On Sunday morning, the Christmas tree was delivered and London and I spent the first part of the day decorating it, stringing lights among the branches and conferring over the placement of every single ornament. When I called Marge and Liz later that afternoon to see if they wanted to come by for some eggnog, Liz answered the phone and said they wouldn’t be able to make it.
“It’s been a pretty bad day,” Liz said. Marge had undergone her second round of chemo on Friday, the day after the trip to the water tower, and I hadn’t seen her since. According to Liz, the nausea and pain were worse than the first time, and Marge had barely been able to leave her bed.
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“No,” she answered. “Your mom and dad have been here pretty much all day. They’re still here.” She lowered her voice. “Your dad—I think it really kills him to see Marge like this. He keeps finding new things to repair. It’s hard for your mom, too, of course, but she’s been through it so many times that at least she knows what to expect. He’s trying so hard to be strong for Marge, but it’s destroying him inside. He just loves her so much, his girl. They both do.”
I found myself thinking about what Marge had said that night on the water tower, about being the kind of dad who is there for everything, always. Even, it seems, at the end.
“He’s a great father, Liz,” I said. “I hope I can be half the dad he is.”
On Monday, London’s last day of school before winter break, I finally got around to the Christmas list that Vivian had left me. Work had kept me busy most days, and in my binary focus on “clients” and “Marge,” Vivian’s list had slipped off my radar. Luckily, Emily still had some last-minute shopping to do, so the two of us drove from store to store late that morning. With Christmas only four days away, I was worried that some items would be sold out, but I was able to find everything on Vivian’s list.
Halfway through our shopping, Emily and I took a break for lunch. There was a café at the mall and though the food smelled good, I had little appetite. On the scale that morning, I saw that I’d begun to lose weight again. I wasn’t alone; Liz was losing weight as well, and I noted that she sometimes looked disheveled, as if she no longer cared about her appearance. Her hair, often tied back in a careless ponytail, was losing its luster. My mom and dad, too, were suffering. My dad seemed to have acquired a defeated hunch in the past few weeks, and my mom’s face was more deeply lined with worry with every passing day.
But our suffering was nothing compared to Marge’s. Walking was becoming painful for her, and often, she struggled to stay awake for more than an hour. When I visited, I sometimes sat with Marge in her darkened bedroom, listening as she seemed to struggle to draw breath, even as she slept. Occasionally she whimpered in her sleep, and I wondered if she were dreaming. If only, I thought, she could dream the kind of dreams that would make her smile.
Thoughts like these preoccupied me, even in Emily’s company, no matter what the surroundings. When my lunch arrived, I stared at it blankly, picturing Marge’s emaciated face. I took only a single bite before pushing the plate aside.
If Marge couldn’t eat, I guess there was a part of me that felt like I didn’t deserve to, either.
“You need to come by the house,” Marge said without preamble, right after I answered her call. I’d just dropped Emily off a few minutes earlier.
“Why? Are you okay?”
“Do you really want me to answer that question?” she said, with a trace of her old sardonic humor. “But yes, I’m feeling better than I was, and I’d like you to come by.”
“I have to pick up London from school in a little while. And drop off the gifts beforehand.”
“Swing by here on the way and leave the gifts with us,” she said. “London won’t find them that way.”
When I reached her house a few minutes later, I started unloading the bags from the trunk. When I looked up, my mom appeared in the front doorway. Even with her help, it took two trips to unload everything.
“I’m not sure where to put all this,” I said, staring at the mountain of bags on the kitchen floor. Did London really need all this? I wondered.
“I’ll put it all in one of the closets,” my mom said. “Go on in. Marge is waiting for you.”
I found Marge on the couch, wrapped in a blanket as usual, with the living room shades drawn. The lights from the Christmas tree cast a cheerful glow, but in the days since I’d seen her last, she seemed to have aged years. Her cheekbones stood out in sharp relief below the sunken pits of her eyes, and her arms looked ropy and flaccid. I tried to mask my dismay at her appearance as I took a seat beside her.
“I heard it was a rough few days,” I said, clearing my throat.
“I’ve felt better, that’s for sure. I’m on the mend now, but…” She cracked a smile, a ghost of her irrepressible self. “I’m glad you came by. I wanted to talk to you.” Getting the words out seemed to be an effort. “Emily called a little while ago.”
“Emily?”
“Yeah,” she said. “You remember her, right? Gorgeous hair, has a five-year-old son, the woman you love? Anyway, she called me because she’s worried about you. She says you’re not eating.”
“She called you?” I said, feeling my irritation rise. Now Marge was going to worry about my health?
“I asked her to keep an eye on you and let me know how you’re doing,” Marge said in a bossy voice I remembered from childhood. “Which is why I then asked you to come over.” She scanned me with a critical eye. “You better eat a decent dinner tonight, or I’m going to get seriously angry with you.”
“When did you discuss ‘keeping an eye’ on me with Emily?” I demanded.
“When we went to Santa’s village for the trees.”
“You have better things to worry about than me, Marge,” I said, conscious of how sulky I sounded.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” she said. “That’s something that I won’t let you take away from me.”
Tuesday, December twenty-second, was London’s last day of school before the winter break, and that was when I planned to wrap all the gifts. Before I’d left her house the previous day, Marge asked if she could help with the wrapping, since the gifts were over there anyhow.
When I arrived at the house with wrapping paper after dropping London off at school, my first thought was that Marge looked better than she had the day before. Simultaneously, I hated that I had begun to make those kinds of evaluations every time I saw her, only to see my hopes elevated or dashed depending on how she seemed to be doing.
Liz was home with her that day, and she exuded a forced good cheer as we brought the gifts to the kitchen and began to wrap. At Marge’s request, she made us all cups of hot chocolate, thick and foamy, although I noticed that my sister drank little of hers.
Marge wrapped a couple of the smaller gifts before settling back in her chair, leaving the rest to Liz and me.
“I’m still not happy that you’re calling Emily to check up on me,” I groused.
Despite her condition, Marge was clearly enjoying my discomfort, as evidenced by the gleam in her eye. “That’s why I didn’t ask your permission. And if you’re interested, we didn’t just talk about that, by the way. We talked about a lot of things.”
I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that. “What things?”
“That’s between me and her,” she said. “But for now, what I want to know is whether you ate last night. Full report, please.”
“I made steaks for London and me,” I sighed. “And mashed potatoes.”
“Good,” she said with satisfaction. “Now, have you spoken with Vivian about the plans for Christmas this year? Other than that she’ll be coming to Charlotte?”
The tradition in my family had been to gather at my parents’ on Christmas Eve. My mom would make an elaborate dinner and afterward, we’d allow London to open gifts from the relatives while It’s a Wonderful Life played on television. On Christmas morning, at our house, Vivian and I would have London to ourselves.
“We haven’t gotten into the specifics yet,” I said. “She doesn’t come in until tomorrow. We’ll figure it out then.”