The Third Part of Chapter 14: Halloween and After

Eunice went down the street to visit Clarissa in the early evening of the following day, the sun having just set, and Eunice having just garnished a steak, which was in the oven. Her behaviour last night was perhaps the most notable aspect of her party, in that she was absent from the fun and jokes, which was unlike her. Eunice walked up the front steps, which were strewn with a few withered leaves, and knocked on the door.

“Coming,” said a voice from inside the house. It was Clarissa, but her voice was flat and quiet, unlike her previous self. She opened the door and it appeared to Eunice that she was much worse for wear.

“Hi Clarissa, I’m so sorry you couldn’t come to the party last night.”

“Sorry; I was exhausted. That seems to be happening a lot these days.”

Eunice looked around the front hallway and the living room; the carpet had not been vacuumed lately––she estimated not since James’s funeral––and the cushions on the couch, which were normally arranged carefully and symmetrically, were now in disarray: one was on the coffee table, the other on the ottoman. This disarray also extended to her bookcases, from which several books were missing, and could alternately be seen on the coffee table, the couch, and the floor near the fireplace.

“Yes, that was sort of what I wanted to talk to you about; are you feeling okay? You don’t look your usual self,” by which she meant the side of herself that she had presented a few weeks previously.

“I’ll admit that I’m still feeling drained, although I don’t know why; I’m not as busy as I was before, so that can’t be it,”

“I know, I remember in university you were involved in all sorts of clubs, the student union, and you had a job; I quite frankly didn’t know how you managed all that and still did well,”

Clarissa half-smiled at the transparent attempt at flattery, but showed none of her teeth, and her eyes retained that tired expression.

“I think work is just wearing me out,”

“I think it’s that your husband died; you know that just as well as I do, dear. I don’t know how it relates to you becoming tired, but it must be affecting you in all sorts of terrible ways, and, well, we’re worried, you know; both Mario and I...well, we pray for you at night.”

Eunice noticed some framed photos sitting on top of a small shelf in the living room. They were of Clarissa and James, and looked like they were honeymoon pictures, as she could see plainly that the pictures were taken in Newfoundland. Next to the photos, in a vase, stood a wilted carnation. This gave the arrangement the appearance of a small memorial for James that had been set up some time ago, and neglected since.

They then walked into the kitchen, in which Eunice could see the previous night’s unwashed dishes in the sink, and the potted oregano and rosemary plants were starting to wither.

“Oh dear, Clarie, you seem to have been despondent this past little while; when I was in here in September, everything was spotlessly clean!”

“I’m too busy for that right now; I have dinner going.” She gestured to the stove, on which Eunice saw a chicken breast frying with some sweet peppers and mushrooms, while the pasta was on the counter, and a pot of water was coming to boil.

“Now Jimmy’s dead, I feel as if I don’t have any choices or direction: I must continue marching into the unknown, but I don’t feel as if I’m getting anywhere,”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, when Jim was alive and with me, the whole world seemed more alive and more wholesome. Now that he’s dead, I see death everywhere: there’s road kill on the street outside, bird carcasses, and withered gardens,”

“It is autumn, you know; of course things are decaying.”

“Well, I’m sorry that he was a pill-popper and had to die,” said Eunice; she had heard this fact from Belinda after the funeral; the Millers’ medicine cabinet, however, remained private.

“Where did you hear that he was a pill-popper?”

“Belinda,”

“That’s not true; the only pills in there are Tylenol, which I need for headaches, but Jim was very healthy until–”

Eunice took advantage of her sudden pause. “Really? I wonder why Belinda told me that,”

“It’s probably just her trying to sound all-knowing or something. If she said that, she’s really stupid; I mean, what can you hope to gain by spreading lies?” That rhetorical question went unanswered, and Clarissa continued. “I don’t know when I will get choice back; maybe when my baby is born, I’ll be happier,” she gestured to her slightly enlarged stomach.

Sensing that the conversation was leading nowhere, Eunice said, “I see; I had better get dinner going too. Mario said he wanted steak, and I left him to fry some onions and mushrooms.”


On returning home, Eunice checked on her steak. “It ought to be ready at seven,” she said to herself.

“How’s Clarissa?”

“Her house is a mess, which is sort of a reflection of her present state; she’s not happy,
which she never explicitly told me but anyone can pick up on that. She’s also tired.”

“From what, something at work, or something that happened last night?”

“I think it’s tiredness in general.”

