Order of Good Cheer

by Bill Gaston

  At home his mother got the turkey in the oven and the vegetables and potatoes chopped and ready, while his job, as always, was the gravy. She had set the ingredients out for him — flour milk salt pepper — and she may as well have added a sign: this is it, nothing else. Always, even when his father was alive, the gravy was his to do, and he had tried different recipes, none of which caught on. His father had been almost angry with him for the smoked oysters in it the one year, and the chestnuts another, and he never seemed to believe Andy that those recipes were standard fare, from Joy of Cooking in fact. He’d also tried dollops of wine and pinches of curry and squeezes of lime, and it became known as Andy’s danger gravy, and Andy didn’t mind the playful notoriety until his mother put a stop to it by saying that variety wasn’t always the spice of life and demanding that he please just make the gravy they all liked.

  As usual, he skipped lunch to stay hungry for this meal, which never deviated. Turkey, mashed potatoes, his gravy, frozen peas, canned cranberry sauce (not the jelly), and yams with maple syrup. Since the banning of his danger gravy, the only variations to the meal were the moistness of the turkey, and sometimes his mother made a mistake and bought sweet potatoes, causing her to remark during the meal how starchy the yams were.

  When this year’s meal was ready and on the table, Andy stood and carved, as always. The food laid out before him looked as it always did. Each item was in the same serving dish as last year. His mother had the serving spoons splayed in their pattern that radiated from the centre of the table. Though there were times he felt warmed by the yearly sameness, by precisely this homey continuity, tonight for some reason he felt foolish slicing through the brown crust of skin and into the breast of the bird. They’d been clinging to these small traditions ever since his father died, but now, standing here, carving, the ritual felt worse than tired; it felt empty, or childish. Or even, he didn’t know why, cowardly. She should be carving the turkey. Or they should be having some kind of spectacular pizza. Turkey and cranberry pizza. They should be drinking mead, or something. Bourbon, with Guinness chasers. Drew should be here. Friends. May E should be here, as should Li, who never should have left. Glowering Natives, wanting our French bread but too proud to ask. Laura’s mum should be here, even. Laura should be here. Strangers. Challenging strangers. And they should all be drunk, and honest with one another, and listening to some kind of chirpy folk music in another language, something none of them had heard before. They should put on a play. A dumb show. King Neptune’s Revenge.

  “You’re still looking overtired, dear.”

  The more he thought about it, the more he saw that everyone he knew was either snarling or depressed or in some kind of emergency mode, the more this party of his was a necessary idea. The seas were rising and throwing dead fish on the beach, the Third World was kindling, everyone’s weather was wrong. They needed a party, time to gather and toast each other with candlelight glinting in all eyes and off smiling teeth. Time was ripe for some — good cheer. It could be for Laura. A welcome. You often read that cancer recovery was a mood thing.

  Time to call Leonard.

  “The turkey’s a good one,” his mother said, not having tasted it yet. “I like the self-basters.”

  “It looks great.” To the knife it felt tough and it looked dry. No sheen on the white meat. A half-hour from now his mother would be dividing it up, for him and her, to use all week for sandwiches.

  “Did I hear you right that you have to work tonight, dear?”

  “Graveyard.”

  “I just don’t know how you stand it. And it’s Christmas.”

  “Double time is how we stand it.”

  “They should make only the more desperate work. The younger ones paying down their cars and such.”

  Andy didn’t tell her that he had signed up. He didn’t mind working holidays. The supervisors were slack and friendly, being in the same boat. Magically appearing in the lunchroom were cakes and goodies and eggnog (the rum was hidden and unofficial). Nor did he mind graveyard. He never had. He read.

  “How’s Mrs. Schultz doing now?”

  “She’s fine, dear, thank you for asking.” Perhaps hearing the inanity of her words, she added, “Fine in the sense that she doesn’t remember what she did. She says she remembers but you can tell she doesn’t. One blessing is that you can’t hold on to the bad things either.”

  “Right.”

  “Though she does have a very painful bruise on her knee where she banged something.”

  “Ah.”

