Alternate Endings Read online

  From her defense of him, it was clear that Damion hadn’t told his grandmother about the couch episode, and Calyce certainly wasn’t going to tell her. Rather, she said, “He earned a degree from Bowie State that cost a small fortune. He had all these big plans for a career but he’s been a bartender for four years.”

  “He’s got time. Why are you wound so tight? You didn’t use to be. You’d take that skateboard twenty-five miles an hour down that hill, remember? What happened to you?”

  When they banged in with one of Effie’s two heavy suitcases, Damion hugged his grandmother for so long she had to tell him she couldn’t breathe. He pulled away, but just a little, after which there was much mutual back-rubbing and loving gazing.

  He said, “Let me go get the other one.”

  “You’re in here,” Calyce said to her mother. “Damion, open your door.”

  “No, that’s okay,” Effie told her. “I’ll go upstairs. I said I’d use the guestroom.” She patted Damion. “I wouldn’t think of depriving you.”

  “Open your door,” Calyce repeated, but he looked at his grandmother, who said to Calyce, “We talked it over yesterday, didn’t we Damion, and we decided I’d take the guestroom.”

  “You talked to him in Florida and you didn’t tell me? Not even on the plane?”

  “He has to come and go at all hours. I’ll be fine in the guestroom. Damion, if you’ll take the bags up there.”

  Calyce snapped at her son. “Did you call John’s job lead like I told you?”

  “It’s the holidays, Mom,” he said as he stepped outside. “Nobody’s hiring right now. Isn’t that right, Grandma?”

  At 10 p.m. the next night, Calyce was sitting in her room in two-piece drawstring pajamas. She had one foot dangling over the side of her bed and the other tucked beneath her knee. She had just installed herself there, facing the open Juliet-balcony door after a long day at the lab having a thin white pH monitor tube laced through her nose and down her throat, then pulled up an inch to measure the acid in the top of her gullet, rather than lower, as was usually done, the technician had explained. The tube exited her right nostril and snaked down her face to her neck to her collarbone, taped every two inches and connected to a red monitor she had to haul around for the next twenty-four hours. The medical tape was white, as it always was, against her tree-bark skin, so she looked like a child’s drawing of someone with stitches.

  When Calyce swallowed she could feel it. Her soft palate and throat felt strangely irritated and for much of the afternoon she had been gagging, not from nausea but from weirdness, though that reflex at last had subsided.

  They had told her to eat normal foods so they could get a normal reading, and she had dutifully cooked for dinner something she thought she should be ashamed of: spaghetti with meatballs, which Calyce had made from scratch. Effie had savored the meal, saying how nice it was not to have to eat alone anymore.

  There was a knock on her bedroom door, which opened to Effie thrusting in her smiling face. “You busy? How nice to be at the top of the house. My gosh it’s cold in here. Did you tell the doctor you’re sleeping with that door open? But I’m like you. I can’t stand it when it’s stuffy.”

  She sat without asking in Calyce’s velveteen slipper chair. “What are you reading? What are those pages?”

  With the tube down her throat, Calyce answered hoarsely, “The Siege of Berlin.”

  Five minutes later even Damion had entered, saying he’d been searching for them both. He came in as he hadn’t in months and climbed on her bed as he hadn’t since middle school, happy to tell his grandmother about his girl, his “serious girlfriend.” Effie would meet Selene soon, but she was at class tonight.

  He said, “I don’t know what I did, but somehow I caught the eye of a goddess.”

  As they talked a text hit Calyce’s phone. Ayt?

  She left them to hide in her bathroom. Yes.

  Belinda texted back instantly: You need to get DeGroot’s endorsement.

  Why?

  We just had a meeting before he left. You can’t take the job for granted. Sorry.

  Why?

  With the department consolidated from Pre-K up, you have to prove you’re the best choice.

  Why?

  Javier wants it too.

