by Louise Penny
Her mother stood beside a long dead and undecorated pine tree propped in the corner of the stark, dark room, a sprinkling of sharp needles on the floor. A single ball hung on the tree and now her mother, hysterical and howling, yanked it off. CC could still hear the storm of needles hitting the floor and see the ball racing toward her. She hadn’t meant to catch it. Had only put her hands up to protect her face, but the ball had landed right in her palms, and stuck there, as though finding a home. Her mother was on the floor now, rocking and crying, and CC was desperate for her to stop. Desperate to shut her up, silence her, calm her before the neighbors called the police again and again her mother was taken away. And CC was left alone, in the company of strangers.
For an instant, though, CC hesitated and looked at the ball in her hands. It glowed and was warm to the touch. On it was painted a simple image. Three tall pine trees grouped together like a family, snow nestled on the bowing branches. Below it was written, in her mother’s hand, Noël.
CC leaned into the ball, losing herself in its peace and calm and light. But she must have looked too long. A banging on the door tore her away from the three pines and back to the horror in front of her.
‘What’s going on in there? Let us in,’ the man’s voice demanded from the other side of the door.
And CC had, though it was the last time she ever let anyone in, anywhere.
Crie walked by the Ritz, stopping to stare into the plush hotel. A doorman ignored her, not offering to let her in. She moved on slowly, her boots sodden with slush, her woolen mittens hanging off her hands, the caked snow dragging them to the ground.
She didn’t care. She trudged along the dark, snowy, congested streets, pedestrians bumping into her and giving her disgusted looks, as though fat children had spread their feelings like icing on slabs of cake, and swallowed them.
Still she walked, her feet freezing now. She’d left the house without proper winter boots, and when her father had vaguely suggested maybe she wanted something warmer she’d ignored him.
Like her mother ignored him. Like the world ignored him.
She ground to a stop in front of Monde de la musique. There was a poster of Britney Spears, dancing on a hot, steamy beach, her happy backup singers grinning and gyrating.
Crie stood before the window a long time, no longer feeling her feet or her hands. No longer feeling anything.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Clara asked.
‘Fuck the Pope,’ Kaye repeated, as clear as day. Mother Bea pretended she hadn’t heard and Émilie stepped slightly closer to her friend, as though positioning herself in case Kaye collapsed.
‘I’m ninety-two and I know everything,’ Kaye said. ‘Except one thing,’ she conceded.
There was another long silence. But curiosity had replaced embarrassment. Kaye, normally so taciturn and abrupt, was about to speak. The friends gathered closer.
‘My father was with the Expeditionary Force in the Great War.’ Of all the things they thought she might say, this wasn’t one of them. She was speaking softly now, her face relaxing and her eyes drifting off to stare at the books on the shelves. Kaye was time-traveling, something Mother Bea claimed to do while yogic flying, but had never achieved to this degree.
‘They’d formed a division especially for Catholics, mostly Irish like Daddy and Québecois, of course. He’d never talk about the war. They never did. And I never asked. Imagine that? Did he want me to, do you think?’ Kaye looked at Em, who was silent. ‘He told us only one thing about the war.’ Now she stopped. She looked around and her eyes fell on her fluffy knitted hat. She reached out and put it on, then looked at Em, expectantly. No one was breathing. They stared back, waiting to hear more.
‘For Christ’s sake, woman, tell us,’ Ruth rasped.
‘Oh, yes.’ Kaye seemed to notice them for the first time. ‘Daddy. At the Somme. Led by Rawlinson, you know. Fool of a man. I looked that much up. My father was up to his chest in muck and shit, horse and human. Food was infested with maggots. His skin was rotting, sores all over. His hair and teeth were falling out. They’d long since stopped fighting for king and country, and were now just fighting for each other. He loved his friends.’
Kaye looked at Em then over to Mother.
‘The boys were lining up, and told to fix bayonets.’
Everyone leaned forward slightly.
‘The last wave of boys had gone over a minute or so earlier and were mowed down. They could hear the screams and see the twitching body parts that had flown back into the trench. It was their turn, my father and his friends. They waited for the word. He knew he was going to die. He knew he had moments to live. He knew he could say one last thing. And do you know what those boys screamed as they went over the top?’
The world had stopped turning and had come down to this.
‘They crossed themselves and screamed, “Fuck the Pope.”’
As one the friends recoiled, as though wounded by the words, by the image. Kaye turned to Clara, her rheumy blue eyes searching.
‘Why?’
Clara wondered why Kaye thought she’d know. She didn’t. And she was wise enough to say nothing. Kaye dropped her head as though it suddenly weighed too much, the back of her thin neck forming a deep trench into her skull.
‘Time to go, dear. You must be tired.’ Em put a delicate hand on Kaye’s arm and Mother Bea took the other and the three elderly women walked slowly out of the bookstore. Heading home to Three Pines.
‘And time for us to go as well. Need a lift?’ Myrna asked Ruth.
‘No, I’m here to the bitter end. All you rats, don’t feel bad. Just leave me here.’
‘Saint Ruth Among the Heathens,’ said Gabri.
