The Most Perfect Gift

by Hubert Furey

  Jimmy stiffened, but he kept his voice low. “Look, I didn’t have to beg you to go up in that grove, and you weren’t exactly Miss Prim on the ground, either.” He knew the first part was true, but the second part was out before he could check it. He saw the colour drain from her face, but she continued to look at him steadily, the even tone of her voice masking the hurt she couldn’t reveal.

  “I didn’t ask to be treated like some piece of trash you picked up off the street, some piece of dirt that . . .” But she couldn’t finish, because she didn’t know how to end. Her feelings were welling up inside her, consuming her, preventing her from completing her thought. She simply stood looking in his eyes, her lips quivering at the harshness of a memory that had never been erased. This was going wrong, and Jimmy knew it. Maybe he should keep on going. He heard a car door close behind him, and he turned to see one of the officers standing by the side of the car, watching the two of them intently.

  “Look, if you think you got a beef with me, take it to the police. They’ll wonder why you waited this long to get your story together.” He hadn’t wanted to be this harsh. She continued to hold his eyes, but her lip had drooped, and her voice was breaking.

  “And let your smart lawyer friends tear me apart on the stand? No thanks. Besides, you’re right. You didn’t have to beg me to go up in that grove. And if they put me under oath, I’d have to tell the truth, wouldn’t I? That I wanted more than anything else to be in that grove with you that day, that I dreamed a dozen times of being in that grove with Jimmy Blanchard, that I thought the world of Jimmy Blanchard, in spite of everything. But you didn’t give a damn about that, did you? You wouldn’t have given a damn if you had known, anyway.”

  She paused, looking across the harbour, shifting her balance so that she would not be facing him. She should have been bitter, but she wasn’t. “I really should have known better, shouldn’t I? With the way you were getting on. You and your fighting and your filthy ways.”

  She had turned back to him, the trace of a smile twisting her face. “You know the craziest part? I really wanted you to love me. In my foolish, teenage craziness I wanted you to take me up in that grove and love me like I used to dream about, like the older girls used to describe it. With nice words, maybe even a little romance. Me and Jimmy Blanchard in love. But the brutal, savage way . . .” She had stopped and was walking away, and Jimmy knew she was crying. Even for him, it was hard to confront. As he followed her movement, he could see the RCMP officer conversing with his two partners as they looked in his direction.

  She turned back to look at him one last time, and he could see the pain returning to her face. The thought of how he had always wanted to destroy her passed through his mind, how he had wanted to reduce her to just another piece of sexual garbage—she, the epitome of everything that was good and beautiful and graceful in women. He had wanted to destroy her, and all she represented in that world of beauty and goodness and love, a world in which he knew he did not belong. And he had destroyed her, that day in the grove, destroyed her well, dragged her down to the level of dirt and filth where he wallowed himself. But he had forgotten, until the previous night at the door of the church, that he had destroyed himself, too. Yes, he had destroyed her, but he had only succeeded in adding one more burden of evil to the evil that was him. And if he were going to rebuild himself, he would have to rebuild her, restore her somehow to what she was before.

  Somehow he had to reach back in time and redress it. He called to her as she continued to walk away, knowing from the spasmodic movement of her shoulders that she was reliving again the terrible memory that must be tearing her apart. He tried to put meaning in his voice, but it sounded flat and vapid against the stillness of the winter day. “Sheila! I’m sorry.” She turned, her face a mask of pain, her eyes brimming with the tears she was fighting to control.

  “Sorry? Sorry? You’re sorry? You think you’re going to wipe away that—that savagery with ‘sorry’? All those nights in twenty years thinking about it, remembering it, feeling the pain over and over, feeling the humiliation over and over, never being able to tell anyone, never being able to breathe a word about it to anybody. You’re sorry!”

  Jimmy was confounded by her response. He thought all you had to do was say you were sorry. Perhaps he had not sounded contrite enough. “Sheila, let me pay you back.” It wasn’t what he had intended to say.