“She said that?”

“Yes and her house also told me that.”

“I’m getting very hungry now,” said Mario, who wanted to take his mind off of something so sad, and food was his main distraction when something was troubling him; Eunice’s description of Clarissa’s behaviour sounded vaguely like the symptoms of depression, which was really troubling. On the one hand, he felt that he wanted to help Clarissa in some way, but on the other hand, he wasn’t sure exactly how.

His propensity to eat as a method of distraction was fortunately absent in his other characteristics such as his waistline; he was genetically blessed that way. He turned back to the mushroom and onion garnish he was making.

“What about mashed potatoes?”

“Oh yes, I need to make them,” and with that, Eunice started peeling the potatoes.

Forty-five minutes later, they were eating, and Mario was talking about work.

“We have lots of turkeys in stock,” he said.

“It’s that time of year again; turkey-roasting time,”

“Have you heard from Kate?” Kate was short for Katelin; Eunice referred to her mother by that affectionate diminutive.

“No, not yet, though I think she’ll call on Friday,” said Eunice.

“How’s her liver?”

“The doctors are saying that she will need a transplant at some point,” said Eunice. “Poor mom
would simply not keep away from the bottle in her youth, and now she’s paying the price,”

“Speaking of liver, would you like some tomorrow night? We have quite a number of cow livers in stock, and there are also a couple packages of chicken livers,”

“Perhaps; liver would be a nice dinner,”

“Good; I’ll bring some home tomorrow,” said Mario.

November, after having a cold start, with a hard frost on the night of the first, was pleasant during the first half of the month, and then grew colder. Snow could be seen first on the escarpment in the distance to the north, as whitening at the top of the hills, which appeared blue in the distance during the summer, and grey in the fall and late winter.

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The Second Part of Chapter 14: Halloween and After

Unfortunately, not only Christine had heard Mario’s compliment; Eunice, who was at that moment standing at the other end of the room, bloody cocktail in hand, and she clearly heard her husband over the hubbub. She rolled her eyes. Must just be one of those things, she thought.

“This is a nice party; I really like the blood cocktail,” he said, holding up a glass of red cocktail, which was really gin with cherry punch.

“Thanks. I mixed it an hour ago.”

Christine turned to Eunice and said, “Hey Eunice, do you know where Clarissa is? She’s a neighbour, is she not?”

Rick added, “I remember her tabletop dance from last Halloween; she’s quite fun when she wants to be; it was too bad her husband was a pill-popper.” Rick had not gleaned the information in the last comment from first-hand experience; rather, he had heard it repeated from Christine and Laura; he had not thought to ask why the contents of James’s medicine cabinet had become so widely known, but after his death, the details of his life, real and imagined were pored over without discrimination, but with enthusiasm, by all of his friends and those who considered themselves friends. Christine, Rick and Eunice weren’t alone in noting Clarissa’s absence; Belinda was also loudly pondering the reasons.

“I mean, how long should we expect a broken heart to last?” pondered she, which Eunice thought was insensitive. As usual, she had a glass with something alcoholic in her hand, which in this case was green and looked like a lime and vodka cocktail, and she was talking to whoever would listen to her, in this case Christine, who seemed to be nodding and interjecting more out of politeness than genuine interest.

“I don’t know, Bel, a loss like that is pretty hard to recover from; I wouldn’t be surprised if the mourning period continues for a while,”

“Maybe we should phone her up, and invite her over; she could do with a drink or two,”

“She’s pregnant, Belinda,”

“Oh, yeah. Anyways, she should be enjoying herself. I’ll call her,” said she, taking her cell phone out of her bra (there was no other place to put it, as the slutty witch costume Eunice had lent her had no pockets). Great, thought Eunice. Drunk dialling: here we have one of the inherent risks of intoxication, although not the most harmful.

“Hi Clarissa, it’s Belinda. Why aren’t you having fun at Eunice’s party? It’s quite happening; it’ll cheer you up,”

Belinda heard Clarissa reply, “Oh, that’s all right, I don’t have a costume.”

“I don’t think that’s all right; we’ve seen you moping around when you come home from work. You’re not yourself; you’re not the woman I knew for so long. I don’t care that you don’t have a costume. Throw some makeup on; you can be a call girl or something. Or, you know what, Eunice has a whole closet full of costumes, you can wear one of hers. That’s what I’m doing; I’m dressed up as a witch,”

Rick, who was facing her, with a beer in hand, thought that she certainly wasn’t dressing
up.

