The Life of Jane continued

                               Jane Meets Two Ethnics - continued


         Jane stopped caring about Samuel. But the next year she met another man from another ethnic group. Ron Shapiro was sitting in the cafeteria of the Student Union Building one winter afternoon. The Student Union Building or 'The Sub' as students called it, was a scruffy three story Gothic style structure where some students hung out .
      On this afternnon just after midday, the cafeteria was crowded with people. Jane was holding a cup of coffee in her free hand. She sat down at a table  where a short stocky man was also seated.
    "Mind if I sit here?" she asked.
    "Be my guest," the young man replied.
    Ron Shapiro was wearing a dark suit and tie that matched his dark hair and brown eyes. He was studying to be a lawyer, he told Jane.
    "Yecch, literature," he said when Jane told him what she was studying. "There's no money in that. My parents don't have much and my dad was a poet. Now he's a cutter in a dress factory. Literature can't buy you much, that's for sure."
     Jane went out with Ron  a few times. But he never invited her to his home.
     One night they went to a poetry reading that featured the well known Montreal poet Irving Layton. Jane liked Layton's poetry but didn't care for his oversized ego. Ron didn't like Layton's poetry or Layton.
     On their way back to the residence where Jane lived, they discussed poetry while Jane held onto Ron's arm. It was springtime and the dark hid patches of ice that made walking tricky. "I'm not crazy about poetry," Ron said. "I guess it's due to having to listen  my dad recite his stuff when I was a kid and watching him sweating while he wrote it."
     "Where were you living then?" Jane asked.
     "Same place as we do now. Right near here on Clark Street."
    "That's right near here," Jane said. "Can I come and see your parents one day?"
     "Oh I don't think that would be a good idea."
      "Why not? Is there something  wrong with me/"
      Ron stopped walking and unhooked his arm from Jane's firm grasp. "Jane I - uh well here goes. You're a WASP Jane, a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, a goy. My parents would have a fit if I brought you home."
    "But we're not going to get married,are we?"
    "They'd think we are. My mother would have a heart attack if she saw us together. My dad might throw me out of the house." Then Ron told Jane how Jews and French Canadians had clashed in the l930's and 1940's. "The French would come down the Main, Sainte Lawrence Boulevard and hammer Jews, who soon were hammering them right back," Ron continued. "Those events are engraved on my parents' souls.
Then of course what happened to the Jews in Europe in the second world war.'
     "But so what?I'm not responsible for those things.'
     "Jane for my parents any Christian is responsible for them. I'm sorry that's just the way things are.'
      "Well in that case," Jane said coldly ."I think I'll spare you any more pain Mr. Shapiro. It was nice knowing you. But now goodbye and good luck." She stalked away into the cold night air and barely nodded at him when she saw him on campus again. So ended another brief romance.