“Yoko Ono said that if she had a penis she’d be laughing all the time.”
“You get used to it.”
“Did you know that Japanese restaurants charge $500 for seal penis?”
No, but I know that one billion Chinese dream of eating tiger penis. I paged through the book. “No, I didn’t.”
“Have you ever used a penis enlarger?”
“Céleste …”
“No, I’m serious. They don’t work, right? I mean … that’s what everyone says.”
“I haven’t a clue about penis enlargers. I would imagine they don’t work. But how did this subject—”
“You a prude or something?”
“Me, a prude?”
“It’s estimated that eighty percent of bikers and hunters— trophy hunters—have small penises. If it weren’t for small penises, there’d hardly be any bikers or hunters. So it’s worth it-—for society—to invent an enlarger that really works.”
This was airtight, logic-wise, but I didn’t feel like pursuing the subject. Not only because I felt uncomfortable discussing penis enlargers with a teenage girl, but because sex in general was a subject I tried to avoid with anyone, of any age. I could never understand today’s obsession with talking about sex. Once you do, especially if you use words like rumpy-pumpy or wooshy-wooshy, the magic and mystery are gone. No? I stared at the ground, at a nail that stuck up fascinatingly from the floorboards. Yeah, I suppose I was a prude.
“Okay, I’ll stop,” she said. “Read me one last poem. No, let me see that. I’ll read you one.”
Now this would be interesting—which one would she choose? D.H. Lawrence’s “Snake”? She flipped through the book like a deck of cards, and I was reminded of an old TV show, My Favorite Martian or something, in which one of the characters could read books just by riffling through them. She handed the anthology back to me, gazed aloofly out the window, and recited the following lines:
At midnight in the churchyard
A tomcat comes to wail
And he chants the hate of a million years
As he swings his snaky tail …
He twists and crouches and capers
And bares his curved sharp claws,
And he sings to the stars of the jungle nights
Ere cities were, or laws.
Beast from a world primeval,
He and his leaping clan,
When the blotched red moon leers over the roofs
Give voice to their scorn of man.
She let her head fall back onto the pillow. “Don Marquis,” she said softly. Then entered the Land of Nod before I could count to ten or conceivably twenty.
A noise from outside, a faint rumbling, drew me to the window. I tried to peer through its thick frost, which was shaped like a map of Africa, but couldn’t see a thing. I melted a peephole on the glass with my palms, then twisted the latch and pushed the window open. A loud snapping sound made me think I’d broken the glass, but it was only the ice breaking. I stuck my head out and saw a dim grey form with a horn-like protuberance. It was about twelve feet long and five feet wide and as my eyes grew accustomed to the dark it took on the exact form of a woolly rhino. It grumbled then roared, as if catching its first glimpse of a hairless, ape-like man.
By the time I made it downstairs with my nightscope, it had reached the main road, driven away perhaps by alien human odour. It paused, its ruby eyes shining from the back of its head, before lurching onto the highway. I adjusted the lens: it was a red sports car.
The next morning, Christmas morning, I burnt something resembling a vegetarian breakfast. “No roast corpse on Christmas,” Céleste had stipulated. “And no birthday cake either, if you don’t mind.” So I made scrambled tofu and grilled okra on granary toast, seasoned with Earl’s microgreens: parsley, chia and fennel. Cranberry relish with orange rind on the side. And a sprig of holly for decoration, which Céleste said was really winterberry, or black alder.
Rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, she arrived in her grandmother’s kimono—faded red silk, covered with clouds and birds and bamboo fronds—which dragged along the ground and smelled of rye and tobacco. She sat down and pushed her plate away after two bites. But gulped down my café crème, two large bowlfuls, after sugarizing it with six cubes.
“There’s something I should probably tell you,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“I’m not really a vegetarian.”
“But when I asked you—”
“My grandmother was, but I’m not. I just don’t eat red meat. I know it’s not consistent. Or right. And I really don’t mind going all the way, if you like.”
