Bursting Bubbles (21 page)

“I did have some herbal tea.”

“Oh well, there you are,” says Byron. “Sofa? Herbal tea? The man must’ve fallen on his head.”

“And what about clothes and stuff?” asks Will. “You expect me to believe you didn’t change your underwear for three days?”

“Of course not.” On Friday afternoon, when he could hobble around enough to be considered ambulatory, Carlin drove him home to get his toothbrush, his laptop, his phone charger and clean clothes.

“I just don’t get it.” Claudelia sounds like an archaeologist who has opened a three-thousand-year-old tomb to find everything wrapped in plastic bags. “I would’ve come and gotten you if you’d asked. You could have stayed with us. We have beds with mattresses.”

“Any of us could have picked you up,” adds Georgiana. “And given you a bucket of water to soak your foot in.”

“But at least you weren’t hurt really bad,” says Marigold. “And you were being looked after. I mean, it’s lucky that guy was there. You could’ve been laying there in the rain all night.”

“Marigold,” says Byron, “if that guy hadn’t been there, Asher wouldn’t have gone up on the roof.”

But nothing is going to distract Claudelia. “So why didn’t you call one of us, Asher?”

“I didn’t think of it, that’s all.” Which sounds stupid, but happens to be the truth. “You know what they say about inertia. I was there already – and I was in pain and trying to rest my foot…” And Mrs Dunbar brought them breakfast and supper, and at night he and Carlin played backgammon and hung out. As Carlin would say, everything was copasetic.

“Yeah, but what’d you do all day?” asks Georgiana. “You must’ve been bored out of your mind.”

Asher takes another quick look at his watch. Is the bell broken or something? Have they drifted into some parallel universe where you stay in the same moment for ever? It has to be time for classes to start. He’s been here hours. “Oh, there was stuff to do.”

“What?” Claudelia again. “While you were in so much pain and resting your foot you found something to do?” Maybe she’s the one who should be a lawyer. A prosecuting attorney.

“Mrs Dunbar found some desk-work for me.”

Mrs Dunbar said that he didn’t have to feel that he was missing out on a fun weekend. “There’s more than one way to climb a mountain.” He could start preparing his first job workshop while he was laid up. “We’ll schedule it for right after Christmas,” she announced. “Start the new year right.” Asher didn’t know what job workshop she was talking about. Mrs Dunbar reminded him that it was his idea. Group workshops where their clients could practise being interviewed and give each other feedback. Build their confidence; make them feel that they aren’t alone. Didn’t he remember? Only vaguely. Mrs Dunbar, however, remembered it vividly. And she didn’t think it mattered that Asher had never actually had a job interview himself, either. Her only worry had been that there would never be any time to get it together because there was always so much else to do, especially with Christmas coming up. It’s not just a busy time of year for Santa Claus. “And here we are,” she joyfully declared, “with the perfect opportunity to get it all done.”
Don’t say it
, Asher silently begged.
Please don’t say it
. But she said it anyway. “God really does work in mysterious ways.”

But from the expressions on his friends’ faces now it would seem that the person who works in mysterious ways is Asher Grossman.

“So let me make sure I understand this,” says Byron. “You’ve been at the community centre since Thursday.” He counts off on his fingers. “One … two … three … four nights.”

Asher nods. “Because I couldn’t walk. And this morning’s the first time my foot was really OK enough to drive.”

“And it never occurred to you to call one of us to say where you were or what happened,” says Claudelia.

Asher nods again.

“I guess you’re going to be real glad to get home,” says Marigold.

Asher says, “You bet,” as the bell finally goes. If he could stand on his foot, he’d run from the room.

The day Carlin drove him over to pick up his things, Carlin was amazed by the size of the Grossmans’ house. He got out of the car and stood there for a few minutes, just staring at it like a tribesman from a remote village who’s never seen a skyscraper before. “This is some place you have here,” he said at last. “No offence, but I couldn’t live in a house this big. I’d feel like I was in a dinghy on the ocean when I was here by myself. You know, kind of lost and lonely. But I guess you’re used to it.”

Asher said he was.

