Five Kids, One Christmas (The Brannigan Sisters)

by Ramin, Terese

  "Simply put, Captain Crockett, given your medical history and the otherwise healthy shape of your eyes, I think the attending physician made a mistake telling you he doubted surgery would do any good. From what I see, you’d make an excellent candidate for a corneal transplant."

  Nat’s fists clenched, unclenched. His throat was closed, his chest so tight it hurt. He hadn’t been Captain Crockett in over five years. He felt like he’d had the wind knocked out of him and was clawing for air.

  Sight.

  After nearly six years of telling him vision was but a memory, they were now telling him that maybe within the next few weeks—even by Christmas—he could have the sight back in one eye. That, if all went well, they could give it back to him in the other in maybe a year. That it wouldn’t be a perfect twenty–twenty, but that twenty–forty or twenty–fifty was well within reach, and that in time the twenty–forty or twenty–fifty might possibly be bumped up with hard contacts—if he wished.

  If he wished!

  He could see the kids. He could have his cameras back.

  He could stargaze and play Horse with the lights on and find out firsthand the color of that damned lace teddy he’d peeled Helen out of this morning.

  He could see Helen.

  But getting there meant restrictions. No picking up Jane, no wrestling with Max and Libby, no tickling Cara, no roughhousing with Zach. No straining activities or violent movement of any kind for several weeks. No getting bumped or poked in the eye, which meant taking precautions not to be in various situations, for example, around small children, where accidents of the striking and bumping variety could so easily happen. Possibly having to return the aging Toby to Leader Dogs so somebody else could use him.

  No making love with Helen.

  And even if he followed all the rules, the possibility of graft rejection, however slight, remained.

  With two minutes to cover the pros and cons, he could hardly think, so much was at stake. The kids had already been through enough, and they were just beginning to get used to having the blind guy and his dog around the house. Also, while it was frequently inconvenient, Nat had learned to be fairly comfortable without his sight. How fair would it be to dump hope on all of them, go through the regimen of further restrictions and inconveniences, the new list of things they’d have to be really, really careful not to do around him, only to have a part of his body over which he had no physical or mental control simply get up one day and say, "Phht, forget it, we don’t want somebody else’s cornea, get rid of it."

  On the other hand, taking the risk also meant grabbing hold of the possibility of success, the prospect of not having to be dependent on other people to… To drive the kids to school when Helen was out of town, to take the photographs he needed to supplement his stories. Hell, even to match his clothes or to fold and code the bills in his wallet for him.

  Of refuting once and for all Emma’s main objections over leaving the kids with him because, even if it was only in her eyes, he could no longer be considered the half a man her daughter had divorced.

  God. His jaw worked and his hands strained around the arms of the chair he occupied across the desk from the doctor who’d dropped the bomb. Why the hell was it that every time it rained, it also poured? Lose his sight, lose his wife, lose his kids. Get back his kids, take a new wife who was coming to mean something to him beyond his wildest dreams, maybe regain his sight.

  And in each case, all in less than two months. Incredible.

  Overwhelming.

  In the spouse’s chair beside him, Helen, of course, had no doubts at all.

  Her fingers slid into the crook of his hand, squeezed excitedly. "Nat, that’s wonderful! You could see! We could dust off your cameras, we could give you film for Christmas. You could teach practical photography as well as photographic and dark–room technique, but you’d still get your pension. I could eventually quit driving the car pool, stop worrying about whether or not a panic attack has me moving the furniture without telling you about it first, and you’d be able to sort the laundry and have no more excuses for not being able to do it. I love it! How soon? When?"

  She was infectious; he sucked in air, looking for valor, closed his fist hard around her fingers and found a lopsided grin to put on. Trust Helen to stamp on his reservations, find the high points and hit them dead on, bing, bang, bong—and all without thinking to consult him first.

  "When?" he asked, repeating Helen’s question. "I want to think about it, but if I decide to do it, how soon?"

  The doctor shrugged. "When you make the decision to proceed, we notify the eye bank. It usually takes one to six weeks to find suitable corneas."

