James Morrow: This Is the Way the World Ends

For the ninth gift, George devised a rag doll out of patches and swatches cut from commissioned officers’ uniforms. Its eyes were brass buttons.

The final gift had been hanging in his closet for months.

Half a day. So short. Best to trim the tree in advance. After all, she would have all those presents to unwrap and play with. For hooks he used the paper clips that held the pages of Captain Sverre’s bad poetry together. By Friday afternoon the former orange tree had become a cheerful mass of glittery, twisted armatures and curled, nameless metal.

He beat the lid from a canned ham into a star. Christmas trees without stars on top were totally unacceptable. He moved the step-ladder into place…

Why am I lying on the floor? he wondered. What am I doing staring at the ceiling? He glanced at the rivet-studded walls, the unfinished tree. I am lying on the floor because there is no point to anything. People are extinct.

Midnight came. He stood up. ‘The point,’ he said aloud, ‘is that Holly and I are not extinct.’ He placed the star where it belonged.

Saturday, the final preparations. He wrapped the ten gifts in aluminum foil and set them under the tree, stacking and restacking them in an effort to find the perfect arrangement.

Sunday.

Seven AM.

Round and round the Christmas tree he cut a path of nervousness and doubt, periodically stopping to rearrange the presents or reposition an ornament. She wouldn’t like the doll. She would start fussing. Something…

Eight AM Nine AM Ten AM.

After Chester the cat had died, they had decided to give him a proper burial, complete with a little headstone inscribed CHESTER that George had prepared at the Crippen Monument Works from a stray scrap of granite. Holly hated the whole idea; she refused to attend the funeral and screamed at her parents for dreaming it up. But the very next day, just as George and Justine had predicted, she began telling everyone about the big event – the monument, the grave, the cardboard coffin from the veterinarian – and continued doing so for months…

Eleven AM.

Justine had blown up a tarantula. This was really pretty funny when you thought about it…

Noon.

Outside the cabin: quick, trundling footsteps. Veins throbbed frantically in George’s neck and wrists, seeming almost to break free of his body. His bullet wound ached, and he breathed deeply. Dear God, make this a good day.

A little girl ran into the cabin. Her feet cycled furiously. Her arms opened wide.

‘Daddy! Daddy!’ Though raspy – a cold coming? – her voice still had the angelic tone that George had never heard in any child except his.

‘Holly!’

They embraced, the child giggling and trilling, George weeping. She was warm. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve and blocked his incipient tears, Holly being too young to comprehend why anyone would weep out of happiness.

‘It’s so good to see you,’ he said.

‘It’s so good to see you ,’ she said.

The war had taken its toll. Her hair looked like yarn. Her smile was interrupted by far more missing teeth than the predations of the tooth fairy alone could explain. She moved cringingly, with a slight limp. But her green eyes sparkled, her face was incandescent, she still had her wonderful compactness, and it was her, it was her!

‘Ahh – look at the tree !’ Holly shouted.

‘Do you like it? You can actually eat those oranges.’

‘No thank you. It’s beautiful. It has a star on top. That reminds me of something.’

‘What?’

‘Those Halloween trees we used to put up.’

‘Yes. We hung rubber bats on them.’

‘And little pumpkins. They were so cute .’

‘I want us to have Christmas,’ George said. ‘You did not get Christmas this year. This was because of the war.’ He was always careful to speak in complete, grammatical sentences around her.

‘Daddy, I have something very sad to tell you. This is important.’

‘What?’

‘This is important. Mommy died.’

‘You are right. It’s very sad. The war killed her.’

‘I know that,’ she said, mildly annoyed.

‘You gave her orange juice, didn’t you?’

‘She died anyway.’

‘Holly, Holly, it’s so good to have you here. See those presents down there?’

‘Are they for me? ’

‘Yes. They’re all for you.’

‘All of them? All? Oh, Daddy, thank you, thank you. I’m so excited .’

‘Why don’t you start with this one?’ he said, handing her the gin bottle. She sheared away the aluminum foil. ‘A flower vase,’ he explained.

‘Later could we pick a flower?’ she asked.

‘Of course.’

Lunging for the big box, she stripped it bare. ‘That says, “Super Duper Cooking Set,”’ her father explained.

She pulled back the lid, took out the dishes, cups, saucers, pots, pans, kettles, and tureens. ‘Oh, Daddy, I love it, I love it. Will you play cooking with me?’

‘I think maybe we should finish the unwrapping.’

‘ Then will you play with me?’

‘Of course.’ Apprehensively he picked up the doll. ‘Try this.’ She tore at the foil. ‘I know you wanted a Mary Merlin,’ he said, ‘but I couldn’t find any.’

‘Couldn’t Santa Claus either?’

‘The stores were out of them.’

‘That’s okay.’ Holly kissed the doll and stroked its hair. ‘I like her so much. Her name is Jennifer.’

She put Jennifer to bed in a roasting pan from the Super Duper Cooking Set, covering her with a blanket of aluminum foil. Next George gave his daughter the white alabaster raven. She unwrapped it, named it Birdie, and laid it next to Jennifer. Soon the doll and the raven were fast asleep.

‘Be very quiet, Daddy.’

‘Okay.’

‘I want to pick out the next one.’

‘Sure.’

She yanked the stovepipe hat from the pile, unwrapped it. Making no comment, she put it on and grinned her ragged, episodic grin. Now the bright cylinder caught her eye. Bits of foil took to the air. ‘Oh, a clown!’ she said, unscrolling the harlequin poster. ‘He’s funny. I want to hang him up.’ They taped the poster to a bulkhead.

‘And now you’ve got this one,’ George said. Gleefully she ripped the foil. ‘It’s a story I once told you,’ he explained. ‘A bunny wants to ride a two-wheeler bike, and—’

‘Read it to me.’

Done.

‘Read it again.’

He did.

‘Read it again.’

‘You’ve got another present over here.’

‘I’ll bet it’s a beach ball.’ She pulled apart the wrapping, continued beaming even after the beach ball proved to be a globe. ‘What does it do?’

‘It shows us what the world is like. Well, it’s really a kind of game.’

‘Let’s play it.’

‘Okay. You need this thing over here.’ He handed her the poker chips, and she unwrapped them. ‘You see, they have the names of countries on them. Everybody gets ten. Then you spin the globe like this, and you keep your eyes closed, and you put your finger out the way I’m doing. And if your finger stops on a country that’s the same as one of your chips, then you—’

‘Is that last present for me too?’ Holly asked, removing her stovepipe hat and waving it toward the tree.

‘Yes. It’s from Santa Claus.’

She freed her civil defense gear from its foil. ‘Oooh, a gold one. Pretty.’

‘It’s called a scopas suit.’

‘I know that.’

‘I thought you might like to dress up in it.’

‘Nice. What’s the matter with the glove?’

‘Something hit it.’

‘Let’s play tea party. I’ll be the sister. You be the visitor.’