Mariette knew that the marriage was over when she opened the front door that Friday afternoon and the Christmas tree was still lying on the living-room floor.

She had bought it after work on Wednesday and it had been so fragrant, so green, so full of life compared to the grey wet streets of Halifax that she had wanted to put it up right away.

'It's way too early to put up a Christmas tree.' Jerry had said.

Jerry was always cranky when he was marking papers. He was good in front of a class- everyone loved him, he was brilliant, he was funny, he was Jerry Seinfeld- but he had never been able to deal with paperwork; he sighed and fidgeted then, wandered around the house looking for his red pen, the Diana Krall CD, the Tylenol.

His family didn't decorate until the day before Christmas, he said.

Mariette had rolled her eyes. Every time they went to Jerry's parents for the holidays, they ended up spending most of Christmas Eve driving all over town looking for a tree. Many of the Christmas tree lots were closed by then (and why not: only crazy people didn't have their tree yet) and it was sometimes dark when they came home with one.

'If they don't want to put a tree up right away, they could still buy one, and keep it in the garage or something.' she'd say to Jerry once.

'But that would take all the fun out of it' he said.

That's how his family was. The first time his parents had invited them for dinner, the meal hadn't been ready to eat until eleven-thirty that night. Suzanne had planned to make phyllo pastry but it turned out that she didn't have the right flour so she had sent Bill out to find frozen phyllo, which had mystified Mariette because she knew that the dough had to thaw at least five hours before you could use it, and when Bill returned, without the pastry, they sat in front of the fireplace drinking wine and discussing the hilarious search—but first Bill had to start the fire, and he couldn't find matches, and then he kept seeing interesting headlines on the pages of the newspaper he was about to scrunch up to start the fire with, and he had to read parts of the articles to them. Suzanne was going through all her cookbooks to find another recipe since she couldn't make the spanakopita now. Meanwhile, their three cats were leaping up on the cluttered kitchen counters, licking the butter dish and eating out of frying pans.

Mariette, sunk in an antique armchair with a velour throw, had thought it wonderfully chaotic. She had looked at a flaming log through the white wine in her glass and smiled at Jerry.

'Your family is so eccentric', she said on the way home, 'So charming. So relaxed.'

So different from her family, where they ate at five o'clock on the dot every evening, served the dessert as soon as the last bite of meat and potatoes was swallowed then promptly jumped up from the table to do the dishes. It was a marathon, Jerry said. As if they couldn't wait to get it over with.

'This thing is useless' Jerry said as he lay under the tree struggling with the screws on the tree-stand. 'It's not going to stay.'

From where she stood holding the prickly top of the tree, Mariette could only see his short stocky legs; one knee bent and one blue wool sock sliding off. He grunted and the tree shook violently under her hand.

Weren't you supposed to be happy when you put up a Christmas tree, she thought. Drink hot cocoa, listen to Christmas carols, reminisce?

'I don't know why we have to get a real tree every year.' Jerry said. 'They're a pain in the ass.'

'You mean get an artificial one?'

'Why not?'

'You can't be serious.' Mariette said. 'Imagine the instructions; insert needle B27 into stem F38. We would never figure it out.'

'Couldn't be worse than this.' he said.

He had returned to his office as soon as the tree was anchored in the stand and Mariette had felt a little sorry for herself as, alone, she carried the boxes of decorations from the basement, strung the lights and hung the ornaments.

The tree had toppled the next morning while she was lying underneath it in her pyjamas, plugging in the lights. His face streaked with shaving cream, Jerry held the tree up so she could crawl out. He looked annoyed.

Mariette shook out her hair and began to pick bits of tinsel and pine needles from the sleeves of her pyjamas.

'I knew you should have tied it to the wall' she said.

'Hey, don't blame me. You're the one who just made it fall.'

'It wouldn't have happened if you'd spent one more minute helping me last night.'

'I had papers to mark, remember?'

'You didn't want to help me and you made sure it wouldn't be done right.'

'If you'd waited a couple of days, maybe I would have had the time.' he said. 'But no, you can never wait, you just go right ahead.'