  Whoa, his brain gasped, agog, while his stomach sank and did cartwheels and tangled in knots and filled up with moths. Put on the brakes; think about this a minute.

  "That fast?" he asked. His voice sounded shaky even to him.

  Helen’s hand tightened painfully around his. "That’s fantastic," she said. Then she did something intrinsically un–Helen: leaned over to grab him in front of a witness, kissed him so fiercely his senses reeled and he would have sold his soul for her. Her arms wound around his neck, hugging him for all she was worth; her voice in his ear was ferocious and loving. "Fantastic," she said. And a third time, softer, overflowing and tremulous with emotion, "Fandamntastic."

  Oh hell, as long as he didn’t have to guess how she felt about it….

  Slowly he reached up to hug the arm Helen had draped across his chest, fed the fingers of his other hand into her hair and pulled her over to brush a pretty damned wobbly kiss on her forehead. Turned back to the doctor.

  "Okay." He nodded and his gut churned with dread and hope. "Let’s give it a shot."

  ~SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT—FULL COLD MOON

  She wanted to tell the kids right away; he wanted to wait and get used to the whole idea himself first.

  They waited two days and told the kids after they’d lit the second blue candle in the Advent wreath on the china hutch in the dining room before dinner on the Second Sunday of Advent.

  "It’s about time," Libby said without missing a beat, clearly unimpressed. "Stupid doctors should have figured this out a long time ago."

  She was obviously Helen’s daughter. Even without sight, Nat could see their resemblance growing by the day.

  "They’re going to sew in new eyes so you can see?" Max was trying to understand.

  "Sort of." Nat nodded. "But not exactly. You watched that program about eyes with Libby, didn’t you?"

  A nod, quickly followed by an "uh–huh" Nat could hear.

  He swallowed emotion and a smile. Good kids. Resilient. Hell had caved in on them and they’d adjusted. Were adjusting. Nobody could ask to have better children dropped on him even if he’d been intimately involved in each birth and growing stage personally.

  Amanda and John had done a good job.

  "Well, just like you saw on TV, the doctors are going to lift off the bad part of my eye—" he pointed at the white coating hiding the blue iris of his eyes "—that looks kind of like boards over a window and graft on a new, clear one that’ll be like putting in a new pane of glass that I can see through."

  "Won’t it hurt?" Cara, as always, was kindhearted and empathetic. "I want you to see me again, Dad, but I don’t want it to hurt."

  "It won’t hurt. My eye will be asleep during the operation and I’ll have eye drops and stuff for after, and they say it shouldn’t bother me much at all."

  "And you’ll be able to see right away?"

  "Pretty much. Soon as they take off the dressings."

  "Nat." There was an insistent tug on his hand. Jane wanting to be picked up so she could take part in the discussion. He obliged.

  "What, shorty?"

  "Getting good eyes?"

  "I hope so."

  "What color?"

  He heard Helen cough, covering laughter. "Same color, sweetie, blue. You’ll just be able to see it better."

  She poked care
fully at his eyes; he flinched. "Don’t touch," she said. "Might hurt."

  "That’s right," Nat agreed, straight–faced. "We’ll have to be careful, won’t we?"

  "Yes." She squirmed to get down, patted his cheek when he planted her on the floor. "Me an’ Toby take care of you."

  "Well…" Nat cleared his throat and heard the three older children freeze. They knew.

  In the sudden, ensuing silence, Toby’s tail thumped loudly against a table leg. It hadn’t occurred to them before what Nat regaining his eyesight might mean to them all where the dog was concerned.

  "You’ll have to give Toby back, won’t you?" Zach, hurt and accusing. The dog was his lifeline some days, the thing that kept him rooted and made the ache he couldn’t get rid of tolerable. Allowed him to live and co–exist with the father he sometimes hated for deserting him merely because his mother had made some judge tell him to. The father he also loved and would have given anything to be able to do things with the way normal kids did.

  Whatever normal meant these days.

  "We might. He’s well trained and he’ll make good eyes for somebody else if I don’t need him. We won’t really have to think about it for a while because it’ll take some time to be sure that once I start to see I’ll go on seeing, but—"

  "But you’ll have to give Toby back," Zach said flatly. "You’ll have to take him away."

