Christmas Present

Christmas Present

Cody had wished her mother dead many times. Before she’d left home, she’d even fantasised about ways she could make it happen. Not kill her exactly, but perhaps refuse to open the text saying she’d taken an overdose, or go to a friend’s house after school and hope that she didn’t choke on her own vomit before her father got home from work. Now she was spending Christmas Eve watching her mother die. She looked up as the door opened and the sounds and smells of an evening on a busy ward permeated the quiet room.

‘Everythin’ okay, darrlin’?  I’m goin’ off shift soon so might not see you again.’

‘Thank you, Brenda. We’re okay. Just waiting. Thank you so much for all you’ve done for us.’

            Brenda was five foot nothing, a middle-aged lady with a pleasant face. For the past twelve hours she’d whirlwinded around the ward, changing sheets, whisking commodes under bottoms, turning passive bodies and generally mopping up the leakings of the old and sick. The cadence of her Jamaican voice had soothed and jollied, a balm against the background of coughs and bells and voices asking a single question over and over. There hadn’t been much for her to do in the little side room by the nursing station. The drips were out and the catheter bag remained empty. Cody was watching her mother closing down, organ by organ, only the whistle of her breathing showing that she remained this side. A quick wave of a gloved hand and Brenda was gone. Cody looked across the bed at her father, slumped in the upright armchair and he winked at her over tented fingers.

“I think this is the first Christmas I’ve ever seen Mother sober.’ Cody spoke as if to herself. There was only a single armchair in the small room, the standard hospital wipe-clean kind. It dwarfed her father. Never big, he had seemed to fade as the years went by. Cody hadn’t been able  to bring herself to sit in the imprint of so many decaying bodies and so had placed herself away from the bedside on one of the wood-framed stacking chairs, designed to encourage you to leave by the end of visiting time. She sat tidily, legs crossed at the ankles, feet tucked under the chair and hands clasped together in her lap.

 ‘The children were asking about her just before the hospital phoned.’ She smiled, tight-lipped. ‘My first thought was it was coincidence, but I guess it was always going to happen at Christmas, wasn’t it?’

Her father’s posture didn’t obviously change but he tensed, waiting to see where the conversation was going.

‘It was the one thing you could rely on with Mother, that she’d manage to ruin Christmas. Do you remember that last one? The one before I left?’ Cody’s eyes suddenly misted over and she blinked hard to stop the tears spilling down her cheeks. ‘I was sixteen, Daddy. That’s what Jasmine is now. It’s too young to deal with all that.’

It had been the family tradition back then to have a Cheese and Wine Party on Christmas Eve. For a month before the event, the talk at the dinner table would be about the invitation list.

            ‘You need to phone your brother and his wife – what’s this one’s name?’ Daddy had a pen and notepad by his plate and would obediently write down names or scribble them out as Mother decided who she was still speaking to and who would still set foot in the house.  She’d wave her wine glass around, sloshing liquid over the edge whenever she got animated. ‘Don’t ask them from number twelve. She is a real cow. Do you remember what she called me?’

            ‘You were all over her husband like a rash,’ Cody muttered into her mashed potato. She glanced sideways at her mother who was leaning, chin in hand, elbow on the table. The other hand flourished the inevitable wine glass and a cigarette, ash precarious. She’d put on some bright red lipstick to welcome her husband home, and it had run slightly into the lines around her mouth. She always reminded Cody of a faded vamp from an old black and white movie. Perhaps part of her tragedy was being misplaced in time, the adult Cody mused.

            The custom was that Cody would help her mother prepare the house while her father did the shopping. The main difference from everyday life was that her mother would still be upright at seven o’clock when the first visitors arrived. She would open the front door to each new arrival, glass and cigarette in hand. Cody would take their coats upstairs and pile them on the double bed in the guest room and her father would pour the wine. Uncle Jim and Aunty Linda had arrived late that year. Their old Ford Anglia had boiled dry on Box Hill, so it was nine o’clock before they knocked at the door. Mother had long abandoned her post by then so it was Cody who welcomed them in.

