A Celibate Season. Carol Shields

I added, “and if you aren’t in, I’ll leave it on your answering machine.”

      The Château Laurier

      Ottawa, Ont.

      Sept. 2

       Dearest Chas,

      I bet you didn’t expect me to pick up pen and Château L. stationery ten minutes after your phone call. Surprise! Here I am, huddled on one of their oversize beds, which makes me feel as though I were drifting around the Strait of Georgia in our leaky old dinghy. When I think of all the times you’ve spent alone in hotel rooms—Regina, Victoria, Edmonton—and how I used to envy your freedom, your adventure! It never occurred to me that it might feel this empty.

      What do I do now? A man, I suppose, would head for the bar. (I can’t—I’ll drown.) I’ll have to pour my own. Damn! I just remembered. You know that little bottle of medicinal Scotch you tucked into my briefcase? (Sweet you—oh God!) Well, at the last minute I decided to bring yet another legal tome and there wasn’t room for the Scotch so I took it out. All I have is a miniature bottle of gin supplied by Air Canada—I suppose I could mix it with mouthwash. I deserve to crawl drinkless across the Sahara—which, incidentally, the dimensions of this room are beginning to remind me of.

      Ingratitude! It was classy of the Commission to put me in such a room, so royally maroon! Heavy maroon quilts, maroon drapes tied back over white sheers that hide what turns out to be two old-fashioned windows (with wooden sills!) that actually open, reluctantly, from the bottom and have to be propped up. But I’d have felt less bereft if the room had been little, with, instead of two big double beds, one modest, cell-like single covered with chaste white cotton—why two doubles, anyway? Are there people so sexually athletic that, having worn out the resilience of bed number one, they roll—not coming unstuck—onto bed number two…I’d better get off that line of thought.

      I got off to a great country-bumpkin start—tripped getting out of the taxi. There’s a step up to the revolving doors here at the Château, and I missed and would have fallen on my face (falling on my face—a hidden message from the psyche?) if the doorman hadn’t had the reflexes of Rambo. I’ve got the jitters, no use pretending otherwise—about tomorrow, I mean. There I’ll be, all got up in that great grey suit from Chapman’s—Mother tried her damnedest to wheedle the price out of me, but I refused to blow my cover—in my suitable navy-blue blouse, navy-blue pumps (and matching soul)—clutching my leather Lady Executive Briefcase, stumbling in and introducing myself to Senator Pierce—oh Lord! How do you address a senator? I forgot to find out.

      I keep remembering how sceptical Mr. Enright seemed when I told him I was taking a leave of absence. “Women’s issues—“was all he said, and then sort of shook his head and grinned.

      Tell me I won’t blow it. This is high-powered stuff. I need you. To reassure me. In person, not over a disembodied electronic gadget. And I’ve got the guilts again about leaving you to cope.

      Happy about Greg’s two goals! I keep thinking of him skating out onto the ice and tossing his head back like Wayne Gretzky. That little head toss—I don’t know why—keeps swamping me with tenderness. Imprinting the hero. Seeing oneself as a glorious hunter/warrior/pilot—maybe it’s the male way of blocking any suspicion that ploughing around in muddy trenches or being impaled on a lance or tumbling in flames into the Atlantic isn’t that much fun. I guess invading space must be next, that’s what little boys dream of now. (Little girls? I notice no one ever cleans space up.)

      I’m trying not to worry about Greg. Or Mia. Or about you, volunteering for this house-husband thing. No vestigial role-model anywhere, is there?Your father’s ashes would ignite, and as for your mother, I did think she sounded a mite snappish when we told her, didn’t you?

      I’ll write after tomorrow’s meeting. It’s only nine o’clock Vancouver time (midnight here), but maybe if I tunnel under the maroon covers my mind will shut down. Why didn’t I steal two little gins?

      Much, much love, and even to the rotten teenagers. Tell them I called them that—perversely, it’ll make them feel loved.

      Love,

      Jock

      P.S. My God, the lentils! I bought two jars; I was going to learn to make lentil soup. They’re on the top shelf, seems a shame to waste them.

      P.P.S. Sequins! Mia has to have them for her ballet costume. Don’t worry, I’ll think of something.

      29 Sweet Cedar

      Drive North Vancouver, B.C.

      4 September

      Dear Jock,

      I’m sitting here by the kitchen window, which is where I moved my old drafting table and typewriter yesterday. Greg came out of his sulks for a whole ten minutes and gave me a hand carrying it up from the basement (my God it’s heavy—you can’t beat good solid oak), while Mia stood by and exclaimed in that shrill piping way she has that it’s a campy old thing and that it makes the kitchen look “unbalanced.” Tell me, what do thirteen-year-old girls know about balance? “Never mind,” I told her, “this is where it stays.”

      You wouldn’t believe what this simple shift of furniture has done for my morale, which was draggier than usual after a weekend of heavy parenting—more about that later. Here I sit, king of the kitchen, in that wasted space between the fridge and the kitchen table. (We moved your bamboo plant stand into the dining room where your mother’s old tea trolley used to be, and as for the tea trolley—more about that later too.)

      At any rate, I feel this dreary morning like a man reborn. The sun is not pouring in—you wouldn’t believe me if I said it was—but there is definitely something about the sight of tall, dark dripping trees that makes for a minor-chord melancholy that’s one step up from basement-iris. God only knows why I put up with that basement room all this time. One more year of strip lighting and cinder-block walls and mildewed straw matting might have destroyed me totally. And so, despite the non-balancing kitchen and the sticky jam jar someone’s left on my drafting table, I feel installed, ensconced, magisterial even.

      Of course it’s helped that your letter arrived this morning. I’ve read it through three times and feel a real pang, whatever the hell a pang is, reading about your snug maroon cocoon at the Chateau Laurier and that wasted width of empty bed. In retrospect it seems somewhat wacky to me that, when this Ottawa job came up, we didn’t stop to discuss or even consider the problems that might accompany ten months of celibate life. Does this seem odd to you? A little suspect in fact? I suppose, like a pair of fools, we thought we could just shut down for a spell, the way we disconnect the pool in winter or turn off the furnace for the summer.

      Speaking of the furnace, it appears we need a new thermal valve which is going to set us back—with labour—two hundred and fifty whopping bucks. When I flicked on the heat and got a series of little cheeping noises and then a crumpling sound and, finally, silence, I called our speedy twenty-four-hour emergency serviceman, who said he was awfully sorry but this was the busiest time of the year and he wouldn’t be able to make it up here until Friday. “Well, that’s just great,” I said.”What are we supposed to do till then—freeze?” There was a pause, and then he said that maybe he could get over here on Wednesday if I could promise that the lady of the house would be in. “I am the lady of the house,” I told him, “and I will be in.” There followed another pause, longer this time, and then he said, finally, something that sounded like, “Yeah?” So it looks as if we only have to stay chilly for a couple more days. Which is another good thing about moving my table to the kitchen—I can open the oven door and bask in its fierce kilowatt-eating coil, never mind what the hydro bill’s going to look like at the end of the month. (You didn’t say, Jock, whether you are on the gov’t payroll yet or not.)

      Can’t wait to hear how you made out with your senator. Put it in writing so I can savour it. Lord, I miss you!

      Love,