by Aaron Dries
Robby laughed. “We can drink lemonade!”
“Oh, totally. And it’d be homemade, none of that store bought yucky stuff.”
“What does it smell like? Outside, I mean.” He closed his eyes, hands clenching the blanket, and inhaled. “I can’t quite—”
“Cut grass,” she said, watching him exhale as though with relief.
“Yeah. That’s it. Cut grass.”
“And honeysuckle. I love honeysuckle. There are birds, too.”
“I can hear them now.”
Lucette watched Robby’s eyes leap and dart beneath his lids as though he were sleeping, which to some degree, he now was. And she, Lucette realized, was the one creating his dream. Her stomach fluttered like the butterflies that no doubt danced through the field where they sat, bathing in sunshine and—
“Eating,” she said. “Lots of food. You laid out one of those checkered tablecloths. You know, like the ones they put in fancy restaurants.”
“A summer picnic. Perfect. When I’m done I’m going to put on my hat and dig for dinosaur bones. I’ll find a big old T-Rex and lay it out on the ground.”
“And then it’ll get dark and some fireflies will come along and sit in the skull. They’ll light up its eyes so it looks alive again.”
Lucette let them both fall into silence in which they listened to each other breathing, savoring the images they had conjured. But she could sense the light in the dinosaur skull beginning to dim, those eyes darkening as night fell to gobble them up.
“I think by the time this snow melts, I won’t be here anymore,” Robbie said.
“Are—are you scared?”
Robby hesitated, nodded. “There’s so much I wanted to do.”
Lucette put the book back on the bed. Instead of sharing summertime, all they could share was their sighs. “Well, one thing you can do is learn to make a paper crane. There are people who live to be a hundred who never get to do that.”
“Yeah. I guess you’re right.”
“Let’s give it another try?”
His smile was genuine, not just a grotesque facsimile. “Deal.”
Lucette pulled out a fresh sheet for Robby and they started again, following along with the diagram, taking it slow. They didn’t speak for a while, cocooned by the sounds of the facility—footsteps, a cough, the drip-drip-drip of her friend’s IV.
“Am I the first infected person you’ve ever been around?” This question, like the descent of night in their fantasy, came without preamble. It had a ring of inevitability to it.
Lucette shook her head, focusing on the fold she was making.
“Who?”
After a brief hesitation, she answered. “My dad.”
“I’m sorry. I had no idea. Was he in a place like this?”
Another shake of the head. “No.”
“I guess in some ways he was lucky, getting to die in his own bed surrounded by his family.”
(But would you mind if I asked Miss Natalia a question or two?)
“We don’t have to talk about this.”
“No, it’s okay. Mom thinks I don’t remember, only I do. My father getting bit is my first memory. And how Mom tried to explain it to me, tried to get me to understand the rules, but I still didn’t get it. I tried. I forgot. The rules, I mean.”
“I get it, Lucette,” he said, gripping her hand. “Trust me.”
The conversation petered out, and the quiet became cottony, soft and gentle and soporific. As they contorted paper into intricate shapes, sometimes stumbling upon success and sometimes not, Lucette wondered what Robby was feeling, wondered if their summertime picnic was haunting him as it was her. Tablecloths and dinosaur bones, fireflies in twilight. And there, in the dark that always came, all of the things that Robby would never get to do.
Going places.
Doing things.
Becoming something.
Kissing a girl.
Lucette glanced down at her origami. The next one would be better—it had to be. She crunched it up and threw it at the wastebasket against the wall under the window. Missed. The leaves she’d drawn into life against the glass bled dewy threads extending down to the sill, and she watched, saddened, as it all faded away.
THE LAST CHRISTMAS
“Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Ho Ho Ho, and all that kind of bizzo!” Mama Metcalf said, opening the door. She wore a knit red sweater with a green Christmas tree stenciled across the front, actual silver bells dangling from it, and a Santa hat was perched on her head. Seeing this, Emily bleated, glad that she hadn’t cancelled as she’d been tempted to.
