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 A New Car?
Not This Year, Sweetheart.
By Jim Shahin
Clausinet.
Clausinee?
I don’t know. And you know what? I’m glad I don’t know.
She didn’t like them, anyway.
Sure, now, years later, she says she did. But back then, on Christmas morning, when she opened the box? You should have seen her face.
You know the face you make at a dinner party when you bite into some special dish the hostess spent a week preparing, and you wonder if maybe she committed a crime in some states for what she did to that poor beef? That weak-smile face? The face that freezes for a few seconds while it checks with the brain for something appropriate to say?
That was the face I got.
“Ohhh,” Jessica said in that singsongy way that attempts to mimic genuine enthusiasm. “I … [pause for brain to check in with face] … love them.”
We were at her mother’s house that Christmas. Not wanting to ruin the whole day, I didn’t call her on it. But that night, in bed, I pounced.
“You didn’t like them, did you?”
“What?”
“Don’t give me ‘what,’ ” I said, like Humphrey Bogart as detective Sam Spade in one of those hard-boiled 1940s detective movies. “You know very well what. The earrings, that’s what.”
Her expression gave her away, and she knew it. She had been trying to hide something, hoping she could get away with it, and now she was found out. She had nowhere to turn but the truth. But it wouldn’t come easy.
“I do like them,” she stammered. “I just … they’re beautiful … I … oh, it’s me, not you.”
“We’re not talking about you or me, sister. We’re talking about Tony and the night, that horrible rainy night, when he took a fall. You were there, weren’t you? Waiting. You thought that when everybody left you could reason with him. Get him to give you the pictures.
“But it didn’t work out that way, did it? Naw. He baited you, even laughed. And when he turned his back on you to face the fireplace and take his drink off the mantle, you pulled out your gun. That’s how it happened, isn’t it, sweetheart?
“He turned back around, and you filled him full of lead and left him lying there for the maid to find the next morning. Tell me when I’m getting warm.”
“I didn’t mean to do it,” she blubbered. “I just … ”
“You just what?” I said. “Shot him?”
Tears streamed down her cheeks.
Oops. Sorry. Got carried away there.
Where were we? Oh, yeah. Clossinay.
Actually, it’s spelled cloisonné. I know because I just asked Jessica.
Cloisonné [kloi-zuh-nay], noun: enamelware in which colored areas are separated by thin metal bands, a.k.a. a type of earring that Jim thought Jessica liked (or would like — a crucial distinction) and therefore got her a bunch of for their first Christmas. But Jim was wrong, or, depending on whom you believe, sort of wrong, but, either way, her version or his, Jim never bought any again.
I suppose I should give you the two versions.
Mine: She would love cloisonné earrings, so they’d be perfect as a Christmas gift.
Hers: I like cloisonné earrings just fine, but I don’t want a million pairs of them, which is the approximate number Jim got me for Christmas.
Mine: The problem wasn’t the number. The problem was the earrings themselves. I saw the disappointment on your face when you opened the box.
Hers: Maybe on the fifth box.
Mine: It was an abundance of love.
Hers: It was an abundance of cloisonné.
Mine: If you liked them, you’d wear at least one pair of them.
Hers: I did, but you didn’t notice.
Mine: That’s because I didn’t want you to wear them if you didn’t really like them. So I made a point of not noticing.
Hers: I’m going to do my yoga.
Mine: Good. You seem tense.
The point isn’t that my version is right. It’s that it can be hard to know what to get somebody as a gift — even when, perhaps especially when, you think you know what she’d like.
Which is why I’m not getting Jessica a brand-new car this year.
I think she’d like it, but what do I know?
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