She couldn't join Abby and me in our hunt for a tree because she was going to be in her office, working on a paper she was supposed to deliver that week to a group of homeopaths in Massachusetts. And so when I phoned her later that day, I was calling her in her intoxicating little world in the Octagon. I used the phone in my kitchen so I, too, could be facing west: Together, sort of, we could watch the December sun sink.
"Find a tree?" she asked.
"A big, beautiful cat spruce. Just about two times Abby's height."
"Cat spruce?"
"A white spruce. Some people call them cat spruce because they smell a tad catlike once the season's over. But they're gray-green instead of a really deep green, and they always worked best with Elizabeth's ornaments. She was into blue and silver."
"Have you trimmed it?"
"Oh, no. Not till tomorrow. Want to join us?"
"Have you discussed this with Abby?"
"I'd warm her up. I wouldn't surprise her. For obvious reasons, she's a very adaptable kid."
"Leland, you know it's impossible. I'm going to have to take a pass. I'm sorry."
"Is this because of the paper you're writing? If that's all that's stopping you, we can trim the tree later this week--when you're back. You know, after you've dazzled the Mass homeys."
"I don't expect to dazzle anyone."
"You will."
"It's not going well."
"Then it's time to cut bait for the day. It's almost four. You're done."
"Probably."
"You should come have dinner with Abby and me. Join us for our special Saturday-night Disney film festival: Abby's favorite five minutes of every single video she owns. She's like a deejay."
"It's just not appropriate, Leland. You're a patient," she said, emphasizing patient like it was a new word in a foreign language I was struggling to understand.
"Then you should let me take you to dinner some night to thank you for the incredible work you've done. Just the two of us."
"Can't do it."
"Just can't go out on what the uninformed might mistake for a date?"
"Absolutely not."
"In that case, consider me cured. Emeritus. Better. All better."
Carissa continued to decline--that afternoon, and again when she returned Wednesday from Massachusetts--and so I decided I had only one alternative: I'd have to woo her.
Saturday night when I was reading to Abby in bed, she asked, "What's adaptable mean?"
I put down the book about the little girl and the corn cakes and the wild animals in the woods, and leaned back against the headboard of her bed. I hadn't realized she was paying attention to my conversation with Carissa.
"Let's see, adaptable. Flexible. Able to do lots of different things, and able to do them well. Our truck, for example. I think that's adaptable. I drive you and me to day care and work in it, and it's very comfortable. But I can also use it to haul lots of stuff--like those long pieces of wood for the church railing last week. Does that make sense?"
Her eyes on the bunnies on the knees of her pajamas, she said, "Why did you tell someone I'm adaptable?"
"I did, didn't I?" I said. I hoped I sounded nonchalant.
She nodded without looking up.
"Well, I probably told someone you were adaptable because you are. Like me. We're both very good at taking care of ourselves. When Mommy died, for instance, we were adaptable. We were used to having a house full of three people, and suddenly there were just us two. But we adapted. We were flexible."
She looked up. "Who were you talking to?"
"A lady doctor."
"But you're not sick, right?"
"Oh, no. I'm fine. Very fine, as a matter of fact."
"Why were you talking to a lady doctor about me? Do I have to see her?"
"Lord, no. You, my dear, are as healthy as a...as I don't know what. But you're not sick. You're the only kid in the history of day care who doesn't live with a runny nose and a cough."
"That's your job," she said, teasing me with one of the expressions she heard me use often.
"Well, it was. Hopefully it isn't anymore."
"So why were you talking to her about me?"
"Mostly I was talking to her about me."
"How come? You said you're not sick."
I lifted her up under her arms and she squealed. "Put me down!" she shouted, pretending to sound indignant, and she curled her legs at her knees as I bounced her up and down on her pillow.
"You ask too many questions," I said, smiling, and then I cradled her in my arms as if she were still a little baby. She giggled, and pulled at the ties to the hood of the sweatshirt I was wearing.
"Someday let's make this a house of three people again," she said.
"Want a new mom, eh?" I asked without thinking, the sentence escaping my lips before I'd had a chance to edit the content in my head. For a brief moment I was angry with myself, because the sentence had more to do with my fantasies for a future with Carissa Lake than it did with the care and nurture of my four-year-old girl.
"A new mom?" she asked, dubious. "I meant a brother. I think I'd like to have a baby brother someday."
I sat her up on my lap. "A brother?"
"A baby brother. Like Jesse," she explained, referring to the toddler who'd recently started coming to Abby's day care.
"Someone to boss around?"
"Yeah!"
"We'll look into it," I said. "But it might take a while."
I watched her digest what I was saying, and I could tell she was interpreting it accurately. Translation? You might be in high school before you get that sibling, kid, so don't hold your breath. And she understood. That was the great thing about Abby. She really was very adaptable.