            ‘Well! Look at you, chick. Hasn’t she grown?’ Aunty Linda kissed her on both cheeks and handed over the full-length fur coat that she’d been wearing at Christmas for as long as Cody could remember. Uncle Jim kissed her quickly on the cheek and leered up at the mistletoe, waggling his eyebrows. Cody laughed and took his overcoat and trilby. Jim followed his wife towards the wine and Cody tripped up the stairs with the coats. One of her father’s office friends was leaning against the wall at the top, waiting for the bathroom to be free and Cody was smiling at something she’d said, which is why she didn’t initially register the unexpected presence in the guest room. She stopped, just on the threshold, coats clasped to her bosom and gaped. Illuminated only by the light which spilled through from the landing, her mother was leaning back against the wardrobe door, cocktail dress unzipped, one side sliding down her bare arm. Her body was framed by the arms of a man who Cody didn’t know, who looked towards her, slightly gormless, with a smear of bright red lipstick on his chin. That same lipstick was on the edge of the glass her mother held, the glass her mother threw at her as she shrieked ‘Get out! Get out you little bastard. Go on, get out and shut the bloody door.’

The coats slid to the floor as she stood frozen, then backed away, into the gentle grasp of her father’s hands. He held her shoulders briefly then turned her towards the head of the stairs.

‘Linda, could you…?’

To this day Cody was not sure how they’d got there so quickly, but Aunty Linda took her, shielding her from the curious glances of other guests who sipped at their wine and suddenly seemed to be absorbed in conversation. The kitchen was dark and quiet and fifteen minutes later Cody and Linda were sitting side by side at the breakfast bar. Cody wrapped her hands round the mug of sweet cocoa which Linda had made for her, trying to soak up the warmth and stop herself trembling.

‘Are you alright, Cody?’

Neither of them had heard her father come in although they vaguely registered the sounds of the party swelling before the door closed again.

‘Where’s Mother? Is she packing?’

The two adults glanced at each other, while Cody gazed at the skin forming on the top of the cocoa.

‘I’ve put her to bed, Cody. She’s not well. She’ll be fine in the morning.’

Cody meant to push the bar stool back as she got up but it crashed over onto its side. ‘In bed? Daddy, you must be joking? You saw her? Didn’t you see what she was doing?’ She knew the pitch of her voice was rising but didn’t seem able to do anything about it. ‘How can you just put her to bed and say everything will be alright? It won’t be. It can’t be while she’s still here. Why can’t you see that? Why do you always have to take her side?’

She backed away, arms across her chest, as her father reached towards her.

‘Cody, she’s not well. She didn’t know what she was doing. She didn’t mean anything.’

Cody backhanded her face, swiping tears and snot across her cheeks. She shook her head, not taking her eyes from his face. ‘She’s not ill, Daddy. She’s drunk. She’s always drunk. You’re always making excuses for her. I hate her and I hate you. You just won’t see what a bitch she is. If she’s not going then I will.’

A sudden burst of voices at the nursing station brought Cody out of her reverie with a start. The only light in the room came through the small window in the door. The ward had quieted with the lateness of the hour and she had to listen hard for the sound of her mother’s breathing. A gurgling exhalation and then a pause. Cody held her own breath as she waited and finally a gasp and they were both breathing again. Cody leaned forward, but couldn’t bring herself to touch the bony hands which lay one atop the other, so still on the cover. They lifted and fell with each breath, each movement so small. Cody’s father hadn’t moved much but his eyes still watched her from deep within that gentle, much-loved face.

‘It was always her with you, wasn’t it, Daddy? You could let me go but not her.’ Cody got up and walked to the door, not wanting to hear the reply. ‘I’m going for a coffee.’

She nodded briefly at the nurses gathered at the desk, taking instructions for the coming shift and tip-tapped along the bright corridor towards the lift. Downstairs the restaurant was empty, most of the space shuttered off, chairs upended on the tables, waiting for the cleaners to wash the floors. Notices around the area informed staff and visitors of restricted opening hours over the Christmas period. Cody hesitated at the drinks machine, her finger hovering over the coffee button before changing her mind and pressing hot chocolate. Her hope of something rich and comforting evaporated with the steam, whose thin smell reinforced the drink’s watery appearance and melded with the residual odours of chip fat and cabbage. Cody felt  nauseous as she carefully carried the plastic cup to the only table. She rummaged in her bag until she found her phone and speed-dialled home. As she listened to the rings she absently clicked the lid of the old-fashioned lipstick case she’d found while rummaging, open and shut, open and shut, and tapped one impatient foot in time.

‘Hi, it’s me.’

‘D-a-a-a-d. It’s Mum.’ Cody held the phone away from her ear until her daughter had done. ‘How’s Grandma? Are you coming home? It’s not the same without you, I won’t be able to sleep. Daniel says he’s not putting his stocking up if you’re not here. We had pizza tonight. Oh – here’s Dad. I love you. Byeee.’

‘Hey, Babe. How’s it going?’

