The Eighth Part of Chapter 17: Three Families, Three Christmases

Melvin and Juliana, on the other hand, were luckier in the endeavours of romance: Melvin had married a woman named Adrienne, who would also be coming, and Juliana had married and had children, both of whom were at the breakfast table, discussing which of their teachers they liked.

Melvin followed up. “Do you think you’ll ever succeed? Maybe this Kevin just doesn’t like you; perhaps he has something else going on.”

This, along with geographical distance, was one of the reasons that she didn’t get together with her siblings and meet face-to-face that often. They were not supportive of her, as this was a continuation of an intense sibling rivalry from their respective high school days. It was a wonder that their rivalries were as intense as they were given that Juliana was six years older than Belinda and Melvin five years younger.

“Maybe you should be pursuing other avenues,” said Juliana, unkindly.

“I know perfectly well what I’m doing,” she snapped.

“You are getting on; forty is not what you would call youthful, you know,” put in Adrienne.

“I remember when I met Adrienne: it was at Casino Rama.”

The look of incredulity on Suzanne’s face was evident to everyone.

“Why am I only finding out now?” She asked.

“I had just won at blackjack, and Melvin here told me that gambling was a sin, and shouldn’t I be a bit ashamed. So of course, I said, ‘it’s no sin if you win.’ And I kept winning throughout my life.” This much was true: Melvin was a successful car dealer, the two had collaborated with Myron and Juliana to purchase an expensive cottage west of Parry Sound, and they had a houseboat in the Barrie Marina. They also seemed to always get the latest expensive gadgets: they had flat-screen televisions in their house and cottage back in the day when they were about as expensive as a car, they had Macbooks, a sophisticated surround-sound stereo in their home that they ostentatiously showed off when they had guests over, and a Ferrari in the driveway. Belinda could only look on jealously whenever she came over, which was rare, as her gadgets and toys were nowhere near as shiny; she only had cable, a poor aging television, and as she spent plenty of nights eating at fancy restaurants rather than at home, she did not have much savings despite the well-paying job she had had.

Suzanne thought that the axiom just stated by Melvin was a very dangerous one to live by, particularly when gambling. “I hope you dropped that belief soon enough,” she said tentatively, hoping against reason that this was true.

“Why would I? It has served me well over the years.”

Suzanne tried to steer conversation away from this topic and toward something else. “So, what do you think of the election?”

Juliana offered her opinion. “I think Duff is going to be Prime Minister. I was talking to a friend from university who lives in Sault Ste. Marie now, and she says the whole town’s in an uproar over that patronage scandal. Their MP is Angus Ross, so it’s puzzling how that all works out. She said that a radio host from there had put it well: ‘he’s gone Ottawa’. I also heard similar sentiments from a friend from North Bay who drops in from time to time; that riding went to Meach by the slimmest of margins last time, and now partisans are saying that Celina Coleville can be unseated this time around.”

“You mean the Minister of Public Works?”

“That’s the one. In Barrie, though, there’s not much of a contest: there are a lot of very big fans of Duff around there, and they are none too pleased with the patronage scandal; they expect hard work for their tax dollars, after all.”

“I think I shall be voting for the socialists, you know, because of their transportation policies; Via Rail needs more money, the train I rode here has seen better days, and I quite like the idea of building up rapid transit systems.”

Juliana said, “I quite like the idea of getting more trains. The drive here from Sudbury’s a nightmare, and the train is not much better, it doesn’t even come every day, and the station isn’t conveniently nearby. I don’t think it should be just Belinda who gets good train service from where she lives.”

“I don’t mind the car. It’s pretty convenient to drive around Barrie; here, on the other hand, driving is a nightmare.”

The conversation wended its way until dinner, and Belinda could never seem to find a good point to say that she had been laid off, but of course saying that she was laid off would be a form of denial; she was actually a bit ashamed of the way her job at Cognos had ended. Of course, she had actually been fired but she would rather spare her family that information; it would only invite ridicule. For this reason, it was not entirely the lack of an opportune time to mention her new unemployed status; it was more that she would rather keep her family in the dark. Still, they were going to find out one way or another. At least I didn’t drop dead, she thought.

“Did you say something?”

“No,”

“I thought I heard you mutter ‘drop dead’. That’s not a threat, is it? I mean, I’m not too passionate about viruses spreading among the squirrel population producing a mass die-off myself, but it’s nothing you would get enraged about,” said Melvin, who liked pushing his sister’s buttons. He knew perfectly well that Belinda was thinking about something to herself, but didn’t want to share; he would get it out of her eventually, needling and nagging a person relentlessly always does that, especially in Belinda’s case.

“You know, about transportation, I think it defines neighbourhoods; my neighbourhood is quite walkable, for instance, and people talk to each other on the way to their shopping, on their way to work, and everywhere generally. I don’t think there would be that sense of camaraderie had the neighbourhood been more oriented towards the car.”

“I think the neighbours might also have something to do with that; in Sudbury, there are some good people, and some people you just don’t get along with. There’s this guy Steve who I share a fence with, for instance; he’s always hanging his underwear out for all to see, his garden looks to be on the overgrown side in the summer, and he doesn’t like me in general. Just last week, the kids were on their snowmobiles in the gully, when his underwear blew off the line and into Myron’s face; Myron wasn’t pleased, let me tell you that.” Myron provided well for the family, Juliana was thankful for that, but when she married him, he was brawny and muscular, the epitome of masculinity as portrayed in the media. Now, however, he had a beer gut; she still loved him; what woman would not love a man who made so much money working for Inco?

Due to the strained relations with her family, Belinda left early on Boxing Day, not caring to spend the day in the crowded Eaton Centre, which she had done when she was married, long ago. She caught the first train home that day, which left at 8:30, and was home in time for a late lunch; at home, she was greeted by a mess on the driveway; there had been a snowstorm on Christmas eve and another one on Christmas, so Eunice told her, and since the snowplough came through, she had to step over a mound of snow that nearly reached her elbows; on top of that, there was a thaw that day, and all six metres of her driveway was covered in a slushy mess, which would freeze and become treacherous at night, and all the more difficult to remove the next day; hence, she spent twenty minutes clearing her driveway.

