Clara Callan (6 page)

I’m working very hard these days, and if you lived in this part of the world, you would hear your sister’s voice on commercial announcements for Mother Parker’s tea and coffee and Royal Cola. “The House on Chestnut Street” goes on the air in June as a summer replacement. If it gets the listeners we think it will, we’ll carry on through the fall. I have been reading Evelyn’s outline and it sounds like a wonderful show. Alice and Effie are two sisters (in their thirties!!!), orphaned since childhood and still living with Aunt Mary and Uncle Jim in the town of Meadowvale, which sounds an awful lot like Whitfield, only a little bigger. Alice (me) is the sensible, older one (oh stop laughing!) and Effie is the one who takes chances and gets into trouble (usually with men). Vivian Rhodes, a fine actress who has been on several network shows, will be playing Effie and we will have two real veterans of radio, Margaret Hollingsworth and Graydon Lott as Aunt Mary and Uncle Jim. They
seem like really nice folks to work with, so as you can imagine I’m looking forward to all this. I finally gave up on the New World Players. It was just too much work with not much reward, so now I have a little more free time. Anyway, that’s what’s been happening down here. How are things in dear old Whitfield? I’ll just
bet you’re sick and tired of trying to keep warm in that old house. You should think about some other arrangement for next winter.

Love, Nora

P.S. Have you finished
War and Peace
? I was thinking of you the other day when Evelyn and I were in Scribner’s bookstore. I saw all these classic novels lined up on a shelf and there was
W and P
. Yikes, there must have been a thousand pages! I told E. you were reading it this winter. She said she read it years ago.

Dear Nora,

Thanks for your letter. I’m sorry that this won’t reach you in time for your thirtieth birthday, but I tend not to make much of a fuss over birthdays. I can’t remember feeling especially troubled about reaching the age of thirty. It’s true, of course, that most women by then have settled into marriage with husbands and children. But the ones I see don’t appear particularly overjoyed by this state of affairs. The young mothers in the village, girls we went to school with like Merle Logan and Dottie Cockburn, look, if anything, a little more careworn than either you or I. Maybe that’s just my imagination.

I am sure there are many advantages to life in the married state (a man to keep the furnace going, for one), but then you have to put up with someone else in the house, don’t you? I see a husband and children as always being underfoot. I wouldn’t know where to go to be by myself when I need to be. Perhaps if I found a man like Father! When he was alive we shared the house, of course, but we never seemed to get in one another’s way. I suppose we were similar in temperament and inclination, comforted by each other’s presence in the house, but seldom feeling any great need to spend time together. He went his way and I went mine. There were days when we probably didn’t
exchange ten words and that was fine; it wasn’t a matter of ill temper or sullenness, it was just how we felt comfortable with each other. The way I live now, of course, is not for everyone, probably not for most. So maybe I am the wrong person to ask about being thirty.

I should tell you that I have become a topic of conversation on the church porch these days. Or so I am told. This is the fourth consecutive Sunday that I have missed church and apparently the new minister has been asking questions about my spiritual health. Well, I am not going to church these days because I don’t feel like it. I seem to have lost interest in what goes on there and they can make of that what they will. Do you go to church down there, or have you pretty much given up on that too?

Yes, I finally finished
War and Peace
. It is an excellent book though I grew a little weary of it in places. A fellow called Pierre is for me the most attractive figure in the entire novel, but I particularly liked Tolstoy’s description of the Russian landscape, especially in winter. It reminded me of Ontario in many ways. This long winter will soon be over, and yes, I am fed up with the damn furnace and its daily demands. On the other hand, I am also tired of the voice in my head that is always complaining about things. I am also beginning to believe that somehow I must learn to recapture the pleasure I took in winter when I was a child. I’m sure I tired of it then too, but I must have taken more joy in it as well. It does no good to wish away the days of the fourth season as I seem to have been doing since Christmas. As someone put it, I must teach myself to cherish not only the rainbow but also the winter branch. I am going to work on that next year. Belated Happy Birthday, Nora, and don’t
worry so about growing old. Think of the alternative!