Cody closed her eyes and relaxed into the mellow woodwind of her husband’s voice. ‘It won’t be long now. I had to get out for a few minutes, I was suffocating in there. Too much time to think.’

‘It’s the very last time, Baby. Make sure she’s gone, then come home. We’ll wait Christmas till you get back and then it’s new century, new beginnings eh?’

Cody leaned forward, elbows on knees, head hanging, and let his voice do the job on her tense shoulders that his hands would normally do.

‘I’ll phone again when it’s over.’ Stiffly she stood up and put her phone back in her bag. Somewhere, softly, there were carols playing.

The Sister was sitting at the nurses’ station when Cody got back to the ward. As soon as she saw her, Cody slowed her pace, knowing yet not wanting to know. From her very heart she just wanted to turn and walk out of the hospital and get into her car and drive home to her family, it was just that her treacherous feet kept moving forward.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Denham.’ The Sister got up and moved around the desk. ‘Your mother died just after you left. It sometimes happens like that. Would you like me to…?’

‘No…’ Cody blocked the woman with a hand, opened the door and moved into the room, registering slowly that nothing and everything was changed. Her mother lay as she’d lain for the past two days, except that she was still. The quiet hum of the pressure relief mattress had stopped. Behind Cody, life went ruggedly on in a ward that didn’t really differentiate between day and night. In front of her, there was silence. Her mother’s hands were no longer clasped but lay alongside the wasted body on top of the sheet which had been pulled taut. Finally Cody could approach the bed. She perched awkwardly on the edge and put one hesitant warm and living hand over the cold bones of her mother’s.  She looked across to the armchair, empty now.

‘They’ve gone.’

‘I’m sorry?’ The Sister had followed her into the room and was standing at the foot of the bed. Her face expressed concern. ‘What’s gone?’

            ‘They’ve gone. My mother and father. He was waiting for her. He always said he would, he said he couldn’t move on until she came too.’ Cody took a deep breath. ‘It was always her, you see. It was always my mother for him.’ She flicked open the lipstick case which she had carried with her for so long and twisted up the sharp angle of red which remained. Gently she began to paint the blue from her mother’s lips and her tears began to fall.

The Twelve Months To Christmas

This is the story I didn't submit for my latest assignment.

Just one week after Christmas, my doctor said to me, ‘I’m sorry, Rosie, the tests have come back positive. You do have type two diabetes. Do you understand what this means?’

            I certainly did. Either a lifetime of deprivation, dieting and exercising or a future involving blindness, sugar induced comas (though they sounded strangely attractive) and amputations.

            ‘I’m not really sure, Doctor. I suppose I’ll need to lose weight.’

            Doctor Callaghan’s smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. I remembered when he first came to the surgery. He had brought such freshness and young, virile energy. My Mum’s generation had said what a nice boy he was, whereas I always thought he looked like his Mum knitted his jumpers for him. Those same jumpers now covered a more comfortable belly, and his enthusiasm had waned as the lines around his baby-blues had deepened.

            ‘Hop on the scales then.’

            Hop! If I could hop onto the scales, I probably wouldn’t be in a situation where I had to.  I gazed at the thinning patch on the top of Doctor Callaghan’s head as he manoeuvred the weights along the sliding balance until there was a clunk. A minor adjustment and he stepped back. I held up one hand.

            ‘Don’t say it out loud, Doctor. We’ll look back on it and smile when I’ve halved it.’

Just two weeks after Christmas, I went to CBT.

            ‘So, Rosie.’

            In the past when I’d been to counselling, the room had been redolent with therapeutic oils, the sofas had been deep and comforting and the sounds of waves on the shore had calmed the emotions. CBT, it seemed, was different. We used one of the doctors’ rooms and the therapist sat side-on to the desk, clipboard at the ready.

There was nothing soothing in the seventies built, city centre surgery with its thirty years backlog of poor maintenance and creeping damp. The curtain was pulled across to hide the couch but a tap dripped into the sink by the frosted window and the corners of the posters instructing you to ‘Get Your Flu Jab’ and ‘Wash Your Hands’ curled off the walls. The generic logo whirled around the computer screen and there was a tangle of blood pressure monitors and stethoscope tubing pushed to the back of the desk. The building always seemed too hot  and stuffy to me. I could see the germs basking in the heat, lying on their backs, hands behind their heads, as if floating in a nutritious soup, multiplying, smiling, coming for me.

            ‘Tell me about a point in the past week when you have overeaten.’

            I racked my brains to isolate one example from the many. I loved eating. I loved food. I loved cooking and sharing.

