“Thanks, I’ll be right there,” I said after repeating then memorizing the directions. I ran back to the parking lot, but the woman and dog were pulling away in a silver Saab. I could make out only the last three letters of the licence plate: RND. I fired up the van, which took a couple of minutes, enough time for her to make a clean getaway.
On the highway I fiddled with the chrome knob on the old radio, watching the red line scan the frequencies, stopping at Jean Leloup’s “Le grand héron” at 96.9, then a French version of “Angels We Have Heard on High” at 99.5, then “Bye Bye Bye” by Plants and Animals at 99.9. What a signal, all the way from Vermont! You can’t beat German radios, you can’t beat a Blaupunkt!
Candy canes dangled from lampposts, and green bulbs winked at me from nests of pine boughs and tinsel. While admiring them I drove at a geriatric pace, trying my best to keep to the speed limit every inch of the way. And trying my best not to jam on my breaks for the benefit of the car behind, a tailgating yellow Hummer. The concept of keeping your distance, it would seem, is as foreign to drivers here as it is in France. I slowed to a crawl and flicked on my four-ways. The driver flashed his brights, three, four times, before passing me on the shoulder, displaying his longest finger.
I reached for the .38 in the glovebox but thought better of it. Pushed on the accelerator, primed for a chase, but thought better of that too. Instead, I wrote down the licence plate (666 HLL) and flicked back to 99.5, a Montreal station. Classical music, my father’s lawyer once told me, is good for anger management. Vaughan Williams’s Lark Ascending was playing, which was perfect, but I couldn’t focus. Questions were crowding my mind. From the police if I got pulled over: Are you aware, sir, that the vehicle’s registration expired two years ago and has not been renewed? Are you aware that this vehicle was involved in a serious crime? Are you aware that you are wanted in the state of New Jersey, and that a full-points bulletin is out for your arrest?
The streets were all biblical: Matthieu, Marc, Luc, Jean. I turned right on Mathieu, left on Marc. Past a disused arena announcing a Pumas-Lynx hockey game from the previous year, past a schoolyard with a swing set, climbing bars and a slide in the shape of a dinosaur tongue. But where were the children? I hadn’t seen a single one, anywhere. Why weren’t they out tobogganing or skating or making snowmen? Or whipping snowballs at cars and windows? Where were they? Was this a retirement village?
Right on Luc, past the flash and trash of new condos littering the mountainside, to a veterinary clinic atop a small hill. The cars were parked in front at a steep angle, presumably with their emergency brakes on. Mine didn’t work so I parked at the bottom and made my way up the slick staircase like a chimp on skates. At the top of the hill I looked down on a glaciated valley strewn with black boulders, at a line of birches and poplars that marked the course of a river whose wild waters defied the frost. I must have a suicide complex because I wanted to jump. It all looked so beautiful, pristine. And sad too, as if I were seeing the end of the old world.
A quaint habit of mine: trying to visualize landscapes from before Columbus landed—towering trees fifteen storeys high, titanic fish leaping out of crystalline waters, ferocious mountain lions, bobcats and wolves skulking through lush boreal jungle … Or trying to see in the other direction: toward post-human landscapes. It took ten thousand years to ravage Mother Earth, but after we’re gone it will take only two hundred years for her to have her revenge. To turn the concrete jungles into the real thing. To bring every skyscraper down, like one 9/11 after another. To sweep away all the dams. To turn cities back into swamps (Paris was once a marsh, and so was London). To save most animals from extinction …
I blinked, wiped the images from my head, gazed up at the sky. Among the clouds was a leaping dolphin, its body a graceful S, flanked by a leaping lion, its forelegs fully splayed. Hamlet, my doctor told me, saw camels and weasels and whales in the clouds before he went mad.
On the door of the clinic was a bilingual sign, whose font 8 English said ANIMALS MUST BE HELD OR LEECHED. The air inside had a slightly sour tang—the smell of medicine, of animal fear—and muffled whines and whimpers drifted in from the back.