Clara

A visit this evening from Mr. Jackson who wanted to know why I have not been attending church. I had been expecting him for weeks and wondered why he had taken so long to get around to me; he is supposed to be such a zealot and saver of lost souls. He sat in the front room with the table lamp catching the light in his stiff coppery hair; long legs crossed and looking at me all the while as if I were not entirely right in the head, a woman mildly unbalanced perhaps by keeping to herself. And I said too much. I was far too anxious to convince him of my sincerity. I shouldn’t have gone on the way I did; it is a failing of those who live alone that when we do have visitors, we say too much. Henry Jackson merely smiled at the things I said and from time to time shook his head as if conversing with some harmless madwoman. He began by saying how disappointed many of the congregation were by my absence these past few weeks. “Your friends, Miss Callan, are worried about you,” he said. “They think
perhaps since your father’s death last year you may have become a little too withdrawn. I understand too that your sister is now down in the States and can’t get up to visit as often as she might like. Would this not be a good time then to attend your church and see your friends? Worship God?”

I should have told him that he made me sound like an invalid. Instead I said, “I no longer believe.”

“No longer believe what?” he asked. He seemed infuriatingly self-assured. Hardly moved in the chair, but lowered his head a little to study me.

“I no longer believe in God,” I said.

He smiled at that. “And what do you believe in then, Miss Callan?”

I told him then that I believed in nothing. But I went on about it far too long. Told him that my belief in God had vanished utterly one Sunday morning in February while I sat at the kitchen table. Belief in God now seemed to me only a childish fantasy. There is nothing there and there never has been. There is no Heaven, no Hell, no resurrection
of the dead. Why did I go on like that? All that detail about Sunday morning at the kitchen table? What foolishness!

He seemed only amused by me. Then he said, “You seem very sure of yourself, Miss Callan. Do you have any proof that God does not exist?”

“Of course, I haven’t,” I said. “It’s not really a matter of proof, is it? It’s a matter of faith and I no longer have that faith. I’m not happy about the way I feel, Mr. Jackson, but I can’t help it.”

Then he wanted me to pray with him. Get down on my knees with him there in the front room and ask God for guidance. I told him the idea was preposterous and he got a bit huffy about that. In the hallway, as he was putting on his coat and hat, he said he would pray for me, though I somehow doubt it. I sense I made an enemy of him.

Dear Clara,

Yes, I am getting used to the idea of being thirty and let me tell you my thirtieth birthday was some night. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. Some of the people at the advertising agency took me up to a club in Harlem where we listened to jazz until three o’clock in the morning. Then we had “breakfast” in an all-night diner on Seventh Avenue. It was past four o’clock when I got back here and I was locked out. I had completely forgotten that they lock the doors at one o’clock. So I had to spend the night (well, what was left of it) at Evelyn’s. Fortunately she has plenty of room. But what a swell evening it was! Besides Evelyn and another couple of gals, there was a copywriter named Joe (have forgotten his last name) and a fellow named Les Cunningham. He is an announcer and is he handsome!!! Brother, he looks just like Don Ameche. We are talking tall, dark, handsome and very suave.
And guess what? I think he’s kind of sweet on me. He sure paid attention to
me that night. But here’s something that bothers me a little. I get the feeling that Evelyn likes me too. And I mean in another way. I’ve had this feeling all along that Evy likes women (if you get my meaning). Not that she has tried anything funny. Even the night I stayed over at her place she gave me the other bedroom, but I just get this feeling about her. The way she looks at me sometimes. The thing is, I like her so much as a “friend.” She has been really nice to me and I don’t want to hurt her feelings in any way, shape or form, but I’ve tried to hint as strongly as I can that I am not that way inclined. Oh and by the way, as you may have already guessed, the tall, dark, and handsome announcer has a wife and two kids. In fact, he had to leave early that night. I might have known that the idea of him being available was just too good to be true. Anyway, enough about my lack of a love life.

