“It didn’t bother you?”
“What? The card?” Ginny let out a gusty sigh. “Don’t tell me. It got Annie’s knickers in a twist. She should be old enough by now to understand that Daddy has a bawdy sense of humor.”
Joanne smiled in spite of herself. In years past, the red-light-district aspect to the card would have bothered Annie. She probably hadn’t even noticed this year.
“The newsletter,” Joanne said.
“I loved it,” Ginny said. “It read like a great story from Luminaria. Made me feel like a little girl again.”
Her response made Joanne lean back against the seat in surprise. The car was getting cold. She turned the ignition, and started the heat, making certain she pressed the garage door opener.
“You there?” Ginny asked.
“Yeah,” Joanne said. “It’s not the newsletter’s content—”
Although it was. The newsletter’s content bothered Joanne so much she couldn’t read it—
“It’s the fact of the newsletter.”
“The fact of it?” Ginny repeated, obviously not understanding.
“That it exists at all,” Joanne said. “Daddy went into a coma weeks before it got mailed.”
“Oh.” Ginny said it as if she hadn’t put that together.
“Annie blames me. She thinks I wrote it and sent it.”
“Daddy clearly wrote it,” Ginny said. “The dates didn’t bother me either. I figured he’d written it a long time ago, like a good-bye newsletter, and made sure someone would mail it for him if he couldn’t mail it for himself. It’s just the kind of thing he would do.”
It was the kind of thing he would do. “I didn’t mail it for him,” Joanne said.
“I didn’t say you did.” Ginny sounded a little annoyed now. “Daddy has friends, you know.”
He did. A large group of them with whom he spent countless evenings, going out to dinner, bowling, or drinking and playing darts at a local bar. They had been visiting him faithfully.
“Maybe that’s what happened,” Joanne said. “The letter just seems so . . . this year, you know?”
“No, I don’t,” Ginny said. “Did you read it? He didn’t mention a single thing that happened this past year. That’s why I figured he’d had the thing in storage, waiting for this moment.”
Joanne didn’t confess that she couldn’t read it. Maybe she had just taken that opening and grafted the events of the year onto it.
“Was yours mimeographed?” Joanne asked.
“Yeah,” Ginny said. “That’s why I figured he planned this years ago. Do you know how hard it is to find a mimeograph machine? Especially one that works? Not to mention the paper.”
Joanne hadn’t thought of that. She hadn’t thought of any of it.
“I guess that’s it,” she said softly.
Ginny sighed into the phone. “Annie really got to you, didn’t she? What did you think Daddy did? Crawl out of bed, type and mimeo a letter, and then sink back into his coma?”
Joanne winced. Annie had always been blunt. Ginny had learned how to be even more blunt.
“No,” Joanne said.
“The letter’s sweet,” Ginny said. “Read it. And get Annie out of your head. She’s always veered to the negative, and it’s gotten worse as she gets older.”
Which was true, no matter how much Joanne didn’t want to admit it.
“So buck up, enjoy your holiday, and I’ll be there to help with Daddy and festivities and everything. I’ll even buy you dinner at the nicest place in town.”
“There’s no need,” Joanne said, but realized she was talking to a broken connection.
Ginny, as usual, had hung up without saying good-bye.
Joanne stared at her phone for a moment, then smiled ruefully. Her baby sister always made her feel better.
Joanne folded her phone and tucked it into her purse. Then she backed the car out of the driveway, and headed to hospice.
She probably should have gone to dinner first. She was hungry, despite all the cookies. But it was getting late, so she went to see her dad.
Already the hospice house had dimmed the lights in the entry. She used the admissions code they had given her and let herself inside. Someone had left fudge on the reception desk with a sign that said, PLEASE! TAKE SOME!
Joanne smiled as she signed in, but didn’t take anything. Lights illuminated the single nurses’ station in the back. The remaining rooms were private, designed to look like bedrooms so that the dying would feel comfortable—if they were aware at all.
