Homesick (29 page)

“That way he can get what he wants,” said her father. “How the hell am I supposed to guess what a kid his age wants for Christmas? I got no idea. If I give him thirty bucks, forty bucks, he can buy himself whatever he wants. Something real nice.” He hesitated. “You think forty bucks is enough, Vera?”

“Maybe,” said Vera, her voice laced with sarcasm, “you don’t have time to shop for your grandson what with entertaining your charming friends full time. You’d rather throw a lot of money at him, it’s easier.”

This is Christmas? A twelve-year-old boy playing cards on a kitchen table covered in a ratty tablecloth, drinking whisky, watered or not. A houseful of vultures diving onto whatever appears to eat and drink, squabbling and farting and picking their teeth with matchbook covers, if they’ve got any teeth to pick. No tree. Money in envelopes. And roast pork for Christmas dinner. When she asked him what he’d like for Christmas dinner, meaning what sort of trimmings to accompany the bird, her father had squinted up sideways at the ceiling and allowed that a roast pork would be nice. He hadn’t had a roast pork for a while. Suffering Jesus. How could you get into the spirit of the thing when people requested roast pork for Christmas dinner?

If nobody else knows what Christmas is supposed to be, Vera knows. She sees it everywhere, mocking her. Sees it on the television,
in the magazines, even the pictures in the Eaton’s and Simpsons-Sears catalogues. There’s a wreath of holly nailed to the door, a sprig of mistletoe, a tree decorated with strings of popcorn, and an angel perched on its tip. There’s oranges and nuts in a bowl on a sideboard and a punch bowl full of eggnog and nutmeg. There are plenty of presents done up in silver paper and big red bows and the men relax in white shirts, ties, and their favourite comfortable sweaters as the women pass around Christmas cake and mince pie. Everybody laughs and conducts themselves properly, in a Christmas spirit.

What she would like to say to her father is this: My husband made me a Christmas a thousand times better than this is and he was a Jew. She hadn’t asked him to either. Their first Christmas together he’d gone out and bought a tree, along with the decorations which, quite naturally, he didn’t have. Christmas was her right, Stanley explained.

But what, Vera had wanted to know, about him? How had he felt carrying a tree home past all the shops of his Jewish neighbours?

“I had an answer prepared in case anyone said anything,” Stanley told her with a wry smile.

“And what was that?”

“That the star on the top of the tree would be the Star of David.”

Nevertheless, despite his jokes, Vera knew it had not been an easy thing for Stanley to do. What made the gesture even grander for her in retrospect was that there had been only one Christmas tree and one Christmas for them to share. It was the year Vera was pregnant with Daniel, already six months gone when December rolled around. By then the episodes of morning sickness had passed and although she was as big as a house, Vera had never felt better. Or looked better, according to Stanley, who appreciated his wife big-breasted and moon-faced with new, healthy flesh. Each morning Stanley served her her favourite breakfast in bed, a large glass of milk and two peach jam and bacon sandwiches.
This weight’ll come off nursing the baby, she told herself, licking her fingers.

Most of Vera’s days in the weeks preceding Christmas were given over to preparations – making cranberry sauce, candy, shortbread, mincemeat pies and tarts, light and dark fruit cake, puddings. When she wasn’t cleaning the apartment and polishing the silver which had belonged to her mother-in-law, she sat in a kitchen full of the warm, spicy smells of baking and the sharp, tart smells of grated orange and lemon rinds, studying recipes, and rubbing the bowl of the expensive English pipe she had bought Stanley for Christmas against the side of her nose. The proprietor of the smokeshop had said there was nothing better to shine and condition a good brier than nose oil.

Whenever she felt lonesome and needed to hear the faint, comforting sounds of life below in the shop – the murmur of voices, the front door swinging shut – she turned down the Christmas music on the radio and listened intently, keeping absolutely still. Then, smiling enigmatically, she turned Bing back up and returned to thinking.

