The Most Perfect Gift

by Hubert Furey

  “If those firemen hadn’t come out to answer that crank call about the old abandoned warehouse at four o’clock in the morning! Another hour . . . another five minutes!”

  She peered through the windshield at snow that swirled and ran before the rising wind. It was a night just like this. She could not entertain the thought for one more second. Whatever he had done, however unfaithful he had been, however much pain and hurt he had caused her, she could not simply abandon him to certain death from drunken hypothermia. Whatever happened to their marriage, she couldn’t have that on her conscience. She had to find him, but where should she start?

  “I was so bloody hysterical during the confrontation. I can’t remember one single clue. Maybe if I go over the whole thing bit by bit—really slowly—now that my mind is clear.”

  She settled herself into a more comfortable driving position, mentally reviewing the conversation in the study, isolating every detail, straining in her mind to hear the words on the telephone, going over every facet of Aaron’s appearance as he sat in front of the desk.

  Then she saw it, by the telephone that brought her the hateful news. She had seen it then, during the confrontation, but the terrible emotions precipitated by the revelation had erased any memory of it from her mind. Now she could see it again, as plain as day, as clearly as if it were written in huge letters on a granite cliff. Because his hand had been unsteady and shaking, Aaron had written it in large letters on his desk pad and propped it against the telephone, the words now clearly visible in her mind as she looked past him toward the desk.

  “Thirty-five Logan Street. Of course, the address! It has to be. I tidied his desk just that morning, and I would have seen that—of course, her address. It’s got to be. Yes, the children will be fine for another hour or two. They can look after one another for a little while.”

  Heartened by her new-found discovery, she headed the car in the direction of Hawley’s Mountain. She had a vague recollection from a news story on the radio the past week that Logan Street was in that general area, but she wasn’t sure. True, Aaron could be anywhere, but it seemed logical to start somewhere along that route. Anyway, it was her only clue.

  “Now, if I could find somebody to give me good directions, I wouldn’t waste time wandering around.”

  Noticing a taxi parked in front of the drugstore, she rolled down the window and called to the driver from across the street.

  “Can you lead me to Logan Street? I’ll pay you the fare. I don’t know my way around that part of town, and I have to get there as quickly as possible.”

  The taxi driver’s reaction startled her.

  “Logan Street! What in the blazes are you going down there for? Delivering coke? Nothing down there but welfare dirt and street bums. You sure you know where you’re going?”

  Rachel was taken aback by his vehement response but was firm in her reply.

  “Yes, I want to go to 35 Logan Street. Now, are you going to take me, or do I get somebody else?”

  “Suit yourself. I’ll swing around, and you follow me.”

  She waited until the taxi driver had positioned his cab in front of her and then settled herself a comfortable distance behind him. Rachel felt her old self emerging again. She could have wasted a lot of time trying to find her way around that part of town. Snowflakes settled gently on the windshield as she watched him expertly manoeuvre through the slow-moving vehicles of every description that comprised the late-afternoon traffic.

  He’s a good driver, thought Rachel. Aaron was a good driver, like that. The image of her husband stayed with her as her eyes followed the efficient movement of the vehicle ahead, weaving its way along. Strange! It was the first time she had thought of Aaron like that since the fight. She let the thought rest there for a moment, blending as it did with her new resolve.

  With the taxi leading her, and not having to concentrate her energies on figuring out directions, she began to mentally review the approach she would take in the upcoming meeting with this other woman—if indeed that’s where she was going. She smiled wryly. It would be some joke if she were to barge into 35 Logan Street and discover it was the home of one of the university janitors.

  Aaron was always bringing them little gifts he scrounged at the supermarket. He felt they weren’t paid enough. She softened at this second thought of her husband, inwardly happy that she was taking some action, any action, in contrast to the earlier paralyzing self-absorption. Yes, it was good to be back. She was aware that this was the first time she had smiled since it had begun. Then she brought herself bolt upright. She grasped the wheel and steadied herself.

  Damn! That was her weakness. Down underneath, she was soft. This was no time to be soft.

  “Okay! So I won’t go tearing into the house like a wild woman. I will simply knock on the door, ring the doorbell, if she has one—it doesn’t sound like the kind of neighbourhood that sports fancy doorbells—and I will simply tell this woman that I know all about her, and her little tryst with my husband, and you can take your little . . .”

  Rachel pumped the brakes just in time to avoid rear-ending a jeep which had appeared out of nowhere between her and the taxi.

  “Have to concentrate. Like the officer said, this is no time for an accident. That’s how I’ll do it. That’s enough rehearsing.”

  The jeep pulled into a side street, and Rachel once again had the taxi in full view. As the cab turned a corner, she suddenly became aware that the buildings were changing, becoming more dilapidated-looking. They had left behind tastefully built houses adorned with expensive Christmas decorations and were entering that part of town which Rachel only heard about in the news.

  She shuddered as her eyes surveyed rundown tenements on both sides of streets, litter over the dirty snow, the obscene graffiti on the cracked concrete walls, and the bags of garbage torn open by the roaming dogs, which seemed to be everywhere.