She walked down the hall to her father’s room. The night nurse peeked out of one of the other rooms, saw Joanne, and gave a little nod.
Joanne nodded back. She slipped into her father’s room. A holiday nightlight in the shape of a tree made the room a festive green and red. A small light glowed from the nightstand behind the bed.
Next to it stood the pile of cookies that Leo had taken with him with a note—Merry Christmas! Love, Leo—in her grandson’s careful handwriting.
She smiled as she sat down next to her father. He looked even less substantial today than he had the day before. This light, however, gave his now grayish skin some color. His head was propped up by pillows, tubes taped into him everywhere. His blue eyes were closed and were slowly sinking into his skull.
She took his hand and was startled at how cold his skin was. Instinctively she looked at the monitor, saw the green line that tracked his heartbeat, and then covered his hand with her other one.
“We did cookies today,” she said, “although I suspect Leo has already told you about that.”
She talked to her father, telling him about the day, the baking, the fact that Ginny was coming—everything except the letters.
He didn’t look at Joanne. He didn’t even move while she was there. Eventually, she ran out of things to say.
She leaned over him, bussed his cheek, and headed out into the night.
It seemed colder than it had before, the air clearer. She drove to a diner not far from her house and ate meatloaf with homemade gravy—comfort food.
Then she went home to a decorated house that still smelled of cinnamon, vanilla, and Christmas love.
The rest of the days before the holiday blurred. She had dinner with Ginny, listened as Ginny told Annie to lighten up and get her butt home to see Daddy one last time, bought turkey and all the fixings for Christmas dinner, wrapped the remaining presents, and somehow got to midnight service on time despite all her errands.
She had no time to look at Daddy’s letter. She barely had time to think about it. She visited him, of course, but each day it seemed like he became more and more insubstantial.
Part of her prayed he would go soon, while the other part hoped he would wait until the holiday was over; she didn’t want to forever associate Christmas with her father’s death.
He hung on, through Christmas Eve and into Christmas Day. She wouldn’t be able to see him until late, so Ginny did the family duty, spending the morning with him.
By the time she got back, Joanne had a feast for the table. Her downstairs Christmas tree, the one that stood in her living room, was buried with presents. She had something for each grandchild as well as her children and their spouses. The few gifts she had received in the mail were there as well, along with the pile that Ginny had brought with her.
The guests arrived, more presents went under the tree, the children begged—as they did every year—to open the gifts before dinner, which didn’t happen, and one of their parents reminded them (in a voice that made Joanne think of her own) that they had already opened some gifts at home and they could learn to be patient.
Ginny helped serve the turkey and stuffing and the dozen different kinds of breads and all the salads, pouring coffees and sodas and waters, acting as if this were an upscale Manhattan dinner party instead of a family Christmas.
And as the adults savored their after-dinner coffee and the kids tried to amuse themselves without shaking the pres
ents to death, Joanne heard Leo’s voice.
“It was weird,” he was saying. “Like I’ve never seen so much light and there were bugs and everything. We walked over the snow and into that spot and then it was too hot and I was going to take off my coat, but Grandpop wouldn’t let me. He said we were only staying a minute.”
Joanne looked at Ryan, who was frowning. They both got up. The other adults didn’t seem to notice. Joanne and Ryan wound their way through the kitchen into the living room.
Leo had the kids sitting in a circle, even the littlest ones, and they were watching him as if he were a magician. He was pacing, his hands gesturing.
“We snuck up on this place Grandpop said was a grove, then he did this”—and Leo put a finger over his lips, lowering his voice to almost a whisper—“and then he pointed.”
Joanne could imagine her grandson and his great-grandfather in their winter clothes, crouching behind some plants in a grove, staring ahead. The image was as vivid as the images she saw when she wrote . . .
Or the images she had seen as a little girl when her father told her tales of Luminaria.
She shook off the thought.
