Poem for the week: "A Long Way to Go Yet"

 

A Long Way to Go Yet

 

I invested a lot of time and energy

reading his books and listening to his

podcasts and interviews and writing my

own book One Rule to Live By: Be Good,

inspired by his bestseller 12 Rules for Life:

An Antidote to Chaos, but the questing

psychology professor no longer called

to me; not because he stopped being one

of the most fascinating intellectuals

of the 21^th Century, but because he had

given up his secret and had nothing more

to say to me but novel iterations of the

same wisdom, following his successful

bestseller with the hopeful sequel Beyond

Order: 12 More Rules for Life. But I

refused to admit it, until something Jung

said reminded me of how he lost interest

in people when he discovered the secret

that made them who they were, the divine

mystery of soul-making essential to his

psychology of individuation, a secret so

sacred that it led him to say, in a moment

of exasperation, “Thank God I am Jung,  

and not a Jungian!” And I moved on from

the mentoring professor, knowing full well

that as far as his heroic path had taken

him, he had a long way to go yet.

 

 

 

Sunday poem: "A Bloomian Whimsy"

 

A Bloomian Whimsy

 

Professor Bloom is back from

the dead, the Promethean critic who

did not believe in life after death,

his last kick at the can, a posthumous

book that does its best to prove the

savior Jesus wrong, and all the prophets

of redemption—Take Arms Against

a Sea of Troubles: The Power of

the Reader’s Mind Over a Universe

of Death—a man possessed by the

spirit of nihilism that refused to set

him free from an incomparable genius

“edged by nothingness,”a man whose

Faustian longing for more life always

moved me to tears, but hearing his

voice once more from his place over

there, I despaired the ironic echo

of his hero Hamlet’s last words, “The

rest is silence,” a Bloomian whimsy

much too tragic for tears.

Short story: "The Big Rock"

 

The Big Rock

 

Brenda was on her coffee break, and Cathy and Cindy we’re shocked by Christine’s profane outburst. An old-fashioned Roman Catholic, who still harbored the illusion that her religion was the only true religion and the Pope the infallible spokesman of God, it was out of character for her to display such outrage; but she couldn’t help herself.

All Brenda did was show the girls her new diamond ring. But this simple gesture, in the context of the deep emotional undercurrent of office personalities, was enough to set Christine off— “As if that big rock is going to change anything! It’s not, you know! She’s still going to treat Gordy like a piece of shit! That’s no way to treat your husband! No wonder he goes on those big benders! She drives him to drink!”

Cathy laughed, and so did Cindy. They had never seen Christine so upset. Her face was so red it looked like a chilly pepper.

Gordy Henderson, a grossly overweight elementary school teacher who took an early retirement at fifty-five and Brenda’s husband of twenty-seven years, had just called the office at the St. Jude Memorial District Hospital. It was his second call that morning.

The first call Christine, whose job was to mind the switchboard, picked up and switched him to his wife Brenda; but Christine was on her coffee break when Gordy called the second time, and Cathy answered: “Good morning. St. Jude Hospital. How can I help you?”

“Is that you Cathy?”

“Yes.”

“This is Gordy.

“Oh, hi Gordy. How are you today?”

“Fine, thank you.”

“That’s good. I’ll put Brenda on—”

“No,” Gordy quickly said. “I don’t want to talk to her. I want to ask you something.”

“What?” Cathy asked, curious by the sound of his voice.

There was a long, uncomfortable pause. “So, what do you think of Brenda’s new ring?” Gordy finally said, sounding like he was confessing to an indiscretion.

Taken aback, Cathy didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t noticed Brenda’s new ring. No one in the office had, despite the fact that she had worn it for the past three days. She had even taken off all of her other rings for her new diamond to stand out. Cathy stammered, “Oh, does Brenda have a new ring?”

“Yes. I bought it for her last week,” Gordy said, apologetically.

“She never said anything.” Cathy replied, glancing at Brenda.

“Well, look; don’t tell her I called,” Gordy said; but Cathy could tell that Brenda knew it was her husband on the phone. In fact, she sensed that they had set it up during his call earlier; but she played along. “Okay, if that’s what you want,” she said.

“Yeah, I don’t want Brenda to know I called,” Gordy added

“Okay,” Cathy said, with another glance at Brenda.

“Thanks Cathy. So, I’ll leave you to it, then.”

Brenda pretended to be working, but Cathy knew she was listening. “Bye,” she said, and hung up the phone and went back to work.

Later, when Christine returned from her coffee break, Cathy made like she needed something from the filing cabinet next to Brenda’s desk. “Brenda, do you have that invoice for McAllen? I can’t find it,” she said, flipping through another folder.

“I’ve got it here,” Brenda said.

“Oh good. I need it,” Cathy said, knowing she had it.

Brenda picked it up and handed it to her with her new diamond ring hand.

“Brenda, is that a new ring?” Cathy asked.

“Oh, that thing? Gordy got it for me last week.”

“And you never said anything?”

“No. Why should I?”

“My God, it’s beautiful! Hey girls, come and take a look at Brenda’s new ring!”

Brenda’s face lit up. In a mock display of movie star glamor, she flashed her hand for the girls to see her new big diamond ring.

“Wow! That must have cost a fortune!” Cindy exclaimed.

