A sense of relief.
Chapter Eighteen
It was Christmas morning…
It was Christmas morning and the first faint traces of the turkey’s aroma were sending their tendrils out of the kitchen. Janet was sitting in her armchair, while the kids sat on the floor in front of the couch, opening their gifts.
Ashley loved her toy bear, and the sweater fit perfectly. Jason seemed to like his gifts. His eyes were drawn back to the model car again and again. Whoever picked that one had made a real hit. Jason obviously couldn’t wait to begin building it. The only trouble was, Janet was pretty sure they didn’t have any glue around the house.
Much to her surprise, the kids didn’t really get cranked up until about seven a.m.
It was with a sense of relief that she saw them both happy, and loving, and sharing this moment together. Janet was relieved of some of the tension that had been holding her in its grip these last three or four weeks. Samantha Davies was true to her word, and not only did she come up with new games, but had even latched onto some donated game-box of admittedly obscure origin. She called and told Janet to drop in and pick it up. But as long as the games fit the box, Jason would surely play them. It took her last twenty-dollar bill, but it was worth it.
His new toque must have been welcome as well, as he wore it still on his head.
The gloves were beside him on the floor, along with small knick-knacks from his stocking. There were chocolate bars, a key chain flashlight, a bottle of his preferred shampoo, and a few other necessities. The psychology of children, in the end they accept what you give them. They just wanted to make sure you cared. Biting her lip, she didn’t give herself a pat on the back, so much as she was aware that we all need one once in a while—and when was the last time had anyone said anything really nice to her?
The three of them lived in a kind of isolation, greater than the sum of its parts.
They had their own little world, and it was peaceful here with the world shut tight on the outside. Her heart swelled with unspoken feelings.
“Open yours, mom.” Jason was becoming insistent.
“I wanna see mommy open hers.” Ashley spoke with almost perfect elocution.
The serious nature of her statement, her big brown eyes, warm with childish sincerity, triggered a lush glow of motherly love and pride. Ashley could read simple books, but Janet was impatient for normal vocal development. Speech therapists were rare in this locale, with long waiting lists. She sometimes wondered if she was too impatient as a mother, wanting the kids to grow up too fast, before something terrible happened to them.
“Oh, all right.” She held it up to her ear and gave it a shake.
Ashley laughed. Janet gave the package a little sniff, and now Jason laughed. Her gift was wrapped in a soft, faded red paper, like tissue paper, only very fine, like rice paper or raw silk. He had taken a lot of trouble with the bow…but he’d held it on with a big gob of tape, she noted with breathless emotion gnawing at her heart.
The box was about three inches deep, and seven or eight inches in diameter, and weighed about a half a kilogram. A bowl? Something like that?
She would have to be careful not to give the game away. She was proud of Jason’s moment of unselfishness and wanted to make the moment special for him.
“It’s a brassiere.” She gasped.
Jason broke up in laughs, and Ashley, who didn’t actually get the joke, chortled right alongside. But Jason had the last laugh. It wasn’t a bowl at all, he had put three music CD’s in a box much too big for them. They were taped together in a clump, and heavily packed and supported with white tissue paper.
“Thank you. You had me fooled, you little twerp.”
Jason seemed so pleased that she liked them. They were bands that she knew, and it was good to watch her son. It was just so good. She wouldn’t give her kids up for anything. Again came the little catch at her heart. She had to stop thinking thoughts like that. Just then they heard a honk from the street outside the house.
“Grandpa.” The kids shouted.
Janet stood up to get a glimpse out the front curtains, confirming that the seniors’ care-a-van was indeed right there at the end of her driveway. She hurriedly got into her boots and coat, and went out to help him in. Jake Hudson didn’t get out very often as he was so frail these days, it exhausted a person just to take him out for a coffee.
Mrs. Johnson was just getting him to the bottom of the steps when she arrived. Dad had a shopping bag over one arm, both canes braced to hold himself from going over on the ice. Janet moved to intercept, and got a firm grip under his right armpit. He was wearing a long topcoat, and dark sunglasses, with a toque in white and red with Olympic rings knitted into it. Typically, he had rounded out this ensemble with bedroom slippers.
“Thank you, Missus Johnson.” She called and waved, as the driver clambered back up and into her seat.
The lady waved, and closed the door without further ado. Jason was here at her side as well.
“Hey, you little whippersnapper.”
“Hey, you big old whippersnapper.” Jason replied with a quick, wide grin.
They labored to get him up the steps and into the hallway. Jason held up her dad while she got the coat off of him, and then the hat. She fondly brushed the long stringy hairs back down on his head, hopefully a little bit of static electricity would help.
“Come on in, sit here.”
“I got somethin’ for you.” The old fellow paused, and the kids were dancing around, all over him, eyes wide with anticipation.
He eased himself down into the chair.
“Do you want coffee, Dad?”
“Do I want coffee, she says.”
“Mom. I think he wants coffee.” Jason, of course.
Janet could hear a bit of a gentle tussle going on out there as she put the kettle on.
Jason was strong, but her dad had learned how to handle him well enough.
“Let go of me, you little varmint.” Dad’s rasping voice sounded from the other room, and she could hear the pair of them chuckling like fools.
“Go easy on your grandfather, Jason.”
***
The wise old owl.
The snowy owl sat in a pine tree, which stood by Jean Gagnon’s garage, obscured from view by a thin screen of boughs and its own natural winter camouflage. With its remarkable hearing and swiveling ears, cup-shaped to collect and amplify sound, the owl was privy to everything that went on in the house, and he listened in whenever conversations happened.
