Lisa Finch

The Bayberry

Lisa Finch

Issue 58, Autumn 2019

It’s Christmas Eve. I shiver in my wool winter coat as I press the code to let myself in at the Golden Acres Nursing Home. The supper hour will be over. Already it’s dark outside.

It’s too cold to snow. If only this heaviness would lift. I take one last look at the sky: ugly, grey and impassive. I step inside the near-empty lobby.

Most of the visitors won’t be around until tomorrow, Christmas Day. Later tonight they’ll have a sing along, but other than that it’s quiet except for the piped-in Christmas music. If I have to hear another instrumental version of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” this week, I’ll scream.

I turn down the hallway to Nana’s room. Since my split with Charles, my visits with her are more peaceful. No more dragging Charles here, with his flimsy excuses about why he can’t stay long. It smells like a hospital. You know how I hate hospitals. Twenty minutes in, he’d catch my eye and mouth the words: “Let’s wrap this up.”

Wrap it up. Like we’re left-overs. I won’t miss his pithy way with words.

But never mind. Maybe tonight Nana will be awake and lucid. I pad lightly into her room and turn on her small nightstand lamp.

“Nana.” She’s snoring lightly. “Nana.”

She opens her eyes and a smile brightens her face. “Elaine.” She mistakes me for my mom who’s been dead for twenty three years.

“No, Nana, it’s me, Allison.”

“Where’s Elaine?” She looks around, as if she’s with me.

“She died, Nana.” On some level she knows this. Every time we have this conversation, Nana nods and says, “Oh, right.” She’s saddened by this old, remembered hurt, not ripped open by a new one.

I hold up the bag I’m carrying and lean in to whisper. “I have the bayberry.”

“Oh!” Her eyes widen as mine probably did when I was little and she brought out the candle. “You’re not supposed to have those in here.”

And just like that, she heads back into the land of awareness.

I put my finger to my lips and then say, “I’ll keep watch. We’ve got to let it burn down to the stump, right?”

“What time is it?”

“Just after seven. No worries, it’ll burn past midnight.”

“Watch out for Nurse Roberta,” she mutters. “She can be a real bitch.”

This brings to mind the stories Nana has told me over the years, of her hell-raising days. Tonight’s rebellion, having an open flame, is mild by comparison.

My mother, evidently, was also a wild child. Her final escapade followed her departure from a pub with too much alcohol in her system, and too little inhibition behind the wheel. I picture my father beside her, egging her on, and then the look on both of their young faces as an instant sobering came too late.

Yet somehow the rebel gene skipped me.

I think about Charles, always getting me to try new things, like parasailing. Later he’d nuzzle my neck and say, “There, that wasn’t so bad, now was it.” Meanwhile, I’d been paralyzed with fear, fighting nausea, the whole time.

“What’s wrong?” Nana asks, bringing me back to the present with a thud.

But I don’t want to talk about Charles. Anyway, there’s an upside to my impending divorce: I can go where I want and do what I please without fallout. With Charles, if it wasn’t his idea, there was always fallout.

But enough of that.

I pull the green bayberry taper from my bag and check the door. Last year I’d brought in a flameless candle as I’d done every year Nana’s been here. That’s me, the rule follower. This Christmas season though, I’m spurred to change things up. This time, screw the rules. Nana gets a real bayberry.

There’s a scuffle at the door and I let out an involuntary gasp. Just the resident cat. A sort of unreasonable relief washes over me.

I softly open Nana’s drawer and pull out the cat treats. “Here, Kitty.”

The orange tabby pushes alongside my calf, allows a pet, gobbles the treats, and then buggers off.

“Are we really going to do this?” Nana whispers, looking over at the candle.

“Yes. We really are.”

“You?” She chuckles. “Going against the rules?”

“Sometimes tradition needs to take precedence over rules.”

“Oh,” she smiles and nods.

What if this was the last time I can do this with her?

I push this thought aside as I focus on the task at hand and clear a spot on her desk. I pull a candle holder out of my bag and position the candle. Then I strike the match and put it to the wick, watch it catch. There. No going back.

I sit on Nana’s bed. “It’s beautiful.” She slips her old leathery hand in mine. It feels cold.

She turns with a surprise to see tears slipping down my face. “What is it?”

What is there to say? That, even if she lives, this might be our last real Christmas? That next year her Alzheimer’s might have stolen her away, that she might not even know me?

“Nothing. I’m being a weirdo. It’s the season.”

We sit in the silence, the scent of the bayberry pushing me back in time. She closes her eyes and smiles.

My phone goes off.

Charles: I need 2 talk. Meet later?

I shouldn’t answer. The last time we met for drinks, under the guise of settling our affairs out of court, had ended badly. I’d been stupid enough to think maybe we could work things out. The next morning, he couldn’t look me in the eye. I wasn’t surprised when he sent me a text later, saying we’d made a mistake.