“I’m worth it,” Brenda said, like the woman in the L’Oreal commercial.

“Where are your other rings?” Christine asked, her brow furling.

“I left them at home,” Brenda said, with a casual shrug.

“I never take my wedding rings off. Just when I’m washing dishes,” Christine replied.

“I don’t do dishes,” Brenda said, in that same pseudo voice that mimicked the woman in the L’Oreal commercial.

“Humph,” Christine huffed, and returned to her desk and put her head down and pretended to be busy. A few minutes later, Brenda went for her coffee break; and when she was out of the office, Christine lost her cool— “Who in the fuck is she trying to fool? They don’t even sleep together!”

 

But Brenda was petty that way. One Christmas, I gave Cathy a new watch. It was an Alfred Sung, with a locking gold bracelet band with a black stripe running through it, very striking and original, and the girls loved it so much that Brenda hunted all over the city until she found an Alfred Sung watch just like Cathy’s, but she never wore it to the office.

One day, however, she forgot herself and wore it to work. Cathy noticed it. “Brenda, you have a watch just like mine—”

Brenda’s face flushed red. “Oh, that? I got that a long time ago,” she stammered.

“You had to go out and buy one just like mine, didn’t you?” Cathy said.

“Gordy bought it for me,” Brenda stammered again. “I mentioned to him how I liked your watch, and the next thing you know, he bought this for me. I had nothing to do with it. I swear—”

She could have sworn on a stack of bibles for all Cathy cared, she knew Brenda was lying. “Well I don’t care,” Cathy said. “I’m not going to stop wearing mine.”

But Christine’s disgust was more personal. She resented the way Brenda treated her husband. Marriage was sacred to Christine. That’s why her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary meant so much to her. Her husband had recently booked a weekend at the Blue Dolphin Inn on the north shore of Lake Superior just across the border in Minnesota for their silver wedding anniversary, and Christine couldn’t stop talking about it—

“It was so romantic. We had a room with a window overlooking the lake, and we signed the guest book and had a candlelight dinner—”

“No wonder my marriage failed,” Cindy mocked, putting her hand to her heart. “I didn’t have a window overlooking the lake, and we didn’t sign the guest book—”

Cindy was single again. She had left her husband for good this time, and to prove it she went back to her maiden name; but Brenda didn’t have the courage to leave her husband, despite how much more miserable she was in her marriage than Cindy, and she made Gordy’s life hell. Sometimes she didn’t speak to him for months at a time, which only drove him to drink more, locking himself in the basement for days at a time and only going out for more booze; but her nasty behavior spilled over into the office…

 

When Cathy beat Brenda out of the office Lead Hand position, Brenda refused to speak to her for five weeks. She only spoke to her if it was work related. Otherwise, it was the same stony silence that she gave to her husband.

“How long are you going to keep this up?” Cathy asked her one day, when she bumped into her at the lobby in the post office and Brenda deliberately snubbed her.

“Until I’m good and ready,” she icily replied; and taking the mail out of her mail box, she strutted out of the post office lobby.

Brenda was slighted by Cathy’s promotion. She had been given the Lead Hand position by the new CEO, expecting no one to challenge his decision; but Cathy did.

“This position has to be posted,” she told Colin, the new CEO. “Brenda can have it for six months, that’s what the union allows; but I’m going to grieve it if you don’t post it after six months.” And when the position did get posted, it was tailor-worded for Brenda to get the position; but Cathy had more seniority, and she was equally qualified. So, Colin had no choice; he had to award it to Cathy to avoid a union grievance.

But try as she may, Brenda could only suffer the burden of her grudge for so long, and she finally broke her silence; but it was Brenda at her petty best—

“Oh, I see somebody’s been shopping,” she’d say, when Cathy walked into the office with something new. “It must be nice to have money to spend on new clothes,” implying that she would also afford new outfits if she had been given a raise like Cathy; but it was only a dollar an hour more, and Brenda was just being spiteful.

But she felt she had good reason to be spiteful. Her position used to be management (general ledger clerk and office manager) before Cathy was hired on at the St. Jude Memorial District Hospital as a cost analyst accountant—a position that never materialized because of office restructuring that made Brenda’s management position bargaining unit work which, to her bitter disappointment, forced her wages to be reduced to what the union allowed for that type of work—a drop of three dollars and twenty cents an hour.

Brenda felt cheated by Cathy, who had five weeks more seniority than her because Brenda’s management position was restructured after Cathy was hired for a position that never came about because of office restructuring; but Brenda could have applied for the cost analyst accountant’s position,” Cathy explained to me. “She felt threatened by that job, that’s why she didn’t apply for it. She suspected that management was trying to get rid of her, which they could have if she got the cost analyst’s job because it wasn’t a union position; so, she has no reason to feel that I cheated her. It just so happens that the cost analyst accountant’s position never came about because of the restructuring, but I had nothing to do with that.”

So, the new Lead Hand position meant more to Brenda than the simple one dollar an hour raise; it meant that she could get her authority back in the office.

Brenda had worked at the St. Jude Memorial District Hospital for nineteen years, much longer than Cathy; but because all those years were management, her seniority meant nothing when the new CEO, who was Director of Financing, cleverly restructured her position to bargaining unit work; but try as she may, Cathy could not get Brenda to see that she hadn’t cheated her. She was simply going by union rules, so she stopped trying.

