Violet
For Patricia Anne
In the most sophisticated establishments, of which Valley Hardware aspires to be, flocking is a holiday tradition. It’s a ritual that started long before Lorne took over the store from his ex-wife’s late father. The front windows, large bay windows, are flocked each year on the first of December. It’s a tradition Lorne secretly looks forward to, especially now that he’s recruited his daughter into the flocking enterprise. This year, it’s her turn to spray the fake snow over the well-worn stencil. Lorne holds a level so that the picture isn’t lopsided. They’re almost done when Monica walks in through the back door.
“Perfect timing,” Lorne calls over his shoulder to his wife. “I need you to hold up the star while we finish the village.”
Monica squeezes into the display beside her husband and step-daughter, careful not to trample the train set that has been assembled around the small pine tree in the centre. She knew nothing of flocking until Lorne moved into her life.
“One the first day of Christmas…” Lorne pulls away the stencil, humming to himself, completely satisfied. Ella goes upstairs to make hot chocolate. Monica marvels that she has married a man who is so easily pleased. She fiddles with the bridge of the train set; its paint is wearing. Her forehead creases in concentration or worry.
“Is something the matter?” Lorne asks.
“The Dean called. The keynote speaker for next week’s conference broke his leg in a skiing accident. The seminary wants me to step in and give the opening address.”
Monica specializes in the writings of a beloved Dutch priest who wrote about the spirituality of solitude, community and compassion. Lorne knew nothing of modern monasticism until Monica moved into his life.
“Aren’t you a little busy to take this on right now?” Lorne asks. December in the parish is… how can he put it nicely? A Gong Show. From choir rehearsals to cookie exchanges, food drives to community turkey dinners, it’s the most wonderful – and insane– time of the year. But he can see from her expression she hasn’t said no.
“They’ve offered to put me up at the King George Hotel for a few nights.”
Lorne nods. “Nice.”
“Yeah.”
Neither of them say anything for a long moment.
“Will you see her?”
Monica puts the battered bridge back on the tracks. It’s already getting dark outside, snowing early this year. The city’s shelters will soon be full.
“I’ll do my best.”
~
Monica decides she’ll make an outline of her talk before she tries to find Violet. But she can’t concentrate. The hotel suite is too big for one person. She shoves the desk in front of the window and waits for inspiration. Monica preaches radical hospitality, generosity, living without fear. She loves ambitious sermons that speak to how she would like to live, if she were perfect and not actually just a human being. Her pen refuses to move across her notebook. She considers the night outside her window. When Lorne calls five minutes later, she’s gone. He leaves a message on the hotel answering machine: don’t wander around all night. I love you. Call me when you get in.
Violet isn’t in the soup line-up or any of the long tables in the basement at the Mission. Monica makes her way to the night manager, a new guy, and asks to leave a message. He’s never heard of Violet.
“Sometimes she goes by Bonnie, or Edith?” What other personas has she invented since the last time?
The man looks at Monica with a pitying gaze. Then, catching sight of her clerical collar he says, “You’re a Rev? Could you come up to the dorm for a minute? There’s an old guy who could use a prayer or two.”
Monica swallows a sigh. She’ll never find Violet at this rate. But what can she do? She’ll go up and then head back to the King George. Her speech isn’t going to write itself.
The man’s name is Arnold. He’s Indian – Ojibway– and has lived his whole life in the city.
“Do you know what Toronto means?” he asks, his voice raspy, worn down by cigarettes or mouldy housing, maybe both.
Monica shakes her head. To her it means family, school, tragedy, mystery…
“Where the trees…” he begins, and then coughs into a tissue. “…meet the river.”
The man closes his eyes. “I miss the water.”
Monica asks if she can hold his hand. He nods and squeezes hers. “Tell me about your rivers,” she says gently.
Soon, she’s forgotten about her speech. She listens to Arnold’s stories. When he tires and falls asleep, she leaves him and slips back into the night with a heavy heart. She finds a pizzeria on a well-lit corner and orders a greasy slice of pepperoni she knows she’ll regret in the morning. In the glass, she catches sight of herself beneath the fluorescent lights. Her mascara is smudged and her lipstick faded. She looks tired and worried, a woman sitting alone in a city of millions; a woman on the verge of tears.
Lorne calls again early the next morning. “Did you find her?”
Monica sips her tea. “No. She wasn’t at the Mission. I thought I’d try the YWCA later on.”
“How’s the speech coming?” he asks.