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The Seventh Part of Chapter 17: Three Families, Three Christmases

Belinda would be spending Christmas with her mother in Toronto, as per family tradition. She did not have much contact with her family apart from her mother, because they had always teased her, there was an intense sibling rivalry, and her brother and sister would pick on her for whatever reason. Of course, it was childish, but they continued it anyways, as they had from when they were much younger. Lately, they had been making malicious comments about her continued singlehood; it wasn’t as if it mattered to her siblings, they only cared insofar as they could needle Belinda about it. Belinda thought they would have grown out of that by now. Hence, she went to her mother’s more out of family obligation than any real desire for the day. In previous years, she would see her family much more often; she once spent a significant portion of her summers at the family’s cottage on Rice Lake, and she would spend Thanksgiving there also, but she had ended those traditions several years ago. She wondered why other people didn’t seem to have these problems; James’s sister Katherine liked him very much, as did Clarissa’s brother and sister, from what she could tell at the funeral.

Suzanne had pared down the celebrations, due to Home Depot having laid her off. Her children were chipping in on the presents, and a large portion of the food, which made up for the lack of money on Suzanne’s part. Belinda had arrived the previous day and would be staying over until Boxing Day before heading back home, as would Juliana, while Melvin would just be visiting for Christmas Day. It was Christmas morning, and the three women, mother and daughters, were sitting around the fireplace in the den, which had a view of the ravine behind the house. Juliana`s husband Myron was in the living room watching a football game he had taped.

Suzanne had many tchochkes around the house, which meant that novelty items had been out of the question for Belinda; she also had a full wardrobe with a nice assortment of clothes, so she didn’t buy her any clothing either; with those two options out, she purchased Suzanne some books. Gift giving was important, but the time spent with the family was much more so even if that were the case for her mother only, and Belinda didn’t particularly care what she received.

“101 duck recipes? Why, thank you, Bela.”

“That’s not the only book,”

“You got me Nicholas Nickleby and Hickory Dickory Dock! This book looks hefty; it will take a while to read it; perhaps being unemployed is not such a bad thing after all.”

Melvin and his wife Adrienne arrived later in the afternoon; they had spent the most on presents, first because Melvin liked Myron and his mother, and secondly because he was the most fortunate child, with the best luck and the most money, and he liked showing off.

Melvin had also given her books, some of which were quite expensive, while Juliana gave her clothing and some chocolate. After presents came conversation, as there was a lot of catching up to do with the family; what with the three kids living so far from home, there was not a whole lot of opportunity for them to meet face-to-face; most of their communication was done by phone and over the Internet.

“I’ve told mom about this beautiful couple, but you haven’t heard. It’s so sad: the husband died, and the woman, Clarissa, is now unhappy. I thought there was something fishy about it; James, the husband, was in his thirties, and one doesn’t just drop dead without people, you know, asking questions. So I asked around, and it turns out to be a heart attack. It still seems suspicious that after his death, Clarissa inherited everything, which would mean, if she were some greedy person of no morals, she would have had a big incentive right there. Oh, and all my friends aren’t talking to me anymore; they think I’m being a nosy parker. Do you think I’m nosy?”

“Not at all, Bela dear,” said Suzanne, though she had already heard this sob story, and was getting bored of the plot line; in her opinion, once was enough for a tragedy such as that.

Juliana said, “I heard you have some flame going on. How’s that coming along?” Juliana heard this not from Belinda directly, but rather from her neighbour in Sudbury back in June, who happened to know Kevin, the subject of Belinda’s affections, in a rare moment of warmer than icy relations; the neighbour didn’t know the relation between Juliana and Belinda, but Juliana was shrewd.

“I think he’s playing hard-to-get.”

Melvin asked, “What was his name again?”

“Oh, Kevin. He’s a dream, he’s so handsome, really well-built, well-groomed, and he seems to have a lot of money, telling from his clothes.”

Juliana said, “So, you’re still trying to find a man after the divorce, eh?” She liked to make pointed and unnecessary observations such as this.

“She takes after her mother, don’t you,” said Suzanne, affectionately touching her knee. Suzanne had been divorced twenty-five years previously, and had remained single ever since.

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The Sixth Part of Chapter 17: Three Families, Three Christmases

With dinner and cake eaten, Mary and Andrew were in conversation upstairs, where they were sure the parents would not overhear.

Mary asked her husband, “Clarissa still seems rather morose, don’t you think?”

“Yes; I miss her smile,”

“So do I,”

Mary thought back to when she used to call Clarissa “Miss Sunshine”, “Miss Dazzling Whites”, and “Miss Happy-go-lucky”. From what she heard, happy-go-lucky was an apt description of how she and James had met. She dearly wanted the Clarissa with the pleasant demeanour back, and the Clarissa with the melancholy demeanour taken away; it was almost as if they were two different people, as if some part of her personality had died with James.

“What do you think we can do to cheer her up?” She asked Alice, who was beside her.

Alice reacted. “Short of finding her another man?”

“Another man may cheer her up, but do you think it’s a really…tasteful thing to do?”

“It maybe somewhat lacking in taste, but at least it will put a smile on her face again, and that’s what really matters.”

“Do you think we should take her to a movie tomorrow night? It might help her get over the slump,”

“I can’t help remembering the greeting she gave me: ‘Oh, hello Mary.’ Normally she would have said: ‘Mary!’ and would then rush up to me and give me a big hug. Speak of the devil! Clarissa, we were just talking about you; we were discussing ways to cheer you up. We miss the smiling Clarie, and we want her back!”

“I want that part of me back too, but alas: James has left, and so has my spark.”

“Please Clarissa, tell us it’s just on vacation! We like happy Clarissa who talks about various boring things pertaining to the Bank of Canada’s monetary policy, not morose Clarissa who talks about the same thing! When you put a smile on your face, inter-bank overnight lending rates sound at least halfway interesting.”

“They call it the dismal science for a reason, you know,”

Alice came into the room with her son in tow; Sean’s mouth was covered in chocolate; Alice had failed to prevent him from finding out where Margaret and Hyram kept their chocolate fudge, and he had made short work of it.