  They passed food. He shook salt with indiscriminate sweeps over his full plate, if anything exaggerating his shaker action, and his mother rolled her eyes. She’d given up her salt warnings to the heart-patient-to-be some years ago. Andy noticed her sweater. Mauve, it looked cashmere, and had what seemed like a hundred buttons up its tight front. So many buttons, little pearl-like buttons, there was as much button as space between button. It must have taken her five minutes to do up. It seemed an archaic style, like something from a royal court, yet it reminded him of the boot buttons of a saloon hooker, a name like Diamond Lil.

  “Your father would be eighty-four this Christmas.” Her tone was cheery and instructive.

  “Holy cow.”

  “Well, that’s where I’ll be in seven.”

  “You’ll never be old, Mom.”

  “And he sure did enjoy the holidays.”

  Did he? Andy couldn’t remember. He recalled his father’s look of wry amusement as gifts were passed around, like he was humouring the situation. But he also remembered his father saying he loved it when they were snowed in and the roads were quiet, and everyone inside and warm. Christmas was maybe the only time Andy saw him drink a little too much, a beer at his side waiting for him to sip it, like he flicked his safety switch off for the day. He worked for the Port Authority, and Andy never knew exactly what that meant until after he’d died: it meant he kept tabs on all the boats, ships, vessels, and craft in Prince Rupert Harbour, making it his business to know what everyone was up to. His mother had taught grade school, stopping when Andy was born and never going back. He’d never asked her why not.

  During dinner his mother’s conversation kept to his father, and Christmas throughout the years. She didn’t talk about Marie Schultz again, or her two other friends at the house. Andy for some reason wanted her to mention Laura, or more to be asked about Laura, a mother’s question about her son’s girlfriend. Eventually she did ask about Rachel Hedley, who was his last long relationship, and whose duplicate library card was still hot in his pocket.

  “Rachel’s okay. Teaching half-time. Alexis keeps her pretty busy.”

  “Alexis . . .”

  “Her daughter? She adopted a daughter three years ago?”

  “Oh goodness yes. Guatemala. And she chose Guatemala because . . . ?”

  “Guatemala is one place that lets single mothers, that thinks single mothers can —”

  “Yes, yes. And Alexis is . . .?”

  “Four.”

  “You two haven’t gotten back together I take it.”

  “No, Mom.” It’d been ten years now. They’d gone out barely a year. Then they’d stayed friends. They’d probably always been only friends.

  He noticed his plate was empty. He remembered nothing. Maybe in the first few bites there’d been some awareness, something. He stabbed some more turkey and poured gravy on it. He deliberately tasted a bite. It was dry, yes. His gravy needed salt.

  “And, are you all planning some kind of do for Laura when she gets here?”

  The sonar of mothers. And it was funny how she said it, as if there was still an “all” to plan a do with.

  “I’m sure we’ll do something. No idea what.” Though Andy did. It involved a party, and a rotten winter, and immense boredom, and scurvy, and festering pain of all kinds. Leonard, he should call Leonard. He’d be up north. His cell doesn’t work there. Tomorrow.

  “You know she’ll be very busy, dear, with her mother. A
nd she’s been so sick herself. I’d be careful about bothering her. She might just want to keep to herself.”

  “No, I know that. She’s coming up here for a bit of a rest.” I promise not to bother her.

  “Well, judging from five nights ago, a rest isn’t what she’ll be getting.”

  “No.” Apparently at the house they were taking turns “guarding” Mrs. Schultz, not letting her take her solitary walks, and this usually led to an argument.

  “And you’re going to gather her at the airport?” She smiled but her smile was fixed and her tone transparent. Not just a disapproving mother but also the friend of Marie Schultz, sounding like some kind of clumsy spy.

  “Yup.” He did a brief drumroll on the table with two fingers.

  “You know I worry about you, dear.”

  Of course she did. It was the biological imperative. He waited to hear one of the dreaded, “A mother’s love never ages,” or, one of his all-time favourites, “An ounce of mother is worth a pound of priest.” But his mom just sat there spying silently.

