A Treasured Gift

 

She was feeling her old cheerful self, following Cliff to the front door, obligingly helping him with his green all-weather coat. Just as she had used to do when the children were young and still asleep when he readied himself for departure. The thought of her impending birthday, on her mind the last week, momentarily slipped her mind.

Her husband turned, smiled at her - a tall sandy-haired man with kind grey eyes that always made her feel like melting with pleasure when he smiled at her. She returned her husband's smile, waiting for a goodbye kiss as he buttoned up. She watched perplexed as his smile turned to a puzzled frown, followed his downward gaze and saw his long narrow fingers fumbling with a button-hole sans button. Damn. She'd seen the button come off the evening before.

She raised her eyes to his. Frown gone, a flicker of amusement danced over his lips, twitched his cheeks as he bent to kiss her, then was off. No reproach; his silence more than adequate. Odd, how a little thing like that could depress her lately. Even when she told herself he could sew it back on himself. She knew he was perfectly capable but felt that like so many other things it was her duty.

Later, preparing to send the children off to school, the girls arguing as usual, David placidly ignoring them, eating his robust breakfast, the twins whining about who was going to bring an apple to their grade one teacher. She responded automatically to the demands, a half-ear bent to her children's bouts of competitive jostling.

"You've just got to lend me some of your records, Trish, you've got to!" Caroline turned to face her mother, including her in her desperate plea: "Mom, she's got to! I promised Marilyn she could count on me for some cool records for her sleep-in!"

"Don't got to", Trish returned imperturbably. "You want cool records, get your own. That'll teach you to hoard your allowance. That'll teach you to promise things that don't belong to you", satisfaction at the reasonableness of her argument visible on the pursed piousness of her mouth.

"Have to", Sheila corrected, abstractedly. Caroline turned in triumph to your sister. "See! Mom says you have to!"

"Don't! I don't have to ... do I, Mom?"

"What? Oh. Well, don't you think it would be nice to help your sister out of her dilemma?" Sheila asked, knowing the reply. "Well then, consider this", she mediated: "how about renting them out? So much per record per day?"

She left the girls to agree on a rental fee, turned her attention to her twins, Jill and Jason. A compromise soon reached there. Jason could take the apple and Jill would raid the fall garden of its rusty glory of marigolds and zinnias. Sparingly, Sheila cautioned the eager child.

"He offered me fifty cents", David informed his quarrelling, querulous, placating family; apropos of nothing.

"Who did, dear?" Sheila asked, handing a pair of reasonably blunt secateurs to Jill.

"The old guy just moved in up the street."

"Old guy? She knew of no old people on the street. "Where, where did they move in?" she pursued.

"Next to Harrisons's", David clarified.

"Why, I saw those people, Margaret Harrison introduced me to them David, he's not at all old."

"But I refused. I enjoyed raking up their lawn."

"David", Sheila persisted, "your own mother is about the same age; do you think I'm old?"

"I don't think it's right to charge someone for doing something you enjoy, do you, Mom?"

They talked tangentially, each involved in a solitary thought process, David proud of his code of conduct, refusing a well-earned tip, his mother upset that her son identified her as 'old'. I should just forget it, it's just the way kids talk; they're thoughtless. He doesn't really think I'm old.

The house emptied of their clamour, the only sounds left that of the FM radio playing Telemann's Water Music (which should have soothed her but did not), she inspected her face in the powder-room mirror. Pushing her hair back at the temples she counted new silver hairs, let her dark brown hair fall back around her face, hiding them. Carefully scrutinized her cheeks, leaner than they had used to be when youth had fleshed them. That delicate mapwork she traced with her fingertips around eyes and lips vulgarly identified as wrinkles, a companion of ageing.

Leaving the breakfast mess, she sat listlessly on the sofa in the living room, looked at the early morning sun streaming through the dining room windows opposite. She recalled how upset she'd been at her thirtieth, how Cliff had assured her chronology meant nothing, it was how you felt. Then it was thirty-five. At thirty-five she told herself she was closer to forty than she was to thirty. That crisis was weathered too. She adjusted to the statistics describing her as 'middle-aged'.

