Chapter 33
In the late afternoon the day before Gabby’s surgery, Natalie found her standing in the upstairs hallway staring into space, shoulders creeping up toward her ears. She touched her back lightly, and Gabby jumped.
“Sorry! Didn’t mean to give you a heart attack.”
“Yeah, am I not already dealing with enough health issues?” Gabby gave a half-hearted smile. “What’s up?”
“Have you finished everything you need to do for tomorrow?”
“I think so. I’m packed, I sent all the work and personal emails I had to get out. I want to spend some time with everyone, and then I guess I just…wait? Try to sleep?”
“Well, if you want to come downstairs, we have something for you.”
Gabby narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “What?”
“You’ll see! Come on.”
Natalie led Gabby down the steps and into the living room, where Angus was sitting on the couch waiting for them. Gabby’s gaze turned to the corner where a Christmas tree now stood. Angus had run out to buy it that morning, and they’d done a speed round of decorating once Gabby had gone upstairs, Natalie waving Angus and Rob into the living room like she was directing a military raid, the two of them running in, each clutching one end of the fir. They’d haphazardly thrown on as many ornaments as they could in the time they had. It wasn’t quite aesthetically pleasing, but it was something.
“Oh, you all got a tree,” Gabby said, distracted but trying to be appreciative. “That’s very sweet.”
“The tree is only part of it,” Natalie said. “Sit on the couch, please, and make yourself comfortable for the show.”
“Um, okay,” Gabby said, and sat next to Angus, who tucked a blanket over them both.
Natalie cleared her throat. “Presenting a one-night-only, not-at-all-official production of…The Nutcracker.” She hit play on Tchaikovsky’s gorgeous, merry soundtrack.
“Oh my God, you did not,” Gabby said, her hands flying up to her mouth. “What?”
“Ahem, we ask the audience to be quiet and respectful,” Natalie said in a lofty tone, and Gabby made a zipping shut motion with her mouth, the skin around her eyes starting to crinkle.
Last night, when Rob had knocked on her door, he’d explained all about Gabby’s to-do list. “It sounds like she’s done most of the stuff on it,” he said, shy, his hands fiddling with the empty air at his sides. “Taught Christina how to make soup. Wrote letters to her loved ones.”
“Oh,” Natalie had said, “that explains the matching envelopes I saw on Christina’s and Angus’s dressers.”
Rob’s eyes flitted to the top of Natalie’s dresser—empty—and then he quickly went on, “But she can’t bring Christina to The Nutcracker. So I wondered if there was any way we could bring The Nutcracker to her.”
“I haven’t seen it in forever,” Natalie said. “I’m not sure if I even remember what it’s about.” She turned away from him and walked deeper into her room.
“Right,” he said, nodding. “Probably a silly idea. I’ll let you get some rest—”
“Come on,” she said. Having Rob in her room was messy and confusing, but they were doing this for Gabby.
“What?”
“Let’s see if…” She sat on her futon bed and typed a search term into YouTube. “Okay, I found at least part of an old recording.”
Tentatively, he sat down a few inches away from her. His body seemed to radiate heat, or maybe there was some other reason she felt warm.
“Ready?” she asked, trying not to look directly at him, and he nodded, so she pressed play.
An hour and a half later, they’d made it all the way through, charmed by this blurry bootleg, smiles on both of their faces. Natalie put on her creative writing hat, ready to problem-solve. “Okay, obviously we’re not ballet dancers. Unless you have a secret talent?”
“Certainly not ballet.”
“But we could still tell the story. It’ll be corny, but Gabby likes corn. And they have a shitload of Christmas decorations in the closet. I mean, you remember that housewarming party.”
He looked at her then, his gaze steady and intense. “I do, very well.”
They’d somehow scooted closer during the video, their bare knees nearly touching, the space between them buzzing. Almost as close as they’d been in his car a year ago before they’d both blown everything up.
Natalie sprang to her feet. “All right then. So we’re doing this. The big question is do we have one of us play Clara? You want to pretend to be an excited little girl?”
“I think we’ve got the perfect casting right under our noses,” Rob said.
They discussed their plan, hashing out a rough script, Natalie typing it up on her computer. She would have expected that collaborating with Rob would mostly involve fighting against his rigid opinions, his eviscerations of her ideas. But there was none of that. He listened and built on her suggestions. In another world where he hadn’t gone into academia, he could have made a good editor. By the time Natalie typed, “The end,” it was one a.m., and they were both fighting yawns. For a moment, she thought Rob might fall asleep right there on her futon bed, and she pictured letting herself curl up next to him. Though she hadn’t gotten a good night of sleep since learning of Gabby’s diagnosis, maybe tonight could be different. But Rob roused himself and power walked to her door. “Well. Thank you,” he said, before disappearing into the hall. She lay awake for the next two hours, tossing and turning.
Now, with Gabby and Angus waiting on the couch, Natalie cleared her throat. “Our story begins with a little girl named Clara, the night before Christmas.”
The door to the coat closet swung open, and Rob ushered out Christina, dressed up in a pink, poofy dress. (There had been many Nutcracker-esque costume options in Christina’s closet—Gabby’s style for her daughter was plenty girly.) Christina wore an expression of delighted mischief, thrilled to be the center of attention.
