“Do you want to read?” she asked.
“Sure.” I took the book. Even though we had done this every year of our marriage, I don’t think the words have ever quite looked the same. Facing one’s own mortality brings life to such script. As I read of the angels, I thought of Michael. It had never occurred to me that these beings had names. Or frequented Starbucks.
When we finished, I took Carson’s hand and the three of us ascended the stairway. Carson darted off toward the tree and homed in on the most visible of her presents with the intensity of a heat-seeking missile. “Look, Daddy! An American Girl doll!”
“You must have been a very good girl,” I said.
Carson hunted down her presents until they were gathered in one big pile; then she sat cross-legged on the floor and unwrapped them. There were still a few packages under the tree. I assumed that they were for Nancy.
“What about yours?” Allyson asked.
“You have a present for me?”
“Of course.”
She got up and walked over to a large, flat package and brought it back to me. I slowly tore back the paper. It was a framed family picture that we had taken last spring up in the canyons. I looked at it silently.
“It was actually a family present,” Allyson said. “I had it made before . . .” She didn’t finish.
“It’s perfect,” I said.
Nancy arrived at the house around noon. As usual she just walked in, and we all knew the moment she did. Nancy makes the noisiest entrances of anyone I know. “Merry Christmas, merry Christmas, all,” she shouted and jumped up and down, ringing the Christmas bell that hung around her neck.
At the sound of Nancy’s entrance, Carson bolted from the floor. “Nancy, Santa came.”
Nancy’s arms were full of packages, and Carson was hugging her waist as she came into the kitchen. I was sitting cross-legged on the family room floor dressing a doll I think was named Molly. “Merry Christmas, Nance,” I said.
“Nice doll,” she said. “Hey, I caught you on Good Morning America. Not bad for a radio salesman.”
“Thanks.”
“Where’s Al?”
“She’s in the shower.”
She set down her packages. “Do you mind bringing in some things from my car?”
“Not at all.”
I put on my shoes and went outside. The snow was still coming down, and I had patches of snow on my shoulders and head when I came back in. I carried a box of food into the kitchen. Every Christmas morning since Carson was born, Nancy came over and made breakfast for us. I set the box on the counter and Nancy walked over and began removing its contents.
“Here’s the menu. Blueberry pancakes. Thick maple-pepper bacon. Italian sausage from Cosimo’s. Eggs any way you want them. Cheesy hash browns and Stephen’s gourmet mint truffle cocoa.
“Way too much,” I said. “As usual. How can I help?”
“You can cook the sausage and bacon.”
“Got it.”
A few minutes later Allyson came out of her room showered and dressed. She looked pretty. She wore a Christmas sweater, and her hair was pulled back with an elastic. She put on some Christmas music, the Carpenters’ Christmas Collection; then she brought out her new Christmas stoneware, setting the red plates around the table.
Nancy picked up one of the dishes. “Are these new?”
“Brand-spankin’-new,” Allyson replied.
“Cool.”
Breakfast was a feast, and at least half the food was untouched. After breakfast Carson dragged Nancy downstairs to see her life book, leaving Allyson and me alone at the table. “What are your plans for today?” she asked.
“Just hanging out. How about you?”
“The same. Nancy wants to take Carson to her place for a while.”
“Is she trying to leave us alone?”
Allyson nodded. “She’s always scheming.”
“I’m okay with that,” I said. “If you are.”
“I’m okay.”
“How about we clean up this place?” I said. While we did the dishes, Nancy came back upstairs. “Hey, I was thinking I’d kind of like to take Carson back to my place.”
“It’s okay,” Allyson said. “He knows.”
I smiled at her. “Fine with me.”
“Then we’ll be on our way. Come on, Carse, let’s get your stuff.”
“I want to bring my life book. And Molly.”
“You bring whatever you like,” Nancy said.
“Bye, Mommy. Bye, Daddy.”
“You behave,” Allyson said.
“I don’t know why you always say that,” Nancy said.
“She was talking to you,” I said. I walked over and hugged Carson. “I love you, honey.”
It was all I could do to let her go.
Chapter 64
While Allyson finished wiping off the counters, I went to the living room and started a fire, which took little more than throwing a match on the gas log. The room was decorated for the season. Across the fireplace mantel was the porcelain nativity set Allyson and I had purchased our first year of marriage. Mother Mary and the baby Jesus were missing. I smiled at this. They always disappeared from the crèche a week or two before Christmas. Carson liked to play with them.
On top of the piano was something new, and I walked over and looked at it. Carson had glued macaroni to a glass candle jar; then someone, I assume her schoolteacher, had spray painted it gold. The candle was nestled in a pink swirl of angel hair.
Allyson came in and sat next to me on the couch in front of the fireplace. “How is it that you always know exactly what Carson wants?” I asked.
“I’m hardly psychic. She tells me every day for three months before Christmas.” Her countenance softened. She said sadly, “I was just thinking that Aunt Denise would be calling any minute now.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s ironic. The older I get the more I realize that all that matters is family. And it’s about the time that we start losing them.” She took my hand and gently stroked it. “I can’t bear the thought of losing anyone else in my life.”
