This is her first Christmas in this city. This is her first Christmas living alone. This is her first Christmas as her own woman. This is the first time she does not have to lend her hand in the preparation of cakes, of cookies, of dressing for the turkey, in making popcorn to dress the stolen Christmas tree.
The tree in her house in Timmins stood almost seven feet, in its stolen splendour and illegal majesty, and packed tight under its bottom branches with gifts, one for each child, in boxes wrapped in cheap green and red paper, stuck together with brown Scotch tape. The mine was on strike all of December that last year.
This Christmas, she has chosen for herself wrapping paper of silver and gold. Silver and gold and blue ribbon. She has no tree. But she has seen the one she likes, leaning in these cold nights, in piles at street corners, and in cold parking lots. Maitland and Church. Dundonald and Church. Isabella and Church. Charles and Church. And brown expensive wrappings from Creeds.
At the office Christmas party, held two days before the 25th, she marvelled at the beauty and the glitter and the waste of drinks and food, and at the fragrance of the cut flowers; at the cheeses, the patés, and the smell of rum punch in its huge crystal bowl, like a crater of ice raised above the ground. All this overwhelmed her. The ground was the boardroom table, and at one end was a pile of gifts, two for each employee, chosen by lot; most of them wrapped to look like bars of gold and silver. The silver boxes were tied with blue ribbon. Some boxes were covered in paper so rich, it looked like brocade, or like rich fabric, with Chinese pagodas, reindeer stranded on a hill, and one was shining black paper, rich as onyx. She wondered what her mother would do, to see her here, merry around her friends of work; what she would say when she learned that she was not coming home for Christmas, that she was now accustomed to this different world, this urban sophistication, and these people, complete strangers five months before; strict colleagues for all that, until one day ago, each person conscious of rank and of salary, and now laughing loud with the janitor and singing carols in voices with too much punch in them; and kissing in corners; and the place of a hand on a knee and five fingers on the raised hem of a silk dress; and seeing the man who had taken her to Vines, for the first time without his vest on, holding a cigar as long as a ruler, drooped at the right corner of his mouth, and with spit on it. He holds his thumbs at his red suspenders, stretching them outwards as if he is measuring girth and mirth to be as formidable as Santa Claus, and slapping the president who came for the party on his back. No, she won’t be going home to Timmins this Christmas. The young woman who took her to the symphony came up to her, and placed her hands on her shoulders and kissed her on her mouth, and she could feel her tongue as it slid over her lips and feel her fingers move up to her breast. And as quick as it started, it ended. And she realized she was holding a silver-wrapped box as large as a shoebox in her hands. Her hands were trembling. Her vision was blurred by tears. But in the next second her ears were filled with “Here We Come A-wassailing” and the woman’s voice, rich as a baritone, was barrelling the tune, joined in by all the secretaries. When they reached the end of the first stanza, she joined in too.
“And where are you going to be this Christmas?” the woman shouted across the table with the gifts.
“In town,” he said. When her tears cleared, she saw it was the man who had taken her to Vines. Beside him was a woman. She was not a member of the firm.
“We’re staying right here,” the woman said.
“Bill and you’ll be coming to the cottage Boxing Day, though!”
“Uncle’s flying me to Miami tomorrow. We’ll fly back on Christmas Day, and drive straight to the cottage.”
It was at this moment she thought of buying food for Christmas. She had done no shopping. But she assumed there would be turkey, because she always had it at home. She remembered this now, as if with the shock of almost having forgotten, that she had not called home to say she would not be there. How would she choose the words? It’s not the flight, no, Mom. I know there’s the train, yes, Mom; if not the train, yes, I know, there is Grey Coach, yes Mom.
“I’m really have a good time here.”
“Are you happy?”
“I’m really happy here, Mom.”
“All right,” her mother said, not convinced.
“I really am.”
“Long’s you’re with friends.”
If her conversation could go like that . . .
Here in the chatter of talk and greeting, she picked out that almost everyone was leaving the city at Christmas. She had forgotten to think of a turkey. Her former roommate, Jill, was in Montreal. And of drinks. Even though she seldom drank, she had to have something in for Christmas. Wish I knew how to make punch like this! Perhaps a liqueur. Perhaps some sherry. Grand Marnier, perhaps. But a smaller bottle than these on this mahogany boardroom table. And some Sandeman like these on this table. I wonder if they sell small bottles? Her rent was due in two days. Her Visa card was strained by the record albums of Sans Saens and Berlioz she had bought. And she had bought no gifts for anyone yet. But for whom would she buy them? For whom? Mom? Dad? Johnnie and Pat, her brothers? And for her sister, Sue? For Jill, her former roommate? And for . . . No!
“Bill, the gifts! Can your wife draw for the tickets to Thomson Hall? She’s impartial.”
