Over the last few years, Ive written Christmas stories set in Vancouvers West End. Im going to post them here, over the next couple of days, for what theyre worth, which aint much. Here goes. West End Christmas Story Two Surprise Me When Lily Donner was growing up, in Montreal, the other children in her class would tease her when Christmas came around. It wasn’t because she was Jewish; that was true of easily half the school. The jibes came her way—and this was predictable, kids being kids—because she shared a surname with one of Santa’s reindeers. She didn’t mind, really. It was good-natured joshing. The worst that ever happened was that someone might call her house, a boy, faking a deep voice. “Is this the Donner residence?” “Yes it is.” “Is Mr. Donner there?” “No, he’s at work.” “This is Mr. Dasher. Would you please ask him to call me at the office of Comet, Cupid, and Vixen?” Hee hee hee. Snort. Hang up. By seventh grade, the joke had run its course. In high school, the only time Lily had cause to reflect on her nominal connection to the airborne ungulate was in the 11th grade, when Eric Blitzstein invited her to a movie. She demurred, citing the next day’s math test as her excuse. In fact, she wanted to nip in the bud any possibility of “Donner and Blitzstein.” The Donners were secular people, devout humanists. Their connection to their faith was more historic than practical. They rarely attended services, other than the usual round of weddings and funerals, bar and bat mitzvahs. They lit menorah candles during the holidays, but also strung blinking lights along the eaves, and typically a turkey found its way to the table on December 25. And always, everyone would have one small gift to open at breakfast on Christmas morning. There was no religious significance; it was merely a nod to what was happening in much of the world around them. Good fun, nothing more. Lily got married half way through college, to a cousin of Eric Blitzstein, as it turned out. She took his name, Blackstone, and kept it when they split up, just a few years later. Shortly after the divorce, he got religion, big time, and struck out for Israel. That was fine with Lily. The support payments always arrived on schedule, and she didn’t much mind raising their daughter on her own. No one was left with hard feelings and, in truth, Seth was easier to manage at a distance. The summer Ariel turned 14, Lily was offered the job of a lifetime in Vancouver, managing a blue chip law firm. They packed up and moved. “I distinctly recall that you promised no snow,” said Ariel, looking from the window of their apartment. It was on the 17th floor, the “sub penthouse,” as the building manager had proudly called it, and as Lily and Ariel did, too, although with more irony. It was their first Christmas Eve on the west coast. The breathtaking view that excused the astronomical rent was obscured by sticky, clumping flakes. “Oh, well,” said Lily. “I gather it never lasts long. We’ll have forgotten all about it when the daffodils come up in February.” “Humph,” said Ariel, who had pollen issues, and also had had a harder time adjusting than her mother had foreseen. Lily was glad when she finally fell in with a crowd, but Ariel’s new friends made her uneasy. There was something wild about them, something punky and anarchistic. They had multiple piercings—the one called Tanya had a nose that looked like a jewelry counter—and dreadlocks and used dubious language. There was a lot of furtive texting, and Lily wasn’t convinced that what they were saying or planning would merit the adjective “savoury.” She could so easily imagine them, a few years hence, sitting in a cluster on the sidewalk, just a block from the apartment, right there at the corner of Davie and Cardero, passing a bong and assailing passersby for change, keeping company with an ill-tempered pound dog, snarling at the end of a rope. One morning, late in November, Ariel passed Lily a folded piece of paper as she was heading off to school. “What’s this?” “My Christmas list.” Her family’s tradition of one gift at Christmas time was something Lily had preserved. “You won’t like it,” said Ariel. “That’s nice to know.” “Think it over. Don’t say anything for a while. Surprise me.” Lily waited until Ariel was out the door before she looked. “A tattoo,” was what she’d written. “Oh,” said Lily, to the empty room. She folded up the note and put it in the desk drawer where she kept things that were not immediately classifiable. Her reflexive response was a swift, “Not on your sweet life and not on your sweet tushy, either.” Nonetheless, she respected Ariel’s request. She held her tongue. She thought it over. Lily understood that tattoos were commonplace, respectable even. One of the young partners in the firm, a woman in her mid-thirties, devoted a considerable portion of her well-into-the-six-figures salary traveling to Amsterdam, the better to enhance an Art Nouveau tableau that had colonized her entire left arm. But Ariel was not yet 15, and while no one has a blameless adolescence, invisible lapses are easier to forget than a lavish Celtic knot twisting around a wrist or the lyrics for some Arcade Fire song emblazoned on a calf. “What are you afraid of?” asked Lily’s grandmother, an exemplum of liberal acuity at almost 95. A widow for over twenty years, she still lived on her own, in her Westmont apartment. She was always the first person Lily turned to for advice. They talked on the phone, twice a week at the very least. “I’m not sure, Bubbe. That it’s the thin edge of the wedge. That next it will be a tongue stud or an eyebrow piercing. That she’ll do something she’ll regret.” “She’s sure to do something she regrets. That’s called being human. Listen, darling. Your grandfather had a tattoo, do you remember it?” Lily paused. “Yes. Of course.” “He never spoke of it, you know. Never. I always supposed he hated it. But once, a few years before he died, I saw an article in the paper, about how they could use lasers as erasers. I showed it to him. All he said was, ‘It was the only thing the bastards gave me. No one is taking it away.’” “But Bubbe, this is not at all the same thing, it’s . . .” “Darling, it’s not the same thing, and it’s exactly the same thing. I’m talking about memory. If next year, she doesn’t like it, she can get rid of it. But it might be that thirty, forty years from now, it’s there still, whatever it is, and wherever. And if it is, you’re the one she’ll remember. She’ll carry you with her, always.” “Bubbe --” “You’ll decide what you decide. Just don’t let her put it anywhere that’s going to sag.” “I’m going over to Tanya’s,” Ariel says to Lily on Christmas Eve. “I won’t be late.” “Don’t get lost in the storm.” “Please. This is west coast snow is for wusses. I’m a Montreal girl, remember?” “I remember.” Ariel leaves, and the silence settled in. Nothing but the hush, hush sound of flakes on the window, and the lovely, old-fashioned, clomp-clomp-clomp of the horses who passed by each night, round about this time. Lily is still charmed by this seeming anachronism: city police on horseback, on their way to patrol the nearby park. She smiles at the sound, snow-muted tonight. She thinks about the pawing of reindeer on the roof, thinks about Eric Blitzstein, wonders what he had become - maybe shell see if hes on Facebook - wonders what she herself had become, wonders what Ariel would become. From the miscellany in her drawer, she extracts the note, the Christmas list. “Surprise me,” Ariel had said. Lily slips her hand under her shirt, tests the skin on her shoulder. It is almost healed, now. It hadn’t hurt nearly as much as she imagined it might. Five numbers, discreet but visible. She hadn’t had to think hard to remember the sequence. She had seen it often enough, growing up. She would show them to her daughter in the morning. She would tell her about her grandfather, whom she had never met. She would tell her what the numbers meant. Ariel might, or might not, be surprised; but she would have her answer. And then, it would be up to her. Then, she would simply have to decide.
Posted on: Thu, 18 Dec 2014 16:34:46 +0000