Aqua - Christmas in New York City (Aqua Romance Travel Series) (8 page)

“I shouldn’t have dragged you into this,” Casey said.

“It’s not a problem. It’s a part of you.”

“You have to say that now. I should have told you earlier.”

“I don’t mind.”

She shook her head back and forth. “I do.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want you with me because you pity me.”

“I don’t at-”

“Or that you let me down easy.” She turned her head and Harry ran his hands through her hair, along her back, kissing it. He heard a sniffle and then her shoulders started shaking. Eventually Casey turned toward him red-eyed. “I can’t bring you into my future pain.”

“But I want it with you.” He kissed Casey’s face. Her cheek was salty.

“But I’m putting you into a corner. You’re the bad guy if you can’t handle it day to day and you’re the bad guy if you leave now. You can’t win, so I’m solving it for you.”

“What I want,” he grabbed her shoulders firmly. “Is you. Nothing else. Being with you in whatever form that comes. Cruising under the stars, gazing at Christmas lights or right here, holding your hand and nothing more.”

“You have to want more out of our life than this.”

“There is more than this. There has been. But right now, this is our life. I love you here, in your pain.”

She chortled, “Yeah, I’m a thing of beauty.”

“You always are. Right here, in your drafty hospital gown, you are beautiful to me.” He kissed her on the forehead. “Don’t you get that I long for you always. That I treasure every evening we cuddle up together and I can’t wait till you open your eyes in the morning and I see your smile.”

“But your biggest dream won’t be fulfilled.”

“You are my dream.”

And children
she wanted to say but she couldn’t.
 

Her eyes filled with tears.
“When they get me for the tests, please go home.”

“You want me to leave?” Harry asked.

She nodded.

He was struck with a bolt of sorrow that cut him open and emptied him. “I’ll come back to pick you up.”

“I’ll grab a cab.”

“I’ll bring you some dinner.”

“I’m not feeling hungry.”

He felt a vacuum seep into his body. “You need to eat. I’ll stop in at La Maison du Chocolat for a dessert.”

She shook her head. “I need to be alone tonight.”

“You’ll call me in the morning?”

“I won’t be calling you, Harry.”
It’s because I love you that much
she wanted to say, but her throat locked and she looked away to hide her tears.

WHEN CASEY pulled her hands from her mouth, the stench was awful. She looked in disbelief and then fright. It was all irrational, she knew. Cancer wouldn’t cause this. And the doctor didn’t have any earth shattering news; he was simply reviewing her surgery details. It was probably something she ate. Yet a heat rose in her body, and a perspiration covered her forehead and arms. She could feel more food rising inside of her.
 

She tried to breathe deep, tried to keep it down but there was an involuntary action that kept pushing her food, digested and not, right up into her mouth. She just made it to the bathroom in time.

She heaved into the toilet, with such convulsions that her eyes watered and her body shook. She kneeled down, holding onto the seat, until the cold filtered from the floor through the bath mat. She shivered once more.
 

She tried to push herself up off of the floor but her body shook so hard that she couldn’t move. She clasped her elbows and tried to give herself a hug to calm herself down. Eventually, she worked her way against the wall and leaned her head back. Her head spun.
 

Casey tried to get up but she felt dizzy again and crawled into the bedroom to reach her phone. There was only one person she could call.

“Harry.” Her throat burned from the stomach acid had just worked its way up. She could hardly talk. “I-” her voice froze and a shudder ran through her. “Sick.”

“I can’t hear you.”

She tried to muster up strength to talk but her throat felt raw and it hurt just to clear it. “I vomited.”

“I’ll be right over.”

THE WAITING room in the nearest hospital was overrun with patients but when Harry made a call on his cellphone, Casey was ushered in a few moments later. The emergency ward was as full but within a short amount of time they had moved her to a private room.
 

For the short while Casey was in the waiting room, she was on the same level playing field with everyone. In the room each person looked the same. No jewelry or clothing. Same robe. Now, in a sealed off room, she felt her situation had escalated.

“What caused this?” Harry asked the doctor.

