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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The Second Part of Chapter 2: They Find Out

Margaret had just finished a busy day at the publishing house where she had worked for a while; it had been her career during the time when people of her generation were considering early retirement; she had never planned for retirement, and simply planned to quit when she felt tired, and her children, Jacob, Mary and Clarissa were happy enough with the arrangement. This particular day was tiring, given that she had to read two manuscripts, both of which were moderately good; she simply had to make a decision as to which one to publish; when she arrived home, she preferred to leave work troubles at work, and in the attempt to do so, started on dinner. She had just retrieved some carrots from the fridge when the phone rang; she picked it up.

“Hello?”

Margaret could hear Clarissa’s voice. “Hi mom, guess what? I finally found a boyfriend!”

“That’s wonderful dear,” replied Margaret. Clarissa was the last in a family with three children to find a boyfriend, and was the latest in life to do so; Clarissa was in her thirties, while her brother and sister had both married in their twenties. Perhaps it had something to do with her being the youngest child, or that she was living far from home, while the other two were no more than an hour’s drive away.

“What’s he like?”

“Well, he’s an economist, like me, and he’s with an economic consulting firm; they do business with quite a lot of clients,”

“So, you met through work? That sounds very nice,” said Margaret, assuming that was the case. “Am I ever going to meet him?”

“I don’t know; both of us are always very busy,” she replied.

I hope this ends in marriage, thought Margaret.

“What was that? I heard you mumbling,”

“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking to myself of what to plant in the garden this year, as Hyram already has some bulbs on the go in the basement, and there’s just the question of what seeds to put in the ground. Let’s see, there’re lettuces, some legumes, squash, carrots, and all sorts of other things. Have you got anything growing?”

“No; north-facing apartments aren’t all that good for growing plants.”

“That’s too bad. What about your boyfriend?”

“Oh yes, he has a nice three-storey house downtown, and there’s a small garden. It’s the winter, though, so I have yet to see it in bloom.”

“I’m quite looking forward to spring; the snow has almost melted here, and I can see buds on all the trees.” There was something not so appealing about the advent of spring: in the light of the evening, she could see that the mild weather had laid the earth bare in all its inglorious detail and the deposits of winter were there for all to see, without the concealing mantle that afforded everyone the illusion of a neat front yard. She could see several deposits made by neighbours’ dogs on their own front yard, which in contrast to its lush summer colouring, was an unsightly shade of ochre in some places, yellow in others, and interspersed with patchy brown. This ugliness heralded the start of lawn work season, which she relished because she could sit back, relax, and watch Hyram do the work.

“That hasn’t happened yet where I live,” said Clarissa. Well, it’s been nice talking to you. Oh, and one thing I meant to tell you is that, um, for Easter, could you pick me up at Finch? I can take the subway from Union Station; you don’t have to drive me from there,”

“Very well, Clarie. I look forward to seeing you again.”

Margaret hung up the phone. She was happy for Clarissa, and for herself; perhaps she would get lucky, eventually, and have a second grandchild. On the other hand, her boyfriend would not be over to visit for Easter.

“It was Clarissa,” she told Hyram in response to his inquiring look. “She has a boyfriend.”

“Is it serious?”

“I don’t think so; she’s not bringing him here to meet us, she told me that. They seem to have separate plans for Easter.”

“It’s very nice to hear that Clarie’s trying to find someone to marry and hopefully grow old with,”

“At least trying is something; for a while I thought she was going to do without, or maybe she was a lesbian.”

“I, on the other hand, never thought that. It seems like they’re attracted to each other’s inner qualities, or that’s Clarissa’s side of the story, anyways. That’s what happens when you meet someone through work.” That had not been the case for Margaret and Hyram; their marriage had been an elaborate machination between their respective parents, composed of many rendezvous, seemingly spontaneous but in reality carefully arranged encounters, and dates; The parents had wanted to grow closer and chose their children as a surrogate vehicle for this to happen. It was quite propitious that they had found in each other a kindred spirit, which resulted in a happy marriage and three children.

“If she’s not really planning on having us meet the man, then perhaps she’s using him as practice. I don’t think we have anything to get all excited about.”

Hyram said, “I thought ‘practice’ would have been reserved for a really good-looking man who didn’t necessarily have to meet any other qualifications.”

“Where did you get that idea from? That wasn’t the case with us,” replied Margaret.

“Well, you know, it’s what Jacob and Mary did. Remember Mary’s first boyfriend Allan and Jacob’s sweetheart, Elena? He looked like a dancer, or an athlete and she looked vaguely like someone I saw on the cover of some glossy magazine,”

“You still want them after all these years? Alice and Andrew are perfectly good spouses, and it’s too bad Allan and Elena were lacking in other areas,” said Margaret, referring to their intelligence, or lack thereof. As high school sweethearts, they were the best for that time: good-looking, without much underneath. Alice was married to their only son and Andrew was married to their eldest daughter, Mary.