  And in the tone of his voice, Nat heard all the things his son didn’t say: You’ll take him away just like you went away, just like God took my mother and my other dad away, just like the Colonel goes away and doesn’t say anything and I can’t stop it. Can’t count on nothin’ with you, Dad. Can’t ever count on nothin’….

  He reached out, wanting to gather Zach in, but the boy wrenched himself well out of range before he could touch him.

  Nat released a quiet sigh, kept his voice steady. Trying to salve the wounds Zach wouldn’t allow him near. "We don’t know that for sure, Zach. The possibility exists that by the time we know for certain I’ve got my sight back, Leader Dogs won’t want Toby at all. He’s nearly eight, he’s getting old to change masters. Maybe we can make some arrangement, offer to raise and donate a couple of puppies to replace him—"

  Zach cut him off. Platitudes had long since stopped doing anything to lessen the heartache when not being able to count on anything was the only thing in eleven years he’d been able to count on. "I don’t want you to see if we have to get rid of Toby," he said, and ran from the room.

  Chapter Twelve

  ~THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT, SATURNALIA AND HANUKKAH BEGIN AT SUNDOWN~

  Morning.

  Grandma Josephine was standing on the front steps, about to ring the bell, when Helen stepped out to bring in the morning paper.

  One hand held the fuzzy collar of a moth–eaten mink coat up around her ears while the other kept a raccoon–trimmed hat of considerable age on her head. The hat’s long, draggling red feather drifted constantly into her face, tickling her nose, and her rheumy, ninety–eight–year–old eyes crossed trying to see it well enough to blow it out of her way. On the porch beside her sat a well–traveled, oversize carpetbag and a battered, leather–bound trunk covered with baggage stickers. From the pocket of her coat protruded what appeared to be the bottom end of a large and colorful parrot.

  "Oh, hello, dear," she said in a voice reminiscent of Miss Katharine Hepburn’s. It took her eyes a moment to uncross and refocus on a gaping Helen. "I’m so sorry I’m late, but we hit a little weather over the Rockies and Janna had to put down for a trice. We spent the night at the airport in Denver, and it was a bit of a mess getting out of there this morning. They really need to do something about that confusion, but, well, I’m here now and that’s not my concern, so let’s just forget about it and go in, dear, shall we? It’s a bit cold out here for these old bones after Phoenix, you know, even if you don’t have much snow yet, but a nice hot cup of cappuccino should fix that in a jiff."

  She grasped Helen’s arm and helped herself into the front hallway. "Well, don’t just stand there, dear, close your mouth and give your old granny a hug and a peck, then get the bags, won’t you? Oh, and my cane." She gestured at the heavy, cherry–wood stick with its grotesque carved face leaning against the porch railing. "Wouldn’t know what to do without the old gargoyle, there’s a love. I understand we have a lot of work to do and not much time to do it, so just point me to my room—I do hope you’ve fixed up one where there aren’t any stairs—and I’ll go unpack while you see to the cappuccino. We’ll have a nice visit, then we’ll get started."

  "Get started on what?" Helen felt completely discombobulated. "Grandma Josey, what are you doing here? I thought when you came for Christmas you were going to stay at Ma’s."

  "Now, now, dear, I couldn’t very well do that, could I? Not when they told me."

  Helen’s eyes narrowed. She had a feeling that very soon General Greene would have to send someone out from the AG’s office to investigate her and the murder she was inclined to commit. "Who told you what?"

  "Why, your sisters, dear. They all called me—a conference call, just like they have in those huge corporations, so we could all talk to each other at the same time, and they do, you know, dear. One would think they’d have outgrown the tendency to all talk at once as they matured, but you know, they haven’t, they babble just like geese, and they’re worse than you all were when you were young heathens dropped out of the sky on me so your parents could go off for those Bohemian weekends they wanted alone. She came back pregnant after every single one and you’d think she’d have learned after the first two or three of you came along, but no, she didn’t figure it out until there were seven of you, and by that time she was headed for menopause, so I think she finally convinced your father that if he wanted a boy they’d have to adopt one, but of course they didn’t, or you’d have a heathen brother, too, and then I’m pretty sure they were a little more careful about when they scheduled those trips after that.

