The Christmas Wedding Read online

  Emily clicked on her mini-recorder to capture every word the very big man said. Gaby nodded seriously throughout the brief update. But Lizzie…well, Lizzie was thinking of another time. A month or so earlier—in another world, before the dizzy spells and the MRIs and the seizures—she had been standing in the kitchen making toast. She had dropped a small jar of orange marmalade. The jar had shattered into pieces on the floor.

  “Stand still,” Mike had shouted. “You don’t have shoes on. I do. I’ll get it.”

  It was a vigorous cleanup—broom and dustpan and dish towels and Fantastik spray to finish up.

  “Can I move yet?” Lizzie had asked.

  Now standing in the hospital, Lizzie remembered Mike’s answer.

  “Absolutely,” he said. “It’s perfect. I think I got it all.”

  Chapter 20

  MIKE CAME HOME and, other than taking long morning and afternoon naps, he was doing well. He walked around the neighborhood, a little wobbly, but he walked. He talked to neighbors, occasionally forgetting a name or two, but he talked. Lizzie crossed her fingers, and hoped for the best.

  Then at five o’clock one morning, everything in their world crashed.

  At first Lizzie wasn’t sure what was happening, but she knew it wasn’t a dream, not even a nightmare.

  The short, sharp grunting noises, the gasping for air, the shaking mattress. Mike was having a seizure. He lay on his back, saliva encircling his mouth. His bare legs shot up, then out. For a moment he was calm. Then his right arm twisted horribly and flailed, and his wrist banged hard against the nightstand. Whenever his eyes opened, they rolled aimlessly around in the sockets.

  Lizzie did what the head nurse at Mass. General had taught her to do.

  She pushed Mike onto his side to help his breathing. She checked his mouth to make sure he had nothing in there. She moved the nightstand and the bedside lamp out of his way.

  She watched every tortured breath, every stunted movement. She was terrified; worse, she knew poor Mike had to be terrified too.

  Then she heard footsteps in the hall and Tallulah yelling “Mommy? What’s that noise?” By the time Tallulah ran into the bedroom, Mike’s seizure had ended. He lay there calmly, covered in perspiration, looking as if he’d been dropped onto his bed from an airplane.

  “Daddy!” Tallulah cried out when she saw her father.

  “Daddy’s sick, honey,” Lizzie said. “Nothing too bad.”

  Mike’s voice sounded full of gravel as he said, “I guess I ruined your sleepy time, Tallu, huh?” He tried to smile. “But you love the lake, don’t you, Tallu? Well, I love the Adirondacks too. You’ve got to dry off, though. It gets so cold up here.”

  “Mommy,” Tallulah shouted, “Daddy’s talking make-believe!”

  Then Mike relaxed. He stopped talking. And at that moment Lizzie decided they were going to the hospital. In a hurry.

  “Tallulah, call Gaby and tell her to meet us in the emergency room at Stockbridge Hospital. Make sure you say Stockbridge. I don’t want her going to the wrong hospital. Tell her I’ll call her from the car,” Lizzie said.

  “Mike, we’ve got to get over to the hospital. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” he said softly. “Of course I do.”

  “We’ve got to get you into the bathroom. I’ll clean you up. Do you understand that?”

  “Lizzie,” he said. “I’ve got cancer in my brain, not in my ear.”

  She smiled at him. Would there ever be a time when he wouldn’t be a joker? God, she hoped not.

  Chapter 21

  “MAYBE WE SHOULD trade in the Hyundai and get an ambulance,” Mike said and forced a grin.

  Lizzie glanced over at him. Always with the jokes. Mike was wrapped in a thick thermal blanket, his head propped up on a pillow she had grabbed from their bed. The pillow—pale blue with a border of yellow roses—looked silly, as did Mike with a thick blue woolen cap pulled over his head.

  “Don’t talk. Be still.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I read somewhere that cancer often disappears if you just sit very still.”

  Lizzie smiled, and again, just for a moment, she took her eyes away from the dark, icy road and looked at him. Mike didn’t look frail at the moment. The blanket gave him a bulky appearance, and his face was puffy from the cortisone they’d been pumping into him.