  Calyce pulled the thin tube from her nose herself, the sensation one of sliding upward like a snake on the inside. She then tried once again to reach DeGroot. He didn’t pick up so she had to leave messages, three of them by two o’clock, when she decided that any more would annoy him, but still she dialed only to hang up before it went to voicemail.

  As she held her phone again that evening, her new ENT called personally. She didn’t know it when she saw the caller ID, assuming it was his office, but his voice came over the line.

  “It’s what I thought,” he said. “The pH levels confirm you have LPR. You’re going to need to change your diet, and I want you to stop eating so late at night starting right now. We’ll see if those changes plus the antacids make a difference for you over the holidays. And continue with your exercise. It helps.”

  “I have to start right away?”

  “It may sound like nothing, but you risk serious complications if left untreated. I’ve got the pdf of the foods to avoid, and I’m going to send it to you. Let me confirm your email.”

  “But they look so lifelike now and they’re much less work,” Effie said to Calyce in the kitchen. “You know the fake trees these days even come with lights on them?”

  “I like them real. Damion, why didn’t you get one while I was in Florida? I told you to.”

  “I didn’t know what kind you wanted.”

  He pointed to the grocery list Calyce was writing. “For Christmas Eve, chili like always, and cornbread.”

  “With hot salsa,” Effie put in.

  “But we’re eating early,” Calyce said. “No more late dinners. I’ll use the leftover cornbread in the stuffing.”

  “Are you making green bean casserole?” Effie asked.

  “Steamed. And no candied yams this year. It’s going to be pineapple sweet potatoes.”

  Damion whined, “But we always have yams.”

  “There’s too much sugar, but I’ll make your egg-custard pie. Mom,” she said to Effie, “we need to leave for the doctor early tomorrow morning.”

  “But it’s going to be Christmas,” he said. “We have to do all the usual for Grandma. And Mom, I want Selene to help with the tree lights. You don’t go that high with the ladder. And she’s bought new ornaments.”

  Effie asked him, “Are you going to any more parties?”

  Damion nodded. “There’s one tonight.”

  Calyce said to her son, “I thought you were working. And I like doing the tree with just the family.”

  Damion ignored her. “Selene wants to make pearl onions for Christmas dinner. She says not to worry about buying them. She’ll bring everything she needs.”

  At Georgetown Hospital’s medical office wing the next morning, Calyce held Effie’s right elbow as they slowly walked from the parking lot. Her mother was breathing in airbursts by the time they got to the elevator.

  “I’m nervous,” Effie admitted.

  Calyce had poked the button but did it again when her mother said it. She poked it again, and again.

  The appointment was so the surgeon could meet her, go over the procedure and review any troublesome results of the additional tests he had ordered after her information had arrived from Florida. Calyce assumed the pompadoured man also wanted to personally assess her mother as a physical body. Calyce gave the man credit, though. He met with them in his small office rather than in an examining room, and he stood when they entered, came around from behind his desk and shook Effie’s hand as well as her own. He was formal, too. No first-name business.

  But he had something of concern to report after they sat in the two guest chairs. Her mother’s A1C results were not good, a
t 7.1, which meant, unfortunately, that she had diabetes. Maybe not for long, so maybe not chronically, not yet, and the number wasn’t as high as it might be, but still. Effie was speechless.

  “Any trouble with your kidneys?” he asked. “How about your eyes? Any loss of feeling in your feet?”

  Effie could only shake her head in answer.

  “I see you’re slender. Not a smoker. Do you exercise?”

  Calyce spoke. “She walks the beach every day in Florida. For miles, even in the rain. She has for years.”

  “I want you to keep that up as much as possible before surgery, and get a glucose meter. Try to limit carbohydrates and sugar. I know it’s Christmas but that’s how you can help me.”

  He went on to explain the post-operative complications that diabetes can cause. Her mother was at increased risk for infection of the wound, which risk if it happened could be substantial. He would have to break her sternum and hinge her ribs. She might heal more slowly and have to remain hospitalized longer.

