Free Serafim and Claire by Mark Lavorato

mailbox was bulging with letters, sun-dyed paper fanning out from the lid, and laboured to pull the wad free without using her stomach muscles. Back inside, she was happy to discover that the air in her apartment had been kept more or less warm by the neighbour’s wood stove below, dry heat slipping up through the loose-tooth gaps in the tongue-and-groove. She would only have to stoke a small fire, which worked out well, since she was running low on coal.
    Claire slowly arranged a few things around her apartment, cleaning out the putrid remnants in the dried and crusted bedpan, digging out some fresh, though old and tatty, blankets (her nicest ones having been lost somewhere between her apartment and the hospital), and emptying out the few vegetables that had been in her icebox, which were now blue-furred and unrecognizable.
    Easing onto the only chair she owned, she sorted through her mail, tossing the bills to one side and opening Cécile’s letters before folding them back into their respective envelopes. As a welcome surprise, the most recent correspondence contained a cheque from her father, who was certainly making a sacrifice with the amount he’d enclosed, even if he’d been doubtful that she would cash it. For Claire, who was in desperate need of money, this was no time for pride or disdain. The sum would be enough to cover her rent and some basic groceries until she could get back to the club, work a few shifts, and start fending for herself again.
    She wasted no time acting on the godsend, telephoning the general store at the corner of her block, where she often paid on credit, and asking for a few things to be delivered: milk, butter, jam, oranges, pears. All things she could eat (once she purchased some bread from the bread man the following day, anyway) without having to cook. Claire, for some reason, hated cooking, and had no idea how Cécile had grown to love it as much as she had. It was such a stereotypical homemaker thing to do. For Claire a baguette, some butter, and a dollop of honey gave just as much satisfaction as an elaborate meal.
    A knock came at the door and Claire shuffled across the floor to answer it. The green-eyed, rosy-cheeked son of the grocer put the paper bag of merchandise on the floor beside him, dangerously close to some snow that had sloughed off his boots. He took out a pad of receipts and pointed out that Claire hadn’t paid anything on her credit in weeks, and that his father insisted he return with some kind of payment or he would have to return with the groceries. At this point Claire could have explained herself, could have shown him the cheque and made him feel ashamed at the fact that she’d just returned from the hospital and was in no condition to fight through the city’s snowdrifts to cash it. But none of that was necessary. Instead, she stepped close, held on to his arm, and blinked. She assured him that she would come in and straighten out her bill the following week. The roses of the boy’s cheeks suddenly beaded with moisture from his hike, and he assented, and scurried back out the door, fumbling with the handle to close it. He waved a bashful smile through the window as he made his way around the bend in the staircase.
    This was what she had hoped would happen with the cabbie as well. Men, thought Claire, gingerly lifting the bag of groceries, were somewhat sad creatures. They were pliable, predictable, and weak. Though, to be fair, most of the time she felt the same way about women.
    Until her seventh year of schooling, Claire had been raised in entirely segregated conditions. From her education at a convent (from kindergarten to her sixth year) to dance classes to Sunday school, boys and girls were kept stringently cordoned off from each other. The one exception to this was in the streets, where francophone boys and girls swarmed the neighbourhoods together during the summer months, playing games with English names — branchy