“Um, Iactuallyhave a lot of friends already,” says Mary-Ann, still examining the book. “Ilike vintage books though. Iarrange mine by colour.” She opens the cover, letting the pages unfurl like a wave. “Okay,” she says. “Iwill cease and desist with the cease and desist.”
“Oh, well, thatisa relief,” says Reverend Michelle, who is a good diplomat, but a very bad actor.
“What did you think,”asks Toby later that night, “of me swooping in there like a hero?”
“Was that what you were doing?” asks Clemence.
“I’m not always the best judge of which people are unhinged,” he says, “but that woman radiates it.”
“And what would you have done,” Clemence asks him, “if she’d proven a physical threat? If you’d been forced to place your body on the line?” Tracing her finger along the length of his body for emphasis, or at least as longas her arm can stretch. They’re lying in her bed on their sides, which is the only way they both fit. She is pleased that they’ve managed to make love without Toby hurting himself. She has scoured the place to get rid of cat hair. This is the closest she’s come with him to something that’s almost comfortable.
Toby answers her question. “Easy. Iwould have pulled her hair. Those braids are just like rope. Like a tug-of-war. Didn’t you just want to?” And she really had. Clemence knows what he means exactly, and it is at moments like this that their connection seems like a kind of miracle. Securing her heart to his, and she wonders if she really could love him. If she should.
Clemence had told him it had been her ex on the phone, that the call had rattled her so much that Mary-Ann seemed like an easy challenge in comparison. “There are things still unresolved, Iguess,” she’d said, “between me and my ex.” But Toby hadn’t asked her to delineate what those things were. Clemence tells him, “You know, you’re braver than I’d given you credit for, daring to confront Mary-Ann Arbuckle like that.”
“Well, you confronted her, too,” says Toby. “You gave her a book.”
“But that’s different,” says Clemence. “Ialways knew Iwas a little bit brave. What Ididn’t know is that you’d show up for me.”
“Ididn’t either,” he admits.
“So what you do you think it means?” she asks him. “If it means anything, Imean. Not to say that it does. But still.”
“Does it have to mean something?” he asks.
“Toby, you’re a reader,” she tells him, rolling onto her back so he’s squished against the wall. “Surely you know that meaning is the point.”
“But meaning is not always definitive,” he says, turning so he’s on top of her. “Or stable.”
She agrees. “Nothing is. Subject to interpretation. There’s ambiguity. That’s what makes it interesting.”
He says, “What it means, though, Ithink, is that Icare about you.” He looks into her eyes. “Is that what you want to hear?”
“And is that really so hard to say?”
“Why do Ihave to say it when it’s demonstrable?”
“Because sometimes,” she says, “it’s just good to know where we’re at.”
“We’re right here,” he tells her, and pulls her closer. He’s kissing her neck, his lips drawing a line down to her chest, and then lower, until his point is really undeniable.
Twenty-Eight
Since time immemorial, the St. Saviour’s winter jumble sale has taken place the first Saturday in December, and no attempted sabotage is going to change that. Even though Clemence rises from bed that morning stiff and sore from carrying all those heavy tables for set-up the previous evening. She rubs frost from her windowpane to reveal a fresh dusting of snow, putting her firmly in the mood for festive things. After months of planning, the jumble sale is here, and Clemence feels proud of what she’s accomplished, helping to build something real and tangible that will make a difference in people’s lives. Examining herself in the mirror as she fastens a butterfly brooch to her sweater, she wonders:Is this, after all this time, what a person of substance might look like?She steps back to admire how the amethysts gleam. The jumble sale had been overrun with brooch donations, and Mrs. Yeung encouraged her to help herself. These items whichwere decorative instead of valuable, and also weighty, passed down through families until there was no one left who wanted them, but Clemence does. Imagining the stories attached to the butterfly brooch, all the places it had been, an anchor and a connection to the past, and to so many women who’d come before her.
As the person charged with promotions, most of Clemence’s job is finished by the day of the sale, and so she’s an ancillary worker, directed by others, doing whatever needs doing. Plugging in coffee urns, arranging jumble in an organized and attractive formation. When the artisans arrive, and Clemence helps them to their tables, everyone apologizing about all the trouble with Mary-Ann Arbuckle, but no one says too much, because who knows where loyalties lie and, also, walls have ears.
By the time their city councillor arrives for the ribbon-cutting, the room is crowded, already uncomfortably hot. Clemence has spied her entire family across the room, and she’s conscious of their attention as she takes her place in the ceremony, tasked with the official role of holding one of the ribbon’s ends—Mrs. Yeung is holding the other. With her free hand, Clemence tries to subtly fan her face as the city councillor steps forth and does what she does, cutting the ceremonial ribbon with the ceremonial scissors that she must bring with her everywhere. Declaring the jumble sale officially open.
And then Clemence takes her place at the cash box, where she’s signed up for the first shift, and it’s a flurry of activity, professional collectors having shown up early, first in line, so they can get their hands on the vinylrecords, comic books, and china figurines whose extraordinary value the sale committee has not picked up on and will be resold online for huge profits. And after things have settled down a bit, Roger and Bonnie roll up with Charles Yeung’s juicer, marvelling at the price.
“You’ve done a great job here, honey,” Roger says.
Bonnie admits, “This actually isn’t weird at all.” They’ve met Reverend Michelle, and they adore her, naturally, and Bonnie seems no longer worried about her daughter having joined a cult. Clemence knows her family has only shown up in order to check in on her, out of concern as much as support. Over the general din, she can hear Prudence shrieking, “Don’t touch that!” as one child or another has discovered something sharp or heavy or fragile.
Clemence’s parents move away to let the other buyers cash out their bundles of baby clothes or towers of vintage bakeware. One guy arrives and purchases an entire box of CDs. Across the room, Clemence can see that the artisans are also doing a decent business, and Min Jee, who directs the small church choir, has set up in the corner with her acoustic guitar and started to sing “In the Bleak Midwinter,” but there is nothing at all bleak about this scene.
Naomi and Jillian arrive, and Bonnie is delighted to see them. Clemence has finished her shift at the cash by now, and so she joins them as they figure out that the last time they’d all been together had been … at Clemence’s wedding.
