Helen Norris—The Christmas Wife

This story, the next entry in Eyes to See, is about as far from a warm-fuzzy, holiday TV movie as I can imagine. Think O. Henry’s “Gift of the Magi” with its huggy ending. Norris’ story is nothing like that. Instead, the coldness of the Christmas season is embraced as both main characters wind up isolated and only vaguely edified by the last page.
The first sentence of this story should not be missed in the headlong pursuit of persons and plot. “His name was Tanner, a reasonable man in his early sixties, desiring peace, a measure of joy, and reassurance.” Tanner, a widower, desires three things, all of them things offered in a pure form by Christ, but Tanner desires not these actual things but their appearance. In reality, what Tanner seeks is control. He wants to craft the same sort of controlled Christmas that he enjoyed with his wife, which is why he goes through the “social arrangements” service in order to find his “Christmas wife.”
Essentially, what Tanner seeks to create is his own version of a Hallmark advertisement, a holiday weekend, crafted in every detail, eliciting from his companion, “Cherry,” exactly the right responses. His project, naturally, fails.
At the same time, we find that the project of Cherry’s husband, the social arranger, is largely failing as well. He, desperate for money, puts his wife into this awkward situation hoping for a good result. While several of the couple’s bills undoubtedly get paid, the reader intuits that the couple emerges from this episode no happier than they had been before.
In much the same way, Cherry, who comes into the arrangement most grudgingly, does not get what she had hoped, although her hopes are minimal. In one of the simplest and most pathetic sentences I’ve read, she says, “’He’s my husband,’ she wept.”
Another telling sentence arrives on the heels of that simple exclamation. “He was forced to see with what grace she suffered them both [Tanner and her husband].” Grace is indeed what is needed for both of the male characters in Norris’ story. Both Tanner and the husband seek control, Tanner in the form of a carefully crafted yet artificial social setting and the husband in the form of the temporary relief dollars can bring. Neither of them, however, has any hope of a sustainable control. Tanner’s Christmas tableau will end, for better or worse, with the close of the weekend. The husband, with no prospects beyond this desperate rental of his wife, only postpones financial ruin.
What is not spoken, in this rather bleak but not utterly hopeless tale, is the true source of peace, joy, and reassurance. What is not spoken is the source of unending provision. What is not spoken is the miracle of the incarnation, the center of Christmas that each of these characters misses entirely. Yes, “Jesus is the reason for the season” may be a cliché, a sort of bumper-sticker discourse, but it is true and profound. Norris, in this story, expands this cliché beyond the bumper-sticker, presenting it in a nuanced enough way to cause the thoughtful mind to pause and ponder.