And what did we have worth saving anyhow? Every time we’d go for a walk, I’d spend it looking at his back. I couldn’t move faster; he wouldn’t slow down. Eurydice would’ve walked safely out of the Underworld if she’d been with Charles instead of Orpheus. Sometimes I wondered. If I turned and walked the other way, how long would it have taken Charles to notice?

I text: Can’t talk now.

Charles: Where are you?

Me: With Nana.

After several minutes of silence, my phone beeps. It’s Charles: After?

Me: I’m here til midnight.

Charles: Bayberry? So. He remembered. Damn.

But it’s too late for any of that now. He and I, we are like a recipe gone horribly wrong. Maybe we’d started out with the right ingredients, but whatever was in the pot now was beyond saving.

Destination: garbage can.

Yes bayberry, I text.

Charles: Call me after midnight.

I stab my phone’s off button. I will not call him and definitely will not meet with him.

I can tell by Nana’s face she knows I’m talking to Charles. Or maybe it’s my face that gives me away. Anyway, when she’s herself, she knows exactly what’s going on, even when not a word is spoken. I’ll clutch at this night we have together, willing it to last, willing her to stay.

“Tell me the bayberry story,” I say.

She puts her hands on my face. “You haven’t changed one bit.”

Then her face clouds over with doubt and I hate myself. I’ve pushed too much; she’s lost in time and can’t recall the story. When I was a child, I begged her to tell it every year, but now it’s lost to her.

She’s looking at the window, but it’s dark. All we can see are our white faces staring back. Ghosts of ourselves.

Softly I start, “This bayberry candle comes from a friend…”

She frowns. She doesn’t remember the words; she folds her hands in her lap.

I continue, “So on Christmas Eve, burn it down to the end. For a bayberry candle burned to the socket, will bring joy to the heart and gold to the pocket.”

She nods and forces a smile. Her eyes glisten. “I used to know that.”

You still do. Just not at this moment.

After sitting in silence for a bit she turns to me. “What’s the legend?” Her forehead creases. “I don’t think I know it."

I take her hand. “If you burn the bayberry to the end, right on into Christmas Day, you will have good luck. If you don’t, then it’s bad luck.”

She nods. “Right.”

After a few minutes she says, “I’m tired.”

“So lie down.” I kiss her cheek. “I’ll keep watch.”

***

I’ve dozed off and don’t hear Charles come in. When I open my eyes, he’s standing over me. I gasp, but he whispers. “Shhh.” Then he motions for me to come with him. When I shake my head, he gives me his signature lopsided grin.

He heads from the room, confident I will follow. I get as far as Nana’s door. There I am, staring at his back again.

“Come outside. I need a cig.”

“Charles, I—“

“One cig. We can talk.”

“Nana…”

“Is asleep.”

He bites his lip. His eyes are wide and disarming. How many times has he melted me into forgiveness? Now he smiles—it is, objectively, a gorgeous, sexy smile—and I expect my knees to go boneless.

They don’t.

“Charles, I’m tired of this. Aren’t you tired of this?”

He shrugs. “I miss you.”

Well, who doesn’t miss a doormat? Who doesn’t miss someone who adores you? But this kind of worship is something he’s never earned, doesn’t deserve.

“I don’t miss you,” I lie.

He tilts his head. Then he reaches in his pocket. “I’ve got something for you.”

He pulls out a box wrapped in metallic red with a glittery gold ribbon. I open it. It’s a shiny bracelet bedazzled with sparkling crystals. It’s not my taste at all, nothing I would ever wear. I say thank you because that’s what you say when you receive a gift.

“I didn’t get you anything.”

“You could though.” He steps in close. “You could make my Christmas very merry.”

Even a cheesy line like this would have, not all that long ago, made my skin tingle. But now I hear footsteps down the hall and all I can think is that it’s Nurse Roberta and she’s going to snuff out that candle.

I can’t let her do that.

“Have you been listening to me?” Charles asks.

“No.” I touch his sleeve. “I haven’t. And I’m sorry. But Charles, there really isn’t anything more to say. If we’re being honest here, you’re just hoping for a quick hook up tonight and then tomorrow morning, we’ll be right here where we started.”

“Again, I’m sorry,” I say. His mouth drops open as I tuck the gift into his pocket. “Merry Christmas,” I tell him, realizing how lame it sounds.

“Merry Christmas.” He turns and walks away with a shrug.

Once again, I’m looking at his back.

I peer into Nana’s room. The candle still burns bright. Nurse Roberta heads towards me, offers what might be a smile, and then passes by.

I step into the room. The bayberry candle steadily burns, no doubt it will do so right to the end. I can’t control the future but I can do this one thing for Nana, for Christmas.