The Fifth Part of Chapter 24: Bleak Month

On the night of Friday, February 18th, Ken was indulging in a habit that at once brought easy camaraderie and liver troubles at his favourite bar with two of his friends, Herman and Ed. He did this because he said it warmed his blood on such a cold night, and it was a cold night; minus twenty and that was three hours after sunset; at the coldest point in the night, just before sunrise, there was promise that the temperature would reach thirty degrees below zero, leaving the air extremely cold, dry, and clear; at that temperature, one’s breath would come in visible puffs as the water vapour condensed out, quickly cooled and froze, creating a frosty rim on jacket collars.

Herman pointed out a woman to Ken. “You notice her?”

“I saw her last week”

“Week before that, too.”

“She’s getting progressively sluttier, have you noticed?”

“Yeah, I find it hot.”

“So do I, kind of. The thing is, she’s looking morose right now. Maybe she broke up with somebody.”

Clarissa overheard, even though there was some rather loud music playing. “Actually, I’m a widow. My husband died of a heart attack.”

“Isn’t it still a bad idea to hang out at a bar while you’re pregnant?”

“Oh, I don’t plan on drinking. I want to pick up. Speaking of which, what are you two doing tonight? Would it bother you to… attend to me?”

“Sorry, I hope you understand that I’m not exactly ready for a kid at the moment.”

“Oh,”

They could see Clarissa’s lip quiver before she turned around and left the place. The bartender turned and said, “This is the third time she ran out of this bar since New Year’s. Each time, someone asked about her pregnancy or why she was in a bar. The conversation would inevitably turn to how she got pregnant, what had happened to her husband, and, well you know. She never had a drink, either; I think she’s a poor, lonesome soul. Incidentally, she had to talk about her miscarriage each time; that made it worse.”

Ed, a frequent customer who was sloshed, said to the bartender, “What are you, some kind of philosopher?”

“I’ve seen all kinds of customers come in here. She’s odd; not like you, I’ve seen boozed up guys checking women out all the time.”

“I think she has a pretty face. Beauty is all in the eyes, you know.”

“Oh yeah, if you have a nice pair of eyes, you have it made.”

“You would have to be pretty lonely to go to a bar once a week for a month in an effort to pick up guys. I’m with my buddy Herman, here,” said Ed, putting an arm around Herman and pulling him into a tight hug. Herman, a person often mistaken for Ed, was at least a little uncomfortable.

“Um, thanks, Ed,” he said.

Ken pondered Clarissa after she had walked out the door, forgetting what she had told him. If she’s a widow, he thought, that must mean her husband died a violent death if he died young. If her husband were old, she would simply be a gold-digger, but for some reason, he could not see a gold-digger widow hanging out at a bar that was admittedly targeted at the university set who came over from the nearby campus. A gold-digger, thought he, would have her own bar at home, furnished with the money of her late husband. Therefore, her husband must have been relatively young, and of similar circumstances to her own. Was it violent, maybe a car crash? That seemed likely; car crashes do kill plenty of people, after all. It might also be some other dark tale of violence and woe. Ed turned to Ken and said, “So, what do you think of the Prime Minister?”

“Duff, you mean? He seems very smart and he has quite astute political instincts, which he’ll need if he is to last with such a small minority government. He hasn’t done anything too high profile yet; he promised ‘rationalisation of the bureaucracy,’ which obviously means cuts to the Public Service, and there was the promise of tax cuts and reform of the Employment Insurance system that was announced to be in the budget. Overall, there’s nothing particularly high profile; I think he aims to be a workhorse, which is nothing too flashy, but decent enough. The budget should be interesting,”

“That’s not so much like the American President.”

“Ah, yes; the world’s foremost admirer and proponent of all things glitzy; tell me about it,”

“Say, where are your kids? I hope you haven’t abandoned them?”

“Of course not; I’m too much of a responsible parent for that; Annette and Venesse are visiting mom and dad in Montréal.”

“That’s nice,”

“They said they wanted to see their grand-filles. They are really quite nice people, and doting. I hope my girls are getting their homework done.”

“What is it that happened between you and Viola?”

