The Second Part of Chapter 3: Easter

Their arrival at James’s parents’ house saw them greeted with open and welcoming arms.

“Jimmy, how are you? You should come over more often––you live so close, after all.”

“I call you often enough––”

“And you must be Clarissa. I’ve heard a lot about you, of course.”

“Jim told you?”

“No, I just heard it from Jim on Wednesday. Eunice told me in March.”

“Oh,”

Then, Clarissa met James’s sister, Katherine; the brother and sister looked very much alike, except that Katherine was female; Katherine smiled at Clarissa, and greeted her cordially.

“Well, let’s go in then. Ryan’s roasting a duck, and it should be out of the oven by six.”

James asked, “Is there any bread?” Patricia liked to make bread, and her favourite was foccacia, which she had often.

“Yes, Jimmy, there’s bread,”

“It’s a very nice house you have, Mrs. Miller,”

“Thank you, Clarissa. You can just call me Pat, or Patty,”

“I have an apartment myself; it’s nowhere near as nice as this. It’s in one of those ugly towers built in the sixties.”

James agreed; there was something decidedly lacking in taste in that era. The four sat down in the living room in the front, in which there was a radio tuned to the CBC, two couches, and a shelf filled with books. The walls were a shade of brown that Ryan said reminded him of Prince Edward Island. A couple of books were out of place on a small coffee table in the centre of the room. James looked at the titles: Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, and The Fire Dwellers by Margaret Laurence.

“It’s such a charming living room,” remarked Clarissa as she looked around.

“You seem like such a happy couple; do you see a future together?” asked Patricia.

“Possibly; we’re talking about moving in sometime,”

“I hope that’s not just idle talk; Jimmy has a very nice house, a very big house, and it can get lonesome for him sometimes.”

“Mom, I’m not lonely; were that the case, I would be visiting you more often.”

“Of course, honey. I was just getting worried, what with you single so long––it’s been a few years now––you might turn into one of those weird old men people talked to behind their backs. You never met anyone since your Toronto years until now,”

“I don’t think there’s any risk of that happening,” said James.

We have a thing going on, Clarissa and I, he thought.

“So, what type of person would you say you are, Clarissa? Are you happy-go-lucky? You seem simply radiant and so exuberant,” rather like Mrs. Dalloway, thought Patricia.

Clarissa laughed. “I don’t know about all the time, but right now, you might say that, but With Jim, well, you know,”

“You have visited his house often, of course; I know that because Eunice told me,”

“Did she tell you everything?” Patricia ignored James’s question.

“Jim doesn’t come to my place quite that often; it’s much smaller than his house.”

“It’s still a nice apartment,” said James.

“It’s small,”

“It’s tastefully decorated, and much more so than my place; there’s so much room that parts of it feel empty.”

“Are you referring to the man-cave parts?”

“I’m referring to the room in the back specifically; there’s just a bookshelf and a chair in there. I’ll admit I’m not a very big spender; shopping isn’t exactly my hobby,”

“That wasn’t always the case,” interjected Patricia.

“I remember you buying all those things,” added Katherine.

“The car,” remembered Patricia.

“The television,” put in Ryan.

“The computer,” said Katherine.

“The second, fancier computer,” said Ryan.

“That elaborate surround sound stereo system,” added Patricia.

“Let’s not forget the house,” Katherine said with finality.

“Such are the joys of youth: the overspending, magnanimous, youth,”

“I only finished paying off the car last year, and there’s still the mortgage,” said James.

“I can also remember you endlessly snacking on chips, chocolate and ice-cream in your teenage years,”

“I loved those teenage years,”

“I wonder how much all those goodies cost?”

“I think that will be one of life’s eternal mysteries,”

The conversation continued in this manner as the rich smell of roasting duck permeated their nostrils.

Ryan said, “What do you think of the radio programme?” He was referring to the phone-in show hosted by Daniel-Matthew Night-Haig; the present topic of discussion on that show was unemployment, and a young person was talking.

“I think there’s a bias against young people in the hiring process; the signs are obvious,” he was saying. “You can see it every time you see in ad or hear someone say, ‘experience preferred.’ I once tried to get an employer to explain to me why they wanted someone with experience, and I found their response evasive,”

“Yes, that is a problem that a lot of people encounter,” said Night-Haig.

“What do you think of that?” asked Ryan.

James answered, “I think we need to encourage employers to make an effort to assume more training costs. That’s what it is, really; people don’t want to have to pay the expenses of training people, so they want people who are experienced and therefore already trained.”

Patricia remembered at five-thirty that she had to put her brioche in the oven and went into the kitchen.

