Chapter 18 – Ordinary Magic
Mac is quiet on the drive home, staring out the window and sucking his thumb. When we get home he unbuckles his seat belt and slides out of his booster seat, waiting until I open the door for him and then reaching his arms out for me.
"You're really not mad at me?" Mac hangs tightly around my neck as I lift him into my arms.
"No, I'm really not." I pick up his backpack and then slam the sliding door and head towards the house.
"Mommy would have been mad at me." Mac looks despondent. "If I got in trouble for fighting at school Mommy would have been super mad."
I half laugh and half sob. He's not exactly wrong – Rosalie understood kids and wasn't a despotic martinet by any stretch of the imagination, but she had high expectations for our kids' behaviour. Fighting in school would absolutely not be tolerated. At the same time…
"I think Mommy would understand about it this time," I say softly, giving him a squeeze. "Mind you don't do it again though!"
Mac leans his head against mine. "I want to punch everyone in the whole world," he mutters.
I don't answer, mostly because I understand his feelings all too well. The way the rage boils up inside, breaking through the heavy darkness of grief, almost blinding me with the desire to hit out at the world is a distressingly familiar emotional state to me right now.
When we get inside the babies are all still asleep and, as she jerks upright on the sofa blinking and covering up her yawns, I think Esme might have been napping too.
"Take your backpack to your room," I tell Mac, handing it to him. I wait until his feet are clumping up the stairs before I say quickly to Esme, "He punched some kid. Leo Hyland told me to bring him home today, but he's not suspended or anything. Mostly, they're worried…his schoolwork isn't good and his behaviour is worse…they want him to see the school counsellor for a bit and…" I break off as Mac comes back into the room. "We can talk about it later. Hey kiddo."
He crawls up on the sofa beside Esme, who wraps her arms around him. She strokes his curly hair and he yawns widely, his thumb going back to his mouth. Heartsick with worry over what I'm going to do with him, I go into my room and flop down on the bed. I don't even bother to take off my shoes, but pull the comforter over my head to block out the world and close my eyes. Rosa-girl…I wish you were here for this. I miss you so much. I love you. I'm asleep in minutes.
I wake when Holly does, her wails from the bassinet dragging me reluctantly back to reality. I pick her up and change her diaper, which makes her scream more, and then carry her out to the kitchen to find a bottle.
"We're writing letters to Santa!" Noah exclaims. He's sitting at the table with Daisy, Mac and Esme, paper and markers spread in between them, and looks happier and more animated than I've seen him for a while.
"That's great! Hang on and let me get some milk for Holly and then you can show me." I step carefully over Bram and Zeke, who are who are happily emptying the plastic utensils out of the bottom drawer, and quickly make up a bottle for Holly. Once it's ready I sit down at the table to feed her.
"What did you write in your letter?" I ask, in the sudden silence that falls when Holly's screaming mouth is plugged up with a bottle.
"I wrote, Dear Santa, I have been very good and I hope I am on the nice list. Please can I have a trampoline, an electric guitar, some new markers and a new sketchbook, a big Lego set and a small Lego set, and an alarm clock, love from Noah," he reads out. "And I'm drawing a picture of me on a new trampoline. See? That's the trampoline and here's me jumping really high. Do you think that's good?"
"I think it's great," I say, trying not to laugh. "I didn't know you wanted an electric guitar…and an alarm clock?"
"On with a bell on top, like in cartoons," Noah tells me seriously. "Grandma tells me they're really a thing you can get. Then I can set an alarm to wake me up to practise my new guitar so I can be in a band."
"Okay…good to know you've got a plan." I look over at the other kids. "What about you guys?"
"I asked for a dirt bike," Mac says. "Grandma wrote my letter for me and I said to write it in big letters because it's what I really, really want…do you think Mommy can talk to Santa? Because I told her about how much I wanted the dirt bike ages ago, and maybe if she could say…"
"I don't know," I say, feeling the familiar ache in my chest. "Maybe. But even if she can, I don't know if Santa brings dirt bikes. Especially when you're only six."
I don't want to crush his dreams, but the idea of Mac on a dirt bike? Yeah, I don't think so…He's probably got two hundred and fifty bones in his body that could break. I've already lost my wife; I'd like to keep my kids.