“Good, lord! The same to you. You look quite festive.”
“Well, way I figure it I only get to wear this stuff once a year. Might as well enjoy it.”
“You’ve got a point there.”
The house was small, a ‘cracker box’ as Emily’s parents used to describe such homes, but it was warm—perhaps a little too warm even. Feeling as though she’d just stepped into an oven, Emily began to de-mummify herself from her layers of scarves and jackets, urging Lucette to do the same.
“Welcome to the Winter Wonderland,” Mama Metcalf said as she took their gear and hung it by the front door.
It looked like a Christmas suicide bomber had come into the living room, yanked the ACME-style trigger, and exploded. Yes, as expected, there was the crackling fire, the massive tree dominating the far corner; but every square inch of space was packed with shrapnel from the blast. Knickknacks jostled for room on the mantle, toy elves poked out of stockings, Santa sentinels lined the windows, miss-matched nativity sets were perched on stools, with Joseph towering over Mary, a gargantuan baby Jesus larger than all three Wise Men combined. The coffee table was piled with plastic snowmen, ceramic Christmas trees, music boxes with glass ice skaters gliding across mirrored ponds, snow globes, and tinsel-haloed angels. From a small tape deck—Emily hadn’t seen one of those in ages—Jim Nabors crooned Christmas classics, only there was no room left to roast those chestnuts over the open fire.
“No doubt what day it is when you come in my house,” Mama Metcalf said. Her cheeks had a natural flush. Emily wondered if the old woman had been dipping into some spiked eggnog, and if so, for the love of all things holy, when would she please share.
“We brought you a present,” Lucette said, holding the gift out. The wrapping was sloppy with excessive mounds of tape holding the edges down, but Lucette had insisted on wrapping it herself.
“Thanks so much. You go put that under the tree. I got presents for you too but we’ll wait ‘til after supper to open them.”
Lucette ran to the tree, placing their gift down next to several others. “Mom, these are all for us.”
“Mama Metcalf, you shouldn’t have. That’s way too extravagant.”
“Oh, nonsense,” the old woman said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I don’t have any grand-young’uns, I gotta do something with my money.”
Emily found herself staring at a photo hanging on the wall above the mantel, a somewhat younger Mama Metcalf posing with a handsome man with dark hair and a thousand-watt smile. “Is this your son?”
“Yup, that’s my Erik when he was a senior in college. Ain’t he a looker?”
“He has your eyes.”
“He favors his Daddy more in the looks department. Luckily he got my temperament.”
“Will your son be coming over tonight?” Lucette asked. The girl was wearing a green dress that Emily had gotten from a secondhand store with matching ribbons holding her hair in pigtails.
“No honey, Erik and his hubby were here last night for Christmas Eve. They spend Christmas night with Paul’s family.”
Emily remembered the pumpkin pie in her hands. “Where should I put this?”
“Follow me.”
An archway led from the living room into a cramped, yet tidy kitchen. The invasion of holiday ornamentation hadn’t spread this far except for a Santa and Mrs. Claus salt and pepper set on the table. The
walls were a muted yellow, the appliances old but clean, and an enticing aroma of meat and spices thickened the air. Emily started to salivate, her stomach grumbling with anticipation.
“Just put the pie on the table there. I got turkey and ham, some dressing and cranberry sauce, macaroni pie and mashed potatoes, some deviled eggs, and green bean casserole.”
“You really shouldn’t have gone to this much trouble.”
“Hush up, let an old woman have her fun. Everything should be ready in about fifteen minutes. Want a drink while we wait. Something warm?”
“That would be lovely.”
Mama Metcalf whipped up two cups of instant coffee for Emily and herself, and some hot chocolate with extra marshmallows for Lucette. They sat at the table, sipping their steaming brews.
“I can’t imagine all the grocery shopping you had to do for this meal,” Emily said, hiding the grimace at the bitter taste of the coffee. She hated instant, but she was a guest and didn’t want to be rude.