Why did you stop going to church? I don’t get it. I would think going to church is something you would want to do up there. I’m not saying you should join those old ladies in the Missionary Society, but wouldn’t getting out on Sunday morning and seeing other people (even familiar ones) be a good idea? I try to go when I can. If I haven’t been out too late on a Saturday, I will go up to Fifth Avenue Presbyterian. It’s a little snooty, but I like the minister. He’s such a good preacher. I still say my prayers too, by the way. Remember how you used to make me kneel beside you with our elbows on the bed while you made up the prayer? You were such a bossy kid, Clara, but never mind, I loved you anyway. I don’t exactly get down on my knees any more, but I do say my prayers before I go to sleep. Well, most nights anyway.

Is it ever mild down here these days! Just like spring. Oh, Clara, I’m so happy I came down here. I just feel it was the right move for me and things are going to work out. I can’t wait for our program to get on the air. They were going to schedule it as a summer replacement show,
but the agency likes Evy’s scripts so much that they are now looking to May or early June. It’s really exciting. Do take care of yourself and write soon!

Love, Nora

Showers and the smell of earth as I walked to school this morning. The children were restless today, anxious to be outside even in the rain. There is an eagerness for spring in their blood: farewell to woollen underwear, to overshoes and scratchy leggings. I understand and remember feeling the same way at this time of year. For me, it is now goodbye, at least for a few months, to shovelling coal into that damn furnace.

A letter from Nora today, which I began to answer before supper, but then Marion came by to ask me to go down to Toronto with her next Saturday and see a movie or something. Now that I no longer have the furnace to worry about, I can get away and so I said I would.

After supper the sky cleared and it was such a fine evening that I walked out along the township roads and didn’t get home until after dark. I will drop Nora a note in a few days.

Dear Nora,

Well, you are leading quite the busy life down there, aren’t you? And yes, I do get your meaning with reference to Miss Dowling. I may live in an Ontario backwater, Nora, but I do understand lesbianism. As a matter of fact, I had my own experience with it when I was in Normal School. A girl there “took an interest” in me. She was always seeking me out after classes, touching me on the arm or shoulder as we spoke,
asking me to come home with her for the weekend. I think her parents lived in Belleville. Many of the other girls had boyfriends who would meet them after classes, and perhaps this girl assumed that because I had no beau I was like her. She was a nice young woman too, but it took a bit of doing to persuade her that I was not interested in that kind of friendship. She didn’t finish her year, but went into nursing. Used to send me Christmas cards for a few years. These situations can be difficult! I liked that girl very much as a person, just as you like your Miss Dowling. You just
have to use tact and judgement and hope the other person understands. I was a little too impatient with that girl, I think. Let Miss D. down gently if you can. As for the tall, dark, handsome (and married) announcer, better leave well enough alone, Nora. A good-looking man like that out on the town without his wife? I can well imagine his intentions, and so can you.

I am glad to learn that you are still going to church, but I’m afraid it has become a thing of the past for me. Yes, it’s a morning out of the house once a week, and I am sure that’s how many people see it, but if I go to church, it has to be for a reason. I have to go to worship God, and, to put it as plainly as I can, I have lost my faith. It happened this winter. Perhaps it’s been happening for some time in small ways, but one Sunday in February, it came with a kind of finality. I just stopped believing. My faith was like a clock winding down until that particular Sunday when it just stopped. So now I can no longer go to church and just sit there pretending to believe. I just can’t do that. To tell you the truth, I feel a little sick about it all. I have to learn to live in a world without God, without the thought of ever seeing Mother and Father again — without any of that. And it’s difficult.

I was down to the city yesterday. I can finally get away now that I don’t have to worry about the furnace. So Marion and I went down on the train for the day. Splurged on lunch at Simpson’s and went to an awful moving picture starring Rudy Vallee. Marion is besotted with the man; otherwise she is a reasonable sane thirty-one-year-old woman. She has been asked to sing at Mildred Craig’s wedding next
month and asked me if I would play for her. I suppose I will, though I am tormenting her a little (for taking me to that awful movie) by telling her I’ll think about it. Yes, it’s mild up here too and about time. So hurrah for spring! Take care of yourself, Nora.