Three Pines was robed in white. A foot of snow had fallen in the last few weeks and every old home round the village green had its own tuque of purest white. Smoke wafted out of the chimneys as though the homes had their own voice and breath, and Christmas wreaths decorated the doors and gates. At night the quiet little Eastern Townships village glowed with light from the Christmas decorations. There was a tender hum about the place as adults and children alike prepared for the big day.
‘Maybe her car won’t start.’ Clara’s husband Peter walked into the room. He was tall and slim and looked like a Fortune 500 executive, like his father. Instead he spent his days hunched over his easel, getting oil paints into his curly gray hair as he slowly created his excruciatingly detailed works of abstract art. They went for thousands of dollars to collectors internationally, though because he painted so slowly and produced only one or two a year, they lived in constant poverty. Until recently, that is. Clara’s paintings of warrior uteruses and melting trees, had yet to find a market.
‘She’ll be here,’ said Clara. Peter looked at his wife, her eyes blue and warm, her once dark hair streaked with gray, though she was only in her late forties. Her figure was beginning to thicken round the stomach and thighs and she’d recently begun talking about rejoining Madeleine’s exercise class. He knew enough not to answer when asked if that sounded like a good idea.
‘Are you sure I can’t come?’ he asked, more out of politeness than a real desire to squeeze himself into Myrna’s death trap of a car and bounce all the way into the city.
‘Of course not. I’m buying your Christmas gift. Besides, there won’t be room in the car for Myrna, me, you and the presents. We’d have to leave you in Montreal.’
A tiny car pulled up to their open gate and an enormous black woman got out. This was probably Clara’s favorite part of trips with Myrna. Watching her get in and out of the minuscule car. Clara was pretty sure Myrna was actually larger than the car. In summer it was a riot watching her wriggle in as her dress rode up to her waist. But Myrna just laughed. In winter it was even more fun since Myrna wore an ebullient pink parka, almost doubling her size.
‘I’m from the islands, child. I feel the cold.’
‘You’re from the island of Montreal,’ Clara had pointed out.
‘True,’ admitted Myrna with a laugh. ‘Though the south end. I love winter. It’s the only time I get pink skin. What do you think? Could I pass?’
‘For what?’
‘For white.’
‘Would you want to?’
Myrna had turned suddenly serious eyes on her best friend and smiled. ‘No. No, not any more. Hmm.’
She’d seemed pleased and even a little surprised by her answer.
And now the faux-white woman in her puffy pink skin, layers of brightly colored scarves and purple tuque with orange pompom was clumping up their freshly shoveled path.
Soon they’d be in Montreal. It was a short drive, less than an hour and a half, even in snow. Clara was looking forward to an afternoon of Christmas shopping but the highlight of her trip, of every trip into Montreal at Christmas, was a secret. Her private delight.
Clara Morrow was dying to see Ogilvy’s Christmas window.
The hallowed department store in downtown Montreal had the most magical Christmas window in the world. In mid-November the huge panes would go black and blank, covered by paper. Then the excitement would start. When would the holiday wonderment be unveiled? It was more exciting to Clara as a child than the Santa Claus parade. When word spread that Ogilvy’s had finally taken off the paper Clara would rush downtown and straight to the magical window.
And there it would be. Clara would rush up to the window but stop just short, just out of eyeshot. She’d close her eyes and gather herself, then she’d step forward and open her eyes. And there it was. Clara’s village. The place she’d go when disappointments and dawning cruelty would overwhelm the sensitive little girl. Summer or winter, all she had to do was close her eyes and she was there. With the dancing bears and skating ducks and frogs in Victorian costume fishing from the bridge. At night, when the ghoul huffed and snorted and clawed beneath her bedroom floor, she would squeeze her tiny blue eyes shut and will herself into the magical window and the village the ghoul could never find because kindness guarded the entry.
Later in her life the most wonderful thing happened. She fell in love with Peter Morrow and agreed to put off taking New York by storm. Instead she agreed to move to the tiny village he loved south of Montreal. It was a region Clara was unfamiliar with, being a city girl, but such was her love for Peter that she didn’t even hesitate.
And so it was, twenty-six years ago as a clever and cynical art college grad Clara stepped out of their rattle-trap Volkswagen, and started to weep.
Peter had brought her to the enchanted village of her childhood. The village she had forgotten in the attitude and importance of adulthood. Ogilvy’s Christmas window had been real after all and was called Three Pines. They’d bought a little home by the village green and settled into a life more magical then even Clara had dared dream.
A few minutes later Clara unzipped her parka in the warm car and watched the snowy countryside drift by. This was a special Christmas, for reasons both devastating and wonderful. Her dear friend and neighbor Jane Neal had been murdered slightly over a year before, leaving all her money to Clara. The previous Christmas she’d felt too guilty to spend any. Felt she was profiting by Jane’s death.
Myrna glanced over at her friend, her thoughts traveling along the same lines, remembering dear, dead Jane Neal and the advice she’d given Clara after Jane’s murder. Myrna was used to giving advice. She’d been a psychologist in Montreal, until she’d realized most of her clients didn’t really want to get better. They wanted a pill and reassurance that whatever was wrong wasn’t their fault.
So Myrna had chucked it all. She’d loaded her little red car with books and clothes and headed over the bridge, off the island of Montreal, south toward the US border. She’d sit on a beach in Florida and figure it out.
But fate, and a hunger pang, had intervened. In no hurry and taking the picturesque back roads Myrna had been on her journey for only an hour or so when she suddenly felt peckish. Cresting a hill along a bumpy dirt road she’d come across a village hidden among the hills and forests. It came as a complete surprise to Myrna, who was so taken by the sight she stopped and got out. It was late spring and the sun was just gathering strength. A stream tumbled from an old stone mill past a white clapboard chapel and meandered around one side of the village. The village was shaped like a circle with dirt roads running off it in four directions. In the middle was a village green and ringing it were old homes, some in the Québecois style with steeply sloping metal roofs and narrow dormers, some clapboard with wide open verandas. And at least one was fieldstone, built by hand from stones heaved from the fields by a pioneer frantic to beat the oncoming murderous winter.