"Can we do more projects tomorrow?" she asked, moving on when it was clear the brother was out.
"Projects?"
"More Christmas decorations!"
"Oh, yes. Absolutely. I've already rounded up pinecones, and I think we have just enough red ribbon from the presents people gave us last year."
"And cotton?"
"We'll get some."
"And we'll put the ornaments on the tree?"
"Of course."
"And we'll go to the church for the Christmas tea?"
"You bet."
"And there'll be the mushy chocolates I like?"
"I'm sure."
She nodded, satisfied. Although she wasn't going to get that brother, she would get to play Martha Stewart for an afternoon.
I hadn't tried wooing a woman in years. Maybe ever. After all, I hadn't exactly had to woo Elizabeth. We were both in our early twenties and had wound up in her bed together two nights after we'd met.
And in the years since she'd died, how many dates had I really gone on? Six? Eight? Certainly no more than ten. The result was six or eight or ten women with whom I was now a passing acquaintance or very casual friend. I never made enemies, and I always called them again when I'd said that I would. But it was hard to find time for that second date when I wasn't on fire for someone.
Carissa, however, was different. Moreover, I was different. I'm changed, I would think to myself as I drove to my office in the morning, sometimes actually waving at the gas station where I used to stop daily for coffee and cough drops. I'm a different guy, I'd say to myself as I toweled the sweat off my neck after another thirty minutes on the StairMaster at the health club during lunch. Pure and simple, I'd conclude as my ripe breakfast pear would melt in my mouth, I've been blessed with good health. Son of a gun. Me.
And so on Wednesday afternoon, immediately after Carissa had told me yet again that she couldn't possibly date me, I sent her a single red rose with a card. On Thursday I sent her a yellow rose. And when she arrived at her office on Friday, she found three white roses waiting for her at the door, one for each day of the weekend. It was hard not to phone her that Saturday or Sunday--I kept hoping she would call to thank me or, at the very least, tell me it was wrong to send my homey some po
sies--but I always managed to stop myself before I'd punched in the seventh digit of her number.
And while it seemed that she knew dramatically more about me than I did about her, she had revealed a few personal details I could use. She had said she dreamt sometimes of butterflies, so I bought her a butterfly-shaped Christmas ornament, the glass colored the orange and black of a monarch. When I recalled her saying she probably loved dates as much as I clearly despised them, I stopped by the health-food store where I knew she must shop, bought a bag of dates, and left them there with a note in the care of her niece. The note listed the nineteen ritualistic uses for the date that I'd been able to find on the Web. (My favorite? Some Berber tribesmen in the Atlas Mountains used them as ceremonial gifts for the parents of the women they wanted to wed.)
"Why don't you just leave the note and the dates at her office?" Whitney had asked. "She has a little wicker basket on her door."
"Because I want her to get them here," I'd answered, and Whitney had nodded knowingly. I get it, that nod had said.
I did utilize that little wicker basket, however: One day I left Carissa a colorful nylon loop for her eyeglasses, and on another I left her a pair of red wool socks with green reindeer and white snowflakes. For a moment the socks had seemed a little personal, but then I told myself I was the only person on the planet who grouped pretty wool socks with lingerie--it wasn't, after all, like I was giving her a pair of silk tap pants and a camisole, for God's sake--and so I offered her that gift as well.
And I knew Carissa had a cat, and her cat's happiness mattered to her greatly. Consequently, I left off a care package for both, a calico bag filled with catnip for the kitty and home-baked chocolate Christmas cookies for her that I had bought when I was taking Abby to meet Santa in Middlebury.
When she finally called, the Monday after I had begun my courtship in earnest, she begged me to stop and said she couldn't possibly accept the gifts I had given her. She said she would have to give them all back.
"Even the catnip?" I asked.
"Well, not the catnip. Sepia's spent the last couple days in kitty heaven."
"And the cookies?"
"Okay, not the cookies, either. But that eyeglass thing, and that Christmas ornament, and--"
"You can't give back the dates, Carissa. For all you know, I'm a Berber warrior with one very macho temper."
"The fact is, I know you're not."
"And the loop for your eyeglasses cost ninety-nine cents. Even if you give it back to me, I promise you I won't bother returning it to the store. Christmas is only a week away. Keep it."
"You really want me to?"
"Desperately."
She sighed, and the moment I heard the whisper of her breath, I knew she was, at least for the moment, wooed. I closed my eyes and pulled the mouthpiece away from my lips so she wouldn't hear my own little snuffle of rapture.
"You know if I agree to go out with you," she said, "you'll have to see a new homeopath."
"I'll be strong."
"I'll give you the name of a fellow in Burlington. He's excellent."
