Christmas, Present (4 page)

“I don’t want to leave you,” Elliott told her, burying his face in her lap, smelling her skin. He felt a part of himself, below his heart, above his waist, give way like a broken button. That was what they mean, he thought, when they say
a part of me died
. An organ lapsed into repose, disuse, murdered by disbelief.

“Well, we don’t have all that much time. Please, Ell. And get me my makeup kit. From my purse. I want to clean up.”

“Can you get out of bed?”

“I can do anything I want,” Laura said. “I’m dying.”

S

he washed her face carefully with the coarse bar soap provided in the hospital’s tiny steel cubicle

of a washroom. She hated to use soap on her face. It was a source of pride to her that she had no crow’s-feet and skin as soft as Rory’s. But this was of no conse- quence now. On impulse, she then decided to shower and wash her hair. She rang for a nurse, who, eyes wide with shock, helped her negotiate the IV pole, use a plastic packet of shampoo (Laura refused the offer of conditioner), and slip into a flowered gown, snapped in back. While she was towel-drying her hair, the same nurse reappeared with an embroidered bed jacket, evergreens and snowmen.

“Did this belong to a person who died?” Laura asked kindly. “Not that I would mind.”

“No, it was a gift for one of the nurses,” the young woman told Laura. “She wants you to have it. She’s

having bunion surgery and will have to spend a month in bed. We all chipped in. But she would rather you have it.”

“Well, no, I shouldn’t take it. But, okay, please thank her,” Laura said. “It sure is pretty. My daughters will like me to be pretty.”

“We . . . don’t . . . we’re so sorry,” said the young nurse, who looked no older than Ellliott’s sister, Sarah, perhaps twenty-five.

“I know. It’s terrible. And at Christmas, too. I feel bad for
you.”

“We’ll try to help in every way, Missus . . .” “Laura.”

“Laura, okay, do you need anything?”

“Ummm, I’d love a cup of coffee. I have to think,” Laura said, more to give the nurse a mission than from any desire. Coffee, she thought. If there is life after death, I will miss coffee. And Italian lemonade. My signature, so practiced on my college spiral notebooks, Laura MacDermott Banner. Also, ironing. Laura loved the plain usefulness, the simple gratification of making a wrinkled thing fresh and crisp. I will miss swimming

in the cold Atlantic. Asparagus. Rory’s hair when she comes out sweating after her workout. Auburn spikes, like a punk rocker.

Rory was tough as nails.

At eight, Rory was almost finished, but still young enough to heal without a grudge against the world.

Annie, well, Annie would be angry, for ever so long. At thirteen, she had the duty to be angry no matter what, even if events offered her no insult. She would need serious help. She would give Elliott a hard ride, particularly if he ever remarried. Little Amelia. Amelia, born of Elliott’s grief at the prospect of losing his mother, Amy, a woman more dear to Laura than her own mother—the real Grandma, who came to stay for weekends and shooed them out to dinner and movies, who cleaned the blinds and made Laura take naps while she was nursing the new baby—Amelia was not yet three.

She would fare best of all.
Particularly
if Ell remar-

ried.

Laura had no memory of her own father.

Laura looked at the telephone. The doctor, so hand-

some and dear, like an archangel, had told her to call anyone she wanted, anywhere, on the house. She would call her sisters soon, before Elliott returned. She pictured him puzzling over cards, searching racks for the right thing, frazzled and distracted, raking at his dark hair.

Should she call the boy who framed the pictures of the girls Laura saved from their plays and sporting events, taking lavish care, with innovative mattes and artful woods? Who had once asked Laura to come to see his own pictures, to meet him at his loft in darkest Lynn, not far from Ell’s warehouse? And she had gone, and he had sketched her, lying on his red futon after she had allowed him to undress her and fondle her to an aching crisis, but not to penetrate her, giving as the excuse their lack of protection. How he had told her he loved her, how he had adored her skin, calling it bisque, old-worldly, as if never touched by sun. And Laura had thanked him, in turn, for his worshipful gentleness, kissed his hands and his chest with its sin- gle tendril of gold hair. She had accepted this after- noon as a gift for a woman just turned forty, newly spayed, just like their dog, Athena, in and out, one

bright afternoon, a Band-Aid on her tummy the only testimony to her lapsed wish for the three more chil- dren they never would be able to afford. At closed con- fession the following week, knowing by his voice the priest was the youngest of the three, she described her immeasurable lust, which had not dissipated. And she remembered his mild voice, no surprise in it, telling her that they were human and therefore liable to sin, giving her no penance beyond her own reflections about the promises she’d made before the altar.