“And over there,” Leo whispered, “was this tiny lady, like Tinkerbell, only prettier, with wings. And she hovered, y’know, like hummingbirds do. Then she saw us and flew away . . .”
The kids groaned as if they were disappointed that the little woman had vanished. Then, from the dining room, one of the adults said, “I think it’s time for presents, don’t you?”
And the spell was broken. The kids stood and everyone headed to the tree.
Everyone except Joanne and Ryan. They went back into the kitchen as if the movement were prearranged.
“Did you tell him about Luminaria?” she asked her son.
He shook his head. “But he spent a lot of time with Grandpop. I’m sure Grandpop did.”
But Joanne’s father always told stories of thinly disguised heroes and princesses (or princes with the grandsons). He never talked about himself in the first person or anyone else.
Except in those newsletters she had found earlier in the week.
“Grandma, you coming?” Leo shouted from the living room.
“Yes,” she said, and grabbed a glass of water, heading into the living room with Ryan right behind her. They took the last chairs as the present free-for-all began.
Three days after Christmas, Daddy died. He had always called the days between Christmas and New Year’s the Last Nothing Days of the Year, because the real holiday was over and everyone was simply waiting for the next year to begin.
The arrangements were all made; Annie was the only person who had to fly in, and she had no trouble booking a quick flight. The funeral was scheduled for the thirtieth, and the burial, of course, would wait until spring.
The planning was less work than Joanne thought it would be. Ginny handled most of it, claiming she wanted to be useful.
Joanne cleaned her father’s house and her own, took care of the visiting relatives by finding them places to stay and people to eat dinner with. It took no time at all.
She found herself looking for things to do.
Which was how she ended up in the entry of her house, holding a pile of late-arriving Christmas cards, feeling the annual dilemma. Hang them on the banister for a few days or simply acknowledge them and toss them?
She decided to hang them when her father’s card slipped from the middle of the pile and landed on the carpet. For a moment, she stared at that familiar handwriting, her name in his flowing script, and then she sighed.
She set the other cards on the table, picked up her father’s, and carried it into the living room. She sat in her favorite chair, and opened the newsletter.
She read it slowly. The line that caught her, made her breath actually leave her body, was this:
I have made an appointment with my great-grandfather in that flashy stone building where he keeps his office. It’ll be the first time we’ve talked since he came here permanently in 1939. It never felt right to talk to him before. Indeed, the few times we’ve passed each other on the street, he’s averted his gaze, as if he wasn’t allowed to look at me yet.
My appointment is three days after the holiday. But Christmas, not to be missed, has to come first. Then I’ll give myself the gift of a visit I have looked forward to for my entire life . . .
Three days after the holiday. Ginny had been wrong. There were dates and mentions of the current year.
Three days after the holiday was December 28, the day Daddy died.
Joanne wasn’t sure she would point this out to anyone. She wasn’t sure the line had been in the letter before Christmas. She could have sworn she only received a one-page letter in the mail, but it had since grown to four pages.
And Ginny was right. Except for the first-person passages, it read like a Luminaria story. Although this one had an ending.
This is going to be my last letter. You can only straddle worlds for so long. I’ve stood in our world for a very long time. The new world beckons.
I’ve always imagined myself a hero, even though I am not. Still, I am off to battle dragons. Any man who has already stared down his own death knows he has seen the worst. Dragons are large, yes, and fearsome, yes, and smelly, yes. But they are also vulnerable.
Death is not. It comes no matter what you do. At least in our world.
In this new one, who knows? Certainly not me. Maybe I am foolish for choosing a life of adventure, but I have never been foolish before. I look forward to it and I step into it with only one regret.
I cannot come back. The time for straddling is done. I must move on.
Some of you, I will see again. And the rest—I will think of you daily, and miss you hourly.
I love you all, more than you will ever know.
Forever and ever,
And then he signed hers in his familiar precise handwriting:
Daddy.