She needed someone to assure her she was still vital, attractive. Her husband too busy; the successful executive personified. Immature, she told herself. He probably thinks you've outgrown that childishness. But she felt inconsolable. If David thought her old, did Cliff?

On Tuesday her mother called to remind her she was expecting the whole family; her sisters and brothers and their families for a little 'get-together'. "But Mother, I'm afraid Saturday evening is out of the question I told you last week, we've got tickets for a T.S.O. event and we've made reservations to eat out."

"All right, dear". her mother acceded, "we'll switch to Friday night." Damn! I'm thirty-nine and she still treats me like a kid. Still throwing 'surprise' birthday parties, as though I'd never suspect, from one year to another. At least to her mother she wasn't old.

Wednesday evening, bridge night. Moody, lethargic and didn't want to go, knew how everyone depended on their little clique to get out. Anyway, Cliff informed her cheerfully, he planned on a work-free evening at home. Monopoly with the kids. Just to jog their memories that they have a father. Great, one night when I could've enjoyed his company, I'm going out.

At June's place the three old friends greeted her, the den theirs. Everyone else banished one night a week when they were together, boosting morales, gossiping; a rejuvenating process; for a brief few hours they were not matrons, but school chums.

A gift-wrapped box on the card table; never forgetting birthdays or anniversaries. She tore the paper off the box, the others quipping negligees, black, silky, slinky; she could model it for them. She knew whatever was in that box would be meant as a tender little poke at her sensibilities.

"Sheila, move it!" they chorused. On Lana's fortieth, she'd been presented with a gleaming set of false teeth, and Doris had been given a long pair of woolly pink bloomers. June, the youngest, had yet to look forward to a dreaded token of the others' affectionate spite. Sheila was considering adult diapers for June. She pulled the top off the box trepidatiously, to then withdraw a fine bone china flower-laden basket. She displayed the treasure.

"It's lovely, girls. I'm really touched. Thank you so much."

"Glad you like it, love. We took a vote, decided the only one with some class would get your gift this year". Do they think I can't take the same ribbing? Is that how delicate they suspect my emotional equilibrium is?

She played a poor hand of bridge. When June brought in a beautifully iced cake and the coffee, they sat around and gossiped. Doris rendering an account of her brother's desertion by his wife of twelve years. "My heart just breaks, thinking of him alone now. He was crazy about her. And the kids, all under ten. My God, I don't know how he'll manage."

"Why'd she leave? Isn't he the youngest of your family, the one you always said had a perfect marriage?" "Well, yes. But how was I supposed to know it wasn't as perfect as it looked? I don't know why she left. She had everything she could want, far as I know." They fell silent. If everything was so good, why would a woman leave? They relished hearing about someone else's misfortunes; it made their own lives appear much more valuable.

"Well", Sheila finally burst, "maybe things just weren't as they seemed to be. What if her husband was devoted to her in an absent-minded kind of way, what if her children depended on her for everything, and took no note of her as a person. There's just so much a person can give. It's not fair, there has to be some kind of, I don't know, a more tangible reward than just the satisfaction of giving all the time. Maybe she got tired of being taken for granted."

"Maybe", Doris conceded. An awkward silence. All eyes appraising her. Lana as the oldest, the spokeswoman, cleared her throat and asked: "Sheila? Anything the matter, dear?" Sheila felt a blush overwhelm her will to betray nothing. They always took everything so literally.

"No! No, of course not. You needn't think I'm about to run off somewhere. I'm happy with my life. It's just that I can empathize. Sometimes the woman, the mother does kind of get left out when the satisfactions, the recognition, the plaudits are being handed out. Don't you think?" Silence, consternation, strain; they soon broke up the gathering.

