The Third Part of Chapter 2: They Find Out

When two people start dating, it is impossible to keep it a secret; hence, the neighbours started noticing James with Clarissa. One such neighbour was Eunice, who knew both of them individually, James because he lived down the street and Clarissa because they went to university together, but she only found out that they were dating on the vernal equinox. One month into a relationship was admittedly rather late for someone so close to both of them to be fining out about it, but Eunice had been keeping busy at her convenience store.

“Small world!” she exclaimed when she found out by seeing Clarissa and James holding hands.

“Eunice! It’s so nice to see you after so long,” said Clarissa upon seeing her.

Eunice went home to tell her husband, Mario, the good news.

“It’s a very small world,” she said by way of introducing the subject.

“Well, if you know Henry personally, then I’m quite frankly not that interested; he doesn’t sound like a very nice person. I mean, if you say you heard from Cora that he’s distracted and a bully and obstreperous and whatever, then why are you telling me?” Mario was referring to the previous conversation they had, which was about a man they knew through Cora, a friend from Eunice’s running club, who they had never met in person and thus had only her impression of him. Eunice liked running, and did it whenever she could, just as much for the gossip, talk about healthy eating and good living, as for the exercise.

“I didn’t mean that,” said Eunice. Mario was referring to their previous conversation when she was telling him about what kind of man not to be. “You know Clarissa, from university? She’s dating Jim who lives down the street.”

“Wonderful, Jim must be really happy right now.”

“They’re talking about moving in, and they’ve only been going out for a month and a half.”

“That’s very good for them, now I have to go shovel the driveway. Fifteen centimetres of wet snow is really annoying.” Mario did not share Eunice’s interest in gossip, and while he thought the idea of James and Clarissa dating very nice, he was not that excited about being aware; he would have found out one way or another, and that Eunice told him in and of itself did not matter very much. His work mattered much more to him than his wife’s mundane gossip, both in terms of time commitment and importance, as he managed a Food Basics that was very busy from the time it opened until late at night. It was common for him to see his wife for only six hours of the week while they were both awake. Although fifteen centimetres of snow was a bother, as he told his wife, it was not this particular snow fall that bothered him, or any other; it was all of them together, and while he would not have minded getting some light exercise––shovelling a porch, a six metre driveway and the small walkway out front was not hard work––the fact that he had to do this chore so often was grating on the nerves, and made him long for the sight of snowdrops and crocuses. This particular shovelling, like the others, was still good for clearing his mind of other mundane worries, such as one about which Eunice kept nagging him: children. She wanted children, and he kept saying that perhaps a little delay was good. One year into their marriage, kids were still far from their mind, if not their parents’, two years in, Eunice was idly wondering, but by four years, she was getting impatient, as was her mother, Katelin. Now, however, all other concerns left his mind as he held the shovel and threw the snow off the porch: push, and...there, now the snow bank is slightly bigger, which only today he could see over for the first time since Christmas. Looking down the street, he could see some houses whose owners had not been busy shovelling, while others had done their duty; he could see that James had been dutiful in shovelling his front walk.

Eunice would be sure to tell his parents the next time she saw them, and by that, she specifically meant James’s mother, Patricia. His father, even though he was the host of a radio program, took a much more neutral attitude to gossip, unlike herself, and still more unlike her friend from a few blocks north, Belinda; Belinda obsessively listened to everything on the grapevine, and passed as much information along as she could, or wanted; Eunice put it down to a feminine compulsion to gossip, and she routinely made excuses for this behaviour to her husband, whose idle talk only went so far as reports that Food Basics was doing well.

The next day, she went through the melting snow and the newly bare sidewalks to do charity work at a women’s shelter; on her way, she stopped by Ryan and Patricia’s house to tell them the news, which they took very well.

“How wonderful for Jimmy,” Patricia said.

“I hope we see his girlfriend at Easter,” said Ryan; this hope bore out, and he saw his wish fulfilled. Since Eunice knew, it would be inevitable that the whole social circle would know, because Eunice would tell everyone up and down the street, and Belinda would catch wind of it, by which point it would quickly become near universal knowledge. Such was a virtuous feature of the gossip: when one knew, everyone else would know before long; Ryan also recognised that gossip had a dark side, which resulted from rumour-mongering, factual errors and people simply telling beautiful fictitious stories. This story about his son, however, had the ring of truth about it. Certainly, people would like their stories to be true, but this was not always the case; given his job, he had become uncomfortably aware of this long ago; he was also perfectly well aware that his role in life had evolved from the ancient role of town crier––in a sense, the official gossip.

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