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    The Queen Of Cans And Jars: Short Story
    The Queen Of Cans And Jars: Short Story
    The Queen Of Cans And Jars: Short Story
    Ebook45 pages37 minutes

    The Queen Of Cans And Jars: Short Story

    By Michael Christie

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    About this ebook

    Bernice is a collector—of items rescued from her thrift shop and memories of a husband who abandoned her years ago—until one day she decides to take her sister’s advice and downsize. “The Queen of Cans and Jars” is part of Michael Christie’s critically acclaimed short-story collection, The Beggar’s Garden.

    The Beggar’s Garden follows a diverse group of characters, from a bank manager to a drug addict to a retired Samaritan, a web designer, and a car thief, as they drift through each other’s lives in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Michael Christie’s darkly funny debut collection won the Vancouver Book Award; it was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.

    HarperCollins brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperCollins short-stories collection to build your digital library.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateNov 13, 2012
    ISBN9781443421775
    The Queen Of Cans And Jars: Short Story
    Author

    Michael Christie

    MICHAEL CHRISTIE received his MFA in creative writing at the University of British Columbia. Prior to this, he worked in a homeless shelter on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and provided outreach to the severely mentally ill. A former professional skateboarder, he is a senior writer for Color Magazine, an award-winning publication that celebrates skateboarding culture. Michael Christie lives in Thunder Bay, and is working on his next book, a novel.

    Read more from Michael Christie

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      Book preview

      The Queen Of Cans And Jars - Michael Christie

      The Queen of

      Cans and Jars

      Michael Christie

      Contents

      Cover

      Title Page

      The Queen of Cans and Jars

      Copyright

      About the Publisher

      The Queen of Cans and Jars

      Her younger sister, Wanda, called that morning to ask if she wanted to move into her coach house. What’s a coach house? said Bernice. It’s like a smaller version of our house, but on our property, Wanda said.

      Many years ago, when Bernice was still in the shoe department at Woodward’s, Wanda was hired as a medical secretary by a brutish orthopaedic surgeon, owner of two of the hairiest arms Bernice had ever seen. They wed after six months of secretive courtship—naturally, there was already a wife—after which he treated Wanda to a smorgasbord of plastic surgery and whisked her off to Kelowna. Now they spent half of the year in Dubai while he, in the twilight of his career, girdered together the bones of the inconceivably rich and she chased golf balls about an island of irrigated turf in the centre of the desert. Wanda called weekly when back in Kelowna, speaking mostly of wine tours and the chore of locating good-quality home furnishings for their expansive lakeside palace, which Bernice had seen only in photos.

      Sitting at her kitchen table, Bernice imagined a series of houses cracking open like Russian dolls, smaller and smaller until the last revealed itself as a tiny pink stucco matchbox.

      What would I do there? she said.

      Relax?

      What about the store?

      Oh, haven’t you been doing that long enough? And where would I put my things … in this … coach house?

      Well, of course you’d have to downsize, Wanda said.

      This new word chafed Bernice like ill-fitting slacks. Downsize seemed so smug and perniciously simple, as if the physical evidence of one’s life, and the space it occupied, could be erased just like that.

      I couldn’t. Why would I leave? I’m comfortable here, and there’s so much to do, Bernice glanced about her apartment, eyes landing on just a few of her beloved things. Wanda called her stubborn and Bernice said she’d think about it, immediately steering the conversation to the custom walnut deck for which Wanda was suing a contractor for poor workmanship, a saga her sister would never resist retelling.

      On May 14, 1978, while sorting laundry in the basement of their building, Bernice had found a dry-cleaning ticket in the pocket of her husband’s trousers. She stopped into the cleaners on her way to work the next day and exchanged the ticket for a green evening dress with a mink collar, almost twice her size. She laid the dress over the kitchen table that evening and waited in the living room doing a crossword. Gus came home from work and entered the kitchen. She heard his keys on the counter. She heard the icebox open and close. Then, without a word, he left their small apartment. She waited up, but he did not return, that night or any other.

      Some weeks

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