  “Let me ask you,” he said to Calyce. “Your mother here seems to be completely on the ball, but since this has started, have you noticed any mental deficits? Say, over the last year?”

  Calyce hesitated. “No, but I haven’t seen her much. Just twice, and both in the last two months.”

  To Effie he said, “Is there someone else I can ask? It’s important because the older we get, the more disoriented anesthesia can make us and you’re going to be under for as long as five hours, barring complications. It could be longer.”

  “You could ask my son Simon,” Effie said. “He comes to visit more often, but other than him, no. I live alone with no family whatsoever.”

  Mom has diabetes, Calyce wrote in a group text she had set up for her and Simon and Nina. It could make this much worse. Should we go forward?

  No answer from the other two came over the next two hours.

  Has either of you seen any change in her mental state over the last year? The doctor wants to know.

  Still silence. The night passed and dawn bloomed.

  Does Mom have a will? A DNR? I don’t want to worry her if you know.

  Simon replied then, probably on his way to work. Yes. I will send.

  Calyce replied. Send what? Which?

  He answered in all caps. SHE WANTS SURGERY.

  And then, five minutes later, Don’t screw this up for her.

  Calyce kept calling DeGroot once a day until it was at last Christmas Eve morning when she reached him at home on his landline. He said purposely that he was having waffles with his wife and grown children, who had just arrived for the holiday.

  “But hold on,” he said resignedly. “Let me go somewhere private.”

  When he spoke again she knew he was unhappy that she had disrupted his day. He cleared his throat through her Happy Christmas Eve and told her flat out and for the first time that he couldn’t endorse her candidacy. The department was consolidated and he had to consider everyone in all three schools on two campuses now, not just the English teachers at the high school.

  “I’ve known Javier almost as long as I’ve known you,” he said. “Decades. He’s a good man and a good person. A tremendous teacher and the kids all love him. I won’t choose between you and quite frankly I’m surprised you would ask. It puts me in an extremely awkward position. You should have realized that, Calyce.”

  That same Christmas Eve afternoon, Effie and Damion braved the local mall with her driving an electric sit-on cart and Damion playing traffic cop through the waves of last-minute shoppers. They came home giddy but beyond fatigued, though delighted to have spent hours in each other’s company, which they seemed unable to get enough of. They whispered together and chortled like drunkards the five minutes it took him to get Effie slowly up the stairs.

  Calyce then heard Damion haul up something big and drag it into the powder room. Both he and Effie then laughed as they poked their heads into the kitchen to instruct her “not to go in there.”

  The four of them that night sprawled in her dirt-brown living room, the two young people reclined on the floor as Effie claimed a loveseat. Their ramekins of chili had been scraped clean and forgotten on the corner table. With Effie’s prodding, Damion had dragged out his childhood favorite, the game of Life, and everyone but Calyce had been playing it for a half-hour with Damion moving for his grandmother.

  “I can’t believe you still like that game,” Calyce said from the kitchen. “Whoever dies with the most money wins? That’s the measure of success in life?”

  “It’s a game, Mom.” Damion was winning. He had stacked his fake bills in front of him on the carpet like a cash drawer.

  “Why not the one who lives the longest?” she called out to them. “Or gives the most away?”

  Effie piped up. “You’re saying this? Miss Do-It-By-The-Rules?”

  Calyce opened the dishwasher.

  “I’ll help,” Selene called out when she heard it.

  “That’s okay,” Calyce answered briskly.

  “She doesn’t want help,” Calyce heard Damion tell Selene. “She never does.”

  “That’s not true,” Calyce whispered.

  When his turn was over, Damion walked in to sidle close.

  “Do we have presents for Grandma?” he whispered. “And for Maria and Greg? I got something for Jimmy.”

  She was slicing the remaining cornbread. “Of course.”

  “Did you see the lights outside? Selene wanted to surprise you. We’ve never lit up the candy cane before.”

