kids were disappointed that the article didn’t mention the people working for the Commission by name, but the bit about “Senator Pierce’s unique ability to surround himself with dedicated hard-headed realists” was nice, and we all basked in the reflected glow of it.
Still no word from Sanderson’s, just a letter saying they had received my letter and would be in touch soon. I hope they mean this week or next—I’d like to get that furnace bill taken care of, not that they’re pressing me yet. The furnace repairs came to more than the original estimate—what else is new? Afraid that scratches a Thanksgiving reunion.
The communications course at Cap College didn’t work out either. By the time I got there to register, after spending an entire morning standing in line and feeling like Old Man Time in my tweed jacket and necktie, I was told the class was filled. There was one other course open, they said—Creative Connections—so I decided I might as well give it a whirl. First session, so gotta run.
With love,
Chas
P.S. It’s all right about the tea trolley. The white shoe polish did the trick.
P.P.S. If Vance says it’s okay to ask questions, can’t see why you shouldn’t,
4 Old Town Lane
Ottawa, Ont.
Sept. 30
Dear Chas,
Yes, Vance does collect rare burgundies—I’ve actually been treated to a sip! He invited us back to his office after today’s hearings, dusted off the bottle, opened it with a bit of joking ceremony, and handed around the wine in delicate long-stemmed crystal glasses that he just happens to have in his desk. It was so dry it took all my sang-froid not to make a face. But Dr. Grey—Austin—held up his glass to the light, squinted, and said admiringly, “Formidable!”
Vance preened a bit and allowed as how it was a nice little burgundy, and when Jessica and I said nothing (my lips puckered), Vance couldn’t resist a dig. “No praise from either of the fairer sex? Not up to B.C. standards, Jock? Could I offer Baby Duck?”
He was trying to get a rise out of me, of course. I think I’ve been less than a barrel of fun lately, because, to tell the truth, I am feeling somewhat down, and besides we’d just heard a brief from a single mother whose home consists of two roach-infested rooms, and whose baby suffers from malnutrition!
“Ignore him, Jock,” Dr. Grey—Austin (can’t get used to it)—said. “Just because he’s a senator doesn’t mean he knows anything.” He then remarked that it had certainly been a wrenching brief.
“Nobody ever said poverty would be fun,”Vance said. “On the other hand, you have to remember that it is, to some extent, a state of mind.”
I snapped at him. “Meaning those poor women should pull up their socks and snap out of it?”
Austin, who seems to be a bit of a peacemaker, said Vance was partly right, although poverty isn’t a curable state of mind. “A state of mind that you, Jock, for instance, don’t share.”
“She isn’t poor,” Vance said. “How could she?”
“I’ve been poor,” I said.
God, remember that first year I went to law school? When we just had the one car, and it took me an hour and a half on the bus to UBC? And how we’d count our pennies to come up with bus fare, and sometimes I’d have to skip lunch?
Vance sneered that I didn’t know the meaning of the word, at which point Jessica, who had been remarkably silent, drawled, “Tell me, Jock, what would you do if What’s-his-name—your husband—”
“Chas.”
“Chas! What kind of a name is that?”
“A nickname,” I said, a bit huffily. “For Charles.”
“Oh. Where I come from he’d be called Chuck. So like I said, what would you do if Chuck—”
“Chas.”
Jessica blew out cigarette smoke and looked sideways at me through the thick glasses and grinned very slightly. “Okay, Chas—if