Mama Metcalf laughed. “Was a haul, that’s for sure, and I had an interesting encounter in the parking lot.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, I ain’t got no car so I took a cab to and from the grocery store, and the cab driver wouldn’t help me load the groceries into the trunk, said it wasn’t part of his job, but then this man came up and asked if I needed some assistance. He was an old coot, looked like maybe he was a boy when Washington chopped down that cherry tree, but I was glad of the help. He was certainly the chatty type, but that ain’t never bothered me none. When all the groceries was packed away in the trunk, he offered to take the cart back for me, and then he asked if he could have my number.”
“Your number?” Emily said with a smile. “Mama Metcalf, were you getting picked up in a parking lot?”
“I don’t know why I gave it to him. He was just being so nice, I figured what the hay.”
“Did he call?”
Mama Metcalf nodded. “This morning. Was telling me how his kids and grandkids was gonna be coming over tonight from all over the country. Was having a nice little talk ‘til he started saying all this stuff about wanting to get me under the mistletoe. I had to stop him right then and there, told him, ‘Mister, that is not gonna happen!’”
Emily burst into laughter, even as she glanced over at Lucette, worried the conversation might be taking too adult a turn, but the little girl was engrossed with the salt and pepper shakers, which she was making dance across the table. Her daughter was no doubt playing possum though; she heard, she understood.
“You don’t ever want a little companionship?” Emily asked in a confidential voice that she hadn’t heard herself use since back when she had girlfriends and went to baby showers and played Bridge on Wednesdays. Memories of someone else’s life—someone naïve, blind.
“Not like that, no thank you. I ain’t got no use for romance in my life, not at my age.”
Emily stared into her murky coffee. Here she was counseling Mama Metcalf about male companionship when Emily herself had more or less lived like a nun since Jordan died. Sure, there had been a few failed dates, a couple of half-hearted ‘not so loud, you’ll wake my girl,’ fumblings in the dark. Nothing lasted, of course; men had a way of sniffing out trauma, it clung to some women like the stink of smoke. Emily knew she was one such person. Occasional pings rung through her newfound asexuality, but she didn’t follow through on the urge. Even simple old-fashioned fucking took time, and what little time she had was consumed by motherhood—the emergencies, the pandering, the tests, the fights, the hugs, the kisses, the lessons, the elastic limits of tolerance.
Love had to take the backseat, a bitter irony if there ever was one.
Loud gurgling pulled Emily from her reverie, and she turned to Lucette. The girl clutched her stomach, a blush creeping into her cheeks. “Sorry, everything just smells so good.”
“Well,” Mama Metcalf said, pushing against the table as she got to her feet, “I’d say supper is just about ready.”
***
Emily and Lucette—darlings that they were—told her how delicious everything was, but Mama Metcalf thought the turkey was too dry and the potatoes too lumpy. Something was off about the deviled eggs as well, maybe not enough mayo. Still, it was nice to be sharing food with people she liked. Not that she hadn’t enjoyed the meal with her son and his husband the previous evening, but Erik and Paul were both vegetarians and had brought over something called ‘tofurkey’, which tasted like boiled tires, or so she imagined.
“I like your sweater, Mama Metcalf,” Lucette said, nibbling on a slice of ham.
“Thank you, honey. My Erik gave this to me last Christmas.”
“What did he get you this year?” Emily asked.
Mama Metcalf reached up to either side of her head, tapping the dangling silver reindeer that hung from her earlobes.
“Lovely,” Emily said.
“You’re like a walking Christmas tree,” Lucette chimed in.
“I guess I am that.”
Lucette leaned forward and said in a stage-whisper, “I didn’t get Mom anything. We were going to make a Christmas wreath in school, then I stopped going.”
Mama Metcalf mimicked the girl’s posture and whisper. “Don’t worry about that. What young-uns don’t get is their very existence is a gift to their parents.”
Emily reached out to stroke one of her daughter’s pigtails. “I hope Lucette and I are always as close as you and Erik.”