“I think it was something about the retirement plan: I wanted to buy stocks, you know, so I could sell them later, and live off the gains. She thought the money was better off squirreled away in an RRSP.”

“That was it?”

“I don’t think that was entirely it; she picked on me constantly for my drinking habits, and I really don’t think it’s a serious problem; what’s wrong with a couple of drinks? It doesn’t make me any less lovable a person. There was also the car; she coveted it so much. It was serviceable enough, which is all I care about, but she desired its glamour. She said I could do with a Sedan. Lucky I’m the sole breadwinner, while she was a housewife.” Ken also thought it was lucky of him that the judge had awarded him custody, with Viola getting visitation rights. “Awarded” was not an appropriate word to use in a divorce case, when all that remained was wreckage and kids who
hated both parents. He had to admit to himself, sometimes, that his drinking did occasionally get out of hand. He personally regarded this as a hold-out from when he was young; he and his wife had met at a crowded bar in Montréal, but Viola had grown out of the drinking habit, while he had not; it wasn’t that he was a nasty drunk; he was slower and more mellow when drunk; it was that his wife thought it was unbecoming, and she called him embarrassing in social situations, and he set a poor example to his daughters, an opinion expressed pointedly and often in front of them.

“You seem to be lost in thought,” observed Ed.

“Just ruminating on the past,” answered Ken.

“Baggage?”

“Lots; too much, in fact.”

“So that’s why you come here,” said the bartender.

Ken proceeded to forget his sorrows with an increasing number of shots of rum, Grand Marnier, and rye; the next morning found him awake at six in the morning, on the couch in his living room, with a dull headache; this was the additional price of the bottle.

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The Fourth Part of Chapter 24: Bleak Month

The next morning, Seth woke with a pounding headache, but was still clearheaded enough to conclude that starting a relationship with someone clearly still obsessed with someone who was in the ground was not going to work, and he told Clarissa as much over breakfast. There had not been the time for an emotional bond to form, so Clarissa wasn’t too upset.

“All right then,” she said. “I suppose if you’re a bit freaked out by those photos of Jim, it’s understandable. But it’s not like his ghost is haunting the room or anything like that,”

Her offhand suggestion seemed at that moment to be a very real possibility; the thought of him, having shared a bed under the still eyes of a photograph all of a sudden seemed creepy. What if he were watching? Seth then tried his best to dismiss that thought: he’s dead, and he’s not coming back from the grave, in spirit or in body.

“Yes, it’s definitely the photos, and it’s not some ghost, but rather the memory; it’s almost as bad as having him in the room with us.”

“It must represent baggage for you, just like this,” she said, gesturing to her still-pregnant belly.

“Well, perhaps that too. Thanks for the night,” said Seth, and then went outside. He turned around and gave the elegant house one last look. Clarissa was visible through the living room window, and he thought he could see her cry. She really misses her husband, he thought; it’s so tragic being in love with a dead person, clinging to his memory without hope. With that, he walked down the street to board the number 14 bus on Gladstone Street, one block north of her house, which would take him in the general direction of home.


Eunice invited Clarissa to accompany her to the art gallery on Saturday, while Mario acceded to the trip with some minor grumbling; he would have been happy at work, but Eunice said that friends were more important than work, and she pointed out that Nadia was a perfectly capable assistant to the manager. One thing that was notable about that day was that it was snowing heavily; a foot of snow had fallen overnight on Friday, and there were fifteen more centimetres on the ground that morning; thus, traffic had slowed nearly to a standstill, and taking the bus was not that much faster than walking, while Mario said that the car was entirely out of the question. The three of them strode down the middle of McLeod Street, which was reduced to a few tire tracks. While it wasn’t cold, it was very quiet; there were no car engines, no dogs, no cats, most people were inside, and even the few birds that were braving the winter were silent. Mario enjoyed these walks.

“I’m very sorry to hear about the miscarriage,” he said.

