Christmas, Present (9 page)

“That already is her name,” Stephen said, his unruly hair crimping from the moisture. He seemed apologetic, as if loath to point out Laura’s infirmity.

“No, no! She’s changing it to Annie Laurie,” Laura said, with more irritation than she meant to betray or to feel. Stephen let his face drop into his hands. For a moment, Laura thought he was angry; but he was touched beyond ordinary tolerance. Surely transmit- ting these revelations must be far worse than dying, Laura thought. She had never been subjected to the battery of so much unadulterated grief. She knew peo- ple who wondered idly what it would be like to be at

their own funerals. She knew she would not have been able to bear the poignancy of her own. She had hoped to ask Elliott to have the organist play “Silent Night” at her mass; it was, after all, a hymn. Her favorite. But she found herself unable to bring up the topic of the days ahead.

“I’ll see she gets the name thing done,” Stephen said.

“Elliott won’t mind. He’ll be in a forgiving mood.” “Sis, will you . . . when I come back?”

“I don’t know. They said eight or twelve hours. I’ve been talking nonstop for eight hours. It can’t be so much longer.”

“So I could be at the goddamned Toys R Us when you die?”

“Stevie. Would you really rather be here?” Laura asked, as abruptly her mind heaved and thrust upward, as if an earthquake had occurred beneath her bed. She bucked. There was nowhere to cling.

She saw Angela, her fairy-princess wedding gown spread like a lily on the bank as she knelt near some body of water, all three of Laura’s girls in identical out-

fits of some rosy fabric, arrayed about her like petals, Stephen in tails, with a woman so tiny she appeared to be Vietnamese, Thai, in a lovely sage dress, cut on the bias, gazing up at him. She saw her own mother, read- ing to Amelia, a slightly larger and blonder Amelia, from a leather-covered book; she could not see the title, but Miranda’s face was more animated than Laura had ever seen it, her careful avoidance of exces- sive smiles and frowns neglected as she made expres- sions for what apparently mimed the cruel witch and the frightened child. She saw Suzie, a head shorter than a tall and angular Aaron, Aaron was wearing sail- ing clothes, sport racing clothes. More water. An ocean twinkled behind them, in the yard of a house that looked like her mom’s summer home, but with a big porch and a garage apartment. She saw Elliott, walking away from her . . .

Laura surfaced, gasping, in her hospital room.

Stephen and Amelia sat beside her. “Elliott couldn’t watch,” Stephen said.

“I begged you to go, hours ago,” Laura told Stephen.

“Grow what?” Stephen asked. “Grow up?”

“I begged you to go to store,” Laura said, irritated. “We’re not at the shore, Sis. You’re in the hospital.

Don’t you remember? You had a . . . seizure, about five minutes ago.”

“Did she see?” Laura asked Stephen. “We’re not at the shore,” Stephen said.

Amelia, her great, wildly lashed eyes tip-tilted, said, “Mama have a tummy ache.”

“Yes, baby,” Laura answered. She opened her arms, and Amelia came into them, promptly clutching Laura’s ear and falling asleep.

“You can’t understand what she says,” Stephen told Elliott. Why did he not leave
?
Her children would have no Christmas.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“She’ll be here soon,” Elliott told her. “She’s on her way from the airport. She had to drive from Provi- dence.” Laura glanced at the window. The sky was darkening. Or was it? She had no idea of the time.

But it was Christmas Eve. This was Christmas for Laura, the anticipation before the satiation, the for-

mality and delicacy. A night of fine fabrics and fine food, and mass at midnight, receiving the wafer.

“In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” said Father Delabue.

No, it was not Father Delabue. It was a priest she did not recognize—a tiny man, brown hair grizzled to clay-tipped gray. “Daughter of the Lord, sinless through baptism, your earthly sins are forgiven, your passage to heaven . . .”

“She will choke on this,” said Dr. Campanile. The wafer was a hoof in Laura’s mouth.

“Annie told me that when she was dying, she almost really did die,” Rory said.

Where was the priest?

“The oil is sufficient and more than sufficient,” the priest said then.

“She saw a man in a railroad hat and striped blue jeans,” Rory went on. “Do you hear me, Mama? With red hair under his hat.”

Laura said, “Yes. Are you sure?”