“I’m just too tired right now; I just got off of a grating day at work,”

Belinda suspected this reason at once. “That’s not a good reason for missing a Halloween party that you’ve been invited to, there’s no good reason. You get off busy days at work all the time. Isn’t that the way it is in the public sector these days?”

“Yes, well––”

“Well, come over here. I miss you,” said Belinda.

“Okay,” said Clarissa, rather unconvincingly.

“Bye, Clarie,” said Belinda, and hung up. Does she want to be sad and lonely? Belinda pondered this question as she sipped her cocktail and chatted to the person next to her about whatever, which meant that Cora, who had a much kinder ear for gossip than others, engaged her.

“You know that actor who’s sleeping with the Prime Minister’s wife? He’ll be in a TV show in the fall,” she said.

“I heard it’s such a soap opera; the Prime Minister’s affairs, I mean, not that TV show.”

“Yeah, it’s Pointe. You know, that cops drama in Montréal.”

“Henry, this guy I work with, is a real fan. He says he likes the intense action and the plotlines. It seems to be the only thing that keeps him somewhat relaxed; otherwise he’s quite harried, and seems to stress out about work, his family, his dog, his family, the kids not doing well in school, and family, of course. They have quite the overactive home life. Talk about soap opera,”

She inquired, “Really? What kind of soap opera?” She scavenged for interesting tidbits and factoids just as much as she spread it around. She then saw an attractive man and tried to catch his eye. This man was Zachary, and he pretended not to notice; when she was drunk, she tended to forget people’s availability status, but one could hardly blame her in this particular case: Zachary and Christine had started dating only a week previously, after four attempts by Eunice to get them together.

“There seems to be an ongoing fight with his wife about her credit card, for one; she tried to get a new one, and some loan officer on the phone from wherever said it could not be approved. I hear it around the water cooler all the time, and then there’s the fact that they’ve fallen into a sort of rut in terms of their daily routine; he was complaining that he always ate the same thing, but I think it’s just his fault for not knowing how to cook. He never learned, you see; he lived off Kraft Dinner and frozen pizzas in his university days.”

“Fascinating,” said Belinda between sips of her cocktail. “That’s such an interesting image of his character. I bet he was coddled as a child; you know the kind: they were never taught how to cook, they didn’t do their own laundry, their mom made their bed, and you know, for cooking, I think it would be better if he were taught cooking. It makes him into a kind of man-child, only with kids,”

“He did have a rather extended youth; he only moved out of home when he was thirty-two.”

The conversation went on in this fashion for about five minutes, where they discussed (Cora told Belinda) various things about Henry: his hair, his clothing, his lunch, which was three pieces of herring as he was trying to lose weight, and his behaviour at meetings, which Cora found bombastic, and Belinda could only agree. It was quite remarkable that they could turn someone as boring as rice into a rather scintillating figure, thought Cora. After tiring of the minutiae of Henry’s life and character, the conversation turned to something else: Mario, the host of the party.

“I heard from Eunice they’re trying to get pregnant.”

Mario overheard. “Oh, yes,” he confirmed, and then went into unnecessary details.

“Really? Um, I think that’s just a bit too much information,” said Cora, and she tried to edge away from Mario, who was standing in the kitchen, out to the porch, where there was some light snow falling; gossip isn’t really gossip unless the subject is not overhearing. Belinda had finished her cocktail and fetched a beer, and continued: “I think they were inspired by Jim and Clarissa,” said she. “It’s never too early,”

“What about you?”

“Oh, I tried once with some guy, then I met Kale, and after a few years I found I didn’t really like him, so there was the divorce, and now, there’s this guy on whom I’ve got a crush; his name’s Kevin, but I don’t know about him. There’s also someone from my mom’s work. She works at Home Depot in Toronto, you see, and there’s this particularly handsome young man who I saw carrying some plywood under one arm when I last went to visit her at work three weeks ago.” Then Belinda just thought of something; “Hey, Eunice,” she called, walking inside and impolitely abandoning the conversation with Cora, who was rather miffed, “I called Clarissa at least fifteen minutes ago, and she lives just down the street. What’s keeping her?”

“It’s probably James’s death, though I don’t like how it’s been dragging on like this,” said Eunice, glad that she wasn’t the only one with Clarissa on her mind, “I’ll give her a call myself.”