“So, what would be best? Do you want a new man? Do you want to laugh some more? Hey, how about you and I go to the movies on Tuesday and we can watch something funny. Jake can take care of that little monster.” Alice gestured to her son Sean, who was old enough to run around and wreak havoc on the house, but seemingly too young to understand the phrase “honey, please put that down,” which was often said to him in the context of him holding knives, vases, small animals and porcelain figurines; tonight he was causing Margaret no end of vexation. The sight of him was enough to put a smile on Clarissa’s face, which was just as much a smile of longing for when she would be harassed by a terrible two-year old as of amusement at the sight of him blowing raspberries.

Jacob said, in observation of his younger sister, “Hey, Sean got you smiling! Do you want to take care of him for us? That would certainly make us happy, and you’ll get some preparation for yourself. You can’t get too much of that; you are due in May, after all.”

The jesting question made Clarissa smile. “It’s nearly nine,” she said.

“Oh, yes, it’s nearly time to go. I’ll tell Andrew.” Mary went to the living room, where Andrew had wandered off shortly into their conversation, and was now talking to Hyram about the environment; she had just caught the tail end of it: “––and that’s why there needs to be more investment in public transportation.”

“Andrew, honey; it’s getting late, and I would like to return to Kitchener.”

“Really?” He glanced at his watch, to find out that it had stopped. He then looked at the grandfather clock just visible in the hall to confirm what his wife was saying.

“Oh, yes,” Andrew was much less enthusiastic about leaving than Mary; he liked the company of his wife’s family. “Well, thank you so much, Margaret, again for your hospitality.”

“It’s nothing, Andrew,” she said. Why hadn’t I developed this sort of rapport with James? Why should I feel so much closer to this son-in-law than the other? It was strange how she had taken a shine nearly immediately to Andrew, but not James. She thought he might still have been alive, had she taken a greater interest in him. Maybe it’s something that simply started on the wrong track. “Goodnight, Andrew and Mary, and Merry Christmas!”

Margaret hugged and kissed Mary and Andrew as they left.

Jacob and Alice also made to leave, while Sean, obviously not wanting to leave, made as if to be oblivious to all that was going on around him, and picked up a book to look at the pictures; this was a new stall tactic; previously he would have just screamed if he wasn’t getting his way.

“What’s this?” he asked nobody in particular.

“Oh, that’s the CN Tower,” replied Margaret.

“Sean, we have to go, honey,”

“No!”

“Sean––”

“Happy here!”

Alice took Sean firmly by the hand, and smiling at Margaret, bade her good-bye.

Sean screamed, “But mommy, I don’t wanna go!” Sean still found the old tactics useful from time to time.

After the family had left, Margaret turned to Clarissa. “I had been meaning to ask you something: how are you coming along in terms of your baby?”

“Very well; it seems to be the thing that’s giving me hope. I really appreciate the crib you gave me; I hadn’t gotten around to buying one myself. I really like all the kids’ books you gave me as well.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to have purchased something that would clutter your house; the baby isn’t due until May, at any rate. By the way, have you determined the gender?”

“The doctor said it was to be a girl.”

“That’s so nice! I think Sean would like to have a playmate, that way he wouldn’t annoy
me so much!”

“Really? I would have thought that they might grow to plot things together, you know, horrible things, and such stuff that toddlers dream up.”

“Oh, please, let’s concentrate on the positive: you are going to be a mother, and that’s simply wonderful,”

Clarissa smiled softly. “Thank you, for thinking of me,”

“Caring for a daughter in need is a mother’s foremost duty, Clarie, now matter how old she is,”

The double meaning of this statement was not lost on Mary, who was standing nearby, first as an affirmation of the relationship between Margaret and her daughters, and secondly as a reminder and admonishment for Clarissa to take good care of herself for her baby’s sake. Speaking of which, she seemed to be taking the pregnancy well enough; she didn’t seem sick all the time, or perhaps it was her putting on a brave face under all the pressures of work, loss and motherhood.

Clarissa sniffed. “Well, goodnight mom.” With that, she went upstairs into the room she had lived in as a child, and went to sleep, as it was a very busy day, and all the food had its effect on people.

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The Fifth Part of Chapter 17: Three Families, Three Christmases

They finished eating their turkey, which was particularly delicious; Clarissa saved the potatoes for last. Alice wondered how widowhood was treating Clarissa; it was quite tragic to have that happen so young. I wonder if it would be any different had he died a violent death; at least that way some sort of blame could be assigned, but no; she doesn’t even have that recourse, which would be wrong if it were thought of as a form of revenge. Thank goodness Jacob is as sturdy as a rock, and still skinny; we wouldn’t want another death in the family. Thinking herself fortunate for having married an apparently healthy man was rather selfish, she thought, and it made her the tiniest bit uncomfortable; but was it really selfishness to think this? Perhaps not: it would certainly be selfish to want a better husband, or more money, or more fame, not the acknowledgement of her husband’s own health vis-à-vis her sister-in-law’s husband, deceased of a heart attack. It wasn’t that Jacob was skinny due to how he ate, either; she thought that Jacob ate as much as any other man, although his weight had not seemed to change since they had first met. It’s odd, she thought; some people are lucky that way: mom and dad––Alice thought of Margaret and Hyram as a second set of parents––are looking very well-preserved; they are both well into their sixties, and neither of them are fat, and dad even looks trim considering his sixty-seven years.

“What do you think of Duff?” asked Mary.

Jacob answered his sister. “I don’t think his forestry policies are particularly good. He was talking about the need to promote forestry products like pencils and paper, but I don’t see why the government needs to take over the role of marketing that. That should be the job of the logging companies, not the governments. The federally mandated minimum stumpage fee that a province can charge is a good idea, though. Trees have been undervalued for too long, and I think that contributed substantially to the denuding of a considerable part of Canada, particularly in B.C. I’m sure you’ve seen photos of the logging, it’s on Google Maps. Hopefully it will boost forest conservation, and we simply cannot have too much forest.”

Clarissa, who knew more than everyone else about the economy, was dominating the conversation.

“Duff’s oil policy, on the other hand, is purely playing to key constituencies in Alberta. He was saying that oil sands extraction is a clean source of energy, when almost everyone knows that is simply not true. It completely negates the very real photographs of those very real ducks that were covered in very real waste when they mistakenly landed in a settling pond; he can’t explain that away. Then there’s the significantly higher cancer rates among people living downstream of Fort McMurray on the Athabasca River.”

