by Zoe Kane
Maybe it was because it felt like an audition, in some strange way, like he had one chance to prove to her – and to those three small children he had still only met in passing, and who had no idea they’d be stuck with him for the rest of their lives – that this was something he could do.
Maybe it was because he was as bereft without Danny to give him advice in a crisis as Annie was without Grace – one of the countless areas in which they could have helped each other if they hadn’t both been quite so stubborn.
“Maybe it’s because you’re an idiot,” said Linnet helpfully as they wandered through F.A.O. Schwartz, and she removed yet another absurdly-overpriced designer toy from his hand.
“Thanks a lot.”
“This isn’t a platinum AmEx problem, Marcus, it’s a relationship problem,” she explained reasonably. “Kids can smell bullshit. They know when they’re being bought. If you show up with a truckload of expensive toys that your brother would never have been able to afford, you’re just going to mess with their heads. Put that down,” she said, yanking the American Girl doll out of his hand. “What do you know about them? What do you know about what they actually like?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, there’s your problem,” she said. “If you want to be the Christmas hero, here’s what you need to do. You need to get to know the kids. What they like, what makes them happy, what are their favorite TV shows and classes in school, what’s got the least chance of messing with their – seriously, Marcus, toy cars? The fuck is wrong with you?”
“Kids like toy cars.”
“Not the ones whose parents died in a fucking car accident.”
He put the toy cars down.
“You need help,” Linnet told him firmly.
“I can’t call Annie,” he said. “I told her I’d take care of this.”
“Well, duh,” said Linnet, to whom he’d told the entire story. “Of course you can’t call Annie. No, Annie’s gotta think you nailed this all on your own.” She reached into his back pocket to grab his phone (hand lingering just ever so slightly longer than necessary, causing him to blush) and began scanning through it.
“Should I ask how you know my passcode, or –“
“I wouldn’t,” she said absently as she skimmed through the contacts, then found what she was looking for with a loud “AHA!” of triumph.
“What?”
She held out the phone. He looked down at it.
“No,” he said. Absolutely not."
“You have to.”
“I can’t.”
“What are your other options?”
“Linnet –“
“This is important shit, Marcus,” she reminded him pointedly. “You’ve got one shot at this. You’ve got to get this right. You said it yourself – this is the one thing you can take off her plate. Do it right, and you’ll show her she can let her guard down around you. Do it wrong, and you’ll never regain the ground you’ll lose. Come on. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You’re not wrong.”
“Ha! Because . . . “
“Because Linnet Ortiz is never wrong,” he sighed wearily, and took the phone out of her hand. There was a bench nearby, around a corner by the elevators, and he followed her out of the chaos to sit down where it was a little quieter.
She picked up on the first ring.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Vera,” he said. “This is Marcus Rey.”
* * *
It probably shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that Marcus and Vera clicked immediately, but it was a surprise to Marcus.
He had met her only very briefly at the funeral, and she impressed him favorably, projecting an air of quiet warmth and competence. He thought he could see why it was that the rest of the family leaned on her. He'd heard all Danny's stories, of course, and had somehow formed an image of someone more grandmotherly than maternal. Somebody tall and angular with severe Victorian posture and impeccably coiffed gray hair. Not this soft, comfortable-looking woman with kind warm eyes who had been the first and only person at the entire funeral to tell him she was sorry for his loss.
Still, he had been reluctant to take Linnet's advice and ask the woman for help. So he was surprised by how much he liked her.
Linnet, too.
"I'm at F.A.O. Schwartz with a friend," he said, having put the phone on speaker so Linnet could chime in, "and I'm totally at a loss."
"I had to stop him from buying them all toy cars.”
"Toy cars?" exclaimed Aunt Vera.
"That's what I said!"
"What's your name, darling?" asked Aunt Vera.
"Linnet."
"Well, Linnet, you and I are clearly going to have to take charge here. Marcus needs help. Only it can't look like he's had help, of course, which is the tricky part. He has to impress Annie with his ability to handle this on his own."
"I said that too!" Linnet shouted back into the phone, grinning at Marcus. "I love her."
"Look," said Aunt Vera, "I can email you a list of basic likes and dislikes - Sophia likes butterflies, Lucy likes to draw, Isaac loves dinosaurs, that kind of thing - but that's not what really matters the most. The most important consideration is that these children are accustomed to Christmas traditions unfolding in a particular way. And if you attempt to replicate their parents' traditions without their parents there, it will be traumatic. You need to start making some new ones."
"Like what?"
"Well, the most pressing thing to address," said Vera, "is the tree."
"Oh."
"Danny always took the kids to pick out the tree," she explained, "and then they would help Grace hang the ornaments while Danny strung the outdoor lights. Then they would all make hot cocoa and watch A Charlie Brown Christmas."
Linnet's eyes became suspiciously shiny at this, and she busied herself with digging through her purse. Linnet hadn't had a great childhood either - not much better than Marcus and Danny's - and he knew she was feeling what he was feeling.
What a waste.
What a waste that parents like this should be snatched away so young while the shitty ones always seemed to stick around forever.
