The Second Part of Chapter 25: Estrangement

Patricia still dwelled on Clarissa with ferocity; she had heard from Eunice that she had been spotted in bars in early February, or so she remembered from their discussions, and while Clarissa did not have any drinks before the miscarriage, Eunice did not pass that crucial piece of information on, leaving Patricia with the impression that even the miscarriage had been planned. She did not know how, but she would find the underlying cause of this. She called Clarissa, but after four rings, the phone went to the answering machine. Undoubtedly, she would be at the pub again, mistreating her body and trying to pick up some hapless economist.

She was so single-mindedly focussed on Clarissa that Ryan started to notice things were going awry.

“Patty, I noticed that the potatoes were undercooked three days in a row.”

“Sorry about that, honey,” she said. Ryan could hear an undertone of insincerity in the apology.

“Is everything all right?”

“I assure you, everything’s fine. How was work?” She wanted to distract him from her own distracted condition; she was semi-retired and to some extent had lived vicariously through him since her last days as a librarian, and was now working in the archives room part-time.

“Work was pretty good, as always; Andy had a good joke to tell,” and he started to relate the joke as first told by Andrew Chadwick Heron, but failed to get the details right, since it was a highly involved anecdote.

“That’s nice,” said Patricia, still distracted.

They ate the bland dinner in silence; Patricia had neglected to add garlic cloves or other seasonings to her mashed potatoes, and rather than putting flour and soy sauce on the fried chicken, she had just put flour, leaving the chicken uninteresting; this was the bad kind of boredom, the kind that results from bad decisions and putting things off, the sentence of fools, rather than the kind that arises from too much contentment or a lack of change in life. The similarity between these two boredoms was notable; both necessitated some kind of comfort level with oneself; with contentment, so much was obvious; with bad decisions, there was an element of the subconscious that did not want change, that desired a weird form of security in dullness, that wanted predictability; thus comes procrastination, idleness, and neglectful mistakes. The interesting part was that Patricia liked one and loathed the other, even though, married to Ryan, who had seen a number of careers in a very exciting life, from journalist to entrepreneur, civil servant and back again, which with all of its attendant moves and lifestyle changes, banished boredom from her life since they had been married.


Patricia had noticed that Belinda was silent on the gossip, if it could be called that; all that she had heard from Belinda in the past week was that Christine had purchased a Van Gogh replica, which now hung over her fireplace, but when she went to Christine’s house, she saw it was not Van Gogh, but Monet, and only a complete neophyte could mistake a Monet for a Van Gogh, especially considering the title and creator were clearly printed at the bottom of the frame. She had not even seen much of Belinda; she would typically walk by or through Dundonald Park on her way to work, and this was not happening, due to her now well-known jobless status, as told to her by Eunice. Thus, she could no longer rely on Belinda as a source of information; there was still Eunice, fortunately, who was looking quite round, but for some reason, not happy, and this was a woman who had every reason to be happy; she was carrying new life. For some reason, possibly connected with her seeming moroseness, the quality of gossip was also lacking, and was inaccurate, which was unlike Eunice. While Belinda’s gossip had some truth and fancy in equal measure, Eunice’s tidbits were mostly factual.

Patricia had to do the sleuthing herself, although Ryan called it snooping, which he pronounced with a pointed distaste; it could be seen to an outsider but not herself that the unfounded suspicion was straining her home life as well. One fine Saturday morning in early April, when the snow was patchy on the ground and the air was fresh, perfect for just about any sort of clothing, Patricia walked over to McLeod Street to pay Clarissa a visit. One ring of the doorbell was enough for an answer.

“Hello Patricia,”

“Good morning,”

“Come in,”

“I just wanted to know how you’re doing,” Patricia looked around; the house had not exactly been maintained well, but it was still inhabitable. She noted that the carpet on the living room floor, which when James had purchased it was a rich burgundy, now had the grey of dust intermingled with it; she also noticed the grey dust gathering on the bookshelves, and there were cobwebs in corners.

“Well, I’ve had a lot happen to me, as you know,”

“You seem to be doing well enough for yourself,”

Clarissa did a double take. “Are you kidding me? I had a miscarriage, and I’m a widow at thirty-three because my husband, who’s the same age as me, had a heart attack, so no, I don’t think I’m doing well.”

Unfazed, she ploughed on, indifferent to Clarissa’s replies. “You must be feeling lucky to be owner of such a fine home, and live alone,”

“That was not my wish, and you know that perfectly well; I thought I knew you! Why are you asking me these questions, anyways? Is it about his death?”

“It’s about the miscarriage, and yes, the death,”

“Well, there’s nothing to it; it’s misfortune, and I don’t feel this conversation is going anywhere,” said Clarissa. “Please don’t bother me with these notions,”

“All right, Clarie,” said Patricia, trying to keep some sense of civility within her. She then left. She felt a growing distance between herself and her daughter-in-law, for she still considered Clarissa in that way. At first, the estrangement was in Patricia’s mind; now it was founded on some truth; this marked the point when their closeness ended, and they became mere neighbours who lived a few blocks from each other, and were not in each other’s family.