“You mean if I learn how to cook?”
“You’ll get better with practice. I could be like the souschef. Can I have some cake now?”
Defying her orders, I had baked an angel food cake out of a box and stuck fifteen candles into it. But I’d hidden it inside an old wooden bread box that looked like it hadn’t held bread since the forties. I’d also bought a bûche de Noël, a foot-long cylinder with chocolate icing stroked into the texture of tree bark. This I’d hidden inside a knotted plastic Walmart bag in the fridge. Which one had she ferreted out?
“Cake?” I said. “What are you talking about? What cake?”
“I’ll blow out the candles, I’ll even make a wish. But for God’s sake, Nile, don’t sing ‘Happy Birthday.’ Promise?”
While lighting the candles with a Redbird Strike Anywhere match, struck against the black denim of my thigh, I promised.
“You wouldn’t have any cigarettes, would you Nile? For the occasion?”
“Nope. Gave them up when I was fifteen.”
After a theatrical frown, Céleste halfheartedly blew out the fifteen candles, then carved out a massive wedge of cake with her fingers and coffee spoon. My father would have had a conniption.
“Has anyone ever told you, Céleste, you have terrible table manners?”
“It’s come up.”
“In case you didn’t notice, I set out a knife and fork and—”
“Look at that!” she said with her mouth full and strawberry icing on both cheeks. She pointed to the end of the table, where a large ant was dragging something, perhaps a fallen comrade, perhaps a cake crumb. She swallowed. “I think that’s the biggest ant I’ve ever seen. Look.”
Had my ex been there, she would’ve crushed it by now. But was it really an ant? Don’t they hibernate or something? “I’ve seen bigger in India,” I said.
“You never told me you lived in India.”
“I haven’t told you a lot of things.”
“Where’d you live?”
We continued to watch the ant’s progress. “Around. Jaipur, New Delhi, Rawalpindi … Islamabad,” I said, rattling off whatever came into my head.
She turned to look at me. “Those last two aren’t even in India.”
“I know, I was … referring to the general area. The ants there are bigger than horses.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“It’s true. They put harnesses on them, and they haul logs and things. And saddle them up for tourist rides.”
“You’ll never get me to believe that, not in a million leap years. I’m not five years old.” There was a long silence, disturbed only by the sound of the refrigerator motor kicking in, as we watched the insect crawl down the table leg. “Do you mean that … they’re related to the ant family, or evolved from them? What kind of ants are we talking about exactly?”
I let the moment stretch. “Elephants.”
Instead of laughing, which was what Brooklyn did when I told the same tale, Céleste put her hands on her hips and sighed, eyes half-closed. Then smacked me on the shoulder with her coffee spoon, leaving a round trace of strawberry icing. Perhaps harder than she intended, perhaps not.
“Tell me about your ex,” she said suddenly, with eyes that looked like they were cooking up trouble. She lifted up her bowl and, tilting her head back, slurped down the d
regs, less coffee than wet sugar. “Is she a blonde?” With the sleeve of her kimono she wiped her mouth and cheek.
I wiped my shoulder. “Unnaturally, yes.”
“Skinny?”
I nodded. She had reached that stage of addiction where food is an afterthought.
“Did you know right away you’d … end up together?”
I knew she was arsenical yet willingly opened my mouth. Desired her the way a twice-poisoned dog eyes a third piece of meat. “Sort of.”
“Beautiful?” Céleste asked.
Knockout beautiful past the genes of either parent, beauty thrown up out of manure. “She’s a beautiful woman, yes. With a drug problem.”
“Much better looking than me, I guess.”
“Well I … I wouldn’t … Two types of beauty, really …”
“Oh shut up. Is that why you left her? Her drug habit?”