But when he pulls up to the garage on Monday afternoon it is Asher who gets out of the car and just stands there for several minutes, staring at his home. He’s been living in a space the size of the downstairs shower room for two days, and suddenly the house he grew up in looks too large. Too large for two people. Even if they had dogs and cats and a talking parrot it would be too large.

That’s when he hears Marigold in his head saying,
I guess you’re going to be real glad to get home…

Now he isn’t so sure.

Jack
Frost nips at noses, silver bells ring, and cash registers hum. Lawns and houses blaze with coloured lights; smiling Santas wave from rooftops, wink from windows and peek out of chimneys. There is a manger in front of three of the local churches, a lighted tree on the town green, and Frosty the Snowman and a posse of elves roam through the mall handing out candy canes and coupons. Artificial snow falls outside the entrance of Toys for Tots. It’s Christmas-time in the suburbs.

And nowhere is it more Christmas-time than at 24 Wolff Drive. The dove of peace has been nesting on the Liottas’ roof for the past couple of weeks, cooing and stretching its wings. This visitation, so in keeping with the holiday season, has a lot to do with the fact that Mr Liotta has been away on business since the beginning of December. The Liottas have always gotten along a lot better when they’re not together than when they are. It’s difficult to carry on the hand-to-hand combat of domestic warfare when one of the fighters is in a hotel three thousand miles way. Their nightly phone calls are pleasant and affectionate. Mrs Liotta catches her husband up on what’s happening in Shell Harbour without once raising her voice or bursting into tears. When he’s home, Mr Liotta sometimes complains about his family or things that happen in the house, but when he’s not his complaints are all about other people and the things they’ve done wrong. All of which makes a nice change. When they’ve finished talking, Marigold is called in to say hello and goodnight to her father. He always asks her how school is and what she’s been doing, as if she’s ten. “I’m really looking forward to Christmas,” he says every night. “I miss the two of you so much.” They tell him that they miss him, too. They can’t wait for him to come home.

All of which also makes it easy to forget that he is a man who has been known to punch a hole in a wall, and that she is a woman who has been known to hurl a hot chicken pie across the kitchen at his head (narrowly missing). And Marigold does forget all that.

Because, despite the number of times it has ended in tears (or possibly because of them), Marigold has always loved Christmas. Everything looks so much prettier and brighter. Happier. And people are happier, too. ’Tis the season to be jolly, after all. They smile. They hum along with the radio. They shout out, “Happy Holidays” to everyone they meet. Marigold throws herself into the preparations with enough enthusiasm to sail a sled across the skies. Christmas music plays morning, noon and night. She dashes around the mall with Claudelia and Georgiana, dodging elves and ticking things off a list. She buys enough gift paper to cover the Pentagon. She spends hours deciding what to wear to the holiday parties. She and her mother bake gingerbread cookies and decorate the house inside and out, even going so far as to put lights around the rear window of the car and around the birdhouse on the front lawn. Mrs Liotta signs and addresses dozens of Christmas cards while Marigold, a halo of silver tinsel on her head, decorates the tree and the Crystals sing “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”.

“Even though Rose can’t get home, this is going to be the best Christmas ever,” says Marigold’s mother. “Don’t you think so, honey?”

“You bet,” says Marigold. They will Skype Rose on Christmas Day, waving at each other from the screens of their laptops. “It’s going to be awesome.”

It would have to work pretty hard to be the worst Christmas ever.

But, of course, neither of them mentions that.

On the day Marigold’s father comes home, Marigold stays behind while her mother drives to the airport to pick him up. It will be hours before they return. She makes herself a snack, then goes into the TV room and settles down to watch a movie. The movie she puts on is an old version of Charles Dickens’
A Christmas Carol
(old enough that it was originally made in black and white). The story is so familiar that although Marigold has never watched any version from beginning to end she feels as if she has. Which means that she doesn’t have to give the movie her undivided attention. While the ghost of Jacob Marley visits Ebenezer Scrooge, Marigold finishes writing her cards. As the Ghost of Christmas Past arrives, Marigold wraps the last of her gifts. She begins painting her fingernails red and green during the visit of the Ghost of Christmas Present.

