Tidings of Comfort and Joy Read online

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.

  THREE

  Marissa dreamed she heard the telephone ringing. She awoke to hear Gran talking to someone who was not there. Something in the tone told her it was her mother, even before the words became clear. Instantly the heartache was back, and with it the anger.

  "Hang on, I'll see if she's awake." Gran tapped on the door, pushed it open. She held the portable phone to her ear. She gave Marissa a smile, and said, "It's your mother."

  Marissa gave her head a fierce little shake. "I don't want to talk with her."

  Marissa half-expected Gran to tell her mother to hold on, then come in and argue with her, ordering her to say something. Which she would, of course, sulking over the phone, trying to make everybody over there feel as bad as she did being trapped here.

  But Gran did nothing of the sort. Her stare did not change, but the smile disappeared. In the matter-of-fact tone they had all come to know well over the past year, she said to the phone, "She's not quite over the trauma yet, honey. But I noticed some cracks in the wall last night. Yes, she woke and we had a nice chat. No, I wouldn't force things just now. Yes, of course I'll tell her. Okay. Give my love to the boys. 'Bye."

  The phone peeped when Carol cut the connection. Gran said quietly, "Your mother says to tell you that she loves you very much, and she misses you terribly."

  "They're there, aren't they?" Marissa said glumly.

  "Checked into the hotel, had a shower and a nap, and were getting ready to go exploring." Gran held to her matter- of-fact tone. "Do you think you could come downstairs for breakfast? You need to move around some. It will help shorten the recovery time."

  "I guess so."

  "Do you need me to help?"

  "No, I want to do it myself." Determinedly she pushed herself upright, and swung her legs to the floor. She was very glad that Gran remained standing in the doorway, watching carefully, ready to rush over if she needed help. Her legs were wobbly, but they kept her upright.

  Gran stood there until she was certain Marissa could move about on her own. "I laid out a fresh nightie for you in the bathroom. Call me when you get to the top landing. I don't want you to try the stairs on your own just yet."

  The lack of criticism and argument left Marissa feeling very unsettled. She found she could not remain angry if there was nothing to react against. And without anger, the pain of her situation seemed even worse, as though by being angry she had escaped from some of the sadness. And the guilt.

  Marissa kept one hand on the wall as she entered the bathroom. It helped to steady herself, which was good, because the weakness was accompanied by a strange dizziness, as though the world was only partly in focus. When she turned on the bathroom light, she groaned aloud at the sight of her face in the mirror. How could she look so tired when all she did was sleep? She had deep circles under her eyes, her hair was matted and tangled, and her cheeks looked sunken.

  The process of washing and changing and being helped down the stairs and into the kitchen left Marissa feeling both better and extremely tired. When she was settled at the kitchen table, with Gran's quilted robe wrapped tightly around her, she admitted to herself for the very first time that she could not have made the trip to Hawaii. For some reason, the admission made her pain even worse.

  "It was my idea," she gloomily told her grandmother. "To go to Hawaii, I mean. I was the one who thought up the trip."

  Gran stopped her moving about the kitchen, and turned to look across the counter. "I know it was, child."

  "I saw the ad when Daddy was going through all that awful stuff at the company. He was coming home so late. And he was getting up early. I remember waking
up a lot of times while it was still dark and hearing his car pull out of the driveway."

  Gran filled a pot with water and set it on the stove to boil. "He was exhausted. For a while he thought the company was going under, and they would all lose their jobs. I was afraid he was working himself into an early grave."

  "He looked so tired all the time," Marissa agreed. "But things got better, didn't they?"

  "They did indeed. Finally."

  "I remember the day he told Momma at the dinner table that he thought they would make it after all. That's when I found the ad. It was in the Sunday paper. A trip to Hawaii for Christmas. A special low-price offer, but we had to book right then, 'cause there were only a few seats. The whole family could go, and it was a hotel and the flights and meals and a car and everything."

  "Your mother said it was a miracle, your finding that ad," Gran said. "They couldn't believe how inexpensive it was. Planning that holiday gave everyone a lifeline, something they could look forward to."