“I guess it’s the luck of the draw,” said Clarissa. “I mean, I don’t think I did anything wrong,” she said as they crossed Bank Street. The office towers, normally visible a few blocks north on the street, were obscured by the tempest, and the normally bustling commercial strip was silent, as people’s footsteps were muffled by the snow; the only cars to be seen were parked on the street, and it was obvious that their owners were not using them or anywhere nearby; no tires were visible, as they were long buried, and most of them were ensconced in deep drifts. On the remainder of the walk, they saw similar scenes; cars were stuck, many snowbanks had grown to be the height of small trees, and when they got to the parking lot of the gallery, which was nearly empty, they could see it was rimmed by mounds of snow that dwarfed all cars, and buried the pine trees halfway up their trunks.

“I have always found it difficult to figure out why you’re unhappy,” said Mario when they were in the gallery. Although he knew that depression did not have to have a reason or justification behind it, the subject was nevertheless hard to broach; any question asked would be awkward.

Clarissa shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said as she looked at a heroic image of Norman Bethune, which a plaque indicated was donated by the government of China. “I guess it’s just life in general.”

“Perhaps it’s all this snow,” said Mario. “I wouldn’t mind seeing green grass and flowers again,”

“It’s more of a social thing; you guys are very kind and all, but the same could not be said of my parents. They try to do the right thing, but mom keeps missing the mark, and Pat seems to have an ulterior motive.”

It was an astute observation, noted Eunice. Patricia had confessed in Eunice her dear desire to see some grandchildren, and was dwelling on it with a growing obsession; the miscarriage must no doubt have been a huge blow for her.

They continued walking, and passed several more pictures; they saw Alexander Graham Bell’s painted image, and Lester Pearson looked very handsome in his portrait. They then saw Richler, Massey, and a number of other luminaries, before turning to a hall devoted to landscapes.

“That one seems to reflect what’s outside,” said Eunice, pointing at one that showed loggers cutting a tree down in a snow-covered forest; it reflected not the present, but rather the heritage of Canada as a logging nation, also reflected to some degree in their city’s heritage; they could see, through a large window, a paper mill across the frozen river giving off large amounts of steam. The visit to the gallery did not seem to cheer Clarissa up, as Eunice noted. Mario also saw that something was wrong with her; several of the neighbours had noticed this as well, and some of them clearly preferred the old Clarissa, the one who had a sunny disposition, who always seemed to be happy, the one with a smile always on her face.

“Has anyone else been looking out for you? I think that, now James is dead, and your mom lives in Toronto, that you have nobody looking out for you,”

“I’ve been going to bars,”

Eunice raised her eyebrows. “You’re trying to pick up?”

“That’s it.”

“Have you been doing this often?”

“Yes; I would have a club soda every time, or a Perrier, if it’s a more upscale place, and some alcohol, and you know, try to have a good time,”

“But you wouldn’t be going out with friends; you need friends to go to a bar,” that Clarissa was going to bars alone was perhaps the worst part, even if she had been abstaining from alcohol; the lone barfly, in her mind, was typically male, unattractive, balding and either single or divorced; it wasn’t the kind of dating pool she would want for herself if she were in Clarissa’s place. There were also the unsavoury characters that went to bars.

“What kind of bars?”

“The ones downtown,”

“The ones with all the rowdy students?” Asked Mario.

“What other kind is there?”

“Oh dear,” said Eunice.

“You know, you’re always welcome to come over to our place any evening you want,” offered Mario.

“Just not at the end of the month; that’s inventory time for me,”

“Oh, yeah, I also do inventory then; of course, I need to keep track of the food constantly, so it’s kind of a continuous process,” said Mario.

“Well, I guess that, now you’re no longer pregnant, there aren’t any restrictions with the bottle,”

“It’s a small comfort; but now I have all this booze––I inherited James’s liquor cabinet––and there’s nobody to share it with,” said Clarissa.