Thursday morning she went shopping and watched a muscular young man load her groceries into the car trunk. She thanked him, smiled gratitude and offered a tip. He smiled back, said "y're welcome, ma'am". Used to be "Miss". Driving out of the plaza, she passed the bus stop, tooted, gestured to a neighbour to get in with her parcels.

"Nice of you to stop." 

"Not at all. I know how much I appreciated a lift when I didn't have a car."
"Harold and I", her neighbour said, "plan on getting another car in a few years' time. You've had a head-start on us, been married longer". And that's a back-handed way of saying I'm older than you, Sheila mused.

"You know, Sheila", Amy confided blithely "I do so envy you."

"Oh?"

"You seem to have so much energy, such verve. From a distance, it's hard to tell you from a much younger woman."

"Oh."

"In fact I was telling Harold just the other day I hope to look as good as you when I'm your age."

The miserable cat. Her spleen will age her twice as fast when she reaches forty.

And when David came home from school, enthusing about 'old man' Harrison agreeing to sign on to his paper route, she was thrilled again. Trish went at her again about wearing eye makeup to school. Sheila was adamant. No thirteen-year-old should wear makeup. Her daughter wasn't interested in lipstick, something her mother might allow; she stamped upstairs. Caroline, front and forward, assured her mother she wasn't interested in mucking her face up like a clown.

Jill later insisted it was her turn to 'smash' the potatoes for dinner. Jason tossed the salad, messing up the kitchen floor. The dentist's office called to remind about Caroline's appointment, and the girl gloomed from the kitchen to the dining room, a suffering waif as she set the table. By the time Cliff called to say he'd be an hour late - don't wait on dinner, he'd grab something at the cafeteria - she was gritting her teeth.

But that was just the appetizer. Cliff's hour dragged into three. In that interval dinner was eaten, Jill and Jason reminding everyone they'd 'cooked' dinner. David whistled his ritualistic monotone ("Well gee, Mom, I've got to practise my embrasure.") Trish was icily polite with her -- 'yes-mother', 'no-thank-you-mother', and Caroline still grumped about her grim anticipation of a dental visit.

David's turn to wipe the dishes. Like his father, a perfectionist. Excruciating, determined to wipe the gold-leaf pattern from every platter, assiduously applying the tea towel. Trish standing by, glowering glum impatience; her turn to put everything away. Her silent antagonism unsettling Sheila.

Still later, strains of Caroline's recorder drifting downstairs, piercingly (the sopraninio) when she hit a series of screeching notes. Trish practised her scales (working out her aggression) on the old upright in the recreation room, badly in need of tuning. In their crowded little den, Jill and Jason debating whose program choice it would be. Jason belligerently standing in front of the television, daring Jill to change the station.

They've got to resolve their differences, work everything out themselves, halting her instinct to intervene. They've got to learn to deal with their own social problems, you won't always be around. David, to her relief was outside with his friends, playing street hockey, not practising his trumpet for the school band. She knew none of her children had any promise as virtuosic performers. She also knew the auditory ambiance was house-chaotic. No wonder Cliff worked late.

Nowhere was privacy, anything hinting of temporary isolation from all the distractions. All those rooms in a spacious house, every one pre-empted, or too proximate to the tenanted one for comfort. She crept up to her bedroom, shut the door, settled in an armchair, a load of junior library books on the floor. To select a few for her reading session at the school her youngest attended.

Isolation from the din short-lived. A tentative series of taps, becoming impatient knocks. Jill's curly head around the corner of the slowly opening door. Her indignant figure planted before Sheila. Demanding shrilly, self-righteously, that Sheila "go right down 'midjitly, 'cause Jason's 'haviour's 'trocious".

By the time their father hauled himself home the younger ones were in bed, Sheila not the least bit inclined to spend what was left of the evening in chummy conversation. Early next morning Sheila woke hearing someone tiptoeing downstairs, heard china clinking, too tired to nudge herself out of half-slumber. When she did descend, there was the table set, everything prepared. Trish bustled about the stove, seconded by Caroline in perfect, accord chiming "Happy Birthday, Mom!". She was touched.

