Rosellen was like a raku master, folding a flaw into a tea bowl. “Decmember” was neither accidental nor glib. It was Rosellen’s intention to bestow the La-Z-Boy on whoever was first to call the flub to her attention. Having the party and getting rid of the rocker might, she hoped, help exorcise her control-freak predecessor. In the name of all that’s wholesome, J.C., I cast you out! Begone!
She pinned her handiwork to the lobby bulletin board.
Santa Marians who were not Brigitte complimented her on her initiative, welcomed her to the building, said how much they were looking forward to the party, and oh, by the way, could they bring some chips, some crab dip, a flagon of something reviving? If “Decmember” was remarked, it went unmentioned; Rosellen was fated to remain the chair’s long-term guardian.
To Brigitte alone fell the burden of qualm. For one thing, why not “Christmas Decorating Party”? In “Holiday” she read the erosion of all she held dear, the decline of the west, hell’s handcart poised on a downward incline, wheels well greased. Rosellen lashed herself to the mast, withstood the old woman’s sirocco of ire. Brigitte bitched, Rosellen beamed. Brigitte groused, Rosellen glowed. Her charm offensive worked. Brigitte thawed. On Decmember 9, she was in the lobby with her Marks & Spencer fruitcake platter, the first to arrive. Her icicle earrings were magnificent. She couldn’t stop saying, not in the moment, nor for weeks to come, that she’d had a lovely time, just lovely, couldn’t understand why no one had thought of this before. The only tarnish on her tine was that the treetop angel, the angel given her by her sister and that she in turn bestowed upon the Santa Maria for its use and enjoyment in perpetuity, was nowhere to be found.
“Where can it be?” Brigitte persisted in asking. She looked everywhere, even unwrapped the purely decorative boxes. No angel.
“Let’s just make do,” said Bonnie, none too patiently. She’d appointed herself Rosellen’s party lieutenant.
“Make do with what?” was Brigitte’s sharp retort.
Brigitte, who grew up poor, held in practised disregard la-di-da penthouse people. Her antipathy was further provoked by the near visibility of the new tenant’s labia; Bonnie had come upon a thrift-store cache of vintage micro-skirts and delighted not only in wearing them but in telling everyone what a bargain they’d been.
“Sure they were cheap, there’s nothing to them,” Brigitte sniffed to Rosellen, who smiled, rerouted the conversation.
“Hey, Nicola Harwood, let’s take this jolly Santa and stick him on the tip-tip-tippy top,” said Philip, who did not live in the Santa Maria. Why was he at the party? Why was he butting in? What did Bonnie think she was doing? No one else had invited a friend along. Why had he brought that fizzy wine, why did he insist on talking like Bette Davis?
“Good idea, Davie Denman,” said Bonnie, who clambered on a chair to reach the highest branch. This was foolish, everyone knew it was dangerous, how accidents happen; also, it afforded anyone who cared to look an even closer glimpse of her lady parts.
“Santa Baby,” sang Philip.
As Eartha Kitt impersonations went, it wasn’t bad, as even Brigitte had to admit.
Christmas advanced, a quickening march. The missing angel proved a bone Brigitte could neither swallow nor bury. She pestered Rosellen with phone calls, notes under the door. Any sign? Any luck? Any clues? Finally, on Christmas Eve afternoon, Rosellen made an eleventh-hour trip to Canadian Tire, hoping that among the picked-over remnants of seasonal decor she could locate a reasonable facsimile, something Brigitte would find more satisfactory than the Santa Bonnie had rigged to the treetop using a combination of a paper clip and the wire ribbing from the cork of Philip’s Henkell Trocken.
Rosellen needed a restorative cup of Murchie’s Christmas Blend before hauling out the stepladder and crowning the tree with the new recruit, who was Black, who held to her lips a herald trumpet. Brigitte would look askance, but Rosellen thought she was snazzy. She boiled the kettle, lifted the lid of the Brown Betty. Slack-jaw wonder. There she was, the AWOL object of so much fretful concern, the pale-faced original, beaming beatifically, halo, feathers, tiny harp intact, if ever so slightly moistened. How? Rosellen had used the teapot the day prior. It was innocent of angel. Who? When? Why on earth – then she whiffed, for the first of many times, the mélange of what she came to know as “Eau de J.C.” What she eventually identified as the formula of Armani + Gauloises + Poppers. The La-Z-Boy squeaked, rocked gently, as if someone had risen from its embrace. As if the seat might still be warm. She checked. It was not. She thought, How strange. She thought no more about it.
Brigitte had a stroke that next spring. She managed to call 911 herself, was able to wave with her right hand from the stretcher as they carried her off to St. Paul’s; in her left she clutched the little overnight bag she kept packed with just such an emergency in mind. Rosellen went to see her in Extended Care. Patient visiting had not been covered in her property management course. The author of those correspondence materials had never imagined unlocking the combination of Santa Maria + West End Vancouver + 1985. Rosellen took up her position just as the plague years were gathering strength, amassing arms, sighting young men in the crosshairs. John from 201, Brandon from 304, Trevor from 206, both James and Robert from 109, and half a dozen others she could still name if she put her mind to it, all struck down. She went to check in on them, also at St. Paul’s, went at first because she wanted to, and then because she felt she must. She went to the funerals, too, until they became too frequent, too much to bear, desultory, often sparsely attended, and the inevitable, dispiriting, yet somehow admirable appearance of one elderly drag queen done up in dowager’s weeds who always arrived five minutes into the proceedings and made a show of taking a place in the front row of mourners. Better to stay home. Better to light a single candle and wait by the phone. Someone might call. When there was a funeral, there was a vacancy. The show must go on.
“Keep an eye on my place,” Brigitte would say, whenever Rosellen dropped by. “I want it to look just like I left it, not a spoon out of place, when I come back.”
Which she never did. Rosellen watched her weaken, watched the waning of her will. She was gone before Victoria Day. Suite for rent.
Summer passed. Days dwindled. Rosellen grew accustomed to, if not fond of, the La-Z-Boy. Her poster – for which Letraset and photocopied clip art from the public library had been employed – was blameless.
“Where’s Philip?” she inquired of Bonnie at the Second Annual Holiday Decorating Party, December 8, 1985.
“With Gary.”
“Gary?”
“His new boyfriend.”
Rosellen took note of the exaggerated eye roll, didn’t inquire. She had lots on her mind. She was puzzled. It was that damned angel again. She herself had taken down last year’s decorations; there was not the same communal enthusiasm for the dismantling as there had been for the assembly. She waited until Twelfth Night had passed, as Brigitte had directed she must. Anxious to avoid any future kerfuffle, Rosellen took great, great care to put the angel, the Brigitte-approved model, mummified in tissue paper, in a box, alongside some red and silver balls and a whole flock of partridges. She took the trouble to write “Treetop Angel” on the outside of the box. She remembered saying, “There you go, you rascal. See you next year.”
The