“I don’t remember James as being a drinker,”

“He wasn’t; he simply liked to collect exotic drinks; he seems to have had a taste for liqueurs; most of the bottles looked really old,”

“That’s interesting,” said Eunice, who had never seen James’s liquor cabinet, and wondered where it would be kept. She had noted a cabinet that appeared to be 70s décor in the study with sliding doors last time she visited Clarissa, and thought that it might be kept there; it might also be in the cupboard with stained glass doors in the sitting room upstairs, or in a variety of other places. She had been idly looking into space at this point, not noticing a sculpture of a lion; then she came back to the present, and noticed the sculpture for the first time. After two hours, the trio went home; the snowfall had wound down to a few flakes falling, and the only noise that could be heard was the wind; the sky was overcast, and was a shade of pale grey, which was reflected on the snow on the ground. The crystals, so beautiful, iridescent, multihued and sparkling in the sunlight, took on the grey hue of the sky in places, while they were white in other places and blue in the shadows. This was a time when Eunice and Mario both found that they could accomplish plenty of work, as the weather outside meant there would be few distractions in the form of warm sunlight or anything, which meant they could subtly get harder and more productive work out of their employees; it was also when they preferred to do their income taxes, again for the reason of few distractions.

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The Third Part of Chapter 24: Bleak Month

Seth spent Friday night, the second one in February, as he sometimes did, at a bar downtown; he seldom did this, but sometimes he found he needed a drink to relieve the monotony of work. On this particular night, he went alone, which meant he would not be drinking anything; he had a principle of not drinking unless he was with friends. He relaxed that rule, however, and purchased a corona beer with lime, which was prominently advertised on the opposite wall. He then noticed an oddity for a bar: an apparently pregnant woman, whom he assumed and hoped, was not there for the drinks. She was holding what looked like a gin and tonic, but he hoped it would be something less harmful, like soda water with a lime. She sat down at a table, and read the drinks menu, not really planning to get anything other than water and maybe a sprite. Seth, thinking she was lonely––she looked unhappy, sat down beside her.

“Well, hello. You look out of place. Is a bar really a good place for a pregnant woman? And I hope that’s not alcohol,”

“Oh, it’s Perrier and lime. Why do people automatically assume I’m pregnant? I might just be fat, you know.”

“A lot of men can tell the difference, and anyways, fat’s a peripheral issue. It’s overblown in society. It’s all in the eyes, really.” Clarissa made no comment about the assumed pregnancy, but bit her lip and instead focussed on the last part of his comment.

“Really? How are my eyes?”

“I think you look rather pretty.”

“Thank you. My husband would say that, before he died,”

Clarissa’s eyes were glistening with tears being held back. The man noticed.

“Oh dear,”

“It’s all right; I’m just another woman, anyways. I’ve received rather much pity, lately, due to, well, things.”

“I would think so, if you spend your Fridays in bars. What’s your name?”

“Clarissa,”

“Seth,”

“So, why are you in a bar?”

“I’m no longer pregnant. I had a miscarriage,”

“Oh dear, I’m so sorry,”

“Don’t worry about feeling sorry for me; I received plenty of that from my parents and in-laws,” Clarissa asked, changing the subject, “What do you think of the president?”

This is an obvious attempt to draw attention away from your dead husband, thought Seth. It’s probably a good idea.

“He puts me to mind of the saying about Julius Caesar––he came, he saw, he conquered. In all aspects of life, I mean. He’s an enormous character. I heard rumours about how he slept with scads of women before finding his wife, who he’s currently cheating on,”

“I couldn’t believe that story when it broke out! I mean, some men, they don’t give one whit to his wife. The worst part is, he has a four-year-old, and I’ve heard rumours of another pregnancy with his secretary.”

“That harlot?”

“Not so much harlot as airhead.”

“It’s a funny show, American politics; at least we get to watch it as a spectator sport. It puts me to mind of what was said by that person on CNN, you know, Rich something-or-other: ‘Politics these days are flashy, splashy, and trashy.’”

“His campaign was quite funny. Who would’ve thought that he could promise to strengthen the ties that bind America to the world, and promise to protect jobs in manufacturing at home? He endorses globalisation and protectionism in the same breath! I’m surprised he got away with it.”

“The debates weren’t that impressive; ‘are tax cuts your only answer to everything?’ said one. ‘Are subsidies your panacea?’ said the other,”

“I hope he ‘wends his way on the incredible American journey of progress’, whatever that means,”

“That’s not to say we’re all that different from them. We bicker constantly, and there’s a real mismatch between rhetoric and action.” This rang especially true; Meach, while making noises about respecting the democratic process, had been reticent about relinquishing power, and only handed the reins of office over to Cameron Duff at the end of the month.

