Class Warfare by D. M. Fraser Read Free Book Online

Jamieson’s who’s got cancer, for a while. Dull, and not very interesting, but it passed the time. Daddy said a prayer with her, I guessed it helped. Then we went for a drive out the highway, and that was the best part of the day. We passed Jerry S. on the corner of Dominion Street, and my heart skipped not just one beat, but two! This evening I played records and did some homework.
    It poured rain today, and a less inspiring day couldn’t be imagined.
    I didn’t do too much else today, and I am glad to have it behind me. Tonight at midnight is supposed to be the end of the world. Isn’t it strange that God would tell the Catholics and not the Protestants or Jews? At least I think it was the Catholics he told. Jerry S. is Jewish, and Mother says when he grows up he won’t be interested in me for that reason. The whole thing is crazy, if you ask me. Now I shall bring this to an end, as I am darn near exhausted.
    Tuesday, January 19th.
I could kill myself. I wish I were dead. I never want to speak to my mother again. I thought anti-Semitism was confined to the Germans. Jerry called to say he couldn’t take me out tonight, he had to work in the store, but that he’d see me tomorrow instead. Then Mother made a dirty nasty speech about Jerry being a lousy Jew who wouldn’t put himself out for me, while I’d do anything for him. Oh! I could have smacked her. I want to run away. I wish the world
had
ended. I don’t want to say anything else.
    P.S. We both got over it, I guess.
    Friday, January 29th.
Friday—another day, and what a day! I feel gloomy, depressed, and generally miserable. Everything happens at once, and it’s not my fault. Somehow my French book is missing, and I can’t find it anywhere, and there’s a test coming up. Lorna told me I’m not her best friend any more, Isabel is, just because of that horrible party last weekend. Then Jerry said he couldn’t take me out tonight, after I told everyone we had a date. Oh, woe is me! He said he might meet me tomorrow night at the bowling alley, but I’m not allowed to go there because of you-know-what. Mother’s going to Toronto tomorrow. This morning I wrote a science test. After school we rehearsed the operetta—it’s going all right, but Kathy J. is so conceited she makes me sick to my stomach! I went down to the rink after that to watch Jerry play Hockey, but I was too late. This evening I puttered around the house.
    Saturday, January 30.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. There. I’ve finally said it. FUCK.
DEATH TO THE OPPRESSORS!
    Et c’est la fin pour quoi sommes ensemble.
And this is the end for which we are together.
DIES MIRABILIS
    Of course, they provide a priest; his name is Father Reagan. She finds that amusing. She thinks: he might have been handsome (Irish movie-priest handsome, Bing Crosby uplifting the multitudes) if love had ever heated him, expanded him; as it is, he looks like a TV dinner, immaculate under cellophane, frozen. His eyes are grey. The walls of Cell 3B-17 are grey. “My daughter,” he says, “my dear child.” It’s a beginning, of a kind. Your what? Marie Tyrell says. She has not refused to meet him.
    â€œYou may send me away, if you wish.”
    â€œWhat for?”
    There are pictures on the walls, watercolours, women with mad eyes staring past bowls of flowers, unlit candles, pagan icons, through barred and leaded windows. The Unknown seems to be out there, waiting, looking in unseen. Father Reagan is thinking, among other things:
She should have been an artist, it would have given her a useful vocation.
He asks, politely, “Is there anything you want to tell me?” (Bless me Father for I have sinned … No. You’re not getting that one out of me, not yet.) He has done this so often, it’s his Calling, it should be automatic. Somehow it isn’t, quite. The method is automatic, something else is not, cannot be.