Jacob replied, “I don’t know why he’s pursuing that policy, and it sounds awfully close to pork to me; there aren’t even that many people in Fort McMurray,”

Mary said, “All this is very interesting to be sure, but political gossip is far more interesting,”

Alice inquired, “Didn’t Clarissa say that gossiping is wrong?”

Jacob jokingly said, “And what is she, a moral arbiter?” Clarissa ignored his comment.

“Yes, but that was personal gossip. When the gossip is about public figures, it’s much more complicated. Too much gossip is bad, and the Bible does warn against it––not that I have ever read the Bible––but politicians like Meach put themselves in the public eye. It’s almost like we were meant to discuss the minutiae of their everyday lives.”

Hyram remembered something he had read in the previous day’s Globe and Mail. “Speaking of which, there’s talk about misappropriation of funds from the public coffers used to pad expenses for consultants. I just heard this morning on an Ottawa gossip site that politicians are recommending that departments hire ‘consultants,’ which are really patronage appointments in disguise. Specifically, I heard that a close associate of the Prime Minister, Neville Dunac, was hired on his recommendation to be a consultant for Heritage Canada, and Catherine Ness, the former Minister of Finance who lost her seat in the last election––remember? ––Was hired for something similar at Industry Canada. These were both high paid jobs, and high fees were charged for supposedly very expensive work.”

Andrew said, “And I suppose that we, the taxpayers, got value for that money,”

Hyram answered his son-in-law. “It turns out, there was not much work done, and donations to the Prime Minister’s election campaign were claimed as business expenses. You simply can’t get away from corruption when it comes to politicians and money.”

“Really?”

“Really!”

As amusing as the story may sound in the history books, indeed––Mary and Jacob were both laughing––Hyram was not amused. The nerve, he thought. Here we are, all working very hard, and those people think they can coast on the milk of our labour!

Margaret was wondering about Clarissa’s affairs in her neighbourhood. “Say, Clarie, do you know that bitchy person you didn’t invite to your wedding? What was her name, Belinda? I heard about her from that nice couple, David and Pia, who were at the wedding.”

“Right now, the latest that I have heard of her, which I have heard in conversations with Eunice and others, was that she had been fired from her job for being too loose-lipped about her boss’s love affair with his secretary. I wasn’t paying attention to names, which is perhaps fortunate, as the whole affair seems rather sordid. Eunice said that Belinda was distraught, but she was idly interested in Jim’s death for some reason; thought there was some darker story, apparently. But you know the whole affair and can see it for what it is.”

“Why is she so interested?” Inquired Jacob.

“It’s in her character to be the town gossip. If I really want to make something well known, I can simply tell it to Belinda and tell her to keep it a secret. That’s where she primarily fails. I can get no shortage of information simply by listening to others, but I don’t pass it along that often, which is how I see it; indeed, I kind of view myself as being almost as well informed of people as Belinda is. Maybe if she could learn to keep her mouth shut, then she would find more things out. That’s the key difference between Eunice and her: Eunice knows when to stop.”

“I think that what you describe as gossip may be ill-fitting; I take it from our correspondence that you view gossip as talking about anybody doing something that you have not witnessed yourself; on the one hand, that may be too restrictive, as you might also include the perceptions that people have of others; on the other hand, it may be too broad, because much of the Prime Minister’s patronage of his friends was uncovered, essentially, by a form of sanctioned gossip.”

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The Fourth Part of Chapter 17: Three Families, Three Christmases

At nine, Clarissa rose and greeted her parents after her breakfast of cereal.

During lunch, while they were eating sandwiches made from leftover chicken breast on whole wheat bread, Margaret asked Clarissa, “So, Clarie, I’ve been wondering about the stock market; we’ve all watched it go on a roller coaster ride: it went down, then it rebounded briefly about a year and a half later, went down again for a month or so, and now it’s on a tear. What’s it going to do next?”

“I wouldn’t waste my time too much in guessing. Are you familiar with the old adage: ‘forecasting is at best a waste of time and at worst a sin’?”

“Indulge me anyways,”

“Very well. I think it will stay flat for a while.”

“Why?”

“From the late 1950s until the late 70s, the stock market changed relatively little. There were some oscillations from year to year, but the Dow Jones in 1979 did not look very different from that in 1959. Now, I think that the stock market crash has really made people re-evaluate their attitude toward investing, and of course, there will be much more government regulation that will hopefully put a damper on any prospective bubbles. That’s the way it was during the post-war era. Don’t hold me to my word, though; my name is Clarissa, not Cassandra. Economic forecasting is, as I said, a very dodgy business.” The remainder of lunch passed in silence, with the exception of chewing noises.

Later in the afternoon, Andrew and Mary arrived from Kitchener, and after they finished complaining about the traffic and put down the mousse that was their contribution to the food, they settled down and hugged the rest of the family; they were the last to arrive, the younger Varrettes having arrived from Mississauga ten minutes previously.

Clarissa asked, “Mary, How’s Kitchener?” as a way of making conversation about something other than a topic as mundane as the traffic.

“It’s decent; the weather’s fine enough, and we haven’t had too much snow yet. The only problem I have is with the neighbours; given that I live next to a rental house, there are always young university students around. This year they’ve been particularly loud; they hosted a huge Halloween party there, for instance, and the ringleader of the house, his name is Malcolm or something, was drunk and wouldn’t shut up until two in the morning. At least it became quiet in the last two weeks; they had exams,”

“At least it wasn’t dull,” said Jacob.

“Oh yeah, every day brings some new form of excitement with them,”

Andrew said, “Daniel-Matthew Night-Haig was musing about the markets yesterday in his column. I always find his turns of phrase quite funny, you know how he is.”

“’The markets are forever twisting in an elaborate, incomprehensible dance, in a perpetual paroxysm of fear and over-exuberance’ was one of his more memorable lines,” added Alice.

“Mom, for some reason I can’t figure out why you didn’t warm up to James,” said Clarissa.

Margaret said, “Well, there seemed to be some sub-current of coldness that I could sense when I met him.”

