The end of Christmas

Everyone in the Bugsby family – three small children, a mother, and a father – believed in Santa Claus beyond a shadow of a doubt. Yes, the father went out and bought all the presents the weekend before Christmas and hid them in the trunk of the car for the mother to find and wrap; yes, it was the mother’s altered handwriting that greeted each of her children on the cards. But even still, the parents believed in Santa Claus. This was due to the carrot cake the children left out every Christmas Eve. It always disappeared. By the time the father hauled all the presents in to put under the tree, the cake would be gone. The first year he’d assumed the mother had eaten it, but she said she hadn’t, and they got into a squabble. The second year, she brought the presents in instead of him and also found the cake gone. She asked the father if he’d eaten it and he said he hadn’t so they got into that same squabble, but in reverse. The third year, they brought the presents in together and found the cake gone. That was when they’d both relinquished what they’d proudly discovered in adolescence and concluded that the man in the red suit was real, but he didn’t bring any presents, he just liked to eat. He might have been a magical homeless man for all they knew, or a homeless man who picked their lock once a year, but they didn’t pursue it. And it never concerned them enough to stay up and watch the cake. If they had, they’d know that Santa Claus was one of the Colombia-blue parakeets they’d had as a pet for six years.

The parakeets were rather like grandparents to the Bugsbys. They were soft and comforting; they had plump, righteous faces and small wattles; they had idiosyncrasies. Their names were Colonel Hmph and Synthia. Colonel Hmph was named after the only noise anyone ever heard him make, and Synthia was quite loud indeed. She would squawk her grievances from the porch of their spacious cage while Colonel Hmph sat sagely behind her and nodded in agreement. Every now and then he’d saunter over to her and ‘hmph’ in her ear and that would set her off. She seemed to be speaking for him. 

At 1AM every Christmas Eve, Colonel Hmph would unlock their cage with a twig he’d gnawed at until it was the shape of the key. He’d make the short flight to the kitchen table silently and eat about half the cake, although it was always a little less than half because he was a chivalrous Colonel and liked to give Synthia the bulk of it. Then he’d jerk his round little head both ways and lift the remaining cake back to their cage for Synthia to have when she woke up. She always woke up moments later, and he always ‘hmph’-ed in her ear about how she could have saved him the trouble if she’d just come with him.

And after the frisson of the holiday settled down, the Bugsbys went back to their lives and the birds went back to theirs. The parakeet couple spent their days napping, watching one another suspiciously for no obvious reason, and tossing a table tennis ball back and forth between them. The game always ended in a shrieking match to decide who won. Synthia always won because Colonel Hmph refused to shriek and would only stomp his small talons furiously. Occasionally, they’d sit quietly with their stomachs pressed together, gazing into one another’s plumage, and Colonel Hmph – if feeling extraordinarily affectionate – would plant a kiss on the side of Synthia’s head. That she did not kill him for this was proof to the Bugsbys that they were in love.

There was a grassy field about a ten-minute walk away from home where the Bugsbys picnicked thrice a month, and they took the parakeets with them. Colonel Hmph treated those trips as meditative retreats, and he’d glide with eyes closed and chin tilted up like he’d just had a sip of the most exquisite wine. Synthia preferred to flap frenetically and zip about in odd shapes while hurling her most vicious insults at bewildered squirrels. Sometimes friends of the Bugsbys accompanied them.

Not all friends of the Bugsbys were friends of the parakeets. There was Nana Judy with her loud voice who made Synthia feel as though her place in the family was being usurped. There was Greg, the guy from marketing at the father’s company whose son tried to feed the birds a LEGO salad. But worst of all was Tina. Tina had piles of brunette hair that looked like a welcoming nest, but she always slapped the birds away if they came near. She was 4’8 (not including coiffure) and always carried her baby son around on her hip because she was too frugal to waste money on a stroller that would never be used when her child grew up. This made her constantly tired and irritable. To rationalize why they still entertained Tina, the mother suggested that there had been a time, pre-pregnancy, when Tina had been less of a human ulcer - although if there was, no one could remember it.

One afternoon in early March, the Bugsbys were picnicking with Tina, her unfortunate baby, and the parakeets. It was after lunch. Two of the Bugsby children were blowing bubbles and the third was raptly popping them. Tina was on the picnic blanket with her baby hanging awkwardly off her forearm, talking to the Bugsby parents. Colonel Hmph was sniffing a budding dandelion and Synthia was zooming rapidly, beak-first, from one end of the field to the other. She looked like a bullet. This alarmed Tina, who mentioned it to the mother. “Oh, Synthia’s a sweetheart,” the mother said. “Don’t you worry.”