 

I was flabbergasted. “To think she would get her husband to call just so you girls would notice her new ring,” I said to Cathy, when she related the incident over dinner that evening. “She can’t be that desperate for attention, can she?”

“She must be. But that’s just her karma coming back to her, that’s all it is.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Brenda never gives compliments. Never. Anytime one of us comes into work with something new, she never says anything. All she says is her annoying little ‘Ummm.’ And now she wanted her big rock to be noticed. But no one did. That’s karma.”

“The civil servant mentality never ceases to amuse me,” I said, and laughed.

“Hey, I’m a civil servant too!” Cathy said to me, in mock defense.

“Yes, you are; but your values are different. And believe me, sweetheart; that sets you apart from the self-serving ethic of the civil servant mentality.”

“Thank you for clearing that up for me,” she said, and laughed again. Cathy hated being labelled a civil servant. She had witnessed too many occasions of flagrant abuse at the hospital to be defined by the self-serving ethic of the civil service mentality, especially management; but just to keep her on her moral toes, I teased her every now and then.

“It’s not like she didn’t try to get her ring noticed,” Cathy said, reflecting on Brenda’s behavior. “I couldn’t understand why she was making such a big fuss over her mood watch the other day, but it all makes sense now.”

“Mood watch? What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s supposed to show the color of your emotions, or something like that. Anyway, Brenda came over to my desk the other day and put her wrist in front of my face and asked me what color her mood watch had turned, but that was just a ploy to get me to notice her new diamond ring; but I didn’t. Honest, it just didn’t register; and that must have really got to her. That’s why I think her and Gordy set me up.”

“With the phone call?”

“Yes. I think she got Gordy to ask me if I had noticed her new ring.”

“Unbelievable. Can people be that small?”

“You wouldn’t believe how small they can be up there.”

“Brenda can’t be that desperate for attention, can she?”

“There’s no love left in her marriage. But she pretends there’s nothing wrong. That’s what makes it so sad. I feel sorry for her. I really do.”

“Why? She makes her own choices, let her live by them.”

“I know, but it’s so petty,” Cathy said, perplexed by Brenda’s behavior.

“Look, Cathy; it’s not complicated,” I replied. “Brenda envies you. You have a life, and she doesn’t. That’s what bothers her.”

“I know. It bothered her when I lost twenty-four pounds with Weight-Watchers in six months while she’s still trying to lose weight with TOPS, and she’s been in TOPS for twenty years. And it bothers her whenever I come in with a new outfit. But what really bothered her this time was my new emerald ring. I’m not bragging, but everyone at the hospital just loved it, and Brenda couldn’t stand it. She must have told Gordy, that’s why he bought her that big rock. Christine’s right; she didn’t’ need a new diamond. But can you imagine going home every night for three days and telling Gordy that no one had even noticed it? That’s why she had him call to ask me about it. She couldn’t stand it any longer.”

“I can just picture it. Brenda walks thought the door, and Gordy says, ‘So, how did they like your new ring?’ Brenda would be so pissed off that she’d blame Gordy for not buying her a bigger rock and then make him cook his own dinner.”

“Again,” Cathy said, and laughed.

But it wasn’t Cathy’s new emerald ring (and matching necklace that she wore to work now and then) that bothered Brenda; it was the love that imbued the gemstone.

“So,” Cindy said to Cathy, all excited. “Is that your engagement ring?”

I had taken Cathy to Duluth for her fiftieth birthday the previous weekend, and I finally asked her to marry me; but we decided to keep it secret, so Cathy replied, “It’s a birthstone ring, not an engagement ring.”

“But it’s on your engagement ring finger!” Cindy exclaimed.

“It’s my coming-of-age ring,” Cathy calmly replied. “I turned fifty, and Oriano wanted it to be a special day for me; that’s all.”

“No, it’s not! It’s an engagement ring, I know it is!”

“It’s a coming-of-age ring, Cindy; so, don’t try to make anything more of it.”

All the girls were waiting for Cathy to come back from Duluth. They thought for sure I would propose this time, because she was turning fifty. Whenever Cathy and I went away, especially on our yearly leafing getaways, Cindy or one of the girls in the office would ask if I had popped the question yet, but when Cathy wriggled out of it this time by telling them it was a coming-of-age ring, it excited their curiosity all the more, and Brenda couldn’t stand for Cathy to get all of that attention.

“That’s ridiculous!” Christine exclaimed, letting it all out. “Spending that kind of money on another ring! She’s got more rings than Carter’s got pills! They could have gone on a real nice holiday and enjoyed themselves! But not her! No way! She has to have another big fancy diamond to show off! No wonder her daughter can’t keep a relationship—”

For Christine, a diamond meant forever, and Brenda’s pretentious display of Gordy’s affection pushed the wrong button, and she continued to rant— “If I was Gordy, I would have left her the moment I found out she was screwing around! She’s got no ethics at all! And she pretends to be such a good Christian! ‘Oh, I’ve got choir practice tonight.’ Choir practice, my ass! She was screwing his principal, and everyone in town knew it!”

“Christine, get a grip,” Cindy said. “You’re going to drive yourself back to the other side if you let her get to you.”

Cathy smiled. Cindy was referring to Christine’s breakdown, which Doctor Jamie diagnosed as Postpartum Depression that kept her in a hospital bed for three weeks.

