The Second Part of Chapter 16: Belinda Wonders

After the onerous task of shovelling the driveway was done, Belinda stroked Pollux as she wondered about Clarissa; she had heard many strange stories thanks to her primary hobby of gossiping, but Clarissa’s continued sadness over her husband’s death, which had occurred two months ago was the most strange; maybe there was something more to the story? She had asked Ryan about it when she last saw him, which was three weeks ago, and the answer she received was that “Clarissa was still in mourning.” She was in mourning for a month and a half? And the last she saw of Clarissa, which was when she was at Hartman’s in the checkout line with some fruit and a fish, Clarissa was still looking rather sad, and that was the previous Friday.

She then put on her boots, coat and mittens and headed down Lyon and then MacLaren Street and toward Hartman’s. It was on the way to buy groceries that she saw Clarissa again, who was returning from a similar errand, trudging along the narrow path that was the sidewalk, buried under knee-deep snow.

“Oh, hi Clarie,” said Belinda.

“Hullo,” came the mumbled reply.

“So, how did you say James died?” This was admittedly quite tactless of her, and she cursed to herself for not being more polite. Clarissa was slow to react to the question.

“He had a heart attack, and he died.”

“Just like that, then?”

“Yes, just like that,” said Clarissa, who looked annoyed.

“Are you sure it wasn’t something else?”

“Quite sure; the coroner said the heart attack caused his heart to stop beating, and he died, quite quickly.”

“I see; well, I’m sorry to have bothered you like this.” At least she had some tact in saying this. She left Clarissa to continue home, groceries in hand, as she walked to the store, and remembered everything on her grocery list: bread, milk, carrots, celery, some lettuce, chips, potatoes, and other things that she would recall upon seeing them written down. She later pondered James’s death some more; he was slightly pudgy when Clarissa met him, so it seemed likely that the heart attack was due to a lifetime of damage and abuse by polluting the body with various fat, cholesterol, and salt. She pondered as deeply as she could on his death, and started to think that if she didn’t know any better, she would have been suspicious of the circumstances, because the two had only been married for two months, and then Clarissa inherited everything; it also had to be admitted that James died very young, considering the cause of death; she might suspect foul play, were Clarissa not so sad. She considered this further: it wouldn’t be too hard to consistently slip some extra salt into his food while avoiding it herself, as in most households, the woman does the cooking. Pondering this on her own made her more and more suspicious, as Clarissa ultimately did have an ulterior motive, despite what she had told her mother in Toronto.


In the days leading up to Christmas, Belinda made more such similar inquiries, and was answered with increasingly annoyed responses from Ryan, Patricia, David, and even Eunice. In the last encounter with David, he simply told her to leave; this was the day before the solstice, and she was standing on the street at six in the evening, lit by only the streetlamps, and freezing cold. During this time she was getting increasingly exasperated as she felt more and more ostracised, and nobody would listen to her theories of foul play, no matter how she framed the question; it was at this that David had pointedly told her to leave his house and never speak of the issue again. Her comment in October about James having been a pill-popper was also coming back to bite her; Clarissa, after having heard of the false information, had quickly gone out of her way to dispel any rumour, and if anything, she had been the house Tylenol addict and not James. This soured the neighbourhood opinion of her, and people no longer said hello to her when she was strolling along the canal, doing her grocery shopping, going to the hairdressers or on her way to the liquor store.

On the winter solstice, Belinda received a blow that would sever one of the major tethers that held her in the city: her job. She worked in the marketing department of Cognos, a technology company that made business software that did detailed analyses of business performance, being able to provide several views of data based on an underlying database. She had always been the office gossip, for the same reason that she was the neighbourhood gossip on her street. The sun’s dying rays were shining in the windows, bathing the white walls in a weak orange light that did not give any warmth. Her boss, Guy Mylenko, said, “I’m sorry Belinda, you know we lost customers, and we still need to do some belt tightening. Now, I recognise your hard work, but it isn’t all about that. Your influence in the company has not been entirely beneficial. How to put this?” He paused, trying to put the wording delicately, and found he couldn’t. “The thing is, your informal role as the office gossip is like a canker, and it distracts the others, and keeps them from the work that they so dearly love. That’s why you no longer have a position here. You have five minutes to clear out of the office, take your effects, and go home.” Belinda stared at his bald head, his liver spots, bulbous nose and leathery, over-tanned skin as he said this.

Belinda held back tears; she wished not to show any weakness in front of her curmudgeonly boss. She knew it was not anything in general, as he had alluded to, but something much more specific: he had been having an affair with the secretary, Emily, and Belinda had wind of it when she came in early one morning and overheard the two making plans for a date. Emily was attracted by his power position rather than his looks; this was something easy to deduce, considering Guy’s appearance. She was right, and she gossiped to the whole office about it, which meant his wife found out through a nephew who also worked there, hence causing several awkward nights for Guy. The only obvious thing that attracted Emily about Guy was that he was a power figure; otherwise, he was unattractive, looked like an ape, and smoked.

That resulted in her dismissal; she would lose her work friends, who formed a key part of her social network. Her rival in the office, Linette, would be sure to gloat over her demise; they had gotten off on the wrong foot when Belinda started at the firm, and their relationship never improved. In this light, it was not good that they had several mutual friends, including Cora, who Linette had met at work, and then followed up with several girls’ nights out, and Eunice, when they had met at university. This was even better for Linette than when Belinda had off-hand, commented about someone’s accent back in October.

That evening, she said to Pollux, “I feel as if I have only you to turn to in this city.” The cat merely turned away with a yawn, and went back to sleep on her couch. The next day, she left for Toronto to visit her mother for Christmas. She had trepidations about visiting her brother, Melvin and sister, Juliana, who respectively lived in Barrie and Sudbury; her relations with her siblings could be described as rocky at best. Pollux would not have any trouble keeping himself together; she would give him the run of the house when she went away, and she gave him a large amount of cat food in his dish, and kept a large bowl full of water.

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