by Jean Little
Mopsy … Button … Sweetie … Min thought dazedly, as she watched the two stare at each other.
“She surely is a sweet wee lassie,” Jess crooned.
“Cassie,” Min said, knowing, all at once, what the puppy’s name was. “Her name is Cassie. But, Jess, is Emily … Emily didn’t … Has she …?”
She could not finish the question. What if Jess had bought Cassie because she’d heard that Emily had died in the night?
“Emily is still alive. I called before I woke you,” Jess said quietly. “If she grows strong enough, she’ll come home to us and Cassie can teach her how to be a normal little dog. Jack thinks Emily has never had a chance at a normal life. He also thinks she may be a Tibetan Spaniel rather than a Peke. But don’t worry about robbing Emily of love by loving Cassie, Min. Your heart holds more than enough love for two small dogs — love I believe you’ve had scant chance to spend. Look. Here’s her Christmas stocking and here’s yours.”
“How about mine?” Toby asked from the doorway in a voice blurred with sleep.
“I was about to call you. You must be half dead, but I was sure you would not want to miss anything,” Jess said.
“When did you come in?” Min asked. Then, before he could answer, she held up her puppy. “Look!” she cried. “Isn’t she perfect?”
Toby blinked. Staring at the tiny wiggling mop in Min’s arms, he asked, “What is it? A new kind of feather duster?”
Then, as Min prepared to blast him, he gave way to an enormous smile and extended his hand open for sniffing to the nose in the small black face.
“She’s my present — and she’s no duster. Cassie is my Pekingese,” Min said, pretending to be huffy but really bursting with pride.
Maude gave such an outraged meow that Min went straight to the piano bench and fetched the catnip mouse she had hidden there before she went to bed.
“Okay, Queen Maude, here’s a gift for you,” she said, stooping to toss it to the cat.
Maude turned her back on the puppy and leaped onto the toy as joyously as a kitten. She tossed it in the air, caught it, jumped on it and rubbed her face against it. Cassie watched her with her round eyes practically popping out.
By this time Toby had collected his stocking. He sat on the floor to investigate its contents. Despite her curiosity about hers, Min was almost too entranced by Cassie to dig into the heap of small presents that bulged within it, stuffing it to the top.
Finally Jess reached out, captured the puppy and lifted her onto her lap.
“Start on that stocking before I give it all away to some other girl,” she said. “I have never filled a stocking for you before and I want to see if I did a good job.”
“You mean Santa didn’t fill it?” Min teased, trying to look shocked. “I always thought —”
“Min, do you want me to expire before your very eyes? I am one of his helpers, you dolt.”
At last, Min began to discover what Santa Claus, a.k.a. Jess, had brought her. There was a package of Hi-liner pens in assorted colours, a marzipan pig, a beanbag shaped like an owl, a book that told her fortune for every day in the coming year, a pad of Post-it Notes, a tube of striped toothpaste, a box of Macintosh’s Toffee, a chocolate letter M, a mandarin orange and a toonie. In the toe was a small fancy box containing a digital wristwatch.
Min had never owned a watch. She gaped at it and drew in her breath sharply. Toby glanced over and whistled.
“Cool,” he said and began to peel his orange.
“I was dimly aware of you searching the house for clocks the other day,” Jess said, grinning. “Finally I realized why. Now, you two, let’s leave the rest until after breakfast.”
“No. I want you two to have your presents from me,” Min said. She felt her face flushing with uncertainty and excitement. After all, she had never done this before. But she left Cassie on Jess’s knee while she dug out the presents she had wrapped for Jess and Toby. All the parcels looked small and insignificant now. With her heart beating fast, she presented them without a word, scooping Cassie out of Jess’s arms so she would have both hands free. For the first time, she actually ignored the wriggly puppy while she watched.
Jess undid first the tiny perfect carving of a chickadee and then the honey-scented candles. “Oh, Min, how did you guess?” she said, clearly delighted. She stroked the chickadee’s tiny head with a fingertip and sniffed the honey-scented candles.