He turned to go.

'Hey!' Mariette said, 'You have to help me put it back up! We can't just leave it here.'

But they had. Jerry had left for work on his bicycle and she in the car, and that evening, he had volleyball and she had eaten leftovers in front of the television and not done the dishes and seethed. The next morning, the only thing she had said to him as they rushed between bed and bath and kitchen was:

'It's your turn to do the cat litter.'

He had not answered.

As she crouched at the door to unlace her boots that Friday afternoon, Mariette surveyed the ruins; the dark shape of the upended tree, icicles gleaming like the eyes of a wounded animal, the floor strewn with balsam needles and splayed icicles, the gold and crimson shards of broken ornaments. She picked up a headless ceramic snowman. Jerry had bought two of the ornaments at the market one year and she always hung them side by side on the tree. She stroked the glazing on the smooth limbs, touched the raw stem of the neck and sighed.

Turning up the thermostat—Jerry was a fanatic about his carbon footprint, the place was always freezing—she huddled on the couch under one of her grandmother's crocheted afghans.

The house was dark—the days were so short now that they didn't bother opening the blinds except on week-ends, and very still. She could hear the hush of forced air from the furnace grates, the muffled sounds of traffic on Robie Street, the refrigerator humming in the kitchen.

The smell of the tree's resin was like a presence in the room, and yet another reminder of their differences. For Jerry could not smell anything; not the lilacs in bloom, not the olive oil you poured over hot pasta, not even the mouse that died between the kitchen walls. He never noticed when she wore scent.

Her current favourite was an essential oil called Balm of Gilead. Her friend Roma had introduced her to it in her crooked kitchen on Cape Breton Island. Roma had moved there after university to live with a German luthier, and to weave silk and linen scarves on a loom. She also gathered wild herbs and made tinctures and essential oils that she sold on the Internet.

'Tell me what you think.' she said as she handed Mariette a vial of the murky oil. 'Would it sell?'

Mariette inhaled the woodsy scent. 

'Who wouldn't buy something called Balm of Gilead?' Mariette said, rubbing murky oil on her wrist and inhaling the woodsy scent. 'It sounds like a tree that Jesus would have in his back yard. Or a knight of the round table. Sir Gilead.'

Roma laughed. 'That's why I don't use its other name. Black poplar doesn't quite have the same ring to it.'

'But Gilead; that is a name in the bible, isn't it?'

'I suppose I should know that if I'm going to sell the stuff' Roma said. She got up and went to the shelf in the living room where she kept her encyclopaedia, the same set she had moved into the bedroom they had once shared in residence.

From the kitchen, Mariette could see Jürgen in the sunroom. He reminded her of a young Father Christmas with his long beard and kind lustrous eyes. On the days when he wasn't working on a guitar, he alternated between drinking syrupy Turkish coffee and smoking marijuana.

'There's another tree named Balm of Gilead.' Roma said when she returned to the kitchen. She held an open book in her hands.

'It's called the Mecca balsam. Listen to this: ''The Ishmaelites from Gilead were bearing balm when they bought Joseph from his brothers''. The rats. ''Gilead is a city northeast of the Dead Sea near Mizpah.''

'It's a beautiful word.'

'So biblical.' Roma said, and they laughed.

Roma had showed her the tree the next time she visited. It was spring and Mariette had wanted to get away.

'Are you sure it's okay if I come?' she had asked Roma on the telephone.

'Are you kidding?' Roma said. 'I'd love to have you. And listen, if you're going by Iqbal's before you go, but promise you won't make a special trip, could you get me a couple of cans of those stuffed grape leaves? It's the one thing I miss about Halifax.'

It had rained the evening that Mariette had arrived and although the sun was out the next day, it was still wet. After breakfast, Roma loaned her a pair of wool socks and some rubber boots and they went out.

The day was calm and fresh, the air transparent, the grass an impossibly tender green. Everything glistened. Just before the little bridge at the end of the driveway, Roma stopped and said:

'It's here; walk back and forth.'

'What?'

'The balm of Gilead; see if you can find it.'