Should she call the boy? She had adored the heat of his muscled belly, the abrupt virility of everything about him, his nutty art-stoked passion, adored him over and over again, many nights in her mind when her sleep was restless. No, he would sometime find out. Elliott would bring photographs to the store, to be made into a tape, or a collage for the girls. He would recognize Laura in the pictures and ask after her. Laura smiled, a little abashed, at the notion of his grief.

But there was another matter.

Elliott would find the sketch. She had not been able to bring herself to burn it.

Well, thought Laura, brushing her hair, he would not find it for a long time, and it was not signed. Would it make Elliott happy or sadden him to know she was still . . . desired? Even in memory? Would he doubt her love for him, which was absolute, or under- stand that the picture represented a momentary lapse? In any case, there was nothing she could do about it now, and she would not know of his reaction, unless she should linger and become a ghost.

I would love to be a ghost, Laura thought.

When they were children, in Sunday school or wait- ing for dinner, idly playing what-if games, wishing for super powers, hers had never been for bags of gold or eternal life but always for invisibility—the gift of stealth to invade secret places, overhear adult conver- sations, glide up to the teacher’s desk during the math exam.

What would she do with it as a permanent condi- tion?

Eavesdrop, of course. Whenever and however she might. Pull pranks on Elliott as he sat reading
Motor Trends
on the toilet. Knock the magazine just beyond

the reach of his hands while his pants were around his ankles. Wake him with a soft whisper as he slept, a breath on his cheek that smelled of her. Perhaps, see him fall in love again. She had read that the famed magician Harry Houdini, a boy from Wisconsin, had promised his wife that after his death, he would send her a sign to prove there was life beyond this life.

I would do that, Laura thought, send Elliott a mes- sage from me, telling him that I was fine, that I loved him still, and even more, that it was fine with me for him to fall in love again. I would make him trip when he tried to dance at his wedding, she thought, nearly giggling, reckoning Elliott might need no help at that. The notion of such a wedding, of her girls slightly older, in the strappy dresses they would wheedle Elliott into buying, thrust her into no state of jealousy, only a wistful smoothness of mood, as if it really were true what Saint Julian of Norwich said, that all man- ner of things should be well. And what if they finally all were? Would she twirl away then, like a twist of snuffed candle smoke, her earthly purpose fulfilled? Or hang around? Visiting at intervals?

Yes, Laura thought, not all ghosts would suppose their work in life unfinished, the common theory. Some might simply be . . . curious. Oh, to watch the girls develop, nudge them toward the right sizes at the lingerie counter, to float in the backseat at Annie’s prom, witness that first ecstasy. To cheer, unseen but felt, at Rory’s first triumph in the all-around?

To hazard a touch, perceived, perhaps, only as an arrow of sunlight, or a puff of wind, on Amelia’s hand at her first day of school.

She had read—where? Somewhere—that spirit entities often manifested themselves as columns of icy air or scented breezes. Laura would not be a cold spot. She would be a breeze, a warm, perhaps even mischie- vous gust.

Laura tried to imagine her clingiest girl, her baby, the one who was frightened of everything from skele- ton masks to pictures of snakes on television, standing proud and wide-eyed with her first backpack, after all those years of pretend homework with Laura at the kitchen table. All those lines and curlicues Laura and Amelia gravely pretended were letters and numbers

coalescing into something intelligible. Being there, a gentle tendril of air, for only her child to feel, a nudge of encouragement, like a steadying hand at her back. She tried to picture Amelia age-progressed, missing a front tooth.

Once she had allowed herself to go this far, she could not blinker her mind’s eye. The weddings. Annie, sliver-thin and severe in a sheath with not a sin- gle furbelow. Rory . . . dancing every dance. The births of the girls’ children . . . now, Laura instructed herself firmly, that is enough. She put her hands flat on the mirror and pushed. She could not tolerate hurtling forward, to a time when they . . . would not remem- ber her, except as an idea that would prompt a tear, perhaps if they played “Mom’s” favorite song. She had applied new concealer, and eye shadow, which she would not weep into stains.

