Order of Good Cheer

by Bill Gaston

  TEN PEOPLE SQUEEZED around the dining-room table and others sat randomly in the living room, appetizer plates and mugs in their laps. During an ebb in the conversations, Rachel Hedley asked, “Andy, so what’s this about? It’s great I mean, but . . .”

  She sat across the table from him. Vivaldi was energetic on the stereo and she spoke loudly so that everyone in the room could hear, and inclined her head toward Magda, as if asking on her behalf. She was using an empty mussel shell to scoop some of the cognac pâté that Doris had brought. He hadn’t remembered to ask everyone to bring “an appetizer you’ve never tried,” but someone had brought mushroom caps stuffed with anchovy and sun-dried tomato, and another some jalapeño hummus. May E had brought, of her own accord, a block of that English cheese with the festive red marbling, and there was also a little tub of baba ghanoush. As a joke someone, likely Drew, had plunked down a can of smoked oysters and box of Ritz crackers. Otherwise, Andy had positioned on the table two bowls of coarse salt for pinching up with one’s dirty French fingers. No other condiments allowed.

  The “mussels smoked under pine needles” were so-so, tasting too resinous, too much like gin, making the gentle seafood bitter. Maybe if he had put the needles on top, as written. But each creature was as big as a fat man’s thumb, and the flesh so bright orange that each bite was startling. More than one person suggested squirting lemon on them, which would have improved them, yes, but Andy had to go find the two lemons he had and hide them under some apples. At l’Habitation, lemon was one thing they famously and fatally didn’t have.

  “So you going to tell us what all this is about? I mean”— Rachel lifted her eyebrows in feigned horror in Magda’s direction — “apparently we’re not only eating moose tonight but we’re eating it for a reason.”

  Andy told them about a cluster of claustrophobic men under short ceilings, a dark winter, and depression, and scurvy, and Samuel Champlain, and the Order of Good Cheer. From over in the living room’s darkest corner Rita shouted that she remembered that from grade-eight history, and some others thought they’d heard of it too.

  Magda piped in that Christmas was originally a pagan festival of light held, for good reason, at the gloomiest time of year. It was because of Magda, and also because for some reason Andy wanted everyone to like Champlain, that he didn’t tell them he’d read how Pierre Berton called Champlain “that assassin.” Or that, after his sailing days were done, Champlain went back and married a twelve-year-old girl. And somewhere along the line he added the pretentious “de” to his name. But theses things seemed like gossip, and didn’t properly sum the man up. Who knew anything about him? It was funny, but not an hour earlier Drew had thrown on The Tragically Hip, and at the “He’s thirty-eight years old, never kissed a girl,” Andy instantly pictured Samuel Champlain standing arms akimbo on deck, face into the wind of a new sea, and he wondered what the man’s mind felt like.

  Nor did Andy say what he’d been thinking, which was that, whatever this night was, it didn’t seem to be working, at least not for him. In fact he thought he might be losing it. Sitting at the table, he found if he relaxed too much in a certain way, the space around people, but not the people themselves, gained a humming sort of richness, so much so that people didn’t feel important any more at all, didn’t feel like the main thing. He could also blink rapidly and feel Laura three seats down from him, and he could feel his mother over in the corner by the window, and he could feel the vast night out there, and the water below it, his moving water that he watched daily, and not only could he hold all of this in his mind, he couldn’t shake it.

  Sitting with her shoulder pressed to Rachel’s, Magda announced that the festival of light was common to every civilization in the northern latitudes. “Anyone,” she said, “who had the solstice and the shortest day figured out.”

  “They’re all calling, ‘Hey, Andy,’” Rachel coughed out, “‘turn on some fricken’ lights!’ Just kidding. We like the candles.” Rachel looked a little drunk already.