Mariette stepped onto the first plank, careful of her footing; grass and moss grew on the bridge and most of the decking looked as if it was decomposing; as soon as one layer of wood rotted, Jürgen just nailed on more planks.

'It looks awful' Roma always said, 'But it's safe'. She and Jürgen barrelled across the bridge in the used Mercedes Benz he had bought in Germany and shipped in a container to Halifax but Mariette was never brave enough to drive over it. She parked her Jetta underneath the variegated rose bushes that always caught on her hair and walked across.

The water was high that day, brown from the rain and the spring run-off. Debris floated by at a fast pace. Mariette walked to the end of the bridge and came back towards Roma. From where she stood, her friend looked like the pregnant woman in that Klimt painting, except that she wasn't pregnant, and she was wearing black rubber boots. It was her frizzy red hair falling down her shoulders, the way she stood, and that pale pale skin of hers.

She smelled the Balm of Gilead at that moment. A poignant fleeting smell, as green as the new grass, as rich as incense. Roma had showed her the tree and they had each plucked a plump sticky bud from a grey branch.

Mariette held hers under her nose.

'I could smell this forever.' she said, closing her eyes.

'Me too,' Roma said. 'But it's like any perfume; it goes away. You have to leave it, and come back.'

'Why is that, I wonder? '

'We get used to it, I guess. Habituated. Isn't that what it's called?'

'I thought that was only for drugs.'

They sat side by side on the damp bridge, swinging their boots over the water. They listened to the river rushing up, close, fast.

'Maybe,' Roma continued. 'It would be too distracting if we didn't get used to beauty. We couldn't go about our lives.'

She threw a twig into the river and they watched the current take it.

'When I moved in to the place near the harbour,' Mariette said. 'I never thought I'd get enough of the view. But I did. After a couple of weeks I didn't even see it anymore.'

'We get used to everything' Roma said. 'Even happiness. It's kind of sad.'

...........

Mariette was still on the couch when Jerry came home.

'Are you sick?' he said.

'No.'

She watched him shedding the layers of fleece, nylon and Lycra he wore when he rode his bicycle. Released from his tuque, his hair stood up in rowdy peaks.

'It's hot in here' he said as he entered the living-room. He looked at the thermostat but did not adjust it.

He lifted Mariette's feet from the couch and sat under them, tucking the afghan back around her toes. She turned her face towards the back of the couch and closed her eyes. She could feel his cold thighs, the weight of his hands, the rough mesh of the afghan, the rhythm of his breath. She was conscious of his cold skin under her calves, the weight of his hands, the rough mesh of the afghan, the rhythm of his breath.

After a few minutes, she noticed a change in his breathing and, opening her eyes, she saw that he had fallen asleep. She examined him as he slept; his face, ruddy and tanned even in winter, his dark stubby eyelashes quivering a little, his short straight nose (how she had wanted a child with that nose) the bubble of breath parting his lips.

A car horn sounded on the street and Jerry's eyes flew open. He looked anxious and confused for a few seconds. Then he sighed, patted Mariette's leg and closed his eyes again.

'I fell asleep.' he said.

She smiled.

'I had this weird dream.' he continued. 'I dreamed the Christmas tree had fallen down and there were broken ornaments everywhere.'

Mariette laughed. She felt a surge of happiness and relief.

She rolled onto her back, pushed the afghan from her chest and stretched her arms above her. Jerry caught one of her hands and kissed it.

'I have an idea.' she said.

After they had eaten supper and agreed to do the dishes the next day, after they had made love on the cool sheets of the unmade bed, they unwound the string of lights from the fallen tree, picked the strands of tinsel from its branches and returned the decorations to their boxes. Jerry dragged the tree across the floor and pushed it through the front door. From the window, Mariette watched it roll over the lawn and come to rest against the fence. Shreds of forgotten tinsel winked at her in the night.

'I wonder who will mention it first.' Jerry said when he came in.

'Jonathan for sure!' Mariette said. 'It will drive him nuts.'

'I think it'll be Mrs. Cameron.'

'Betcha twenty bucks it's Jonathan.'

'You're on.' he said.