“WHAT THE HELL is wrong with me?” Delphine asked herself on Christmas morning, ashamed to remember how she’d treated Cyprian the night before. “Maybe,” she amended, eating an oatmeal cookie as she sat before the tree, “nothing’s so very wrong. I’m just fed up.”
It was partly the fault of the Christmas tree — strung with long loops of popcorn and cranberries, tiny stars cut from tin and painted green and gold, paper angels with cottony down wings, frosted milkweed pods, twigs dipped in silver paint. The tree was very beautiful, loaded with these tiny decorations, and even without the candles flaring and although the morning light was stark and reflected a white sky, the charms of the decorated tree were so calming and reassuring that she found herself falling before it into a serene meditation. She had watched it last night, too, and had offended Cyprian.
She ate the corner of another cookie, her breakfast. The irritation that had flooded her the night before shamed her now that she could see what painstaking preparations Cyprian had made. She gestured at the tree with a piece of the cookie. “I should love him, right? That’s the message of the tree. But last night I was tired. Just tired of trying so hard. I guess this is what happens when you just don’t love somebody. Is it my fault?” The rest of the cookie went into her mouth. She chewed it up.
“You end up talking to a damn tree, that’s what.”
Delphine jumped up in gathered energy and dressed herself quickly, warmly. She bundled on her coat and boots and made ready to walk into town with her gift for Clarisse — a pair of expensive silk stockings. Delphine knew how much Clarisse liked having fancy stockings and showing off her pretty legs. She thought herself clever, too, for wrapping the stockings in a flowered head scarf and using a hair ribbon to tie the package, not that Clarisse often wore a childish hair ribbon. Maybe she could trim something with it, though. Damping down the fire, Delphine prepared to leave. She left the key over the door lintel, for Cyprian and Roy. One or another of them would probably beat her back home, she thought, ready to eat a late Christmas dinner.
CLARISSE WASN’T HOME and her door was locked, but Delphine knew her friend kept an extra house key underneath an iron boot scraper. Sure enough, Delphine rocked the heavy thing aside and drew the key from beneath it. She let herself into Clarisse’s house through the rattly glass-paned back door, into a tiny mud porch. The porch, littered with boots and newspapers, led into the kitchen, always much tidier than Clarisse’s other rooms. That her friend might be sleeping late occurred to Delphine as she entered, and so she called out from the kitchen. Then she walked over to the stairway that led up to her friend’s bedroom, and called from the bottom step. No answer. She thought of walking upstairs, but that seemed presumptuous, even though at one time she’d had the casual run of Clarisse’s house. I’ll just leave the gift on the table, thought Delphine, maybe write a note to go with it.
She put the package on the white painted surface of the kitchen table, and was rummaging in her pocketbook for a pencil and a bit of paper, when she saw something that arrested her attention. A small box lay opened on the kitchen table, its candy-striped ribbon flung aside. A small wad of cotton batting lay tumbled from it next to the sugar bowl. Something about the box was immediately upsetting. She stared at it until she realized that it was the same green-and-red box that Cyprian had tried to give her. Just the same, down to the candy-striped ribbon. Whatever it had held — a ring, she’d guessed — was gone of course. There was just the box lying on the tabletop, spilled open. Delphine eyed it for a moment, and then thoughtfully hefted the gift she’d brought Clarisse, as though all of a sudden it weighed a great deal.
Walking out, Delphine locked the flimsy door and replaced the key underneath the boot scraper. Making her way through the back lot into the alley, she saw the car that she shared with Cyprian — the DeSoto. The car was parked to one side of the alley and covered with a new, frail dusting of snow. All was white, all was still. Up and down the block, nothing moved. A holiday inwardness, a sweet pause had gripped the houses. Plumes of smoke poured from the chimneys, and the windows were icily blank. Delphine drew from a corner of her pocketbook her few keys, which she kept on a little brass ring. She unlocked the car door, got into the cold car, pumped the starter button with her foot. Then she drove out of town, back up the farm road, and parked the car where it could be seen by anyone who passed.
Inside the house again, she shook snow off her coat and draped it across an armchair, set her boots neatly beside the door. She tossed the gift for Clarisse back underneath the tree. In the kitchen, she built up the fire in the stove and warmed her hands while she waited for her tea to boil. As she turned her hands back and forth in the heat, she puzzled things out. There was only one thing to make of it, at last. Failing with her, Cyprian had driven to her best friend’s house last night and given her the ring. She nodded as she concluded this. Delphine poured herself a cup of tea, stirred in a dollop of honey, added a bit of thin cream, and went back to sit in the chair before the Christmas tree. What might it mean, she wondered, that the car had still been parked in the alley? A moment later, her face stained red with heat, embarrassment. It occurred to her that the car was still there because the two of them, Cyprian and Clarisse, had been, at the very moment Delphine had entered the house, upstairs in her best friend’s messy bedroom. Half asleep in Clarisse’s musty sheets. Waking to hear Delphine’s voice at the bottom of the stairs. She could practically see the expressions on their faces! And she could picture the relief when they heard her walk away. Her lip trembled. More than anything, Delphine hated feeling stupid. And then, quite suddenly, she laughed at herself.
Wasn’t this the perfect solution, if she looked at it objectively? Wasn’t this exactly what she’d have wanted if she could have solved the impasse she and Cyprian had found themselves in the night before? She did not love Cyprian, and even though his sudden defection stunned her, it was definitely better that he found someone else. A burden had been lifted. She already felt lighter. The scene with the man in the park, he and Cyprian twining almost invisibly in the dark, flashed before her. If that happened, she thought, so be it. Certainly not her problem anymore. The situation even contained an element of its own revenge. Delphine knew herself well enough to understand that, contradictory though it was, she’d need to comfort herself occasionally with the thought of the difficulty that Clarisse faced in loving Cyprian Lazarre. And vice versa, she thought, too, recalling the red bead dress.
CLARISSE ALWAYS LEFT out things that had more use in them. Carelessly packed in boxes, sacks, or tied in old skirts, they made a tumbled pile on her back porch. Step-and-a-Half was prompt and regular in her visits to gather what was left. Sometimes the castoffs were of a quality that she could sell, like the glitter dress all hung with red beads. She’d found the dress some time ago, wrapped with newspaper, tied with string. The dress had some dirt on it, as though it had been in the ground and dug up, of all things, but the garment was perfectly fine once Step-and-a-Half aired it out, picked away the grains of dirt, sponged down the fabric with a fine soap. Step-and-a-Half had got three dollars for the dress from a lady who came traveling through with her husband, a man who dealt in scrap metals. No, Clarisse had been a lucrative source, a discarder of valuable rubbish, although sometimes Step-and-a-Half wondered whether some of the things — the hats, the shoes, even items that Step-and-a-Half ended up using herself — might have belonged to the dead people Clarisse fixed up in Strub’s basement.