Joanne cradled the letter against her heart, her eyes closed, her questions answered.
Daddy had sent this letter. Not through a proxy. Not planning months ahead. But from an odd place, the one where he straddled both worlds.
He combined his holiday letters, looking forward as he never had before. But thinking of what he had left behind.
Some of you I will see again. She knew he hadn’t meant her. He meant Leo, and maybe some of the other great-grandchildren.
She should have minded. She, after all, was the responsible one, the one her father had always relied upon. The one with the imagination, who created books from nothing.
But she didn’t mind. She didn’t want to leave the here and now for a place of winter bugs and bright sunlight and giant dragons.
She liked her holiday decorations and the cookie tradition and the giggle of grandchildren. She liked holding hearth and home together.
Adventurers needed a place to come back to, to rest their weary feet, and know that they were safe—even for an evening.
She provided that place. She created it, hoping to leave a bit of it in the minds of her own grandchildren, so that when they grew old enough, they would create a marvelous place to come back to as well.
Some of you, I will see again. And the rest—I will think of you daily, and miss you hourly.
I love you all, more than you will ever know.
“I love you, too, Daddy,” Joanne whispered.
Then she folded the letter, and put it away.
A world: Christmas trees, a decorated home, the smell of fresh-baked cookies and the family who love her and whom she loves. Joanne Carlton’s world is grounded solidly in the real world we all live in. But for an instant in time, Joanne Carlton finally understood that her world is sometimes not the world of others, that there are adventures to have and dragons to slay. With one Christmas letter, Joanne Carlton got a glimpse of the other side—the side sometimes called . . . the Twilight Zone.
AN ODYSSEY,
OR WHATEVER
YOU
CALL IT,
CONCERNING
BASEBALL
Rod Serling
Once again, I am pleased to be able to provide another previously unpublished story from Rod Serling himself. As with many of his stories, this one deals squarely with a theme that he examined so often in his television scripts—the power of imagination, this one set squarely against the backdrop of America’s national pastime. But what happens when a man’s dreams are faced with the reality of his life? There’s only one way to find out . . .
There is a gigantic silver-buck moon hovering high in a September night over Shea Stadium, touching the darkness and softly dispelling it. And down below, leaving the New York Mets dugout, is Albert Patrick Hogan. Feast your eyes—the word must be “feast”—feast your eyes on Hogan: He glides, not walks. The grace of the man must be seen, must be experienced—muscles and ligaments in a ballet; shoulders and arms and legs in a rhythmic dance that glorifies the symmetry of the human body. Watch him as he saunters past the on-deck circle, picking up a bat in a single graceful notion. Just the one bat. Other men—lesser men—pick up the lead-weighted stick and swing it, or they fiddle with trouser belts, or kick mud off cleats, or furiously rub rosin bags to dry out the moist residue of fears that collect in palms—the ritual, the liturgy of baseball that marks any plover’s obeisance to the nerves and tensions of the sport. But not Hogan. Oh, no. Hogan carries the one bat over to the Plate. It is the heaviest bat in the National League. And when he gets to Home Plate, the universe narrows down to a ninety-foot rectangular corridor between the high mound of the pitcher and the small square arena of the man with the bat. Then the two opponents face one another in a special moment of truth.
Hogan plants his two thick legs into the dust like mighty oaks ready to be driven deep into the earth. Then he gazes out like a calm eagle toward the pitcher’s mound. See the smile flicker on his lips. A part of the man. A clue. A hint. A suggestion of his preeminence. He’s the best. Nobody touches him. Nobody comes close. The probing gray eyes scan the outfield, then the three runners on base. Those eyes. They, too, bespeak the quality. He has the best eyesight in the National League. But the smile never touches them. The smile is simply the unspoken awareness that Hogan has no peers. He must play in this league because there’s none better. In Heaven, maybe.
More Stories from the Twilight Zone Page 39