"Six is old enough for a dirt bike! I could totally ride one!" Mac says confidently, his tongue poking out in concentration as he draws what is actually a pretty accurate representation of what he images he'd look like riding a dirt bike like a ninja.
"And Santa can bring anything!" Daisy interjects. "He's magic."
I smile. Daisy's eight years old now and I wasn't sure if she would still believe this year. But looking at her, I can see how desperately she wants the magic to be real. After what she's been through in the past two months, the harsh and unforgiving reality of a world where bad things happen and no one can stop them, is it any wonder that she's clinging to the idea of a jolly fat man in a red suit who can deliver anything you want?
"We'll see…what did you write?"
"Oh, I wrote it like a real letter, so I asked how Santa and Mrs Claus and the reindeer are to be polite. Then I wrote a list- I asked for a trampoline, a team USA jacket to wear to gymnastics, some Harry Potter stuff, some books, an ipad of my own so I don't have to share anymore, a phone of my own, rainbow legwarmers, a unicorn onesie, some hair things, new clothes, glitter gel pens, markers and more thread and beads for friendship bracelets. Since all the babies can't really say what they want I also asked for a trampoline for them – Holly is really too little but I bet the Things would like it – and new cars and big Lego for Bram and Zeke and a new pacifier and stuffed toy for Holly." She shows me her letter, which is obviously written in her best handwriting and has an elaborate border and a half completed picture of Santa's reindeer and sleigh.
"That looks great, you guys all did a good job." I give Esme a lopsided smile. "Thanks."
"I can't wait for Christmas," Daisy says fervently. "Are we going skiing with Grammy and Grandpa Jack?"
"Not this year." We'd made plans to spend Christmas in Whistler with Rosalie's parents ages ago, but now the thought of going without her is unbearable. I don't know that being here at home is going to be any easier, but at least I won't have to drag six children through two airports, a plane ride, and mounds of snow to do it. "Grandpa Jack said he might try to take you skiing somewhere else over the winter break, if you want to go."
"Yes please!" Daisy draws a bright red nose on her lead reindeer. "We have to get our decorations out and put up our tree. Can we do it today? It will make our house so pretty and happy again…"
She cuts off her words, but I heard her and I know what she's saying. This grief, this sadness that's pulling me down like quicksand – it's drowning the kids too and they need something to hold on to. Christmas, the season of love and giving and hope…oh, it's enough to break my heart, but maybe it's exactly what my kids need and I make a promise to myself that I will do everything in my power to give it to them. I hold Holly and her bottle in one hand and reach over to touch Daisy's fair hair.
"I'll go down to the basement and look for the tree and the decorations later," I say to her with a smile. "It's December…we should have already done it! We'll make this Christmas good, I promise."
As good as it can be, anyway. Where do I buy a trampoline?
"You should do a letter too," Noah says, pushing a spare piece of paper my way. "What do you want Santa to bring for you?"
"Oh, I don't know," I say, picking up a marker in my free hand and beginning to doodle. "I haven't thought about what I want yet."
Because the truth is, I can't think let myself think about what I want. I can't bear to open that door, because there is only one thing in the world that I want and there is no amount of Christmas magic that's going to give it to me. I stare down at the paper, where I've written it down in swooping letters that flow over the page like water. The same word I've written a million times, in a million different fonts, just to see it in front of my eyes.
Rosalie.
Esme leaves for her dinner out with Carlisle late in the afternoon, and I put the kids all through the tub or shower and then heat up a donated casserole from the freezer. I can't even tell what the frozen lump is, but someone's scrawled cooking instructions on the plastic wrap so I bung it in the oven and hope for the best while I head downstairs.
I always hated our basement. It's where the worst abuses in my childhood took place, and even though Rosalie and I finished the floors and redid the drywall I still couldn't walk down the stairs without an instinctive feeling of tension tightening in my gut. Funny thing is though, since Rosalie died, I don't feel it at all. Now when I go down to the basement all I think of is her – down here doing laundry, organising boxes and totes of hand-me-down clothes and toys we were keeping for the younger ones, running on her treadmill or working out on her home gym, catching a quick break from the kids in the comfy armchair she dragged down here after spilling a glass of wine on it. She saw the pain of memory for me in coming down here and tried to save me from it, and in that way she made the basement hers and now that she's gone it's just one more place in the house that howls out her absence.