  Andy loved his mother heartily enough to be able to admit he didn’t like her. If they weren’t related, went his logic, would he want to befriend her? Hang out with her? No.

  He knew this was because they’d never talked, not really. Maybe in her view they had, maybe to her they communicated up a storm. Maybe her generation just put less pressure on it, and thought small talk and proverbs were enough. He knew the child in him still believed their lack of communication to be her fault: since she was the adult she must know how to do it, how to speak deeply about real things, and for some reason she withheld this from him, she wasn’t letting him in on her secrets, or all of her knowledge. He wasn’t allowed to know her. It felt almost physical, like he could only partially see her. His actual and adult suspicion, of course, was that she had no secrets or knowledge to share and, even worse, that she didn’t know herself either, not at all.

  He knew that if he had kids maybe he wouldn’t be so hard on her. That is, maybe he’d stop being a child himself. Drew had told him as much. Drew who, again, found Andy’s mother funny. And Drew who, yesterday on the phone at work, had told him it was in some ways worse to have Chris home again because now he was “waiting for that call,” or for “the next family shit storm,” and Chris leaving again. In any case, having a kid you loved so much — and here Drew’s voice actually broke and it was here Andy realized that this phone call was the only way his friend could have talked about this —was automatically heartbreaking. When your child was with you, you didn’t say what you dearly wanted to, and when he wasn’t home, you wished you had.

  Andy had told Drew, lamely, that it was too bad he and Chris couldn’t have a nice heart-to-heart talk about precisely that stuff. Drew’s snort was answer enough.

  Andy eyed his mother bringing turkey dipped in gravy and cranberry carefully to her mouth, then settling her fork, tines curled down, while she chewed. No doubt she had some proverb about the transparent wall that divided Drew and Chris.

  When Andy couldn’t fathom his mother he sometimes thought of the incident outside the movie theatre. He was ten or eleven and they waited in a small line for tickets. He was aware even then of his mother being somehow not made for a common lineup. It wasn’t her clothes — as always, she was dressed smartly, but not ostentatiously. Things matched, and were of quality. Nor was it that she thought a lineup beneath her —she seemed quite happy to stand in one — but more that it actually was beneath her, like it would be beneath a cheerful queen. There was something in her manner of standing and waiting, apart from the others’ small talk, but with a friendly smile for them. Her alert posture was part of it, and so was the way she gazed easily at things, giving off a sense that she knew why things were the way they were.

  In any case, on the theatre’s roof that day a raven hung its tail over the edge and shat on his mother’s head. She let out an uncharacteristic whoop and her shoulders shot to her ears. She didn’t look up, because she knew what had happened and there was no need. She also didn’t move to get out of danger, because she knew it would happen only the once. What she did do was instantly recover. There were white, wet droppings on her head above her ear, and some on her cheek. Everyone had turned to her. Her tone of voice was pleasant and clear.

  “Well, it’s rather surprisingly cold,” she said. “And I can smell that it’s fishy.”

  In her answering everyone’s unvoiced questions, Andy didn’t think his mother was trying to be funny at all. Through a mix of laughter and condolences she made her way to the ticket gate to have herself let in to use the washroom. What struck Andy most, and strikes him still, was that she had used the moment to be instructive.

  They were taking last bites of turkey, not saying much, and when she cleared her throat Andy realized he’d been ignoring her overlong, staring out the window into black nothing.

  “Sorry,” he said, and smiled limply.

  “About what, dear?” she asked, though they both knew, just as they both knew she had been as insincere as he had.

  Real things. Andy would love to have a proverb-making-up session with her, about real things. “Familiarity breeds claustrophobia.” “Familiarity means you don’t have to talk.” “Love means never having to say anything at all any more.” She might even enjoy such a thing. But there’s no way it would ever happen between them. How could he start such a thing without insulting her in all sorts of ways?

  “Are you all right, dear?”

  “Sure. Yeah. Why?”

  “Well, I guess we all have a lot on our minds.”