“I don’t care! She’s just a big phony, and she’s not fooling anyone around here!”

“Calm down, Christine,” Cathy repeated.

“Why? Why should I?”  Christine replied.

“Because your face is all red. Your blood pressure must be going through the roof.”

“Is it? Is my face all red?” she asked, her brow furling.

“Like a lobster,” Cindy said.

“Well, someone had to say it. She makes me so sick sometimes—”

 

Only four people worked in the office, Cathy, Brenda, Cindy, and Christine, and one would think they would all get along, and they did; but not really.

Colin Hamilton, who was the Director of Finances before he became the new Hospital Administrator (the old CEO had taken an early retirement with two years full pay and a twenty-thousand-dollar buy-out, leaving him free to double dip as temporary administrator for the hospital in the northern community of Sioux Lookout, an egregious example of civil service ethics that drove independent workers like myself insane), can’t make a decision and stick to it, because he wants to please everyone; consequently, everyone is left frustrated, like Colin’s inability to deal with what everyone referred to as “the Christine situation.”

After her breakdown, everyone tiptoed around Christine, making sure not to push her over the edge again; but the girls in the office finally decided that if she couldn’t do her job, she shouldn’t be there, because all the extra work from the fund-raising department had to be absorbed by them because after the office restructuring they had eliminated that position, which meant that Christine had to help out. But Colin didn’t want to stress Christine with more work, and he let her off the hook. In her job as receptionist and switchboard operator, she had more than ample time to help the other girls out, especially during audit and year-end, but she refused to offer a hand, and she always got away with it.

It was flagrant favoritism, and the other girls resented it. So much so that Cindy, who was normally very timid when it came to speaking up about her job, lost it with the overload of extra work, especially when they dumped fundraising onto them—

“And don’t give me that nonsense about no money in the budget!” she blew up at Colin. “If you really wanted to save money, you’d cut Christine’s job! Job! What job? It’s a goddamn joke! She doesn’t do a damn thing out there! All she does is write up a few receipts and answer the phone, and she doesn’t even do that half the time! It’s not fair Colin, and you know it! She’s getting away with murder out there!”

Shocked by Cindy’s outrage, Colin didn’t know what to say. Finally, he told Cindy that he would have a talk with Christine and ask her to help out with the extra workload; but, as usual, he waffled and never said anything to her.

“I’ll bet he wouldn’t treat her like that if they didn’t go to the same church,” Cindy said to Cathy one day when Christine was on her coffee break.

“It’s the Catholic connection,” Cathy said, and laughed.

“Well, I can’t keep up this extra work load,” Cindy said, with a determined look on her face. “I’m just going to go on sick leave and see how he likes it!”

And Cindy did go on sick leave. She used the excuse that the stress of her marriage breakup was too much for her, and Doctor Jamie gave her sick time, so she was off work all summer and Colin had to hire a temp until Cindy returned; but when she returned, nothing had changed. Christine still refused to help out with the extra workload.

“That’s why Christine blew up, you know,” Cindy said to Cathy. “She’s just as big a phony as Brenda. Even bigger. She sits there all day pretending to be busy when we all know she’s not doing a goddamn thing. It’s a joke. Her job’s a big fucking joke! I mean, how long does it take to write up half a dozen receipts? One hour?”

“If that,” Cathy said. smiling.

“Yeah, right!” Cindy replied.

“She’s got a big skunk on her conscience, Cindy,” Cathy said. “That’s why she lost it when she saw Brenda’s new diamond ring.”

“Yeah; maybe, eh? I couldn’t figure out why she got so mad. I mean, she really lost it,” Cindy said. “I thought for sure she was headed for the other side—"

Cathy laughed, but as unresolved as it was, the girls managed to live with “the Christine situation.” But that didn’t bother Cathy as much as Brenda’s work ethic.

Unable to come to terms with Cathy’s promotion to Lead Hand, Brenda did everything she could to sabotage Cathy’s job—withholding information; or giving Cathy just enough information for her to complete some work but which would all have to be redone when Brenda gave her the rest of the information that she was deliberately holding back. That finally got to Cathy, and one day she confronted her—

“I’m not playing games with you, Brenda. If you continue to withhold information from me, I’m going to Colin—”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Go to Colin. You’ve got nothing on me.”

“We’ll see about that,” Cathy said; but she couldn’t bring herself to lodge a complaint about Brenda’s sabotaging behavior, she wanted to work it out between them. “But she won’t change,” she confessed to me over dinner at the Mosport Inn (a quaint old inn on the shores of Lake Superior half an hour’s drive from St. Jude). “She’s too stubborn to change.”

“That’s sad,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

“I know. And it’s so damn frustrating. But what can I do?”

“Grin and bear it, I guess,” I said.

“I’m going to lose it one of these days,” Cathy said.

“Sweetheart, do your job as best you can and let the universe take care of the rest. You know how karma works, don’t you?”

“What else can I do? But it’s so damn petty. I mean, can you imagine having her husband call and ask me if I had seen her new ring? My God, if I ever become that small and desperate for attention, I want you to tell me.”

“Are you out of your mind? You’re so thin-skinned that if I ever hinted at anything like that you wouldn’t speak to me for months. No thank you, dear; you can work out your own karmic relationship with her. I don’t want that responsibility.”

