Order of Good Cheer (40 page)

She looked to be trying, but for now the pall of her mother was a constant, clumsy weight over everything they could possibly say or do. It made his tea only bitter, without taste. It made the teary spark in her eyes an empty thing, a reflection of fluorescent lights on irises. And now she was asking him if he would mind ferrying out to the airport that afternoon to pick up her daughter while she attended to necessary business. He said of course, but wondered aloud about her not greeting her daughter in person, and she told him she'd left her only yesterday, they'd been visiting for Christmas. He realized, again, that he knew nothing about her life, not the details anyway. He asked himself how much the details mattered.

He had to leave right then if he was going to make the ferry. He reached into his pocket for his wallet and Laura waved at this almost violently and said she'd charge it to her room. So he stood facing her. He smiled, paused, and shrugged rather emphatically. Andy wasn't sure himself what he meant by it — then she smiled and shrugged identically back.

“Sorry, Andy, we —”

He put a hand up to stop her talking. “It's okay.”

As he left the café he hoped he wasn't the gangly fool he felt like. He didn't know what had just transpired, only that they still hadn't had their reunion.

EVERYONE WHO WAS
drinking tonight had one in hand. Drew, who Andy made music master for the night, had put on the
Goldberg Variations
, a heady but good early choice if only because there was no forced fun in it. The fire out back had burned down almost to coals so it was time to get out there and smoke the mussels. Climbing into his black rain-gear, he saw he'd forgotten to change his clothes for tonight's big to-do, which was funny given the shopping spree and all the rest of it. Here he was wearing worn-out blue jeans and an old sweater, comfy brown wool with a yellow and olive Aztec sort of thing going on. He pinched up the ribbed hem and brushed off what looked like pastry flour. It was good he was dressed for action. He had these mussels to smoke. Later he'd be butchering a five-foot fish.

He knew he was being watched through the wall of picture windows as he humped the mussel cooler to the firepit. He didn't mind the audience, the attention, maybe because it was in his own yard. It felt like a current of water that moved him along. Leaning back, elbows out, he waddled side to side and understood that from behind he looked like a tall penguin. Though there was no snow underfoot. The rain had taken care of it. His workboots felt cruel on the lush grass, richly bejewelled even from the living-room candlelight. It was good to be outside, no longer buffeted by people and talk. In this solitude, where he could hear nothing but the wind and his own grunts, he could feel how busy he had been and how tired he was. He really hadn't slept much lately at all. Things had edged beyond the numb and into the vivid, where indefinite rabbit-like creatures spring out from the legs of coffee tables or from shrubbery. He hoped tonight's measured doses of wine would steady him.

He was starting things off with the “mussels smoked under pine needles,” one of the supposedly authentic Order of Good Cheer recipes he'd found. He was changing only one thing. The recipe called for the dried needles to be placed on
top
of the mussels, and then lit, and when the needles had finished burning, the mussels would have opened by themselves and be done. Well, theoretically the mussels got cooked and smoked enough sitting under the burning needles, but Andy didn't believe they would. Plus, as they opened, wouldn't all the pine ash fall into the exposed meat? It sounded so wrong that Andy suspected a failure in the translation he'd read. So, out here in his yard, he did it the more logical way. He poured two bucketsful of pine needles on the coals, dumped the mussels on a sheet of chicken wire, and lifted them onto the smoking needles. As he did so, applause broke out from behind the living-room windows, and through the billowing smoke, which still reminded him of his father's aftershave, he could make out his cheering guests. May E laughed at something, her own joke probably, and Pauline smiled in her ear, nodding. His mother and Doris and Rita stood shoulder to shoulder as though in support, and his mother looked only concerned, perhaps about the smouldering hole in her lawn, perhaps about the neighbours. Off to the side, Laura was lifting her wine mug to him. Beside her, Amelia neither cheered nor lifted a glass, but appeared to be checking him out. Chris and his friend James lurked in the darkness behind her, their eyes probably on the prize. Leonard was vigorously waving him in and yelling, but then Andy looked to his right and saw it was little Alex being waved to, no coat on, arms wrapped around himself, staring at the black shells as big as dance slippers like he wanted to get in there and grab something. Andy wedged his body in front of Alex's. And in the time it took to become aware of his own patience, one by one the mussels
began to ease apart. As they did, the fire hissed with their juice, and to the pine smoke was added the smell of living ocean.

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 but 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.”