Tidings of Comfort and Joy (2 page)
Carol picked up the quilt she had brought from Marissa's bed, and tucked it in and around her daughter. As she straightened, she found that Marissa's eyes were open and watching her solemnly.
They stood like that for a long moment, mother looking down at daughter, until Marissa's eyes again began to sink shut. With an overly quiet voice, she said, "You don't love me at all, do you, Momma?"
Buddy dropped his side of the empty mattress and fled from the room.
"Oh, darling, darling." Carol reached down and cradled Marissa's face with both hands. "I love you with all my heart, and that is the truth as best I know how to say it."
George pulled the mattress over to the doorway, stopped, and said quiedy, "I'll miss you, Sis. Merry Christmas."
Marissa struggled to keep her eyes opened and fastened upon her mother. "Why is everybody going away and leaving me alone, Momma?"
"I would do anything if I could be lying there instead of you," Carol said, and a single tear escaped to trace its way down her cheek. But her daughter did not see it. Marissa's eyes had defeated her best efforts and closed on their own accord.
Carol sat there and stroked Marissa's face, then rose to her feet with a weary sigh. She turned to her mother and said quietly, "I don't know if I can let you do this."
"We'll be fine," Emily said.
But this time Carol was going to have it out and said, "This will be your first Christmas without Dad. You don't need this."
"I'm not so sure about that," Emily responded quietly.
Carol was too busy with her own worries to hear her mother. "You've been talking about this Indiana reunion for over a month. I hate to see you miss it on our account."
"She needs me, Carol. All those families can be seen another time."
Carol felt defeat crowding in. She tried once more with, "You've seen how she is, Mom."
"Yes. And I also see how tired you are. All of you. It's been an exhausting year for everyone. George's company almost going under, then my Colin passing on, now Marissa's illness." Emily's tone was flat and determined. "You have to go. We've been through this a dozen times. You
have
to. This vacation has been like a lifeline for all of you.
Carol's shoulders slumped. She rubbed her forehead, her cheek, the back of her neck. "I'm so tired I can't even think straight anymore."
Emily gave her a fierce hug, turned her around, and guided her out of the room and back down the stairs. "Go and start getting ready for the time of your lives."
At the front door, Carol halted once more. "Are you really sure about this, Mom?"
"I am," Emily replied calmly. "Who knows, this may turn out to be a blessing in disguise."
Marissa awoke to the smell of soup. She opened her eyes. Her grandmother had pulled a chair up close to the bed and was sipping from a steaming cup. "Good evening. Are you hungry?"
Reluctantly she nodded. She hated her body. She hated how it kept her trapped in this bed and in this house. She hated how it had grown until she looked like she was nothing but a scarecrow, her clothes flapping on empty sticks. And now she hated how it refused to let her just lie in misery, how it forced her to wake up to a world she hated, and made her hungry for food she didn't want.
"What time is it?"
"Almost eight. You've slept over twelve hours." The edges of Gran's eyes crinkled with the tiniest of smiles, one that did not touch her mouth at all. "That little tantrum of yours must have tired you out. It certainly did me."
Marissa blushed at her grandmother's matter-of-fact tone. The way she said the words made her feel even worse. "They've gone off and left me," she said morosely.
"Yes, they did." There was no getting around the directness in Gran's voice. "Carol called from the airport about an hour ago. They were just boarding the plane.
She'd been waiting to see if she could speak with you again, but I told her not to bother. I said you needed time to get used to the way things are."
"The way things are is just plain awful," Marissa declared. She felt another flare of anger over being left behind. But then she recalled how she had screamed at her brothers, and how sad Buddy had looked. The anger mingled with shame, pinching her heart. She had always been so close to Buddy.
Marissa found herself hoping that her grandmother would disagree, so that she could use the renewed anger to push back her shame.
Yet all Gran said was, "Thing are indeed truly awful. But they could also be far worse."
"I don't see how," Marissa muttered crossly. Yet the remorse still flickered like shadows just beyond the light's reach.