  "And, of course—" She shrugged "—when they told me the situation here, and your husband needing surgery and you never knowing when you’re going to have to be out of town and all those little children, well, I couldn’t ignore it now, could I? It wouldn’t be Christian, it wouldn’t be right, and I mean, truly dear, I wanted to come. Your mother is so busy with her life, and all those other grandparents have theirs, and anyway, it wouldn’t be right to have them coming in here—you need a bit of a break between the generations. And I, well, you know, there’s a skipped generation between you and me that makes it all right, and I’ve reached a stage where, really, it wouldn’t hurt me to settle down a bit for a change, and it’s good for the heart, you know, dear, so stimulating to be around the young. I quite look forward to it."

  "To what, Grandma Josephine?" Helen asked, aghast, not even attempting to sort through the confusion of her grandmother’s saga—although she had the gut feeling she already knew. "To what?"

  "Why, I thought I told you, didn’t I, dear? I’ve come to live with you and be your nanny."

  And with a gentle pat on her granddaughter’s cheek, the aged Mary Poppins collected her gargoyle cane, swept passed Helen and tapped briskly down the hall toward the kitchen.

  * * *

  Nat was in the bathroom shaving when Cara stuck her head in the door to announce, "There’s some weird looking old lady making something weird smelling in our kitchen, Dad, and the Colonel’s hiding in the attic and says don’t tell anyone where she is, especially her sisters, because if they come up there and bother her any more than they’ve already done today she’s likely to kill ’em."

  "Oh?" Nat asked. "That’s an interesting statement. And does she know this weird lady is in our kitchen making weird stuff?"

  "I’m not sure, but I think she must because she told me to find Libby and tell her to weigh anchor until it was time to go to college unless she wanted all her cheeks pinched, and she wasn’t making a lot of sense, Dad."

  "No," her father concurred, "it doe
sn’t sound like it. Have you told Libby yet?"

  "No, the Colonel was acting so weird I came to you first… Huh." There was a thoughtful pause. "Weird Colonel, weird looking old lady. I wonder if they’re related."

  "Oh, undoubtedly," Nat said dryly. "If they weren’t, Helen probably wouldn’t be hiding. Well, you find Libby, I’ll go meet the lady in the kitchen, then deal with the Colonel. Did she happen to say where in the attic she planned to hide?"

  "Christmas ornaments, I think," Cara replied, and went with considerable interest to see how Libby would take the news Helen wanted her to have. She was back in a second. "Oh, by the way, Dad? Grammy Sanders called. She’s coming over this afternoon to help us decorate the house the way Mom always did. Okay?"

  And even if it wasn’t okay, Nat mused bitterly. But Cara was gone and he wouldn’t have told her no anyway.

  He wiped shaving cream off his face, ran his hand over it to make sure he’d gotten all the whiskers, then simply stood there for a long time trying to think. Had he been able to see his reflection in the mirror, he would have observed a man who looked like he was about to face the guillotine on a day they’d forgotten to sharpen the blade trying to come to terms with all the bad things he’d ever done in his life to deserve this. Emma was coming over to make sure Helen decorated the house exactly like Amanda used to, and Cara hadn’t even winced when she’d announced it.

  Nuts, he thought. What else can happen?

  But this was family, and he should have known better than to ask.

  * * *

  Contrary to Helen’s hysterical instructions, Libby beat Nat to the kitchen by two steps and a heartbeat.

  "Great–grama Josey!" she squealed, delighted, and launched herself enthusiastically into Helen’s mother’s mother’s arms.

  "Is this my young poppet Elizabeth Jane?" Grandma Josephine asked, staggering under the onslaught, but retaining her balance with remarkable agility. "Why, you look just like your mother and you’re as tall as me."

  So this was the infamous Grandma Josephine Helen had told him about. She didn’t sound threatening. In fact, Nat thought, she sounded sharp as the proverbial. Ninety–eight going on sixty–seven. Maybe.