This was, undoubtedly, the absolute worst Christmas ever. Mom and Dad, who had always been Mom-and-Dad-together had decided, just a few weeks before Christmas, to separate. Who does that to their only child? Who ends a marriage of over 45 years, just a few weeks before Christmas? Neither would say whose idea it was, but also neither blamed the other. So Charlie didn’t even have someone to cast her anger and blame upon. She was stuck with it. The big feelings with no logic, with nobody to share these big feelings. Some Christmas gift.
This change in the family set-up impacted everything. Now there was no “home” for Christmas Dinner. Mom decided she wanted “to get away from it all” … what does that even mean anyway? You cannot ever really get away from family. Or Christmas. Both can be a little like an overly-greasy meal, repeating long after the final chew and swallow, the enjoyment on the palate becoming a late-night walk through a cold house looking for Alka Seltzer. Being alone made it all that much harder.
Charlie’s job in the deli section of the local Zehr’s supermarket didn’t help. Zehr’s wasn’t the bargain basement grocery store. There were expectations from the customers about how they would be served. There were expectations that the lowly deli servers would know what would go well together on a charcuterie board. As though, they themselves, minimum-wage-earning-workers could ever afford the pay cheque it would cost to buy all those fancy things to lay out on a charcuterie board. Charlie’s idea of fancy was a couple slices of kolbasa (on sale) with a couple wedges of pre-wrapped Happy Cow cheese-product. Maybe a few Ritz crackers.
Zehr’s had a bakery counter, a deli counter, a butcher counter, and a real live pharmacist in the drug store section. Fruit and vegetables purchased here were committed to lasting until the next big grocery day, a week over at least, without growing fuzz and threatening to walk out of the fridge in search of fellow science experiments in food!
She lucked out with the Christmas shifts, being paid time and a half to work on Christmas Eve right up to closing, and the two days before - two full shifts. What that meant was she was on her feet for pretty well three 8-hour days, serving entitled-feeling customers who could afford fancy charcuterie boards, and likely wore hand-knitted wool or alpaca socks all-year round.
Heck, they probably did the New York Times crossword puzzle too. Knew big words. Charlie herself preferred the find-a-word books available from Dollarama. Hours of entertainment without herniating her brain, trying to tweeze a hard-to-remember word from some dusty corner of her mind, where it never had cause for use other than being coughed up like a hairball, not to be used in meaningful conversation (she had nobody to talk with really anyway), but to put on a crossword puzzle page.
The customers were relentless. The worst of them always wanted what had gone out of stock two seconds before they arrived, and then needed to carry on endlessly about how this would utterly ruin their Christmas spread. They always chose to enter into this endless carrying on while the line of other impatient customers grew (both in customers and their impatience). Charlie’s inner mental dialog usually went something along the lines of “Kolbasa and Happy Cow cheese product, baby.” Simple. Effective. Available at every Food Basics, No Frills and many convenience stores too.
Getting home on Christmas Eve night, Charlie was relieved to be finally done work. It was a strange kind of relief though - her work at least kept her in the company of humanity. Going home she would be faced with the length and breadth of her solitude. Her mind went to what she would do when she got home: a way of distracting herself from the big-feelings of her family breaking apart, and the lone iceberg in a cold ocean feeling that kept washing over her.
On her walk home, the few blocks from work, she thought about what she would have for supper. PB & J seemed like a good option. Nobody to see, so no need to shower, although getting the days work washed off might have made her feel better. She was in that kind of mood where feeling better needs to be negotiated: should I, or shouldn’t I? There’s a self-righteous value to a good funk, mellowed to perfection. A shower might ruin that process.
When she got to her door, there it was. The Amazon insignia unmistakable.
She hadn’t ordered anything. A little thrill rose up in her. Maybe someone had sent her a surprise. Maybe Mom or Dad had relented a bit, realized how badly they had messed up this Christmas for her, and this was their penance gift. A little package of joy from Amazon.
She pulled the package from the mailslot, where it offered a bit of resistance before coming loose in her hand. She slipped her key into the lock. It turned effortlessly, her hands on autopilot turning the door knob while holding her key, the other hand turning the package over in her hand. As a small child might do, she shook the package. It was not very heavy. Nothing rattled. It felt like it might have been a book of some kind. It was addressed to her. She did not recognize the sender.
But the sending address was Whitehorse, Yukon.
Hmmm, who did she know in Whitehorse? She’d never ever been there.
She got herself inside, now in a rush to open her package.
Charlotte Brown was the sender.
Before Charlie even took her coat off, she had ripped the package open. Inside was a small photo album, filled with pictures which told the story of a life.
Beginning with a young woman, very pregnant, glowing and smiling at the camera as though she knew a secret nobody else would ever fathom. Hands on her bulging belly in that pre-birth embrace.
The blue-green-hospital gown, the slightly drugged and bedraggled face of a new mom holding a scrunched up baby, just released from her womb, dotted with baby goop bits from it’s (her? pink baby hat of course being a sound determinant of gender) last known address: inside mom.
First Birthday photo - a cake being smashed by a now chubby little girl. Chocolate cake from the look of it - Charlie’s favourite too!
Fifth Birthday photo - the cake was a football, the girl was dressed much more like a boy in this one. Short hair, coveralls and a red flannel shirt.
Sweet Sixteen - back to girly-ness, in an elegant gown, draped over a body that was preparing itself to cause her problems in the world of hormonal interactions!
Charlie didn’t recognize any of the characters in the photo album, and she carefully scanned each picture for clues. Flipping through again and again. The last page showed the same woman who was on the first page, this time, sitting in a hospital chair, connected to some kind of a drip, with no hair. Seems she had cancer.
Beginning again at the back of the album, she trekked through time in reverse for this strange album of people she didn’t know. Her eye caught something she had not seen, the edge of a newspaper clipping tucked under the First Birthday photo. She gently pulled it out.
“Cassandra Brown: Beloved mother of Charlotte Brown, aka, Charlie, succumbed to her long battle with cancer on November 29th, 2023. Cassandra was well known for her shortbread cookies, her find-a-word books - always completed from cover to cover, and the mystery she kept her whole life through: who was Charlie’s dad? Being a mom was Cassandra’s life-long commitment and passion. Charlie Brown was her biggest accomplishment, and on her death-bed, she let Charlie know of another Charlie, who lives in Southern Ontario, two years younger than her Charlie, and is in fact Charlie’s half sister. As such, Cassandra leaves behind Charlie, and her half-sister Charlie - the two Charlies who never knew each other, but share a bond of blood. Cassandra’s dying wish was that the two Charlies would get to know each other., so that as sisters, they would no longer be alone in the world.”
Someone else, somewhere else, some other Charlie would be alone this Christmas Eve. Somehow, confusing as this all was, there was a measure of comfort in this shared solitude, provinces apart, for two half-sisters.
Photo by Olivier Rouge on Unsplash
Blessings, love Jean