‘Our Lady of Perpetual Poetry,’ said Olivier. ‘We’ll stay with you.’
‘There once was a woman named Ruth,’ said Gabri.
‘Who was getting quite long in the tooth,’ said Olivier.
‘Come on, let’s go.’ Myrna dragged Clara away, though Clara was quite curious to see what they’d come up with to rhyme with ‘tooth’. Mooth? Gooth? No, probably better if it’s an actual word. Being a poet was harder than it looked.
‘There’s one quick thing I need to do,’ said Clara. ‘It’ll just take a minute.’
‘I’ll get the car and meet you outside.’ Myrna rushed off. Clara found the small brasserie in Ogilvy’s and bought a panini and some Christmas cookies. She also bought a large coffee, then headed for the escalator.
She was feeling badly about the homeless person she’d stepped over to get into Ogilvy’s. She had a sneaking, and secret, suspicion that if God ever came to earth He’d be a beggar. Suppose this was Him? Or Her? Whatever. If it was God Clara had a deep, almost spiritual feeling that she was screwed. Getting on the crowded escalator up to the main floor Clara saw a familiar figure descending. CC de Poitiers. And CC had seen her, she was sure of it.
CC de Poitiers gripped the rubber handrail of the escalator and stared at the woman getting on at the bottom. Clara Morrow. That smug, smiling, self-righteous villager. That woman always surrounded by friends, always with that handsome husband, showing him off as though it was more than some freak of nature that she’d landed one of the Montreal Morrows. CC could feel a rage building inside her as Clara approached, looking so wide-eyed and happy.
CC gripped harder, willing herself not to launch herself over the sleek metal divider and onto Clara. She balled up all her rage and made a missile of it and, like Ahab, had her chest been a cannon she’d have fired her heart upon Clara.
Instead, she did the next best thing.
Turning to the man next to her she said, ‘I’m so sorry, Denis, that you think Clara’s art is amateur and banal. So she’s just wasting her time?’
As Clara passed CC had the satisfaction of seeing her smug, arrogant, ugly little face crumple. A direct hit. CC turned to the baffled stranger beside her and smiled, not really caring whether he thought she was nuts.
Clara got off the escalator in a d
Amateur and banal.
And then the pain started and the tears, and she stood in Ogilvy’s, the place she’d been yearning to enter all her life, and wept. She sobbed, and lowered her precious presents to the marble floor, and placed the sandwich there and the cookies and the coffee, carefully, as a child places food for Santa. Then she knelt there herself, the final offering, a tiny ball of pain.
Amateur and banal. All her suspicions, all her fears had been true. The voice that whispered to her in the dark while Peter slept hadn’t lied after all.
Her art was crap.
Shoppers swirled around her, no one offering to help. Just as, Clara realized, she hadn’t helped the vagrant outside. Slowly Clara gathered herself and her packages up, and shuffled through the revolving door.
It was dark and cold, the wind and snow now picking up and surprising her warm skin. Clara stopped to allow her eyes to adjust to the darkness.
There, under the window, still slumped on the ground, was the bum.
She approached the beggar, noticing the vomit had stopped steaming and was frozen in place. As she got closer Clara became convinced the beggar was an old woman. She could see a scraggle of iron-gray hair and thin arms hugging the crusty blanket to her knees. Clara bent down and caught a whiff. It was enough to make her gag. Instinctively she pulled back, then moved closer again. Putting her weight of bags on the ground she laid the food next to the woman.
‘I brought you some food,’ she said first in English, then in French. She inched the bag with the sandwich closer and held the coffee up, hoping the bag lady might see it.
There was no movement. Clara grew concerned. Was she even alive? Clara reached out and gently lifted the grime-caked chin.
‘Are you all right?’
A mitten shot out, black with muck, and cupped itself round Clara’s wrist. The head lifted. Weary, runny eyes met Clara’s and held them for a long moment.
‘I have always loved your art, Clara.’
FIVE
‘But that’s incredible.’ Myrna didn’t want to sound as though she doubted her friend, but really, ‘incredible’ was charitable. It was unbelievable. And yet despite the cup of tea and fire in the grate her forearms broke out in goose bumps.
They’d driven home from Montreal in silence, listening to the Christmas Concert on CBC Radio. The next morning Clara was at her bookshop bright and early and eager to talk.
‘It is,’ Clara agreed, sipping tea and taking another star-shaped shortbread cookie, wondering when she could in all conscience start eating from the bowls of licorice goodies and candied ginger Myrna had scattered around.
‘She really said, “I’ve always loved your art, Clara”?’
Clara nodded.
‘And this was right after CC said your work was, well, whatever.’
‘Not just CC but Fortin as well. Amateurish and banal, he’d called it. Doesn’t matter. God likes my work.’
‘And by God you mean the shit-covered bag lady?’
‘Exactly.’
Myrna leaned her bulk forward in her rocking chair. Around her were the usual stacks of books waiting to be inspected and priced. Clara had the impression they sprang legs and followed Myrna about the village. Wherever she was there were books, like very unwieldy calling cards.