Cathy knew only too well what I meant, and didn’t respond; and after a moment’s silence, we continued with our Trout Hemingway dinner.

 

——

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem for the week: "A Purposeful Life"

 

 

A Purposeful Life

 

“I want to have a purposeful

life,” said singer Jann Arden

in the Zoomer magazine profile

on her third memoir If I Knew

Then, and so do we all; and we

do, but don’t know it. Sit back,

relax, close your eyes and let

your mind wander. Stop, reflect,

and tally up the sums of your

life, one image at a time. Don’t

censor, just look. The first image

begins the accounting of your

life; other images will follow.

Rest deeper, wander further,

and your life’s purpose will rise

to the surface. I saw it, my own

life, replete with all my virtues

and faults—and, thank God, fewer

regrets than I would’ve thought;

just a little sorrow for not doing

more, but enough to die content

with my divine imperative, the

same karmic directive as Jann

and every other soul: to resolve

our paradoxical complexity

and become whole.

Thanksgiving Day poem: "This Day of Gratitude"

 

This Day of Gratitude

 

The beech tree in our front yard

seems to have turned yellow

overnight, and in a few short days

will shed its joyous splendor,

and even our oak trees seem less

stubborn this year, turning golden

faster than usual, but they take  

longer to shed, even hanging

on till the November snow, and

our tired old maple trees are gently

turning myriad shades of crimson

while my sweet Penny Lynn,

safe and whole from yet another

medical adventure, is happily

in her kitchen getting the turkey

ready for Thanksgiving dinner

which we’ll be sharing with our

good friend and neighbor, making

this day of gratitude in beautiful

Georgian Bay the best ever,

Sunday poem: "Not the Way of Marcus Aurelius"

 

Not the Way of Marcus Aurelius 

We have a stoic anxiety with death

today (especially since the pandemic)

that would dismay the Stoic philosopher

emperor, keeping at bay the stark reality

of our inevitable passing, as if not thinking

about death would stave it; but the days

quickly sink into each other, each more

oppressive than the other, piling on the blind

conceit of our mortality, and we lose all

perspective, and panic; certainly not the

way of Marcus Aurelius, who taught

himself to face death with the equanimity

of a man who had done so countless times

in the past and who grew in wisdom,

patience, and resilience.

Short story: "The Frenchman's Notebook"

 

The Frenchman’s Notebook

 

It put Leo Kubochev on the spot. He didn`t want to offend either one; but if he had his choice, he would rather have coffee with Jimmy Mitchell.

And he did find himself avoiding Mike`s Mart where Gaston Gauthier went for his long morning coffee break, and just as long afternoon coffee break, the only place in St. Jude that didn`t seem to mind his loud presence, and that was only because Mike`s Mart wasn`t a coffee shop; it was a convenience store with a soup and submarine sandwich bistro.

But it was inevitable that he would have to confront “the Frenchman,” as all the coffee regulars in town referred to him, and he did one afternoon while walking downtown.

Leo was going to the post office. Gaston was sitting in his shiny red Toyota (which always looked like it had just come out of the showroom) parked on Front Street in front of the drug store, waiting to pick up his wife who got off work at five-thirty.

As Leo approached Gaston`s car, he recognized him, steeled himself, and waved hello, hoping that would be enough; but it wasn`t. Gaston stretched over, opened the passenger door window, and waited for Leo to bend over and talk with him.

“Long time no see,” the Frenchman said, in his usual loud and embarrassing voice. “Are you working now? Is that how come you been avoiding me?”

“No, I’m not working yet. But I’ve got some good prospects.”

“Yeah?” Gaston said, feigning excitement. “Where?”

“Oh, here and there,” Leo said. Actually, he didn’t have any job prospects. He said that to everyone who asked. “I’ve put my name back in at the mill.”

“No way!” the Frenchman exclaimed. “They won’t hire you at the mill. You’re too old! You’re wasting your time. I put thirty-seven years in that place, and I know for sure how they think. Come on, Leo; where’s your brains? I thought you were smarter than that!”

And he wondered why people stopped having coffee with him…

 

Born into a family of twelve children, Gaston Gauthier moved to St. Jude from “la belle province” when he was twenty-one and worked in the bush camps for two years, hating every minute of it, before getting on at the paper mill in the nearby town of Rock Point where he worked loading magazines in the Groundwood until they shut that department down, which forced Gaston to take an early retirement because he hated being in the labor pool where he was shunted from one job to another, depending upon where they needed him.

He lived in the company bunk house at Rock Point for the first ten years of his employment until he met his wife Casandra, and when they got married they rented for five years the main floor apartment of the house that used to be the old hospital building of the Ontario Hydro community that my neighbors Bob and Carol had moved to St. Jude when Ontario Hydro closed down the Pine Falls town site; but the new house that Gaston and Casandra purchased wasn’t a regular house, it was a pre-fabricated factory home that was moved onto its location in two parts by a tractor trailer.

When Gaston called me to do some work on his place, it didn’t surprise me to see that his house, as tight as it was in its design—one narrow hallway going half way down the center of the forty-eight-foot unit—was kept completely spotless, everything in its place and not a smudge on the coffee tables, counter top, or windows.

