The First Part of Chapter 4: Merging and Reawakening

The week following Easter found both James and Clarissa in high spirits. Maurice noted that quality in James, even though he had always been a chipper man, and Vilia, Nicolas and Yvon noted the same quality in Clarissa. Yvon started referring to her as “Miss Head-in-the-Clouds,” or its French equivalent.

He commented, “Là va Mademoiselle Tête-dans-le-Ciel,”

“No, no, Yvon, I’m just as much grounded on the earth, just like you are,” said she after he made that comment when she passed by his office on her way to a meeting.

“She must be in paradise,” he said to himself; he, on the other hand, was beginning to grow bored of his married life; only his teenagers provided him excitement.

Clarissa moved in with James on the weekend following Easter. Her rental apartment was in the eastern suburbs, which meant that moving into James’s house would be a step up for Clarissa, so it was essentially a no-brainer: Clarissa should move in with James, not the other way around. Although James had owned his house for five years, his workweek was fifty hours, he was not particularly sociable, and therefore knew only a few of his neighbours, which amounted to only seven people, which was hardly anybody for such a densely populated area. It was a cold, crisp day in April, and last year’s detritus lay soggy on the ground, compressed under the weight of the heavy mantle of snow that had been present since November. There was also five centimetres of fresh snow that had fallen the previous evening, which was now melting, and creating large, slushy puddles. For this reason, Clarissa hurried in and out of her car and the moving van she had rented, which, considering she was renting her apartment, thankfully had plenty of spare room: she brought a mirror, her clothes, books, dresser, clothing, and various odds and ends. It was over in an hour, and the process had now moved to the spare bedroom that James had been using as an extra lounge. They had agreed to sleep in separate rooms for a month, and then get more intimate. This was not so much principle as circumstance: James did not have a double bed, and in an earlier discussion, Clarissa said she wanted to go further than just a double bed and get a queen-size bed.

“You know, I think we can buy a queen bed in three weeks or so; we’ll go to Ikea or somewhere and look for something on the first of May,” said James.

“We’re going shopping? This is obviously a sign of progress in our relationship. Come here, you.” They kissed.

“I think there are several other things we need to do…” said James vaguely, while pondering just what they had to buy: they needed new bookshelves, bed sheets, fresh herbs to put on his steaks and chickens, perhaps a carpet, and all manner of other things; he had not entirely grown out of his old buy-nearly-everything-you-see persona. Some features of his house had obvious qualities of a man-cave, including pictures of women in bikinis hung on the walls, a decided paucity of vegetables in the crisper, and clothes lying on the floor. James thought that it was the opinion of most women that par-terres should be made of plants arranged in an artistic pattern in a garden, not shirts and old socks laying at random on the bed and floor.

“Now that there’s a woman living in the house––I’m not just visiting anymore––the clothes lying on the ground are going to have to go.”

“There’s an easy concession. Will you promise to keep the bathtub drain free of hairs? I haven’t had that problem, as nobody with long hair has lived here before.”

“You know, I’ve just realised how many friends live nearby; there are Eunice and Mario, who live just down the street, Laura lives a few blocks away, and I believe Kevin’s house is on the other side of Dundonald Park.”

“Yes, it’s so wonderful knowing so many people in the neighbourhood already; I haven’t been too quick in getting to meet people; I’m more a work kind of guy and this home has essentially been a bedroom.”

“It’s been a similar situation with my apartment on the east side of the river; now we have each other; I expect this will become a real home. You know something else about this house? I can walk to work from here; it should take about half an hour,”

“I can’t do that, but I walk to the grocery store all the time, and since I take the bus to work and my friends either live close by or come to see me rather than the other way around, I rarely use my car; the last time I drove it was in mid-March on a trip to Cornwall.”

Moving into James’s house on McLeod Street improved Clarissa’s mood significantly; she did not explicitly tell James what the main factor was; he simply assumed it was a combination of living in a nice old house, being able to walk to work, not having to worry about the busses being stuck somewhere, or having more room, but he could tell she was happy, and he suspected that he wasn’t alone in this observation; her co-workers would notice, the neighbours who knew her would notice, and her parents would notice the perk in her voice during phone calls, which he knew she made at least once a week.


During the morning coffee break on Friday at 10:15, Vilia was talking to Nicolas while they sat at a small table among the tropical plants in the atrium of their office building; it was not anything important, but simply gossip.

“Clarissa’s looking unusually happy lately,” said Vilia.

“Have you heard? She’s dating someone who made a presentation here back in February.”

“That’s really nice for her,” Vilia had always admired Clarissa’s work ethic, and was really impressed: she was engaged, always smiling, and never batted an eyelid at anything, and contrary to many others in the office, never showed any signs of fatigue, even though she frequently put in extra hours and the directors noted her very high productivity. “Was he the really tall middle-aged man?”

“No, his name’s Maurice. She’s dating the other guy, James.”

“I would have thought that she would pick someone better looking; there’s nothing particularly special or eye-catching about him; he wasn’t too tall, and he seemed to have gone a bit to seed.”

“I don’t think she picked him for looks; if she did, that would severely limit the dating pool.”

Talking about Clarissa like this seems awkward, thought Nicolas; fortunately, in the atrium nobody pays too much attention to us. It was then that Clarissa came down the escalator for her morning coffee. Vilia and Nicolas both heard her approach first due to her pumps.

“Good morning, Nick, Vilia,” she said.

“Good morning, Clarissa,” said Vilia. Nicolas nodded. Their conversation turned to the labour market until Clarissa went back up the escalator, coffee in hand. Nicolas noted that she was looking unusually trim lately, but perhaps that was an effect of her smiling all the time.

“Do you find it rather odd that she always has a grin plastered to her face?”

“That would be her thinking of her beloved; I bet they’re quite enamoured of each other: couples become that way in that phase of their relationship,”

When Vilia arrived back at her desk, she went back to her original work, which was composing a long email for the head of a Service Canada Branch in Vancouver; it was on policy and the details of new programs, and she found the details too boring to discuss with someone who was not a co-worker, and everyone in the office knew about it anyways, so there was not any point in discussing it with them, either.


Previous Next