Clara Callan (3 page)

Clara

P.S. Had our first winter storm this week but I am finally dug out!

Dear Clara,

Thanks for your letter, but please don’t talk about falling down the cellar stairs. It gives me the willies when you say things like that. I know you are facing your first winter alone in that big house, but try not to be morbid, okay? Well, I’ve survived nearly a month down here and, to be honest, I’m really glad I made this move. New York is such a fascinating city and I’ve just been too busy to be homesick. People have been terrific to me. Americans are much more open in their ways than us. It sure doesn’t take them long to get acquainted with you.

If you had been listening to the radio last Tuesday night to a program called “The Incredible Adventures of Mr. Wang” (if you get it up there), you would have heard my voice, though you might not have recognized me. I played a gangster’s moll who is trapped in a warehouse surrounded by police and the inscrutable Mr. Wang, and my line was: “Let’s get out of here. NOW!” That was supposed to be delivered in a “hard-boiled egg” kind of way according to the director. Mr. Wang is a detective along the lines of Charlie Chan or Fu Manchu. Do any of these names mean anything to you? Probably not. Anyway, it was fun to do, even if I only had that one immortal line. I know it’s not
Uncle Vanya
, but it’s a start.

I’ve also been doing some commercial work (thanks to Jack) for Italian Balm. The work is a little boring, but it pays well and, as Jack says, I’m getting all this experience. They seem to like my voice at the agency. Next week we start rehearsals for a show about a surgeon who performs all these life-saving operations. “Calling Dr. Donaldson.” I am going to play the doctor’s nurse, June Wilson, and I actually announce the show by saying through this microphone filter, “Calling Dr. Donaldson, Calling Dr. Donaldson.” As if it were in a hospital ward. That will be an afternoon show. Evelyn is writing another serial about — get this — two sisters who live in a small town somewhere “in the heartland of America.” The younger sister Effie is always getting into trouble (usually men) and the older sister Alice is the wise one who dispenses advice and gets her sister and others out of jams. Now guess which part they are grooming your kid sister for? Wrong!
I am going to play the
older
sister, so there! It will be called “The House on Chestnut Street.” According to Evelyn (and she should know), the big market in radio in the next few years is going to be in afternoon serial dramas for housewives. It makes sense when you think about it. Women are home all day washing and ironing and cleaning, and while they’re doing all that, they can listen to programs about people who lead more interesting lives. It’s the perfect escape when you’re ironing your husband’s shirt to listen to a woman falling in love with a handsome doctor or rich lawyer. There are a lot of food and cosmetic companies interested in this market so there should be plenty of sponsors out there.

The other thing that’s happened is this. Jack and Doris took me to a party down in Greenwich Village the other night and I met this couple, Marty and Ida Hirsch. He’s a playwright and he and Ida are producing this play. It’s not Broadway or anything. In fact, I think it’s fairly small potatoes, but they asked me if I would be interested in reading for a part. I had told them about my experience, limited though it was, with the Elliot Hall Players and my radio work up in Toronto. So they asked me and I said sure and next Wednesday I’m
going to try out. I figure I have to get all the experience I can and this seems like a good opportunity. Marty asked me all about Canada and what the politics were like up there. He had this strange idea that we were still ruled by the King of England. I’ve discovered that Americans don’t know a lot about some things. But Marty is a nice guy if a little opinionated, and I’m looking forward to joining this group. He told me I had a lot
of moxie coming down here on my own from Canada. I’ve never heard that word before, have you?

Speaking of words, have you written any poems lately? It seems to me you were writing some in the spring just after Father passed away. How did they turn out?

Remember how you used to fill those scribblers with poems and then some Sunday morning, right out of the blue, start tearing the pages and burning them in the kitchen stove? The pipes would get so hot that Father would start grumbling about a chimney fire on the way. But he would never say a word to you about it, would he? Brother, if I’d done something like that, I would never have heard the end of it. I hope to goodness that if you’re still feeding the stove with your poems, you’re careful. Thanks a heap for the money and write again soon.