“Oh no, don’t get me wrong; I was just commenting on the manoeuvrings of it all. Anyways, I forgot to ask you at dinner, how was work?”

Hyram’s reply sounded bored, and she had heard it many times before, in that age-old marital progression towards some happy boredom: “Same old, same old: it was slow today; it always seems to be that way this time of year.” The work they were referring to was his work with the Ministry of Transportation, where he was a bridge safety inspector; this was a substantial career change from his more youthful purchasing and sales jobs that he had with various companies. On the one hand, stability with the Ministry was nice, but on the other hand, it was boring and unlike sales or purchasing jobs. This was one of the hazards of having been married for so long, and Hyram thought that perhaps they were due for a vacation to an exotic part of the world. By exotic, he meant that he wanted to go somewhere completely unlike Canada; it would be exciting, unlike Canada, or an old city, unlike Toronto. So, he said to his wife, “How about a trip somewhere. We have the money, so why not?”

At his suggestion of travel, Margaret said, “Did you have any particular place in mind?” Her work was getting stressful, and she felt that she needed a break; she sat on the board of Twaddle and Twankfors, her publishing house where she had worked many years, and they had spent a mind-numbing meeting that day debating a change to the company logo, which was T&T over a silhouette of what was supposed to be a cupola representing the tower of a stately building somewhere, but everyone who saw the logo said it looked like something else altogether, which led them to wonder, “What do you guys publish anyways, erotica?” It was for this reason that she had suggested a bell tower. She had worked at the publishing house since the mid 1980s, and thus her career path was much more stable than that of her husband. This was her second career after an earlier life working in retail and writing fiction.

Hyram suggested a place where he had never travelled: “How about Russia?”

“That sounds nice; do you mean this summer?”

“Sure,”

The two carried on the conversation into the night, turning from their family to friends, politics, science, the garden, until they tired and went to bed.

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The First Part of Chapter 2: They Find Out

It was Monday morning, and there was an all-company meeting. Karim turned to James, sitting on his right beside Colleen, and asked, “How was Montréal?”

“Clarissa and I had a lovely time there,”

“That’s nice to hear,” said Maurice. Riley nodded in assent.

Without further delay, Maurice got to the point. “The ends of this meeting run thus: Septara, the computer chip maker, remember them? Anyways, Intel absorbed them, Le Chateau is lukewarm about us, and Venneris is struggling. In short, we’re losing market share. Are there any ideas? I’ve asked everyone in the office to come here today, in the boardroom, for who our next clients should be.”

The meeting, despite the urgency given the shrinking market share, was quite boring in James’s opinion, and he stared at the clock, as it slowly approached the appointed end of the meeting at 10:15. Riley said, “We should continue in our efforts to help Venneris,”

“My file,” noted James quietly. “They should diversify their product lines––and I told them as much––from simply one paper product, namely newsprint, to others, such as packaging, toothpicks, or perhaps pencils.” That was that for Venneris; the final decisions rested with Venneris executives in Corner Brook, not themselves. Riley, Karim and Courtney respectively called companies in trouble, including Magnus, which made ball bearings, Evitron, the hubcap maker, and two publishing houses. Colleen and Marcus meanwhile went over the daily news to see if they could find any companies to be concerned about, and had found the proverbial butcher, baker and candlestick maker, or that was what James had heard; his mind was still with Clarissa, and his body yearned for her too; fortunately, Courtney, sitting on his left, didn’t look down and notice. The meeting lasted an hour, which was much too long; he wanted to be back on the phone with Clarissa––no, wait––the CFO of Venneris. The meeting was at last over, and at 10:15 James went to his office and picked up the phone. He had the chief financial officer of Venneris on speed-dial number one, and he made sure he pressed that and not Clarissa’s number, which was on speed-dial number two. Within two rings, there was an answer.

“Venneris, this is Eileen O’Murphy.”

“Hello Eileen. We just got out of a meeting; anyways, we at Valoix Consulting are really passionate, as you know, and to cut matters short, we think you need to diversify.”

“Diversify?”

“Into other paper products, of course; there are all kinds of paper that we need––”

“Yes, we know, and let me tell you, we’re working on it.”

“Would you like to set up a conference call sometime so I can go through the numbers? I can run them in two days or so, and I expect they will get the same results as I have just told,”

James reflected on Venneris’s corporate image: it was squeaky clean, but not especially known for creativity, and this collective persona for that company was reflected in Venneris’s company motto, “never sin”; it was a staid logo, and good enough for survival, but not expansion, and that attitude would not hold off potential shocks.

When the day was done and James went home, which was at six, as usual, James’s thoughts turned from work and Clarissa to just Clarissa; he was obsessively and constantly thinking of her, and assumed she was doing the same. His thoughts went from various romantic moments touring the hills by bicycle, strolls along the river, much hugging and kissing, body contact, and various fantasies that cast him and Clarissa as heroes out of legend. He assumed Clarissa would tell her parents some time; he was planning to get around to it, though it kept slipping his mind; perhaps he should simply let a neighbour tell them?

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