“Honey,” he said, holding his wife by the arm, her body big with their third child. “Meet our latest addition to the staff. This is Miss Belle. Miss Belle, Patricia, my wife.”
“Oh! Timmins!” the wife said, with a smile that came to her lips like lipstick applied; and was wiped off straightaway, without saying another word. Bill shrugged his shoulders in defeat and in surrender, and smiled the way he smiled the night he took her home from the Vines bar. That night, he had hardly spoken with her as they sat for the two hours drinking.
“Where’re you spending yours? Here? Or back home with your family?”
“With friends,” she lied.
“Good. Nobody should be alone at Christmas.”
“I’ll be home with family and friends,” she lied again.
“Bill?” It was his wife, calling him as if she was asking a question. She was beside him now. “Oh, I forgot to wish you Merry Christmas. Would you be in town for the holidays? Or heading back to Timmins? You do have family in Timmins?”
“With my friends, in Timmins or, maybe, Toronto.”
‘Nobody, but nobody, remains in Toronto for Christmas!” Bill said.
The nativity scene in the show window of the Simpson’s store tied her interest to its cold glass, and her face became the same as the temperature of the night. She had walked to this spot, the five cold blocks from the office Christmas party. In her hand, without a glove, were her gifts: one from the woman who took her to the symphony, and the other two from the office draw. All three were wrapped in silver paper and tied with blue ribbon. Her body was warm. She did not notice the cold. It was below zero. And with a wind. Children ripped their hands out of their parents’ protection and ran to the moving scenes and pushed themselves in front of the adults, and stood against the cold window and recited the names of the animals, and named the reindeer and Santa’s village, and the names of the gifts brought to Jesus by the Wise Men, and hummed along with the carol played on bells. The three Wise Men were all white. She walked on, heartened by the children’s cries, some of whom were the same age as her brothers and sister, in the deep slush under the trees of gold, under the lights strung overhead; passing windows of ready-wrapped gifts in colours of red and green. And she stopped for a while to listen to five men and a woman dressed in black, begging for money and playing carols off key, and loud. A man was drunk on the sidewalk. He wiped his mouth after the thick greyish slush erupted from his bowels. He stood where he was, wobbled a bit, and then stepped into the acrid gruel at his feet, and began to conduct the five men and one woman of the Salvation Army Band in “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” played in lugubrious mood and in lentissimo. Music for Christm
as, from many cultures and songs played in a rhythm that made them sound like rhythm and blues, blared on to the mushy sidewalk from record stores. A man begged her for spare change.
And another, for a quarter to buy coffee. Other men stood in doorways, as if they were frozen into the pattern of the concrete pillars. She left these sounds of Christmas behind and headed home, turning off Yonge Street into the darker street where her apartment building was located. The ten stone boxes had turned to stubby snowbanks. Frost was sprinkled by hand, like writing, onto the glass of the front door, in shapes of Christmas trees, with the message, Merry Christmas. She was cold now. Her body was shivering. The three gifts were like blocks of ice in her hand as she entered the lobby, as she paused by the soft warm hiss of the vent, and could barely hear the voice of Perry Como coming from the superintendent’s suite. “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” In Timmins, she and her brothers and sister sang this song, and were accompanied in it by the old Seabreeze record player, until the grooves were broad and Perry Como sang with more slurs than his style intended.
Going up the elevator with her was a woman dressed in a black mink coat, black kid gloves, and a black fur hat. “Merry Christmas, dear,” she said, with a foreign accent. She had heard this accent in the North. Her own mother had this accent, after forty years in Canada. It made her feel warm. And happy “All this rush for one day. Just one day! We spend what we don’t got.” The woman carried three large shopping bags. Creeds was written on one of them; but she could not place the blue boxes in the plastic bag.
On the street earlier, most of the people carried bags, some persons had three, and she joked with herself that they were most likely intent upon purchasing all they needed, all that was available, before the last-minute rush started, and as if each shopper were intent upon emptying the stores herself.
The elevator stopped at the fourteenth floor. There was no thirteenth. And she heard “Jingle Bells,” piped through an unseen hole in the ceiling, for the rest of the climb.
The lights in her apartment remained off for a long time. Across the hall, she could hear voices and laughter. She got up from the mattress on the floor and went to the window, facing the street. The man she saw slumped beside the red mailbox when she came home was still there. She stood watching him until her eyes glazed over, until her body and the cold of the glass were almost the same temperature. The man had not moved when, hours later, she put on her flannel pyjamas, and sank into the mattress on the floor. In the darkness, the red digits of her clock radio said 3:00. And she thought of the man, wondering if he was still by the red mailbox. But she did not move. She had still not opened her three gifts.