My chest felt like concrete. The moment fell into silence. “I have something for you,” I said. I went to my coat and brought out the package from Tiffany’s. It was a beautifully wrapped box, bigger than the one I had given Camille, with matte gold paper and a red silk bow.
“I didn’t get you anything.”
“Yes, you did. You gave me the picture.”
“Well, that was really for all of us.”
She held the box aloft. “Did you wrap this yourself?”
“Does it look like I wrapped it?”
“No.”
“But I picked out the wrapping.”
She pulled one end of a ribbon and the bow disappeared. Then she unwrapped the thick paper to find a box inside, a robin’s-egg blue box from Tiffany.
“It’s from Tiffany’s, isn’t it?” she asked.
I nodded. “Open it.” Inside the blue box was a burgundy velvet box. She glanced up at me then back at her gift. She slowly pulled back its lid. Inside was a diamond and emerald necklace. She just stared at it.
“Do you like it?”
Her eyes began to moisten. “It’s beautiful. It’s so . . .” She looked into my eyes. “Big.” She lifted it from the box.
“Here, I’ll help you,” I said. I walked up behind her and draped it around her neck. It lay beautifully against her throat.
“I don’t want to know how much it cost,” she said.
“Good, because I wasn’t going to tell you. You’d never wear it if you knew.”
“I want to see this in the mirror.” She walked out to the hall tree, delicately touching the necklace as she admired it. “I can’t wait to show Nancy.”
“Far cry from your first diamond.”
She laughed. “You mean my cubic zirconium engagement ring?”
“Remember how afraid I was that your dad would find out that I couldn’
t afford a real diamond?”
She walked back and sat down next to me. “I told him, you know.”
“You told him?”
“He didn’t care. My dad only had fifteen dollars when he asked my mama to marry him. He knew you’d always take care of me.”
“What different worlds we came from. When I told my father that I was planning to ask you to marry me, he said, ‘In what world could you conceivably take care of another human?’ ”
“You never told me that.”
“I wasn’t real proud of it.”
“My father knew that you’d land on your feet someday. He trusted me to make a good decision.”
I frowned. “I guess I proved him wrong.”
She looked at me somberly. “No, you didn’t.”
I glanced at her hand and noticed that her ring was still there. “I thought of getting you a new diamond for your ring. A real rock.”
“I wouldn’t want it. I love the simplicity of this little ring. Sometimes less is more.”
“Sometimes.”
She went quiet and looked down as the question rose from the pit of her stomach, ascending as if she were unable to stop it. “Are you going to stay?”
I didn’t answer for a full minute. With all my being I wanted to say yes. But it would have been another lie. For once I wanted to do the right thing
I looked toward the fireplace. “When I was little, Chuck used to take my brothers fishing every summer. I was always too young. Stan used to torment me about it. He’d say, Someone’s gotta stay home with the womenfolk. Then one weekend, around the time I turned eight, my father told me that I could go fishing with them. But if I wanted to be with the men, I’d have to act like one. I’d have to get up on my own and be ready to go. My father would always leave at some ungodly hour, like four-thirty or five. I was so excited to be going that I couldn’t sleep. Of course, by the time I got up the next morning, they were already gone.
“I threw a tantrum any eight-year-old boy would be proud of. But my mother just said, ‘Robby, you’ve no one to blame but yourself, little man. You should have woken earlier.’ ”
I turned back to Allyson. Her beautiful eyes reflected the light from the fire. “I should have remembered those words.”
My heart filled with the pain of the moment, and the tears came no matter how much I fought them. I took her hand in mine and wiped my eyes with the back of my other hand. “I’m so sorry for all the time I’ve wasted complaining that I didn’t have the life I wanted when all I really needed was right here. I’m sorry that I left you. But most of all I’m just sorry that I didn’t wake earlier.”
Allyson also began to cry. “It’s not too late.”
“I wish it wasn’t. I’d give up everything to make it different. But sometimes it is too late.”
“Rob, whatever you’ve done, I’ll forgive you. I don’t care about the past. We’ll start again. We’ll just move on like nothing happened. We can even move into that new house.”
“I wish I could. But it’s out of my hands now.” It took tremendous strength to release her hand, but I knew that I needed to go while I still could. “I have a letter for you.” I reached into my pocket and brought out the sealed envelope.
She took it fearfully. “Should I read it now?”
“No. You’ll know when.”
I kissed her cheek; then I walked to the door. Loneliness gripped my heart. “I love you, Allyson. I always have. I always will. Give Carson my love. Someday she’ll understand. So will you.”
Without looking back, I walked out the door. The sky was still dumping snow, and there was a blanket of powder on my car. I started the car, then found a scraper and brushed off the snow. As I pulled out of the driveway, I saw Allyson looking out the window between the curtains. I saw her wipe her eyes. My heart was broken. For the first time since I’d met Michael, New Year’s was too far away. I wished that it could just all be over.
Chapter 65
Visibility was poor, though nearly as much from my own emotion as from the storm. The minimal traffic on the freeway—those of us foolish enough to be out in a blizzard—moved at a crawl and I passed a few cars that had slid off the road. It took me forty-five minutes to reach the hotel.