“Raymah told me what you’d like,” Min mumbled.
“Well done, Raymah,” Jess said. Then she stood up and came over to kiss Min’s cheek. “Thank you so much, my sweet.”
Min was horrified. She had loved the lapful of loot she had taken out of her stocking, but she had not remembered to thank Jess. She certainly had not kissed her!
“I’m sorry,” she began, blushing scarlet. “I never said thank you …. But I love the things.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Your shining face thanked me for every trifle and your joy over Cassie was beautiful to behold.”
Now Min’s attention had shifted, though. She was watching Toby out of the corner of her eye. He ripped off the paper and at once began to leaf through the book’s pages, exclaiming with delight at the pictures and the detailed history of each breed. He didn’t say thank you either, but Min saw how much he loved it and realized Jess had been right about words not always being needed.
Jess peered down at the picture of a champion Pekingese he was looking at and smiled.
“Good choice,” she said. “Now let’s eat. The eggnog is poured and waffle batter is waiting.”
Min could not bear to put Cassie down on the floor. Keeping her on her lap, she sipped her eggnog and then started in on her first bite of waffle.
“I can’t believe this,” Toby said, staring at Cassie’s head, which had popped up to see what they were up to.
“Me neither,” Min answered, smiling a smile he had never glimpsed before. His startled expression told her she had been transformed somehow and she ducked her head and hid her hot face behind Cassie’s. When she raised it again, she was almost back to her usual self.
“She’ll have to learn some table manners,” Jess said firmly, pretending to glare at the puppy.
“Like what?” Toby asked through a mouthful of waffle.
“Dogs watch people at tables eat, but they stay on the floor while they watch and they get no handouts during meals. Today being Christmas, we’ll pretend Min is not sneaking tidbits into the mouth of a greedy Peke pup.”
They all laughed as Cassie gave a small yip of protest. Then, after they had cleared the table, Jess led the way back to the front room, got out the Bible and read the story of the first Christmas aloud. The old story made Min think of the homeless stone family downtown. She was glad the baby Jesus had been born in a warm stable instead of by the roadside.
The rest of the day went on being magical, even when Cassie tried to eat a piece of toffee and got her baby teeth thoroughly stuck, and when Maude Motley, wanting to be a part of things, ate the wishbone before they could pull it. Both pets survived, but not without drama.
Toby kept eyeing the telephone, sure his father would call. But the only long-distance ring was from his mother, saying that they had arrived safely and that opening their stockings on the airplane had been a great success.
That night, Cassie was put to bed in a snug box fitted up for a small dog’s bedroom, but Min and Toby and even Jess knew perfectly well that she was going to spend most of the night snuggled up with Min. They were all tired after the day. They had worked on a gigantic jigsaw puzzle Toby had given them both as a family present. They put on a CD of British choirs singing carols. They had eaten enough turkey for four or five people and had been almost too full for dessert.
“We can save it,” Jess said. “Midnight snacks.”
“I don’t think I can make it to midnight,” Toby said, yawning widely. “But I want to download some music into my iPod.”
The two of them consulted on which tune
s he should choose and Jess let them pay for them with her credit card.
Nobody turned on the television. Nobody switched on the radio to listen to the news. It was as though the three people, the cat and the puppy spent their first Christmas together inside an enchanted bubble into which nothing worrying could break.
When it was time to go to bed, Min finally got up the courage to carry the drawing she had made into Jess’s bedroom. She had planned to prop it up against the pillows, but Jess herself came in and caught her in the act. She took the drawing and gazed at it, her eyes wide.
It was a picture of a Christmas tree under a starry sky. On its branches were the decorations they had used, but next to the felt and feather birds sat real ones — chickadees and a cardinal. At the foot, a blue jay strutted. There was also a baby fox scampering off with one of the balls and Maude Motley sitting up tall, gazing up at the star on the top. There was no pot to hold the trunk because the tree was clearly alive, but it looked as though it was celebrating Christmas from its unseen roots to the star on its tip. At the bottom, carefully lettered, were the words A Tree for Jess.