            ‘Erm, perhaps when I’d cooked dinner for my friend and she couldn’t make it so I ate both portions’

            ‘So. What thoughts were going through your head as you ate?’

            ‘I don’t think I really thought anything. I was fed up she’d let me down and there was nothing on tele, so I just ended up eating it all.’

            ‘And how did that make you feel?’

            And so it went on. What were my thoughts? How did it make me feel? It seemed that ‘full’ isn’t an emotion and perhaps I was using food to avoid dealing with my feelings. No shit, Sherlock! I went away with homework. I could identify the feeling on that one. I felt like a child again and that was not a comfortable feeling.

On the third week after Christmas, I went to join the gym. I stood at the bottom of the stairs and watched two sylphs in lycra take both flights at a run. I couldn’t embarrass myself by taking the lift up to the initiation session I’d booked. It seemed like cheating before I even started. I was passed by two more couples who smiled sympathetically as I hauled myself up using the bannister. I waited at the top until my breathing had slowed. I was glad I’d opted for the gray track suit as it wouldn’t clash with the beetroot of my face. I leaned on the wall and looked at the double doors which were all that stood between me and a fit new life. They were dull gray with a small, square window in each. The looked for all the world as if they were prison doors and I could almost hear the sound they’d make as they clanged shut behind me. Claustrophobia tightened my chest and I made my way slowly back down the stairs and across to Starbucks.

On the fourth week after Christmas, I decided to walk myself thin. I was feeling rather virtuous. My CBT diary showed that I was following the techniques we’d discussed. I’d bought a smaller plate, ringed with red, because research shows that people eat less off a red plate. I wondered idly if the same applied to red food and how long I could stay on an exclusive diet of tomato ketchup and red cabbage. But idle was not the emotion of the day (if it was an emotion – I’d have to ask). My gray track suit was still in the washing basket as it had been soaked in sweat after my abortive trip to the gym the week before. It seemed important psychologically to look the part, because I needed to stride out, not dawdle if I was going to be successful. I decided on my black leggings with walking boots,  a day-glo yellow cycling jacket that a previous boyfriend had overlooked when he packed to leave and – most importantly – a sweatband around my forehead. I added the final touches with my ipod, pre-loaded with Gorillaz for the energetic phase and a Chill album for the cool down, and a bottle of water. I would have to buy one of those special bottles that you could put your hand through, which would act like a weight to increase my calorific expenditure. So, loaded with the right vocabulary and the right attitude, I set off to the park.

On the fifth week after Christmas, I ran myself a bath. It was the only thing I could think of to stop myself power-eating through the contents of the fridge. I’d run through all the CBT techniques. My thoughts were that I’d been on a proper diet for three days now and my feelings were basically raw hunger. I’d been out for a walk again and was soaked to the skin. I’d like to say it was the sweat I’d worked up but it was actually that gray, dismal drizzle that seemed to have replaced the story-book snow of my childhood. I’d done the park every day for a week now and felt I’d seen all it had to offer.  In the meantime, I needed to get warm and stay away from the kitchen. Preparing the bathroom took on the air of a ritual. I found the cream bath sheet, which would fit all the way round me, and hung it over the radiator. The water was steaming and fragrant with oils - wintergreen for the aches and ginger for its appetite suppressant qualities. I turned on my i-pod, docked it on the windowsill, lit the candles on the toilet seat and lowered myself, groaning, into the bath. Paul McKenna’s voice lovingly reassured me that he could make me thin.

On the sixth week after Christmas, it all felt such a faff. It was still raining and my thigh muscles were so sore that even lowering myself onto the toilet for a wee was agony. My research had shown that pacing was an important skill and so I decided that today would be a rest and planning day. Every time I got hungry, I sniffed one of my essential oils and when I got desperate about three o’clock, I dripped some vanilla essence under my tongue. My God! I felt virtuous and sick with hunger. Never mind my clothes, it felt like my skin was hanging on me. There was nothing left to fill it. My body was eating itself.

On the seventh week after Christmas, I went back to be weighed. Luckily the appointment was immediately followed by a CBT session and we were able to talk about coping with setbacks and disappointments. Because it was weigh-in day, I’d skipped breakfast and hadn’t even risked the weight of a coffee. I sat now, surrounded by my fat, arms folded across my ample bosom and glowered at the thin thighs and prominent cheekbones of the woman in front of me.

            ‘So, tell me about a point in the past week which has been difficult for you.’

The CBT was working. The decision was so much easier this time round.

