The 13th Day of Christmas Read online

Charlee’s dad sat on the opposite end of the table from Miss Marva with Zach on one side and Emily on the other. Charlee sat by her mother and, across from her, Melvin the monkey sat on two stacked throw pillows from the couch.

  Charlee thought the table looked like a scene from a television commercial. A giant turkey sat on the table in front of her father. Stuffing surrounded it on the china platter like clouds. Her mother had made Waldorf salad, which Charlee didn’t like but would eat anyway because she could pick out the apples. There were hot rolls made from scratch and real butter—not the waxy spread that tasted like the plastic tub it came in.

  Her mouth watered at the heaping mountain of mashed potatoes. Steam rose from them, and Charlee admired the melting hunk of butter she’d placed so perfectly at the tip-top.

  The table also held yams with marshmallows, corn on the cob, green beans, two kinds of squash, and another vegetable she’d never seen before. Right in front of Melvin sat a plate of deviled eggs; Charlee would eat one of those first, by tradition. Tradition also demanded that Charlee not leave the table until she’d placed a black olive on each of her fingertips. Zach used to do it, too, but she thought he was probably too old for that.

  “Let us pray,” Miss Marva said, and even Melvin bowed his head with an assist.

  “Dear Father, we gather on this Thanksgiving Day so grateful for so many blessings. But mostly, Father, we are grateful for the gift of friendship. We thank thee for bringing Charlee and her family into my home this day. May they be blessed with all that they need, Father. We ask also that Thou would bless our troops, wherever they might be, and bless the leaders of our country, that they would turn to Thee, and also please bless all the pastors and preachers of the world, whatever church they might belong to. Finally, dear Father, we are thankful for this food and ask that Thou would bless it. May we be strong, happy, and healthy. In Jesus’ name, amen.”

  They each added an “Amen!”—Charlee’s was the loudest—and they began to fill their plates. Charlee’s parents took turns saying things like, “This is so much food. You’re so kind to do this. Are you sure we can’t contribute toward the cost? This turkey must have been expensive. It all smells so delicious, Marva, thank you.”

  They only stopped when Marva playfully threatened to not share any pie if they didn’t simply enjoy the meal and their time together.

  While Charlee ate slowly and enjoyed every bite like it was her last, Zach sat across the table and took bites so big Charlee told him he could have swallowed the turkey whole. When Emily asked him to slow down, Zach stuffed half a roll in his mouth and apologized at the same time.

  “You’re so gross,” Charlee said.

  “It’s all right,” Miss Marva said. “He’s just hungry, right, Zach?” While he nodded a yes, Miss Marva took the biggest bite of stuffing Charlee had ever seen. It was so big, a chunk fell off her heaping fork when she put it in her mouth.

  When everyone but Zach began filling their plates for seconds—Zach was going for thirds—Miss Marva slapped the table next to her plate. “My! Oh my, I nearly forgot the gumdrops with all the excitement.”

  “Gumdrops?” Charlee’s voice rose.

  “Yes, I put a bowl out every year. They were my son’s favorite. J.R. always had to have a bowl on the table when he was young, and it became a tradition in our family. It was our little reminder that Christmas was right around the corner, and that while we loved Thanksgiving, the most important holiday would arrive before we knew it.”

  “That’s sweet,” Emily said.

  “I’ll get them for you,” Charlee offered, jumping up from her chair.

  “Wonderful, dear. I’ve already got them in a glass candy dish on the kitchen counter, right next to the microwave. Thank you.”

  Charlee dashed from the room and heard the adults behind her laugh as she skipped down the hallway. She pushed open the swinging kitchen door, and her eyes found the dish on the counter. Charlee picked it up and spun back around on her feet, but when she stopped spinning, the room didn’t.

  She tumbled forward and heard the sound of her head hitting the square kitchen table.

  The bowl fell from her hands, and the thin glass shattered on the floor into more pieces than there were gumdrops.