“Indeed; ‘building Canada’ turned out to mean building an airport for Winnipeg that’s not really in Winnipeg, and widening a few roads. What the hell is that?”

“To me, building Canada would mean building on human capital. I was expecting to see university expansion and more funding when I heard that phrase, but I have never seen someone so eager to curtail research budgets,”

Seth thought that she was very interesting.

“What do you think of Cameron Duff? He seems a rather interesting character; just think of his life story: once an economist with the Conference Board of Canada, independent and essentially a dark horse and a contrarian voice throughout his period in Parliament until ten years ago, and then he stood as the primary antagonist of Meach and the other party leaders, who are trying to portray him as the universal nemesis, and representative of all that is devious, with alleged cloak-and-dagger strategies on Duff’s part; I don’t buy that, however, and neither did many other people.”

“Oh yeah, if there were any cloak-and-dagger conspiracy, we would have known about it already. That was a very leaky election campaign, thanks to journalists being very good at bugging conference rooms; I now know all sorts of things where I think I was better off in the dark, so to speak.”

“I find Duff as sort of a man of principles; he said that he didn’t want to make any particularly flashy promises that he couldn’t pay for, yet he had no problem making all the flashy promises that he could pay for. By the way, how would they bug a conference room?”

“It’s a simple matter of cleverly hiding a digital recorder in the room, pressing record, and retrieving it later. He had no problem mocking the system, occasionally light-heartedly, at other times passionately, but there’s no question that he’s a first-rate political actor; he has never been one to tip his cards. It’s another thing about him that he likes to play all roles that can be ascribed to a person: villain, hero, anti-hero, jackass, ladies’ man, and neutral observer after the fashion of Oberon.

“At least he can’t be accused of being a ruthless womaniser or a mollycoddler; that describes Meach. I was none too pleased with him redecorating his cottage with public funds, like quite a lot of my friends. They have to work very hard for that money.”

“The Prime Minister works very hard for the money he gets as well, and as neither of us have ever been Prime Minister, I don’t think we should talk about the stresses he may or may not be experiencing on the job.”

Seth was taken aback by this perhaps nobly disinterested opinion, and tried to change the subject. “So, why are you here? You’re obviously still in mourning,”

“I kind of want to forget about my husband. I’ve had enough of crying for so long. I’m really just here to play the field.”

“And a bar was the best place to do it,”

“Well, sure; one only goes to nightclubs in groups, at parks you’d be taking
a pot shot, book clubs are usually only for women, and all of my neighbours are married. Hence, the bar was my best bet; I find people are a lot looser here, and I don’t mind being the so-called designated driver,”

Seth thought, my, this is at once disturbing and a turn-on.

As happened often to people, that had been more than a thought. “Pardon?”

Clarissa asked, “Uh, so, were you planning on taking me home?”

“Um…sure. I’m single too, after all.”

As it turned out, they did not go to Seth’s house, which was on the east side of the river, and then a further two kilometres; they went to Clarissa’s house instead, which was a highly manageable fifteen minute walk, and thus very friendly to a moderately drunk Seth and a sober Clarissa, who was clinging tightly to his arm, out of fear of the dark and criminals, but also in an effort to keep warm, and in a desire for companionship. When Seth entered her house, he had the impression of a nice, though slightly neglected interior; he noted the wilted potted plants and the carpet that needed vacuuming. The two headed upstairs, Seth inebriated, Clarissa simply tired, but both of them excited, and they went to the bedroom, which Seth noted had several photos on the wall of a slightly pudgy man who was shorter in stature than Clarissa, as was evidenced by the photo of the two of them standing on a beach together. This man, he assumed, must have been her deceased husband.

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The Second Part of Chapter 24: Bleak Month

Margaret could hear her daughter in tears as she answered the phone. The last time she had been this tearful was at her husband’s funeral, and although she did not like him due to some characteristic of his that she could not quite pin down, she still felt sorry for her daughter for having lost her husband. It was true that there were other fish in the sea, but she simply wanted to see her daughter happy; it had always been first on her mind. This was why Clarissa’s next words struck her like a blow.