            ‘Well, half an hour ago when I discovered that I’d only lost a pound in spite of all my efforts, that has to be a contender.’

            The sarcasm hit her professional armour and slithered to the floor, unnoticed.

            ‘What thoughts were going through your mind?’

And so it went on until I broke.

            ‘ I thought, what’s the point? It’s like everything I do. I give it my best and it isn’t enough. I wasn’t thin enough to keep Jez and I’ll never be thin enough. I’ll just get fatter and fatter and no-one will ever want me and then I’ll die.’

            ‘And how does that make you feel?’

            ‘Are you kidding me?’

            She looked at me over those little half-moon glasses that she wore at the end of her nose. That curly, graying hair was so, so…middle-class.

‘I feel lonely. And sad. And useless. And ugly.’

‘And do your friends see you as useless and ugly?’

‘I suppose not. They’re always on at me to come out with them. They say it’s not as much fun if I’m not there.’

‘Okay.’ She dropped her gaze and blinked hard.  ‘Can I suggest that until our next session you behave as if you are not ugly and useless. Perhaps you could behave as if you are that person that your friends can see. How do you feel about that.’

I felt okay. Perhaps lunch would be a salad after all.

On the eighth week after Christmas, I was getting what I’d craved. I bet you think it was chocolate and latte with whipped cream, don’t you? Well, you’re wrong. I told them at work I was coming to the girls’ anti-Valentine night out after all and you’d have thought I’d won the lottery and promised to share it out. Sharon and Dana (‘Pronounced Day-naah, long final vowel’ as she always introduced herself) leaned on my desk with their pert derrieres up in the air until the office manager coughed meaningfully and we all got back to the job in hand. Lunchtime had never been so easy. I’d brought a sandwich and didn’t even pinch one of Dana’s chips. What’s more I walked back up the stairs to the office, three flights, and only had to spend five minutes in the toilets before I was fit to go back to my desk.

On the ninth week after Christmas, I went to Slimming World. Dana was a long-term recidivist and had signed up already to lose the half a stone she’d put on over Christmas. She had half a stone that she repeatedly gained and lost over the course of a year. We were all kept up to date on her successes and failures in minute detail. Dana didn’t do any of the meal planning, that was too much bother. She just had two of the shakes every day –  ‘two hundred calories and all the nutrition I need’ – and went twice a week, at five pounds a time (sterling), to be weighed. In between times, when she was putting the half stones back on, she didn’t worry about nutrition much, she just replaced the calories. I, however, intended to learn the lessons they had to teach me. ‘A diet is for life, not just for Christmas’, as they say. I thought they were joking when they brought up the subject of ‘syns’ in the introductory talk. What thoughts went through my head when she said described the syns we were allowed? I thought , if I was going to have a sin, I’d want a proper one. Sloth, for example, or greed. Somehow fat-free chips didn’t have the same appeal. The weigh-in was good news though. I’d lost five pounds at last. On the way home, Dana stopped for a kebab. I left her to it and walked back through the park as fast as my shrinking legs would carry me.

On the tenth month after Christmas, I felt like a new girl. Sharon, Dana and I hit town to find something to wear for yet another night out. Between us we tried on pretty much every dress and top in the High Street. We tromped through the shopping centre, arms linked, doing that leg braiding walk that had us crying with laughter. We rocked up to the changing rooms with arms full of clothes and argued cheerfully about how many we could take in. Okay, once inside, I slunk off into a cubicle leaving the other two to display their wares in the open plan bit but I’d come out to show them or get my zip done up and even to look in the mirrors and take artistic selfies. I hadn’t been clothes shopping since I left school. The occasion that broke me was when my Mum had dragged me round to find something for the Leavers’ Ball. She’d actually walked out and left me when I’d commented loudly that they ought to have wider aisles in shops for fat people. I had thought she was going to hit me right there and then. I didn’t go to the Ball, I just left school.

On the eleventh month after Christmas, my GP said to me,

            ‘Well! You’ve worked a miracle here. Your tests are all within normal range and you’ve lost more than two stone. How do you feel about that?’

            D’you now what? I knew what I felt about that. I felt proud and happy and I felt twenty five not fifty five.

            ‘I’m really pleased.’

            ‘I don’t need to see you again unless you have any problems.’ Dr Callaghan leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head and beamed. I walked out past the reception desk; I didn’t need to book another appointment. I went down the stairs at a trot and past the pharmacy entrance. I didn’t need any medication either. I unlocked my bike and set off for the gym.

           

            Now it’s twelve months after Christmas and time for a parteee!