I don't have time for maudlin contemplation though. I find the bags and boxes of Christmas decorations and carry everything upstairs, much to Daisy's delight. She puts on a Christmas music playlist and starts pulling out the tree ornaments and bossing the boys around to hang up stockings, while I hook the fibre optic tree together.
Daisy, Mac, Noah and I decorate the tree, flinging tinsel happily around and rediscovering all the handmade ornaments they've created in previous years. I lift them up so they can reach the higher branches and, at Daisy's insistence, I 'help' Holly put the star on the top branch because it's her first Christmas. We turn the lights on and the tree glitters and sparkles, and the kids all clap their hands with glee and excitement.
It lasts about three minutes before Bram and Zeke strip bare every single branch that they can reach, Bram starts choking on a dangling fairy ornament and then, while I'm clearing out his windpipe, Zeke gets tangled up in a string of tinsel and pulls the whole damn tree over. Ornaments go flying, the big kids all start screaming, Zeke is buried under the six foot Christmas tree howling like a banshee, and as I yank the stupid fairy ornament out of Bram's mouth the loop of ribbon pulls out of his throat and he pukes all down my arm.
"Oh FUCK!" I yell.
Daisy, Mac and Noah all stop screaming and stare at me, mouths agape.
"Okay, Daddy shouldn't have said that but…SHIT!" I jerk the tree off Zeke and grab up one of Holly's blankets to wipe up the vomit before someone walks in it. "We don't say those words! Not even when trees fall down on poor babies' heads!" I bundle the puke into the blanket and shove it aside, picking up Zeke and kissing his forehead as I unwrap the tinsel from around his arms and pluck a macaroni encrusted love heart ornament out of his hair.
Daisy giggles, and gives Bram a hug. "Don't cry! And don't eat any more decorations!"
Zeke stops crying fairly quickly, more shocked than hurt by the tree falling on his head, and I plop him onto the ground by his brother. "I think we might have to put the tree up inside the playpen so that Bram and Zeke can't get to it," I say, surveying the mess.
This is easier said than done, as it involves moving everything that's already in the playpen out of it, including Holly in her swing, and then lifting the tree up and into it. Then we have to crawl around the floor finding all the baubles that have fallen off and rehang everything, which mostly means I have to rehang everything because the kids' enthusiasm for the task doesn't mean they can reach any higher than four feet at best. I don't know that the result would really match Rosalie's aesthetic standards, but the kids are happy with it and that's all I care about.
To calm them down we sit and read one of the Christmas books Rosalie keeps with the decorations and brings out each year. Fun, happy stories where nobody dies and Santa delivers dreams and magic happens. Then I make sure five sets of teeth get brushed (with a brief moment of relief that Holly currently has no teeth) and pack the older kids off to bed.
I come downstairs after kissing Daisy, Mac and Noah goodnight and pause for a moment looking into the living room. The tree lights are on and Holly is in her swing, gazing at it raptly. Bram and Zeke are hanging onto the playpen, reaching out for the ornaments on the lower branches and babbling to each other. Hearing my footsteps they both look over with matching grins, lights reflecting in colours on their faces.
"Dada!" Zeke crows.
"Dada!" Bram echoes. And then, like he's done it a million times before, he lets go of the playpen and walks across the room. His first steps, toddling across the living room to land laughing in my arms. "Dada!"
"Oh, look at you!" I fall backwards to the floor, hugging him tightly. "Who's a big walking boy now?" I'm laughing, and he laughs back and gives me sloppy kisses as Zeke, evidently not wanting to be left behind, follows his brother's example of a moment before and staggers wide-legged and lurching across to join us. "Both of you! Damn, aren't we in trouble now that you're both on the move!"
But my laughter turns to tears, because this is a huge milestone in my babies' lives and I'm celebrating it alone. There is no Rosalie to share it with, no proud mama to grab the camera and coax them into doing it again, no one who will feel the happiness and pride of the moment in quite the same way as I do. All I have is a stocking hanging up that's going to remain empty on Christmas morning, and mistletoe by the door with no beloved wife to kiss below it.
The tears run down my face, but I smile anyway and kiss dimpled cheeks and tickle pudgy little bellies, because this is my magic. Not Santa. These babies, that I first saw through a microscope when they were still a single, eight-celled embryo, who are now two individuals who are growing and walking and thriving despite everything…this is my magic. It's simple and ordinary and happens every day, but this is what I have and what will bring me through.