She went to the telephone and dialled Clarissa’s number. The phone rang four times, and then it went to the message tone. “No answer,” said she. “Maybe she’s asleep; I don’t think we should disturb her,”

That was the last time that night that Eunice attempted to contact Clarissa; subsequent attempts would not have ended in success, she guessed: if Clarissa were asleep, she would remain asleep until morning. This instance, however, marked the time when Eunice started to be worried about Clarissa; she had attended last year’s Halloween party, when she had masqueraded as Marie Antoinette, the theme of that Halloween party being villains and villainesses. James, being their neighbour, and like them childless, was also invited to that party, but by a stroke of misfortune, he had the flu.

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The First Part of Chapter 14: Halloween and After

Eunice was hosting a Halloween party for herself and all of her friends who did not have the blessing of children; she had invited almost everyone she could think of, and was planning for quite a packed night, which it was: her friends, husband’s friends, and neighbours showed up. Eunice was dressed as Frankenstein’s wife, but Mario did not complete the costume, as he disliked face paint. Therefore, he dressed as batman.

“Isn’t a mask more uncomfortable than face paint?” She asked, in reaction to what he had chosen.

“But face paint feels icky,” he said.

“Very well, I’ll just hope that someone else comes as Frankenstein.”

She noted the appearances of the guests, as they arrived: Christine was a female vampire; Belinda had borrowed Eunice’s slutty witch costume that she had decided against wearing, Peter, the comedian, came in a mask, disguised as the Prime Minister, while her friend Rana from Kingston was in a goblin costume. She was disappointed that Clarissa had not shown up yet; it was 8:30, and she couldn’t possibly be at work as she had seen her on the bus on the way home; she had even seen her open the door, so she could only be home. She gave her the benefit of the doubt and assumed she would show up fashionably late, although that wasn’t her style. She also occupied herself with Clarissa––indeed, who wasn’t thinking of her, who was still in mourning over the loss of her husband.

Peter was introducing himself to Mario: “Hi, my name’s Pete,”

“You mean Peter Charles Ku, the comedian? The one who satirises politicians?”

Peter, amazed at having been recognised beneath a mask, was quick on his feet. “No, not that one,” Mario looked disappointed.

“Actually, I do satirise politicians. Have you heard there might be an imminent election call? The opposition is all geared up for a Christmas campaign,”

“Really? Well, I wouldn’t know; I don’t follow politics.”

“The opposition say Meach has spent too long in power. He’s grown corrupt, and has forgotten his principles.”

“Is that them saying that or you?”

“Well, both; either way, it provides fodder for me. Have you heard the one about him, the French President, and the walrus? Well, the French president is very fat, he has a big moustache, and everybody calls him ‘walrus’ behind his back, but nobody does so to his face. Meach and his Foreign Minister, Alain-Bertrand Glengarry, both made the same mistake of referring to him that way. The look on the poor guy’s face was priceless! Then he went on the news kvetching about it to anybody who would listen. None of them took him seriously, and he moped all around Europe.

“Then there’s what the Bloc leader, Valence, said about seal hunters. Unfortunately, it wasn’t seal hunting season, which is April, and then it got picked up by all the networks, and not everybody understands French; and you know what the French word for ‘seal’ is, right?

“Let’s not forget Question Period; it’s brilliant; half of my material comes from Question
Period,”

“There was that good one on Friday that I can remember,”

“Ah, yes: ‘Don’t you have any new ideas?’

“‘Don’t you?’ It reminds me of Agnes MacPhail, not that I was alive then, of course,”

Mario laughed; he had remembered watching the CBC piece on CNN misinterpreting “seal” in French, leaving many Americans thinking he was cursing his constituents. At that moment, Rana noticed Peter, and said, “Are you Peter Charles Ku?”

“Who?”

“Don’t kid around; I recognise you from your show on CTV.”

“Fine, whatever,” and then Peter turned to talk to Rana, who was still agog at seeing a
comedian at a friend’s house.

“Really, I’m not that well known; my show comes on at midnight,” he protested.

Mario, not wishing to bother Peter––he was a polite host––turned to another of his guests, Christine: “Nice vampire costume, it’s very seductive.”

“Thanks, my boyfriend and I have a Dracula theme going on. I’m supposed to be Dracula’s wife. Oh, Vlad!” she called her boyfriend, whose actual name was Zachary. He came over, and greeted Mario; they knew each other through Eunice, and Zachary was friendly with Mario from their dinners together.

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