  Then she turned to the backseat and gave Tallulah a smile. “Hang in there, honey,” she said.

  Her phone rang, and she handed it to Mike.

  “Can you answer this?” she asked. “It’ll probably be Gaby.”

  He wiggled his hand out from under the blanket and answered, “Rodgers Cancer Taxi Service. Brain tumors our specialty.”

  A pause, then, “Gaby, how are you doing?” Another pause. “Oh, we’re just out for an early-morning ride in our Hyundai. Catching the fresh air. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Looking forward to it. See you there. ’Bye.”

  He handed the phone back to Lizzie.

  “Your mom and Tom Hayden are already at the hospital. They’ll meet us outside ER.”

  “Tom’s with Gaby,” Lizzie said, and was about to comment on how interesting it was that the two of them were together, but she didn’t get the chance. A scream came from the passenger seat. The garbling, gurgling, horrid sounds of another seizure began to explode.

  Maybe it was Lizzie’s imagination, but this time it seemed louder and wilder and longer. Maybe Mike’s being confined by the seatbelt and shoulder belt made his flailing seem more intense than back at home.

  From a distance she could see the long, low red brick building that was Stockbridge Hospital. She thought she might have to pull to the side of the road, but she decided that the emergency room was the safest place for Mike right now.

  In the nearly empty parking lot she saw Gaby and Tom Hayden. Lizzie screeched to a halt, skidding in a complete circle, like the second hand of a clock, then stopping.

  As Tom yanked open the passenger door, Lizzie shouted, “He’s having another seizure.”

  The moment she said the words, the seizure seemed to stop. Mike’s eyes closed, then opened. His face was smeared with sweat again. He rubbed his wrist, sore from where he’d banged it so many times on the armrest.

  Tom and Gaby managed to lift Mike out of the car. He stood by himself.

  “I’ll get a wheelchair,” said Lizzie. Tallulah clung to her hand.

  “No,” said Gaby. “Mike can make it. Right, Mike?” It was as if she were returning a tiny bit of dignity to him. And it worked.

  Walking slowly, Mike turned to his wife.

  “Lizzie, just look at me. I’m a mess. You’ve got to do something about your driving.”

  Chapter 22

  SOMETIMES GABY FELT that she knew the emergency waiting room of Stockbridge Hospital better than she knew her own house.

  Not only had she been here a half dozen times during the last year with Mike and Lizzie, but, as the mother of four, she had waited in this same room while Claire had broken fingers set and taped (a diving-board accident), while Seth had twenty-nine stitches in his right thigh (a fall from the hayloft with a perfect landing on a pitchfork), while Lizzie got three hypodermic shots of antihistamine (she was four years old and had punched a beehive), while Emily had a stubbornly stuck tampon removed.

  Finally, it was also right here that she had waited as a CPR unit tried to bring Peter back to life when he had his heart attack.

  She thought about that horrible day as she walked into the cramped cubicle where they were keeping Mike for the time being.

  The sweet, brave guy was wearing one of those ridiculous hospital gowns. Pathetic, Gaby thought. Hospitals got it so wrong. They made being sick even more depressing and depersonalizing than it had to be.

  “Sorry to have messed up the morning for you and Tom,” Mike said. There was a definite teasing tone in his voice. But Gaby wasn’t biting.

  “Don’t be annoying. The whole gang was there getting breakfast ready. Tom and I were
the least important. How are you feeling?” she asked.

  “I could swim the Housatonic River north to south,” Mike said.

  Gaby shook her head. She could only imagine how frightened Mike must be—of cancer and pain and the whole ugly business of being sick and possibly dying. So Gaby did what she was famous for. She asked the simplest, most straightforward question she could think of.

  “Mike, are you scared?”

  “Would you pass me my clothes?” he said.

  “Answer me, Mike. Are you frightened? It’s a good question.”

  “Gaby, please hand me my clothes from that chair. I just want to get dressed and go home.”

  “I’m going to keep asking.”

  “Where are Lizzie and Tom? Is Tom the one, Grandma?”

  “First answer my question. Then I’ll answer yours. Your first question.”

  Mike pulled the ridiculous hospital gown around him.