“Is this about you trying to pigeonhole people into various stereotypes framed by literary characters? If that is the case, he’s certainly not cold, and he’s not a male version of Kate out of East of Eden.”

Margaret added absently, “At some point he gave off a distinctive aura of Duddy Kravitz; maybe it was that he studied economics?”

“I studied economics, you know, and Duddy Kravitz is not a representation of all economists. Why do you have this obsessive need to put someone into a small category, such as, ‘okay, Sue so-and-so reminds me a lot Bianca from The Taming of the Shrew? It’s much more complicated than that: at some point or other, some part of a wide variety of fictional characters may be seen in people. At times, James reminded me of Gabriel Oak; at others, he resembled that character what’s-his-name from Brave New World. These were only facets of his personality, you know.”

“Well, I may be wrong. Do you know who is really easy to pigeonhole into a specific literary character? The Prime Minister: his every move speaks “Macbeth” to me; his scheming, his dark designs, and his temper all point to a character who has numerous things to hide. He also reminds me of Michael Henchard from The Mayor of Casterbridge, who is himself modelled on Macbeth.”
“I must say, Clarissa, your depiction of James was much better than my experience with Ian; I always saw him as a lecherous person, like an overly virile character out of a Margaret Laurence novel, like Tonerre. That was one of the reasons for the divorce; he was an alcoholic, he was lecherous, he had a decidedly lowbrow view of others, and I found out he was cheating. Then I met Andrew.”

“I believe that it is said that great minds talk about ideas, normal minds talk about events, and small minds talk about people, and I would prefer to talk of ideas.”

“I agree with Andrew,” said Alice. “What do you think of the announced plan to turn the Atlantic waters into a marine reserve?”

Jacob said, “I think that’s a very good idea; I think that we, not only as Canadians, but as a species, have been abusing the oceans by taking too much from it, by using all sorts of destructive fishing techniques, especially bottom-trawling, and we really need to do some work to restore it.”

Hyram opined, “I guess the major qualm that I have with it is how they plan to enforce the protection and conservation of fish? That’s a lot of ocean that they are going to protect, and the coastline is huge, so I guess that the issue is how the government will prevent it from becoming a park only in name. There are all sorts of things that they would have to do, and the extent of the police state required to enforce such a conservation area would be frightening; you would need quite a large fleet of patrol boats, I imagine, you would need regulations limiting the length of fishing lines, the amount of rope used in nets, the size of fishing boats, and all sorts of sundry other things.”

Alice said, “Well, I think that the proposal would be enforced in large part by moral suasion, which is how they enforce no-smoking areas. I’m sure that there would be some people who would flout the rules, but I believe the large majority of Atlantic Canadians are respectful enough of the law not to cause a fuss.”

Clarissa added, “Many small fishing villages in Atlantic Canada also have a severe unemployment problem. I have a friend who worked at Fisheries and Oceans Canada named Nicolas who went to visit a lot of those communities, and almost every small town that used to be a fishing port has an unemployment rate above ten percent; most of them have unemployment rates above twenty percent, and he said some communities, I think he mentioned one on the Magdalen Isles, and another on Newfoundland’s Northeast coast, where almost everyone was out of work, and the buildings were slowly being abandoned. That was all due to the collapse of the fishing industry, so I think when Meach proposed this two weeks ago, he had an ear to reviving the fisheries by first putting in place the reserve such that the stocks would recover, and then when they are recovered enough, the fisheries would re-open, although they would have a lot of new regulations and limits.”

Margaret had a different take. “Ah, yes, how do you define ‘recovered’? Is it when a fishing line cast never becomes empty?”

“I think Meach said that when he was making the announcement he would be using historical averages going back five hundred years, and if you can recall that story about Cabot’s ship being impeded by the sheer mass and abundance of fish in the Grand Banks, that’s what he’s aiming for,” put in Jacob.

Hyram added, “I think there would also be an issue with the credibility of those reports. Don’t forget that Cabot was trying to make himself look as good as possible in the eyes of the English Monarchy who were then employing him as an explorer.”

Mary responded, “I know, but I still think that his story has some credibility, and I have also seen photographs of prize fish back in the thirties. I saw a black-and-white picture of a cod that was the size of a small car; the ocean had leviathans living in it before we fished them clean. It’s not that all of the oceans are dead, it’s that it is economically unviable to fish; that’s why unemployment is so high in the Maritimes.”

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The Third Part of Chapter 17: Three Families, Three Christmases

André, who had moved to Toronto at the start of September, had been feeling antipathetic toward his mother; he anticipated bad blood in his future, and could not understand the viciousness of the custody battle she had waged; he would miss all of his friends, and as a protest, all meals in the household were eaten in stony silence. He liked to escape the dreariness of home, and was in the Eaton Centre that day with one of his new friends, Quentin. He pointed someone out to André.

“Do you see that woman?”

“The one walking, there?

“Yes, the pregnant one.”

“She looks rather distraught.”

“I think she would have been pretty were she smiling,”

“And had kept her hair orderly.”

The woman, an attractive brunette, looked at them, evidently having overheard.

“I prefer that people not make snap judgments.”

“Sorry ma’am; you just looked sad, that’s all.”

The woman stopped. “In that case then, you’re right; I’m a widow.” She then hurried off into the Eaton Centre, apparently to do some last minute Christmas shopping.

Good luck with that, thought André. It’s crowded like hell in there.

“What’s your brother Mike doing?”

“I don’t know, he’s in Montréal or something visiting his girlfriend; then he’ll be going to dad’s place in Buckingham,” replied André.

His brother was not a particularly nice person, especially when he was around; he was always bossy, and it puzzled him as to why he had so much difficulty finding a job.

“Divorced parents suck; my mom’s always insisting I call my dad ‘Maurice’ when I’m with her, as if that will deny his parenthood in some way. I don’t know why they split custody,” said André. He didn’t like his mother, Rose, that much either; she was always asking how Maurice treated him, and not in a kind way; she was much too obsessive, and endlessly sought to prove herself as a better parent.

The two went into the mall and headed toward the food court.

“Hey, look at that woman,” said Quentin.

“You mean the old one?”

The object of their attention noticed them. “It’s rude to point,” she said, and hurried past them in a huff.