And that’s also how Gaston looked, as though he was going to Sunday Mass every day of the week. He always wore dress pants and neatly pressed shirts. He never wore jeans except for work where he loaded eight-foot logs into the magazine pockets in the cement floor rigged with elevator lifts that dropped the logs down where they would be ground into pulp by the huge grinding stones and then sent by conveyer to the digesters to be cooked, a hard, solitary job which they called “loading magazines” and which was eliminated when the company started buying wood chips instead of logs. But Gaston never went to work in jeans; he had a locker at work, and he changed his clothes before and after every shift.

Gaston took his time showering after work, because he commuted in his own car from St. Jude to the paper mill in Rock Point. He used to belong to a car pool (three, actually), but all the men soon tired of him and found some excuse to exclude him from their pool.

He always shaved after his shower, and combed his neatly trimmed hair; and every day, for reasons one could easily guess given his nature, he kept a record of the weather and other details in his shirt pocket. In fact, this became a standing joke in the mill. “Watch out he doesn’t write you up in his notebook,” the men would say, and laugh.

The two-by-four feet ceiling tiles in the small kitchen ceiling had sagged over the years, and Gaston wanted to know if they could be screwed back up and painted.

I didn’t know. Carpentry wasn’t my trade, and I didn’t want to get involved in something that I knew could easily come back to bite me; but he insisted that it would be alright, because he had asked two other “professionals” about it.

“See,” he said, standing on a chair (after first placing a newspaper on it) and pushing a tile up so that it went to its original flat position. “If you put a screw here it will stay, and then you can paint it.”

“Why don’t you do it yourself, Gaston? It’s not a big job,” I said.

“I want a professional. Me, I’m just a mill worker. You can do that, eh? It’s not a big job. I ask two or three other guys to come, but they never show up. How much you charge for this job? Not very much, eh?”

“I charge by the hour.”

“How much you charge an hour?”

“Twenty dollars.”

“How long it gonna take you?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure I even want to do it. I don’t know if the screws won’t bust through the tiles. The sag pressure might force the screws to break through—”

“Then put lots of screws!” he jumped in, in his extra loud voice to convey absolute confidence, which in reality only made him look more of the insecure buffoon that everyone in town took him to be.

“Why don’t you put the screws in and leave them for a few days and then I can come back and tape them and paint the ceiling for you,” I said.

“You think they gonna show?”

“Probably. That’s not drywall up there. I won’t be able to get a smooth finish because the tiles have a rough texture. The best thing you can do is texture the whole ceiling, like we did your living room—”

I had textured his living room ceiling four years earlier when he had the tiles replaced with drywall, but word got back to me that I had “gouged” him and I didn’t want to work for him again; but he kept calling and leaving messages on my answering machine.

I never liked the man from the day I met him. He was a rude little martinet who everyone in town knew kept his wife in her place (their only child ran away from home when she turned sixteen), but he couldn’t have the same kind of control over others, and that fostered a personality much too strange for the good people of St. Jude to suffer. But for the sake of my business, I had to be professional; so, I answered his message in person.

“How much you charge me for texture?” he asked.

“My texture rate is still the same, one dollar per square foot; but I’d have to do prep work first, so that would be extra.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

“I have to prepare the ceiling first. If you screw the tiles back into place, I’ll have to tape them so the heads won’t show, and then I have to tape all the seams as well; and then I’ll have to prime the whole ceiling before I texture it.”

“How much you charge me for the whole job?”

“Do you want me to screw in the tiles too?”

“Yeah. You do the whole job.”

“Are you sure you want me to give you a price?”

“I don’t like my ceiling! It look like hell! I have to fix it! I can’t look at it no more!”

“Why don`t you replace the tiles with drywall like you did the living room?”

“I ask, but no one want to do the job for me. Give me a price for texture.”

“Okay,” I said, and worked out a price for the entire job. “But I won’t be able to do it for you for a month. I’ve got other jobs ahead of you.”

He studied my estimate, then looked at me with his suspicious little eyes and was about to say something but relented; but he relented relenting, and said, “How about you give me a deal. I pay you big money to do my living room. You should give me a good deal for my kitchen. What you say?”

“I have to make a living too, Gaston. That’s my price, take it or leave it,” I said, and turned to leave. Just as I was about to open the door, I added, “If you can get someone else to do the job, please go ahead. You have my blessing.”

Unsure of what I meant, he just stared at me. Gaston wasn’t the most perceptive person in town. “Okay, I think about it,” he said, and that night he called, and the following month I did the job, taking extra caution to avoid Murphy’s Law which always seemed to manifest for people like Gaston; but once again, word got back to me that I had gauged him.

This time I was told by Leo Kubochev, whom I hired occasionally to work for me whenever I got a bigger job, and he told Leo that I had “stuck” it to him really good…

 

Jimmy Mitchel was just the opposite of the Frenchman. Where Gaston was meticulous in his appearance, Jimmy always looked rumpled; but it didn’t seem to matter to him. In fact, it suited his easy-going nature. And unlike the Frenchman, who craved to be noticed (another reason he spoke so loudly), Jimmy’s ego didn’t need that kind of attention; he was perfectly content to fade into the background.

A down-to-earth, easy-going “down-homer” (he hailed from Cape Breton), Jimmy also worked at the Domcan Paper Mill in Rock Point, a truck driver and loader operator before retiring at sixty-five. He was married with three children, two boys and a girl, all grown up and living in different parts of the country; but his wife one day packed up and left him for the man she had been having an affair with most of their married life.