Love, Nora

Commotion in the classroom today. Started by the Krays. During the arithmetic lesson they began pushing and shoving and then they were on the floor at the back of the room punching and choking one another. I tried to separate them, but they wouldn’t stop and I had to call Milton. I like to think I can manage these things, but the Krays incite a rage that I find so difficult to check it frightens me. At ten o’clock this morning, I could easily have smashed the yardstick across Manley Kray’s face. Even looking at them provokes me: those brutal bullet-shaped heads, the grimy necks, the ringworm and smelly feet.
At recess I sat listening to the measured strokes from Milton’s office. He told me that he learned how to apply “the leather” from Father. “It was one of the first things he taught me, Clara. ‘Even strokes, Milton,’ he used to say. And you never apply them in anger. They have to see the justice in the exercise. You’re just doing your job, not venting
your frustration.”

It’s odd that Father never talked to me about strapping. Perhaps he didn’t think I needed talking to. How wrong he was! I always have to be careful about my temper. Afterwards I stood by the window and watched the Krays walk out into the schoolyard. They were surrounded at once by the other boys who dislike the brothers but admire their defiance.

Mr. and Mrs. Cameron came by this evening with Willard Macfarlane. They were collecting winter clothes for the needy. Last Sunday I told them I had some things of Father’s, including the new overcoat he bought on sale in Toronto last January and then refused to wear. He brought it home and, standing in it in front of the hallway mirror, decided that it was too grand. “I can’t walk around in a coat like this when so many people are hard up,” he said.

I told this story to Willard and the Camerons and they enjoyed it. “That sounds like Ed,” said Willard holding up the coat. “But gosh Almighty, this is some coat. It’s a dandy!” Since Father had bought it on sale, he couldn’t return it and so the coat with its velvet collar hung all last winter in the hall closet. The Camerons told me that they are leaving at the end of the year. I shall miss them.

I was out for a walk along the township roads this afternoon. A raw, windy end-of-the-year kind of day with the sky carrying snow somewhere. Approaching the village at nightfall (5:45), I passed Henry Hill who was too drunk to notice me although I wished him a good evening. Henry was singing a mischievous song about love and
trying out a kind of jig in the middle of the road. And all this in Father’s new overcoat! I am glad, however, that Henry will have a fine coat for the winter ahead. When I got home, I started this poem, the first in months.

In my father’s overcoat
The drunken man performs a jig.
With arms flung wide
And overcoat unbuttoned to the wind
He dances in the street.
That sombre banker’s coat
Now the glad rags
Of a foolish man.

It will perhaps go something like that.

Dear Nora,

According to the dictionary,
moxie
is American slang for courage, though a more precise synonym might be the old-fashioned word
pluck
. With the car business over now, the only thing I had left to do was clear out Father’s dressers and closet. I should have done this ages ago, but I kept putting it off. Then last Sunday Mr. Cameron asked for donations of winter clothes for the needy, so I got busy and packed Father’s things into boxes. On Wednesday evening the Camerons came by with Willard Macfarlane and took everything to the church hall. I thought that was the end of it, but then a strange thing happened. Well, strange to me at least. Late yesterday afternoon, just as I was coming home from a walk in the countryside, I saw a man in a long coat and he seemed to be shuffling about in the middle of the road, performing some kind of dance. As I drew nearer, I could see
that it was Henry Hill. Drunk, of course. Then I noticed that he was wearing Father’s new overcoat. Do you remember last January
when he went down to Toronto and bought it? Saw it in a haberdasher’s window on Yonge Street. It was a beautiful coat with a velvet collar, expensive as the dickens but marked down and Father thought it was a bargain. When he brought it home, however, he fussed about it. Said it was far too grand to wear around the village. “I look like a Toronto banker in it,” he said. “People will think I’m putting on airs. It’s a poor time to go about in a coat like this.” He wanted to take it back, but it had been on sale. I told him it looked good on him and he shouldn’t worry about what people might think, but of course he did, and I don’t believe he wore that coat a half a dozen times all winter. And there it was on poor old Henry last night in the middle of Church Street! But then why not? Winter is coming on and Henry needs a coat like everyone else. Yet it was unsettling to see the old man lurching about in Father’s new coat. Well, you’ve seen him in such
a state! Watching him, I wondered if perhaps there was a poem somewhere in all that, though I’m beginning to doubt whether I have the talent or the discipline to write poetry. Still these doubts (hobgoblins who perch on my bedstead at night) don’t keep me from trying. I experience this peculiar happiness while puzzling over the selection and arrangement of words on a page even if, in ordinary daylight, their lustre has mysteriously vanished and they seem only pale and worn. And, by the way, you were right. I did attempt some verses about Father’s death, but they didn’t work and they proved to be more useful in the stove, giving off, you might say, more heat than light.