Mama Metcalf nodded, returning to her dinner. She recalled playing dress up with Erik when he was three or four, him scooting around in her high heels (always when his father wasn’t home); evenings spent watching Steel Magnolias or Golden Girls reruns together. When Erik came out of the closet, his father blamed her for turning their son into a sissy, though she knew better. It was the way he had been born, like some people having blue eyes and others green. It was merely different, neither better nor worse.
Over the years, that closeness waned. Once he went off to college and moved from South Carolina, she saw him just on holidays and not even all of them. Phone calls became infrequent. Erik was always after her to get an email account, only she didn’t trust computers. She wouldn’t even have a cell phone if he hadn’t bought one for her.
She thought moving to Chicago would bridge the emotional distance between them by bridging the physical. Things hadn’t worked out that way. If she was lucky, she saw Erik once every few months, and phone calls were still few and far between, and she was usually the one doing the dialing. Yes, he was a busy man, but she’d uprooted her life and moved to an unfamiliar place where she knew no one just to be nearer to him. The least he could do was make time for his poor old Mama. After all, she wasn’t going to be around forever.
One of the main reasons she’d decided to start volunteering at the hospice was to get out of the house. Loneliness drove her to it, the same loneliness that had caused her to give her number to the old coot in the grocery store parking lot. She hadn’t been lying to Emily earlier; she had no desire for romance at this point in her life, although the idea of someone to call and talk to was not without appeal.
You got a new friend sitting right across the table from you, she reminded herself. So stop wallowing in self-pity and be a good guest like your Mama taught you.
“Got any big plans for New Year’s Eve?” she asked Emily.
“I’m working the morning shift. After that, well, probably the same thing I did last year. Have a quiet dinner with Lucette then turn in early. I’m on leave after that for a bit.”
“I wanna stay up and watch the ball drop,” Lucette said. “Mom won’t let me.”
Emily gave the girl a stern look. “The year will switch over whether or not you’re awake to see it, young lady.”
“You know, I can always watch the young’un that night if you want to go out.”
“That’s very nice of you. It’s unnecessary though.”
“I hear the riverfront is quite the sc
ene on New Year’s Eve. Of course, I’m too old for that kind of thing myself, but a young thang like you should be out and about mingling.”
“I’m not terribly social.”
“Sounds like prime resolution material to me.”
“Hey, I’m here tonight, aren’t I? I call that a first step.”
“I reckon you’re right, but steps eventually need to turn into leaps if you’re gonna get anywhere.”
“You know the old expression about looking before you leap?”
“How about this? You and the young’un come spend New Year’s Eve with me. I’ll make a big bowl of popcorn and we’ll let Lucette have her first ball-drop experience.”
Lucette, who had been staring off through the archway at the Christmas tree, specifically at the presents under its branches, turned back. “Can we, Mom? Please?”
“I’ll think about it,” Emily said.
The little girl clapped, and truthfully Mama Metcalf felt like joining her. No one should be alone on New Year’s.
You thinking about Emily and Lucette, or yourself, ol’ girl?
It didn’t matter either way, she figured.
With the main meal finished, they armed themselves with a wedge of pie apiece and ambled back into the living room. The Christmas tree towered over them, a totem to less desperate times. Lucette dropped to her knees and reached for a present. “Darlin’, I think we should let Mama Metcalf go first,” Emily said. “It’s her house, after all.”
Lucette stared at the gifts with her name on them—so close and yet so far—but didn’t muster an ounce of protest. This warmed Mama Metcalf. The girl had fine manners, a trait as rare as hen’s teeth in this day and age. Lucette handed her a present, which she unwrapped, revealing a glass jewelry box with a plush red interior.
“Oh, it’s beautiful. I love it.”
“Now you have somewhere to put your reindeer earrings,” Lucette said.
“That I do, honey. Now why don’t you open that big one with the red wrapping?”
Lucette looked to her mother first, and when Emily nodded, the girl grabbed the gift.
“What did you get from—” Mama Metcalf almost said Santa Claus, but remembered the girl knew certain things about life that other girls her age did not. “—your mom?”