It broke Jimmy’s heart, but he didn’t blame his wife for leaving him. He still loved her. One day, while having coffee and a plain old-fashioned donut with Leo at Robbins Donuts in the city where they had gone up just for a drive, in Jimmy’s Mercury, he said to Leo, with a mixture of melancholy and amusement in his quiet, soft-spoken voice, “Today’s my thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. I think I should celebrate, don’t you?”

Leo smiled. Jimmy had been divorced twelve years, and not once did he show an interest in other women, though some women in St. Jude showed an interest in him.

Jimmy’s charm was his innocence. It was also his flaw. But that didn’t seem to bother him. Somehow, he had managed to survive all of life’s blows that his innocence invited; and at his age, he wasn’t about to change. That’s why he stopped talking to the Frenchman; the very core of his being had been impugned by the man’s impudence.

 

I had also done some work for Jimmy. Not for Jimmy Mitchell himself, but for the fly-by-night contractor that Jimmy had contracted to renovate his washroom.

Pro-Renos was from Winnipeg. They were canvassing all the towns in the North Shore of Ontario. I had heard of them from some of my customers, and what I heard wasn’t all that favorable; but when they asked me to do some drywall taping and painting, I accepted. Work was scarce that summer.

Lorne, the salesman for Pro-Renos, approached me. He was as unctuous as salesmen can be. So slick was he, that he talked a friend of mine (whom I considered to be one of the most frugal people I had ever met) into a renovation that her carpenter son-in-law could have done for one half the price and still made a salary and profit; but I played dumb.

“What are your rates?” Lorne asked me.

“Twenty dollars an hour,” I replied.

“Do you have a GST number?”

“Yes.”

“What if I paid you cash?”

“Sorry. I have to charge GST,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, too clever to push the point. “When can you start?”

“Whenever. I don’t have much going on right now.”

“Good,” he said, and we drove over to Jimmy Mitchell’s house to show me what had to be taped and painted.

Jimmy was still working at the paper mill at the time. That’s why he did the renovation job. He didn’t want to be saddled with that expense when he retired, so Lorne easily talked him into it; an eight-thousand-dollar job that I calculated could have been done for half that price by a local tradesman; but I didn’t tell Jimmy that.

I did however suggest that he get another estimate for the siding job on his house that he was going to give to Pro-Renos the following spring. “Get Terry McAllen, or Art Simpson; I’m sure they’ll give you a much better price.”

“I didn’t know there was anyone around here who could do that kind of work,” Jimmy said. “If I had known, I would’ve gotten another price for my washroom. What do you think? Do you think I paid too much?”

“It seems a bit much to me. Whatever you do, Jimmy; don’t let Lorne talk you into the siding job until you get another price. Ask Terry or Art. See what they say first, okay?”

“Okay,” Jimmy said, and he did get two other quotes; but when he told the Frenchman what Terry McAllen had charged him to do his siding, Gaston, in his extra loud voice said: What’ the matter with you? You crazy? You coulda got that job for half the price!”

Jimmy did not react. In his usual quiet voice, he said, “I got two other prices, and they were both higher. I think Terry gave me a good price. And he did a good job.”

“No way! That’s too much money! I think he stuck it to you real good! I know these guys. They’re all crooks!”

Jimmy didn’t say anything. There was no point talking to Gaston. He finished his coffee and went home and watched racing on TV. Jimmy loved car racing. He used to race stock cars when he was younger. He had trophies and pictures of his ten years of racing, but his wife took all the photo albums with her when she left. Then Jimmy made himself some dinner; shake-and-bake pork chops, boiled potatoes, and carrots; and he had his usual beer.

Jimmy was overweight and had high cholesterol. His doctor put him on medication for his cholesterol, and he was told to watch his diet and to exercise; so, he started walking every day. He began to enjoy his walks, doing up to four and five kilometers some days; but he had trouble controlling his diet. “I just can’t seem to lose any weight,” he said one day in the coffee shop. He was sitting with Gaston, Mike, and Bunny, who were all retired. “I cut back on my eating, and I walk every day,” Jimmy said, “but I’m still the same weight.”

“That’s simple,” the Frenchman said. “You eat too much!”

“I guess so,” Jimmy replied, in his easy-going manner.

“It’s not how much you eat, Jimmy,” Bunny said; “it’s what you eat. That’s what my wife tells me anyway. She should know. She belongs to Weight-Watchers.”

“What’s the difference what you eat? You eat too much, you get fat. That’s the trooth, eh?”  Gaston said, expecting everyone to agree with his irrefutable logic. And it didn’t matter what they talked about, the Frenchman had to put his peculiar spin on things, which always got to one or the other of the coffee regulars eventually.

But it was more than that. Gaston interrupted conversations. “out-louding everyone,” as Leo Kubochev put it; and he was rude, and insensitive.

One time, a couple of weeks after Jimmy retired, he was sitting with Gaston in Mike’s Mart. They didn’t know each other that well, so they talked about themselves, their family and so on; and Gaston said, “Oh, yeah; that was your son that had that bad car accident a few years ago! I remember now! The other boy got all crippled up!”