As the morning progressed, Jill complained about the oatmeal 'mush' she had to eat, complained further when David kicked her under the table, hissing this was a 'special' morning. Her birthday; crossing the critical threshold of the mature thirties into the unknown. Cliff had kissed her a purely mechanical ritual farewell. But stopped an instant to peer at her, leaving her wondering how she must look. Dropped her eyes, fumbled with the cord of her dressing gown.

Soon as the kitchen was cleaned up, upstairs to check the beds. All done, even hers and Cliff's. She took a moment to correct a potentially emotional scene later in the day when Jill would discover she'd placed her stuffed turtle on its back. Too bleary-eyed - it happened before. The child frantic that Myrtle had spent the day on her back. Common knowledge how dangerous that was for turtles. Poor Myrtle half dead from hapless sun exposure and wild prowling turtle-eating animals.
 

At the school, she gathered the usual batch of children, marching them to the library where they grouped around as she took a rocking chair. They sat docilely at her feet. One little girl on her lap, possessively helping turn pages, solemnly telling the others to "shush", unable to view the pictures. The children's focus as she read stories always moved her. Some children drew closer. Pieces of her skirt in grubby little fingers, twisting the fabric with worry for the little squirrel in the story. Others stroked her nylon-covered legs, played with the buckles on her shoes. It was all she could do to hold her attention to the text. Tactile contact important.

Two additional sessions with older kids. She went to the teachers' lounge to lubricate her throat with that vile instant coffee. Eleanor, school principal, was there, pleasant. Wondering if Sheila would be interested in coming in one other day. Work specifically with slow learners. "And by the way", Eleanor said, "have you given any more thought to coming back to work? You taught for years, your presence here ample testimony you enjoy the work. We could use you, working with the younger ones, kids from broken homes needing a little extra warmth."

"I've thought about it. I don't know if I could manage a job right now. I know all about Parkinson's Law", she laughed ruefully. "I'm not certain it would accommodate itself to my current frame of mind. I don't feel I have that much flexibility now."

Lunch time. David wolfed his food, anxious to return for broomball. Caroline and Trish had their lunch at school, bused to a junior high. Just Jill and Jason. "Mom, what kind of cake you baking?" Sheila looked blankly at her daughter. Bake a birthday cake for her own birthday? Jason looked interested, recommended a devil's food cake. Jill argued for strawberry cake.

Heading off another dispute, Sheila claimed the flavour would a surprise, her birthday, her choice. When they left, she found an old Centennial cake recipe; maple syrup would be the flavour of the day. She assembled the ingredients. Miserably.

She woke after a brief afternoon nap that had her steeped in self-pity, weeping for years gone. Her trapped in mother-love, children-dependence, submerging her in a state of emotional indenture beyond her will. She wanted her independence, her time, her spontaneity, her choices in life restored.

When she woke she felt a touch on her cheek, someone breathing beside her. Cliff, kneeling beside the bed. Wiping her damp eyes, bending to kiss her forehead. A flood of tears, again. He gathered her up and rocked her.

"I'm sorry. I don't know what's wrong with me."

"It's all right. Don't say anything else."

He gave her an antique brooch, a cameo of a mother and child, to celebrate her motherhood, no, her birthday. The cameo, carved from a piece of glowing amethyst, hung from a delicate gold chain, a gold pin affixed to its back, so it could be worn either way.

Exquisite. "I love it", she told him.

"You're exquisite, and I love you", he said. More soberly: "I've been thinking about all that time spent at the office, bringing work home. I'm not arranging my time well. I talked to Fraser this morning. We had a good long talk, and he understands. Things will be just a little different from now on."

Treasure this, Sheila told herself. Not the cameo; his perception, his unanticipated empathy. But don't fool yourself. He means well, things will be different at first. Then there'll be a certain amount of benign forgetfulness, recidivism. The old pattern re-established. 

 

 Time being, I'll wallow in this pleasure. I'll be stronger for the thought of his delicate intuition. A quality I thought only women were endowed with.