The Christmas Hope (13 page)
Read The Christmas Hope Online
Authors: Donna VanLiere
“Good morning, Emily,” Mom said. “And merry Christmas!”
Emily sat at the island and watched Mom work. “Are we going to see the activity today?” Mom and I looked at her.
“What activity?” I asked, washing my hands.
“With all the animals and Mary and Joseph.”
Mom threw her head back and laughed. “Oh! The living activity,” she said.
“We’ll do whatever you want,” I said. I scrambled an egg and put a piece of toast on a plate for Emily. I poured her a glass of milk and set it in front of her. I was getting good at this.
“Can we go to see Mia today and can I buy her a gift for Christmas?”
“Yes, we can go see her.”
“Can Mark go, too?” I knew Mom was waiting to hear my answer but she acted as if she were as busy as could be finishing the pie.
“We can ask. I’m sure he’ll want to.”
When Mark and Dad returned from shopping, a huge topiary entered the kitchen before Dad. “We’re going to set this on the floor next to the mantle,” he said. “What’d that lady call this thing, Mark?”
“A topiary.”
Dad shook his head. “It looks better than it sounds. See, it’s got real fruit mixed in with the artificial leaves. That way you can use it every year.” He smiled and Mom laughed. For years we’d only heard him use construction and building terms. Today he was an article straight out of
Better Homes and Gardens.
Mark followed carrying large paper bags with handles. Emily drank the last of her milk and ran into the dining room to help. I searched for our camera in the hall closet and tried to snap a picture of Mom but the batteries were dead.
Better Homes and Gardens.
Mark followed carrying large paper bags with handles. Emily drank the last of her milk and ran into the dining room to help. I searched for our camera in the hall closet and tried to snap a picture of Mom but the batteries were dead.
It’s
been four years,
I thought, realizing the last time we’d used the camera. I popped new batteries into place, put in a roll of film, and stepped into the door of the dining room. I took a picture of Emily burrowing through the bags, of Mark and Dad hanging garland, of Dad giving me a thumbs-up while he strung some lights, of Mark helping Emily spread out the table runner, and of Mom licking her fingers and giving me a dirty look. We baked and cleaned and spruced up the house for our visitors and for the first time in years it felt normal; it felt real.
been four years,
I thought, realizing the last time we’d used the camera. I popped new batteries into place, put in a roll of film, and stepped into the door of the dining room. I took a picture of Emily burrowing through the bags, of Mark and Dad hanging garland, of Dad giving me a thumbs-up while he strung some lights, of Mark helping Emily spread out the table runner, and of Mom licking her fingers and giving me a dirty look. We baked and cleaned and spruced up the house for our visitors and for the first time in years it felt normal; it felt real.
Mom and Dad left and Mark carried games in from the garage. “I bought these today,” he said to Emily and me. He was holding Candy Land, and Chutes and Ladders. “Does anybody want to play?”
Emily held up her hand. “I do. But can we see Mia first?” She walked over to him and looked up. “Can you go with us?”
“I can’t be seen in public with someone wearing reindeer pajamas,” he said. Emily ran up the stairs into the bedroom, leaving Mark and me alone in the kitchen.
“The dining room is gorgeous,” I said, breaking the silence. “Thanks for doing that.”
He nodded. “Thanks for cooking.”
“Mom did most of it. She’s a much better cook than I am.”
“Guess it depends on who you’re asking,” he said. He smiled and I wanted to hug him but I couldn’t. He couldn’t either. Roy was wrong. We didn’t know what to do. There was something broken and neither of us knew how to fix it.
Emily ran downstairs and I helped her with her coat. “Are you coming to the activity tonight?” she asked Mark.
Mark raised an eyebrow and looked at her. “What activity?”
“The live one,” she said, pulling on her gloves.
“The living Nativity,” I said.
“You have to go because all the animals will be there,” Emily said. “Mary and Jesus, too.”
“Well, of course I’ll go,” he said, opening the car door for her. I sat next to her in the backseat.
“I love animals,” she said. I knew she did from the way Girl responded to her. “We had a cat named Harry once, but he ran away.”
“I have an uncle named Harry,” I said. “We always wanted him to run away but he never did.” Mark laughed out loud and his sudden outburst made me laugh. I caught him looking at me in the rearview mirror and when I saw him he smiled. I wasn’t sure if he was smiling at me or because of what I had said. Did it matter? He was smiling again. And so was I.