“Oh, Min, how … how wonderful,” Jess whispered.
The hug that followed was nice but, when Min and Cassie were in bed, Min knew that the look on Jess’s face and the hush with which she spoke were her most precious moments — next to her unbelievable introduction to her Cassie.
She lay there with the puppy — tired out at last — curled up next to her chin and started going over it all, the first truly merry Christmas she could remember. But she drowsed off before she had finished gloating over even half the jewel-bright memories.
And no bad dreams came to shadow her joy.
10
Lost Fathers
THEY ALL SLEPT IN and had to rush to be ready for church.
Jess went to the old stone church that was right across from the bench on which Min had sat studying the statue of the happy family less than a week before. Glimpsing it when they got out of the van, Min found it almost impossible to believe that her life could have changed so drastically in such a short time. Only a couple of hours after she’d been sitting gazing at that stone family, Jessica Hart had swept her out of the Children’s Aid office and taken her and her unhappiness into a world she had never dreamed would be hers. It seemed that she had been caught up in a dizzying whirl ever since.
To Min, the naked people still looked cold. She dropped a step behind the others and sent a quick wave to the baby festooned with snow.
I sat right there and hoped for a miracle, she remembered, and I got one!
As they waited to cross the street, Jess told them about being taken to this church when she was six by her adoptive parents.
“I was in the children’s choir, and when I was nine, I actually sang a solo on Christmas morning. I remember shaking in my shoes,” she said, laughing and leading the way up the aisle.
The church was crowded and they had to sit in the second row. A large Christmas tree stood near them and Min smiled as she caught its woodsy scent.
“Do you remember the song?” Toby whispered to Jess once they had settled themselves.
“I do, as it so happens,” Jess told him quietly. “It was a verse from ‘The Huron Carol.’ I suppose they thought it was made to order for an Indian child, although, to my knowledge, I was never wrapped in a ragged robe of rabbit skin.”
Min had no idea what she meant until they sang the hymn as part of the service. It reminded her not of Jess as a child but of herself. She stood and joined in singing the words and smiled at the verse Jess had quoted:
Within a lodge of broken bark
The tender babe was found.
A ragged robe of rabbit skin
Enwrapped his beauty ’round …
But his parents were with him, Min told herself. And they had not left him there alone. And the rabbit skin might not have been ragged.
When she had been fostered by Natalie Snyder, her little girl Holly had had a rabbit-skin muff, and it had been beautifully soft and not a bit ragged. Min had stroked it and longed for one just like it, even though Holly Snyder hardly ever used it. It ended up in the dress-up box.
While the rest of the service went on, Min looked up the next hymn. It was one she had never heard before, even though Enid had dragged them all to church every week and made Min go to Sunday School too. It wasn’t just a song, like “Jesus loves me,” but a poem with its own music. She read over the words to the first verse while they took up the collection. Some of the words reminded her of herself out in the country in front of Mabel’s house, spinning around in the drifts and toppling over and ending up making her snow angel.
Reeling, clapping, touch the air
Is that fragrant music there?
As she took in the last two lines, her eyes widened.
Lost we were a grief ago.
Now we’re dancing through the snow.
It was as though the person who made up the words had looked inside her and seen her imprisoned in loneliness and then, all in a blink, breaking free to dance through a field of shining snowflakes.
While the minister led them in prayer and made an announcement about refreshments, Min concentrated on trying to memorize the rest of the words. She did not understand them all, but they still sang deep inside her, bringing with them a delight she usually only experienced when she was drawing.
That afternoon they watched an old Christmas movie about Ebenezer Scrooge. After supper they played games and then, before bed, Jess turned on the television to see if a choir would sing them one last carol.