In some fashion, Vera felt herself to be a pioneer, a trailblazer. Stanley brought no Christmas baggage with him, so it fell to her, the one with experience, to invent a family tradition, to set the tone for all the Christmases that they and their children would celebrate in all the years to come. Santa Claus but no Jesus, Vera decided, turning over the pages of the cookbook. A bowl of eggnog standing near to hand when the tree was trimmed. Gifts opened Christmas Eve, not Christmas morning, so everybody could get a decent night’s sleep. Turkey for dinner, not goose, because Stanley preferred white meat.

In the end, Christmas turned out perfectly, exactly as Vera had planned. The candlelight flickered on her mother-in-law’s pieces of crystal and silver, Stanley praised every bite he took, her cheeks flushed warmly with wine and pride.

After the steamed pudding, at Stanley’s suggestion they went
into the living room to listen to music as he liked to, in a completely darkened room. He even unplugged the Christmas tree lights.

The record he chose was Mahler’s Symphony No. 4. Stanley settled in his armchair, the special blend of Irish tobacco Vera had bought him glowing red in the bowl of his new pipe and wafting its aroma to where she sat on the sofa holding the pearl earrings he had given her, one in each hand. Stanley hadn’t realized her ears weren’t pierced.

When the haunting music commenced, Vera felt the child stir within her. With each measure, these movements grew stronger and stronger until the ferocity of them came near to frightening her. Of course, the baby had kicked before, but never like this.

Before she knew it, Vera had called out to Stanley. “Come here,” she said.

He crossed the room to the sofa. At once Vera felt foolish. Really, it was nothing after all.

“What do you think of this?” she asked, fumbling for his hand in the dark, pressing it to her belly.

For a time neither of them spoke.

“I believe he’s conducting,” said Stanley, breaking their silence.

“What?” Vera had not caught his meaning.

“Conducting.” In the meagre light she could just make him out, illustrating what he meant, flailing his arm about more or less in time with the music.

At that moment she could not stop herself from reaching out and seizing the hand moulding and carving the dim, shadowy air, carrying it to her mouth and kissing it passionately.

“Why, Vera,” said Stanley, surprised. She was not given to such displays, even in darkness.

“Never mind,” said Vera, recovering. “Go on back to your music.”

That, she told herself, had been a proper Christmas. Not this. This was Hallowe’en, a Grey Cup drunk, an all-night poker game rolled into one, but it sure as hell wasn’t Christmas. Where had
decency, gentleness, kindness gone? Sometimes she doubted she could stop here any longer in this desert, in this absence of love.

It was December 22, nine-thirty in the morning, and Vera was struggling to raise the tree she had bought and carted home herself the day before. Flushed and tight-lipped with determination she battled to hold the spruce upright while attempting to tighten the screws in the stand to lock it into position. In the kitchen her father was hosting the day’s first arrivals, Huff Driesen, the McIlwraith brothers, Adolf Romanski. Daniel was finishing his breakfast, lounging against the kitchen counter with his plate under his chin. The visitors had begun the morning with coffee and rummy, a warm-up for beer and poker by eleven o’clock. Right at the moment, the first argument of the day was in full spate. Whose turn was it to deal?

The tree swayed, toppled. Vera sprang off her haunches, caught it with a jerk, shaking loose a shower of dry needles into her hair and down onto the floor. The evidence of earlier crashes lay thickly all about her, crackling under the soles of her shoes, and making her feet skid with every step she took. She had been wrestling the tree unassisted for the past half-hour but had no intention of planting the suggestion that she needed help.

Just then her father eased into the living room and, blind to her difficulties, inquired whether she had noticed his spectacles lying around.

“No,” said Vera, teeth clenched as she shoved the tree upright in the stand again.

“I can’t think where they could’ve got to,” he said helplessly, looking about vaguely. When it became clear she had no intention of joining the search he wandered off, with a forlorn, neglected air.

Five minutes later he was back. The tree was now standing, or rather leaning, in the corner of the room, and Vera was asking herself why she hadn’t thought to attach the star to its tip before she got it completely vertical. Now she was going to have to risk
her neck standing on a chair, fending off branches as she leaned out precariously to fix the star.