  She cubed a few slices. “I saw.”

  She scraped the knife-edge along the board to slide them into a storage bag she had propped open. “I’m going to mix up the oats. Will you go down and get the glitter out of the Christmas cabinet?”

  An hour later they came, her daughter Maria and Greg and darling Jimmy, who yelled “Gammy!” as he ran to Calyce and hopped in front of her with his arms out until she scooped him up and held him. He nuzzled her with his cheek and they became one single, connected mass of giggling love.

  “Merry Christmas Eve!” Calyce said to him. “Are you going to feed the reindeer with me?”

  They walked holding hands as Calyce balanced the big metal bowl of shimmering oats against her coat with her free arm. The other five had all stayed inside, where Greg and Maria were getting to know Selene, whom they had just met, so Calyce and Jimmy had the spangled night to themselves. The stars shone so bright and clear they looked faceted.

  The little boy was overwhelmed by his oversized black puffer jacket, which was brand new but had brown stains already at the sleeve hems where they had met chocolate, the vestiges of which she saw on his wrists too when she pulled on his mittens. Jimmy looked like he was trapped inside an inflated balloon with only his face showing as he smiled and bounced happily alongside her.

  She had him dig his mittens into the aluminum bowl and sprinkle the “reindeer food” over her few front square feet of grass, then do so again in her backyard after taking the boy down and out the sliding door in Damion’s bedroom. There, in the small, patchy rectangle that was hers, the child lifted his cupped hands and blew on the grain to make it fly. Bits and dust and taupe oat flakes wafted in the light she had turned on at the back of the house, and the gold glitter she had mixed in glinted. She told him, as she always did, that the shine helped the reindeer find it.

  She only spread a little herself, to make sure the fun was mostly his.

  She took him down the street too, after clearing it with his parents, and they arrived shortly after eight at the little footbridge she had found over the stream that in warmer months grew rushes and cattails. She made sure he didn’t stumble into the frigid water but stood safely on the thatched slope to scatter what remained. She had him scour the bowl to get the last flakes, then made a show of handing it to the child to up-end and shake, moving her hips with his as she sang “Jingle Bells” at full voice like a madwoman, rolling her backs
ide and laughing in the dark.

  Inside again, she made Jimmy hot chocolate, some of which he missed getting into his mouth. He put the cup down and wiped west of his lips with his jacket sleeve as he balanced on one leg, then leaned forward to spread his arms in airplane wings.

  “Gammy, see what I can do?”

  Calyce countered with a one-foot stork stance, the ball of her right foot on her left instep, and he mimicked it, which is how Maria found them. Maria started doing it too and the three of them maintained it, hopping to retain their balance. Greg came in and tried but soon fell out of it, which made Jimmy ecstatic that he could best his father.

  When Damion appeared, wondering what they were all doing, he wouldn’t even try.

  “You all look stupid. Except you,” he said to his little nephew.

  She hugged her sleeping grandson and lifted him gently into the car.

  Alone in her room, she slid open her top right dresser drawer and lifted the drawstring pouch, then pulled out a random stone star that looked as though it had been dunked in watercolors. It had swirls of gray and white and cinnamon and peach along with a warm red-brown. She caressed it with her thumb, turning it on one of its points, back to front and back again between her fingers.

  From her bedside table, she picked up one in jadeite, a solid celadon cut thicker than the new one so smooth in her other hand. She put the light green star back in the bag and lay the watercolor in its stead on the table’s upper right corner nearest her head when she was in bed.

  They had to wait until afternoon Christmas Day for Maria and her family to arrive because Jimmy now celebrated the morning at home. Selene had stayed over so there were four adults wandering the house aimlessly in their pajamas, then in their clothes, waiting, unsettled, for the focusing joy of a child.

  Calyce kept busy preparing dinner and still demurring Selene’s help, which Selene reported privately to Damion, who then made his own circuit into the kitchen to press his mother to let her “do something, anything. She’s driving me insane.”