The Extinction Club (27 page)

Although she never mentioned it, she must have heard the same things I heard during the night: a snowplow grinding up and down the church lane, snowmobiles roaring through the graveyard, a ringing black phone with ghosts on the other end …

“Don’t come in!” she would hiss each time I knocked on her door. A whispery voice that rasped like a file.

She was making ornaments for a Christmas tree, I soon discovered, for a tree she didn’t want. At least not at first. “It’s a stupid tradition,” she said over a quick lunch I’d prepared, a blameless shiitake conchiglie with dark opal basil and white cilantro sauce, from a recipe Earl had given me. “It’s stupid to take the life of a young tree, and plastic ones are just as stupid.” Her mouth was encarmined with tomato sauce, which matched her bloodshot eyes. When I told her that I had found a red pine in the cemetery, one that had been felled and left to rot (two other taller ones had been poached), she thought that decorating it would be a nice memorial.

“Can you get some gifts for the cats before the stores close?” she asked. “Nothing for me, though. Promise? And some candles?” She then raced back to her room, or rather limped quickly.

For once I was ahead of her. While she was locked away upstairs the previous morning, I had slipped out, riskily, and purchased two dozen candles, six packs of Luv cat treats and as many catnipped fluffballs. Along with a Christmas log, microgreens, pink champagne, and three gifts for Céleste.

“And leave you alone?” I replied. “Sorry, can’t do it.”

Late on Christmas Eve, close to midnight, Céleste began trimming the tree with her handmade decorations: multicoloured clay figurines of deer, lynx, cougars, wolverines, bears (riding on the backs of cardinals) and swans, a pair of each, some of which she had just made, others from Christmases past. Added to these were some of her plaster and pewter dinosaurs, to which she attached red ribbons and loops. No angels, no star. After arranging and lighting the candles, two of them in corner nooks beside old brass snuff dishes, she put two wrapped boxes under the tree.

“You believe in God, right?” I asked.

“Yeah. God and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.”

“No, seriously.”

“I’m an evangelical atheist. Like my grandmother.”

“So why are we celebrating Christmas? You believe in Christ?”

“Do you?”

I didn’t answer.

“I’ve never doubted,” she said, “that a Jewish troublemaker was hauled away for disturbing the peace two thousand years ago. And in fact I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for him. But as for his being the son of God? No.”

“Because there’s no God.”

“Well, your friend God really took great care of my
grandmother. And my mother. And me. And all the animals

around here killed for fun.”

“So why are we celebrating?”

“Because this is a holiday from pagan times too. Candles, lights, even trees. It’s not altogether Christian.” She walked over to the foot of the stairs. “I’ll be right back.”

While she was in her bedroom I placed my own gifts under the tree. And hung two Christmas stockings lumpy with walnuts and tangerines. Should I deck the halls with balls of holly? I parted the curtains, wanting a white Christmas backdrop. Low in the sky, near the horizon, were vapourish waves of light, the blue-green streamers of an aurora. It’s a wonderful world.

I was stoking the pine-log fire, and seeing goldfish and guppies and angelfish swimming through the flames, when Céleste made her grand entrance. Slowly down the stairs she came, sans spectacles, squinting, in a distressed black frock, black ankle boots with a crisscross of laces wound through button-hooks, and tights of billiard-table green. But for the black lipstick and mascara, she might have been a pubescent Victorian widow. As she paraded by me on her way to the tree, I told her she looked great.

She waggled her eyebrows. “Miss America on the runway, that’s me.”

We opened our presents at midnight on the nail, that being the Quebec tradition. Céleste put her glasses back on and lackadaisically pulled out my unwrapped offerings from three plastic bags: a stamp album (she’d asked for one); my album of prehistoric animal stamps (she’d admired them); a telescope (which she’d not asked for); and
The Best of Jimi Hendrix
(ditto). She said thank you, but I think I had disappointed her.

“Do you know who Jimi Hendrix is?” I asked.

“No.”

A shocking gap in her home-schooling, that. “He was …” I didn’t quite know how to describe him in a sentence or two. “The greatest … well, you’ll see. He was part Indian like you.”

I received two well-thumbed volumes from her private collection—Bertrand Russell’s
Why I Am Not a Christian
and J.M. Coetzee’s
The Lives of Animals
, both wrapped in white paper adorned with hand-drawn silver swans—along with something protected between two heavy pieces of cardboard. A drawing? Yes, a blue-pencil portrait. Of yours truly.

“Beautiful,” I said, my eyes slowly taking in the subtle shadings and sure lines. “Now I know what I’d look like with successful plastic surgery.” It was the first “normal” drawing of a human I’d seen of hers. Her figures were most often grotesque and distorted à la Bosch or Bacon or fitted with devil horns; her animals, on the other hand, were always true, always beautiful. “Thank you.” I reached over and gave her an awkward hug.

“That one I just dashed off,” she said, blushing. “Look under the tissue paper.”

I did so and found another drawing, one that had taken much more time: a painting of Céleste and her grandmother in an airplane, after the photograph in the study. It was in the photorealist style, which I’d always thought was pointless non-art. Until now.