“I’m worried,” Tina scowled. She shifted her son to her other arm. “You really shouldn’t let wild creatures be so…wild like that. They could hurt someone.”

The father laughed and pointed to Colonel Hmph. “You’re more likely to be hurt by a pillow,” he said.

Just then, Synthia miscalculated the distance she was flying and shot into the picnic basket. Tina screamed. One of the children blowing bubbles was so startled she stuck the soapy wand in her mouth and then spit aggressively to clear the taste. The other child blowing bubbles spilled the entire solution and sat down in the dirt to cry. Tina grabbed Synthia around the neck with her free hand and shook her at the Bugsbys. “See?” She raged. “Some sweetheart! She could have killed my baby. She should be sedated, clipped, euthanized…”

Synthia, panicking in Tina’s clutches, let out a series of heart-wrenching wails that alerted Colonel Hmph. He flew towards the picnic blanket and began pecking at Tina’s hand. This time Tina freaked out so completely that she let go of Synthia and her baby and fell back into the grass, writhing and thrashing. “Get it off me!” she cried, long after Colonel Hmph had stopped pecking. “Get the little devil off me!”

“Tina, Tina,” the mother said. She patted Tina’s shoulder. “They were just startled. They’re not going to hurt you.”

“Not going to,” Tina exclaimed, now laying still except for the pulsing veins around her face. “They already have! Look at this! Look at my hand! Something will have to be done!”

The mother rubbed Tina’s unscathed hand soothingly. She had plenty of experience with invisible injuries. Tina wagged her other index finger. “Something will have to be done,” she said again.

“What do you mean?” The mother asked.

“You’ll have to get that bird’s wings clipped,” she said.

The father intervened. “We can’t do that,” he said. “That would be cruel.”

“If you don’t, I’ll call the police and report you for assault,” Tina said.

And that was that. The Bugsbys and their parakeets went home and a week passed with no one bringing it up again. Then the phone rang one morning, and it was Tina. “Have you done it yet?” she asked.

“Done what?” said the mother.

“Clipped that bird’s wings.”

The mother’s mouth seemed to fall into her throat. “No,” she said hoarsely. 

“When are you going to?” Tina asked.

“We don’t know,” the mother said.

“I’m coming over,” said Tina. 

So that afternoon, Colonel Hmph had his wings clipped in the shed as the mother held him in her lap and looked helpless. Afterward, Tina looked around and said, “Where’s the other one?”

“Synthia didn’t even touch you,” the mother said coldly. And no matter how much of a tantrum Tina threw, the mother wouldn’t budge. So Tina had to go home having only ruined one bird’s life.

In the weeks that followed, Synthia prodded and chirped and rolled the table tennis ball toward the Colonel, but he was like a stowaway from another world. He trudged back and forth in a corner of his cage. He ate so little that the Bugsbys began to worry. He was looking haggard and frail. His body slumped and his few remaining feathers were sparse. The vet could find nothing wrong with him, but he gave the Bugsbys a bag of extra-nutrition birdfeed that Colonel Hmph wouldn’t even look at.

The snows were heavy that December and the parakeets stayed huddled in their straw and cloth scraps. The Bugsbys had stopped locking the cage because Colonel Hmph hadn’t left it in so long and Synthia had taken to glaring at them in a way they couldn’t bear any time anyone got close enough to lock it. 

That Christmas Eve was just like all the others. A slice of carrot cake was left on a china plate in the kitchen, the children were coaxed to bed, the parents collapsed into their own. At 1AM, Synthia was fast asleep with her head against her breast. Colonel Hmph got to his feet gingerly and looked around the cage. He bowed his head slightly to Synthia and tiptoed on his nails to the cage’s door. He walked to the edge of the table they were on. He took a moment and then hopped onto the nearby ledge of a window that was left open for the father to pass presents through. He stepped out into the stinging cold and began a journey he must’ve known wouldn’t last long. 

A few minutes later, by habit, Synthia woke up. When she realised she was alone, she let out a short, pained squeak and flew out of the cage. She fluttered through the living room and past the carrot cake and back around the cage. Outside the window, she saw his shaky footsteps in the snow. Synthia lowered herself to stand beside them as her sharp eyes blurred. Her body trembled and she tramped in a spiral in the snow. Then Synthia heard the Bugsby parents coming downstairs. She turned away from the window and in an uncharacteristically smooth motion, she raised her wings and flew, higher than she ever had, in a direction she didn’t care to remember. She closed her eyes and tilted her chin up like she’d just had a sip of the most exquisite wine, like she could taste the clouds.