  "When Momma and Daddy talked about it that night, it was the first time Daddy had smiled in a long long time," Marissa said, remembering. "I felt so proud."

  "It was a wonderful thing you did," Gran agreed. "Would you like some oatmeal and maybe some hot chocolate afterward?"

  "Okay." But the burning lump of disappointment was so great, she was not sure she could fit food around it.

  "I'll have it ready in a jiffy." Gran started moving around the room in her brisk way. "Would you like brown sugar, cinnamon, and raisins?"

  Marissa nodded. "Hawaii. I've been dreaming about going there ever since I was little."

  "I know you have." Gran measured out a cup of oatmeal, poured it into the boiling water, and stirred briskly. "I remember when you were young, you loved to make yourself necklaces of flowers using daisies and daffodils. Then you would sing to yourself and do those swaying little dances all around the house. Mmmm, doesn't that cinnamon smell good?"

  "I collected pictures of the islands, and learned all the names, and had a book of the flowers." Talking about it only made the disappointment worse. But she couldn't stop. The pain was a balloon in her chest, forcing out the words with its burning pressure. "I used to dream about going out in one of those canoes with the big side float; they're called outriggers. And seeing the coral with all the fish. I wanted to go in one of the glass-bottom boats and study them, and maybe take diving lessons."

  Gran brought over two steaming bowls and set one in front of Marissa. "While you were still very little, I remember taking you to your swimming lessons one day. You told me you had to learn to swim very well."

  "And dive," Marissa said, blowing on her spoonful.

  "That's right, and dive. Because you were going to go to Hawaii. You were going to learn to scuba. I remember how amazed I was that you even knew the word. You were going to take Buddy out to the coral reefs and show him all the pretty fish."

  Buddy. Marissa kept spooning the oatmeal into her mouth. Her body had to be fed. But hearing her brother's name brought out such regret that she totally lost her appetite. She had been close to Buddy since she was a baby. The family told stories of how her first smile had been for the middle brother, her first word his name. Buddy was the one always there for her. Marissa found herself recalling what she had said to him the previous day. Her remorse made the oatmeal taste like mud.

  Now he was in Hawaii without her. She could not stop thinking about everything she had wanted to do. And how excited she had been when her mom and dad decided to go ahead and book the trip. "We got the last five seats," Marissa whispered, her thoughts about Buddy all muddled with her pain over not being there with them. "That's what the travel agent told Daddy."

  Gran set down her spoon, leaned over, and murmured, "Child, do you realize you're crying?"

  Marissa set down her spoon. "It's just so unfair. So bad."

  "This must be so hard for you." She rose from her chair, helped Marissa get up, and led her into the living room. "Look, I've made up the sofa into a little bed. That way you can spend your days down here with me, and I'll decorate the tree right over there, and we'll have a big fire. Won't that be nice?"

  As soon as she saw the bed, Marissa felt the rising weakness, as though it had been there the whole time, just waiting for her. The tears stopped. She no longer had the strength to cry, or even to feel enough to want to cry. What difference did it make anyway, they were there and she was here, no matter how many tears she shed. "It's all wrong, Gran. It's not supposed to be like this."

  "I know, dear. I know."

  Marissa allowed her grandmother to take off the robe, guide her down into the bed, and tuck the sheet and blanket up around her. "This can't be a very nice Christmas for you either."

  "There's no place I would rather be," Gran replied quietly. "And that's the truth."

  Another wave of fatigue hit her. She did not want to give into it, though, not yet. "Didn't Momma say something about a reunion? Or did I dream that?"

  "Oh." Gran waved it away as unimportant. "Your Uncle Hank and Aunt Annique had invited me over for Christmas. They were planning a reunion so that I could see the new babies."

  Hank was not his real name. Nor was he Marissa's real uncle. In fact, if she understood things correctly, all those families were no relation to her at all. Uncle Hank had a truly impossible last name, something with two y's and a k, she remembered that much. He and Aunt Annique had come to visit them once years ago. They had stayed with Gran and Granpa, and seemed to be all smiles the whole time they were around. They both spoke with accents, but not the same as how Granpa used to sound. Harsher. Hank and Annique shared something special with her grandparents, but Marissa wasn't exactly sure what. Something about them both being adopted because of her. Marissa had found that very strange, because they lived outside Indianapolis, and when Marissa had asked her grandparents when they had lived in Indiana, they had all laughed loud and long.