  Andy wondered if he’d be kissing Rachel tonight at midnight. It had been part of New Year’s parties ever since high school. At midnight you kissed your girlfriend but then every other girl too. Sometimes there were little extramarital displays, kisses that lingered or dared some tongue. Sometimes you kissed someone you didn’t want to, and how many girls had suffered the same with him? But it was a ritual lasting into their twenties. Maybe it continued still; Andy had been to New Year’s parties only sporadically and rarely saw any of the old gang, possibly because they didn’t live here any more. But he remembered Drew yelling once, after his Pauline-kiss was over, “Time for some wives.”

  Maybe he’d kiss Magda tonight too. Why not? He checked out her thin mouth. She had what Rachel herself used to call chicken lips.

  “So you’re curing our scurvy?” This from Drew. His head down, he mindlessly diddled two forks on the tablecloth. He was wearing his grey hoodie, up. He must have been outside for a smoke. He hadn’t acknowledged Andy much all evening.

  Andy matched his tone, which had sounded a little angry. “Just yours.”

  Diddling his forks, his anger almost palpable now, Drew pointed his chin at the table and its scatter of mussel shells and half-eaten appetizers and snorted.

  “Well, whatever,” Andy said. “I thought it was a good idea at the time.” What was with Drew? From around the table came eruptions of “No, this is good,” and “Hey, great party,” and the like, and Andy was embarrassed he’d fallen defensive. But he understood Drew’s irritation. Drew would bristle at the supreme arrogance of his intentions and was simply letting him know. Or — maybe Drew was only mocking Andy’s ulterior motive, to worm his way into a certain someone’s embrace.

  Deus ex machina, the timer rang for the curd pies and Andy leapt up. He also saw it was time to open a few more bottles to breathe.

  He let the two pies cool on the stovetop and meantime stirred the stew and its bulbous piece of moose in the middle. He was opening more wine when here was Pauline at his side.

  “Don’t take Mr. Dickhead personally,” she whispered. “I don’t know what he’s so damn cheer-ful about.” Pauline, on the other hand, seemed quite energetically happy.

  “Really not a problem.” And it wasn’t.

  “Well, actually I do know what it is.”

  “It’s understandable. The guy’s moving out tomorrow.”

  “Well, that’s another thing. He isn’t. We decided he shouldn’t. Chris. The timing is just — You know, Chris moves back in, dad moves out, it sort of sends the wrong, you know . . .”

  “Ahh.”

  “So we’re going to try it out for a while. The happy family.”

  Andy turned to her. No wonder she was happy. “Well, that’s great.” And it was, it partly was. But he did understand Drew now. Drew had tried to change his life and he had failed.

  “But anyway he’s pissed off because of Chris tonight.”

  Studying the knife coming out of the curd pie, Andy checked for doneness, not sure what to look for. “Why?”

  “I hope you’re not bothered by it too, but Chris and James took mushrooms.”

  “Mushrooms.” Andy stopped and turned to her full on. “Holy cow.”

  “They were laughing so much in the garage, and Drew said something, and James made some crack about ‘the ’shrooms,’ because he thinks we’re cool about everything, I guess Chris gave him that impression, but Drew sort of went all quiet on them, so. I mean he should be happy when Chris is open with us, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe there’s the whole drug thing he’s worried about in general.”

  “Well, he certainly did mushrooms. They’re no worse than pot. You did mushrooms with us too that time, didn’t you?”

  A hundred years ago. Laura had been there too, it was the four of them. He’d felt a bit uneasy and then, for maybe an hour, on the verge of a giggle that never came. Mostly just sort of fuzzy. Pauline was right, it was no biggie. And he couldn’t help bu
t feel a tad proud that here were two kids on a head romp who thought his house and his party might be a good place to be. He hoped it was. Anyway, it wasn’t mushrooms Drew was mad about.

  “Is Chris going to school?”

  “He’s agreed to go back to school.”

  “Grade eleven, right?”

  “Grade eleven. And we worked out that as long as he keeps a B average, he gets his freedom. Pretty much. Curfews and stuff.”