  “Everybody looks stupid in these nightgowns,” he said. “Even a good-looking hunk like me.”

  Gaby didn’t laugh. She didn’t even smile.

  Then Mike finally said, “No. I’m not frightened. I’m not frightened at all. I know that’s crazy. I should be shaking with fear. But I’m not. This sickness has brought me closer to Lizzie than I’ve been in years. It’s shown me that Tallulah is the most wonderful girl in the world. They don’t need me at my own store, but I still get some income from the place. I’ve grown to like the physiotherapy they put me through after the chemo. So, like I said, it’s crazy, but I’m not frightened.”

  Gaby grabbed Mike’s clothing from the chair. Another woman would have carried the pile of clothes to him. But not Gaby. She took the pants and the socks and the shirt and the sweater, rolled them into a ball, and threw it at Mike.

  “Thanks for answering my question, Mike. It was a wonderful answer. You’re a wonderful guy.”

  “It was the truth,” he said. “Now, by the way, you said you’d answer my question if I answered yours.”

  “Sure, but I can’t even remember your question.”

  “It was ‘Who are you going to marry?’” he said with a completely straight face.

  In a high, squeaky, funny voice Gaby said, “I…don’t…think…so.”

  “Damn,” Mike said.

  “Do you want me to help you get dressed?” Gaby asked.

  “You just want to see me naked,” Mike said.

  “Yeah, that’s always been a dream of mine.”

  “Anyway, I’ve got underwear on.” He lifted the front of his gown to prove it.

  “Well, if you’re not even naked, then I definitely don’t want to help,” Gaby said. “Where’s the fun in that?”

  As they laughed, Tom and Lizzie walked in.

  “What are you two up to?” Tom asked.

  But they didn’t stop laughing.

  Lizzie walked over to her husband and kissed him on his completely bald head.

  “You look much better, Mike,” Lizzie said.

  He kissed her on the cheek. “Thanks, sweetheart.”

  And for just a second her eyes met Mike’s eyes, and for just a second they both smiled. And for just a second there was a feeling of hope.

  Chapter 23

  CLAIRE AND HANK

  WHERE THE HELL IS Hank? Claire’s heart was pounding, and she was feeling like a complete fool. She didn’t know where he was, only where he was supposed to be. In the headmaster’s office with her.

  “Will Hank be joining us, Claire?”

  “He’ll be here any minute. He knows he has to be here. Sorry, Paul.”

  Hank hadn’t called. He had probably forgotten that they were meeting with Paul Lussen, headmaster at Oceanside Prep, to discuss the school’s “extraordinary” problems with their son Gus.

  Where the hell is he? Claire’s heart was beating even harder, and her head was starting to ache.

  Claire had reminded Hank this morning. Twice. He’d snapped at her the second time: “I’m not an imbecile, Claire. Contrary to some people’s opinion.”

  “I have another appointment in half an hour. You know how crazy my schedule is just before winter break,” Paul said.

  She knew. After all, she was the after-school tutor to four students at Oceanside. She knew all the teachers here and they knew her. And Gus.

  “Ordinarily I’d say we should reschedule, but there are extraordinary issues surrounding Gus’s future that just can’t wait any longer,” said Paul.

  There was that word again. Extraordinary.

  Where the hell is Hank? This is unacceptable.

  “Well,” she said, “I guess we can start. I can bring Hank up to speed later.”

  Paul was a huge supporter of Claire’s and her tutoring. But things went even deeper than that. He was also a good friend, so good a friend that he was, in fact, Gus’s godfather.

  Today Paul was all business. And it made Claire sad that she was sitting opposite a rather stern headmaster instead of the charming, funny friend who had rocked Gus to sleep when he was little.

  Paul opened a folder on his desk. Gus’s folder.

  “It’s hard to know where to begin,” he said. Then he looked down at the papers. “I take that back. Actually, Gus’s record is so…unfortunate…that I could begin just about anywhere on these pages. So that’s what I’ll do.”

