The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

A Silent Night

Here is a long harvest table, laden with poinsettias and gold plates, crystal glasses and lit candles. The chairs around it filled with a bizarre mix of guests, each one glowing and smiling, looking to me to raise a glass or lift my fork.

I do not recognize the room at all, with a fireplace crackling at the far end between two windows festooned with garland. I am welcomed by it, though; this is a room for family and the kindred, I think, a warm hug of a room with dark and light coming together to produce a sense of comfort only found in mugs of hot chocolate or under a blanket while reading a much-loved book. There is no fear here, no death or sickness, only recognition and good intention.

I sit in a chair, feeling as though my body has left me but the sensation is not unpleasant. I look at the guests, and each of them is chatting happily with the one next to them while I search their faces for patterns and correlation. Strangely, they make no sound, but there is the crackle of the fire and the landing of the flakes as they hit the ground outside. I wonder what it is they have in common, what has brought each of them to the table, until I begin to see them for who they are.

To my immediate right is Grace. Until this moment I did not know how much I’ve missed her, how I’ve managed to convince myself she has been alive all this time. She is smiling, laughing even and this pleases me. Her hair is a dark, chestnut brown, a colour unfamiliar to me when it came to visualizing her because to me, she had always shone silver. The eyes are still a lovely oceanic blue, except there are sparks of light in them. There is no evidence of age in her and for the first time ever I know I am seeing the woman who was before the pain set in. She wears a dark red suit, lusciously velvet, and her lips are painted to match it. She is drinking the wine with the kind of daintiness I’d always figured her for, taking small bites off a gleaming silver fork. She smiles at me with the love I’d only known with her, an untarnished, pure kind of understanding reserved for grandmothers and granddaughters. There is peace in that face, something I’d never seen in her before and it calms me. For a quick second, it is just the two of us, and I think of the last time we were together, the day I told her it was time to go and it saddens me, until I see her smile again, almost as if she is saying ‘thank you’. There is nothing of disease in her now, no more heartache or disappointment. She is here, she is happy.

Next to her is Ernest. Such a handsome man in his white shirt and his slicked blonde hair, he looks to me with an expression of triumph, as if to say ‘we meet at last!’ and his arm curls around the back of Grace’s chair. He is young, but then, he was when it all ended, and I am able to see my own reflection in his face. She seems torn between welcoming him and berating him, fumbling with pleasure and annoyance, but he is all love as he squeezes her tiny shoulders and she has to stifle a girlish giggle. The air around them is possessed with the sounds of strumming guitars and laughter, pulled from a time when the neighbours would gather to sing and drink in their living room, and she pulls out a cigarette, which he moves to ignite with his lighter. I scowl at her for this, wondering how she’s not learned her lessons yet, but it’s clear she has no intention of putting it down. What for? All is said and done and this is a party, after all. He kisses her as though it has been a thousand years of longing, and I feel a tear roll down my face.

I see Mike, then. I worry that he will be envious of this display, but he is oddly content. He picks up a tumbler of whiskey and water and he gives me his puckish grin. I see him chuckle but hear nothing, which was the case when he was here. Always chuckling, never a sound. He stuffs tobacco into his pipe and lights it before taking a few puffs, and it is odd to me that he looks older than the other two because they’d been the same age in life. He is the odd man out in some ways, coming into Grace’s life when Ernest had left it, and he’d had his own history before then. Still, he is the grandfather, the one who was there, the one who made me laugh, and he was always more comfortable as an elder. It takes more than blood to build relevance. He shakes the glass, creating ice music, and he grins again, implying that happy hour is not yet over. I think of the last time I saw him, laid out on a bed in a check shirt, grey pants and red suspenders, looking as though he were napping. His end was as gentle as he was, and I will always be grateful for that. Here, at this table, he looks jolly once more. He is not thinking about loss. He is not worried about sharing. He is here for a drink and company. His kind affection makes me feel like I’m seven again, and I am missing the lake water and the drives through the country. Tinkle, tinkle goes the glass and I am brought back to the chair at the head of the table.

Beautiful, young, cinnamon-haired Rosemary sits across from the others, near the far end of the table. She is laughing at what she hears the others saying, and she glitters. I look at her hair and I think about how I was fascinated by it when I was young, how lustrous and sweet smelling it always was. I search her face and body for injury and see none. She is as lovely now as she ever was, no scratch or bruise from that December morning where the car was hit from behind. She wears the engagement ring she’d been given a few weeks before, and it flickers when it catches the firelight, but she is not sorrowful nor is she yearning. She is reaching for her glass of wine and she looks to me and glows. My childhood heroine has come to the table and she is younger than I am now. How odd, I think, that someone who seemed so grown up to me once would suddenly be so young, so terribly young.

We come, then, to Kathleen and Jack. He reaches for a glass of Guinness and she shoots him a disapproving look. While he is dressed in a tweed coat and white shirt with a tie, she is wearing a simple, floral housedress and a green cardigan. She refuses her wine and sips a cup of tea instead. I see the cross around her neck and I know that in her heart she is praying. He admires the poinsettias, missing his rose garden, and he taps his foot under the table to the beat of the drums around them. When Kathleen (Kate, as he called her) looks to me with a strong, authoritative smile, he sneaks a few sips of the heady elixir in the glass before him. He is impish and theatrical and he raises a finger to his lips telling me to keep what I’ve seen to myself, but Kathleen has never been a fool. She turns her gaze to him and brings him to a rigid stillness with the penetrating power of two small, dark eyes. They are both white-haired and slump-shouldered, wearing glasses and smelling of pot roast and extinguished candles, but they are so much like home. I desperately want to ask them all the questions I’ve been storing for these past twenty-five years, all the stories I want to have verified, from their politics to their original hair colour, but words have no place here at the table. She impresses me so much, with her look of unfailing discernment and I ache with want of knowing her better, even though she slightly frightens me. He, on the other hand, has such a playful cheekiness about him that I want to whisk him away to the nearest pub so that I may sit for hours and hours and listen to the thousands of stories he has tucked in his pocket. I will not care if any of them are true.

Lastly, we have Philippe and Isobel. He is looking hopeful, aching to make peace as he extends a glass of white in her direction. He is dressed in his kind of casual, with a jacket, vest and tie, and he has a moustache, which is slightly unfamiliar to me. She is tall, willowy and her hair is shimmering with gold. Oddly, she has chosen to wear the uniform from her days in the British air force, and she waves off the white wine, opting for a glass of beer instead. She is looking around her surroundings, marveling at it all, adjusting to the light. On a small plate before her is a buttertart, and she smiles at this, fingering the grooves of the pastry. They are courteous with one another, but there are many things not yet said. He picks up some bread and cheese and takes a hearty bite before drinking half the contents of the glass before him. Around them is the euphonic warble of Edith Piaf, and I almost believe I see Isobel soften as his finger brushes against her own. I look away. It is not my business. They are here because I love their son, helped create their granddaughter. I've no call to interfere.

So, instead, I flood with warm tears and feel my chest tighten with unspent emotion. I look up to see if they’re still there, if they’re still smiling and imbibing and I take my own glass and raise it up high. It is unusual, this kind of showy sentimentality, as I have never been comfortable with it before. Tonight, though, there is call to let go of the rules, to see them all without their disease, or their agedness or their misfortunes. The broken, abandoned love is done, the suffering has long ago ended, and they are here, at a table, breaking bread, not quite alive, but not exactly dead. They are somewhere in between, the extremes pushed away so that all that remains are the remnants of truth and the purity of what links us to one another.

No words are spoken, no morals or wisdoms shared. There is only togetherness. There are only poinsettias, gold plates and firelight.