by Gail Bowen
She reached over and switched on the radio. The Christmas weather forecast was snow and more snow. Sally listened for a moment, then she said quietly, “Jo, you can’t push somebody over the side of a cliff and then be surprised when they fall. I won’t take the tape to the cops. It’s not that I don’t think you’re right about Clea. Burning down a building she loved is just the kind of thing she’d do. She’s big on symbolism. You know she used to have the most beautiful hair. It was a coppery red colour and long. She hadn’t cut it since she was a kid. Anyway, when I married Stu, Clea had a kind of breakdown, and she hacked off her hair and mailed it to us at the house.”
“Oh, Sally, how awful. Poor Clea. I can’t imagine that kind of mourning. It can’t have been much fun for you and Stu, either.”
Sally shook her head. “No, it wasn’t. And there were phone calls then, too. Hundreds of them. Just like these. Stu was going to go to the police, but I told him not to. I took Clea to the desert with me for a couple of weeks. When we came back, she was okay again.
“Anyway, the buildings of Saskatoon are safe. Clea’s a one-trick pony, and she’s done her trick. I’m not going to turn her in to the police. But I’m not going to stay here and dry her tears, either. As soon as the holidays are over, I’m going to take my daughter and go someplace hot where nobody knows me.”
I was astounded.
“Take Taylor? Where did that come from? I thought you and Stu had agreed to leave Taylor with him. At least that’s what Nina told me.”
“That was the arrangement before Nina came into the picture. Don’t look at me like that, Jo. Let’s just say I’ve changed my mind. I want to show you something.” She took a framed drawing off the wall by the trestle table and handed it to me.
It was a picture drawn on paper with felt pens. In it a row of hula dancers with spiky eyelashes and corkscrew shoulder-length curls bumped grass skirts against one another. It was indisputably a child’s picture, but even I could see evidence of real skill and something that went beyond skill.
When I looked up, Sally was still focused on the drawing. Her face was soft with love and pride. “Look at that, Jo. It’s exciting all over. There’s something interesting going on everywhere on that paper. You’ll have to take my word for it. It’s an exceptional picture for a child of four. If it weren’t, if all her pictures weren’t so good, I’d tell Nina to take a hike and I’d leave Taylor with Stu.”
Mother love. I didn’t know what to say, and so I said nothing. My silence spurred her into uncharacteristic self-justification.
“It would be immoral to leave her in that house, Jo. I know I can’t expect you to understand, but if Taylor is going to make art, she can’t have someone standing around telling her what it means all the time. You know what Stu used to do? He’d come over here when I was working and give me all these insights about my work and then sit back and wait for praise – like a dog bringing me a dead bird.” Her voice dropped into a deadly imitation of Stuart Lachlan’s. “ ‘You see, don’t you, Sally, that your art invites judgements that are sexually dimorphic: women judge its complex interrelationships; men look to its statement.’ ”
In spite of myself, I laughed. “God, you and Nina, you’re both so good at mimicking. I was always afraid you did imitations of me behind my back.”
Sally smiled. “I’d never mock you, Jo, and Nina thinks you walk on water. Of course, she’d never make fun of her Stuart, either. She’s right. He’s a good person. It’s just – he’s dangerous to be around when you’re working. He’d wall Taylor in with words, Jo, and the art she made would get more airless and miserly till he choked her off altogether.”
“Have you told him?” I asked.
“I thought I’d tell him tomorrow.”
“On Christmas Day! Come on, Sally.”
“Okay, Jo, you win. But soon. I don’t like putting things off. Now come on, get out of here. I’m all right now, and it’s the day before the big event – you must have a million things to do. Here,” she said, and she handed me the porcelain doll, “souvenir of your morning.”
I took the doll, put on my coat and boots and walked to the door. When I opened it, the winter light hit Sally full in the face. She looked tired and somehow forlorn.
Stuart Lachlan didn’t know that his estranged wife planned to take their daughter. If he had, I would have suspected him of staging the paean to family life that my kids and I walked into that Christmas Eve. On the front lawn of the Lachlan house on Spadina Crescent, there were three snow people: a father, a mother and a little snow girl. They all had pink scarves, and the snow lady had a pink hat and purse; the snow girl was holding up a sign: “Merry Christmas from Taylor.”