“Almost done,” she lies. She’ll finish it soon. She still has time.
“The kiddo is here beside me – she wants to talk to you. I’ll hand her over.”
“Hi, Monica,” Ella says. “I had a dream about you last night.”
“Really? Was I giving an amazing speech in a beautiful gown?” Monica doesn’t own any gowns but she can dream too.
“Nope. You were walking through the zoo with your sister.”
Monica covers her mouth so Ella can’t hear her gasp. She tries not to cry. She and Violet loved walking through the Riverdale Zoo when they were little. Had she ever told Ella those stories? She doesn’t remember.
“Was it a good dream?”
Ella hesitates. “I don’t know. You were talking but I couldn’t hear the conversation.”
Monica smiles. Even in her sleep, Ella wouldn’t eavesdrop. It is so like her. She feels homesick for their cozy apartment above the store. They ring off and Monica stares at the yellow legal pad. The sun is doing its best to burn off dawn’s grey shadow. She shoves her things in a leather satchel and heads outside before she changes her mind.
Tucked behind stone walls, almost hidden from view, the Toronto Necropolis is one of the city’s hidden treasures. It reminds Monica of the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. She finds her parents’ gravestone and kneels on the frozen ground.
“Hi, Mum. Hi, Dad.” It’s been awhile so she rushes on. “I’m in town this week to give a little talk. But it’s not quite done… I’m looking for Violet…” her voice catches, as it does every time she updates her parents on her promise.
“She took all her money out at the beginning of the month but I couldn’t find her at the Mission. I haven’t given up. I know you’re watching out for her, too.” Monica pulls out a piece of paper, rips off a clean sheet and writes: King George Hotel, Room 218, Monica.
She leaves it on the headstone, secured by a couple pebbles and a fake chrysanthemum she picked up off the path. The zoo is right across the park. She finds a cozy corner in the café restaurant and writes for two hours. She has a draft but it’s awful. The ideas are disjointed, the transitions stiff and awkward. It sounds like something written to accompany a museum exhibit. She’ll go to the university library and revise it again later. The Dean has invited her for dinner. He’ll have some encouragement, she hopes. At the very least, he’ll have some wine.
The taxi drops her back at the King George Hotel just after ten. She has eaten two helpings of Boeuf Bourguignon and would have gone for thirds if she’d chosen pants with an elastic waist. When she exits the revolving door and steps into the lobby, she stops abruptly before heading to the elevators. She smells Violet before she sees her.
In front of the fireplace, curled into a ball in a leather club chair with a small dog on her lap, her sister looks at once younger and older than her thirty-five years. The concierge clears his throat from somewhere behind her.
“She said you were expecting her,” he says. His eyebrows are knit together in a nervous ‘shall we call the authorities?’ arch.
“Yes. I was.” Monica eyes the black garbage bags, the sleeping roll and the dog.
“Violet?”
“Hiya, sis. Got your note.”
Monica hugs her tentatively and points to the dog.
“He’s a rescue,” Violet explains. “His name’s Tagish.”
You’re a rescue, Monica thinks. Instead she says, “Merry Christmas. Come on up.”
Violet twirls around Monica’s suite, exclaiming at the elegant furnishings. Monica winces at the mud tracks Violet’s boots leave on the cream carpet. When her sister spots the jacuzzi, she shrieks.
“Go on, get in,” Monica says. She leaves a robe for Violet and scoops up all her clothes plus whatever is in the garbage bags. She calls room service and agrees to the exorbitant fee to launder it all. Once, years ago, Monica had thrown out Violet’s clothes because she noticed a bed bug. Violet almost disowned her. It’s disrespectful, she yelled. It’s only one tiny bug, she insisted. What right did Monica have to touch her things? It was months before she called Monica again. In retrospect, the hotel’s cleaning service was a small price to pay.
She sits on the cool tile floor and listens as Violet tells her how she found Tagish. “Do you want me to wash your hair?” Monica interjects.
“I don’t have lice, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Violet says.
“Of course not,” Monica says, but that’s exactly what she’s thinking.
Monica lathers Violet’s long hair and rinses it out with warm water. She glances at the tub. The water is gray. Violet studies her fingernails. She looks at the bath water.
“I guess you can tell I’ve been mucking stalls,” she says.
“Stalls?” Monica pulls the plug and offers her sister a towel.
“It’s warm with the animals. Nobody bothers me there.” Violet shrugs. “You know I always liked the zoo.”