“She’s here,” Elliott told her. “You spoke to Suzie.” “Stephen?”

“She’s
here,
Laura. And Angie is here.”

“I drove from Providence,” Suzie said, and Laura saw Aaron’s pale, preternaturally mature small face, his white hand tentatively lifted, waving at her from the doorway. She raised her hand and made the okay sign with her fingers. A brief, pinched grin crossed Aaron’s face.

“. . . that I was a bad mother, not loving enough, but I was so frightened. I had to work all hours for you four,” Miranda said, “but I do love you. I did love you. I’m proud of you, Laurie, for being the mother I was not.”

“I know,” Laura said.

“Please don’t say no,” Miranda pleaded. “Don’t say that.”

“Laurie! Laurie!” Angie was shaking her shoulder, then holding her underwater. Laura tried to shrug Angela’s hand loose, then to tear away her sister’s strong fingers, and finally came up and gulped for breath.

“. . . a ventilator, in a short time,” said Dr. Cam- panile. Elliott, tiny and dark-ringed in a corner of the room, shook his head, then nodded sadly.

“There hasn’t been many time for us to be saying things poems and important to talk over which meant to us that you were always my deficits,” said Elliott.

Laura shook her head. “Elliott, we talked about important things every day, for fourteen years.”

“I suppose because I don’t want to frighten Amelia even more,” he said. “There will be plenty of time for tears. Or did you mean fear?”

Stephen was leaning over her, his smell unmistak- able. “I did it all,” he said, “and you held on. Every- thing is under the tree, Sis. I love you, Sis. I love you more than I love my own life. I wish to merciful . . .” “God have mercy on the soul of Laura MacDermott Banner, and carry her from strength into strength,” said Father Delabue, surely he this time. Laura imag- ined she lay in a bed made for a Cleopatra, padded in silver and rose, her mother standing at her feet, wear- ing a black mantilla and the highest heels, the image of the older Jackie Kennedy, her bobbed hair black

with violet undertones.

“No!” cried Amelia. “Mama eye open.”

She was still in the hospital. Amelia had awakened

in her arms. Or had she? Was Amelia really beside her? She reached for Amelia, and all that filled her hungry arms was a pillow. Angels sang “
Adeste fideles. Venite adoramus,
” and
“
I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
.”
“The nurses are singing. They do sound like the angels,” Dr. Campanile told Laura, who was unaware that she had spoken. “Christmas at my work is the saddest day. And this is the saddest of all of the Christ- mases I have spent at my work. You have the loveliest young girls. You have named the red-haired little one

Aurora.”

“Yes. Thank you,” Laura said. “We wanted them all to match. All beginning with
A
. It seems silly now, to have thought that would matter, having it all fit in the right way.”

“She seems very bright indeed,” the doctor told her. “I don’t know whether it will make it more hard or more easy. I think they will all do well. They have your soul, I think.”

“I don’t know, either,” Laura said, “but I am ready.” “Can you see, Laura?”

“Not very well,” she replied.

“Is there any pain?” “No. Are my girls here?”

“Elliott has taken the bambina, but Rory was here talking about the railroad man.” Laura felt her hand lifted, a finger against her fluttering pulse. “In a while, we will insert a tube to help you breathe, so you don’t have to work so hard . . .”

“Why,” Laura said suddenly, struggling to rise in the bed, “that was my grandfather! The man Annie saw! My grandfather was a railroad engineer. He died in a fire. That is the man with the red hair! We never could figure out why Rory had reddish hair! I remem- ber him now! I barely knew him, but he was so kind.” “Perhaps you will see him,” said Dr. Campanile.

“Perhaps he is there now, holding his lantern.”

Laura tried to smirk at his sentimentality, but her lips would not obey. She pointed at them, and then her chest, pushing away the pillows, drowning, thrash- ing. A nurse and the doctor pried apart her teeth, and Laura obediently swallowed—a good girl, swallowing what she was told—her throat slack. She tried to see faces through the lambent light of candles carried in a

row. She squinted. There was Elliott, his shirt stuck all over with her notes, his pockets bulging with more; he put his lips against her brow. “I don’t think I can bear it,” he said. “Laura, my own Laura, no!” With one fin- ger, Laura tapped his hand. It was not her concern anymore. Not for this moment. She had to work at this next step.