"Thank you."
"And I hope you know I don't feel good about this."
"I won't think less of you in the morning. I promise," I told her as I glanced at the calendar I kept on my desk. I saw Wednesday night was the yearly meditation on boredom that posed as a party at the mayor's office in City Hall, and Thursday and Friday nights I had important dates with my daughter: Thursday was the preschool's annual holiday play, and Friday we were shopping for Christmas presents for her cousins in New Hampshire. No matter. I would see Carissa tomorrow night. Tuesday. Tomorrow night I'd be on a date with my homey. Ex-homey. Erst-homey. Homey from heaven.
Chapter 10.
From Psora
(OR PSORIASIS)
The good physician will be pleased when he can enliven and keep from ennui the mind of a patient.
Dr. Samuel Hahnemann,
The Chronic Diseases, 1839
.
"Spend Christmas Eve with us, too," my sister, Diana, was saying. "Drive down here the day before. Abby can bunk with Lydia."
Even before Elizabeth had died, we'd always seemed to spend Christmas Day with my sister's family in Hanover. Thanksgiving was usually earmarked for Elizabeth's family, but Christmas seemed to be devoted to mine. I wasn't sure why, but I thought this had something to do with the teddy bears, and the huge numbers of them that had wound up with Diana--including the eight-foot display teddy our father's company had used for years in its trade show booth. Initially, Diana had been reduced to shrieking and sobs when she first saw it when she was nine: The poor child had wandered downstairs in our house in the middle of the night Christmas Eve and discovered what we would come to call Giganto Bear sitting upright in the doorway. Our father had thought it would make a fun Christmas surprise, and indeed it had. Sort of.
In any case, the teddies were now a symbol of Christmas for Diana, and that meant spending the holiday in New Hampshire.
"I can't imagine not being here Christmas Eve," I said, resting the cordless phone on my shoulder and spooning the last bite of breakfast melon into my mouth. I pressed the rind into the garbage and wandered into the living room to admire the tree Abby and I had decorated. About ninety-nine percent of the ornaments were on the branches Abby could reach, and so the spruce looked a bit like a mountain with a tree line: About three feet off the ground, the glass balls and cloth reindeer and silver tinsel started to diminish. By four feet the decorations went from sparse to nonexistent. My contributions, essentially, were the blue angel and the star that sat perched at the top of the tree.
"Abby expects Santa to find her here," I continued. "She expects to wake up in her very own house and find her presents under her very own tree."
"Santa somehow gets to those kids who are away from home all the time. Just tell her about the Christmas bookings at hotels in Hawaii."
"And one of Abby's friends is having a little party that night. They're all going to bake cookies for Santa. And you know how I love the Christmas Eve service here. You know how I love all the candles."
"We do have churches in Hanover, you know."
"Yeah, but you people are smarter than we are. You don't give the little kids candles."
"You really want to be there when the church goes up in flames. Is that it?"
"Have you ever watched their faces when they're raising and lowering their candles? They're so earnest about it. So serious. It's wonderful. They get the meaning of the ritual much better than we adults do."
"They're just little pyros. It's the only time they're given an adult-sanctioned chance to play with fire. Will Abby get her own candle this year?"
"Maybe. I think we're going to go to the eight-thirty service. It'll depend on how awake she is."
"So you'll drive down here Christmas morning?"
"You bet. Will you be done opening the loot Santa left by early afternoon?"
"God, yes. Will and Lydia will have ripped apart the mountain by seven A.M. By early afternoon, they'll have the list ready with everything Santa forgot--and the stores where Mom and Dad can find it."
"Then we'll leave here about eleven. We should be in Hanover by one."
"What will you do Christmas Eve?"
"You mean besides the candlelight service?"
"Besides that, yes."
"I'm having dinner with someone."
"Like a date?"
"Romantic dinner for two."
"Where?"
"Here."
"Here, like your house?"
"Like that. Yes."
"Is this a woman you've been seeing a long time? Is this some secret you've had all fall?"
"Oh, no. I would have told you. Tonight's our first date."
"But you're spending Christmas Eve together?"
"Well, it's not official. I haven't asked her," I said. I reached down for one of the silver and blue bells on the tree and turned it so that the swirls faced the center of the ro
om.
"But you think she'll say yes."
"I do," I said, and I noticed the ornament sparkle as it reflected a fragment of light from the sun. "I'm absolutely sure of it."
Do I know Richard Emmons because I know his cure? Sometimes I believe that I do. Biographers, after all, often begin their books knowing that little about their subjects. Besides, I know what Carissa was thinking when she administered Richard's remedy, and what Jennifer told me about the weeks before and after the tiny pellets of medicine rolled in the pink-and-white froth of his mouth.