Myrna thought back. She’d noticed the vagrant, but then Myrna noticed most vagrants. She wondered what would happen if she ever recognized one. For years she’d seen patients at the mental hospital in Montreal, then one day, not so out of the blue as she liked to pretend, a memo appeared. Most of the clients—the patients overnight had become clients—were to be released. She’d protested, of course, but had eventually given in. And so she’d found herself looking across her battered desk at a succession of ‘clients,’ and into their eyes, and giving them a piece of paper that lied, that said they were ready to live on their own, with a prescription and a prayer.
Most quickly lost their prescription and never really had a prayer.
Except, perhaps, Clara’s woman.
Was it possible—Myrna watched her friend over the rim of her mug—that Clara had met God on the streets? Myrna believed in God and prayed God wasn’t one of the men or women she’d betrayed by signing their release. Myrna’s weight wasn’t all carried around her middle.
Clara was looking past the wooden shelves full of books and out the window. Myrna knew exactly what Clara was seeing. She’d sat in that very chair countless times staring out that window, dreaming. Her dreams were simple. Like Leigh Hunt’s Abou Ben Adhem, all she’d ever had was a deep dream of peace. And she’d found it here, in this simple, forgotten village in the Eastern Townships. After decades of treating people who never got better, after years of looking out windows at lost souls wandering toward a street that would become their new home, Myrna longed for another view.
She knew what Clara was seeing. She was seeing the village green, now covered in a foot of snow, and an irregular skating rink, and a couple of snowmen and three enormous pine trees at the far end that were lit at night with cheery Christmas lights of red and green and blue. And on the top of the tallest a brilliant white star shone visible for miles around.
Clara was seeing peace.
Myrna got up and went to the wood stove in the center of her shop, and taking an old tea pot from the top she poured herself another cup. She wondered whether she should get out the small pan and warm up some milk for hot chocolate, but decided it was a little too early.
On either side of the stove she’d placed a rocking chair, and facing it a sofa Peter had found while dumpster diving in Williamsburg. A Christmas tree she and Billy Williams had dragged from the woods stood in a corner and filled the shop with its sweet scent. Now it was decorated and under it were brightly wrapped gifts. A tray of cookies sat beside it for anyone who dropped by and bowls of candy were placed within easy reach around the store.
‘So how’d she know your art?’ Myrna had to ask.
‘How d’you think?’ Clara was genuinely curious to hear Myrna’s thoughts. They both knew what Clara believed.
Myrna thought for a moment, holding a book in her hand. She always thought better when holding a book. Still, no answer came.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked Clara with a grin.
‘You don’t know either,’ said Myrna. ‘You want to believe it was God. I have to tell you, people are locked up for less.’
‘But not for long.’ Clara caught Myrna’s eye. ‘Now, in my place what would you believe? That CC was right and the work is crap or that a vagrant was God and the work is brilliant?’
‘Or you could stop listening to the outside world and decide for yourself.’
‘I’ve tried that.’ Clara laughed. ‘At two in the afternoon my art is brilliant, at two in the morning it’s crap.’ She leaned forward until her hands were almost touching Myrna’s. She looked into her friend’s warm eyes and said very quietly, ‘I believe I met God.’
Myrna smiled, not in a patronizing way. If Myrna knew one thing it was how little she really knew.
‘Is that Ruth’s book?’ Clara picked up I’m FINE. ‘May I buy it?’
‘But you bought one yesterday. We both did. Even had her sign it. You know, I think I saw her signing some books by Auden too.’
‘I lost mine somewhere. I’ll get this and if she signs an Anthony Hecht I’ll buy that too.’
Clara opened the book and read, at random.
‘Well, all children are sad
but some get over it.
Count your blessings. Better than that,
buy a hat. Buy a coat or pet.
Take up dancing to forget.
‘How does Ruth do it? I swear she’s just an old drunk.’
‘You thought that about God, too,’ said Myrna.
‘Listen,
Forget what?
Your sadness, your shadow,
whatever it was that was done to you
the day of the lawn party
when you came inside flushed with the sun,
your mouth sulky with sugar,
in your new dress with the ribbon
and the ice-cream smear,
and said to yourself in the bathroom,
I am not the favorite child.’
Myrna looked out the window and wondered whether their peace, so fragile and precious, was about to be shattered. Since CC de Poitiers had arrived there’d been a gathering gloom over their little community. She’d brought something unsavory to Three Pines, in time for Christmas.
SIX
The days leading up to Christmas were active and full. Clara loved the season. Loved everything about it, from the sappy commercials to the tacky parade for Père Noël through St-Rémy sponsored by Canadian Tire, to the caroling organized by Gabri. The singers moved from house to house through the snowy village filling the night air with old hymns and laughter and puffs of breath plump with song and snowflakes. Villagers invited them into their living rooms and they carried on round pianos and Christmas trees, singing and drinking brandy eggnogs and eating shortbread and smoked salmon and sweet twisty breads and all the delicacies baked in the festive ovens. The carolers sang at every home in the village over the course of a few evenings, except one. By unspoken consent, they stayed away from the dark house on the hill. The old Hadley place.
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