Michael Christie - The Beggar's Garden

It was a friend of her mother’s who had arranged the job for Bernice after she graduated high school. That first morning, Bernice had arrived an hour early and walked around and around the block until the store opened. “There are two ways to sell shoes,” Carol, her new supervisor, said in the stockroom, a svelte cigarette bucking in her mouth. “Tell ‘em the shoes look good, or tell ‘em they’ll never wear out. Me, myself, I prefer the flattery — it’s easier to lie about.” Bernice adored her immediately. She was old, which to Bernice meant over thirty, with a residue of tragedy and a fondness for big dark sunglasses and miniskirts that stretched over a high flat butt that seemed to have drifted up on her lower back.

People came from all corners of the world, strolling the store like an amusement park or a museum. There was often music and singing on the first floor, and Bernice couldn’t imagine a food that the food floor didn’t stock. To her, it was a small version of a city, only a better one: inside, cleaner, more orderly. It seemed to be bursting with goods, an intoxicating promise of endless possibility. It never failed to amaze her what wonders they could make, what unheard-of new things could come.

At first she was timid with customers. She’d never spoken much in school and spent most of her leisure time with her family, rarely with friends. Those nights, she replayed in her head the mistakes and inefficiencies of the day and chastised herself for them. She practised the smooth, pauseless speech of salesmanship on her stuffed animals and memorized the shoe styles by lugging catalogues into the bath. Carol was impressed by her commitment and knowledge of the products, and Bernice found Carol’s growing confidence in her to be contagious.

Soon Bernice was scheduled weekends, holidays. She navigated the department as if hovering, helping three or four sets of customers at a time, bursting into the stockroom with styles and sizes balanced precariously in her mind. For the first time Bernice had her own money, all of which, because of her discount, she spent in the store. She met Gus each day at the lunch counter and bought expensive gifts for Wanda and her parents.

Her sister, mouth agape, visited her at Woodward’s, and they’d catch a show when Bernice got off. When she neared graduation herself, Wanda begged Bernice to recommend her to the ladies’ wear department. Though Bernice knew her sister’s presence in the store would lead to comparisons being drawn between them and could threaten the fragile independence she’d established there, she agreed. It was then Carol informed her of the store policy that once one member of a family worked at Woodward’s, that person’s brother, sister, mother or father couldn’t also work there. Management’s reasoning was that salespeople doubled as advocates for the store, a kind of advertising network, and by limiting the number of employees who knew each other, the customer base was broadened considerably at no cost to them.

When Wanda learned of this she was mutely devastated. Bernice sensed she somehow blamed her for the store’s policy, or thought she’d made it up entirely. Wanda found employment in the concession at a bowling alley on Granville and would no longer eat with the family, even on Sundays. She left home shortly thereafter to begin a series of relationships with men whom Bernice found similar only in their fancy clothes and fondness for finishing Wanda’s sentences. Bernice had only seen photos of Brian, the surgeon, the most striking of which was of him skiing in a T-shirt, his hirsute arms planting two neon poles like flags on an arctic moon, with Wanda beside him, flushed beneath her pink headband. Though she’d never met him — Wanda had neglected to invite her to their wedding in Whistler, later saying it wasn’t her “kind of thing”—she suspected he was like the others. For the first time Bernice wondered if there was some way she should have assisted her sister, some advice she could have given. But what did she know, anyway? She’d latched herself to Gus with the same recklessness, then spent her whole adult life sorting through the wreckage, with no answers to come of it. A sharp desire to call her sister rose in Bernice.

“Something you want, lady?” rasped a voice from her knees.

“Oh … sorry.”

She was standing over a man who sat cross-legged on the ground, a small, sad collection of things for sale lying before him on a blanket. She backed up and saw power adapters, thick booklets of compact discs, a cracked computer monitor, a flute missing valves.

Recognition lifted his scowl. “You from the thrift shop?”

“Yes,” she said, unsure what to add to inflect the word with more friendliness. He looked familiar.

“I suppose you don’t need anything then? Got everything you need, do you?” he said. Though the sun was now muted by cloud, he squinted as if in pain. He had heavy brows, like a cartoon Neanderthal.

“Well, I’m Harold, and you let me know if you got any questions about the items.” He stood, allowing Bernice to read his T-shirt—“i still miss my ex, but my aim’s improving”—and she smiled.

“Harold, can I ask where you get these things you’re selling?” she said.

He blew air loosely through his mouth. “Guys bring ‘em to me, they find ‘em in alleys, dumpsters, bushes, that kind of thing,” he said, twirling his hands as if to imply anything could be found anywhere, even perhaps the air. Bernice then noticed the chapped nub where his thumb once was. She wondered what awful moment had taken it, whether it accidental or intentional, and where this part of him was now, a jar? a lake? a box? Behind him, hanging on a nail in the plywood, she saw a leather jacket she’d once had in her store. It was cherry red, mid-thigh-length, a popular style when she and Gus were dating. It had been in her shop for a few weeks last month and she’d put it on once or twice, wondering if Gus would’ve liked it, until she’d noticed it missing and asked Tuan, who said he hadn’t sold it.

“Is that coat for sale?” she said.

He turned. “Yeah, pretty, ain’t it? Real good leather, smells like a ball glove.” He rose and took a long whiff of the coat and put it on.

“It suits you,” she said, admiring how well it embraced his shoulders and how it hit his wrists perfectly, right where he’d wear a watch, if he had one.

“Ten bucks,” he said.

“You should keep it for yourself. It looks … handsome,” she said.

He smiled and his teeth resembled the wall of a castle. “Got plenty of coats. Ten bucks,” he said. He removed it and hung it with finality.

“Well, it suits you, Harold, that’s what’s important. I wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true,” she said, then feigned interest in a few coverless mystery pocketbooks before slipping away when he was distracted by someone else.

A message from Wanda was waiting on her machine. No mention of the coach house, just one of her sunny updates indexing the things she and her husband had been up to: catered lunches with eminent doctors, notable art purchases, the mounting achievements of grandchildren. Her sister seemed most herself when leaving a phone message, and Bernice suspected she timed her calls for when she was out.

“I’m not going anywhere, Wanda,” she said when she called back.

“What, Bernice? Not going where?”

“Into the coach house.”

Her sister groaned as if she were reaching high up in a cupboard. “Oh, right, sure that’s fine, Bernice. It was Brian’s idea really, he mentioned you probably hadn’t managed to put much away for retirement and could use a hand, and the girls are all gone now, so — but that’s fine, you’re happy where you are, to be honest I didn’t think you’d go for it.”