The Second Part of Chapter 9: The New Arrangement

On Wednesday, Margaret decided to call her daughter to see how she was doing, as she had not heard from her since the letter had arrived on the first day of the month. She dialled the phone, and on the second ring, Clarissa answered.

“Hello Clarissa,”

“Hi mom,”

“Does James answer the phone?”

“Usually. Why?

“I don’t know. It seems to me that he never answers the phone,”

“Must you judge Jim so harshly? You only called four times, once just after the wedding and during our honeymoon, and that was on my cell phone, and then two more while I was home and he was at work. Four phone calls are not what you would call a representative sample, you know.”

“Um, right. How’s married life?”

“Pretty good. I’ve noticed a string of small incidents, though. I think we’re getting clumsy, now that we don’t have to perform to the very best ideal, as we did when we were dating. There are small things, like, you know, this morning Jim dropped his toast on the floor, butter side down. I have been knocking glasses over; I go to reach for my drink, and suddenly I find it on the ground, making a puddle. The washing machine seems to be breaking down, which is something Jim said he only noticed yesterday.”

That seems unimportant, thought Margaret. What about his socks? She had intended this as a thought, and it was a major sticking point with Hyram; intentions and actions can sometimes point in different directions, though.

“His socks? They seem fine. He’s very good about his socks, actually: he throws out any socks that have holes in them, and so far, I haven’t had to pick them up after him,”

There goes one common complaint; it seems more of a fictional anecdote that people tell one another than actual truth some of the time. Still, we have evidence in the family: Hyram always leaves his lying around the bedroom, and Mary found Ian’s habit of going barefoot inside irritating for some reason. Surely, there must be peccadilloes she is omitting.

“His eating habits are rather like grazing, I’ve noticed: he doesn’t eat ice cream straight from the tub, but he always goes back for second helpings, and he hovers around the bowl full of nuts in the living room. There’s nothing wrong with a few salted nuts.”

“I think he has too much waistline. Do you?”

“Mom, you know perfectly well I’m thin.”

“No, I mean him,”

“Who cares about his waistline?”

“I think you should. Thirty-eight inches is not what you would call healthy,”

“Then what do you think about dad?”

“Hyram is in his sixties; it’s normal to gain a few pounds in one’s later years. It offsets other problems. In a man’s thirties, however, he should have a flat stomach. You should know that,”

“Mom, must you dwell on his waistline so much? It’s fine with me; therefore it should be fine with you,”

James was upstairs watching television, and he overheard this.

“What about his job? Is he treating you right?”

“Of course, but I don’t see how that relates to his job; that’s one of the reasons why I married him. Granted, we don’t see a whole lot of each other during the daytime, it’s only three hours in the evening, the weekends, and fifteen minutes at breakfast, but I don’t think it’s important: we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together; we’re married.”

“I think he should be spending some more time at home; you know, to attend to you and get used to you.”

“I don’t think we’ll have a problem, and it’s really fine, it’s not like he’s the only person in my world. And you didn’t have any problems with Hyram, and back then he was a purchasing agent for Omega Faucets and thus always on the road. So if you managed, then so will I.”

“Oh, we had quite a lot of fights back then: there was always something going on, it was the dishes, the garbage, hair clogging the shower drain, that sort of stuff.”

“I imagine emotional attachment would have played some role in there, too.”

“Maybe,” said Margaret, who was uncomfortable that Clarissa had hit the nail on the head, stating a truth in her marriage: she had indeed gone through an emotionally needy stage a few months in, before they had any children, when she was obsessively thinking of Hyram, and constantly worrying about where he was. It was then that they both decided they needed children, and after that she quickly became pregnant; a year into their marriage, she had Mary.

“Is there anything that you would like to talk about other than Jim’s imagined habits of, I don’t know, fiddling around with pens in his fingers?”

“He does that?”

“No! I was just stating some imagined behaviour that you would probably project onto him.”

“Well, sorry about that; I’m sure he presents a different face to me than he does to you. It’s you that he loves, not me,”

“That could be an explanation,”

“I think it is.”

There was an awkward silence. “So,” said Clarissa, in an effort to move past the conversation block. “Has Hyram been doing anything interesting?”

“There’s been a comprehensive bridge audit that’s been keeping him busy; he’s been always travelling the province,”

“I see.”

“He complains about the travel every evening, and last week he went to Nipigon and up north.”

“Was he tired after that?”

“Extremely; I think he’ll be looking into retirement sometime soon,”

“That should be nice for him; many people your age have been retired for ten years already,”

“You know me; I just like to keep busy; I’ll likely be working until I drop,”

“That should be fun,”

“Well, good-bye, Clarie. I’ll always love you,”

“Bye mom. I love you too.”

Clarissa hung up the phone, and James, having overheard a substantial portion of what Clarissa said, conjectured the questions Margaret had asked.

“What was that about?”

“Just mom. She wanted to see how we were doing.”

“Meaning she wanted to know about me,”

“Pretty much. The whole conversation revolved around you.”

“What did she want to know?”

“Various things. I don’t think she formed a good impression of you, and she simply wants to get a clearer image of you in her mind.”

James thought this description of the conversation was glossing things over, but did not tell Clarissa.

“Oh, and did I tell you, I just saw the most adorable little kitten playing in Christine’s front yard today; she told me she had got it when we were on our honeymoon. It looks so cute and fuzzy and soft" and she then went on to tell him that she saw that Christine had a rather handsome visitor over.

James noted the attempt to distract him from the conversation that she had just had with her mother, and murmured in acknowledgement. His mind was admittedly on other things: he was thinking about the accounting statements of various clients, financial analyses that he needed to do, and the fact that several of them appeared to be in trouble.

“What are you thinking?” James’s only answer to this was awkward silence. He wondered why women bothered to use this, as it usually had the opposite effect of that desired. Meant to start a conversation, or meant to peer into the innermost parts of one’s soul, it would simply elicit the response from him of “umm...” which was what he said. Many other women had asked him the same question, and normally, the relationship was over within a month if the woman in question were his girlfriend at the time, or else the remark would simply leave an awkward void in a room were the questioner his mother; this had happened in his teenage years, and Patricia had eventually learned not to ask him that.

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