I left my keys with the valet and walked into the Monaco. Christmas music played inside the lobby, which was deserted except for the clerk at the registration desk and a group of skiers who looked like they had just returned from the slopes. They were still dressed in sweaters and snow pants and they sat in front of the lobby fireplace laughing and drinking.
I quickly passed through the lobby. I didn’t want to hear laughter. I took the elevator to my room on the seventh floor. Once inside, I unbuttoned my shirt and kicked off my shoes then lay back on top of the bed. I fell asleep almost immediately.
I don’t know how long I slept, but I woke disoriented. The room was dark. It was evening and the room’s lights were off. Still the curtains glowed from the blizzard outside. I could hear the wind beat against the glass panes, and I walked to the window and drew back the curtains and watched. I stayed at the window for ten, maybe fifteen minutes, just looking. I watched the bellboy shovel snow. I followed the path of a car as it precariously made its way up Main Street nearly as much sideways as forward. You’d have to be crazy or desperate to be out in this weather, I thought, as if forgetting I had recently been out there myself. I went back to my bed.
I was lonely for Allyson. I wished that I could just talk to her and tell her everything. She had always been my confidante. This was the greatest part of my pain, that I had no one to share it with. I even wished that Michael was around. I called out his name, but he didn’t come.
Weary of the quiet, I turned on the television and began surfing the channels. It’s a Wonderful Life was showing on PBS. It always played at Christmas. Allyson and I had watched the movie every holiday since our marriage. It was one of our most enduring traditions. Every year I’d say, That Donna Reed is easy on the eyes and Allyson would playfully hit me. That too was part of our tradition. I think by now she’d remind me to say it if I forgot. I set aside the remote and lay back in bed to watch.
Suddenly there was a knock on my door. Even before I was up, the door swung open to a bellman. He appeared startled to see me. “Excuse me, Mr. Hemingway. We didn’t know . . .”
It was a surreal moment. “What’s up?” I asked.
He stumbled over his words. “I’m sorry, there’s a woman here who says she’s your wife. She said it was an emergency.”
Just then Allyson appeared in the doorway.
“Ally?”
She ran past the bellman, throwing her arms around me. “Oh, Rob. I was afraid I was too late.”
I looked up at the bellman, who looked just as bewildered as before. “It’s okay,” I said.
“If you need anything . . .” Without finishing his sentence, he stepped back out into the hall, shutting the door behind him. Allyson just held to me, sobbing.
I ran my hand over the back of her head. “It’s okay, honey. What were you afraid of?”
“When I read the note, I was sure that you were going to do something awful.” She leaned back to look into my face. “Your letter read like a suicide note.”
I hadn’t considered that. Of course it did. But then I hadn’t expected her to read the note until after I was gone.
“I wasn’t going to do anything,” I said. I led her over to the bed and we sat together at the foot of it.
For a minute she just sat there wiping her eyes. Then she said, “Rob, I know why you wrote the note.”
I brushed her hair back from her face. “No, you don’t, honey.”
She looked into my eyes. “You think you’re dying . . .”
I froze. “How did you know that?”
“. . . but you’re not.”
I looked at her in bewilderment. “Ally, what’s going on?”
“Can you log on to the Internet from here?”
“Yes.�
�� I went over and switched on my computer. For a moment the room’s only sound was that of the modem connecting. While we were waiting, I asked, “How did you find me? I checked in under an alias.”
“I called Camille. She told me some of your aliases.”
“I’ve never used Hemingway before.”
“I know. I asked for a dozen author ’s names. The woman at the counter was helpful. She said the only dead author staying here was Ernest Hemingway.”
I looked back at my computer. “Okay, we’re up.”
Allyson walked over to the desk. I stepped away from it and she typed on the keyboard. Suddenly a Web site pulled up. The name M. Stanford Hillenbrand came up first. There was a large graphic on the site that was taking time to load.
“This modem is slow,” I said.
“Do you know him?” Allyson asked. “Stanford Hillenbrand?”
“Isn’t he one of Camille’s authors? The one who lives in Park City?”
She nodded. “The mortician.”
Suddenly the graphic appeared. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. “You’ve got to be kidding . . .” I said. Stanford Hillenbrand was Michael.
Allyson was watching for my reaction. “You recognize him?”
“Indeed.”
I stepped up to the computer and scrolled down. There was a list of books, all of which seemed to deal with death: Deathbed Repentance: Twelve Stories of the Dead and Dying; Death, Taxes and Other Necessities ; Last Rites; The Shadow Beyond; Angel of Death. His most recent work was titled Conversations with the Reaper. There was a short biography beneath the book graphics.
M. Stanford Hillenbrand graduated from Marquette University with a dual major in philosophy and theology. He is currently employed as a mortician in Park City, Utah, where he lives with his wife and two children. In 1992 he was a finalist for the National Book Award for his first work, Death, Taxes and Other Necessities. He has been published in Harper’s, The New Yorker and the Atlanta Journal. He is the author of six books. He is currently working on his first novel.
A Perfect Day Page 21