  Removed from the pain, Charlee thought she heard her body hit the floor in stages: first her hips, then her legs, chest, arms, and head. It sounded like an old woman’s slow clap.

  Four sets of heavy feet clopped down the hallway, but Charlee did not hear those sounds.

  She did not hear the sound of hinges squeaking on the kitchen door.

  She did not hear the door slam with violence against the inside wall.

  She did not hear the scream of her mother.

  11

  Black Friday

  Marva stood up for the fourth time to stretch her legs.

  The stiff, cool, green plastic seat didn’t invite anyone to sit for long. Instead, it seemed to suggest that weary emergency room visitors would be better off if they went home and sat in their own soft, warm, living room chairs to await the news.

  Marva stood again at the bank of vending machines and examined the selection of stale Honey Buns and generic corn chips as if they’d somehow changed in the last hour, or the hour before, or the one before that.

  She stretched her back and felt the pain of eight decades collecting and collapsing on her spine. She’d been remarkably healthy her entire life, having spent much more time in hospitals in behalf of John’s health and other loved ones than for her own issues. But spending Thanksgiving Day on her feet and moving around the kitchen with the energy of a celebrity chef had taken its toll.

  Tired as she was, Marva’s emotions were even more battered. She examined her face in the reflection of the vending machine and put her hands on her cheeks. Her eyes were heavy and sore. She’d cried in the car all the way to Woodbrook Mercy Hospital, following the ambulance close enough that she could see paramedics buzzing above Charlee through the small rear window.

  Reflected behind her, she could see Charlee’s family spread out across a row of seats across the waiting room. Charlee’s mother had ridden in the front of the ambulance, and Thomas had sprinted to the house to get Emily’s purse and the family minivan.

  All the frantic motion had left Zach at Marva’s, and he stood on the porch watching the ambulance lights bounce off the trailers of 27 Homes as it navigated down the fishhook and onto the main highway.

  “What are we waiting for?” Marva had said, bursting from the house with her coat and car keys. “Let’s go.” While she drove and began to cry, Zach popped his knuckles in the passenger’s seat.

  “Is she going to be okay?” Zach had asked.

  “I don’t know, Zach. I don’t know.”

  “Did she trip?”

  “I didn’t see. I wish I had.”

  “Was she sleeping on the floor? It looked like she was sleeping.”

  “I don’t know, son, I just don’t know.”

  Marva turned away from the snack machine and watched the family of three sitting like lonely islands in the green sea of seats. Zach clutched his knees, his sneakers pulled up onto the chair. Thomas sat with his legs extended and his head back, his eyes pointed to the ceiling or heaven, Marva couldn’t tell which. Emily sat with her legs crossed over one another and her arms folded tightly across her chest in a hug that she must have wished came from someone else.

  Since arriving at the ER, they’d watched the room fill and empty around them. They’d seen a broken arm from a backyard Turkey Bowl football game, minor burns from a deep fryer, two people with flu-like symptoms, and a baby whose cries could still be heard from behind the double doors that separated the ill from the healthy like an iron curtain.

  Charlee’s mother and father had taken turns at her unconscious side back in the belly of the hospital, but eventually had both been asked
to sit outside while the doctors awaited the results from the latest test—an MRI. They’d taken Charlee’s blood, hooked her up to heart and breathing monitors, and promised an update before midnight.

  Marva made a loop around the waiting room and smiled again at the nurse at the triage desk. She paused to put her hand on Emily’s shoulder for a moment before slowly looping once more. When she returned again to Emily’s seat, she took the one next to her and looked at the clock on the wall near the mounted television. She compared the time to her watch and realized that, without fanfare, the day had turned from Thanksgiving to Black Friday.

  At 12:30 a.m., two doctors appeared through the emergency room doors and surveyed the scene. Only Marva and the Alexander family remained. One of the doctors was familiar from earlier in the night, but the other was a stranger, and he introduced himself as a neurologist.

  “Would you like to find someplace more private?” he asked.

  “No,” Emily said, standing and speaking for the family. “How is she?”