I was an expert in dying relationships, in black-sky unions, in the death march that drags on and on till someone makes a move. I stayed with her out of a kind of recklessness that was as vain as it was pigeon-hearted. She said I was morose and taciturn and dull when sober, but fun and electric and interesting when drunk. “No, I had some bad habits myself.”
“So why’d you leave her?”
Because of an abortion that killed the foetus and me. “It was just … you know, one of those things.”
“How was the sex?”
Again, I did not feel like discussing this subject with a fourteen-year-old. Or fifteen-year-old. Or any-year old. “You don’t do drugs, do you?” I changed.
“How many times did you make love to your ex per week?”
The question, out of the blue like that, made me laugh. My ex and I were like gorillas, who when kept in cages too long begin to smack each other in the head instead of mating. “Per week? I’d need a decimal to answer that one.”
Céleste paused, rewound. “Of course I do drugs.”
“A kid your age, are you serious? You mean like … the odd joint, sniff of gasoline, belt of cough syrup?”
“I’m not a kid, okay? Friends younger than me have had abortions.”
“Christ. Have you?”
“Not exactly.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means … nothing. I haven’t had an abortion.”
“You don’t do coke, do you?”
“That is so old school, so twentieth century.”
“Don’t ever start.”
“I do crystal meth.”
“You don’t.”
“All the girls up here do. It’s the best way to keep your weight down. Riding the white horse, it’s called. It’s packaged like candy, like Pixy Stix.”
Acid, I remembered, used to be moulded like Bart Simpson, and ecstasy decorated with dolphin stickers. I was a frequent flyer back in those days, I’d do anything. If it took five to kill you, I’d take four. “Jesus. You won’t be doing any riding as long as I’m around. It’s bad for you.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“What’s it cost?”
“Ten to fifteen.”
“A gram? Much cheaper than coke.”
“Have you done heroin?” she asked. “What do you guys call it in the States?”
H, horse, smack, dynamite, black tar, brown sugar, mud, scat, shit, jones … “No, I’ve never done it,” I said. I didn’t feel like describing how cosmic it is. Assuming she didn’t know already.
“They say it’s like shaking hands with God.”
I blinked. “I thought you didn’t believe in God.”
“I was speaking metaphorically. Do you know why it’s called heroin?”
“Yeah, it’s from the Greek ‘ηρωίνη.’ Hero, warrior.”
“I know, but why?”
“Why is it derived from ‘hero’? I think because … I don’t really know.”
“Because of the delusions of heroism you get from using it.”
“Really? I get those delusions from whisky.”
“I know.”
“You do?”
She nodded. “Dutch courage, it’s called.”
“Do you drink?”
“Of course.”
“Whisky?”
“Of course.”
“What kind of whisky do you like?”
“Scotch, Irish, rye and bourbon in no particular order.”
“Single malt?”
“Single, blend, ’shine, who gives a shit after the first shot?”
I smiled. This sounded like her grandmother talking. She then went on about May-December romances for some reason. About Emma and Mr. Knightley, Jane Eyre and Rochester, Edgar Allan Poe and thirteen-year-old Virginia Clemm, Samuel de Champlain and twelve-year-old Hélène Boullé, Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider …
“Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider? You mean in Last Tango in Paris? You haven’t seen that, have you?”
“Twice.”
Good Christ. Was she having an affair with an older man, was this where we were heading? “You’re not having an affair with an older man, are you, Céleste?”
She shook her head, her little black mane sweeping back and forth.
“Have you … you know ever …”
“Had sex with an older man?”
I nodded.
