The Second Part of Chapter 3: Easter

Their arrival at James’s parents’ house saw them greeted with open and welcoming arms.

“Jimmy, how are you? You should come over more often––you live so close, after all.”

“I call you often enough––”

“And you must be Clarissa. I’ve heard a lot about you, of course.”

“Jim told you?”

“No, I just heard it from Jim on Wednesday. Eunice told me in March.”

“Oh,”

Then, Clarissa met James’s sister, Katherine; the brother and sister looked very much alike, except that Katherine was female; Katherine smiled at Clarissa, and greeted her cordially.

“Well, let’s go in then. Ryan’s roasting a duck, and it should be out of the oven by six.”

James asked, “Is there any bread?” Patricia liked to make bread, and her favourite was foccacia, which she had often.

“Yes, Jimmy, there’s bread,”

“It’s a very nice house you have, Mrs. Miller,”

“Thank you, Clarissa. You can just call me Pat, or Patty,”

“I have an apartment myself; it’s nowhere near as nice as this. It’s in one of those ugly towers built in the sixties.”

James agreed; there was something decidedly lacking in taste in that era. The four sat down in the living room in the front, in which there was a radio tuned to the CBC, two couches, and a shelf filled with books. The walls were a shade of brown that Ryan said reminded him of Prince Edward Island. A couple of books were out of place on a small coffee table in the centre of the room. James looked at the titles: Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, and The Fire Dwellers by Margaret Laurence.

“It’s such a charming living room,” remarked Clarissa as she looked around.

“You seem like such a happy couple; do you see a future together?” asked Patricia.

“Possibly; we’re talking about moving in sometime,”

“I hope that’s not just idle talk; Jimmy has a very nice house, a very big house, and it can get lonesome for him sometimes.”

“Mom, I’m not lonely; were that the case, I would be visiting you more often.”

“Of course, honey. I was just getting worried, what with you single so long––it’s been a few years now––you might turn into one of those weird old men people talked to behind their backs. You never met anyone since your Toronto years until now,”

“I don’t think there’s any risk of that happening,” said James.

We have a thing going on, Clarissa and I, he thought.

“So, what type of person would you say you are, Clarissa? Are you happy-go-lucky? You seem simply radiant and so exuberant,” rather like Mrs. Dalloway, thought Patricia.

Clarissa laughed. “I don’t know about all the time, but right now, you might say that, but With Jim, well, you know,”

“You have visited his house often, of course; I know that because Eunice told me,”

“Did she tell you everything?” Patricia ignored James’s question.

“Jim doesn’t come to my place quite that often; it’s much smaller than his house.”

“It’s still a nice apartment,” said James.

“It’s small,”

“It’s tastefully decorated, and much more so than my place; there’s so much room that parts of it feel empty.”

“Are you referring to the man-cave parts?”

“I’m referring to the room in the back specifically; there’s just a bookshelf and a chair in there. I’ll admit I’m not a very big spender; shopping isn’t exactly my hobby,”

“That wasn’t always the case,” interjected Patricia.

“I remember you buying all those things,” added Katherine.

“The car,” remembered Patricia.

“The television,” put in Ryan.

“The computer,” said Katherine.

“The second, fancier computer,” said Ryan.

“That elaborate surround sound stereo system,” added Patricia.

“Let’s not forget the house,” Katherine said with finality.

“Such are the joys of youth: the overspending, magnanimous, youth,”

“I only finished paying off the car last year, and there’s still the mortgage,” said James.

“I can also remember you endlessly snacking on chips, chocolate and ice-cream in your teenage years,”

“I loved those teenage years,”

“I wonder how much all those goodies cost?”

“I think that will be one of life’s eternal mysteries,”

The conversation continued in this manner as the rich smell of roasting duck permeated their nostrils.

Ryan said, “What do you think of the radio programme?” He was referring to the phone-in show hosted by Daniel-Matthew Night-Haig; the present topic of discussion on that show was unemployment, and a young person was talking.

“I think there’s a bias against young people in the hiring process; the signs are obvious,” he was saying. “You can see it every time you see in ad or hear someone say, ‘experience preferred.’ I once tried to get an employer to explain to me why they wanted someone with experience, and I found their response evasive,”

“Yes, that is a problem that a lot of people encounter,” said Night-Haig.

“What do you think of that?” asked Ryan.

James answered, “I think we need to encourage employers to make an effort to assume more training costs. That’s what it is, really; people don’t want to have to pay the expenses of training people, so they want people who are experienced and therefore already trained.”

Patricia remembered at five-thirty that she had to put her brioche in the oven and went into the kitchen.

“The smell is very nice; it’s making me hungry,” said Clarissa.

“Good; it promises to be very nice dinner,” said Ryan. He went over a mental checklist, ensuring he had done everything that was required: he had pierced the skin with a fork, he had rubbed the inside with salt, he had stuffed the bird, put water in the base of the dish to prevent a nasty cleaning job later, and he had seasoned the outside of the bird. He just now recalled something that he had forgotten to do.

“Pat? Could you put the giblets in with the duck?”

“Sure thing,”

“Oh, Katie, I almost forgot to ask you: how’s teaching lately?”

“It’s all right; I told you the classes are nice and quiet, and my grade twelve chemistry class is getting started on a hard unit right now.”

“I saw on Ratemyteacher.com that some of your students find you less than adequate,” said Ryan.

“I think the students who post on that site are the dregs of the class.” Katherine knew that what she said was disingenuous; it was simply that she did not really like her students that much, and did not treat them with the respect they deserved. This may have been due to her rocky relationship with her ex-husband; now, she had something of a bias towards most men, with the exception of her older brother and her father. Wishing to change the subject, she said, “are they still dealing crack on the corner over there?” She was referring to the street corner on the southeast side of the park, on the other side of Lyon; she thought that the customer base for this particular hotspot was composed of the disreputable-looking women who lived a few doors down in what she suspected was a halfway house.

“Are they still dealing crack on the corner over there?” She was referring to the street corner on the southeast side of the park, on the other side of Lyon; she thought that the customer base for this particular hotspot was composed of the disreputable-looking women who lived a few doors down in what she suspected was a halfway house.

“I think now that hotspot is so widely known, the police are keeping a closer eye on it. We can see a police officer patrolling the park nearly all the time, so if you wanted to buy some, you’re out of luck, my dear,”

James and Clarissa laughed at this joke; Katherine did not.

“Always the kidder. What I’ve wanted to know all these years is: why you chose to move into the city at a time when so many people were fleeing,”

“It’s a bit of defiance, I guess; I’ve always been contrarian, both you and Jimmy know that.” The question posed by Katherine had always had its implicit meaning; she would have preferred a suburban childhood, such as the ones relentlessly portrayed in the media as good and wholesome; the main source of Ryan’s objections to the suburbs was the car: he usually drove five times a year, and that was quite enough. Here, on the other hand, work, shopping, entertainment and friends were all within a fifteen-minute walk; he enjoyed being able to, on a whim, decide to visit his friends or his son, or go to the grocery store, all without needing a car. He also preferred not to abandon the inner city when so many others had; it made him, in his own mind at least, a reverse pioneer.

Dinner was delicious, as always, and the couple, after exchanging pleasantries, went home.

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