Jimmy didn’t want to remember. It was his car that his son was driving, and with all the trauma and hassle with the insurance company, he wanted to put it all behind him; but Gaston, seeing the crippled boy’s brother sitting in another booth, called out, “Hey Billy! Where’s your brother now?”

Taken by surprise, Billy Preston didn’t know what the Frenchman was after. “Which one?” he asked, with some embarrassment.

“The cripple,” Gaston called back.

Jimmy wanted to crawl into a hole and hide. His back was turned to Billy, so he couldn’t see him; but he felt the heat of Billy’s red face burn into his back.

“He’s in the city,” Billy said, reluctantly.

          “Oh, I didn’t know that,” Gaston replied. “You know that car he got smashed up in? That was Jimmy’s car! That was his car,” he said, pointing to Jimmy. “Yeah, that was his car. Did you know that?”

Billy lowered his head. Of course, he knew; but he didn’t want to talk about it, especially not across the room with that loud Frenchman, and Jimmy felt no less humiliated than the crippled boy’s brother.

But Jimmy was patient with Gaston. He wasn’t much of a coffee shop goer until he retired, but once he found himself with all that time on his hands, he didn’t know what to do with himself, so he began going out for coffee just to get out of the house and be with other people. And he enjoyed talking with other retirees.

But it was bound to happen. Jimmy didn’t feel like making lunch one day, so he dropped into Mike’s Mart for a soup and submarine sandwich. Gaston, who had dropped his wife off at work at Harvey’s Pharmacy, was still sitting in a booth by himself nursing his second cup of coffee and staring out the window. Jimmy ordered his lunch and joined him.

One thing led to another, and before long they were talking about hub caps. Jimmy tried to explain to Gaston that the hub caps of his Mercury Century weren’t like other hub caps; they were only six or eight inches in diameter, and not the full size.

“No way!” Gaston said. “All hub caps are the same size! What’s the matter with you? You know that!”

Jimmy, who had taken off the back right tire of his car the day before to check for a rattle that he thought was coming from the shocks, knew what he was talking about; but he couldn’t get through to the Frenchman that his hub caps were smaller than other hub caps. “They’re only this size,” he said, forming a small circle with his hands. “I know. It’s my car. I just took off my tire yesterday—”

“Bullshit! They don’t make hub caps that small! I know that for sure!”

“I’m telling you, Gaston; I know the size of my hub caps. They’re only this big.”

“No way! I think you bullshit me!”

“You don’t believe me?”

“No way!”

“Are you calling me a liar?” Jimmy asked, incredulously.

“For sure!” Gaston said, in his extra loud voice.

Jimmy didn’t know what to say. He had never been called a liar to his face before, and the very thought of being called a liar—especially about something that he knew was a definite fact—so affected him that he began to shake all over.

“What’s the matter with you?” Gaston asked.

Jimmy couldn’t speak. He just stared at Gaston, studying him as though he were seeing him for the very first time; but again, Gaston said, “What’s the matter with you, you sick?”

Jimmy winced, and then his whole face contorted as though he had just seen something so utterly repulsive that he had to get away as quickly as possible.

He put his hands firmly on the table and forced himself up, and looking down at the Frenchman he said, “I’m not talking to you anymore.” And he didn’t. He left and never sat with the Frenchman again. That was two years ago.

At first Jimmy used to avoid going to Mike’s Mart whenever he saw the Frenchman through the big plate windows sitting in one of the booths; but then he said to himself, “Why should I deny myself because of him? If I want a submarine sandwich and a bowl of soup, I’m going to have them,” and he went in and sat in another booth.

This happened at least once a week, and every time it happened, someone they both knew would walk in and invariably sit with Jimmy; but the Frenchman could not figure out why. It was beyond his comprehension. But he always took out his notebook after each incident, and made a little note…

 

Leo Kubochev, who walked downtown to the post office every day, had to walk by Mike’s Mart, and he would often see Jimmy sitting by himself in one booth and Gaston alone in another, but he never went in because he didn’t want to choose between them. But Gaston confronted him again one day. “So how come you avoid me?”

“I’m not avoiding you,” Leo said, lying.

“Then how come you don’t have coffee with me no more?”

“I don’t know. I guess I haven’t been around,” Leo said, embarrassed.

“I see you walking downtown every day. What’s the matter with you? You think I’m stupid?” Gaston replied, giving Leo his fixed stare whenever he meant business.

“Look, I have to go,” Leo said, not wanting to get into a discussion. “I have to get a money order before they close. I’ll see you later.”

“Okay. See you later,” Gaston said, trying to sound casual; but Leo didn’t like being put on the spot like that, and he decided that he, like all the others, had to make a choice.

He hated to do it, but he didn’t want to sacrifice his freedom in town just because he didn’t want to sit with Gaston. But he did sacrifice his freedom, because he couldn’t offend the Frenchman “He can’t help himself,” he rationalized. “That’s just the way he is.”

One day, however, while walking back home from the post office he looked into Mike’s Mart and saw Jimmy and Gaston sitting alone in separate booths, and something gave way: he was simply tired of the Frenchman having that kind of power over him.

He walked in boldly and said hello to Gaston, and then he got a soup and coffee and sat with Jimmy. Gaston made a note in his notebook and never talked to Leo again. In fact, there were many people in town Gaston had stopped talking to; but no one cared.

 

——