The week before Christmas Eve, Carmen had visited Izzy with some real estate options printed out from the computer. She seemed to be vibrating with excitement, which was a marked difference from the atmosphere in the complex. “I’ve got something good,” she said, opening Izzy’s cabinets. “Do you have any booze?” she asked, and Izzy produced a bottle of vodka and they made screwdrivers and Carmen laid out the pages on the coffee table.
“There are two houses for sale,” Carmen said, “right across the street from each other. They need some work, but they’re in a good neighborhood and they’re affordable, which is rare in East Nashville right now.”
“Okay,” Izzy said. “Are you going to buy one?”
“I talked to Kenny about it. We’ve got the money to do it. We’re buying this one,” she said, pointing to a cute one-story house with a nice yard. “And,” she said, smiling as she pointed to the other house, a two-story cottage, “we think you should buy this one.”
“Really?” Izzy said.
“Wouldn’t it be perfect?” Carmen said. “We’d stay together. At least a small part of the family.”
“I’d love that,” Izzy said.
“I think of you as family,” Carmen said. “I want us to stay close. Maxwell and Cap, they’re closer to each other than actual brothers. I cannot imagine a world where Maxwell doesn’t see Cap every single day.”
“You’ve looked out for me the whole time we’ve been here,” Izzy said.
“Yeah, but that’s nothing special,” Carmen said. “Family, right?”
“I didn’t think so before this place,” Izzy said.
“That’s why we’re here,” Carmen said, and both Izzy and Carmen realized that in less than two weeks the entire complex would be empty.
Once the tree was decorated, Izzy returned to the kitchen and made a batch of eggnog and started to bake the cookies that the children had cut into festive shapes earlier that evening. By now the children had wrapped the popcorn strings around the tree and were checking over the presents, identifying the recipient of each package. Now that it was almost nine o’clock, the remaining parents, as well as Jill, began to wander into the dining hall, ready for their last enactment of the complex’s Christmas tradition. As the clock rolled over to nine o’clock, the kids perked up at the sound of jingle bells coming from the hallway. They ran to the door just in time to meet Dr. Grind, dressed as Santa Claus, weighed down with a sack of presents. Izzy brought out the cookies and eggnog, spiked with even more rum than usual, and watched as each child waited for their turn on Santa’s lap to receive their one gift on Christmas Eve, a special treat to hold them over until the morning. The parents sipped from their cups and used their phones to take pictures as each child stepped up to Dr. Grind, the festivity of the situation finally easing some of the tension in their bodies.
This year, the gift was a customized photo album of the past seven years, showing each child from birth to the present, with their names printed on the glossy covers. Jill and Dr. Grind had worked on the presents for more than a month, Dr. Grind doing most of the work while everyone else slept. Each book was entirely unique, an assortment of the thousands and thousands of photos that every member of the family had taken. It was, Dr. Grind had told the family one day, halfway into the project, like excavating the artifacts of a grand and heretofore unknown civilization. As each child received their gift, they ran over to their parents to show them their bounty. “Merry Christmas!” Jackie shouted, and Dr. Grind, fiddling with the itchy fake beard, gave a resounding “Ho, ho, ho,” and the children all clapped as he exited the room, only to return a few minutes later in his regular clothes, wondering what all the fuss was.
The cookies consumed, the stockings hung with care, each child hugged and kissed by every member of the family, Izzy turned off the lights and returned with Cap to their own house. “It was the night before Christmas,” Cap stated, and Izzy couldn’t tell if he was starting the poem or simply making a very obvious statement. “The last one,” he then said.
“Just the last Christmas at the complex,” Izzy reminded him, and he smiled weakly, allowing her correction, too tired to explain what they both knew he really meant.
A few minutes later, just as they had begun to get ready for bed, someone knocked on the door. Cap ran to answer it and they found Dr. Grind standing there with a large, awkwardly shaped present.
Cap ran back to the coffee table and retrieved the photo album before running back over to Dr. Grind; Cap gave him a hug, holding up the photo album and begging him to look through it with him.
“Is this okay?” Dr. Grind, placing the present next to the sofa, asked Izzy, who nodded at the same time that Cap, still smiling at Dr. Grind, exclaimed, “Sure it is!”