“An infection, imbalance of minerals in the blood. We need to do some bloodwork and other tests before we know for sure.”

“Ok,” Harry stammered, still taking it all in.
 

“We’re trying to reach her oncologist but he’s out of town.” The doctor shook his head. “Holidays. Does she have family?”

“Me,” Harry said. “And her father.”

BY THE time Casey was wheeled back to the room, Harry had left. In his place, Foster barged in. The nurse bolted in after him. “Sorry. I know you don’t want visitors but-”

“It’s okay. Hard to tell my father no.”
 

Foster sat on the edge of her bed and the mattress moved. He got up quickly.

“It’s ok, Dad.”

“No, no.” He dragged a chair from the wall. “I’m like a beached whale.”

He sat next to her, arms crossed over the top of his stomach. He looked around at the room, then back at her. “Hospitals aren’t my favorite place.”

“I know.”

“Ever since Mom died.”

She nodded and looked away.

“Don’t go thinking like that.” His voice was harsh, then he changed his tone. “It’s different for you.”

“We’ll see.”

“You’ve got to stay positive.”

“Since when have you been so upbeat?” she said with a sarcastic edge.

“It’s all a front for an unhappy man, Cass.”

She was taken aback with his honesty.

“I never got over your mom’s death, you know. I was more lost than you were.”

“You blamed me.”

He shook his head. “I blamed myself.” His head dropped and he let out a big sigh. “I should have taken better care of her. I should have kept stress from her life.”

“By not having me.”

“No. You’re the best thing that ever happened to us. I was a happy guy when she was alive, you know. I did a lot with you.”

“That got overshadowed.”

“My fault.”
 

“You said she didn’t want children.”

He nodded. “For the same reason you don’t. Her mother had died of cancer as well. She was scared.”
 

“Grandma was in her 80s when she died.”

“That was her stepmother. Her mom died when she was five. We decided never to tell you.” He looked down at his shoes, then back at her. “She wanted a child more than anything, but she was convinced she wouldn’t live long. When you turned five, then ten, and she was still alive, your mom wanted to have more kids.” He leaned closer to Casey. “She said she had made a mistake. I don’t want you making the same one.”

Casey closed her eyes and took it all in. Foster watched her for a while, his little girl whose features had become the same as the woman he once so loved. “I see her in you, you know.”

Casey’s eyes opened wide.

“Your eyes, Cass. You have her sweet, warm eyes.” He took a strand of hair between his fingers and closed his eyes. “The soft hair. That color that is so uniquely you.”

“I’ll lose my hair in chemo.”

“You don’t need that.”

“Well something’s wrong.”

“They’re just being careful.”

“Mom, her sister, it’s in my blood.” She pressed her fingers against her eyebrows and hung her head. “I’m next.”

Foster tapped her on the shoulder. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

She looked up at him, her eyes exhausted.

“Your mom never did.” He pointed over his shoulder toward the sky. “She never stopped wishing. Believing.”

Foster got up and went to the head of the bed and bent down till his face was next to Casey’s. He slipped his fingers through hers and locked their hands as one. Then he lifted her hand till it covered the outline of the star on top of the Christmas tree. He squeezed her fingers and formed a fist around the star, then he slid his fingers from hers and gently pushed her closed hand against her lips. “Make a wish, Mom would say.” His voice was on the verge of breaking.

A tear ran over Casey’s cheekbone and she swallowed hard. Images streamed through her mind - her mother, Harry, a child, her tombstone, her holding her child, her sick in a hospital bed. In her mind, she scattered them and retrieved one image only - her and Harry, holding the hands of two children. She opened her fingers toward Foster’s face and blew on her palm. “Make a wish,” she said.

A slow smile formed and then he grinned ear to ear. Foster caught the imaginary star as he always had, pressed his fingers tight against his palm as he closed his eyes around the wish. In his mind, he visualized Casey, healthy and happy with Harry, and with children. Then he held his hand toward the tree and released the wish with his fingers.
 

LIGHTS SPARKLED as Casey was wheeled into her hospital room and she gasped. It looked just like the south edge of Madison Square Park in miniature. At the centre was a glittering Christmas tree.
 