  He read out loud: “September fourteenth. Gus Donoghue and Alex Frahm are seen urinating in the drinking fountain at the school practice field…September nineteenth. Gus Donoghue is sent to this office, reprimanded for drinking a Heineken—a Heineken beer! Not a Coke! Not bottled water! A Heineken!—during study hall…”

  Heineken was his father’s favorite, Claire thought and cringed.

  Paul kept on reading: “October fourth. Gus Donoghue and Alex Frahm are found smoking pot in the bathroom.”

  Claire remembered that whenever she used the word “pot” Gus corrected her. “They haven’t called it ‘pot’ in twenty years, Mom. You call it ‘weed.’” Claire decided not to update Paul.

  “And the grades, Claire. You’re aware of Gus’s deplorable grades—Math, D. English, C-. French, F. Biology, D. Music, F. Music! Claire, you know what that course is like in this school. All you have to do is show up and listen to some music and you get a B!”

  She nodded.

  Where the hell is Hank?

  “I know, I know. This is why we took Gus out of public school. This is why I came to work here for no salary. So that we could get free tuition for Gus. We couldn’t afford a terrific school like this…”

  Paul interrupted.

  “The problem is that one or two of these transgressions might be considered pranks. But with Gus it’s a dozen or more things. Gus does something extraordinary every day. Getting stoned. Getting drunk. Cursing at a teacher.”

  “I’m trying everything, Paul,” Claire said. “I help him at night with his assignments. I forbid him to go out with certain friends, like Alex Frahm. I…”

  Paul stood up behind his desk.

  “I think you’ve just identified the problem, Claire. You keep using the pronoun ‘I.’”

  Claire knew where he was going with this, but she just listened. What else could she do?

  “Claire, where is Hank in all this? Where is he right now? This is an important meeting for Gus. For your entire family. Hank is still part of the family, right?”

  Claire knew Paul well enough that she could cry in front of him, but she didn’t want to. She absolutely refused to show weakness.

  “Listen. The only reason that Gus hasn’t been expelled already is because you work here and, well, because I’m your friend, and I know how much you want Gus to succeed. But this can’t go on. Two teachers won’t allow him in their class next semester, and I don’t blame them. What’s worse—they adore Gus. Then you look at the grades. He can’t move on to sophomore year with grades like that. You know, Claire, if you can—”

  Claire interrupted. “I know, Paul. ‘If you can teach the after-s
chool kids and do a good job, why can’t you help your own son?’”

  Paul nodded. “If there’s no improvement after Christmas, then there’s no way I can allow Gus to stay here. This breaks my heart too.”

  Chapter 24

  CLAIRE TOOK DEEP breath after deep breath as she sat in the empty chapel of Oceanside Prep and listened to a Bach cantata on her iPod. It was an old trick of Gaby’s. Bach usually soothed her nerves, but this time Johann Sebastian was letting her down. She made an L with a thumb and forefinger and touched it to her forehead: Loser. That was her.

  As soon as the Bach ended, something unfamiliar came through her earphones. Then she remembered. Gus had commandeered her iPod a few nights before. He said he was determined to blast her into the twenty-first century.

  She laughed. She was suddenly listening to Daft Punk singing “Something About Us.”

  But there’s something about us I want to say

  Cause there’s something between us anyway.

  The music, the words, the beat, the wacky combination of Claire Donoghue and Daft Punk in a prep school chapel, made her shake her head. Unfortunately Daft Punk was no more successful at soothing her than Bach, but it did make her think happily of her son. She loved Gus so much, in spite of himself. Hell, everybody loved Gus, even the teachers who were flunking him.

  She remembered as a child seeing a photo of mothers in a visitors’ room at a state penitentiary. She’d asked Gaby why all those moms went to see their sons if the sons were criminals. Gaby had the answer: “Claire, sweetie, love trumps everything.”

  Claire snapped open the old pocket watch that hung from a gold chain around her neck. Inside was an antique watch face on the right, and on the left a tiny photo of Gaby, age sixteen. Very pretty. With attitude.

  “Now you have me with you all the time,” Gaby had said when she gave her the watch. “Even when you don’t want me there.”

  Time for class. Her students—Curtis, Andy, Reggie, Timbo (real name Timothy)—would be waiting for her. If she wasn’t on time they’d shout “Class canceled!” and take off.