“Of course. Well, maybe not as old as you. But a guy nearly as old jumped me one time when I was walking home—along this path in the woods that my grandmother told me to stay clear of. It was so weird, almost more weird than scary. The guy starts yelling at me—you know, for sabotaging traps and blinds?—and then he gets me in the crook of his arm and the first thing I feel is his front teeth smashing into mine—it’s not really a kiss, it’s all wet bone and tongue and tobacco and I can hear him laughing and snorting too. It’s so gross when you hear saliva in a person’s laugh. And his hands were gross too—oily white fingers like slugs and fingernails clogged with dirt. Anyway, he pulls down his zipper then starts ripping off the buttons of my shirt, one by one, real relaxed like, so I stabbed him in the neck with a 6H pencil. It must’ve gone in an inch! He just sat there dazed and confused in the middle of the path—with the thing sticking out of his neck! Like Frankenstein! I always keep a pencil handy, a hard and sharp one. You can kill a man by ramming one up his nose and into his brain.”
Her words went through me like a spear, but I tried not to let it show. “So … then what happened? What’d you do?”
“What do you think I did? I ran like a jackrabbit, I ran till my lungs almost exploded.”
“Jesus. And you … I mean, you were all right after? You got over it?”
“Well, I thought I did but my grandmother thought I didn’t and she studied psychology. I felt okay and everything, but it was around that time that I sort of … well, exploded. Became a stress eater. I don’t think there’s any connection, though, because it started before that. Whenever I got stressed out I lost control and ate tons of junk, especially cereal, right out of the box, that’s all I felt like eating, twenty-four seven. I got Earl to order different kinds and I hid them from my grandmother. But it’s not connected. I’m just telling you. In case you thought I had a gland problem or thyroid problem or something like that. I’m just a stress eater. And Déry stresses me out. And so do his sons, big time.”
“Déry’s the guy who jumped you?”
Céleste chewed a nail, didn’t answer.
“Tell me.”
“It’s a long story.”
“Shorten it.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Who Déry is.”
“He’s a wildlife officer, okay? Inspecteur Déry. A real bad-ass on the take. Both him and his son Jacques, Jr. His other son’s a biker. You’ve met him—in the winter he scares the shit out of everyone in his yellow Hummer.”
“That tailgaiting idiot? I thought you said you didn’t know—”
“I’m scared of them, all three of them, I really am, they give me the creeps. But my grandmother wasn’t scared at all
and she marched into Inspecteur Déry’s office and read him the riot act. I don’t know what she said exactly but the guy never went near me again. Or his sons either. He told me I was too fat and ugly to bother with, that my face was plain as margarine, that there were lots of other girls to take my place. He was right too.”
“He wasn’t right. Don’t ever think that because it’s not true.”
“It’s what everybody says around here. That I’m like a homely little librarian headed for spinsterhood. Well, maybe not little. More like the Dandurand sisters down the road. They’re obese.”
“You’re not obese, far from it. Everybody around here is wrong, dead wrong. And anyway, librarians are cool. Very cool. And so are spinsters.”
“I’m no oil painting, that’s for sure. More like a grub hoping for some sort of metamorphosis.”
“You’re at that age, or close to it, when young women transform into beautiful swans.”
“Have you been reading Hans Christian Andersen or something?”
“Your eyes, for one, are stunning. Unique.”
“They’re green, big deal. Hardly unique. Like Anne of Green Gables, Jane Eyre, Ichabod Crane and Pinocchio.”
“But everything together … you’re a true original.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The beauty of an original is in the originality of its beauty.”
Céleste rolled her emerald eyes. “Is that supposed to be deep or something?”
“It’s from a car commercial. The point is you’re not the garden-variety kind of girl. And you’re not … homely. Not by a long shot. Everyone around here is jealous of you, that’s all. Because you’re smarter than everyone else.”
“I’d rather be beautiful than smart.”
I stared at the floor, saddened by this. Beautiful women are for men with no imagination, I wanted to say, but it’s not what she would’ve wanted to hear. “You’re both,” I said cheerily. “In equal proportions.”
Céleste closed her eyes, let her head drop. “You think just ’cause I’m young I can’t tell when a guy’s lying? I’m a goddamn human polygraph.”
White lies introduce others of a darker complexion: my father’s words. “I’m not lying.”
“You are. You’re trying to snow me.”