  Rachel was filled with an instant revulsion. It was a dismal, filthy place, everything about it depressing and degrading. It pushed out of her mind all memories of the crib, and her mental rehearsing of the impending conversation, and brought in its place an overpowering sense of poverty and hopelessness.

  “My Christ! What has he been sleeping with? How desperate was he?”

  For an instant the thought of venereal disease flitted through her mind, but the thought was too horrible to entertain.

  The taxi driver had activated his signal and was turning into a narrow street, pointing with his extended arm to a row of rundown houses, now in various stages of disrepair. He stopped the taxi in the middle of the street and came back to Rachel, looking over his shoulder toward the second house on the right.

  “That’s 35 right there, the one with the broken rail. Do you want me to hang around for a while? This isn’t the best neighbourhood.”

  His eyes reflected genuine concern.

  “No, that’s okay. I’m sure I’ll be all right. There’s a police car parked just up the street. How much do I owe you?”

  “Aw, give me ten bucks. And Merry Christmas.”

  She acknowledged the well-wishing with a forced smile. He then waved the bill in the air in a farewell gesture and headed back to the taxi, turning the vehicle expertly with the same sure confidence he had displayed on the drive through town. Rachel wondered if she should have accepted his offer to stay, but the sight of the police car reassured her.

  She got out and looked around nervously, but she could see no threatening movements anywhere in the few poorly dressed people who appeared in her view. Two older men, bearded and shabbily dressed in ill-fitting winter clothing, ignored her as they exchanged a paper bag from which protruded the neck of a bottle. Solitary women walked hurriedly by, their expressions weary, their shoulders sagging under the weight of plastic bags, their heads bent, their eyes and faces portraying years of struggle and hardship
.

  Rachel shivered and drew her coat more tightly around herself. She thought she had been raised poor, but she had never known this kind of poverty. She gave her body a shake to force herself back to her reason for being here. Her eyes sought out the broken railing, and above it, barely discernible, the number 35.

  As she walked toward the steps, a sudden commotion in the distance attracted her attention, and she turned in the direction of the police car across the street. Two policemen were restraining a handcuffed woman and dragging her toward the waiting car. An unkempt-looking, surly-faced man watched them from the entrance. The woman was screaming obscenities at the police officers in a hysterical voice, while attempting to detach herself from her captors. At one point she lashed out with her foot, just missing the officer’s groin.

  Rachel shuddered as her mind went back to her nights in the emergency ward; those nights when they brought in women like that, coarse and vulgar and tough, reeking of smoke and alcohol. They would be beaten up, blood over their faces, their clothing torn to shreds around their bodies.

  As she walked toward the steps, she was suddenly overcome, for the first time, with a draining uncertainty. She tried to recreate the conversation she had prepared in the car, to restore the confidence she had then, but it eluded her. As she grasped the one good railing and climbed the steps, she had a mounting sense of apprehension. What was this woman like? She shuddered as she looked up toward the battered front door.

  “My God! What am I getting myself into? I’m no match for a hard, tough woman who can survive in conditions like this. Is this even safe?”

  Panic again gripped her. For an instant she was tempted to turn and run, but she knew she couldn’t. She had come this far, and whatever her fears, she was no coward. No, she would see this through to the end. There was too much at stake to give up now.

  Rachel knocked on the door, gently first, then much harder, as her resolve returned. They could carry her to the hospital on a stretcher, but she would face this woman. There was no going back.

  She inhaled deeply as she watched the door open to reveal the frame of a rough-looking woman in a gingham dress, scowling at Rachel through the aperture. Rachel quailed before the intensity of the look, struggling to maintain her courage, knowing at a glance that the forthcoming exchange would be no easy confrontation.

  The sharp tones of the woman’s voice did nothing to dispel her foreboding.

  “I was expecting a man, Aaron Kearning. Who are you?”

  The curtness in her voice shook Rachel, but she fell back on her inner strength and rallied, steeling herself for the onslaught which she knew was about to come. Yes, she would go through with it. As hard and tough as this woman looked, as overpowering as her presence was, she would go to the end, or die in the process. She affected a look of confidence as she stepped through the door, looking the woman straight in the eye, her voice steady and controlled.

  There would be no retreat.

  “I’m Rachel Kearning, Aaron Kearning’s wife.”

  Rachel waited for the immediate impact of her announcement—the signs of awkwardness and embarrassment on her opponent’s face, the nervousness in her response, the tautness of her body—but no such reaction was visible. The woman merely shrugged in acknowledgement, then turned abruptly and reached for her coat over a chair, addressing Rachel as she hastily pulled the coat over her shoulders.

  “Oh, he sent you instead. I suppose it’s all right. Well, come on in and get it over with. I haven’t got all day. I have to get back and get Tim’s supper ready. I wasn’t supposed to be here in the first place.”

  Rachel was dumbfounded. Then she became angry. The indifference, the callousness of the tone. Was this woman dismissing her as easily as that, after causing so much hurt and strife, so much separation and bitterness? But then, Tim’s supper.

  The woman noticed the confusion on Rachel’s face and softened her approach.