The missing glasses had made Monkman as peevish and frustrated as his daughter. “I’ve lost my reading glasses,” he announced in a loud, slightly belligerent voice. “I can’t find them anywhere.”

Vera kept her eyes fastened on the top of the tree, like a bird judging a perch. “So what’ve you got to read that can’t wait?” she said. “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I’m busy here.”

“It’s not reading. It’s for Huff. He wants his sugar diabetes shot and I can’t do it without my glasses. It’s close work.”

“It’s just about time you stopped babying Huff Driesen. He’s a big boy. Let him do it himself.”

“Vera, you know he can’t. He’s squeamish about needles.”

“So let one of his other bosom buddies in the kitchen do it. If he hurries he can get one while they’re still sober.”

“He don’t trust
them,”
said her father, dropping his voice.

“Neither do J,” Vera whispered back theatrically.

Her sarcasm appeared to be lost on her father, who hesitated before revealing his proposal. Still speaking in an undertone, he said: “As a matter of fact, Huff was wondering if I didn’t find my glasses … could you maybe do it, Vera?”

Vera laughed in his face. “Driesen’s got to be out of his mind. Not a chance.”

“It isn’t hard,” said her father. “Really it isn’t. Huff’ll load the needle for you. All you got to do is stick it in and push down the plunger.”

“Dream on. Push down the plunger. You make it sound like the French Resistance blowing up bridges in the movies. If I could blow that old sonofabitch sky high, then I’d press down the plunger.”

“Now don’t make jokes, Vera. This is serious business. He’s got to have his shot. And if you won’t do it, I’ll have to get Daniel to.”

Vera was aghast. “Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t ask Daniel to give him a needle.”

“I did already. He says, ‘If Mom can’t do it – I will.’ ”

“Use your head. Where’s your sense? Nobody lets twelve-year-old kids give old men needles. It’s just not proper.”

“Well, maybe it isn’t,” said Alec, feeling she was ready to give ground, “but if there’s nobody else to do it, what can I do?”

“Oh, Christ!” cried Vera. “All right, all right, I’ll give him his bloody needle. Get him in here and let’s get it over with. Jesus.”

Moments later her father returned, escorting a shuffling, grinning Huff. For the sake of privacy, Vera led him off to her bedroom. The notion of administering a needle made her feel slightly queasy and she was afraid that an audience might cause her to botch the job completely.

Once inside the bedroom Huff sniffed the air appreciatively. “Smells all perfumy,” he remarked. “Smells like a garden.”

Vera had no time for pleasantries. She wanted this done with, before she lost any more of her nerve. “Okay, okay,” she said brusquely, “let’s get this show on the road. That thing loaded?” she asked, pointing to the syringe in Driesen’s left hand. In his right he clutched a bottle of alcohol and some cotton balls.

“Loaded and ready to fire,” said Huff agreeably. “Loaded and ready to fire.”

“Fine,” said Vera, betraying gathering apprehension as she gnawed her bottom lip. “Get your sleeve rolled up.”

“Oh, not in my arm,” said Huff smoothly. “I don’t take my needle in my arm, Vera.”

“Where do you take it then?”

“Here,” said Driesen, striking his flank with his palm. “Here, where I got some meat.”

Vera looked doubtful. On the other hand, she didn’t want to prolong the ordeal with argument and questions. “All right,” she said, “what do I do?”

“You wipe me down with alcohol, pinch up some skin and fat, shove in the needle, and push down the plunger. You do it right, Vera, you got yourself a full-time job as my nurse.”

“Don’t tempt me to injury, Driesen.”

“Oh, don’t give me none of that, Vera. You wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“I don’t hurt flies,” said Vera. “I kill them.”

Driesen chuckled. “ ‘I kill them,’ ” he repeated to himself. “ ‘I kill them.’ ”

“Come on,” said Vera, “I haven’t got all day. Get your pants down.”

Huff was eager to comply. He turned his back on her, unbuckled his belt, and dragged down trousers and underpants all at once, exposing saggy, creased buttocks to view.