A Celibate Season. Carol Shields

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СКАЧАТЬ of us chewing and swilling, though once Gil mumbled something pious about how we had much to be thankful for. I wasn’t up to the topic, I’m afraid.

      Which all goes to say, my lovely and hard-headed realist, that we miss you from time to time around here. By the way, how do you make that turkey curry you used to do?

      With love,

      Chas

      P.S. Found the lentils. Now what?

      4 Old Town Lane

      Ottawa, Ont.

      Oct. 10

      Dear Chas,

      Rotten, rottener, rottenest—that’s how I felt after reading about your Thanksgiving dinner. Quite simply, I felt the rottenest I’ve felt since I left. What in sweet heaven was wrong with The Mothers?

      I’ve sat through countless harangues from mine, as you know, on the subject of dinner guests who didn’t have the manners to let one know well in advance—“Don’t they know the amount of preparation…? No regard for a person’s feelings…Nothing but a servant…” Really, I don’t know when I’ve been so goddamned mad!

      In fact, Chas, I couldn’t turn off the mental harangue that circled and swirled and harped away at me in a voice suspiciously like my mother’s. As I explained to Vance, the cauliflower casserole was the last straw, and when he snorted and guffawed my first instinct was to punch him right on his aristocratic nose. Fortunately, Mother’s voice blipped off in mid-sentence and I was restored to temporary sanity. No, I don’t discuss personal matters with Vance as a rule, but when I was so obviously upset he was persistent, and Mother’s voice never needs a lot of encouragement.

      He is a surprisingly warm man, considering, as you say, the BMW et al. And he did cheer me up with a rather wry account of his own Thanksgiving dinner, which was marred irreparably by the poor burgundy that his wife had chosen. What suffering!

      My own Thanksgiving dinner was not lonely, although loneliness might have been preferable. I know that sounds ungrateful after Jessica was good enough to invite me to the group home turkey spree, and other than a three-year-old who rubbed cranberry sauce in his eye, a dog who choked on a turkey bone and had to be clipped smartly in the dog equivalent of the solar plexus (dislodging the bone along with other stomach contents), a baby who threw her bottle at my wine glass and scored a direct hit (there was lots more wine—that kind comes in gallon jugs)—other than that, as I say, it was not bad and I wasn’t hungry anyway.

      I think my difficulty came from feeling out of place. Before dinner Jessica and I were having one of our interminable dogfights about background being a poverty determinant. She’s bound she’s going to radicalize me, but I’m not at all sure I’m ready to abandon the good old middle class, which has, after all, been good to us.

      She had just launched into a tirade about power and how nobody—especially men—relinquishes it without a fight, when one of the women who lives in the house came over and asked if she could talk to Jessica for a minute, about a problem.

      “Shoot,” Jessica said.

      “Well, like, I hadda quit my job and I’m gonna have trouble with the rent this month, so I was wondering if it would be a hassle if I didn’t pay for a couple of weeks, just until I line something up.”

      “No sweat,” Jessica said. “What happened to the job?”

      The woman’s eyes slid away. She’s about twenty-five, I would guess, and quite pretty, and she was holding the baby that later spread my plonk over the tablecloth. (Plastic, fortunately.)

      “Here, have a cigarette,” Jessica said, getting up and pulling a pack out of the hip pocket of her jeans.

      The woman helped herself, and Jessica took the baby while she lit up. The woman looked rather shyly at me, and all at once I was conscious of how I looked, in my good wool skirt and that nice silk blouse your mother gave me last Christmas. The young woman had on jeans and a polyester blouse and very high heels…no—it wasn’t clothes that separated us. I mean, everyone wears jeans, it wasn’t that, it was something else I’m having trouble defining. Here it is. If we met at a social event I would know instantly that she wasn’t my kind and she’d know the same thing about me and in fact that was what was making her uneasy. What is it? The cut of our hair? the shade of lipstick? the jewellery or lack of it, the thousand little signals that say “different class”—God, I’m beginning to sound like Jessica.

      “This here’s Jock,” Jessica said. “She won’t harm you none, I mean, you can talk in front of her. Let’s all take a load off our feet.” And, still holding the baby, she plopped back onto the grimy chesterfield beside me and the woman—Jean—sat down across from us.

      Jean blew out cigarette smoke rather self-consciously and said, “Well, like, I tried to stick it out but the manager—my boss—he doesn’t own the restaurant but it’s like, a chain, eh? Anyway, he kept coming on so strong, you know? I couldn’t keep him off, so finally I just figured it wasn’t worth it, he was making my life so miserable, eh?”

      I was shocked, as you can imagine. I glanced at Jessica and waited for the explosion I thought was bound to come. But she just lowered her eyes and jammed her cigarette butt into an ashtray, then handed Tricia to me (I was nervous that she would spit on my blouse, silk is not a wonder fabric and I can’t afford to get it cleaned) and said, “You don’t need to take that kind of shit you know, Jean.”

      Jean looked terrified. “It’s not worth it to start trouble, Jess. I’ve been through all that when I tried to get support from the kid’s father. It just isn’t worth it. I’ll find something else, but for now I’ll be a bit tight. I got some unemployment coming, I think, except I dread going in for the separation certificate.”

      “I’ll go along if you like,” Jessica said.

      Jean’s face lit up and she looked so pretty I could see why she might present a fetching target to that yahoo boss.

      She reached over to take the baby (which had spit on me, do cleaners take Visa?), but for some reason I didn’t want to give it up, and when she took it and hugged it I felt something like envy! Do you think, Chas, that absence makes the head grow softer?

      “Listen, I made a real nice dip,” Jean said. “Would you and Mrs.—Jock—like some?”

      “Yer damn right. Pass it to Jock, she needs some meat on her bones.” Thanks a lot, Jessica. But I ploughed my chip into the dip anyway and waxed enthusiastic over the stirred-up onion soup and sour cream.

      All the same, Chas, I can see what Jessica means—about poverty being a state of mind, I mean. If I were sexually harassed on a job I wouldn’t stand it for one minute. I’d state flatly that I was going to the Human Rights Commission if he didn’t leave me alone and I’d point out to him that no doubt the restaurant chain wouldn’t be too pleased to see its name dragged through the media. But Jean couldn’t possibly do that, she hasn’t got what it takes, the indignation, the sense of self-worth, the outrage.

      I’ve surprised myself, since then, with sudden flashes of anger that attack without warning, like a minor mental blight. I can be listening attentively to a brief when a chance turn of phrase will trigger it, and I feel possessed, suddenly (as in possession, exorcist style), and I get a shaking in my limbs and a sort of blindness that blocks out my surroundings. Isn’t it odd? I mean, rationally I’ve—we’ve, СКАЧАТЬ