All the same, family members told her that I had been writing about my feud with Atwood ( http://michaelmurray.ca/atwood-condo-tweet-fight#more-6562 ), and that some of the things I had been saying about her weren’t very kind. My mother was very, very disappointed in me and demanded that I write her an apology. We got in a huge fight about this, of course, and since I refused to do what she wanted, she went ahead and wrote Margaret Atwood a letter herself:

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Dear Ms. Atwood,

Hi, how are you?

I am fine, although I have to say that the weather in Ottawa has been very unpredictable! One day it’s hot as the blazes and the next it’s so cold Frito won’t even go outside!

Just last week ( in late September) it was far too hot to shampoo the carpet, so I called up Bea and asked her if she wanted to go to the Second Cup for a coffee. She said Ok, but first she had to finish watching her show, and so I waited, and then once we got there Bea insisted on sitting out on the patio. I have no idea why she wanted to sit there. It was so humid it was like being in a sauna! It’s no wonder she felt faint, she’s lucky she didn’t have another heart attack!

Anyway, I hope that the weather is better in Toronto than it is here.

It has come to my attention that my son, Michael Murray, has been saying some mean things to you on the computer. That’s not nice at all. Just cheap. It’s elder abuse, is what it is, and he’ll find out exactly how that feels when he’s older. He’ll get his, he will, and then he’ll be sorry. Let me assure you he was definitely not raised to be so cheeky and disrespectful, and the ENTIRE Murray family is very sorry for the way he has behaved toward you. It’s shameful, and although no one likes to say it, the truth is that he’s never been the same since the bee sting. It changed him, even if the doctors said it didn’t. A mother knows.

By the way, congratulations on winning an Emma for The Handmaid’s Veil! Such a fancy event! It must have been nice to have all those lovely starts applauding the great work you’ve done! Did you see Hugh Jackman? Such a handsome, classy man!

Yours sincerely,

Barb Murray

PS: Just awful about Las Vegas! I don’t know what’s gotten into people!

PPS: I have inclosed some hand sanitizer (There is a special on at Shopper’s Drug Mart) as you can never be too careful during flu season!!

The person on the other end of the connection was just going to get taken advantage of, “fucked-over and left to rot, dammit!!” His manner was so florid and over-the-top that I wondered if he was actually communicating with anyone other than himself, the phone serving merely as the magic portal for his interior dialogues.

On the patio at the Second Cup sat three teenagers. “Did you hear about the cannibal in Miami?” the Asian girl asked. Smiling, she leaned forward and relishing each word she slowly added, “He ate the face right off a guy while he was alive!” A campfire ghost story told over steaming cups of coffee.

Two other teens, both younger, walked toward toward me. One of them was heavy and had the wounded look of a bully-magnet. He was upset that his younger brother was getting his own bedroom at an earlier age than he did. The look of hurt and anger on his face was so sincere that it was both funny and sad, and then after a moment, a little bit scary. Engrossed in his own misery, he passed by this flier posted on a newspaper box:

A little further up the street a Native man was selling dream catchers on the sidewalk. The woman he was talking to looked enthusiastic and hopefully flirtatious. She had a last-call hue to her, and braless beneath her sundress she was hoping that the sunlight was catching in all the right places. The man was looking at her, a little bit pleased with himself, “ Chile?” he responded, “I used to sleep with a couple from Chile a few years ago.”

A skate boarder, cut off by a car, shouted curses and banged his fist on the trunk. The car came to a stop and everybody on the sidewalk slowed down– curiosity, anxiety and excitement now humming like a hydro wire. The window of the car powered down and an open-palmed hand emerged followed by the face of a middle-aged man. “I’m sorry,” he said, “it was my fault. I’m getting old.” The skate boarder, taken aback, wasn’t sure what to do, so he just got back on his board and slipped invisibly into traffic, as if a fish free from the hook, now cutting deep into familiar waters.

A woman who was probably around 50 hadn’t been paying any attention to this little drama and was walking through the cluster of pedestrians stalled on the sidewalk. She had a salon tan and was wearing red jeans and jangly jewelry. Speaking firmly into her phone she said, “I love you. That’s all. I love you.” And then she flipped her phone shut and smiling to herself, or to anybody who cared to notice, walked past the Shopper’s Drug Mart and turned the corner.