I was in no mood to see a beautiful human but was now in the presence of one. A woman in a white frock with long wavy Pre-Raphaelite hair who stood by a bay window, tall and straight and queenly, with unfeasibly long legs. I was distracted not only by her, but by the male receptionist, who had bleached white teeth and skin bronzed with a chemical tanning agent.
I asked for syringes, cephalexin and pethidine, armed with a cock-and-bull story about a near-fatal injury to my cat, caught in a hunter’s steel trap. To my surprise, the receptionist gave me what I wanted after getting a curt nod from the doctor. I thanked her but a swinging door was already closing behind her.
As my bill was being rung up, I wondered if I should talk to the vet about my patient’s wounds. Or even bring her in for an examination. A medical doctor would be required by law to notify authorities; a veterinarian had no such obligation. At least in the States …
« With the tax, that’ll be $114.44, » said the receptionist. « For an extra ten bucks, I’ll give you a tick bath. »
I laughed. Then asked, in a low voice, « You wouldn’t have any diazepam, would you? Or something like that? » This was a tranquilizer, for me, because it seemed like I’d forgotten how to sleep.
« Yes, we do. But you’ll need a doctor’s— »
« Can you toss some in? » I gave him what I hoped would pass for a seductive wink and camp little moue. « Just, you know, like a sample? »
The receptionist bit his lip, looked both ways. Then spun in his chair and opened a metal cabinet. « On the house, » he said in a stage whisper, handing me an aluminum blister pack.
Zieline, it was called. Two would knock out a thousand-pound horse. « Uh, I don’t want to sound fussy or anything but … you wouldn’t have anything milder, would you? For humans? »
« Oh my God! Wrong pack. » He spun round again and rooted through the cabinet. « How about these? »
“Perfect, thanks.” I counted out six American twenties. Left a seventh on the counter, worth two tick baths. « Joyeux Nöel. »
On my way out, a poster on the door caught my eye: a missing-girl flyer. A dead girl, most likely. I looked closer. A fourteen-year-old with short dark hair and glasses, last seen at the Maison d’Hébergement Jeunesse in Ste-Madeleine: CÉLESTE JONQUÈRES.
She was still sleeping when I got back, struggling and muttering like a dreaming dog. I put away my purchases noiselessly, placed the DVD player and crossword puzzle on the chair beside the bed, set up the TV on a kitchen chair at the foot of the bed. Punched it on, fiddled with its wire antenna until finding one semi-clear channel among twelve of snow. Then went back out, to my neighbour’s, for my daily theft of wood.
When I returned, my foundling was bathed in the vampiric light of the TV, her teeth gritted and tears making glossy tracks on her face. I made some comforting noises—the kind made for pets and babies, the kind I used to make for Brooklyn—and patted her cheeks with a Kleenex. She responded with a series of groans and spastic movements that both perplexed and troubled me. Was she mentally retarded?
« Are you … in pain? » I asked in both languages, sitting on the edge of the bed.
She shook her head in a preoccupied way, then moved her lips as in a silent film. With her pointer finger she touched her mouth, tapping it two or three times.
« Ma pauvre. T’as faim! » I rose to get some food, but she clutched weakly at my wrist with her hand. Again she put her finger to her mouth, but this time made an “x” over her lips.
« Oh, I see! You can’t speak! »
She nodded weakly, closing her eyes. Or perhaps rolling them at my stupidity.
I gazed at her for several seconds. A deaf mute. Well, obviously not deaf. A baritone on the box intruded: three Quebec soldiers, one of them from here in the Laurentians, had been killed by a suicide bomber in Afgha
nistan. I turned off the TV. Tried to refocus.
The sole words in my sign-language repertoire—“Hello,” “How are you?,” “I love you”—were met with a frown. She made frail little writing gestures in the air. Why didn’t I think of that? I pulled a pencil from my breast pocket, along with some folded real estate notes.
On the back of one of them she wrote English words that I had to put on my glasses to read: I’m dying, aren’t I.
I shook my head violently, but wasn’t sure she noticed. She continued to write: No police.
I nodded. At least we agreed on that.
I don’t want to be found.