Taylor herself opened the door to us. She was dressed like a child in a Christmas catalogue, all velvet and lace. Her hair, which was blond and thick, like Sally’s, had been smoothed into a sleek French braid. Taylor’s hair may have been like her mother’s, but her face, fine-boned, dark-eyed and grave, was Stuart Lachlan’s. She thanked us for the gifts we had brought, placed them carefully on a sea chest that was covered with a piece of Christmas needlepoint and disappeared down the hall.
“I’ll bet you a vat of bath oil that she’s forgotten all about us,” said Mieka.
“No, that was your trick,” I said. “All those kids in snow-suits, melting in the front hall when you went upstairs for a pee and forgot about them. Taylor seems to have better long-term memory than you had.”
“A tuna fish sandwich has better long-term memory than Mieka has,” said Peter as he hung up his coat and walked into the living room.
Angus followed him, looking around. “Deadly,” he said, and he was right. Royal Doulton Santas gleamed, expensive and untouchable, behind the glass of a curio case; teak camels, big as rocking horses, strolled behind intricately carved wise men carrying gold, frankincense and myrrh to the baby king. On the mantel above the fireplace, real holly filled pink Depression-ware pitchers, and antique wooden blocks spelled out the names of the people in that household for Santa: Taylor, Daddy, Nina, and then, a little apart, Sally.
Mieka and I took off our things and followed the boys into the living room.
“You know,” I said, “every year I promise myself we’re going to have a living room that looks like this for Christmas, and every year I end up hauling out the same old decorations. The only thing I ever seem to change is the poinsettias.”
“I like the way our living room looks,” said Peter, “but if you want something different, one of the guys in my biology lab showed me a battery-operated Santa Claus he got at the Passion Pit. Mum, you should see the stuff that Santa can do, and just with four double-A batteries.”
I was just about to ask for details when I heard Stuart Lachlan’s voice behind me.
“Oh, good, you’ve made yourselves at home.” He was standing in the living-room doorway. Beside him, her hand gripping his, Taylor smiled tentatively. Stu came in and kissed my cheek.
“Sorry we weren’t here to greet you, but we had a little problem in the kitchen. Nina’s taking care of it.”
“Then,” I said, smiling back at him, “it’s taken care of. There’s never been a problem yet that Nina couldn’t vanquish.”
As if on cue, Nina appeared in the doorway, flushed and laughing. “Jo has always been my one-girl fan club.”
“No longer a girl,” I said, “but still a fan. Nina, you look beautiful.” And she did, although it was a risky look. Her hair was smoothed into a French braid, not as long as Taylor’s, but I could see the intent had been to suggest relationship, and Nina’s dress was the same dusky rose as her granddaughter’s. It was a stunning outfit. The dress itself was very plain, high-necked and long-sleeved, but over the dress, she had a white organdy apron, full in the skirt, fitted in the bodice and gently flaring over each shoulder. Stunning, but a bit self-consciously domestic.
As she had been all my life, Nina was quick to read my expression. “I know, Jo, the apron is a tad too lady-of-the-manor, but an hour ag
o the roof of Taylor’s gingerbread house slid to the floor and smashed, so I just made a replacement.”
Not in that outfit, I thought, but it was such an innocent subterfuge, and Nina looked so happy, I couldn’t help smiling. “It’s a beautiful dress, Ni, and I notice it matches your granddaughter’s. Pink must be the colour of choice on Spadina Crescent this Christmas.”
“It’s Taylor’s favourite,” said her grandmother simply.
“Now, Stuart, why don’t you get us drinks.” She touched the little girl’s shoulder. “And Taylor and I will get our special cookies.”
Stuart came back with a tray full of soft drinks for the children and a bottle of Courvoisier for the adults. When Angus saw the soft drinks, he was jubilant.
“Great,” he exclaimed. “None of that crappy eggnog. Everywhere you go people give you that stuff, and it’s so gross.”
When Nina appeared in the doorway with a cut-glass bowl of eggnog, Peter turned to his brother. “Way to go, Angus,” he said.
“I can dress him up, but I can’t take him anywhere,” I said, laughing. Taylor came in, carefully balancing a plate of cookies.