“I think everyone can come now,” the doctor said, and Laura felt rather than saw all of them swoop down upon her, buoying her up, over the coved roof of the hospital, helping her reach up so that she might garb herself in stars. She could hear the nurses singing, “Silent night, holy night,” for long moments after Dr. Campanile pronounced aloud the time on the clock.

O

ne day in July, when the hot-water heater gave out with a horrible bleat, Elliott went rum- maging to find the source of the problem and came upon the stack of wrapped and named Christmas pres-

ents in the tiny closet off the downstairs bath.

There was a ski sweater for him, and a screened T- shirt of all the girls, tumbled about him on the sand at Cape Cod. There was a gift certificate for CDRah, the music store.

Hesitating, he called the girls and gave them their boxes. Annie set off for her room, but Elliott demanded she sit down with the others.

“Oh, ritual,” Annie sneered, “I forgot the impor- tance of ritual!”

She fingered her stack of books and the cashmere sweater she had once admired so extravagantly in a store window. She said that it felt to her as though it would itch her skin; Elliott might wish to give it to Goodwill. And it was too hot to try on a sweater; the very thought made her nauseated. But she cradled the music box, which had individual perforated discs and played classical tunes. The inlay on the lid she did think was pretty, a Scottish rose.

Rory had grown, and the fancy leotard and sweat suit no longer fit her. But there was a locket—Elliott found this spooky, precognitive—containing a lock of Laura’s and Elliott’s hair with one of Rory’s baby curls

like a swirl of bright thread in the center. And the per- fume was her mother’s favorite. Rory would hoard it—even after years of baby-sitting when she could have purchased many bottles with her own money— placing a drop each night on her pillow. She would make it last for five years. Each time she competed, she would rub a drop into her wrist braces. Not the first year after Laura’s death but the second, she placed first on the beam in regionals; and the third year, third at nationals. She remained tiny, never, even in adult- hood, topping five feet one.

When Amelia opened her boxes, the Amish doll family her mother had carefully mail-ordered fright- ened her, because the dolls had eyes but no mouths or noses. She was captivated, though, by the set of col- ored pencils, crayons, and paint, in a case with her very own initials on it, which she could now read. She began to draw in her sketchbook daily, and in time she’d make a human figure that would astound her kindergarten teacher with its detail and perspective.

Late in October, while searching for a pack of matches to light the first fire of the season far too early,

because the girls wanted to watch Halloween movies by its light, Elliott opened the nightstand that had held Laura’s reading glasses and her manicure kit, long since given to her pals, along with most of her cloth- ing. He would have searched her desk, where he knew she kept a haphazard collection of restaurant matches for gas stove emergencies and birthday candles. But Suzanne had taken Laura’s desk, insisted on shipping it to her own home in San Diego the very day after the funeral, despite the ghost it left on the wall, which had forced Elliott to repaint the whole room. There was nothing in the drawer, but in a lower paneled com- partment he never opened, he found a novel, neatly marked with a clean Popsicle stick, and a silver box with a card.

His gift was a fine Belle Temps watch with two cir- clets on a single clock face, one set accurately to Boston time, one many hours later. He opened the card and read some lines he recognized vaguely from a college English course, Elizabeth Barrett counting the depths and breadths of her love for her husband. Inside, Laura had written, “Guess what time it is in

Paris?” and signed her name within the outline of a heart.

Three years later, after Elliott had established trusts for all the girls’ educations and had paid off Angela’s student loans, he found he had substantial investments and disposable income. He had never suspected to enter midlife without dire financial strangling. Gen- uinely, and for the first time without a tweak of guilt, he was gladdened by the size of the insurance policy they had purchased, costly and improbably useful as it had seemed so long ago, as well as the drudgery he had given the plant in exchange for profit shares.

And so, he took the girls to Paris.

At the last moment before they headed for the air- port bus, Elliott halted the cab and rushed back into the house, reaching high into his armoire, into the pottery jar painted with orange roses, a wedding gift so revolting they’d kept it for humor’s sake. He scooped out a handful of ash, crumbling, the color of lead, the consistency of potting soil, and slipped it into a plas- tic zip bag he snagged from the kitchen drawer.

Late on the second day, they approached the Eiffel Tower, and Amelia, six and sassy, asked, “Do they have a levelator? Because I’m not crawling up
that
!”