There was a time, around her age, when I didn’t want to be found either. She fell back on the bed, her head dangling over the side of the mattress. Her eyes remain fixed on the ceiling, unblinkingly.
“What’s your name?”
She reached for her pencil, flat on her back. Wrote something and scratched it out. Then wrote again and held up the page. Église de Ste-Davnet, you know it?
“The church? Yes, that’s where I found you. In fact, I may even be …” I left the sentence dangling as she continued to write, or rather print. Not in a slow scrawl, as you might expect, but quickly, neatly.
Ring of keys in bird feeder. Backyard, rectory. Big key opens back door. I need my glasses. And sketchbook.
For a last will and testament?
Upstairs, first room on the left. Bed table. Smallest key.
“Okay. But how did you—”
And can you feed my 6 cats? And get me some smokes?
“Yes of course, but—”
BE CAREFUL.
“I will, but how did you—”
I used to live there. With Grand-maman.
“You did? And where’s your grandmother now?”
In the cemetery.
IV
It’s the glove I remember. An orange rubber glove, like the kind used to wash dishes. I was sleeping in my bed. I heard the creak of a floorboard — the creak that Grand-maman always makes. I heard the click of the bed light being switched on, the thump of footsteps from bed to closet, from closet to dresser — a routine that always ended with her leaning over & whispering “Asleep?” & my small groan that said Yes, I’m asleep but I’m glad you’re here & that we’re going to have breakfast together.
I heard the creaking sound but for some reason she wasn’t going through the routine & that’s what woke me. I waited sleepily for the light to go on, for the footsteps to move between bed & closet. Somehow the thought became a snake crawling down my spine, winding tight around my chest. Poor thing, it said to me, this isn’t your grandmother at all. How could it be? She’s dead.
I opened my eyes & a gloved hand slammed over my mouth. I saw a long shadow & heard heavy breathing & smelled beer. I bit down on the hand that gagged me, my teeth sinking into the rubber glove, grinding it as hard as I could. But there were two hands of course & the other, in an orange fist, slammed into my throat. I gagged & gasped & then blackness came.
When I came to I was tied up, with gooey muck in my face and hair.
I’m wrapped in bandages like a mummy. Dopey with painkillers & nauseous too. Just the thought of eating — or even smoking! — makes me want to hurl.
Without my glasses I can barely see. And with a broken windpipe I can barely breathe. At least it feels like it’s broken. I feel like I swallowed a sleeping bird that woke up then panicked & is now thrashing its wings inside me. When I try to talk nothing comes out. But even if I get better, which is not likely, I’m never going to speak to anyone again.
I can’t stop crying & the crying has a muffled, drowning sound. I feel like a duck trapped under the ice, its eyes frozen open, begging whoever walks above it to free it. Now. Please. I’m nearly 15 but I feel like I got mileage on for 115. I don’t plan on making it to 16. I’m going out in my grandmother’s Exit Bag. Before Christmas.
The family tree
Ends with me.
I’m feeling a bit better. And slowly starting to “get my bearings.” I’m in a cabin in the middle of nowhere — from the tiny glimpse I get out the window it may be on that strip of land by the river with hunting cabins that crazy man Brioche built but can never rent because the land’s flooded half the time & the roads aren’t cleared in winter. Plus I’ve lost my voice. Which I might’ve mentioned already. I’m here with this strange American dude who seems to be a doctor who’s got a night telescope or whatever it’s called, black tar in a jar, a stamp collection & generally jumpy behaviour. He chain-drinks coffee from morning to night & paces up & down like an expectant father. Before going to sleep he writes in a small notebook or reads a paperback novel with no covers called Broken Wind. I asked him why it has no covers & he said that it’s probably the result of it being flung across the room many times.
Every day I think up a new back-story for him. A heart surgeon who lost his nerve in the middle of an operation. A doctor on the run, fleeing a malpractice suit. A jailbreaker convicted of practising with forged medical credentials. An escaped mental patient who thinks he’s a physician. But he might not even be a doctor. For all I know he could be President of the Jeffrey Dahmer Fan Club.
