The Art of Saying Goodbye - Ellyn Bache [68]
It’s not even the presents she cares about. Mostly, Rachel loves to sit in the kitchen sectioning Clementine oranges for fruit salad while Ginger slices apples, and the aunts and grandmothers make stuffing and put the potatoes on to cook. To Ginger, Christmas always feels like the one time she can help make a meal without feeling rushed, so after she cuts the apples, she goes through the bowl and cuts them smaller, just the right size to put in your mouth. She slices grapes and removes all the dark parts from the bananas. At Christmas they feel as if they have all the time in the world. The child Rachel who didn’t mind sharing her thoughts once said that, when they eat that fruit salad, it tastes like love.
Across the cul-de-sac, Brynne comes out of her house with Trinket. She takes off the dog’s electric collar and attaches her leash. No one ever walked Trinket before now. They left her in the yard. Now they walk her all the time. Trinket is a way to escape the house.
Turning her back to the cul-de-sac, Rachel studies the sky, and Ginger knows she’s doing this so she and Brynne can pretend they don’t see each other. She’s offering Brynne her privacy. It seems to Ginger a remarkably mature act for a child of twelve.
Then Rachel turns her attention, as usual, to the sky. There’s lots of air traffic tonight, even more than the usual pageantry of planes and stars. Rachel watches intently, but Ginger suspects her daughter is distracted, listening for the jingle of Trinket’s rabies tag against the leash to signal that Brynne has passed by.
Just then, one of the lights in the sky dips from its horizontal course and moves with a kind of celestial grace into a slow downward trajectory. Is it a falling star? A crashing plane? Ginger’s heart ups its tempo. Out in the yard, Rachel seems to freeze. Both of them wait for the explosion, the blinding flash of light. Ginger yearns for it. This is not a voluntary thing. For long seconds there’s no sound except the thudding of her heart. Then the arcing pinpoint of light fades and vanishes from its path without a sound.
It was just a falling star.
In the yard, Rachel turns and heads for the house.
Ginger wonders if she made a wish.
Chapter 17
November 17
The first thing Andrea sees when she walks into Paisley’s family room is the hospital bed that now sits where the couch used to be. It’s very white—white frame, white sheets, white coverlet—a patch of medicinal sterility in the warm-hued room that used to be all leather and honey. If not for the throw rugs and golden hardwood floors, the room would be unrecognizable. White is not Paisley’s color.
“Don’t worry, I haven’t taken up residence there yet,” says Paisley, indicating the bed but sitting, as always, in the recliner, the only piece of furniture that hasn’t been moved out of the way. Notebook in hand, she bites on the end of her pen, then scribbles something on the paper. The strains of “My Girl” blare from the speakers. She turns down the music. “It’s easier to sleep down here at night than make Mason carry this IV doodad up and down the stairs. Don’t look so upset, Andrea.”
Andrea tells herself she isn’t upset. She’s steeled herself for this. It’s been a month and three days since the ribbons went up. Given the circumstances, the hospital bed might well have been necessary before this. She turns from the bed and points to the notebook. “Shopping list?”
“Planning my funeral,” Paisley says.
“Don’t try to shock me. I’m unshockable.” Andrea thinks this might actually be true—or if not unshockable, at least unflappable. At home, where Courtney continues to play the offended daughter sulking in frosty silence, Andrea goes about her business with remarkable calm, aware that Courtney’s outburst—surely there will be an outburst?—looms like an approaching thunderstorm. Andrea sorts through her possessions, discards amazingly large numbers of items she’s decided she doesn