It came as no surprise to the owl, when Polly Andrews came out the front door, assisted with her numerous packages by Jean Gagnon. The owl watched and listened as Jean helped her into a waiting taxi. Miss Andrews was going off to the bus station, and hence to Ottawa, where her niece resided with her family. The taxi driver loaded into the trunk a pair of big, matched luggage, which should keep her going for a while.
The owl watched Jean go back into the house, and could even monitor his progress through the building by the noise of his passage down halls, opening doors and drawers, and making his way up and down the stairs. When Jean came out again, the owl would be aware of it. Tucking his head under his wing, he took a much-needed nap.
A couple of drowsy hours later, Gagnon exited the back door by the kitchen and picked up the ubiquitous snow-shovel, perhaps not the right word but that shovel seemed to be everywhere these days. He rambled about, tidying up his driveway, and re-clearing his sidewalks where the ever-present wind had pushed snow drifts up, in, and over the shrubbery. He seemed to be making up his mind about something. With a final backward glance at the house, Jean went off up the street, the shovel on his shoulder. If he kept that up, people would get used to seeing it. The owl flapped a few times, and glided over to the roof across the street. With a pale white sky, fully overcast in a fine misty haze, he was almost invisible when he flew.
The owl was bemused to hear a vehicle start up. He flew up onto the peak of a church roof, sheltered from the snow blowing out of the north by the base of a tall steeple.
Normally, not much got past him. His slumber must have been a deep one.
The white Ford pickup slowly drove along the street, going through an intersection on the green light. The pair of heads inside turned to their right, as they seemed to be taking quite an interest in Gagnon. The big bird sat there for a while longer.
He mulled it over, and then leapt forward, out into space again. Here was an opportunity, and one he couldn’t let pass. The pigeon met his end, clutched in his talons.
He perched on a secondary trunk of a forty-metre silver maple tree in a city park. The bird was an easy kill, and a tasty one too.
The owl liked pigeon well enough, when he could get it, but more often he subsisted on lemmings, ground squirrels, and small songbirds. On a really good day, he might get some fat and sassy squirrel, taken from behind while foolishly crossing open ground between two big trees. Squirrels were good winter food.
The owl watched Jean Gagnon as he trudged down the sidewalk, wondering where he was going, and who were the men following him so clumsily and why were they doing it? It was all quite fascinating, and perhaps none of his business. Lately, it was like he was stuck in a kind of a rut. Sounds of the city echoed all around the white, silent owl, buses going down their routes, cars whisking their occupants to and fro, the wail of a siren from a fire truck, as it raced past with red and white flashers going, kids walking along in the middle of the road, throwing snowballs at each other. He could sit there and listen to them all, triangulating on their sources, and perhaps even learning a little bit about each individual as he did.
A mysterious white pickup truck...
***
Janet managed to get her dad and the kids in the truck, all properly bundled up against the cold, with the kids clutching a few small presents for Grandma and Grandpa Herbert.
She eased down the snow-covered street, greasy from being churned up and half-melted by traffic. There were literally dozens of cars parked along the curb as everyone was attending to the roles of guest and visitors, hosts and hostesses. Many of the neighboring homes were lit up, and people could be seen coming and going in a self-conscious manner, mostly strangers but for this once-yearly ritual.
“How’s the truck running?” Her dad asked, predictably enough.
You could almost set your watch by it.
“Um, it’s hard to start sometimes. I think it needs a new battery.”
“Why don’t you get it fixed, and I’ll pay for it.”
Janet gulped in thanks and said she’d try to get it done after Christmas, but before New Year’s.
“And don’t worry about my retirement.” His voice took on a gruffness that disguised something deeper. “It’s not like I spend more than twenty or thirty dollars a month. The only thing I buy is razors and shaving cream.”
“A man needs a good shave.” He gave Jason this advice in an aside.
Jason was named after his grandfather, but everyone in town called him Jake.
“Yeah, I know.” Jason said it soberly and solemnly, cracking up Janet and Jake.
Then he sat up straighter. He still had time to tease his grandfather, and intended to make the most of it.
“When I grow up I’m going to shave my head. I’m going to get an earring. And tie a red handkerchief on my head.” I want lots and lots of tattoos, grandpa—
“Promise to send me a picture.” Her dad spoke in a faux sotto-voce fashion.
In the rear-view mirror, Jason was grinning and Ashley dozing. She saw a familiar figure walking towards them on the other side of the road. She tooted the horn a couple of times, and gaily waved as Jean smiled, nodded, giving an exaggerated wave. He seemed to be playing it up for all it was worth, but then who else did he know in town? He had more or less admitted to being a stranger. It sounded different, when she thought of it that way. What did she know about him? Nothing.
“That’s Jean.” Her dad was all ears. “He’s a nice guy.”
She glanced in the mirror to see him disappearing in a puff of wind-blown flurries.
“Oh, really.”
Jason caught on, but Ashley was oblivious.
“Is that his name, Mom?” Jason asked. “How do you know?”
“I heard it somewhere.” She lied, but what the heck. “Anyways, he helped get the truck started the other day.”
“Does he live around here? Or does he just walk around with a shovel?”
Jason laughed from the back seat.
“He walks around with a shovel.”
“There’s no need to repeat, dear.” Janet spoke over the back of the seat with firm dignity.
When they got to the old age home, Janet had to cruise around looking for a halfway-reasonable place to park. The home was chock full of visitors. The kids came up with them. She didn’t dare to leave them alone in the truck for too long. Finally she got her father undressed, and settled in bed with a book. It was time for the kids to say goodbye, and then they could go.
“Don’t forget your pills, Dad.” Janet stood there a moment.
Jake reads it once a year.
“I won’t, honey.” Her father, murmuring sleepily, was already deeply immersed in the pages of a Zane Grey novel, Nevada.
The man had read it fifty times. Shit, he read it at least once a year.
END
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