It’s right at the end of this ghost’s visit that he pulls back his robes to reveal two emaciated children crouched beneath them.

Marigold looks up, holding the red nail polish brush in mid-air.

There was one other thing that Marigold put completely out of her mind while she was shopping, wrapping and stringing cards across the mantel. And that one other thing is Sadie Hawkle. It is only now, staring at the haggard faces of Ignorance and Want with their wide, dark, deadened eyes, that she remembers her.

That afternoon when she took the books over, it was such an uncomfortable meeting that she couldn’t get away fast enough. And as soon as she was on the sidewalk, she called Claudelia and talked to her all the way home, putting Sadie so far out of her mind that she couldn’t find her way back. Until now. Now, of course, Marigold can’t stop thinking about her. She tries to concentrate on finishing her nails, but she can’t get rid of the sad and sallow face of Sadie Hawkle staring at her like the ghost of some poor Victorian flower girl who froze to death in the snow. Sadie standing beside her mother on the afternoon Marigold went to her house. Silent and still as a corpse.

As that image comes back to her, with it come all the questions Marigold didn’t ask herself at the time. Was Sadie lying when she said her mother was sick the morning that she didn’t go to school? Or was Sadie’s mother lying when she said that Sadie was sick? But why would Mrs Hawkle lie? She certainly didn’t look sick. She looked as if she was going out. But Sadie didn’t look sick, either. She looked as if she’d already been out. And why did Sadie rush to the door when she saw Marigold, then act like she’d been struck dumb? Why was it so hard to get her to take the books?

Almost as if she’s being directed by some external force, Marigold suddenly turns off the television, and goes over to the cabinet where her mother keeps the old photo albums. She goes through half a dozen before she finds the one she’s looking for. The picture taken late in the evening of the Christmas That Almost Never Was. She sits back on the floor with the album on her lap. There they are, she and Rose, sitting side by side in front of the tree, each of them wearing one of their gifts and holding another. She can hear her mother saying, in her chirpy, cheerleader voice, “Come on, girls. Give me a really big smile!” And they do. Both of them are smiling. But only with their mouths. If their expressions were a sound, it would be a cry for help.

Now who does that remind her of?

Although
she knows her mother can be very persuasive (Adele Shiller can take almost anything back to the store and get a refund, even if whatever it is has been opened and used), Georgiana didn’t really expect Mrs Kilgour to accept the invitation to Christmas dinner. She had no trouble imagining what Mrs Kilgour would have to say about the invitation – or with how much sarcasm and contempt. Why would she want to spend the day with a bunch of strangers? What was she, the last charity case left in town? Had they run out of one-legged dogs and one-eyed cats? Did it make the Shillers feel good to drag some poor old lady into their home and make her eat food she has trouble chewing that’s too rich and not good for her? What were they hoping, that she’d drop dead and they’d see an angel? Are all the soup kitchens going to be closed for the day so that they can’t go to one of them and bother the homeless?

But what Georgiana overlooked was that Mrs Kilgour isn’t just as stubborn as blood, she also enjoys being difficult. Contrary. Doing exactly what Georgiana doesn’t expect her to do. According to Adele Shiller, when she extended the invitation Mrs Kilgour said none of the things Georgiana imagined. She didn’t even hesitate and ask for time to think it over. She said, “Thank you very much, Mrs Shiller. I’d love to come.”

When her mother reported this conversation, Georgiana stood beside her mother’s workstation for several seconds, watching reindeer dance across the screen and trying to process what she’d just been told, squeezing out a smile the size of the last drop of toothpaste in the tube. “Did you say she accepted? She said
yes
?”

“Of course she said yes. She was thrilled to be asked. And we had such a nice chat.”

A nice chat? With the woman who makes the Grinch seem jolly? Was that even possible?

Mrs Shiller shook her head, not the first parent to be baffled by the ways of her child. “You never mentioned what an interesting woman she is. How charming.”

“Gee whiz.” Georgiana slapped her forehead. “How could I forget that?”

“Well, I really don’t know.” The maternal head was shaking again. “She’s extremely intelligent and knowledgeable. If I didn’t know her age, I’d’ve thought she was a much younger woman.”