The grey water is sucked down the drain. Monica finds bath salts and runs a second bath. She combs out Violet’s hair and braids it into a crown. She clips her nails and rubs oil onto her calloused feet. “Back in you go.”
“How many rinses until I’m clean?” Violet asks, teasing Monica.
“One more and you can share my bed,” Monica replies.
The sisters sleep side-by-side, the way they did when they were girls. Monica watches her sister as she dreams. Violet’s eyes move constantly beneath her lids, her limbs flail, grasping for something she cannot quite reach. The dog is content to curl up in a pile of abandoned towels.
In the morning, Violet asks Monica why she’s in the city anyways and Monica explains about the conference.
“They should have asked you first,” Violet says, slurping her coffee in a rush though it must be burning her throat.
“Thanks–”
“I mean, you’d never be brave enough to go skiing,” Violet says, her eyes dancing with mischief. When Monica looks insulted, Violet punches her lightly on the arm. “Gotcha.”
“I have to get going soon. I have to work on my speech,” Monica says.
“Let’s go for a walk, I know a great hike close by,” Violet says. “Tagish needs some air.”
Monica checks her watch. She has an hour, maybe two. “Okay.”
Before long they are in the woods. Violet leads Monica along a ravine and explains that she likes the paths along the river. She says it feels safer than the streets sometimes.
“You know what I mean?” Violet says.
Monica doesn’t understand. She’s spent a decade trying to get Violet into different apartments. She never stays. Once she took down all the plaster in the middle of the night, convinced there was lead paint in the walls poisoning the air. Another time she brought a family of baby squirrels home after their mother was hit by a car. The last apartment she shared with two veterans, one of whom woke every night screaming in terror. Violet tells Monica she can manage. She knows her way around the city. Though she knows her sister means well inviting her to come north she insists a small town would just make her claustrophobic. “I’d find it hard to breathe, you know?” she says. Monica finds it hard to breathe thinking of her sister sleeping on a subway vent, camping in a ravine or paying to squat in an abandoned factory.
“You’re not staying at the Mission anymore?” Monica asks when they emerge from the woods. She’s avoided questioning her sister because Violet calls her questions an interrogation. Things usually fall apart soon after.
“They won’t let Tagish in,” she explains.
Monica nods. She figured as much.
“But on Thursdays I leave Tagish with the ponies and I sing in the choir,” Violet says.
“What?”
Violet shrugs. “They needed an alto.”
“You’re singing tonight?”
Violet nods. “Want to come to our concert?”
The speech. The stupid, unwritten, horrid speech. Why did she ever say yes?
“Maybe you’re too busy…” Violet says.
“If I had known…” Monica laments. “I’m sorry.”
“No worries, it was great to see you again. Merry Christmas.”
“I’m still at the hotel tonight…” Monica falters. It’s always like this with Violet. An unsatisfying goodbye. So much left unsaid.
Violet nods, but doesn’t commit. Monica watches her sister weave down the street, high five a bedraggled man outside the post office and continue on out of sight.
~
“I don’t know what I’m talking about,” Monica says to Lorne later on the telephone.
“You do. I know you can do this.”
“It’s just so unreasonable,” she says. Lorne realizes she’s not talking about her speech.
There’s a strange silence on the line. The register clangs shut, the doorbells chime. Lorne is closing up for the day.
“Ella brought home gingerbread cookies but she won’t let me eat them until she decorates them with you.”
“Well yeah. That’s tradition.”
“Maybe, but I’m hungry.”
“I love you.”
“And I miss you. Tell the tweedsters ‘Merry Christmas’ and come home already.”
~
The annual holiday Messiah sing-a-long at the Mission is a packed-out event. When Monica arrives, breathless from running from the subway, the air is thick and there are no chairs left. She leans against the back wall and scans the choristers for Violet. With her braided crown and wool overcoat dotted with buttons, she’s hard to miss. Monica waves and Violet nods, a smile spilling across her face. When the music starts, it’s as though Monica can hear Vi’s voice separate from all the others. Or maybe it’s the memory of her song, when it was certain, when it was clear.
Comfort, comfort, all ye people.
Monica will slip out through the back door after the final chorus. When the conference opens the following day, she’ll hold onto the podium with both hands and take a deep breath. The reliable pinch-hitter, always prepared, always polished, will stand in front of the audience and abandon her notes, her numbered pages, her bullet points. Instead of a speech, she’ll tell a story.
“There were once two sisters. One held up the stars, the other slept beneath them…”