  She wheeled abruptly to face him directly, her voice suddenly bitter and contemptuous. “Pay me? So what am I now, a past-tense whore? Tear them apart when they’re at your mercy, then toss them a few cents to ease the pain?”

  That wasn’t what he had meant, either.

  Sheila pulled her collar around her neck, holding it in place with both hands as she stared across the harbour. She stood for one more moment to look at him, then walked away, her head lowered, seemingly oblivious to the presence of the police officer standing by the side of the car. He wanted to call out to her again, to tell her that he did mean it, that he wasn’t used to saying he was sorry, that he had been just as uncomfortable and confused in her presence as he had been with Mother Hennessey, that he was telling the truth, but she was walking away, and he said nothing, knowing that words of any kind were now simply useless.

  Jimmy watched as the police officer intercepted her, and he saw her shake her head in no particular direction without stopping, and he knew she was telling the officer that everything was fine. But he knew it wasn’t. He continued to watch her as she turned into the yard of her house, saying over and over in his mind, Sheila, I’m really sorry, I’m really sorry, but she never once looked back. He noticed the police car turning and saw them slowly approach, with the windows down and the officers alternately looking from him to the direction of Sheila O’Keefe’s house. The female officer was addressing him, trying to sound professional in spite of her nervous tone.

  “Friend of yours, Mr. Blanchard? She seemed awfully upset. Nothing we should know about?” Jimmy looked down at her, sensing the dread through the protective stiffness of the uniform, before looking again in the direction of Sheila O’Keefe’s house. Maybe he should tell them the whole story. But then, short of putting him back in jail, what else would it achieve?

  “I went out with that girl a long time ago, then I left her. I realize now what a very, very stupid mistake I made.” There was no need to tell the police any more. He knew, Sheila knew, and God knew. That was enough. It wasn’t totally untrue, certainly not the last part. The officers continued to study him closely, as if trying to decide whether they should believe him.

  From the slow movement of the car came a parting admonition through the open window as the tires began to slowly crunch the hardening snow of the afternoon. “Watch your step, Mr. Blanchard. We’re as close as Couteau.”

  Jimmy continued to hold the car in view long after it disappeared over the hill to the Brandy Gulch. He would watch his step. He would watch his step very carefully. He had already begun, he had thought—proferring such a huge gesture of atonement to Sheila. Well, it was huge for him. He had given it his best shot, did exactly what he thought should be done, but he had not gained a thing. He had said he was sorry, from the bottom of his heart. Repaying wasn’t as easy as he thought. What more did he have to do?

  A car passed, too quickly for the state of the road, he thought, and the driver weaved to avoid him. The movement jarred him out of his self-absorption. He thrust his hands back into his pockets and began to walk quickly, hunching his shoulders as a defence against his sudden awareness of the cold. Two young girls avoided him, the fear apparent in their hurrying steps. Sheila was right. It was a hollow gesture. Perhaps he should have taken her to the police car, confessed it all himself, signed the confession right there before her eyes. Then she wouldn’t have to worry about courts or lawyers or being skewered by the system. He would have gone back to Dorchester, there would be no doubt about that, but maybe it wou
ld prove to her that he would do anything to undo the wrong. Yes, take away the past of pain and memory, give her back the life to which she was entitled.

  But even as he thought through the scenario of his vicarious confession, he realized that she wouldn’t—couldn’t—have accepted that, either. She would not have seen the gesture as grandiose or noble, an eloquent self-sacrifice of his life to erase her past. She would only see it as more shrewd manipulation, the kind that had led her to the grove in the first place. How could she ever believe that he was placing his life in her hands like that? She could never be party to it, anyway. She could never truly hurt, he knew that, and sending him to prison would destroy her soul as much as he had destroyed hers that day twenty years ago. Maybe people who truly loved could never exact true revenge. He had been so much a part of hurting and hating that he was having difficulty learning that there were people in the world incapable of either one.