  “That sounds fair, I’d say.”

  They left the kitchen each bearing a curd pie, Pauline using the oven mitts, Andy a towel.

  Placing their pies on the buffet to the exclamations of others, though they merely looked like pies, Pauline said to Andy under her breath, “I’m just trying to enjoy everything about him.”

  “Sounds good,” Andy said, just as hushed. He stooped at the buffet cupboard for some small plates, and Pauline joined him.

  She paused in their chore to squeeze his arm. “Anyway, Andy, sorry about Laura.”

  “I know. It’s sad.”

  “Wednesday, eh?”

  “Wednesday what?”

  “She leaves Wednesday? Her flight?”

  Andy’s hands froze on the stack of plates.

  “Right.” Right, yes, how stupid of me, it slipped my mind. Wednesday?

  “Now she gets to be nearer her daughter.”

  “That’s right.” That would be, let’s see, two more days. Here I was hoping it might be a tad longer.

  “Can’t blame her on that one.”

  “We can’t,” he whispered.

  “What a complete knockout, eh? Is Amelia gorgeous or what?”

  “Boo-yes.”

  Andy knew now what Pauline’s sad, sad look there at the front door had been about. It hadn’t been big-eyed sadness for herself and Drew, but for him and Laura.

  He rested a moment more, his hand on the plates. And now Pauline had his arm in a firmer squeeze, maybe because of what was on his face.

  Andy was glad to see Leonard lean out from the kitchen, arm around his niece, nodding vigorously at him, mouthing, The moose? The moose? An hour earlier Leonard, good old Leonard, had taken him by the soft of the inner elbow and in his deep, Tsimshian tones suggested that his niece serve this main course, under the guise of giving her more training. Maybe he’d seen Andy’s edgy state, his sleeplessness, the nerves he couldn’t shake, the pressures of hosting, and of Laura, and yard tumble and glacial melt and looming scurvy and his mother, and also maybe a glass of wine too many.

  Leonard hissed that it was not only ready, it was all plattered up. Beside him, his niece stood wearing her cousin’s chef hat, around which was tied a broad red ribbon decorated with sprigs of pine.

  Andy considered getting up and joining the procession in, but didn’t. At l’Habitation, the main dish was brought in to great fanfare and shouts of praise, and sometimes even a hymn.

  So Leonard’s niece bore the silver platter, actually an old tea tray of his mother’s, walking slowly. On it the moose nose, a massive and awkward nub, its nostrils pointing up like two cavernous eye sockets atop a brainless and hairless head. Everything about it — the shape, the mud colour, the pocks from plucked bristles — was homely and absurd. Surrounding it, a crudely decorative collar of potatoes, carrots, and parsnips. Following with the tureen of stew, Leonard for some reason hummed “Here Comes the Bride.” He stared fondly at the moose nose, his smile growing.

  Leonard’s niece’s arrival with the platter sparked sounds of delight or disgust or incredulity as it dawned on people what part of what beast this was, and she rather proudly set it down, centre table. Poor Doris knocked her chair back as she rose to her feet to get away. May E looked simply pleased, in her smile no awareness that this wasn’t traditional holiday fare. Drew couldn’t help laughing at first sight of it.

  Others were mostly laughing too as Andy went to the kitchen for his carving utensils and the ladle. He glanced at Laura, who appraised him in a lovely, significant way, eye to eye, no words needed. Here she was. Andy took an involuntary breath. It was like the last twenty years of his life brightly watching him. He wanted to run, to leave. How was that look of hers even possible? He tested the absurd notion that this night was working magic and she would now not be leaving town after all, but this hope made him feel pathetic. From the kitchen, rooting in the implement drawer, he could hear Leonard answering the moose questions, the where it came from and the how it got here. Returning appropriately armed, Andy confronted the moose with a carving pose just as Chris and his friend came guffawing in from the backyard, having learned of the nose and enamoured with it already, and Amelia followed behind them, brow knit and newly unsure.

