A couple of weeks before Christmas the judge buys a fourteen-foot-high spruce tree for the living room, whose ceiling is twelve feet high. “I could’ve told you it was twelve foot,” says Howie, and he saws off the top, producing a second, little tree he mounts on a plank and gives to Abel for his room. That night, after coming back from the bar, Abel and I decorate it. I make aluminum-foil balls. He makes an angel out of cigarette papers and a Q-tip. On her tiny cotton-swab head he glues strands of my hair.
“She looks like a lunatic,” I say.
“All the best angels do,” he says.
A couple of nights later there’s a party to decorate the big tree. It turns out that the judge owns boxes and boxes of antique ornaments. He says that when each of his three marriages fell apart, these boxes were all he walked away with. In exchange, his wives got cars and houses, Limoges china, Waterford crystal.
“But I came out the winner,” he declares, holding a blue glass bird to the light.
About fifty people show up, and for a change some of them arrive bearing alcohol and food. The tap dancer, who is now studying opera, treats us to an inflamed version of “O, Holy Night.” Abel plays the piano. Somebody hands out carol sheets and we all sing with great gusto. I am happy. I am drunk on the crème de menthe an elderly woman wearing sparkly red slacks keeps pouring into my glass.
My hangover the next morning is a sore throat and cough by the time I’m ready to go home. Abel takes my temperature and says I have a mild fever. He phones for a taxi. “Don’t bother dragging yourself to the bar,” he says. “I’ll come by your place first thing in the morning.”
Outside my apartment, Norman, the guy who wants to make the documentary about an insect, is waiting for me. Last week I slipped him two hundred dollars and asked him to pick up a camera that I could give to Abel for Christmas. He found one and has it with him: a refurbished Nikon he claims is worth at least five hundred dollars. “A steal at a hundred and seventy-five,” he says.
I let him keep the change, simply to get rid of him faster. For the rest of the day I sleep, waking up once around dinnertime to eat an orange. When I wake up again it’s three o’clock in the morning. My sore throat and cough are gone. I’m light-headed, though, wound up, as if I’d drunk a glass of champagne. I get dressed and call a taxi. If I’m not going to sleep any more tonight, I may as well lie awake next to Abel. At the last minute I decide to bring the camera so that we have something under our little tree. Where’s the wrapping paper? I can’t find it. I empty the purple velvet Seagram’s bag I keep my pennies in and use that.
The house is unlocked, as it usually is. In the front hall the sleeping dogs lift their muzzles. “It’s only me,” I whisper. Buster, the Pekinese, barks once. Lights are on everywhere, but it’s quiet.
There’s a line of light under Abel’s door. He must be reading. Or he fell asleep reading.
I go in.
The woman, curled against his back, opens her eyes. She sits up, pulling the sheet over her breasts. It’s the jazz bagpipe player. We stare at each other. I feel as though hands are cupping and uncupping my ears. She punches Abel’s shoulder and he wakes and pushes the hair away from his face. “Hey,” he says, drunkenly. “Louise.”
I approach the bed.
“When did you get here?” he says.
I hit him across the head with the Seagram’s bag. He lifts his arms to protect himself. I hit him again. I‘m yelling now. “Bastard! Bastard!” The woman runs to the wall. I throw the bag at the tree, which topples over. “Merry Christmas!” I scream.
Out in the hall I stagger. I slip on the stairs. Howie appears. His lean and worried face. “Louise?” He hurries over. I get to my feet and shove past him. Doors open. “What’s going on?” bellows the judge. I hear Abel now, calling, thudding down the stairs. I hurry up. The front door won’t open.
“Louise.” He’s right behind me. He touches my arm.
I swing around. “I hate you!” I punch his chest. “I hate you!”
He sways backwards.
“You’re sick!” I scream. “You’re evil! I hate you!”
The taxi I arrived in is still out front. I bang on the driver’s window. At home, on the mat in front of the kitchen sink, I collapse. The phone rings. The sun rises. I go to the bathroom and wash my face.
I feel as if I’ve been pulled back into a pit of loneliness, and everybody I’ve ever known is down here. Don Shaw. Troy, poor Troy. Tim Todd … did Tim ever get out? Mr. Fraser never did, this is where he died. My father and Mrs. Carver got out but it took them both a long time.
All the lonely people, all of them so much braver than I am. Alice, selling books door-to-door, Debbie with her bridge championships, Aunt Verna lugging her steamer trunk up from Texas. Even my mother, after she left us. Whatever else might be said about my mother, it took guts to traipse around the Prairies looking for work, never once breaking down and asking if she could come home.
Maybe I should leave. Jump on a bus and go wherever it takes me. Change my name.