by Hubert Furey
I viewed her impatiently as she fumbled desperately through a hideous-looking monstrosity of a purse, something that she must have picked up at some rundown flea market or rummage sale, or rifled out of a bin of discarded clothes. Two overfull carts waited beside her, the no-name-brand groceries and giant boxes of low-quality cereal sufficiently visible in the open grocery bags to allow me to guess at the remainder of the carts’ depressing contents.
Glancing from the sick-looking child securely anchored in the top of the first shopping cart to the absence of any colour in the drabness of the carts’ contents, I wondered if his mother had included some fresh fruit as a healthy additive to the panoply of tasteless-looking food which she was purchasing. I suspected that one would have to look hard to find an orange or a banana.
I shook my head and looked around the supermarket, hoping that I would see another checkout that would offer me the means of escape from the dreariness of waiting, but it was the second-last supermarket day before Christmas, and all the checkouts had long lines of customers.
While I was debating my next course of action, in a line that had virtually stopped, my retreat to the rear was suddenly cut off by the appearance of a fifth customer immediately behind me, sealing my imprisonment and forcing me to resign myself to staying where I was. If I left to scout the other lanes, he would take my place, and at this time of year, your place in line was sacred. There was absolutely no chance of retreat. I sighed and shifted from foot to foot, using this time-honoured way to silently vent my frustration at this woman who had brought our line to an abrupt halt. At least the other lines were moving.
The young cashier darted her eyes from one to the other of us, fearful that she would be held responsible for the delay. Relieved that she detected no threatening look from either of us, she turned her attention to the frantic gestures of the woman directly across from her, wrestling with the contents of the huge bag. Bored with the lack of movement, I leaned to the side to study the cause of our unnecessary waiting.
There was no question about her poverty. A long, speckled-grey winter coat draped in folds around her thin frame, reaching down to the tops of ugly black rubber boots. She was a relatively young woman, but lines had already begun to appear on her face, clearly visible in spite of poorly applied makeup. It was a pale, freckled face that reflected worry and strain, perhaps illness, probably years of grinding, unremitting hardship.
Her hair fell around her face, straggling and unkempt, like wisps of uncarded wool or strands of old, used fishing line. Tears of panic formed in the corners of her eyes as she noisily tore apart the contents of her handbag, searching frantically for the sixth fifty-dollar bill that should lie next to the other five that she had already counted out and which lay evenly separated on the cleared space of the checkout counter.
The figure of two hundred and seventy-seven dollars and thirty-two cents was clearly visible on the screen of the cash register. She needed that fifty to cover the cost of the two huge carts of carefully chosen groceries. She was the epitome of desperation as she held open the huge handbag with one hand while she repeatedly plunged the other deep inside in search of the remainder of the money, noisily thrusting the contents to and fro. As she paused momentarily to hold the bag apart, peering inside one more fruitless time, I couldn’t help noticing the rough, reddened hands. Surely hand cream wasn’t that expensive.
There were no rings on any of the fingers.
She was beginning to sound distraught, the short bursts of explanation coming in nervous, agitated tones as she described the lost money yet one more time. She seemed to be talking straight into the purse.
“I know I got it in here somewhere. When I changed the cheque and finished buying the children’s toys I had six fifty-dollar bills, definitely, enough to buy everything else for Christmas. I counted them twice on the bench outside McDonald’s. It got to be in here somewhere.”
Rapidly approaching a state of severe agitation, she proceeded to pull the contents from the bag, grasping handfuls of items indiscriminately and strewing them along the counter. The lady immediately next in line wrinkled her nose in disgust as several tissues dropped to the floor. The other five bills rustled with the reverberating force of her arm motions, as if, like us, they were objecting to the unnecessary waste of time, and the cashier gathered them up in her hands in a gesture of safekeeping.
The man in front of me—a short, balding man with a puffy red face—looked back and rolled his eyes, a resigned sneer forming in the droop of his moustached lip. The well-dressed woman ahead of him, the one disgusted with the tissues, was getting angrier, but she was restraining herself. Totally unaware of the effect she was having on the people behind her, the object of our impatience continued to shovel out more tissues and change and lipsticks and small pieces of pencil, all the while talking to herself in a voice that was becoming more broken by the minute. The cashier held the five bills and was peering into the handbag with the woman. She seemed to be the only one that was showing any compassion for the woman’s plight.
“What am I going to do? What did you say it was? Two hundred and sixty-seven dollars?”
She looked at the cash register again, as if hoping that the figures would somehow be different, lower. She had checked the tears, but the ones that had come still remained, staining the tops of her cheeks. She turned and looked at us helplessly. Good Lord! She was going to explain again.
“Why doesn’t she just put some of the groceries back?” The puffy-faced man in front of me whispered. “We can’t stay here all day.” The angry woman in front of him nodded in agreement. She didn’t say anything, but the scornful toss of her well-coiffed head could be understood a mile away. People like that should shop somewhere else.
Now the poorly dressed woman was apologizing. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m sure I had another fifty-dollar bill. After I bought the presents, I must have lost it. I’ll put some groceries back.”