“The smell is very nice; it’s making me hungry,” said Clarissa.

“Good; it promises to be very nice dinner,” said Ryan. He went over a mental checklist, ensuring he had done everything that was required: he had pierced the skin with a fork, he had rubbed the inside with salt, he had stuffed the bird, put water in the base of the dish to prevent a nasty cleaning job later, and he had seasoned the outside of the bird. He just now recalled something that he had forgotten to do.

“Pat? Could you put the giblets in with the duck?”

“Sure thing,”

“Oh, Katie, I almost forgot to ask you: how’s teaching lately?”

“It’s all right; I told you the classes are nice and quiet, and my grade twelve chemistry class is getting started on a hard unit right now.”

“I saw on Ratemyteacher.com that some of your students find you less than adequate,” said Ryan.

“I think the students who post on that site are the dregs of the class.” Katherine knew that what she said was disingenuous; it was simply that she did not really like her students that much, and did not treat them with the respect they deserved. This may have been due to her rocky relationship with her ex-husband; now, she had something of a bias towards most men, with the exception of her older brother and her father. Wishing to change the subject, she said, “are they still dealing crack on the corner over there?” She was referring to the street corner on the southeast side of the park, on the other side of Lyon; she thought that the customer base for this particular hotspot was composed of the disreputable-looking women who lived a few doors down in what she suspected was a halfway house.

“Are they still dealing crack on the corner over there?” She was referring to the street corner on the southeast side of the park, on the other side of Lyon; she thought that the customer base for this particular hotspot was composed of the disreputable-looking women who lived a few doors down in what she suspected was a halfway house.

“I think now that hotspot is so widely known, the police are keeping a closer eye on it. We can see a police officer patrolling the park nearly all the time, so if you wanted to buy some, you’re out of luck, my dear,”

James and Clarissa laughed at this joke; Katherine did not.

“Always the kidder. What I’ve wanted to know all these years is: why you chose to move into the city at a time when so many people were fleeing,”

“It’s a bit of defiance, I guess; I’ve always been contrarian, both you and Jimmy know that.” The question posed by Katherine had always had its implicit meaning; she would have preferred a suburban childhood, such as the ones relentlessly portrayed in the media as good and wholesome; the main source of Ryan’s objections to the suburbs was the car: he usually drove five times a year, and that was quite enough. Here, on the other hand, work, shopping, entertainment and friends were all within a fifteen-minute walk; he enjoyed being able to, on a whim, decide to visit his friends or his son, or go to the grocery store, all without needing a car. He also preferred not to abandon the inner city when so many others had; it made him, in his own mind at least, a reverse pioneer.

Dinner was delicious, as always, and the couple, after exchanging pleasantries, went home.

Previous Next

The First Part of Chapter 3: Easter

At Easter, James’s relationship with Clarissa reached a significant stage: he was about to introduce her to his parents. His relationship with both of them was quite warm and loving, and was ideally what every parent-child relationship should be; it was a bit uninteresting, perhaps, and resembled something out of a Norman Rockwell painting, but it was predictable, and that was what James preferred. The predictability even extended to their jobs in the public sector, which tended to be more stable than the private sector. His father seemed to take on a variety of roles in life, in reflection of his multiple careers; a journalist at the CBC was merely his latest job, and before he had been a university lecturer, proprietor of a bookstore, and a semi-professional activist, advocating on behalf of sundry causes. They had discussed her introduction to his family one night at Clarissa’s apartment, and he called his parents’ house on the Wednesday before Easter.

“Hello?”

“Hi mom,” he said.

“Oh hi Jimmy, how are you doing?”

“I’m doing great, actually; I don’t suppose I told you about Clarissa,”

“Your new girlfriend? Eunice told me, and Kevin confirmed it. Gossip travels, you know; we only live a few blocks apart.”

“I wanted to tell you that I’m bringing her over for Easter,”

“We’ll be glad to welcome her into our home,” said Patricia.

“Thank you mom,” said James.

After he hung up the phone, he thought that it had gone well: on Easter Monday, they agreed that James and Clarissa would be visiting his parents’ house. He had always thought of that house, which he had first seen when he was eleven, as a cozy place, with its short picket fence in the front, shaded by a large maple, and decorated within with many exposed beams, dried flowers and carved objects.