It was where her mom took her on Christmas Eve, to the city’s first community holiday tree, to think of those who didn’t have the fortune of yuletide celebrations. It was the one place she had never returned to and finally wanted to go with Harry. He gave her the strength to do everything - face her sorrows with her mother, face her fears with her dad, and now, when she had the greatest anxiety, she had pushed him away.
 

A large screen sat in front of Casey’s bed and the nurse turned it on.

The camera was zoomed in on blue and pink wings, then it moved down to a flowing silk dress, a gentle face with a slight smile, hands holding a silver-gilt censer. Then another bare-footed angel came into view with a green and yellow silk dress, another in light green and purple, another holding a yellow scarf.

Casey knew where this was. The Neapolitan Baroque crèche at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Each of the figures, from six to twenty inches were works of art and she had come to know them well over the years during her annual Christmas visits with her mother. It was such a peaceful, happy time in her life and she sunk her head into the pillow and watched.

The camera paused on a gentle smile, a head modeled in terracotta and polychromed to perfection. The angel’s golden wings were brushed lightly with red and teal, and led to an articulated body of wire wrapped in tow, covered with a blue cape billowing from a red and yellow dress.
 

Each of the 200 figures were crafted this way, by the finest sculptors of the eighteenth century - Giuseppe Sammartino, Salvatore di Franco, Giuseppe Gori, and Lorenzo Mosca. The jeweled and embroidered costumes were hand-sewn by women who collected the pieces.

The camera moved along the hand-sculpted angels and cherubs, each one familiar to her. Casey’s favorite was the angel with a simple pale yellow dress scooped at the neck, holding a salmon shawl, with curls shaped as if the wind was blowing through them. When her mother died, she wished to be buried in a dress just like it. ‘She was an angel’, Foster repeated over and over again on that day.

The camera skimmed over approximately fifty large angels on the baroque Christmas tree each year and then panned to the scenes below. The Virgin and baby Jesus with a silver-gilt halo, St. Joseph clutching a silver staff. The dark-skinned Moorish king with a silver-gilt crown and velvet garments with glass buttons, coral beads and pearls. And the king’s attendants, one with a cotton turban and a silk and satin jacket, and another with a long cotton and silk cape with a brass sword.

Casey was always amazed at the detail in an eleven inch figure: shepherds with simple cotton and burlap clothes with leather belts with silver buckles; a young man with wooden bagpipes, a man with a fur vest, another with silk striped pants.
 

The camera swept past a peasant woman with velvet clothes, an oriental woman with glass eyes, the lady with gold earrings with pearls holding a silver basket. As a child, Casey’s favorites were always the animals. The wooden camel with leather saddlebags, the adult goat with metal horns, a monkey with silver collar and chain. She had loved the black horse with velvet-covered saddle so much that her mom created a replica for her one Christmas and they sewed a satin saddle blanket with metallic thread and braided a gold mane together. It was the center point of the family Christmas tree every year, and one of the many items that her father tossed into the garbage.

The camera pulled back to take in the entire eighteenth-century nativity scene, silk-robed angels floating from the candlelit spruce looking upon the lifelike figures below. Casey could just see herself decades ago, standing in awe while her mother explained the various figurines to her, and told her the Christmas story.

The exhibit was a longstanding holiday tradition for New Yorkers and visitors, but to Casey it was a mother-daughter tradition. Since Loretta Hines Howard donated the crèche figures to the museum in the 1960s, she worked on the display each year. Then her daughter, Linn Howard, helped her with the annual installation, and continued the tradition after her mother's death. Now Linn Howard's daughter, Andrea Selby Rossi had joined the tradition and helped her mother create the holiday showcase. Casey could hear her mother’s voice.
This is the magic of Christmas.
 

Instead Harry’s voice entered the room. “Happy twenty-fourth day of Christmas, Cassandra.” She saw his face briefly on the screen. I thought I’d bring what you love about Christmas to you. And for that, I needed some help because I didn’t have you as my tour guide.”