“I’m no longer pregnant.”

“What? Oh, Clarissa! You had a miscarriage!”

“Yes. I woke up mysteriously feeling better, and the doctor told me that I had lost her.”

Then I’m no longer going to have a grandchild by her, thought Margaret, even though there would be other chances. What misfortunes have befallen her! She has had far too much death. It was also true that although Margaret wanted her daughter to feel happy, she did not find the deaths tragic for herself. She wasn’t the one who had loved James, and that stillborn child belonged to Clarissa, not herself. Thus, she reacted to this latest tragic news as if it were somebody she did not know, and she felt uncomfortable with herself for thinking this. Didn’t she also take a disliking to James for his detachment and indifferent attitude to everyone who wasn’t Clarissa? That was how she saw it; he seemed to have very few tender relations, even with his parents, she thought, her mind going very quickly, and leaping rashly from one thing to the next. Wasn’t this detachment the same sort that she was currently feeling?

“I’m so sorry,”

“I told Ryan and Patricia. They were in hysterics. I’m surprised that you’re not.”

Margaret wiped a tear from her eye, as she sometimes did when she read a particularly sad story in the news.

“What did you think when James died of that heart attack? It seems to me like he stopped loving you, divorced you, and died, all within four seconds. And you know: a heart attack seems a dodgy way to go for a thirty-three year old.”

“Must you read something that’s not there into James’s death? It was a heart attack, pure and simple, and the shock of unemployment combined with the news of my pregnancy pushed him over the edge. And honestly mom, every time you mention it, you conjure uncomfortable thoughts in my mind. Suggesting that his death was dodgy suggests some responsibility on either my part, or Maurice’s. So please, don’t mention his death.”

“I’m sorry honey,”

“This isn’t exactly the first time you bought this up. It somehow surfaced in a conversation at Christmas, and several other times, which is not a terribly impressive record. It seems like you have an obsession with it.”

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“You haven’t been discussing this with Hyram or your friends, have you?

“No, honey.” Margaret was sorry she had brought it up, and she was feeling at least a little guilty for making Clarissa reminisce over James’s death, and contemplate her role in it. This gave rise to another thought: would things have turned out differently had I reached out to James? Maybe he would have survived if I had given him my warm support rather than the cold shoulder.

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The First Part of Chapter 24: Bleak Month

Winter had dragged on to a phase which was universally found to be grating on the soul, and which everyone wanted to see over: it was the phase in which the last day when the temperature had been above freezing was three weeks previously, on the 11th of January, and the snow, where it wasn’t packed down hard, was chest deep, and one could not see over the snow banks. At least that was the way it seemed to Patricia, as she walked home from her grocery shopping at Hartman’s. She reviewed her purchases, to check whether she had remembered everything. As it turned out, she did: the jam, the milk, cheese, olives, bread, meat, and everything else was in her bag, and she continued down the street, shielding her face against the cold. She wondered how Clarissa was faring; winter was known to be a time in which people were affected with depression, and with quite good reason: after nearly three months without seeing the bare ground and having to dress up in sometimes cumbersome clothing, and having to deal with short daylight hours, it was easy to see why one would become downtrodden. After shopping, she decided, she would go visit; she had last visited Clarissa’s house just after Christmas, and she wanted to see what had become of the house that her son had purchased.

She put her groceries away, and then walked the five blocks over to Clarissa’s house. Clarissa, like James, had very little use for the car, and thus had not bothered to shovel the driveway around it, but rather only shovelled the front walk and steps. The car itself was just discernable, with one window uncovered, while the rest of the vehicle was buried under the deep snow. She knocked on the front door, and Clarissa came to answer. This being the weekend, Clarissa had taken the opportunity to sleep in, she was still in her dressing gown, and her shoulder-length hair was uncombed.

“Hello, Clarie. I just came by to see how you’re doing,”

“Good morning, Pat. It is still morning,” she checked the clock in the living room to make sure. “I’m doing as fine as I can expect; the pregnancy is still making me sick all the time, so I can’t be too well until the baby comes.”

