The Second Part of Chapter 6: Cleaning and Arranging

Belinda, upon hearing the news, felt in a way similar to the way she had felt after the divorce; she was angry, frustrated, and had a sort of disbelief of her circumstances. If what Pia was saying was true, then she deserved it. If it was not, then this was clearly an attempt to ostracise her. It might be both; attempts to isolate people usually go with some “justification”. Thinking this made her reflect on her divorce, which had occurred under similar circumstances, insofar that she was an alcoholic at the time and may have stepped on a few toes. Whom am I kidding, she thought. I’m still an alcoholic, just not to the extent that I was before the divorce. Just what had she done that night? She remembered Kevin, all right; who wouldn’t? She could also recall, faintly, the sound of a baby crying very loudly. Maybe it was true about me stepping on baby Jason when I was wearing my stilettos. I must get an opinion of a sober person, she thought; which is to say, a sober person other than Pia. That was why she called Clarissa.

“Hello?”

“Hi Clarissa. How was last night?”

“Last night was wonderful. I’m engaged!” Belinda was unclear on all the details of the garden party; she simply knew there was plenty of food and noise.

“Wow, really? Jim proposed to you at the garden party?

“Yes, he did. We ‘went to the washroom’, so to speak,”

“Ooh, sounds frisky. What about the wedding?”

“Oh, it’s in August. So, why did you call? Are people doing anything interesting? I hear there’s some kind of game of broken telephone going on at Parliament Hill.”

“No. I’m actually calling about last night. Pia read me The Riot Act, and now I’m having doubts about how everything went.”

“I wasn’t there the whole time, but you were making sexually suggestive gestures at David, which is a major faux-pas, especially considering his wife could see. I wasn’t there the whole time because I was busy with, uh, other matters, but I could hear a baby crying when I went back out with him.”

“She said I stepped on Jason’s foot with a stiletto,”

“That would explain the crying. I think it’s just her disliking your behaviour in general last night. Which reminds me, I’m faced with a choice of having a dry wedding and you not being there, and I would prefer to have alcohol at my wedding. Hence, you are not invited. I’m sorry.”

“Is there a chance things will change?”

“Don’t push your luck.”

“Well, goodbye then.”

“Goodbye, Belinda,”

The initial shock of the termination of the friendship with Pia prepared her somewhat for this; still it made her feel bad, as she was missing the major event of the season. Just imagine all the people who would be there! On the other hand, the wedding was likely to be full of economists, considering how both James and Clarissa were themselves economists, and that would make for decidedly uninteresting talk about Taylor series, Nashian equilibria and such other conversation that would fly right over her head. This thought assuaged her somewhat.


Arranging a wedding within a month and a half was a tall order, which would take a lot of planning and a substantial amount of luck, but James and Clarissa were good at that. They were also helped, by the bankruptcy filing of a car seat maker, Inxton Car Seats, which had recently gone out of business; this particular company had booked a ballroom in a convention centre for their annual shareholder’s meeting, and as the company had shuttered its doors, there was not going to be any shareholders’ meeting any longer. For some reason, the name of Inxton was familiar to James, but it escaped him for the time being; he was doing a financial analysis of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Fund, and that had taken most of the morning. Of course, it helped that this particular ballroom was five kilometres from their house, and James was quick on the uptake; he was listening to the radio at work when he heard that the company went bankrupt; fortuitously, the details of the annual shareholders’ meeting was mentioned with this piece of news; he called the convention centre at once, and within ten minutes, the wedding had a venue. Now, all he had to do was find a local church for the ceremony, and he would be done with the hardest part of planning the wedding.

He arrived home that evening, and greeted Clarissa, who had also recently arrived home. “Hi honey, guess what? We have a venue for the wedding reception!”

“Really? That’s great!”

“It’s at the Lakeside Convention Centre; some car seat maker went bankrupt, and that opened up a spot in their convention schedule.”

“Awesome! I mean, about the venue, not the car seat maker. Anyways, I also looked into the question of where the ceremony would be, and two churches have spaces open. Neither of us is particularly religious, so I wasn’t fussy. I found a church close to home, and another one out in the suburbs that have open spots. The Lakeside Convention Centre, you say? That’s in the west of the city; well, I called a Baptist church near there, and I think there’s also a Catholic church nearby.”

“So, things are going well, in other words.”

“Yes.”

“What do you think we should do for Canada Day?”

“I was thinking of going biking in the hills,” she said, referring to the escarpment just north of the city.

“That sounds nice.”

“Yeah, we’ll make a day of it,”

“And then, there’s fun to look forward to on the Bruce Peninsula. By the way, how were you planning on getting there?”

“Well, there’s a train that leaves for Toronto in the evening, and then it’s a matter of renting a car to drive to Owen Sound or Wiarton. Yes, I think the group’s going to Wiarton.”

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