“Why?” she asked, and in the set of her mouth I could see the girl who had told a classmate to lay off Sally because his mother had a mustache. “Why can’t you take him anywhere?”
“Because he always acts silly,” I said. “Those cookies are beautiful, Taylor. How did you make the ones with the little stars cut out on top?”
Gravely and in great detail Taylor gave me the recipe, then she told me how she and her grandmother had made the candy-cane cookies, twisting pink and white together, and the gingerbread Santas with the red sugar hats and the beards white with icing. As she explained, her dark eyes never left my face, just as Stuart’s eyes never left your face when he was trying to make you understand something.
“These cookies really take me back,” I said to Nina, “especially the jam-jams with the little stars. You must have spent a hundred hours making those with me when I was little.”
“You always dropped the cookie dough on the floor at least four times,” said Nina. “All those dirty little cookies.”
“But always miraculously perfect when they came out of the oven. How did you do that Nina, smoke and mirrors?”
“No,” she said, laughing, “more domestic than that. I always had an extra batch of dough in the refrigerator. I still do. Sometimes grown-ups have to intervene, you know, for everybody’s good.” She turned her perfect heart-shaped face to me and smiled conspiratorially. “While we’re being nostalgic, come upstairs with me and let me show you what I’m giving Taylor for Christmas.”
When we came to the guest room that Nina was using during her visit, I was surprised to see her take down a key from the molding over the door.
“A bit Gothic novel, I know,” she said, “but I’m a believer in Christmas secrets. Now you close your eyes, too. I want to see your face when you see Taylor’s present.” She led me into the room. “All right, Jo, you can look now.”
When I opened my eyes, I was back forty years in the brick house Sally and Nina and Desmond Love had lived in on Russell Hill Road in Toronto. On Nina’s night table, faces carefully painted into expressions of gentility, were those emblems of nineteenth-century womanhood, Meg, Jo, Amy, Beth, and Marmee from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. An American dollmaker had produced the dolls in the late 1940s. The woman’s name was Madame Alexander, and the dolls had become famous. Nina had gone to New York especially to buy a set for Sally’s fifth birthday.
“I see you replaced Amy,” I said.
“Yes,” said Nina, straightening the ribbon on the Marmee doll’s hair.
A memory. A room full of little girls in party dresses and patent leather shoes, clustered around the dolls, watching. And Nina with that same gesture. “You see, this is Marmee, the mother doll. She’s a mother like me, and these are her girls. This one with the brown eyes and the strawberry blond hair is Meg. She’s the oldest, and this one with the brown hair and the plaid rickrack on her petticoat is Jo – she likes to read, like our Jo does, and this is Amy, she’s Marmee’s little artist, like you, Sally, and she has beautiful blond hair just like …”
But Sally wasn’t listening any more. Her face dark with fury, she grabbed the Amy doll by the ankles and smashed her china face against the edge of the table. Her voice had been shrill with hysteria. “She is not me. I am my own Sally Love,” and she’d hurtled blindly past all her birthday guests and out of the room.
In this room, now, Nina was talking. “Yes. I replaced her, and she cost a small fortune, but Taylor’s worth it. She’s such a bright little girl, and she’s like you were, Jo; she wants to learn. It’s fun to do things for her. She’s going to grow up to be a beautiful and gracious woman.”
“Like her grandmother,” I said.
Nina’s face shone with happiness. “Thank you, Jo. That means a lot. Everyone needs to feel valued. I haven’t had enough of that feeling lately.” She shrugged. “But no self-pity. It’s Christmas. And I have wonderful things to look forward to in the new year.” She took both my hands in hers. “Come on, let’s sit down for a minute. I have some news.”
We sat down facing one another on the edge of her bed. I could smell the light flowery scent of her perfume. Always the same perfume – Joy. “A woman’s perfume is her signature, Jo.” That’s what she’d told me. The glow from the lamp on the night table enclosed us in a pool of yellow light, shutting out the darkness.
“Stuart’s asked me to move here permanently,” she said. “When I came, we’d agreed to try the arrangement until Sally came to her senses, but I think we all know that’s not going to happen. Stuart thinks Taylor needs a mother or at least someone to take the place of a mother in her life. Jo, it took me three seconds to give him my answer. I’ve put my house in Toronto on the market. It looks as if you and Stuart are stuck with me.”