  She could never have done it, any more than the rest of them. He had met gratitude and enjoyment, and now he was experiencing goodness, and he was only beginning to understand the faintest glimpse of its meaning. Putting him back in jail for her own benefit would have been an evil thing, and he was slowly beginning to see that good people found it difficult to do evil things. As he walked along, his head bent in absorption of the beaten snow below his feet, he realized that it was the easiest thing in the world to hurt, but that it was hard to forgive and, it seemed, utterly impossible to repay. Still, the thinking did not depress him or entice him into self-pity. Sheila O’Keefe had refused his apology, but strangely, he didn’t feel embittered or rancorous or spiteful or have any of those other feelings that had always separated him from the presence of humanity and made him want to sneer and hate and be contemptuous for their weakness. He was experiencing a strange, simple feeling of being, without understanding what it meant, like the feeling of enjoyment that he had experienced earlier.

  He raised his eyes and looked around, feeling at peace with the day, suddenly aware of the beauty of the world through which he trod, where the open, blue sky and the grey, undulating sea and the whiteness of the land around him merged into one great eternity of enchantment, blending in a single panorama of unparalleled beauty. The smooth cover of snow heaped in deep furrows by the wind stretched away in every direction, white and unbroken. The sun drenched the landscape with its cold brilliance, and the harbour heaved and sighed against the still cliffs and ice-encrusted beaches that bounded it on all sides. He could not remember ever being aware of such beauty as this through which he was passing or when he had been so struck by such a dazzling panoply of colour. The realization that people—a lot of people—truly cared for him was overpowering him, rendering him awestruck in the face of feelings that had lain buried since childhood, and that he was encountering as an adult for the very first time.

  He looked up across the harbour as he walked along, crunching the snow beneath his boots, turning over the recent scenes in his mind, scenes that he would never have been able to contemplate even a day before. Frank Ryan, peering through the curtains every second of the night—something he was at all his life. “Looking for news’” was how his grandmother used to describe it. Now he was Jimmy’s best witness, willing to take the stand and testify on his behalf. He shook his head, still unable to believe the conversation he had just witnessed. All those years of snooping had culminated in the greatest act of deliverance for Jimmy that he could ever envision. Tom Blanchard’s craftiness would have landed him in prison, and Frank Ryan’s snooping was his only protection.

  Sheila O’Keefe walking by that police car, unable to punish him. She had the chance to put him back in—he knew she had suffered enough to do it—but she was unable. Cheri Wilson, believing that he couldn’t have done it. Laying herself on the line in front of the world for him—at least the world of Brine Cove. Then he knew she would do it in front of the whole world if she had to.

  He turned in the direction of Mother Hennessey’s, suddenly realizing how hungry he was, his mouth watering in anticipation of what would be his first home-cooked meal in twenty years. It had been a long morning, and that cup of tea was well down by now. He moved easily along the main road, the white smoothness of the surface undisturbed except for the myriad of tire imprints which added a strange artistic effect to the otherwise pure image of the newly fallen snow. He had to admit those guys on the plows didn’t waste any time pushing her through. He walked past huge piled drifts thrown up on both sides by the plow’s action, hardly meeting a soul. He knew that people who weren’t still eating Christmas dinner would be sitting back around the tables or moving into living rooms to continue the fun and open presents. His mother used to open presents on Christmas Eve, after supper. Well, at least present. There wasn’t a whole lot of anything any time, and Christmas was no exception.

  He walked along, savouring the Christmas scenes that came back from his childhood, scenes that had suddenly become so important. Dressing up in the green and white checked shirt and the tie that had a big Santa Claus face on it—probably on credit from Dick Furneaux’s store; sitting at the table with the steaming salt fish and raspberry syrup and dark fruitcake; going into the parlour to finish the Christmas tree, the excitement of that first present. Wheeling the little red and blue wheelbarrow ’round and ’round the kitchen on Christmas morning while his grandmother chided him and his mother laughed. He remembered his mother giving him that one present, always wrapped and always with a Christmas bow. His mother always explained that he could only have one because Santa Claus was bringing the rest. But he still couldn’t remember anything he had opened. The little blue and red wheelbarrow dominated his memory, refusing to go away.