  Andy began to carve. He decided on thin slices, he didn’t know why, it just seemed better than big country chunks. The texture as felt through the handle of the knife resembled the beef tongue he’d had once, but there was an unappealing sponginess to this nose, sponge was the word, no doubt about it, though the bubbles were a little finer.

  They would try it, he was pretty sure. In the spirit of the night they’d give it a go. Especially anyone who had learned, like he just had, that this party, this night of Good Cheer, was meant for every one of them.

  So he paused in the carving for a taste of something he’d never tasted before. He hacked off not an exploratory sample but a hearty square, an inch back from the nostril. Some people were watching, others weren’t. He lifted it in the pinching tips of carving knife and fork and into his mouth it went. He chewed, tall and brave, a big dumb moose himself, and his teeth crushed it to release a brown rainbow of alien flavours. This nose meat wasn’t organ meat but its own unique not-quite-meat. He could taste its snuffling proximity to fungus and mud and the swampy roots of reeds. He could sense a decade’s worth of oddest breath droning lungfully through it, and though his instinct was to ignore exactly this taste, it was what woke him up, this was his medicine.

  GRATEFUL TO PAUSE, and do something simple, he put his hands in the soapy hot water and let them hang there a moment. He liked that he’d insisted on candlelight in the kitchen too. It lent a soft contentment to the room that seemed to go well with this smell of soap and the underwater clunking of dishes. As happened at any party he’d ever been to, people were gathered here in the kitchen, but they spoke more softly and seemed to enjoy the atmosphere too as they watched him work. Enough dirty cups and glasses had to be washed to serve everyone the Napoleon brandy. He was insisting that everyone at least put their pursed French lips to it and have a sip, because he wanted to make a toast or two. And then maybe try to get everyone to sing, or dance, or a game. Some kind of homegrown entertainment. He had a pretty decent guitar in his room. He wondered if anyone played besides Drew, who he knew wouldn’t go near that thing tonight, not for a million dollars.

  He circulated with a tray of glasses. His mother, Doris, and poor hefty Rita looked dithery and lost, and it dawned on Andy that of course Marie Schultz had been their leader, the planet within whose stern gravitational pull they’d gathered. To look at them now, though they were standing grouped, they stood less chest to chest than back to back, pointing their gaze out into the room. It seemed like they had no focus, and might easily drift away one by one, with no goodbyes, and be gone.

  Andy put glasses into their reluctant hands, saying, “Just a sip, just a sip.” Hidden in behind them, but part of their faltering conversation, was the older Native woman, whose name Andy had learned was Gloria Tait. Only Rita, whose past included years of front-line social work, looked at ease with her. Andy wouldn’t call his mother a racist, but she would be a little too aware that she was standing there, at a party, in her own house, talking to a Native.

  No, he should give her more credit. She was stilted and queenly with everyone; her bigotry was universal. Leaving the women to their talk, he heard his mother say, “Well, of course, home is where the heart is.” Maybe she referred to Gloria Tait leaving her village, or maybe it was about Laura leaving on Wednesda
y. Or, maybe she was talking about herself. That his mother had stooped to such a humble maxim didn’t bother him as much as the question it raised: was she talking about her old house, that is, this house, or the one she would soon be leaving? He understood that the answer could hurt him.

  Outside, the promised storm was picking up, mostly the wind, gusts of which could sometimes be heard over the music, except when Chris succeeded in putting Death Cab or Modest Mouse on again, CDs he’d smuggled in. Because there was a storm, in the kitchen the clutch of people — Leonard and his niece, Rachel Hedley and Magda, and Laura — decided that the brandy should be warmed, so Andy complied, putting the bottle in a pot of water on the stove. It should be warmed “in honour of the storm,” not because of it, Laura added, and Andy liked that. He had the sense she was in the kitchen because he was. He wanted to tell her about storms and tides and show her the yard he’d lost. She knew his yard, she’d see the difference.