“I expect you’re looking forward to that happy day.”

“Yes.” Patricia could hear that the bounce and perk of her voice was absent. She looked around: it seemed like the carpet had last been vacuumed two weeks ago, and some of the plants in the living room were starting to wilt; the spider plant that she had given James was looking small and sad, just as she was imagining Clarissa was feeling about her dead husband. She noticed a collection of photographs on a small shelf in one corner; the shelf had once belonged to her grandmother, and had lingered in her mother’s basement, then her own basement, before James had found a use for it when he purchased his own house. The shelf’s age was evident, as it was an antique, and one of the legs showed several scratch marks. The photos on top of the shelf were mostly of James: when he and Clarissa were on a date, when he was swimming, and several honeymoon pictures, arranged around a white vase. The room, which was decorated in shades of blue, looked quite cold and uninviting, as opposed to the lived-in and welcoming appearance that it had before James died. It even felt cold; this was an effect of the weak sun, and the fact that it was still around ten degrees below zero outside as much as the feeling that it had not been cleaned for a few weeks; it seemed to her that Clarissa was slowly losing her grip, and would need to find it soon.

“Well, I just want you to be happy, dear.” Patricia had formed a sort of attachment to her daughter in law; it was as if Clarissa were a surrogate for Jim, and now she regarded her almost like a daughter. It was for this reason that she cared for Clarissa almost as much as she cared for Katherine. Ryan had formed a similar attachment, although this bond was not nearly as strong: he was still just as interested in her welfare as Patricia was, but he did not go out of his way to make phone calls or visit; he was a man, after all. He, like her, also regarded Clarissa like a member of the family, even though there was no blood relation. The care both of them shared for Clarissa was an obvious manifestation of the hope and joy they felt that they would be having a granddaughter to love and dote upon in May, if all went well. She considered that, given Clarissa’s misfortunes, her luck would have to turn and Alexandra Apollonia’s birth would be a joyous occasion come May. Patricia, who knew some statistics and probability, fully realised that its underpinnings were random rather than moral, even though she felt it should work in a more moral fashion, with virtue being rewarded; she did not doubt that Clarissa was virtuous, as was her son; this wasn’t virtue in the classical sense of the word, but rather it was virtue in the sense that her son had always cared for his girlfriends.

As she walked back home, it started to snow. The gray skies had been threatening snow for a day, and it started to fall, first in one or two flakes, and then more heavily as she turned on to MacLaren Street. She fried mushrooms and a chicken breast for dinner, and put rotini on the stove to boil, and by the time dinner was ready, the snow was falling thick and fast; the pavement, once gray, was presently obscured entirely. The sidewalks, like the road, were also quickly buried afresh, which meant that the plough team, consisting of a snowplough for the road, and two snowblowers for the sidewalks, would be coming within three days.


On the fourth of February, the first thaw came; the snow melted and formed large, slushy puddles, and several backyards were flooded by water dammed by ice; the ground was still frozen, the air still cold, and thus the water had nowhere to go. The elder Millers’ backyard sloped away from the house, and they were not bothered by water, though their neighbours to their back, Jeannine, and to her west, Rick, both had flooded backyards. That evening, Patricia was mincing garlic for the spaghetti sauce she was making when the phone rang. It was Clarissa, and she crying.

“Oh dear, Clarissa, what’s wrong, darling?”

“I just had a miscarriage. You won’t be grandparents.”

The news hit Patricia like a blow; losing James was bad enough; indeed it was quite shocking, but this really put her over the edge. She was howling, and this attracted Ryan’s attention as he was removing his tie.

“What?”

“We’re… no longer going to be grandparents,” Patricia bawled. Ryan, who was still emotionally distraught from his son’s death only four months before, also dissolved into tears.

“Dear Clarissa, how did this happen?”

“I don’t know; I just have terrible luck.”

“I’m so sorry,”

“You don’t have to be, but thank you. I woke up and I wasn’t sick like I usually was, so I called the doctor. He told me I was no longer pregnant,”

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