"So you see," Vera continued, "if Annie just goes to the lot and buys a tree and comes home and they all decorate it together, it's going to feel like a pale imitation of the real thing."
"No, I get it," said Marcus thoughtfully. "You're right. It has to be something completely different." And as he spoke, he suddenly felt the beginnings of an idea stir in the back of his mind.
He did not say anything about it to Vera or to Linnet, not just yet, and he thought perhaps it might be a trifle insane. But he thought about the looks on the children's faces and he thought about making Annie smile and he thought about all the weight she was carrying, how out of her depth she must feel, and decided that come hell or high water, he was going to get Christmas right.
"It was kind of you to stay over with her after the funeral," said Vera in a neutral tone, causing Linnet's head to snap up abruptly as she and Marcus stared at each other, wondering what Vera knew.
"She seemed like she was – having a hard time," offered Marcus carefully.
"I'm surprised she asked you," said Vera. "I'm glad, but surprised. The Walters don’t trust people they don’t know well,” she explained. “Which means that for the most part, Walters only trust each other. It took a very long time even for Danny to find his place. Annie was very uncomfortable around him for the first few years. It took a long time for us to find our new normal again.”
Marcus had some thoughts of his own as to why Annie had not felt comfortable around his brother, but forbore to mention them to Aunt Vera.
"And now you all have to find it again," he said. "Only you're stuck with me this time. Which can't make things easy."
“You’re not your father, Marcus,” she said unexpectedly, and he was so startled he almost dropped his phone. Linnet's eyes widened.
“I – what?”
“
Danny told us all the stories,” she said. “I understand. You’re very different men, you and your brother, and you had different mothers, of course, which explains a great deal of it.”
“A great deal of what?”
“Danny dealt with it by running fast and far in the opposite direction,” she went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “He had a terrible childhood so he wanted to give his children the perfect one. Being a good husband, a good father, was the most important thing in his life. Everything else came second to that.”
Yes, it did, he thought, feeling a dull, heavy ache in his heart for Annie.
“And you,” she continued, “you did the opposite. You built a life for yourself where you could never disappoint anyone, because you’d never stay in one place long enough to hurt anybody.”
“That’s not – I – what?” Marcus stammered, violently regretting the decision to put this conversation on speakerphone to include Linnet, who was staring in wide-eyed astonishment and clearly hoping that Vera would keep dropping truth bombs on him for the rest of the day.
“If you found her chilly and difficult to get to know, that’s why,” Vera explained. “Think about the things she knows about you. All those colorful, crazy stories, exaggerated by Danny in the telling. That time you stole a helicopter and went joyriding –“
“That’s not quite how it happened –“
“Danny’s birthday in Vegas –“
“Yeah, she already yelled at me about that one.”
“The time that one supermodel whose heart you broke pushed the other one off the catwalk at a Versace show –“
“That’s what he said? No, okay, listen, what happened was –“
“She doesn't really believe you're a real person, Marcus,” Vera interrupted him, and he shut up. “She doesn't really trust yet that you're going to come through. And she doesn't let go of burdens easily because she's afraid no one else can actually bear the weight.”
“She’s afraid I’m going to let down the children,” he said flatly. “Because she thinks I’m selfish and irresponsible.”
“Well, to be fair, darling,” said Vera in a reasonable voice, “you’ve been selfish and irresponsible.” There was, of course, no possible answer to this, although Linnet looked like she had some thoughts. “But you haven’t learned one thing about her if you really think that’s what she’s afraid of.”
“Then tell me what it is.”
“She just lost two of the people she loved most in the world,” said Vera simply, “and she never saw it coming. She lost her grandparents and then her parents, plus whoever that doctor was he was clearly important to her, and that ended too. And now this. She doesn't trust anyone not to leave her, Marcus. She doesn't really believe she'll ever stop being alone.”
It was so agonizingly, excruciatingly true that he felt staggered by it. He actually felt himself lose his balance the tiniest bit, and braced his hand on the bench to collect himself.
He had given credit – or thought he had – to Annie missing her sister, and at the particularly painful nuances of her grief for Danny. But he had not tallied up the full measure of her losses, of the people who had left her in her thirty-eight short years.
Of course she held everything on her own shoulders. Of course she resented the dilettante brother from New York, jetting in to wreak havoc. Because she was looking ahead to a future where she was convinced she’d be picking up the wreckage of the mess he’d left behind him when he, too, inevitably walked out on her and went back to his life.
“What can I do?” he asked her.
“You show up, and you stay,” she told him sharply. “That’s the only thing that matters. You stay. No matter what happens. No matter how hard. Your brother did this for you as much as he did for her, Marcus. It’s time for you to grow up.”
“That’s a little harsh.”
“Do you think I’m wrong?”
“No.”
“Marcus, if you don’t want to do this,” she said, her voice softening, “if you’re not ready to take on the challenge of raising three children, nobody will think any less of you. It is not a character flaw to admit there are burdens we are not ready to bear. If this is not something you want – if this is not something you are ready for – say so. The lawyers will fix it. We can take care of it. But you must decide now. Because if you come back, dear heart, you must come back to stay. Come to stay, or don’t come at all. Don’t uproot her life, and then leave her. She’ll never be able to put the pieces back together if you do.”