I don’t know what he expects from me when I get better — if I get better. He obviously took my clothes off & God knows what else he did. But if he saved my life, I should be grateful, I guess, because it might allow me to do two major things before I die. More later, he’s back with more firewood …
With fuzzy vision I’m looking at water stains on the ceiling & one of them seems to be turning into the man with the orange gloves, but with his face upside down, mouth on top, eyes below.
Still trying to figure out who exactly I’m rooming with. I know he’s an American from his accent (he says “HOWse” and “badderies” and “huh” instead of “eh” and “zee” instead of “zed” and “Eye-rack” instead of “Iraq”), but he also speaks Parisian French with machine-gun speed, especially when he swears.
I fed him a line about a girl gang sticking me because I was a fat stuck-up know-it-all science geek who prefers reading to cellphones & texting & cloneclothes. And he swallowed it. If he finds out what really happened he’ll only screw things up, he’ll end up blabbing it all over the place & getting us both killed.
It’s not that he’s stupid or anything but he seems, I don’t know, like a fish out of water or a rabbit in New York City. Like a baby could take candy from him. He’s certainly no match for Alcide Bazinet …
He thinks I’m a poor little mute girl & I’ll let him go on thinking that. I’ll be like one of those Benedictine nuns in their refectories. Besides, I’m so painkilled I couldn’t speak if I wanted to. If he only knew what a little chatterbox I am.
If I can get out of bed, I’ll root around next time he’s gone, try to find out more about him. He won’t even tell me where he’s from. Keeps saying he’s from Neptune.
V
Céleste was snoring softly as I awoke in the pre-dawn dark. Nightmares had raided my sleep, caveman dreams in which I was rubbing two sticks together, nose flaring, eyes roaming and ears straining for hidden danger, my short furry legs ready to outrun the wind. Dozily, eyes half-closed, I looked out the living room window at a scene dim and vague with flowing mists and mastodonic shapes with tusks and horns. The trees were ghostly and bent, the ice burdening or breaking their limbs. I could feel myself out on one of them, saw in hand.
Birds began to sing, reminding me that not all birds fly south. Nothing familiar to me, like the ovenbird’s teacher teacher teacher, or the catbird’s meow, or the towhee’s drink-your-tea. Just a few pigeon-like sounds, two repeated syllables, doo-doo, like the dodo is said to have made.
While listening to them I made a decision, a snap decision: to bolt, to go back to where I came from and face the music. I’d failed as a tourist, failed as a hermit; it was the end of my nature experiment, end of my doctoring. I’d stretched myself as far as I could and had no more stretch. Chalk it up t
o a bad month to be buried with the memory of other bad months.
Besides, how could I even think of living with a teenage girl after the charges I was running from? A teenage girl with serious enemies. A depressing foreign film is what I was in, complete with subtitles, handwritten ones. I was losing it, wobbling out of orbit. A pharmaceutical backlog—teenage acid, college weed, adulthood coke and alcohol, in unwise conjunction, joining forces in a time-release attack on my brain cells. Turning my grey matter into shaving cream. Why else would I come to these alien pines, this gutted church surrounded by homicidal bog men? Heavenly callings? Delusions of sainthood?
I would go to the police, turn myself in, report what I’d seen. And get her a doctor. A real one. Céleste would give me no explanation of what had happened to her that night, nothing credible at least, but she’d have to tell the cops. And they’d protect her.
But first I’d go to the rectory for her, as promised. Or rather second. First I’d make breakfast. I leapt out of bed, glanced at my patient, then yanked open the fridge door. It’s not giving up, it’s growing up, an inner voice reassured me.
While listening to the bacon and eggs in the skillet, to the pig and chicks cursing and spitting in anger and anguish, it dawned on me why Céleste wouldn’t eat my breakfasts, or much of anything else. So I put the kettle on.
“You’re a vegetarian, right?” I asked when she opened one eye. I had deliberately dropped her plate with a clatter onto her tray table.
She nodded slowly.
“I made porridge for you.”
No response.
The Extinction Club Page 4