The newscast was a terrible shock. While they had been spending a pleasant Boxing Day, a mammoth tidal wave had swept up onto the shores of Asian islands and countries, killing hundreds of people and leaving thousands lost. As they watched and listened in horror, the news grew more and more alarming and tragic. Thousands of men, women and children in Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and countless other places Min barely knew existed, seemed to have been swept away or their homes had been broken and flattened under the rushing wall of water.
As facts piled up, backed by the first television pictures, Toby’s face went white as chalk. Min, staring at him, learned in a flash that having your father in danger could hurt as much or maybe even more than having none.
“If Dad’s all right, why doesn’t he call?” Toby kept saying in a strangled voice.
Jess did her best to persuade him that the news might still be good, but it was impossible to believe as the numbers of dead and missing continued to rise.
Min buried her face in Cassie’s soft coat and whispered love words into her ears, but even though the puppy waved her tail happily and puffed breaths into Min’s downcast face, her mistress was left trapped in a deep sorrow, her heart aching for complete strangers. At first she compared the orphaned children to herself. There were dozens of foundlings. But their plight seemed so much worse. There were so many of them and no Mrs. Willis waiting to look after each one. They didn’t even have enough cribs for all the babies, and many were hurt.
The three of them could not go to bed until two in the morning, when even Toby’s eyes began to droop with weariness. Laura called from Saskatoon, but she had no comforting word to pass on.
Toby told them that his mother figured there was always the chance that Patrick had managed to catch an earlier flight at the last minute — even though he wasn’t scheduled to fly out until tomorrow. If so, he would have already started for home when the tsunami struck.
But even Min could tell that she had been unable to keep her son from guessing that she was almost as worried as he was.
It bewildered Min. How could Laura still care so much for someone she had chosen to leave? Puzzled, she looked to Jess for answers. Her question, unvoiced, must have been clear.
Jess said quietly, “Oh, Min, at times like this, the heart doesn’t pay much attention to divorce.”
Finally she sent them off to their beds, promising to call both
of them the minute there was any news to be told, even if it was bad.
But there was no word that night. In the morning, while they struggled to eat their breakfast, Jess warned them that it might be a long wait. “If Patrick was safe in some airport halfway home, he would call,” she said. “But, Toby, your father is both a survivor and a reporter. He won’t turn tail if he can help with rescuing people. He would know that we’d guess what he might be doing. We must wait and hope — and pray.”
Min wished she felt sure that praying worked. She felt uncomfortable trying it. If you weren’t sure what you believed, was it still okay to pray? But she had asked for a miracle, hadn’t she? She tried asking over and over, “God, bring Toby’s father back and please make somebody love the babies.”
Over the next few days the news grew worse and the slow, agonizing hours of waiting mounted.
Cassie, who had begun to chase after a doughnut-shaped squeaky toy Jess had given her, put her head through the hole in the middle and began charging around the living room wearing the thing like a sausage-shaped necklace and looking utterly foolish. Everyone, Toby included, burst out laughing. Then Toby realized he was laughing and gasped. Min wanted to tell him it was okay, but Jess got there first.
“If you were lost, Toby, and Patrick was out of his mind with worry, do you think he would not let himself laugh at Cassie?” she asked gently.
Toby glared at her for a second. Then he looked thoughtful. At that very moment, Cassie pounced on his dangling shoelace and fought it to the death in a fierce battle.
Toby could not resist her.
“She’s such a clown,” he wheezed, tears streaming down his cheeks. He collapsed on the carpet next to her and hid his wet face in her mop of fur. Min was not sure whether he was laughing or crying but, either way, she felt certain it was good for him.
Halfway through the afternoon, Min opened her mouth to suggest they go for Emily or, at least, call to check on how she was, but closed it, leaving the words unsaid. They would not want to tie up the phone line. Finally the veterinarian called Jess to say Emily was much better and they could come and get her in the morning. They would have to give her pills several times a day and treat her gently, but he was almost sure she would pull through. Now she had gotten rid of the abscess in her right front paw, she would be better off at home.