The weather, completely independent of human emotions, improved slightly; there was only one heavy snowstorm that month, which delivered half a metre of snow, and hit the city on the 11th of March, which meant there would be an unscheduled holiday from school, and for many people, from work. That was the final major snowfall of the season; after that, the weather warmed up sufficiently for people not to need toques when they went outside; Patricia’s attitude, in defiance of the seasons, darkened toward the other women in her life, and this trend continued into April.

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The First Part of Chapter 25: Estrangement

Eunice observed, during the dreary months of winter, when the sun was weak and the snow lay deep on the ground, that Clarissa’s mood, already having been down over an extended period, had taken a turn for the worse. The first indicator was the number of times they had seen each other: that figure had dropped, leaving her, in the eyes of Eunice, an automaton, and this particular statistic was significant considering they lived across the street and a few doors down from each other. Her mood couldn’t possibly have been good for the baby she was carrying before the miscarriage, and it was unquestionably bad for her now. The worst thing was that she did not know how to help. Talking about her condition simply reminded Clarissa, and she would dissolve into tears. Finding someone else might help, but of course, she knew that Clarissa was trying to do that. It could also be that men weren't attracted to women with baggage, and being a widow in her thirties would certainly constitute a lot of baggage. Her sad face also seemed to age her; when she was with James, she had looked so vibrant and youthful. Now, as a widow, she looked to be in her forties, even though the change came about in less than a year.

It was not as if she had not tried everything to cheer Clarissa up, as they had gone to the movies together, they had taken in a concert in January, and she had invited her to dinner several times, but she only came occasionally. After the miscarriage, she had grown worse: she had taken to drinking; Eunice had found this out when she saw Clarissa stumbling home one night, and she had heard a similar story from Belinda. Clarissa’s downward spiral was also pulling Eunice with her; she found she had less energy, which on top of her pregnancy––by March, at five months, she had become large––made her a less pleasant person.


Eunice, the older Millers and the older Varrettes were not the only ones impacted by Clarissa’s miscarriage; now that all possibility of Clarissa bearing her descendents were gone, Patricia turned up the pressure on Katherine to find a boyfriend. Katherine knew the real purpose was so that Patricia could call herself a grandmother, and she was not exactly appreciative of the efforts; while the idea of having a boyfriend was nice, the implicit pressure to get pregnant was unwelcome.

“How many men work at your school, Katie?” was the form the question inevitably took over the phone one evening.

“Out of the seventy staff, there are thirty men,”

“How many of them are single?”

“I have never really asked.”

“Come on; in a profession as young as teaching––and I know teaching’s a young profession––there must be some eligible bachelors.” Patricia didn’t actually know that teaching was a young profession––she was simply trying to make stuff up on the fly in an effort to pressure her daughter, her last remaining child, to find someone.

“I’m sure a man will turn up in good time,”

“But honey, what does ‘in good time’ mean?”

“It means that when I want a boyfriend, I will find one.”

“But honey, your biological clock is ticking,”

“Relax; many women have given birth past the age of thirty-one. And is my romantic life all you want to talk about? I told you, I will find a man when I want one; if only they weren’t all such insufferable brutes like Mike.”

“Mike’s just one man, Katie. And Ryan’s a great husband, and a wonderful man, so there’s proof right there that there are good men. Say, why don’t you go on a dating site? I’m sure someone will turn up.”

“Thanks for the relationship advice,” said Katherine, insincerely.

“Bye Kate, and think about it, okay?”

Patricia’s thoughts turned darker as she peeled some potatoes one evening; why had
Clarissa received all the good luck? This callous thought ran through her mind, and the sense of injustice about the possibility of being left without descendents banished her sympathy for Clarissa, and neglected that what Clarissa was going through could hardly be called luck, without the attendant “bad” in front of it. Clarissa, at the present, seemed to her to be a figure out of a fairy tale whose husbands mysteriously die in succession, leaving her to accumulate a fortune. Although in reality the circumstances were innocent, they seemed otherwise to Patricia. Perhaps she failed to rein in Jimmy’s love of salty foods, she thought, ignoring the fact that Clarissa had spent eight months with James, while she had raised him for twenty years, and watched him closely for a further thirteen years.

The next day, she called Katherine again.

“What do you think of Clarissa?”

“Mom, are you all right? Your tone of voice makes you seem on edge,”

“I’m quite all right,” said Patricia, who was increasingly focussing her thoughts on one thing: the belief that Clarissa had carefully planned and orchestrated Jim’s death.

“Well, if you must know––and I’m not so sure of that, myself––I think Clarissa’s an extremely unlucky woman,”

“Do you call inheriting a fine house in a nice neighbourhood bad luck?”

“Aren’t you forgetting that she didn’t only inherit the house, but the mortgage too? The rate’s the same; the monthly payments remain the same, and that mortgage was signed when Jim’s credit rating wasn’t so good, remember? He had a habit of going on spending binges when he was younger; hence the car in that driveway?”

“But it all seems uncanny,”

“Look, mom, why don’t you sleep on it or something,” But Katherine was unsure that sleep would rid her mother of this ridiculous supposition and dubious theory.

“Bye Katie, and get a boyfriend, okay? I worry about you,”

“Really? I think things are not so hunky-dory with yourself.”

Sensing that the conversation could continue and be unnecessarily long, Katherine hung up the phone, and to ensure Patricia would not call back left the receiver off the hook; she didn’t anticipate any important calls, anyways; it was late at night, and concerned parents would call at some different hour.

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