  As he negotiated the graceful sweep of the Brandy Gulch, he paused to contemplate the near-horrific events of the night before. The sea had subsided into a more regular surging motion since the storm had passed, and a gentle heaving of the waves washing the beach of the cove gave no hint of the raging storm the night before, with its vicious crashing mounds of sea and drenching spray. Parts of the car were strewn about the beach and among the rocks, but the main body of the vehicle was nowhere to be seen, either smashed to bits or dragged by the undertow to deeper water. Jimmy shuddered and turned abruptly to walk on, not wanting to entertain for one moment the thought of Cheri Wilson hurled to her death in the car, her body perhaps never to be found.

  He walked quickly on the smoothly plowed surface, and he arrived at Mother Hennessey’s earlier than he expected. As he turned into the shovelled path of the little yard, the old woman was waiting for him inside the porch, holding open the door in expectation. “I thought about waiting to get ye to shovel the path, but the little fella did it before he went up for ye. He comes to shovel the path, and I gives him a few cents. Come in. Don’t mind yer boots. Come in, now. I can’t afford to heat up the back mashes.”

  Jimmy covered the remaining distance in long, bounding strides that took him quickly to where the old woman stood in the porch, pausing to remove his cap and mitts and take off his boots. “Leave them on. ’Tis only a bit of snow water. Yer feet’ll be cold on the canvas.” Succumbing to the warmth of the invitation, he followed Mother Hennessey into her kitchen, which, like every other room in the tiny bungalow, was small but not cramped. The table was festively adorned with a red Christmas candle already burning amidst the clutter of steaming plates and bowls arranged at various distances from the two place settings.

  “I was watching for ye, and when I saw ye break the hill before the Brandy Gulch, I took everything up. I said I’d have it on the table when ye came in. I knows yer hungry after spending the night in that house and that scarafunging in the police car. Come on. Sit down. I’ll pour a cup of tea. I can give ye a drink if ye wants it, but ye probably shouldn’t be touchin’ it.”

  Jimmy wondered if she knew about probation. Then, it wasn’t the first time he had met ordinary people who were very, very smart. “It’s ok
ay. I’m just going to enjoy what’s before me.”

  Mother Hennessey took a roast of pork from the oven and set it on the last remaining space on the table, then passed Jimmy a knife. “Here, you cut it up. Your hand is stronger than mine.” Jimmy studied the knife before taking it, overwhelmed by an inexplicably sick fear that he couldn’t shake. Pictures of him holding knives flooded his mind, and he sat rigid, unable to respond. The old woman looked at him understandingly, then dismissed the gesture in a scowling tone of voice.

  “Go on. Take it. Ye’ve got to trust yourself sometime. Cut up the pork.” Jimmy’s eyes met the old woman’s, and he took the knife slowly, then proceeded to carve the pork with deft, capable strokes. Within moments he was gorging himself on the salt beef and cabbage and pease pudding and the multitude of vegetables which had been arrayed in the different dishes in front of him. The old woman ate loudly, sucking salt meat with obvious relish, oblivious to the noise her action was making, pausing occasionally to look at him with intense pleasure.

  “I think you likes me cookin’.”

  Jimmy laughed. “Don’t take me wrong. But after the food in Dorchester, anything is good. And this is heaven.”

  Mother Hennessey looked at him in a straightforward manner, her tone changing abruptly. “I think Cheri Wilson came to visit ye last night.”

  Jimmy looked back in astonishment. “How did . . .”

  “The phones, b’y, the phones. You’re the talk of the place this mornin’. How ye got her out of that car before the car went over. Every man jack has been down to the Brandy Gulch to see the car. She must be smashed to smithereens. That was a wonderful thing you did, ye know. The phones are goin’ all ahoi talkin’ ’bout it.”

  Jimmy half-shrugged, not wanting to display the feeling of pleasure he was deriving from the old woman’s compliments. “I suppose I couldn’t just stand by and watch her drown, could I?”