“She doesn’t know how to dress for her age,” said André. She had been wearing jeans too tight for her, producing a muffin bulge in the waist, her blazer was inappropriately large, and he didn’t think much of the bright pink overcoat she was carrying in one arm.


Suzanne had just exited the Eaton Centre and entered Dundas Station, having finished her shopping, which given her jobless situation, consisted mostly of window-shopping, and she put on her pink overcoat, which was not really necessary considering that she would not be going outside until she reached Old Mill. Suzanne had only purchased some chocolates, and considering she could have done that in a small corner store much closer to home, the main purpose of her trip downtown was people-watching; she had seen the usual fashionable young crowd that spent large amounts of money in stylish stores, among other shoppers, but she had also seen an unhappy-looking pregnant woman, who she found quite pretty. There were also those two noisy youths she had passed on the way out; they were garishly dressed, looking somewhat like her two grandchildren, and rude, considering they had pointed at her and whispered. Someone really ought to tell them off, she thought; she did so, and in her opinion, nobody else was doing so at home. She went through the fare gate, watched the grey train pull into the station with its reassuring screech of wheels upon track, and boarded. Suzanne hoped for a cheerful Christmas, when she could forget her marital troubles, her son Melvin could forget the still-weak sales numbers at his dealership, and her son-in-law Myron could put off worry about his waistline, while Belinda had no worries at all, as was her fantasy.


It was Christmas morning, and like Suzanne, this was Margaret’s favourite time of the year; she was at the kitchen table with some coffee and a muffin; nobody else in the house was awake yet, and she and Hyram would be exchanging presents soon after breakfast. She was reading a story about polling written by Andrew Chadwick Heron in the previous day’s Globe and Mail:

Polls show Bruce Meach with a narrow lead over Cameron Duff ahead of the elections this January 17. While they are currently tied in leadership numbers, with 40% of respondents saying each would make a good leader, Meach is slightly ahead, which Mark Gainly, a pollster of the research and polling agency Treiserd-Wiss, has attributed to the attack ads which ran up until Christmas portraying Duff to be an ineffective leader causing divisiveness within his own party. The abovementioned survey is accurate to within three percentage points nineteen times out of twenty. Meach said yesterday, “The polls say I’m up, and I believe the momentum is on my side; not until the president of France says I’m a pig will I lose this election.” Meach went on to outline a new spending program aimed at improving urban transit infrastructure. “Under our governance, the government of Canada will spend one billion dollars per year over the next five years on rail transit projects in cities such as Ottawa, Quebec, Winnipeg, Kitchener, and Hamilton. We are confident that these projects will enhance mobility among city-dwellers, and help build the Canada that we need to be competitive in the future.”

He also reflected on how his government had reined the deficit in. “It was very remarkable that we managed to do it so quickly; after last year, it was very tough to get control of spending, but we did it, and we did it because we had a plan. This is the kind of leadership that Canada needs, and this is the kind of leadership that Canada will get.”

Cameron Duff, also on the campaign trail, announced new programs for the forest industry and the oil industry aimed at key constituency groups. Turn to page 4 for the story.

Margaret, with a history in the publishing business, knew Heron as a reporter, while not especially kind to his subjects, always left them feeling better; this was a relatively new strategy for Heron; in his younger days he had been more predatory, waiting for some important personage to slip up before he would pounce. She perused the other headlines, which were about an election in Lebanon, European Union negotiations with Russia, and the most remarkable performance of the stock market over the previous year. What will Clarissa have to say about the stock market, wondered Margaret; she was very interested to know why they had been rising so sharply. Her thoughts then turned to what the day would be like; Clarissa had been visiting friends the previous evening, and would arrive in the early afternoon, which meant she had to pick her up from Union Station, while Jacob and his family were to arrive at two. She must prepare the turkey, and of course the bread, which was by family custom tarragon rolls, had to be baked. There was so much to do! Luckily, the presents had been all wrapped the previous evening, the cheese was in the fridge, and Mary would be bringing the desserts. She put her coffee mug in the dishwasher and got the turkey, which had been thawing for two nights, out of the fridge.

Hyram had just woken up, and was warmly anticipating seeing all of his children that afternoon: Jacob and his wife Alice, Mary and her husband Andrew, and Clarissa, who had arrived on Christmas Eve, was pregnant, he noted happily. He hoped for Clarissa’s sake that she had stopped mourning over James’s death. While it was true that James and he had not been particularly close, Clarissa and James were close, and he simply wished to see his daughter truly happy.

Hyram had a light breakfast consisting of coffee, a piece of toast with some jam, and several oranges. After breakfast, he joined Margaret in the den, where Christmas presents would later be exchanged. He had gotten Margaret, who said she was contented and didn’t really need anything, a novel that looked interesting; they still loved each other deeply, but had stopped spending enormous amounts of money on each other long ago, each having fulfilled their material desires.

“Vanity Fair? Thank you, dear,” she said when she opened her gift; she had given him a pair of silver cufflinks, and he expressed similar appreciation. “I’ve been meaning to get this for a while, but I can never seem to find it,” she said. “Twaddle and Twankfors specialises in Canadian novels, so I don’t think we’ll be printing this any time soon,”

“I thought you had power,” said Hyram.

“Being a board member of a publishing house isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, honey; they’re always strained for money,”

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The Second Part of Chapter 17: Three Families, Three Christmases

“How are the science classes, Katie?”

“They’re going pretty well; it’s filled with all the usual suspects: the five kids or so who I love teaching, the fifteen people who are passable, normal kids who will probably get in the 70s or so, the two rambunctious kids who would do well if only they settled down, and then there’s that one lost cause. All my classes are something like that; I’m not teaching grade twelve chemistry this year like I was last year, hence there are fewer keen students; that class I just described was a grade ten, and there’s a grade nine class and a grade eleven class.”

Dinner passed relatively quietly, and the present opening that closely followed was happy, as Christmas should be.

“Clarie! You didn’t have to get me anything!” exclaimed Katherine as she read the card accompanying her gift, opened it and admired the white blazer that Clarissa had given her.

“Oh, you know, the expenses of raising a child haven’t come in a major way, unless you count the clothing and the furniture. Then my savings rate will plunge.”