Crossing to the telephone, she called her mother and asked her to wake the girls. Miranda already had, and said she was just leaving the house, in any case.

Laura then dialed her little sister, Angela. Angela was a slow waker, a source of concern to her as a third-

year medical student. It took copious coffee and time to get her to a state of full alert.

So Laura was not surprised when Angela did not recognize her voice at first. “Doctor MacDermott,” Angela said. “Doctor MacDermott here.”

“It’s Laurie, Angie. Do you hear me?” “It’s Doctor MacDermott.”

“Can I talk to Cobb, Angie?” Laura heard the phone’s muffled fall, and Cobb’s voice rising into a question as he took it up. Cobb was a surgical resident. Was Miranda sick? Or one of the girls?

“No, it’s me,” Laura said. “I’m in the hospital and you have to explain to Angie that . . . actually, I’m dying.” Shame was her transitory sensation. It was so bald, so melodramatic.

“Laurie, wait. This doesn’t make sense.” “I know. But it’s true.”

“Laurie!” Cobb was that rare human, a physician with an almost comic absence of arrogance. This was what Angela, who had sworn not to become involved until she was finished with all her studies, had been

unable to resist. He loved them all, like a fifth Mac- Dermott sibling.

“I haven’t got much time,” Laura said. “So, Cobb, listen.”

“I am,” he told her seriously. Cobb was solid.

“I don’t know if this thing—Elliott will explain it— is hereditary. My father died young. He had a stroke. She has to have her blood pressure monitored and have her head examined.” Laura realized what she had said and tried to stifle a snort of laughter. “I mean, her brain scanned. For an aneurysm.”

“I promise, Laurie,” Cobb said. “Can I put Angie on now?”

“Laurie?” Angie’s voice was still thick with sleep. “What’s wrong?”

“Angela, I’m so proud of you,” Laura said. “And you know I love you best of all.” She could hear Cobb’s voice murmuring behind her sister’s.

“What? Why?” Angela began to hiccough, then wail, “Where are you? Mercy? Let me talk to the doctor.”

“He’s out looking for help, writing e-mails to doctors

all over the world, he is,” Laura said. “If there’s a way to help, he’ll find it. He’s very good. But you can’t get here to talk to me in person by the time this is over.”

“I have to see you! There has to be a flight!”

“It’s snowing. You know they’ll close the airport.” “I’ll get there!”

“I want you to come for Christmas, whenever it’s safe to travel, and be with the girls and Elliott. And I want to tell you I love you best. I was like a mother to you, and you were my little dressup doll . . . I know this sounds schmaltzy, Angie, but I have to tell you, it’s what you think at a time like this. Your life really does go on instant replay.”

“Laurie! Don’t! Laurie, you loved Stephen best!” She listened as Angela covered the phone and yelled to Cobb, “Get the airline on the cell phone! Get a flight for us! Now, right now!” And then she came back on. “Is Stephen there?”

“No, not yet. But I want you to remember. Stephen was our big older brother. He was the chief torturer, the big cheese, the big tease. I loved him”—Laurie

thought,
I am using the past tense
—“best next to you. He was a
guy
. We all had to take care of him. And he had to take care of us. He was the daddy. And Suzie just wanted to grow up and get out of the house. That left us.”

“Is Elliott there?” her sister asked.

“He’s at the drugstore,” Laura explained. “I wanted him to get me some things.”

“At the
drugstore
?” Angela brayed.

“Yes, I don’t have time to explain. Before I hang up, I want to tell you, Suzanne had Mother. You had me. There are things you will always remember about me. Remember when I painted you as a Picasso for Hal- loween? All blue on one side and all yellow on the other? Remember when I read you
Little House in the Big Woods
, and you wanted to move to Wisconsin and live in a log cabin, and we got the plans from the library . . .”

“And stole the lumber. Stephen could have been a full-time thief . . . ,” Angela, now fully awake, said roughly.

“He built the tree house! He could have been a builder or an architect!”

“If he wasn’t a full-time screw-off . . .”

“Don’t say that, Angie,” Laura reproved. “Stephen’s just . . . it’s a phase . . .”