"Shall I help you sit up so you can have some soup?" When Marissa nodded, Gran set down her cup, rose, and helped her slide up in bed. As she plumped the pillows behind her granddaughter's back, she went on, "Well, let's see. At least we know you're going to get better."
"They haven't even told me what's the matter," Marissa said glumly.
"Yes they have. A little, anyway. But you weren't listening."
"They keep treating me like a child."
"Well, that's partly because you've been acting like one. Here." Gran handed her a mug. "Homemade chicken soup. Good for what ails you." She watched Marissa take a tentative sip, and went on, "Your folks also didn't tell you much because there was a lot they weren't sure of. Which was why they've been so scared."
"Scared? Of what?"
"Of you dying." Gran watched Marissa with that calm stare of hers. "They thought you had leukemia."
A cold wind passed over Marissa's heart. "That's what all those tests were about?"
"Some of them. The doctors couldn't figure out why you were so tired all the time," Gran replied. "So they started eliminating one possible ailment after another. And all the while there was that terrible fear at the back of their minds."
"Leukemia," Marissa said, and sipped again. "I've heard of that. It's bad, isn't it?"
"Horrible. As bad as bad can be. It's a child killer of the first degree."
Over the rim of her mug, Marissa regarded the older woman. Her grandmother had changed a lot in that year since Granpa had died. He had passed on just after Christmas of the year before, a time that had been hard for all of them. The frank way her grandmother observed her now, the way she seemed ready to sit and wait there forever, gave her the strength to say, "It seems like the whole world has come unwound since Granpa died."
Gran backed off a notch, clearly caught off guard. Marissa took a little pleasure in that, being able to make somebody else hurt. But the feeling was instantly replaced by a pang of guilt. Her grandmother watched her with a gaze that seemed keen enough to understand exactly what was going on inside her, but all Gran said was, "Well, mine sure did."
The pain inside Marissa seemed to grow even stronger. But her words seemed to come of their own accord. "You've gotten a lot thinner. And you cut off your long hair. And you've gotten, I don't know, harder. No, that's not the word."
"I think I understand," Gran said, and set down her cup. "I've lost some of my sweetness, haven't I? All my soft edges have gotten sharper."
The quiet way she spoke those words made Marissa feel so ashamed. "I'm sorry, Gran. I didn't—"
"Shah, child. There's no need to apologize." She took one of Marissa's hands in both of hers. "You are absolutely right. I'm sure everyone else has noticed and thinks about it, but they just don't want to say anything. I can't help it, you see. I lived for my Colin. He was the center of my world. And now he's gone."
There was a little lilt to that last sentence, so much longing that it pulled up the edges of the words. Gran gave a big sigh, as though trying to push all the pain back inside her chest. She raised sorrowful eyes to Marissa's, and went on. "I've had to pare things down to their very essentials. That's what it takes at a time like this, just to keep going."
Marissa wasn't sure she understood what Gran had said, but she heard the emotion behind the words. "You miss Granpa a lot, don't you?"
"With every breath. With every thought. With every passing minute."
Until that very moment it had never occurred to Marissa that romance was something people as old as Gran could feel. But the way Gran said those words, and the way she turned to look up and out the window, searching the night for a man who was no longer there, made Marissa's heart swell with a shared sorrow. "I miss him too."
"I know you do, child." Gran did not turn back from the window. "We all do. He was a truly wonderful man." But it was not missing Granpa that bound Marissa to her grandmother at that moment. "Now we both have a reason to hate Christmas," she said.
That brought Gran around. "What a thing to say." There was no anger to her voice, no criticism. Just a quiet surprise. "I don't hate Christmas."
"But you . . . " Then it came, the blanket of sleep rising so swiftly that she would have spilled soup all over herself had Gran not reached out and taken hold of the mug. "Oooh."
"You sleep, child," Gran whispered. She set down the mug, leaned over, and kissed Marissa's closed eyes. "You sleep."
IN THE NIGHT'S darkest hour, Marissa awoke with a strangled cry.
"Shah, child, it's all right." Gran was instantly there beside her. "It was only a dream."