We walked into the room where Mia was being monitored and Emily ran to her side. She was awake. “Hello, sweet girl,” I said, stroking her hand with my finger. She smiled and Emily wrapped her hand around Mia’s.
“Merry Christmas, Mia,” she said. “We’re going to see the animals tonight. I wish you could come with us.” She made faces at Mia and Mia giggled. Emily beamed. She was so proud. She reached into a bag and pulled out the tinsel and strand of lights she’d brought for Mia’s room. Mark plugged the lights in and formed them in a snake shape on the windowsill and wrapped the tinsel around Mia’s bed where she couldn’t reach it.
“‘Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.’” Emily was singing. She looked up at Mark and me and nodded her head, trying to get us to sing as well. We looked around, hoping no one could hear, and joined in, whispering. “Louder,” Emily said. We sang louder and Mia kicked her feet. “‘In a one-horse ohhh-penn sleiiighh,’” we all sang, giving the song a big finish. Fortunately, Dr. Andrews entered the room after the song was through.
He walked to Mark and extended his hand. “I’m Nathan Andrews.”
“I’m Mark. Nice to meet you.”
“She’s doing great,” he said, touching Mia’s leg.
“Everything’s working?” I asked, looking at the wires surrounding her.
“Everything’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to do.”
“Will she ever be sick again?” Emily asked.
He put his hand on her shoulder. “I think Mia’s going to surprise us all,” he said. “And I love surprises. Especially at Christmas.” He handed me an envelope and I opened it. It was full of money.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Somebody started a collection for Mia. We thought maybe you’d know what to do with it. You can use it however she needs it most.” I felt like a little girl again watching Pastor Burke hand my mother an envelope at Christmas.
“This is so kind of everyone,” I said, wishing I were better with words. “I can’t believe they did this.” He smiled and I knew that Mia wasn’t the first child Dr. Andrews and the staff had rallied around at Christmas.
“Are you ready for Christmas?” he asked Emily. She shrugged but kind of grinned.
“Are you?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. My dad and his wife and my grandmother are coming to visit us this year because my wife is so pregnant that everyone’s afraid she won’t be able to make the trip to see them. They say they’re coming to see us but I know they’re hoping she has the baby early.”
“When is she due?” I asked.
“The first of January.”
“How long have you been married?”
“Three years tonight!”
We got out a round of congratulations before Dr. Andrews was paged to another room.
“If I don’t see you again today, Emily,” he said, kneeling in front of her, “I hope you enjoy this Christmas and every one after it.”
She put her arms around his neck and hugged him. When everyone left, Emily pulled the gift she had chosen at the department store out of the bag. Mark and I had followed her earlier as she went from one floor to the next looking for the perfect present. It was sitting alone on a shelf that had long been picked over and emptied. She fluffed the angel’s dress and set it on the windowsill by Mia’s bed and then leaned in and whispered something to her. I kissed my finger and put in on Mia’s head and then Emily did the same.
“I suppose you’re not going to tell me what you said to Mia this time either,” I said.
“I told her that her angel would stay with her until we got back. She can’t see her angel. That’s why I wanted to get her one, so she’d know what angels looked like.”
Nathan Andrews walked past the nurses’ station on the way to his office. “Are there any messages for me?”
A nurse looked at the message caddy next to her phone and shook her head. He walked toward his office, disappointed that he hadn’t heard from Rory yet.
“Oh, wait, Dr. Andrews, you do have a message.”
He turned around.
“Sorry. It was sitting on the desk instead of in the message carrousel.” She picked it up and held it in front of her. It says, ‘Found the needle.’ That’s all.”
Nathan smiled. He went to his office and picked up the phone.
“Sorry, Dr. Lee had to go off site,” someone said. “Some sort of explosion. He’s already been gone close to an hour.”
“Do you know if he left any sort of message to give to Nathan Andrews?”
The woman shuffled through paperwork and grunted. “No, nothing here,” she said. “I expect them to roll back in here any minute.”
Nathan asked her to remind Dr. Lee to call him but he wasn’t hopeful. Nathan jotted a name down on a notepad on his desk: “Mark.” He underlined it. Then he wrote “Mark and Patricia Addison.” He tried to put a face to the mother he had spoken to four years earlier but there was no use; he couldn’t. It was part of his job that he didn’t like; how names and faces could blur. For all he knew he was confusing everything in his mind: the young man, the mother, the gift, the social worker he’d met who had a deceased son.