On the other end of the line, Patricia looked out of the front window, which afforded a nice view of Dundonald Park, and thought: Jimmy has a girlfriend! It was not as if Clarissa were the first, as he had had plenty of girlfriends from high school and his university days, but she was excited all the same. She continued to look at the park, in happy anticipation of the time when the trees would have leaves, the snow, which was now forming slushy puddles, would be gone from the ground, the kids would be playing and Somerset Avenue on the opposite side of the park would be partially obscured by the foliage. She knew from Eunice that James was quite lucky this time; Eunice had described Clarissa as a tall woman, poised and elegant, and very pretty. In addition to spring, this was one more thing to anticipate happily. She only wished the same thing could be said of her daughter Katherine, who had divorced her husband a few years ago and had not looked back; she was still single, which bothered Patricia, who had started nudging her to meet other people, and had even gone so far as to attempt to set her up once or twice with some of her co-workers at the library; failing that, her daughter was a teacher, and there would always be a few eligible bachelors there. Ryan arrived home at five, and she told him about Clarissa. His reaction was quite happy. “It would be excellent to have Clarissa over for dinner on Monday. I’ll tell Kate.” Ryan talked to Katherine roughly once a month, slightly more so in the summer, and slightly less so in the winter. “Have you heard about Ollie?”

“The one with the hypertension?”

“Yeah, that one. He had a heart attack.”

“Oh dear, really?”

“He’s fine now, though. He’s on a low salt diet.”

“Well, that’s good for him,” said Patricia, who turned to her seed collection: things needed to be planted soon, considering that the last vestiges of winter were going, albeit with a seeming reluctance.

Easter arrived, and as happens in spring, there was a sudden snowstorm on Good Friday. Patricia grumbled as she shovelled the surprisingly powdery snow off the driveway and onto the dirty grey snow banks. The amount of snow gave her no bother, as it only came up to just above the ankles. It was more the fact that she had felt sufficiently warm just on Wednesday to go outside wearing her flower print skirt and set up the parasol on the back patio, and was planning to do some gardening on Saturday.

On Monday the weather was sufficiently warm to melt Friday’s snow. James was at home, relaxing with a book, which was what he did best; this time, however, it was to keep his cool in anticipation of Clarissa’s meeting with his parents. She had said she would be back from Toronto shortly after two, and would be coming to his house at three thirty. It was three o’clock at that moment. James rose from the chair in his living room and fetched a bag of potato chips from the kitchen; they were dill pickle. He like many men, considered himself a connoisseur of potatoes in all of their forms: fries, chips, mashed, cooked into soups, scalloped, barbecued, baked and boiled. There seemed to be a never-ending variety of potato recipes, as Kevin, who he had had over on Saturday, impressed upon him during a conversation about Keynesian stimuli, and how easy it was to eat too much of them. He reflected on his condition at that moment; in his opinion, he was doing quite well; he had a girlfriend, his income was decent, and his expenses, the largest portion of which was the mortgage he had paid on his house, were small; such were the fleeting virtues of being young and not tied down with all sorts of commitments, he thought.

The appointed time arrived, and James got out of his armchair and looked down the street. A tall feminine figure had just come into view down the street. He could recognise Clarissa from a distance, and there was no mistaking: this was Clarissa. As she approached the front walk, he stepped out the door to greet her.

“Hi Jim,” she said brightly. “Nice house,” she added. “It looks like it’s from the Edwardian era,”

“Clarissa, you look splendid,” said James.

She walked up the front steps and kissed him.

“The plan is to walk to mom and dad’s place; it’s on MacLaren Street and faces the south side of Dundonald Park.”

“That will be nice.” They then set off on the leisurely stroll to meet James’s parents; at this time, there were no leaves in the trees, and the winter had taken its toll on the ground cover, reducing it to a few sticks, the lawns lay flat, and so the earth was bare for all to see. Given that the shrubbery was non-existent or brown, their attention was drawn to the architecture of the neighbourhood, which, given that it was in the inner city and built in the Victorian era, was beautiful and covered in many places with the delicate traces of naked ivy vines. The buildings came in a variety of styles; some were unchanged from their construction over a century before, others had newer additions in various places, while still others were new. The architecture visible along the eight-minute walk made the trip almost as worthwhile as the destination, and it was for this reason that the neighbourhood was so desirable for so many people. James had made a hefty down payment on his house, and there were nicer and therefore more expensive houses on the street.

Given that it was a holiday, they did not pass very many people on the street, and there were very few cars on the road; Gladstone Street was nearly empty. On the way to the house, Christine waved at them from her front porch; she was putting some dried branches in a vase for decoration, as the weather did not permit any showy plants outside just yet. They waved back. Christine had moved in to that house on March first, and was thus just getting to know the neighbourhood. Eunice had introduced her to her husband, James and various other neighbours, including Belinda, David and his wife Pia in an effort to integrate her into the community; it was clear that Eunice had taken a liking to Christine.

Previous Next