Patricia turned to Ryan: “Ryan, have you thought about our retirement? It’s not that far off: we’re both in our sixties.”

“I guess we will have to work till we drop,”

“Um...”

“Oh, don’t worry, mom; I shall take care of you when you want to retire,”

“That’s very nice of you, Kate, but I wouldn’t want to burden my last living child with that sort
of legacy,”

“It’s no problem, really: I’m single, childless, and thus sitting on a pile of money. I should actually be more worried about myself: I’m thirty-one, and still single, without kids; now consider my position: I won’t have any kids to provide for me when I become old and bent.”

“You just need to find the right man, and keep trying again.”

Katherine did not like the sound of this advice; as if she hadn’t been trying hard enough already; as if the previous marriage to Mike had never happened; as if she hadn’t had enough of men as it was.

“Well, goodnight, Ryan and Patricia, and thanks for having me over. I need to get to bed; I’m leaving for Toronto in two days, and it’s a long trip, and anyways, the thing inside me is draining my energy. Thank goodness I’ll be taking the train,”

With that, Clarissa left for her home, and went home to sleep.


On the following day, Eunice was at Clarissa’s house after dinner, in order to see how she was doing. She felt sorry that one of her best friends was being unmercifully tossed about by the vicissitudes of fate; now, however, she was talking about something else entirely.

“Have you heard about Belinda? She was fired,”

“Oh,” said Clarissa, disinterested. Eunice knew that Clarissa had held Belinda in low esteem since June, and so didn’t set much store by her indifference.

“Her lips were too loose,” and she went into all the details and consequences, all the while perfectly well aware that many of the qualities she ascribed to Belinda could also be said of herself.

“As they say, loose lips sink ships. The Belinda is floundering right now,” said Clarissa.

“I think that refers to espionage, but whatever. So, what I really wanted to know was how you're doing,”

“Okay, I guess.”

Eunice immediately noticed the disconnect between her words and her facial expression, which said, “I’m still sad.”

“How are you, really?”

“Very well; I’m feeling slightly groggy and drained. Maybe it’s the pregnancy, or that I’ll be leaving for mom’s early tomorrow morning. I’ve never had to do this before. I would have been gone by now, in Toronto, and shopping for food at the St. Lawrence Market.”

“It’s really Jim, isn’t it? What can I do to help? You know it hurts me to see you sad like this. Do you want to go to a movie when you return?”

“Sure. I think I would like a comedy, but not a romantic comedy; I wouldn’t find any of those remotely funny. I was thinking of a gross-out comedy, something physical,”

“Something like Blades of Glory? Mario has that on DVD. I don’t know what he finds so funny about men with their faces in each other’s crotches, but he thinks that’s the funniest part of the movie. I kept laughing at the one guy’s effeminate dress.”

Eunice then thought of something else: “What do you think the Prime Minister meant by what he said? I heard it on the six o’clock news–– ‘And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.’”

“I think he was referring to the behaviour of the opposition–have you heard what Patrick Wakefield said about him? He insinuated that the Prime Minister was distracted by his wife’s antics, and his attitude toward women does nothing to advance gender equality,”

“There’s one area where he’s definitely lacking,” said Eunice. “There’s the prostitute, Andrea Colm’s messy resignation, and his relationship with his wife.”

“I think gossiping about this whole thing universally lowers the quality of political debate,” said Clarissa. “So let’s not talk about it too much; it’s regrettable that the Prime Minister can’t control his loins, but most people can channel that excess energy into other uses,”

“Perhaps he doesn’t get enough with his wife; I don’t have that problem with Mario, thank goodness,”

“That’s another thing I noticed about James; I thought the quality of his performance was lacking somewhat in the last week of his life,”

“Do you think it could be put down to premature ageing?”

“No; I suspect a different cause. Jim liked to eat fatty foods, or otherwise foods loaded with cholesterol, you know, the usual suspects: deep-fried objects masquerading as a meal, rich chocolate pudding, and of course there’s mousse, not to mention red meat,”

“You cooked him beef?”

“On occasion, but when I was away, or when he cooked, he was fond of roast beef, sirloin, or ground beef,” answered Clarissa.

“What about the mousse?”

“That was his favourite dessert,”

“And you say–”

“That all of that cholesterol blocked the wrong arteries, yada-yada-yada; you know how it goes,”

“How unfortunate,”

“Very unfortunate,” said Clarissa

“Anyways, I’m sorry about that vicious rumour that spread around after the funeral; you know the one about the drugs?”

“Yes, I remember,”

“I’ve been wondering where it came from, but it was Belinda who first told me that; I don’t know why she said it,”

“I wonder what made her think that Jim was a pill-popper,”

“And now look at where she is; unemployed, and her friends aren’t talking to her,”

“I don’t feel too sorry,”

“Linette said that her last days at work were awkward and unpleasant, too,”

“I’m not surprised; well, thanks again for visiting, Eunice,”

“It was my pleasure; it’s so nice to chat with the neighbours; well, Mario will be wondering what’s keeping me; I’d better hurry home,” and then she rose and left. Tomorrow, she anticipated happily, it would be warmer; it might even go above freezing, which would be a treat after more than a month of cold temperatures. Tomorrow, Clarissa would be visiting her parents, and Eunice sincerely hoped she would be happier, or at least a little less gloomy and lugubrious; it was the time of year to be cheerful, after all, and cheerfulness ought not to be treated as a duty, but a pleasure.

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The First Part of Chapter 17: Three Families, Three Christmases

The morning after the midwinter solstice was a cold one, and very clear, as the sun shone weakly on the glittering snow that covered everything by the road to a depth of nearly a metre. Ryan thought the iridescent crystals, which caught and refracted the reflected light off nearly everything, looked very pretty as they sparkled in all the colours of the rainbow. He and Patricia were celebrating Christmas that day, to accommodate Clarissa, who was to go to Toronto to visit her mother over Christmas. The day was a very busy one, of course: Ryan prepared the roast goose, while Patricia got the hors d’oeuvres in order, which consisted of an assortment of cheeses arranged on a plate with bagel crisps, shrimp, and cracker-thin foccacia. The presents had been wrapped, and were under the Christmas tree; the scene looked like a postcard, all awash in warm colours in contrast to the cold grays and blue tones that dominated outside. By three, almost everything was in order; it just remained to roast the goose and bake the bread. The oven was small and the goose was large, which meant that the bread would be going in first, resulting in them eating bread that had already cooled down, and everything would be ready at seven. Things didn’t go entirely to plan, however: the bread was burnt at the bottom, and Patricia prodded it.