Coincidence
? he thought. What were the odds?
Slim
, he thought, pushing away from the desk. In five hours he’d be eating dinner with his family. If Rory didn’t call before then he’d forget about it till after Christmas.
Coincidence
? he thought. What were the odds?
Slim
, he thought, pushing away from the desk. In five hours he’d be eating dinner with his family. If Rory didn’t call before then he’d forget about it till after Christmas.
After we returned home from the hospital Mark and Emily made a fire. When it crackled and popped and a steady flame wrapped around a log we sat together at the kitchen table and ate lunch. It was the first time Mark and I had sat at that table with someone else in four years. After lunch Mark sat on the sofa to read through the instructions for Candy Land. It had been so many years that neither one of us could remember how to play. He threw his legs up on the ottoman and Emily sat down next to him. Within minutes of Mark reading the instructions out loud she was asleep, falling over onto his shoulder. He tried to reach the blanket on the back of the sofa and I grabbed it, pulling it over her. “You may be there for a while,” I said, whispering.
“I hope so,” he said, wrapping his arm around Emily’s shoulder and resting his hand on her arm. In a few short days Emily had managed to wrap Mark around her little finger. I guess she’d done that to both of us. It was going to be hard to place her in a foster home. I put the thought out of my mind. I didn’t want to think about that right now. I’d deal with it after Christmas; then maybe it wouldn’t be so hard. I looked at Mark. His head was resting on the back of the sofa and his eyes were closed. For so many years he hadn’t been able to sit and relax. He had kept himself busy; we both had. I never took the time to rest because that paved the way for thinking and remembering, and those were painful options, especially if I wasn’t ready for some of the memories. Emily repositioned herself and snuggled closer to Mark’s side. He was relaxed now and the look on his face told me he was at peace. I didn’t know if placing Emily was going to be harder on him or me.
At five o’clock we loaded into the car to go see the living Nativity. We picked Mom and Dad up and they were wearing matching red turtlenecks with green cardigans. They looked like a singing Christmas duo that might perform at nursing homes. Mom’s sweater had a big Santa pin that said “ho, ho, ho” when you pulled his feet. Mark drove up the winding drive that led to Longworth Farm and noticed the man signaling him at the end of the field that had become the parking lot. The field was full of cars. Emily took Mark’s hand and then mine and pulled us forward toward the entrance. I’d never seen a child so excited to see a few animals. Mom and Dad ran behind us to keep up. Emily dragged us past a man selling sugarcoated pecans and roasted cashews and a woman selling hot chocolate and cider. The barns on the property had enormous lit stars on each roof and swags of spruce that hovered above the barn’s opening. Carolers dressed in Victorian costumes sang at the entrance of one barn while another was filled with a small petting zoo that included sheep, goats, ponies, and calves, each wearing a red Christmas ribbon and bell around its neck. Emily ran from one animal to another stroking its nose or patting its side. Mom snapped pictures of her with each animal, taking so many pictures that she had to change film.
We walked out of the barn and saw lines of people waiting for the horse-drawn sleigh rides. “This is just like a winter wonderland,” Mom said, gasping at the sight of the sleighs gliding over the snowy meadow. I pulled Emily’s hood over her head and zipped her coat as we waited our turn but she didn’t seem to mind the chilly breeze. When our turn arrived, Mark and Emily and I sat in the front seat of the sleigh and Mom and Dad sat behind us. The driver clacked his tongue and the two black horses pulling our sleigh headed across the meadow, the bells around their necks jingling as they ran. Emily squealed and grabbed for my hand and Mark’s, holding our hands in her lap. She was beside herself when the horses pulled us through the woods.
“We’re going into the forest like Snow White,” she said, looking wide-eyed around her. We passed a large gingerbread house with a waving gingerbread man out front and she popped up out of the seat. “Look,” she said, pointing. “We could eat that!” She put her hands up to her mouth and pretended to bite and make chewing sounds. Mark laughed and eased her back down. She clapped and stomped her feet and Mom snapped one picture after another. The ride was over much too soon. Mark helped Emily out of the sleigh and then offered his hand to me. I accepted it and he helped me to the ground. I know Mom and Dad saw us but they pretended not to notice. They’d gotten just as good at pretending as Mark and I had.
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