“Thank you, this is stunning, I … I’ll treasure it, I really will.” I examined the faces, the detail of the blue-and-white plane, the little metal “skis” over the wheels, the colours of the frozen lake. “Thanks for … you know, all this. The books and … all the work you put into … thanks.”

“Yeah, sure. After all, not like you ever did anything for me.”

I nodded, my eyes trained on the painting.

“I started that one a while ago,” she admitted, “but just finished it last night.”

I looked again at the farcically flattering portrait. Thought I’d better change the subject before ruining it with teardrops. “Can a plane take off on a frozen lake? Or would the wheels just spin all over the place? Or the skis just … slide.”

“When I was seven I asked my grandmother the same question.”

Sounds about right. “I guess you were a bit backward at that age.”

“Think about it.”

I used to be fairly good at thinking, but over the years I seem to have weaned myself off the habit. “Do I get three guesses?”

“It’s amazing, Nile, how many people don’t understand the concept. The wheels have no friction, or practically none. They’re on the plane to
reduce
friction. They don’t drive the plane. They’re only there to stop the plane from dragging its guts along the ground. Its fuselage. Other than that, they apply no real force on takeoff. The engines act on the air
above
the ice, pushing the plane forward, and since the plane can move forward, it can generate lift and take off. Once it reaches a certain speed, of course.”

Of course. I was about to ask more questions, about her grandmother’s piloting experience and plane, but Céleste hobbled off to the kitchen. As I unfoiled a bottle of Perrier Jouët Fleur de Champagne Rosé, a connoisseur’s pink according to my father, she returned with yet another gift-wrapped present. “Open it,” she said.

From the irregular shape and translucent paper I knew what it was, but of course didn’t let on. “What could this be?” I said. “A tie clip?” I unravelled the red ribbon, tore off the white tissue paper.

“It was given to my grandmother, so I’m regifting. But I know she’d want you to have it.”

It was something I’d stumbled upon in the basement while looking for Christmas-tree lights, in a kind of hidden alcove, like those secret caves in Europe where wines were kept from the enemy until peace was restored. The label on the box said A
CИHT
Kρ
ИCTM
ac (“Christmas Absinthe”) and alluded to some chess tournament in Czechoslovakia. No date, but obviously Soviet era. It was a gift set, complete with glass, spoon and lighter. Just what a recovering alcoholic didn’t need. “Thank you,” I said, giving Céleste another hug. “Just what I always wanted. Amazing.”

“You’ve never had it before?”

“No,” I lied. “But I’ve always wanted to try it. Shall we have a drop?”

“No, but you can,” she said. “I don’t like the smell of that stuff. The anise—it reminds me of bear hunter’s bait.”

I didn’t trust myself with
la fée verte
, afraid I’d drink the bottle in one sitting. Or falling. I used to be able to drink it till the cows came home. When I was amped on speed it didn’t slur my speech or lame me. It just took the edge off my hot nerves. I stashed the bottle in a high kitchen cupboard, out of sight, out of mind.

In the living room, beginning to sweat and trying not to twitch, I popped and poured pink champagne into two unmatching flutes. This I could handle, this I didn’t like enough to overdrink. Its liftoff was good but touchdown bad.

“I think that’s the most beautiful bottle I’ve ever seen,” Céleste enthused hoarsely, as if her vocal cords were numb from cocaine. She picked up the clear bottle, held it up to the light of the fire. “Art Nouveau, right? And these flowers are anemones?”

I shrugged, botanical dummy that I am.

“A toast,” she said.

This champagne’s too good for a toast—if you mix up emotions with stuff like this, you lose the taste:
my father’s words. Only since his death had his voice sung like this inside me, sometimes the accompanist, sometimes the soloist. “Good idea,” I said. “Do you … know any?”

“‘Drink to me with thine eyes. And I will pledge with mine. Or leave a kiss but in the cup, And I’ll not look for wine.’”

“That’s …” I was going to say “romantic” but thought better of it. “… Ben Jonson.”

“It’s the only toast I know,” she shrugged. “You know any?”

“‘To alcohol. The cause of—and solution to—all of life’s problems.’”

“Who said that?”

“Homer Simpson.” We clinked glasses. “Merry Christmas.”

“Say Merry Christmas in every language you know.”

I paused. “
Joyeux Noël, Feliz Navidad, Frohe Weihnachten, Buon Natale, Feliz Natal
,
Xαρo
µεvα Xριστo
γευυα
,
Shèngdàn kuàilè
. That’s it.”

“Say … ‘The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.’ In … Spanish.”

I hesitated. “Do you mean literally, or an equivalent that uses all the letters of the alphabet?”

“Literally. No, the equivalent.”

“
El veloz murciélago hindú comía feliz cardillo y kiwi
.” This had some letters missing, but it’s the only one I knew.

“Okay. In German. Literally.”

“
Der flinke, braune Fuchs springt über den trägen Hund
.”

“Greek.”

“Hγρήγoρη καψρετιά λ
o
ηδά
έρα
ó τo oκvηρó σκvλí.”