In the crisp, early morning, Christmas Eve, as she stepped through the glass front door, the cold dampness hugged her round her waist; she checked in her mind that she was properly, warmly dressed; and she looked at the ten boxes which had held the pink, yellow and red blooms, and felt sad that they were now mounds of white, buried beneath the snow, like her father’s car in Timmins, obliterated out of commission, beside the road. She glanced across the street. The man was not beside the mailbox. Perhaps he had died standing up. Perhaps he got warm and thawed enough to move. Perhaps a police cruiser took him to jail. Or to a shelter. Or to a morgue. She wondered where he was now. Did he die standing up, frozen like the trees in the tall circle of iron protectors? Did she actually see a man last night? Or was it her imagination? The cold, and the coldness of this city, brought a numbness to her spirits, and she could feel the hair in her nostrils and the hair of her eyebrows turn to bristle.
At the glass counter of the women’s department at Holts, where most of the women looked like the one in the elevator, she bought pantyhose for herself, and asked for a gift box; and she bought a white lace handkerchief, for herself, and asked for a gift box; and she bought a pair of hair combs, for herself, and asked for a gift box; and before she left the store, charging these purchases to her Visa card, she asked for some silver wrapping paper and a large shopping bag. In Creeds, she asked for two gift boxes, without making a purchase. The attendant noticed the Holt Renfrew bag in her hand, assumed that she was a woman of means, and smiled, and gave them to her. She placed her handbag into the shopping bag; changed her mind; took out the handbag, and checked her shopping list. The items on her list were turkey, sherry, liqueur, one shawl for the woman who took her to the symphony, one tie, cigars – for Bill – incense, men’s socks and nail polish. She bought only the nail polish, and the ladies’ shawl.
The trees were like golden diadems. They hung in the middle of Bloor Street, suspended high above her head; and the trees in the large stone boxes sprouted fruits of sparkling gold; and some had silver leaves; and the men and women in the store windows dressed for display, from the pages of the latest expensive fashions, remained in the same arrogant pose and posture, not having moved or batted an eye in all the days she had been passing them. And men and women with large parcels walked, slipping on the sidewalk as if they were dancing to the dirge played by a group of musicians dressed in the uniform of the Army of Salvation, who serenaded the shoppers. It took her a while to recognize the carol they were playing. The street was full and joyful and everyone she passed said “Merry Christmas.” And she was smiling. Her jaws were becoming tight. And her lips were cracked. And her eyebrows were like bristle. A man asked her, “Spare any change?” And she gave him a Loonie. He blessed her three times, and told her “Happy Christmas, dear” once.
And then, almost all of a sudden, the street was empty. The people had vanished. It was just after six o’clock, Christmas Eve. The people had all passed away, as if the snow, which was now blowing, had swept them into the sewers beneath the street. Steam was rising through the circular grates, along the side of the street, and that was the only sign of breathing, and of life.
It was over. All the fuss.
She laid her things on the IKEA table. She placed the bottle of Sandeman sherry on the kitchen counter. She emptied the boxes from Creeds and from Holts on the table. She had bought no Christmas ribbon. The cards she had bought three weeks before Christmas, at Coles where they were cheap, remained in their boxes, unopened, unaddressed, unnoticed. The pink geranium plant in the windowsill needed water. She took the coffee mug with I Love Toronto written in fat round letters round its girth, and with a large red heart, filled it with water, and walked to the window. As she poured, as the plant remained unaffected by its sudden nourishment, she peered through the frost on the pane to see if she could see the man, Her vision was clouded. With her left hand index finger, all the while pouring the water into the green plastic flowerpot, watering the geranium to its certain drowning death, she marked X on the glass. Then M. Then A. Then S. And around these letters, she drew an uneven circle. It became the outline of a face. She drew the curve of its mouth turned downwards. Through an eye in the face, she saw a man; the same man, leaning against the red mailbox. She watched him until she heard the water hitting the floor in drops.
She moved from the window. She walked around the small apartment, immaculate and tidy except for the scatter of boxes and purchases on the table. No sound came from the people on her right. No voice from the woman who lived on her left. Everything was still. Softly her clock radio was playing carols, the same carols, over and over, the same tiring carols she had learned in kindergarten. She had listened to “Wish You a Merry Christmas” four times already. She opened the bottle of Sandeman Sherry. And poured a drink in the I Love Toronto mug. She took the drink to the mattress, spread a blanket over her legs, and sat and watched the darkened sky and listened to the silence. The window was closed. No life came from below. Just like the silence she and her mother listened to, for those thirty minutes after the mine horn summoned the end of one shift of life, spent in the bowels of the earth. In the northern silence, the wait and the silence gave birth, at its maturation, thank God, to the stomping of her father’s feet on the side-door steps. All those miles from here, on this holy night, her own wait is merel
y silence. The silence of expectation and of fertility; a woman waiting for a birth, to deliver her from labour.
In this City Page 3