She turned to face the cashier, looking helplessly from the cart to the register, her voice flat and empty. “What will I take out?” It was a silly question to ask the cashier. She should really have known what she would take out herself, but she had lost any ability to focus. She seemed totally beaten. For the first time since I became a witness to her predicament, I began to feel pity for her.
“For heaven’s sake! Why don’t you look around? Maybe you dropped it on the floor somewhere.” It was the voice of the man behind me, a voice that I couldn’t decide was one of boredom or irritation as I turned in his direction. He was tall, but his height was obscured by the bent-over posture in which he had positioned himself, slouched over the back of his cart, his size disguised by the parka which hung carelessly from his shoulders, giving the impression that it would slide off any minute.
I can normally spot right off what somebody does for a living, but he didn’t fit any of the stereotypes, although his wind-burnt face suggested work in the outdoors, maybe a linesman or ironworker. He was just so ordinary. Still, I kept looking at him longer than I should have. There was something about his eyes.
His voice snapped us out of our absorption with the woman, and as a group we responded automatically to the authority it conveyed. We began at once to move about in our confined spaces, our eyes searching the floor around our feet.
The balding man with the sneer gestured excitedly. “Look! There it is, there, by your cart.” He was pointing just behind and to the side of my cart. I must have rolled right past it. I reached down and picked up the bill and passed it to the balding man, who eagerly handed it to the woman.
“She must have dropped it on the way through,” the angry lady said, sounding very relieved that the line would finally be moving again.
“Yes, I must have, when I was settling the baby,” the woman replied, her face suddenly ecstatic, in sharp contrast to the frustration and mental agony which had been so evident just moments before
. She looked from the woman beside her to the man who had just given her the money, her voice jubilant.
“Thank you! Thank you so much. I knew I had it. I knew I had another fifty-dollar bill. I just knew. Oh! Thank you, thank you so very much.”
“B’ys, Christmas only lasts twelve days. What say we get this line moving and get ourselves out of here?” It was the voice of the man behind me again, coming in the form of one long, irritated sigh.
The balding man in front of me bridled. He was feeling really pleased that he had discovered the money and had revelled in the woman’s gratitude. He directed his remarks past me to the man still slumped over the cart. “It’s Christmas, you know. Give the woman a break. For the love of the Lord! It’s people like you that ruin Christmas for everybody else.” Then he turned and gripped his cart, as if he were going to throw it all the way back to the cart corral.
The man behind me ignored the scolding tone, still remaining slumped over the cart, his slouched stance the epitome of pure boredom. The woman paid her bill and put the receipt in her handbag, then set about gathering up the strewn contents from the counter. The look of happiness on her face hadn’t disappeared. She counted the change carefully before depositing it in the handbag.
“I still have enough left to get something to eat for me and the child. And I can get a taxi home.” Then she looked again at the man who had found her money. She looked truly radiant. “Thank you again. Thank you very much. You’ve made my Christmas.”
The man blushed with pleasure and nodded in return. She then positioned herself between the two carts, simultaneously pushing one and pulling the other. The obvious exertion didn’t seem to dampen her joy.
The woman who had been angry was already in the process of placing her groceries on the counter. In anticipation of the line moving, the man behind me reared up from his slumped position, his motion attracting my attention. From the corner of my eye I saw him follow the woman’s movements to the little deli at the front of the store, where she looked over the array of sandwiches, all the while chatting happily to the child. She would probably pick a bologna sandwich and share it. The irritation and boredom had suddenly and mysteriously disappeared from his face, and I couldn’t help noticing the whole new expression that had replaced it: an expression that told me that he would have wanted to do more, like maybe buy a big toy for the child or fill the cart with fresh fruit or something.
That’s when I was sure. But I couldn’t say anything. It would have spoiled it for him and for her, and for everybody else. I would have liked to tell them what I was thinking, though. Or at least tell them that he didn’t have to be reminded that it was Christmas.
She hadn’t dropped that fifty-dollar bill. I just knew it. It felt so crisp and new, where the other five looked so worn and used on the checkout counter. Unlike the other five, it had been obviously and deliberately folded. It would drop faster that way and wouldn’t be noticed.
Anyway, where it was found, I’d had to have seen it when I was pushing my cart along, before he came behind me. You’re always looking down when you’re pushing your cart along, so you won’t hit somebody or hook the sides. In her confusion, she lost that bill somewhere in the mall or left it on that bench outside McDonald’s or spent it without realizing it in the noise and melee of some crowded store, trying to look after a small child and account for every penny of a welfare cheque at the same time.
He dropped that fifty-dollar bill when nobody was looking. I couldn’t prove it, but I just knew it. There was something about his eyes.
The Most Perfect Gift
Rachel Kearning sat at the end of the table, silently watching her five children discuss their expectations for Christmas—in their usual polite manner, she thought wryly above the noise. Christmas was only three days away—she was reminded of that on a minute-by-minute basis by the radio announcers—and she had a problem. She had absolutely no idea what she would get her husband for Christmas.