Gabby drew a sharp intake of breath at the sight of her daughter, and Christina looked over to her. As Gabby gave an encouraging nod, Christina twirled around. “Look at my costume,” she said.
“It’s beautiful,” Gabby said, her voice catching.
“Clara was so excited for Christmas and loved to look at the tree,” Natalie said, pointing Christina in the right direction, and Christina went and stood by the Christmas tree as they’d practiced earlier. “And their family had lots of guests come over to celebrate.”
Rob swung open the coat closet door again and came marching out wearing one of Angus’s ill-fitting work blazers, only the slightest hint of self-consciousness on his face. He went over to Christina and swept into a deep bow, holding out his hand. Laughing, she placed her hand in his, and he swung her around the room. Never in a million years would someone mistake him for a professional dancer, Natalie thought, covering her smile, but he threw himself into the task at hand. He had a look of concentration on his face, even as a lock of his hair fell forward into his eye, and something in Nat’s chest swelled at the sight of him. He’d be a good father, she thought suddenly, if he ever wanted that for himself. And then for the briefest, strangest moment, an image flashed into her mind of the two of them taking a child to a pumpkin patch. What the hell? The last time Natalie had done anything remotely autumnal, it had involved going to a pop-up “pumpkin patch experience” in LA with some friends from the show. They’d spent the whole time directing her to take photos of them holding up various gourds in a carefree way.
Rob looked over at her and raised an eyebrow. Right, because she had another line to deliver. She blurted, “And then the creepy toymaker slash magician slash random old man who was somehow friends with Clara’s family had a special gift to give her.”
“Herr Drosselmeyer is not creepy,” Gabby said. “He’s her godfather!”
Natalie shot her a look.
“Okay, he’s a little creepy,” Gabby admitted.
Rob reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a small toy nutcracker, because of course Gabby and Angus had a toy nutcracker among their pile of Christmas decorations.
“Clara was so happy with her gift, she just had to dance,” Natalie said, jumping and doing a little twirl as she indicated Christina should follow, and Christina began to hop in a kind of mad glee, clutching the toy so hard Natalie thought she might break it. On the couch, Gabby watched her daughter, rapt, as Angus sat next to her, holding her hand, looking back and forth between his two girls. From the expression on Gabby’s face, the New York City Ballet had nothing on this thrown-together pantomime. And they hadn’t even gotten to the good stuff yet.
“And then it was time for the guests to go, and Clara fell asleep,” Natalie said.
Christina hesitated, putting her fingers in her mouth.
“Right over here by the Christmas tree, she fell asleep,” Rob said, pointing to a cushion on the floor, trying to get her to move.
Christina stood stock-still, working something out in her mind. “I want to watch Blippi,” she said.
“Honey,” Angus said. “Let’s do this fun performance first!”
Christina began to toddle over toward the basement, where Gabby and Angus kept their biggest TV. Angus jumped off the couch and made to go scoop her up, but she swatted him away. “Blippi!” she wailed.
“But—”
“Now!”
Angus looked at the others helplessly, then back at his daughter, who had taken off in the direction of the steps. “Wait,” he yelped. “Okay, maybe just one video, and then we’ll come back.”
The door slammed behind them, leaving Rob and Natalie standing in front of Gabby, flat-footed. In the silence that followed, the music reached a useless crescendo. Natalie reached over to pause it, cutting off the strings and bells as they blared.
“Sorry,” Natalie said. “We practiced a lot more…” She trailed off. In the ensuing silence, the faint sounds of some godforsaken children’s program rose from the basement.
Gabby folded her hands in her lap and looked down at them. “It’s like she doesn’t even realize that I might be dying,” she said. Then she lifted her head back up and fixed them both with an almost mischievous look. “What a little idiot.”
They all began, slowly, to laugh. A laugh that gathered momentum like a train speeding down a hill until they were shaking with it. Natalie had to brace herself on the stair railing. Even Rob was overcome in a way she’d never seen before, and the sight of him doubled up made her laugh even harder.
“We spent hours practicing the rest of it,” she wheezed. “Rob even learned a little bit of the choreography. It was going to be very moving.”
“No,” Rob said. “It’s better for everyone that Gabby doesn’t have to see that.”
“Christina’s screwing me out of a chance to watch Rob humiliate himself? That’s the real tragedy here!” Gabby managed to force out amid peals of laughter. “I guess we can forgive her since she’s only three.” And then she froze, like she’d just registered her own words. Almost in slow motion, her face crumpled. “She’s only three,” she repeated, and began to weep. “I don’t want to…” But she couldn’t get the rest of the sentence out. Her body shook with great, racking sobs.
Natalie and Rob looked at each other. Then, in unison, they ran to the couch, one of them on each side of Gabby. “I know,” Natalie said, taking Gabby in her arms, unable to stop her own tears from beginning to fall as her best friend cried into her chest. “I know.”
Rob tentatively patted Gabby’s shoulder, and she reached out a hand to meet his, pulling him in too, so that the three of them were smushed into a Gabby sandwich on the couch. They stayed like that for a long time, not speaking. As stupid fucking Blippi blared in the basement, they held one another tight, facing down a terrifying tomorrow.