After they hung up - Vera promising him an email with a more detailed list of toy preferences - he and Linnet sat side-by-side on the bench in the toy store elevator bay, staring straight ahead at the white wall in front of them.
"Don't take this the wrong way," Linnet finally ventured carefully, "but I think I might love Aunt Vera."
"I know," said Marcus. "I think I might love her too."
Chapter Thirteen: Helen
While Marcus was in New York, emailing with Vera several times a day about holiday logistics and recruiting her assistance with the grand secret plan he’d begun to formulate that day at the toy store, Annie was dealing with a Christmas crisis of her own.
She had been so focused on the well-being of the children in theory – how to move in while disrupting their lives as little as possible, how to handle the question of Marcus – that she had not spared as much attention as she maybe should have for the children themselves. Michael and Vera were around a great deal, after all, and they were better at this than she was, so she sometimes found herself simply trying her hardest not to be invasive.
Dinner table conversation was minimal. Michael drove the twins to and from school, and Aunt Vera came on the weekends so Annie could work. (Her T.A. was handling the last week of classes before the students went on break, but she had a stack of term papers to grade that was piling up paralyzingly fast.) And so, with the exception of driving them to their weekly appointments with Doctor Megan and sitting in the waiting room for an hour until they were done, she managed over those first few weeks to actually be alone with them very little. They had not exactly established a rapport.
So when the first real parenting crisis arose, it caught her unprepared.
It was a rainy Saturday afternoon and Annie was sitting at Grace's desk, sorting out the mess of papers into three piles: personal items she couldn't quite bear to look at; things which needed filing; and things which required immediate attention. Fortunately, the last pile was small, but there were a handful of bills that still had to be paid by check and the twins were due for a checkup at the dentist. She added these items to her ever-growing list of things to do.
The knock at the bedroom door startled her. “Aunt Annie?” said a small voice. Annie turned around.
“Sophia. Hi,” she said. “And hello, Dolphin.” There was a long silence before Annie forcibly reminded herself that she was the responsible adult and should make the next move. So she added, uncomfortably, “You can come in. If you like.”
Sophia did. She looked around the room a little nervously, as though all the furniture might have secretly rearranged itself since she last saw it. She disliked change, Annie could see. They had that in common.
“I have a question. About school,” she began. The twins had decided the week after the funeral to go back for their final two weeks of classes before Christmas break; they were out this Friday. It seemed to be going well so far, or at least no one had broken down crying in the middle of gym class, but when she asked them about it they just shrugged and said “fine.” So this, perhaps, was progress.
“Sure,” said Annie, turning her full attention to Sophia. “I’m pretty good at math and science stuff. If it’s about history or religion, though, you want Aunt Vera. And Michael’s your best bet for English.”
“It's not about homework.”
“Oh. Okay.” Annie waited patiently for her to continue.
“There's a Christmas party at school on Wednesd
ay.”
“Okay.”
“With food and stuff. For the whole class.”
“Okay.” Annie looked at her with a raised eyebrow, waiting for the question, when she realized that Sophia’s lip was trembling and she was holding Dolphin close to her chest. Annie felt like an idiot.
“Oh, Sophia,” she said heavily. “Your mom was supposed to bring treats for the party, wasn’t she?” Sophia nodded, biting her lip and valiantly attempting not to cry. “Okay,” she said in as reassuring a voice as she could muster. “Don’t worry. It’s okay. It’s fine. I can do it. Thank you for telling me. What should I bring?”
“Cookies.”
“You need me to make cookies?”
Sophia looked impatient. “You can't make cookies. It's against the rules. You have to buy them. Ms. Brown says.”
“Is Ms. Brown your teacher?”
“Ms. Brown’s the principal.”
This was not going well.
“Okay,” Annie said comfortingly, trying to salvage it. “That’s fine. I can do that. I'll buy cookies. What kind would you like?”
“There were special ones.”
“Special cookies?”
“They were our special Christmas cookies,” said Sophia, lip trembling again.
“Okay. What kind?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh. Well, what did they look like?”
“We called them Saint Agatha cookies,” said Sophia.
“Saint Agatha cookies? What does that mean?” asked Annie, puzzled. “Is that the brand? Is that, like, a nickname? Do you know where she bought them?”
Sophia couldn’t answer. Her face was buried in Dolphin, her dark hair hanging messily around her face like a tangled curtain, and she was trembling all over, and Annie felt like a bully.
“I’m sorry, Sophia,” she said quietly. “I didn’t mean to make you cry. I’m trying to learn a lot of things right now and sometimes when I don’t know something I’m supposed to know, it’s very frustrating. Does that make sense?” Sophia did not look up, but nodded. “I’m going to figure this out,” she said. “Okay? I’m going to find the right cookies for you. I promise. Don’t worry about it.” Sophia nodded again. “Should we,” Annie began, then stopped herself. “Would you – would you like a hug?”