In a Mist Read Free

number.
    â€œHello?” she said. “Hello? Is that you, Herbert?”
    His throat began to swell. He knew if he were to speak she would hear only the slurred despair of his father’s voice, as if calling from beyond the grave. He hung up the phone and walked out of the room.
    He went into the bathroom, urinated, and turned to face the mirror. He took off his horn-rimmed glasses and polished the lenses with the corner of his shirt. When he put them back on he saw patches of stubble on his broad cheeks. He recalled the searing morning headache, his unwillingness to turn on the bathroom light while he shaved. Then he noticed more tufts of white in his dark, crewcut hair than he had ever seen before. Opening the medicine cabinet he took a bottle of Listerine, gargled, and spat in the pink porcelain sink. Then he splashed cold water on himself and dried his face with a green towel hung on a hook on the back of the door.
    He patted his right haunch and felt the slight bulge of his empty wallet. In the living room he sat down at the writing desk, took the scissors from the middle drawer and worked at the cardboard and the cellophane until all ten coins were loose. He stood, slid the coins into his right front pocket. Before he left, he looked over the living room and except for the dent in the wall and his dirty shirt and the stain on the floor the room looked to him as it did when he would come home late on Sue’s nights off , after she had tidied up and the girls had gone to bed. He did not bother to lock the door after himself. Walking down the driveway he heard the sound of a dog barking, a radio playing. He smelled fresh cut grass and the odour of a charcoal barbeque. As he made his way down the street he looked back at the Kwong’s but the window was empty and so was the driveway and there was no one there to see him leave.

Alice and Roy
    June 19, 1981
    Dear Down Beat,
    I am writing out of dismay at Mr. Glasner’s piece on Eleanora Sinclair in last month’s issue. Glasner’s assertion that the small acclaim enjoyed by Ms. Sinclair is due primarily to her strange disappearance only betrays his ignorance of vocal jazz and shows the same penchant for crude sensationalism exhibited by the mainstream media. The suggestion that she orchestrated her own disappearance as a publicity stunt is a joke of exceptionally poor taste—an insult to both Ms. Sinclair and her devout fans. Many of us consider her to be one of the greatest vocalists of her era. It is absurd to think that anyone who loved the stage as much as Ms. Sinclair would wilfully abandon public life. Dean Glasner should stick to writing about the bop and post-bop he gets off on, and leave Sinclair fans in peace.
    Alice Alderson
New York, NY
    * * *
    July 7, 1981
    Dear
Down Beat,
    I couldn’t agree more with Alice Alderson’s defence of Eleanora Sinclair. Too often, as in Mr. Glasner’s piece, Ms. Sinclair is dismissed as a second rate performer. Indeed, the editors of
Down Beat
may be responsible in part for her status as a footnote in jazz history. Since Earl Ehlrich’s short article following her disappearance in 1950,
Down Beat
has all but ignored her impressive catalogue and wide-ranging influence. Even Ehrlich’s piece focusses on the circumstances of her disappearance and virtually ignores her merits as a distinctive, perhaps incomparable jazz vocalist.
    I applaud Ms. Alderson for her criticism of Glasner, and would like to extend this criticism to the
Down Beat
establishment on the whole. Eleanora Sinclair ought to be remembered for her artistry, and not treated like pulp for the tabloids.
    p.s. Any
Down Beat
readers who happen to live in the Fredericton/Oromocto NB area would be well-advised to tune into CHSR 97.9 FM every Thursday at 10 pm for
Two Drink Minimum
. Those of you who recognize that the show borrows its name from Sinclair’s signature song (originally by Art Beazley, though Eleanora really made