She rose from the depths of lingering fatigue with great effort. The edges of the nightmare clung to her like tentacles. "It was horrible."
"Everything is fine." Gran settled on the edge of her bed, and stroked the sweat-limp hair from her forehead. "Don't worry about a thing."
"I was back in the doctor's office. He had a needle. It looked two feet long. And thick as Daddy's drill." She shuddered at the memory. "He was going to stick it in me."
A streetlight shone through the frosted windowpane, the yellowish tint making Gran's features look old. And determined. "Nobody is going to examine you with any more needles. Of that you can be sure."
"But I remember something." It was hard to tell the difference between what was a dream and what was real. Yet there was a hint of memory hidden in the shadows. "Sometime when I was in a doctor's office, did you and Momma quarrel?"
Gran's fingers hesitated a moment. "I hoped you had slept through all that. You were conked out on the examining table. I shouldn't have let my voice rise so."
It was comforting to sit there, to feel the gentle caress, to know that she shared the night with someone who cared for her, who would protect her always. "I can't remember you and Momma ever quarreling before. That's why I was sure it was a dream."
"I was not quarreling with your mother. It was that doctor. That's whom I was angry with." A spark of annoyance returned to Gran's voice. "They had eliminated almost every possibility. But he still wanted to continue with those silly tests of his."
Marissa clutched at the covers. "There
was
a needle, wasn't there? A
big
one. That wasn't a dream at all."
"He wanted to do a liver biopsy, which required taking a sample of your liver tissue. O f all the . . . " Gran stopped and gathered herself. "You had become slightly jaundiced. That means your skin had turned a little yellow. And your liver had swollen up so I could feel it with my own fingers. Anyone with any sense would know what was ailing you. But that doctor, he kept saying the tests weren't conclusive. Just this one last test—he must have said those words a dozen times. Shooting us off to the hospital and the clinic and back to his office again, making everybody worry until the results came back, and then saying we had to go through it again. Just one more time. Over and over, without end."
Marissa drew the covers up close to her chin. She could feel the tendrils of fear all the way down to her toes. "He was going to stick a big needle through my tummy and into my liver?"
"Nobody is going to do anything to you, child. I promise you." Gran resumed her gentle stroking. "Would you like an old woman's diagnosis of what's wrong with you?"
"Yes." Her voice sounded tiny to her own ears.
"You have hepatitis. A strain they haven't identified yet.
I've seen it in children before. And I've talked to some other doctors since all this started. There are several new strains around, some they're just beginning to recognize. These don't show up on the regular tests. But there is no cure for hepatitis except rest. So having them jab you with another needle would do nothing except satisfy the doctor's curiosity. That way, if he can't heal you, at least he can feel professional by putting a name to your illness."
"Momma was going to let him do it?"
"Your mother has been pulled in so many different directions recently, she's lucky she can remember her own name. As soon as I started arguing with the doctor, though, she saw the light of day. Carol was the one who told the doctor we'd had enough. Not me."
Marissa lay there a long moment, coming to grips with a nightmare that had almost happened. She glanced around the room, and saw that Gran had made up a rollaway bed in the corner. The sight was very comforting. "How did you know about, what was that name?"
"Hepatitis." For some reason, the question brought a smile to Gran's features. "Oh, child, that is a long, long story."
"Tell me."
"I wouldn't even know where to begin. Telling you that story would be like pulling at a thread. Once I start, the whole thing would just unravel in my hands."
"But I want to hear."
The gentle fingers stroking her temples communicated a quiet message of their own. One that spoke to her body and not her mind, whispering a message of comfort, inviting the sleep to come back up and recapture her. Gran said softly, "I'll think about it."
Marissa gave a mighty yawn. "Why am I so sleepy all the time, Gran?"
"That's what an illness of the liver does to your body. It makes things slow down, so that it can repair itself. You need to rest just as much as you can."
Marissa started to say that she would sleep some more, and that she was glad Gran was there with her in the night, and a lot of other things, but the words were swept up and away, like leaves swirled away by a strong winter breeze. The last thing Marissa knew was the touch of Gran's gentle fingers on her forehead.