  Both Thomas and Zach stood, too.

  The neurologist motioned for them to retake their seats, and he crouched down in front of them. The other doctor stood behind him, clutching a clipboard. Marva thought he wore the kind of stoic look of a man working much too hard to hide bad news. Still standing nearby, she decided to ease out of the private conversation but remained close enough to capture the essentials.

  “We’ve reviewed the MRI and CT scan,” the neurologist said, looking at Emily. “It’s serious.”

  “From hitting her head?”

  “No.” His eyes moved to Thomas. “Mr. and Mrs. Alexander. It’s a tumor.”

  Emily gasped, and the doctor placed his hand on her knee.

  “What?” Thomas asked.

  “Your daughter has a brain tumor.”

  Thomas stood, and the neurologist followed to his feet.

  Marva took Thomas’s seat at Emily’s side and put her arm around her shoulders.

  “A brain tumor?” Thomas repeated, and Marva found the words even more sharp the second time she heard them.

  “We’ve got another neurologist on the way here, a colleague, but yes, it’s quite clear on the scans.” He paused and took a long breath. “We’re not wasting a minute, Mr. and Mrs. Alexander.”

  Emily dropped her head in her hands.

  “So what? You operate? You can take it out, right? You’ll just take it out?” Thomas demanded.

  “Yes, the first step will be surgery, and a neurosurgeon has been called. The surgery will almost certainly happen today. But if it’s what we think, it will take more.”

  “More surgery?”

  “More treatment. I don’t want to get in front of the other doctors here—we have a lot of information to gather—but I think we’re going to have to be aggressive in this case.”

  “Aggressive?” Thomas said sharply, and Emily finally sat up and steadied herself on her armrests.

  “It looks like a PNET—a primitive neuroectodermal tumor. It’s near the back of her brain. We call it a medulloblastoma. I know that doesn’t mean anything to you yet. It shouldn’t. But you should know that this could be a fast­growing, possibly malignant, tumor.”

  “Cancer,” Emily whispered.

  “We’ll know more after the surgery, of course. But we suspect it will take radiation and chemotherapy to control it.”

  Thomas looked away from the neurologist and to the other doctor. “This is a mistake—a mistake. She was fine today. She cooked dinner. She and Marva—they worked all the day on it. Didn’t they, Emily? Didn’t you, Marva? You worked all day on Thanksgiving. Charlee helped and laughed. Then she went for gumdrops.” He looked at his wife. “She just went for gumdrops, Emily. Gumdrops.”

  Marva watched the doctors exchange a glance before the neurologist said, “We’ll know more soon. I’m sure it feels like this news is coming from nowhere, but the truth is, this illness has probably been coming for a while. Who knows how long the tumor has been there, but we’re lucky to have caught it now, while we have options and a chance to form a plan.”

  “Options,” Emily said, staring at the doctors.

  “I understand—we understand—this is a shock. But we’re going to be aggressive in our treatment and do all we can as quickly as we can. We know a lot about these tumors, and Charlee is not alone. This is the most common of childhood brain tumors.”

  Emily stood and crossed her arms again. “She’s not going to die, right?”

  “Of course not,” Thomas answered. “No.”

  The first doctor spoke up. “Children beat this all the time.”

  “All the time?” Emily asked.

  The neurologist hesitated before putting a hand on her arm. “We’re going to do everything we can with the best people around us. Charlee is still asleep, but we’ll come get you when she wakes, and, hopefully, by then we’ll know more. We’ll have the entire team here, and we can get started immediately.”

  At 11:35 a.m., Charlee was rolled into surgery while Marva, Zach, Emily, and Thomas sat in a more comfortable and private waiting room.

  Marva returned to 27 Homes with a key to the Alexanders’ trailer and a list. Thomas asked if she’d mind collecting a change of clothes for each of them, Zach’s iPod and backpack, a file folder with the family’s expired health insurance information, Thomas’s cell phone charger, and Melvin the monkey.