  “Look, I haven’t got a clue what’s going on myself. It all happened so fast. The mother was gone before I got here, and Madge was talking a blue streak when I met her in the door there. Madge, that’s my sister—she usually looks after the child. Right in the middle of her pipes bursting and water going everywhere, she gets this phone call, something about the mother having to go to the hospital—right in the middle of her pipes bursting, now, mind you. So she raced on over here.

  “She called me before she left the house to come across right away and mind the child for her. Then she took off like a blue streak. You knows what it’s like now with pipes freezing and bursting in the winter, water up to your knees in the basement. Didn’t want the child left alone, so I said I’d come over until this Aaron came.”

  The softness of the woman’s tone calmed Rachel and restored her to a more ordered mode of thinking, making her realize she was talking to the wrong woman.

  “So you’re not . . .”

  “The child’s mother? My God, no. I’m Kit Stevenson from across the street. The mother was gone before I got here.”

  For Rachel, the rapidity with which the woman was talking, the ideas tumbling over one another in her haste to leave, was adding confusion to an already confused mind.

  “You said hospital? Was she . . . ?”

  The woman was bent over, zipping up her coat, preparatory to leaving.

  “Like I said, I have no idea. There’s a big accident over on Canning Street, a lot of people hurt. Maybe she was called back or something. Anyway, I’ve got to go. Make sure you lock the door after you leave. The key is on the table by the phone. By the way, the child is in the bedroom. She’s ready to go.”

  “Child . . . bedroom?”

  Rachel could only blurt out the words, having difficulty comprehending the speed with which events were unravelling.

  The woman’s tone hardened again, totally dismissive of Rachel’s confusion.

  “Yes, in the bedroom. That’s why you’ve come, isn’t it?”

  Then she was gone, slamming the door impatiently behind her and leaving Rachel totally at a loss at this sudden and abrupt turn of events.

  Still reeling from the encounter, it was several moments before Rachel became aware that a child had come to stand in front of her, and was peering up at her, totally unafraid.

  “Have you come for me?”

  Rachel gasped as she beheld the child’s face, the very picture of her husband: the black wavy hair, the serious blue eyes, the little round nose, the dark complexion. The child stood there, a brown teddy bear almost her size clasped firmly to her chest, looking up at Rachel, awaiting her answer. Rachel was taken aback and could only continue to blurt out a response, at a loss for words at the child’s sudden appearance.

  “Come for you? Come for you?”

  The child seemed unconcerned about Rachel’s uncertainty and replied in the same sure voice.

  “I’m Becky. Mommy said not to be afraid, that someone was coming to take me.”

  “Take you where?” Rachel, almost against her will, was being caught up in the child’s presence, following blindly along.

  “To my new home. Mommy told me she was going away and wouldn’t be coming back, and that someone would come and take me to my new home.”

  “To your new home? Your mommy, is she going somewhere?”

  The question sounded harmless enough, but she felt horrible for asking it. Deep down she knew she was interrogating the child for her own perverse reasons. The child pondered for a moment before continuing.

  “She’s going to a really nice place where she’s going to stay for a while.” Then her face brightened. “But I’m going to see her again, she told me.”

  The innocence of the child did not prevent Rachel’s old thoughts from returning. She inwardly bridled, her thoughts becoming sarcastic, cynical. Her eyes fell on the suitcase, over which a coat was drap
ed, ready for departure.

  Going to a really nice place, eh? So there was something big coming down, after all. Were they going south? Where was it Mr. Cronin and his secretary disappeared to? Acapulco? And I so bloody concerned . . .

  Yet, on second glance, the suitcase was hardly big enough, and the coat obviously belonged to the child. Rachel’s eyes roamed over the room, seeking some resolution in the scene that surrounded her.

  She was not unimpressed by what greeted her eye. The apartment was small but clean and brightly painted, in stark contrast to the dilapidation which had greeted her on the outside. This woman was not dirty. Chairs and cushions, though scarce, were arranged in place, and the floor was spotless. The walls were neatly decorated, and the furniture, though of an inferior quality, was tastefully arranged and bore the signs of frequent polishing. The curtains which hung on the windows were of a cheap material but had been freshly laundered. Whoever hung them had taken great pains to separate the folds. It was almost artistic.

  The entire scene conveyed an aura of order and cleanliness, overwhelming in its neatness and simplicity. It attested to a woman of discipline and character, of order and of talent. The child, too, was well-groomed and neatly attired, extremely confident in a difficult situation, not a child who had been poorly raised. Whatever else were her faults, this woman cared, and she knew her business.

  Rachel shook herself. What was she doing, going over to the other side? Still, the apartment was so well-organized and, Rachel was forced to admit, too scrupulously clean to reflect other than a woman of character.

  What caught her attention most, however, was the sense of urgency which emanated from the scene before her. The kitchen table was set, and an array of vegetables lay strewn around a small aluminium pot, indications that lunch preparations had been interrupted. She looked again at the child’s suitcase and coat. She obviously had to leave in a hurry, and had left the child behind, in the care of her sitter, who then called her sister. In spite of the haste which was evident in her leaving, she had taken great pains to ensure that her child was not left alone.