On Friday evening I went with “the ladies of the village” to a performance of
The Merry Widow
at the Royal Alexandra. I don’t know why I went; I don’t really care for Lehar’s pretty tunes and I felt a little misplaced travelling with a dozen older women and their husbands. Three carloads of us! Ida Atkins is after me to join the Missionary Society. “Dear Clara, it would be so good for you to get out. All alone in that big house now. And we do need some young
blood.” That’s true, I suppose. Except for poor Marion, the “ladies” are all in their forties, fifties and onwards. Am I now at thirty-one perceived as a member of this group? I expect I am, though I can’t help thinking that I’ll grow old before my time if I join the M.S. The thought of setting aside Tuesday evening for the next thirty years is dispiriting, to say the least.

I shall miss you coming home on Saturday evenings this winter. I always listened for the sound of the train whistle and so did Father. I know that you used to get on one another’s nerves, but he really did look forward to your coming home. The fact that you were often at one another’s throats within fifteen minutes is not as important as the fact that he cared about you. After one of your arguments when you’d stay away for weeks, he would say, “I wonder how Nora is getting on.” Of course he could never have admitted such feelings to you. It was not his way. I can well imagine how he would worry if he were still alive and with you now in New York City.

I’m very happy to learn that you are making your way in the radio business, Nora. Do be careful crossing the streets.

Clara

Dear Clara,

Thanks for your letter. Honestly, I can’t see you with all those old ladies like Mrs. Atkins. I can picture Marion Webb, but she seemed “old” to me in high school and she’s lame, poor thing. It’s just too bad there aren’t more people your age around the village, but I guess they’re all married by now, aren’t they? And here we are, both still on the shelf! Sometimes I’m glad to be on my own like this. I’ve always enjoyed going out to work and having my own money, but there are
times when I think it would be nice to have a home and kids. The other day I saw this family. They were looking at Macy’s windows which are all decorated for Christmas. The woman was about my age and pretty enough, but her husband!!! Was he a doll! He could easily have been in the movies. And they had these two cute youngsters, a boy and a girl. I have to admit I envied that woman. Oh well! Maybe Prince Charming is out there somewhere among these millions.

Do you remember me telling you about Marty and Ida Hirsch who run a theatre group? They asked me to read for a part in a play they’ve written, and a week ago I went down to this place on Houston Street. It’s just a big hall on the third floor of this old factory, but they’ve made it into a kind of auditorium with a stage and a lot of chairs. There were about thirty people there and they call themselves the New World Players. They are planning to put on a series of one-act plays this winter on what they call social realism. They are nice enough people but very serious about politics. Before we started reading for the parts, there was a meeting and this guy gave a talk on how things are done in Russia. I didn’t catch his name but he writes for a newspaper called
The Daily Worker
. He talked about capitalism and Communism and how there is no unemployment in Russia because the people there are looked after by the government.

Do you follow these things? History and civics were never my strong points in school. Anyway, I read for the part and I got it. I play this rich man’s daughter-in-law. He owns a big factory where the workers are so poorly paid that they go on strike. His son has an argument with him because he thinks his father is being unfair and so he joins the strikers on the picket line and he’s killed by a gang of thugs hired by the father to break the strike. I have a big speech over his dead body about exploiting the workers and so on. To me, the play is awfully preachy, but everyone else seems to think it’s wonderful.