Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

The house begins to smell a lot like Christmas. Mimi has been busy baking: shortbreads, icebox cookies, sugar cookies, “porkpies”—iced date tarts that resemble their millinerial namesake. The kids use the cookie cutters to make bells, stars and snowmen, decorating them with bits of green and red maraschino cherries. Festive tins pile up on the counters, wax paper peeking out from beneath the lids. Mimi takes the first of les meat-pies from the oven — spicy and mouthwatering, the Québécois call them tourtières —then gets to work on les crêpes râpées . At some point she will call everyone down to the basement to take a stir of the Christmas cake batter — it has been fermenting since November.

Mimi and Jack read Madeleine’s letter to Santa Claus and laugh out loud. Their little girl wants a cap gun and holster “or any kind of gun,” a skateboard and a walkie-talkie. There is a polite PS reminding Santa that she has enough nice dolls which he has been kind enough to bring her in the past.

Jack puts up the Christmas lights with a minimum of swearing under his breath, borrowing a ladder from Henry Froelich and counting the burn-outs to see how many bulbs he’ll need to pick up at Canadian Tire. He takes the kids to get a tree from the temporary pine forest set up at the Exeter Fairgrounds. Thick flakes fall as though on cue from Frank Capra. They pick one that is not quite perfect, pained at the thought that this brave yet blighted tree might not be taken home and loved this Christmas. The bare patch can always go against the wall.

Jack digs out the tree-stand, which he threatens each year to throw away, it clearly having been designed “by a Frenchman” for maximum frustration, and, enlisting his son’s help, performs the annual feat of engineering — shimming, trimming, sawing and straightening. “Careful, Jack, I don’t want you looking like a pirate again for Christmas.” He shakes his head, mock-rueful, as they recall the time he was poked in his good eye by a spruce needle and wound up wearing a patch till New Year’s. That was the year they all had the flu and Madeleine was teething. “That was one of the nicest Christmases ever, remember, Missus?” He kisses her. She says, “It’s still too far to the right.” He puts the electric star on top, strings the lights, plugs it all in and his wife and kids applaud.

Two Saturdays before Christmas, the family goes into London. They have split up, Jack taking Madeleine to buy a present for her mother and Mimi taking Michel to buy for his father. They are to meet up again across from the Laura Secord’s in front of Simpson’s, and trade. Madeleine buys a ceramic frog for her mother, its mouth open wide to hold a pot scrubber.

The street lights come on and, with them, the electric stars and giant candles that arch overhead and cast a multicoloured glow on the crowds below. Carols play over a loudspeaker mounted at the entrance to the market building, Hark the herald angels sing… . Madeleine holds her father’s hand in its huge black glove, and the two of them gaze in the Simpson’s window, where toys ride a train through a winter wonderland, teddy bears skate on a frozen pond, and a jazz combo of cats plays beneath a Christmas tree.

She chooses her words carefully. “Some kids in my class don’t believe in Santa Claus.”

Jack knows it’s a test. “Oh? Why not?”

She presents the case against Santa: one sled could not hold all those presents, one person could never cover the globe in a single night. Jack responds by asking her to speculate as to the nature of time. Perhaps what we think is the present is really the past. Perhaps we can only perceive reality after it has happened, and in this way we are like the stars: reflections of what has already been. “That’s why some people are clairvoyant — able to see the future. And it’s why others are able to time-travel. Like Santa.”

“So … we could be already dead now?” asks Madeleine.

Jack laughs. “No, nothing like that, what I mean is….” He looks down at her. She’s got him. He is suddenly pierced by the memory of a day long in the future — or perhaps already in the past — when she will grow up and leave him. No longer his little girl — the one who believes he has all the answers. Moisture gathers in the corner of his bad eye; he blinks it away and says, “I think we have to conclude that anything is possible. But that, if there isn’t a Santa Claus, we should make one up anyway, and enjoy the idea.”

“Do you believe in him?”

“I believe in the idea.”

“Me too,” she says, relieved — Christmas still intact, no need for her to lie.

At the clang of a bell nearby, they turn from the window to see a Salvation Army man. Jack reaches into his pocket for change just as Oskar Fried comes out of the market building, a newspaper under his arm, smoking his pipe. So the son of a gun does go out, he just prefers not to carry his own groceries. Jack is about to call out a greeting when his wife and son arrive—“No one is to look in any bags from now till Christmas,” Mimi says, pretending to be stern, and he smiles. “How’d you fellas make out? Mission accomplished?”

Fried is crossing the street, he sees Jack and looks away. Jack is surprised by his own flush of anger. It feels like a slap, this rejection of Jack’s goodwill, his entire family here on the Christmas sidewalk. It’s an unreasonable reaction, Jack knows, but he is tempted to call out, “Merry Christmas, Oskar, Fröhliche Weihnachten!” forcing the man to respond. Fried walks right past him, so close Jack can see his newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , bought at the German deli. Jack says nothing. He allows Fried to disappear into the crowd.

Mimi says, “What is it, Jack?”

“Oh nothing. Thought I saw someone, but I didn’t.”

At home the four of them begin their tree-trimming party. The spruce has stood for a week with its lights strung and now it’s time to dress it up. Mimi has brought the boxes up from the basement, and they sit open on the coffee table, their contents glittering. The decorations are like a core sample of McCarthy family history — old tinsel from three postings ago that the kids refuse to part with; delicate birds with feathered crests from the first year Jack and Mimi were married, bulbs with skiers etched in frost.

Jack is fixing an eggnog for Mimi when the phone rings. She answers it. “Another hang-up.”

“Some crank.” He hands her the drink. He makes no move to “go for a quick walk” and phone Fried back, but as he reaches for a decoration, he feels his wife looking at him. More of a glance, really. It’s fleeting — his sense that she is waiting to see whether he will find a reason to leave the house. He feels himself colour and avoids turning around, saying to his son, “Flip the record, eh Mike?”

Jack selects a bulb in the shape of an acorn and repairs its tin hook. That miserable bastard has phoned again, despite Jack’s request, his clear explanation, regarding using the home number only in an emergency. If he is lonely, facing a blue Christmas, all he has to do is agree to come home with Jack and meet the family. No, he prefers to behave like a thief in the night, a pervert skulking in the shadows. “Ouch!” Jack manages not to swear, but he is bleeding, a shard of the fragile acorn wedged in the tip of his thumb.

Mimi runs upstairs for a bandage, and Madeleine hands him one of the unbreakable snowballs to which she and Mike were restricted when they were little. “These are my favourite,” she says, and he rubs her head.

Bing Crosby dreams of a white Christmas and soothes away the dregs of Jack’s anger.

The next day, Jack calls from his office to find that Fried is out of pipe tobacco. “That’s why you called my home?”