Clara Callan Read Free Page B

gave me the last payment for Father’s car yesterday and the enclosed money order for fifty dollars is your share. I am sure you can put it to good use. To tell you the truth, I now regret selling the car. It has occurred to me more than once over the last little while that I might have kept it and learned how to drive. I just didn’t think that way at the time of Father’s death and maybe I was just in too much of a hurry to get everything settled. Speaking of getting settled, I have also dealt with the man from Linden Monuments who finally got around to seeing me the week before last. These people certainly taketheir time to conduct business; I’ve been after him since the summer. He wanted to sell me some folderol for the family headstone and showed me a catalogue which very nearly struck me dumb with amazement and horror: hundreds of dreadful little verses which attempt to reassure the living that the dead are not so badly off. Perhaps they aren’t, but in any case
I told him that plain words would have to do the job. And so alongside Mother’s and Thomas’s names and years will be Edward J. Callan, 1869–1934. I hope that’s all right with you.
    I think I have now mastered the furnace. It has been worrying me all fall, but Mr. Bryden has given me several lessons on how to start it and keep it going. There is a trick to all this. You have to be careful about allowing enough flame through the coals to burn off the gas, but you can’t smother the flame or, of course, the darn thing will go out. I now appreciate the hours Father used to spend watching “this monster in the cellar.” And in a way it is a “monster” that will have to be attended to and appeased every day of the blessed week from now until April. These days I am hurrying home at lunch to make sure that “he” is still breathing and satisfied, but I am also learning how to put enough coal in after breakfast (“building the fire,” according to Mr. Bryden) so that it will last until I get home from school. I really had no idea what a chore it is just to keep warm. At the same time, there is an undeniable satisfaction in knowing how to do all this.
    I was amused by your colourful description of Miss Dowling with her tobacco-stained fingers and tailored suits. You are certainly meeting some exotic creatures down there, aren’t you?
    I have noted the telephone number you gave me and passed it on to Mrs. Bryden who says hello and good luck. She will get in touch with you if I fall down the cellar stairs and brain myself some evening. And no, I am not going to rent a telephone. As you say, we’ve been through all that and I still maintain that, in my case, it’s a waste of money. I doubt whether I would phone three people in a month and Isee no reason why we can’t keep in touch by letter. Do take care of yourself in that city, Nora.
    Clara
    P.S. Had our first winter storm this week but I am finally dug out!
Tatham House
138 East 38th Street
New York
November 25, 1934
    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