  He took some more food, a little of everything, for lack of something better to do. He forked mashed potato and dipped it on his peas, several of which embedded themselves. Overfull, he wished he had a Scotch or something to cut through it. A cognac. No — Calvados, that French brandy made of fallen apples. He yawned and predicted his mother would mention tryptophan again, she having forgotten that, two years ago, he’d told her that turkey actually had no more of it than any other meat. People were still discovering tryptophan and loved reporting it, and at work this week he’d had to hold his tongue twice.

  His mother simply said, “Well,” and smiled her satisfaction. Andy imagined a quick nap while she divvied the leftovers and cleaned up, which she always insisted on doing in payment “for letting me come here for dinner.” He had five hours before his shift started. In a small inner spasm that made his chest contract, he remembered the one Christmas dinner when he’d been so bored that, right about now, he’d gone off and masturbated in the upstairs bathroom, just for the contrast, for the moral danger.

  But now, finally, it arrived. It was such a caricature of herself,

  Andy could almost see how Drew found her funny. His mother sighed, elaborately and for show, fluttered her eyelids, placed her knife and fork diagonally on her clean plate, and announced, “Well. A good Yule makes a fat churchyard.”

  Andy hadn’t heard this one. “As in, you eat too much, you die?”

  “I suppose so. Yes.”

  He actually liked it, perversely, for the extreme puritanical clucking: beware enjoying yourself on Christmas.

  And then, after all these years, he had to know. He didn’t think, he just asked. “Mom. Did you know that saying or did you look it up? You know, for today? So you could say it?”

  “I looked it up, dear.” She appeared not in the least perturbed by his question. She added, “Don’t you think they’re fun?”

  “Sure.” No, he didn’t think they were fun. He’d never thought they were fun. Maybe they were interesting. Maybe it was fun to hear how people once thought.

  “But I really have eaten too much,” she said. She arched back in her chair, took a big breath, and, while still carrying her head elegantly on her neck, cradled her small belly in her hands. “Because you really do make excellent gravy.”

  Andy didn’t know if she was trying to be funny.

  FINISHING GRAVEYARD shift the next mornin
g, he saw no sense in going home to pretend he could sleep. The Tim Hortons was open and, even more amazingly, almost full. Over steaming coffee and muffins sat a crowd of people who looked mostly at a loss as to where else they might come to spend the day after Christmas. Standing in line, Andy had to smile at himself: here he was, doing the same but he was going to judge them anyway.

  Laura flew in tomorrow.

  He took coffee and muffin to the lone empty table, smack in the middle of things, surrounded by people he recognized but no one he was obliged to talk to. He would have preferred a window, though the rain and cement outside were only familiar. It was more the need of an opening through which to point the eyes. If you fell into a sleepless stare here in the middle you might unknowingly target someone’s breast, or wife, or eyes.

  He sipped milky coffee and noted the muffin only in that it tasted like fake cherries. Was it true, the rumour that they used msg in their coffee, to trick and addict our tongues? He did like this coffee. He could see that, outside, the rain had eased, but the low pressing clouds were of the kind that absorbed light, and things were just too dark out there for a mid-morning. In the restaurant, most everyone looked fat because lots hadn’t bothered to take off their ski jackets as they blew over their coffee. Shoulder to shoulder, one couple stared out the window not knowing they did, a steadiness that aped but lacked the energy of actual thought. Streams of gossip trickled everywhere. Andy heard that Canada had won a world junior hockey game. He heard, Heard about Simm’s dog? Yes, the friend had, and now he heard it again. In the near corner sat another lone man, an old guy, maybe seventy, but he had stayed very handsome, with ice-blue eyes and stylish hair, a rarity with old people. Andy knew his name was Charles. An artist, a sculptor. Pots, odd sculpted pots. He came from Chicago in the ’80s and lived in Dodge Cove. The man looked tired and, stealing a closer look, Andy could see sleep marks cut into a cheek, like he’d slept hard on a cushion’s piping. Charles made Tim Hortons feel almost cosmopolitan, but you had to wonder what he was doing here today, alone. It was odd that he and Andy had never met.