“It will become soft in time for dinner,” she said.

The goose, on the other hand, was not quite ready in time for dinner, and Ryan nearly
forgot to put the liver in with the bird: “Oops! That’s my favourite part of the bird,” he said when he discovered this, and that resulted in a red and still-runny liver, which Ryan served to himself.

At four, Clarissa arrived; she was quite well dressed, with her hair pulled back in a ponytail. “Clarie! How nice to see you, and Merry Christmas!”

“Merry Christmas, Patricia,” she replied. Patricia thought the half-smile that accompanied the greeting was at least a little insincere; perhaps she was still grieving a bit over James. She herself was, to be sure.

“You’re looking very well right now: nice and big,” said Patricia, referring to Clarissa’s now large stomach.

“Oh yeah; this keeps me going,”

Clarissa passed through the vestibule, and after removing her boots and coat, placed the gifts she had brought under the tree.

“I think something the Prime Minister said last week seems relevant to my present situation: ‘tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty face from day to day’”

Ryan finished the quote: “––‘to the last syllable of recorded time’, yeah I’ve been wondering why he’s channelling Macbeth; it’s not so good to identify with him, especially at that point in the play; it foreshadows downfall,”

“For me, it’s relevant because life alone is wearing me down; between the pregnancy, work, and all sorts of other things, I’m getting older,”

“You don’t look any older,” said Patricia, who knew perfectly well this wasn’t true: there were faint crow’s feet traced next to her eyes, and there were shallow smile lines on her face. By “other things”, she assumed Clarissa meant her weekends volunteering at a local school, or growing workplace tensions about which she could only speculate: Clarissa did not talk about work to her.

Fifteen minutes later, Katherine arrived.

“Hello Kathy, how are you? Wait––are you crying? What happened?”

“I ran into my ex-husband when I was picking up some chocolates and a few groceries at the mall, and we inevitably started arguing. There was just too much going on, and he called me a money-grubbing bitch. I called him a control freak, and it got quite ugly from there.”

“Where did this happen?”

“Lincoln Fields. A lot of people were staring.”

“Oh, I’m sorry honey. Come in,”

Just our luck, thought Patricia; we had two kids get married, and neither of them worked out the way we had wanted. One gets divorced after five years, and the other died. How could two people grow so far apart over only five years? Hearing them talk was like hearing the radio on two different stations; they were on completely different pages, and both of them were screaming, “I want out!” They didn’t even have any children; maybe physical attraction was the only thing they had going for them, and there’s no denying, Michael, the ex-husband, was very handsome and well groomed. Maybe they weren’t having sex often enough; sure, Ryan and I have our arguments from time to time, but we’re always able to resolve our differences beneath the covers. It was still surreal to see their faces bent into scowls whenever they were looking at each other.

Then there was the other marriage, which ended in tragedy: why on earth did Jimmy have to die? Life’s just not fair; he died too young! Then she thought of something that had not previously occurred to her: their retirements were approaching, and Katherine wasn’t particularly rich, and Ryan and Patricia’s retirement funds were rather depleted, given that they were largely invested in stock, and they hadn’t sold soon enough to avoid the losses universally incurred during the stock market crash two years previously; she would bring it up with Ryan later.

After calming down and collecting herself, Katherine saw Clarissa standing down the hall.

“Oh, Clarissa! It’s so nice you could join us. We haven’t spoken since the funeral, so how are you dealing with his death? I’ll admit, it was a burden to me too, a sort of emotional hole. I thought about him at least every day, wondering what he would think of what I was doing. We were very close, of course.”

“I don’t know what a worse way for a marriage to end is: unexpected widowhood or a divorce. At least there’s no way I can share in the blame with widowhood, not that I blame you for that messy divorce from two years ago that you told me about. On the other hand, I would have liked to know him a bit better. Eight months is a little while, but it’s not years; I didn’t know all of his foibles. At the same time, he seemed distant to me occasionally, as if he were zoning out. Did your husband do that?”

“Well, sometimes he would be in his own world when I said that I wanted a kid. Other times, he didn’t do the dishes, and I quickly found his quirky habits irritating. But you felt he was distant at times? Does that mean that he was there but not there?”

“Sort of. I don’t know, it’s like, I would be telling him a story about that adorable kitten that belongs to the people on the next block, and his reply: uh-huh.”

“That’s Christine’s kitten Castor?”

“Yes, that’s the one,”

“Maybe it’s a guy thing; it is said that men tend to hold back their emotions,”

“At least we were close physically. I wonder why that didn’t lead to us being close emotionally,”

“You were close enough to conceive before you got married, which is more than I can say of my ex. What do you mean by ‘not close emotionally’? You got married, after all,”

“It’s more than that, though,” said Clarissa, and she looked as if she were about to continue, but trailed off.

Clarissa smiled a little. “That was a week before we were married; we were visiting my mother’s place, and I don’t think she was too pleased that conception occurred when she was so close, by which I mean close emotionally, as she’s very much attached to that house; she’s something of a prude that way. My father is also like that; they seem to be reflections of each other; they have near identical tastes, nearly the same wishes, and when you ask one’s opinion on something, you always know what the other thinks as well, because they are so much alike. Maybe it’s the effect of being together for so many years.”

“I think mom and dad went down the same route; there was always some sort of small argument, but they really have merged into the same person,”

“I wouldn’t say Ryan and I are the same, it’s more like we’re kindred spirits. You know what they say about the perfect pair complementing each other? That described us forty years ago, when we met. Now, I find that I am taking some of his opinions and ideas for my own, and he’s reciprocating.”

That might be that we have changing roles to play in life, thought Katherine. At one moment, you find your foil or your complement early on in life. In my case, I thought I had found my kindred spirit, but he turned out to be a reflection of all that I found irritating in the world, and what’s irritating for five minutes can be positively hateful when stretched into a marriage.

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