I felt my heart sink. “That’s great news,” I said weakly.
Puzzled, Nina looked at me. “I thought you’d be thrilled, Jo. I know I was, at the thought that after all these years, you and I’d be in the same city again, able to pick up the phone and meet for lunch or tea or go for a walk.”
“I am thrilled,” I said. “One of the best Christmas gifts I could have would be having you here permanently. It’s just … has anyone thought about what Sally might want in all of this?”
“Sally always thinks enough about Sally for all of us,” Nina said sharply. “Damn it, Jo, she made her decision when she walked out on Stuart and Taylor. She didn’t go alone you know. She went with a student of hers, a boy of seventeen. It didn’t last, of course. Do you know the joke that went around the gallery? ‘Someone told Sally Love it was time she thought about having another child. So she went out and had herself a seventeen-year-old boy.’ You should have seen Stuart’s face the first time he heard that. He came home looking like a whipped dog. No, Jo, we haven’t given much thought to Sally in all this, or perhaps I can put it more acceptably, we’ve given her about as much thought as she gave us.” Her face, usually so expressive, was a mask.
I reached out to embrace her, and she turned away. “Nina, don’t,” I said. “Don’t be angry at me.”
She took my hands in hers again. “I could never be angry at you, Jo.”
“And don’t be angry at Sally. She wants what’s best for Taylor, too. And she has her own worries right now. Did you hear her gallery burned down last night?”
“Of course. It was all over this evening’s paper. Stu thinks it must have been some sort of retaliation for Erotobiography. Sally’s always chosen to live on the edge, Jo. And if you live on the edge, you have to accept consequences. I’m just glad she’s out of this house. It wouldn’t have been much of a Christmas for Taylor being stalked by a lunatic.” She stood up and smoothed her hair. “I don’t want to talk about this any more. Come on, let’s go downstairs. We have one last Christmas Eve surprise.”
We came back to a sce
ne of perfect holiday harmony. The boys and Stu were sprawled on the floor in front of the fireplace looking at baseball cards, and Mieka and Taylor were sitting side by side at the coffee table, drawing butterflies.
It was Nina who broke the spell.
“All right, Taylor,” she said. “Time to come into the dining room for the big moment.”
“The next event calls for champagne,” Stuart said, filling five glasses and splashing two more. “Now you Kilbourns stand right there in front of the French doors, and I’ll go back into the dining room and let you know when we’re ready.”
The kids and I stood obediently, with that self-conscious air of celebration that comes when you’re holding a glass of champagne. Someone turned off the lights; the doors to the dining room were flung open, and we were confronted with the extravagance of the Lachlan family Christmas tree.
It was a plantation pine, full and ceiling high; its fragrant, soft needles had the fresh green of new growth, but everything else was pink. There were dozens of dusty pink velvet bows tied to the branches, and each of them held a shining pink globe. And there were candles, pink, lit candles that sputtered a fatal hairbreadth away from pine needles, and there were pink roses, real ones suspended from the pine branches in tiny vials of water that glistened in the candlelight. Beside the tree, Stu and Nina and Taylor stood, hands linked. “We wish you a merry Christmas,” they sang in their thin, unprofessional voices, and I felt a sense of dread so knife-sharp it sent the room spinning.
“Steady,” Peter said, and I felt his arm around my shoulder. The moment passed, and in seconds, we were all drinking champagne and exclaiming over the tree.
Twenty minutes later, Taylor’s stocking hung with care and the last holiday embraces exchanged, the children and I were walking along the river bank toward the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The church was packed, and we had to sit on a bench at the back. Beside us Mary, Joseph and a real baby sat waiting for their cue. I knew the girl playing Mary. She had borrowed our tape recorder at the beginning of school and gone out to the dump to do a project on all the reusable things people throw out. The local TV station had heard about it, and I’d seen her on the evening news, standing on a mountain of garbage, swatting at flies and telling us that time was running out for the environment. A real firebrand. At the front of the church a boy in a white surplice and Reeboks started to sing “Once in Royal David’s City” and Mary stood up, adjusted her baby, shook Joseph’s comforting arm off her shoulder and strode up the centre aisle. A Mary for our times.