The First Part of Chapter 24: Bleak Month

Winter had dragged on to a phase which was universally found to be grating on the soul, and which everyone wanted to see over: it was the phase in which the last day when the temperature had been above freezing was three weeks previously, on the 11th of January, and the snow, where it wasn’t packed down hard, was chest deep, and one could not see over the snow banks. At least that was the way it seemed to Patricia, as she walked home from her grocery shopping at Hartman’s. She reviewed her purchases, to check whether she had remembered everything. As it turned out, she did: the jam, the milk, cheese, olives, bread, meat, and everything else was in her bag, and she continued down the street, shielding her face against the cold. She wondered how Clarissa was faring; winter was known to be a time in which people were affected with depression, and with quite good reason: after nearly three months without seeing the bare ground and having to dress up in sometimes cumbersome clothing, and having to deal with short daylight hours, it was easy to see why one would become downtrodden. After shopping, she decided, she would go visit; she had last visited Clarissa’s house just after Christmas, and she wanted to see what had become of the house that her son had purchased.

She put her groceries away, and then walked the five blocks over to Clarissa’s house. Clarissa, like James, had very little use for the car, and thus had not bothered to shovel the driveway around it, but rather only shovelled the front walk and steps. The car itself was just discernable, with one window uncovered, while the rest of the vehicle was buried under the deep snow. She knocked on the front door, and Clarissa came to answer. This being the weekend, Clarissa had taken the opportunity to sleep in, she was still in her dressing gown, and her shoulder-length hair was uncombed.

“Hello, Clarie. I just came by to see how you’re doing,”

“Good morning, Pat. It is still morning,” she checked the clock in the living room to make sure. “I’m doing as fine as I can expect; the pregnancy is still making me sick all the time, so I can’t be too well until the baby comes.”

“I expect you’re looking forward to that happy day.”

“Yes.” Patricia could hear that the bounce and perk of her voice was absent. She looked around: it seemed like the carpet had last been vacuumed two weeks ago, and some of the plants in the living room were starting to wilt; the spider plant that she had given James was looking small and sad, just as she was imagining Clarissa was feeling about her dead husband. She noticed a collection of photographs on a small shelf in one corner; the shelf had once belonged to her grandmother, and had lingered in her mother’s basement, then her own basement, before James had found a use for it when he purchased his own house. The shelf’s age was evident, as it was an antique, and one of the legs showed several scratch marks. The photos on top of the shelf were mostly of James: when he and Clarissa were on a date, when he was swimming, and several honeymoon pictures, arranged around a white vase. The room, which was decorated in shades of blue, looked quite cold and uninviting, as opposed to the lived-in and welcoming appearance that it had before James died. It even felt cold; this was an effect of the weak sun, and the fact that it was still around ten degrees below zero outside as much as the feeling that it had not been cleaned for a few weeks; it seemed to her that Clarissa was slowly losing her grip, and would need to find it soon.

“Well, I just want you to be happy, dear.” Patricia had formed a sort of attachment to her daughter in law; it was as if Clarissa were a surrogate for Jim, and now she regarded her almost like a daughter. It was for this reason that she cared for Clarissa almost as much as she cared for Katherine. Ryan had formed a similar attachment, although this bond was not nearly as strong: he was still just as interested in her welfare as Patricia was, but he did not go out of his way to make phone calls or visit; he was a man, after all. He, like her, also regarded Clarissa like a member of the family, even though there was no blood relation. The care both of them shared for Clarissa was an obvious manifestation of the hope and joy they felt that they would be having a granddaughter to love and dote upon in May, if all went well. She considered that, given Clarissa’s misfortunes, her luck would have to turn and Alexandra Apollonia’s birth would be a joyous occasion come May. Patricia, who knew some statistics and probability, fully realised that its underpinnings were random rather than moral, even though she felt it should work in a more moral fashion, with virtue being rewarded; she did not doubt that Clarissa was virtuous, as was her son; this wasn’t virtue in the classical sense of the word, but rather it was virtue in the sense that her son had always cared for his girlfriends.

As she walked back home, it started to snow. The gray skies had been threatening snow for a day, and it started to fall, first in one or two flakes, and then more heavily as she turned on to MacLaren Street. She fried mushrooms and a chicken breast for dinner, and put rotini on the stove to boil, and by the time dinner was ready, the snow was falling thick and fast; the pavement, once gray, was presently obscured entirely. The sidewalks, like the road, were also quickly buried afresh, which meant that the plough team, consisting of a snowplough for the road, and two snowblowers for the sidewalks, would be coming within three days.


On the fourth of February, the first thaw came; the snow melted and formed large, slushy puddles, and several backyards were flooded by water dammed by ice; the ground was still frozen, the air still cold, and thus the water had nowhere to go. The elder Millers’ backyard sloped away from the house, and they were not bothered by water, though their neighbours to their back, Jeannine, and to her west, Rick, both had flooded backyards. That evening, Patricia was mincing garlic for the spaghetti sauce she was making when the phone rang. It was Clarissa, and she crying.

“Oh dear, Clarissa, what’s wrong, darling?”

“I just had a miscarriage. You won’t be grandparents.”

The news hit Patricia like a blow; losing James was bad enough; indeed it was quite shocking, but this really put her over the edge. She was howling, and this attracted Ryan’s attention as he was removing his tie.

“What?”

“We’re… no longer going to be grandparents,” Patricia bawled. Ryan, who was still emotionally distraught from his son’s death only four months before, also dissolved into tears.

“Dear Clarissa, how did this happen?”

“I don’t know; I just have terrible luck.”

“I’m so sorry,”

“You don’t have to be, but thank you. I woke up and I wasn’t sick like I usually was, so I called the doctor. He told me I was no longer pregnant,”

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