On Christmas morning, Mimi opens a big box from the St. Regis Room of Simpson’s and says, as she always does, “It better not be a you-know-what.” It isn’t a mink coat, but Jack has nonetheless courted her wrath with an extravagant silk negligée. Mike receives the supreme gift of walkie-talkies. Madeleine doesn’t receive a weapon of any kind, but neither is she burdened with more dolls. Her booty includes a Mr. Potato Head, an Etch-A-Sketch, a toboggan, yo-yo, puppet theatre, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and other treasures too numerous to mention — chief among them a psychology kit complete with white goatee, glasses and ink spots.
Only one gift requires acting. It comes in a little blue Birks box, and Maman looks so pleased as Madeleine unwraps it that it makes her feel plungingly sad. The kind of sadness that is possible only on Christmas morning; your dear mother, smiling and hoping you will like the special present she has picked out.
A sterling silver charm bracelet. With one charm on it already—“That’s just for openers,” says Dad, pleased to be giving his little girl a young-lady gift. “Merci maman.” Madeleine compresses her lips into a smile, swallowing the lump in her throat.
Her mother fastens the bracelet onto Madeleine’s wrist and her family admires it. She keeps it on for church, then takes it off to go tobogganing, returning it to its blue box on her dresser. Wondering how long she can go before having to wear it again, she closes the lid on the silver bracelet and its single charm — her name.
FOR AULD LANG SYNE
ON NEW YEAR’S EVE, Jack is shaved, showered and Brylcreemed by five. He wipes fog from the mirror, dries the walls of the tub, sets out a fresh towel and hollers, “It’s all yours, Missus.”
Mimi is in her slip, taking curlers out of her hair, when the phone rings. Jack calls, “I’ll get it!” and grabs it before either of the kids can answer. “Hello? … Oh … oh, that’s too bad, Vimy. Yup, yup, not to worry, I’ll tell her.”
He puts his head in the bedroom door and says to his wife at her vanity, “That was Vimy Woodley. Martha’s got the flu.”
Mimi’s hands fall to her sides, a freshly liberated curl droops and bounces. “Merde!” Without a babysitter, at the eleventh hour. She glares at him and says, “Marsha.”
“What?”
“Oh never mind, Jack,” and lets slip the ultimate Acadian curse word: “Goddamn!” smacking her thighs. She starts yanking out curlers and pitching them among the silver combs and brushes on her table.
“Wait now, sweetie, just keep doing what you’re doing, I’ve got an idea.” He kisses her bare shoulder. “Wear the No. 5 tonight, it’s my favourite.”
Jack hands Mike the Kodak Instamatic and a flash cube, and the boy positions his parents in front of the fireplace and the oil painting of the Alps. Jack is in his formal mess kit — short blue coat with black bow tie, blinding-white shirt front and black cummerbund. Blue pants with gold stripes down the sides, tapered at the ankle, where concealed stirrups cause them to fit snugly over the high-polish ankle boots that lack only a Cuban heel to render them utterly hip. Mimi is in an off-the-shoulder gown of silk in shades of green and gold, with a shimmering satin stole. Her hair is done, her face is radiant, eyelashes long, décolletée within the bounds of good taste and off the scale of sex appeal. Flash.
Then Mike snaps a picture of his parents with the Froelichs: Henry in a freshly pressed brown tweed jacket with suede patches at the elbow, his usual white shirt and black tie. Mimi discreetly observes every detail of Karen’s attire: an open-weave shawl over a dress that appears to be essentially a floor-length turtleneck. The shawl is lumpy black, but the dress is composed of several dull reds and purples that seem to have bled into one another. She has brushed her long hair and applied two horizontal lines of red lipstick. Beaded earrings dangle from her lobes. On her feet, a pair of embroidered Chinese slippers. The dress manages somehow to be both dowdy and clinging. The woman is obviously not wearing a girdle; her slimness is no excuse, slimness is not the point, shape is.
Mimi had handed Karen a sherry when they arrived. “That’s a very pretty dress, Karen.”
“You think so? Thanks, Mimi,” she replied, as though Mimi had just given her a present. “I got it at a thrift shop in Toronto.” She nervously tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Nice hands, short unpainted nails.
Henry kissed Mimi on both cheeks. “Aber schön, Frau McCarthy, you look ravishing.”
“He’s right, Mimi, you do,” said Karen and, try as she might, Mimi could detect not a drop of malice in her tone.
“’Night-night kids,” Jack says now and, in his most jovially man-to-man voice, “Help yourself to anything and everything, Rick.”
“Except the liquor cabinet,” jokes Karen.
Mimi hopes her smile doesn’t look too pained.
The men help the women on with their coats, carry their shoe-bags for them, and the four of them bundle into the Rambler. Mike, Madeleine, Colleen, Ricky, Elizabeth and Rex look at one another in the living room. The twins are already sound asleep up on Jack and Mimi’s bed, behind a barricade of pillows. Ricky says, “What do you guys want to do?”
No one says anything at first — Colleen and Elizabeth may be used to having Ricky around, but for Mike and Madeleine it’s as though a god has descended from Mount Olympus.
They feast on hot dogs and Kraft dinner. Ricky and Mike play table hockey, violently jerking the handles while commentating from high above the Montreal Forum: “Hockey Night in Canada!” Ricky has brought a stack of forty-fives. Madeleine and Colleen make popcorn as Jay and the Americans blast. Ricky ransacks the upstairs closet for blankets and drags them down to the basement, where he empties the bookcase and tips it against the wall to form a lean-to. Madeleine looks at Mike, who stands by, hesitant, then says, “My dad doesn’t let us do that.”
“Do what?” asks Ricky, opening the duffel bag where the camping equipment is stored.
“Make shelters.”
“It ain’t a shelter, it’s a fort.” He drapes blankets and sleeping bags over the bookcase and the basement furniture. “’Sides, you’re going to clean it all up before they get back.” He tosses Mike a flashlight, says, “You’re it,” and turns off the lights. Madeleine yelps in spite of herself. They play hide-and-seek in the dark all over the house — except in Jack and Mimi’s room. Madeleine has to change her pajama bottoms due to a slight accident brought on by terror and mirth. They jump on the beds and take turns shooting each other with Mike’s cap gun, dying spectacularly; they try one by one to tackle Ricky but he is invincible, hurling each assailant onto a mattress. They have a pillow fight in the dining room; the oil painting of the Alps is knocked askew, the couch cushions are on the living-room floor. Rex, exhausted from rescue attempts and the vain effort to herd everyone into one room, yields finally to temptation and, as intoxicated as the others, chews one of Mimi’s rubber spatulas. Through it all, Elizabeth sings, drops off, wakes up, listens while Madeleine reads aloud her Cherry Ames book, and falls out of her wheelchair reaching for an Orange Crush. “Lizzie, you’re drunk!” says Ricky, mopping up the mess, opening another bottle of the best — Mountain Dew. “It’ll tickle yore innards!” he howls.