She sighed thoughtfully as she gently raised her teacup. Getting a gift for Aaron Kearning was no easy task. It seemed all that other women had to do was roam the aisles of Canadian Tire or Home Depot for that latest tool or newest hunting rifle.
Gifts like that would be totally lost on her Aaron. Her husband’s idea of outdoor sport was to amble along some obscure beach or wood path, wherever his mood took him, admiring every silly tree and bird that came within view and talking a blue streak about whatever book he was reading at the moment.
As for hunting, he couldn’t kill a cockroach.
She had already decided upon gifts for the rest of the family. She would get that beginner artist’s set for Jenna. She was only nine, but already she was displaying a real talent for sketching animals. Or at least one animal. Rachel never knew there were so many ways to draw a cat, but there was no doubting the lines. The talent was there.
There would be no pleasing Samuel, almost twelve, but he did need new skates and some new hockey equipment. He was practical, like her. She smiled as she looked at her youngest son, devouring his food like a growling husky. That’s how her father used to eat. Samuel hated school as much as he loved hockey, but he had a big heart.
Moira, the fifteen-year-old, wouldn’t be a problem, either. Anything in clothes or books would be a hit. Mark—six feet tall and built just like his father—was the second-oldest. He loved receiving money, any amount, and could be written off as the one genuine materialist in the family, except that he read every line of every verse of every card that he received. You had to get just the right card for Mark.
Aaron was the oldest, the first-born, named after his father, just as the oldest son had been in the Kearning family for five generations. He was serious and introspective, traits inherited from his father, and he collected music in every form, even though he couldn’t play an instrument. He would be easy, too.
Rachel lifted the cup to her lips, absent-mindedly sipping the steaming tea. She wished his father were that easy. Aaron didn’t have a tape or a record to his name. When he wanted music, he simply turned on the radio. Every Christmas since she had met him, she had undergone the same mind-searching experience, trying to find a gift for him that would be meaningful and expressive, and this Christmas was no exception.
“Why don’t you buy Dad that encyclopaedia of military history I showed you?”
Moira had sensed her thoughts and was looking directly at her, her cup still poised in front of her mouth. This girl was uncanny. Rachel shook her head as if the thought irritated her and looked directly back.
“I’m so tired of buying your father books. Not that I wouldn’t buy him another one, mind you. It’s the one thing that he never seems to get enough of. But I would like to give him something different this year.”
She paused and held the hot teacup to her lips again, sipping its contents thoughtfully. Her elbows rested on the table, staring at the steam that rose languidly from the hot sandwich still awaiting her attention in front of her.
“He’s still wearing that same old suit. I’d buy him something new to wear, but it would just hang in the closet for two or three years before he gave it to the Salvation Army. He absolutely refuses to wear anything new until the last piece of clothing looks screedless. Too many poor people in the world, he would say. He has the same watch I gave him for his birthday twenty years ago.”
The irritation had gone out of her voice. She was too fond of her husband to harbour any unkind thought about him for any length of time. There wouldn’t be a poor or a hungry person in the world if Aaron had his way. Her thoughts were interrupted by Jenna’s mischievous voice.
“I know what I want for Christmas. I want a different sister, a smaller one. I’m tired of big sisters.”
She was squinting her face in Moira’s direction, teasing her. The older girl poked her tongue through a half-smile and went on eating. Rachel ignored the exchange, knowi
ng the deep attachment that existed between the two girls.
“Just what we need,” growled Samuel, his face still close to his plate, “another girl. We’ll never get in the bathroom then.”
“I don’t think you have any worries, Samuel. Or you either, Jenna,” Rachel replied, nodding toward her youngest daughter. “Our family is complete, at least as far as any new ones are concerned.”
Painful memories gripped her as her mind flashed back to that terrible Christmas seven years ago. She saw herself running frantically with Aaron into the emergency ward of the children’s hospital, praying desperately, the broken body of her lifeless six-year-old son, Mikey, sagging helplessly in her husband’s arms, struck by a car as he ran across the street to thank his grandmother for her gift—a big, shiny silver model of a Ferrari that had made him shriek with excitement.
He had run straight into the path of a car that just couldn’t stop on a stretch of black ice. The driver didn’t have a chance. She remembered the time he had spent in the hospital, too, on the psychiatric ward. It hadn’t been a good Christmas for a lot of people that year. She bent her head and forced the food into her mouth to check the emotion surging within her. She had never wanted the children to see her crying at Christmas—that Christmas, or any other Christmas.
“Come on, Mom.” Mark had picked up on the anguish in his mother’s face, and his earnest voice was soothing. Like the rest of them, he knew what his mother was thinking. The big lump! He would probably make the best kind of money, then give it all away. The other children were looking at her anxiously.
“I’m all right now,” Rachel reassured them. She hadn’t cried, but she wanted to. She had to distract them. Rachel had never let the death interfere with their Christmases, even that awful, terrible Christmas. She had to change the tone immediately, and her husband’s absence was a good pretext.
“Where’s your father?” she asked, glancing at the empty seat to her left. “He hasn’t come to the table yet. His sandwich is getting cold.”