  "They didn't want me to be alone this first Christmas without Colin, that's all," her grandmother was saying. "When they heard you were all going to Hawaii, they invited me to come and visit. The reunion can wait. They're not going anywhere, and the babies will only get bigger so there's more to hold."

  There were hundreds of them out there in Indiana, Marissa knew that much, and more of them all the time. Most of them were total strangers, people she had never even met. But they all held some special secret bond with her grandparents. They wrote Gran all the time, big long letters full of pictures that Gran framed and hung on the hallway going back to the kitchen. The walls were floor-to-ceiling pictures of families and children and teenagers. Marissa did not know even half their names.

  Sleep crept up her frame, inch by inch, a numbing tingle that could not be denied, no matter how hard she fought. "You stayed here because of me?"

  Gran gave her a smile, and a hint of the old tenderness returned to her features. Marissa looked up, and saw the way Gran had been before Granpa died, and wondered sleepily why Gran had buried that expression with her grandfather.

  "No," Gran said quietly. "I stayed because of us."

  FOUR

  This sleep was not like normal slumber. When Marissa awoke, she felt as though it was still with her, a shadow just at the edge of the room, always ready to come back and sweep her away unless she was very careful and very alert.

  Something else was different about this fatigue. She would sleep, and when she awoke, it felt as if no time at all had passed. She found it hard to believe the clock's message that four or five or eight or fourteen hours were gone from her life. She felt as though she had just closed her eyes, and then opened them again.

  Thoughts that she had started the last time she was awake, or even the time before that, still seemed new. As though her mind had come to a complete halt when she closed her eyes. Marissa found it very frightening, how all her inside world seemed to just stop whenever she gave in to this tiredness. Each sleep had the taste of a small death, and for the first time she was f
orced to realize that she was human, that she would someday pass away.

  Marissa tried to move her mind off those worries. She lay on the little sofa bed and watched as Gran hung glittering balls and tiny angels on the Christmas tree. Gran was working as quietly as she could, but every once in a while she would hum a single note, as though she was listening to music in her mind, and occasionally a bit of it would break out.

  Marissa said, "I forgot about how you and Granpa celebrated your wedding anniversary at Christmas."

  "Not exactly our anniversary, but we did like to have a private little party around Christmastime." She smiled over at Marissa. "I didn't know you were awake. Did you have a nice nap?"

  She nodded. "It wasn't your anniversary?"

  "No, dear. Colin and I were married in June. The twenty-first of June, the first day of summer." She hung up another shimmering bauble. "Why were you wondering about that, dear?"

  "You know, what we talked about this morning. Why you don't hate Christmas."

  "Oh. I see." Gran sat down on the floor beside the tree and gave it some thought. "I suppose what Colin and I shared does have a little to do with how I feel about the season. A little. But not a lot."

  "I guess I don't understand," Marissa said, the words carried upon a very soft sigh.

  Gran remained where she was, her gray eyes regarding Marissa, probing. "I wonder," she finally said, "whether you are old enough to hear about this."

  Despite herself, Marissa's interest was instantly piqued. "About what?"

  "What we've been dancing around ever since you arrived." Gran pressed both hands on the floor and pushed herself upright. "Let me go see if I can find them."

  "Find what, Gran?"

  "Wait there, I'll be right back."

  But she was not so swift in returning. There was a lot of bumping around overhead, and footsteps going from room to room, before Marissa heard her grandmother exclaim, "There they are! I knew I hadn't thrown them out."

  When she reappeared, Gran held yellowed squares of paper clasped up close to her chest. She seated herself on the edge of the sofa, and inspected Marissa with the oddest expression Marissa had ever seen. She was very grave, but there was a mischievous light to her eyes. "If I am going to tell you this story, I am going to have to do it as one adult to another."