  She also spent an hour in her own home changing her clothes and cleaning up the crusty, sour remnants of Thanksgiving. The dinner table looked like a wonderful dream that had ended too early with the jolt of an unfriendly alarm clock. Charlee’s fork still sat on her plate, jousting a piece of white turkey she’d dipped in the potato and gravy swimming pool.

  She rinsed but did not wash the dishes. She had swept up the strange mix of shattered glass and gumdrops before she realized she had not bothered to put on an apron. She promised herself she would share that odd fact with Charlee when she saw her again and prayed that Charlee would playfully scold her.

  On the way back to the hospital, she stopped and bought $30 worth of sandwiches in the hope she’d bring something the family would enjoy. She was grateful that Zach and Thomas both found something they liked and was very satisfied that they’d finally eaten something. After some coaxing from Marva, and despite assurances of not being hungry, Emily finally chose and dressed a club sandwich. But then she averted her eyes from it, like it was a stranger she did not want to talk to.

  Marva gave in and let Emily be; she was out of energy for anything else. She could not remember when her bones had been more tired. All that was left in her was to sit and watch each of the Alexanders process the shock of the day.

  Emily’s attention went from a window overlooking the parking garage to a muted television running a syndicated talk show Marva did not recognize.

  Thomas texted someone on his cell phone, and it dinged almost constantly with replies.

  Zach sat in the only chair in the room that reclined, listening to music. Marva would have thought he was asleep, except that his hands occasionally rose above his chest and he looked to be playing the air drums.

  Marva gathered all the images together and wished she knew precisely what they thought and how she could help. She considered whether she belonged there at all, if she was intruding, whether they knew she was even there anymore and if she should wait at home.

  Marva also considered whether Charlee would ever hang laundry with her again. Would she wear one of Marva’s aprons? Pick dandelions? Spin on the stump?

  She had a hundred questions and only exhausted guesses for answers. When all the questions came and went, when the answers tumbled into one sad unknown, Marva was left with only one: Would Charlee live to see Christmas?

  12

  Balloons

  Charlee looked at the bouquet of yellow balloons in her room and
didn’t have to see the card to know they were from her best friend. Miss Marva had sent other balloons too, and flowers, and candy which she could only eat a tiny piece at a time.

  The room reminded her of family birthdays, and she stared at the balloons and remembered the days when birthdays were a grand production. Once upon a time, they’d been better than her favorite movies, the kind they stood in line for. They were way better than that unbearably long musical they saw in Washington, DC, during their old life in their old town on Eyring Avenue.

  Birthdays for the Alexanders weren’t just a party after dinner, or a trip to Gabby’s—their favorite pizza place. Charlee’s mother and father said they hadn’t had many nice birthdays when they were kids, so they’d promised that Charlee and Zach would have what they didn’t.

  Birthdays began in the morning with balloons, one for every year of the person’s life, and whatever breakfast treat had been requested. One year, Zach had tacos for breakfast. Charlee once had gummy bear pancakes. Even their parents had special birthdays, and they always seemed to pick something for breakfast they knew the rest of the family would like, too.

  The whole family also played a game that Charlee’s mother said started when Zach was a baby. Only the first person to see the birthday boy or girl that morning was allowed to sing “Happy Birthday.” Everyone else had to wait until the cake was served later that day. The best strategy was to be there when the birthday person walked sleepy-eyed out of his or her bedroom, or to wait just around the corner, or to stand just outside the bathroom door when they finally came out of a long shower. Zach said he was growing tired of it, but Charlee knew he still secretly liked all the fuss.

  Birthday dinners were also up to the person celebrating. Sometimes they chose to go out, sometimes they ate at home, but no matter what, everyone was together and the balloons always made the trip. After dinner, but before the cake, everyone gathered in a circle and said something they had learned that year from the birthday boy, girl, mom, or dad. Usually the activity turned into a tickle fight or giggle contest, and everyone laughed until their stomachs hurt. Then they ate cake and ice cream until their stomachs hurt even worse.