2:56 p.m. EST
Lucius Mills pushed the wheelchair bearing Tommy’s father, Arnie. The lobby at High Ridge Manor was filled with Christmas decorations, including a twelve-foot-tall, perfectly symmetrical spruce trimmed with lights, tinsel, and ornaments made by local elementary school children. There were boxes under the tree filled with goodies sent by the local high school students—things to eat and things to play with, Rubik’s cubes and jigsaw puzzles to keep the recipients mentally sharp. Three elderly residents, two of them also in wheelchairs, and all three dressed in their Christmas sweaters and pins, waited by the window for their families to come to pick them up.
Tommy needed to see his dad. Lucius had explained on the phone that Arnie had had only a few moments of partial lucidity since arriving at the nursing home. He had been sleeping a lot and was quite likely unaware of the approaching holiday. But Tommy needed to see him anyway.
When he did, the sight made Tommy’s heart ache.
Arnie was wearing pajamas beneath his robe. He held his head lower now, and both hands trembled from the Parkinsonism that accompanied Lewy body dementia. Ten years ago doctors would have mistaken the disease for Alzheimer’s. Tommy had mistaken it for forgetfulness, at the onset.
First it was a meal at a local restaurant where his dad left a tip equal to the size of the bill, apparently unable to calculate what 20 percent would be. Then Arnie, who’d run a nursery and landscaping business all his life, inadvertently placed the same order twice with their Halloween pumpkin supplier, and when Tommy said it looked like they were going to have to eat five hundred pumpkins, Arnie said, “That’s a lot of pumpkin pie,” but he wasn’t joking. His mental functioning just wasn’t what it should have been.
They were watching a basketball game between the Celtics and the Lakers when Arnie complained that they were playing too fast. Tommy realized his father’s vision wasn’t impaired, but his ability to process visual information was.
When Tommy saw his father’s gait changing, his steps getting shorter and more hesitant, he brought him in for tests. The doctors performed tests for a specific protein, finding clumps of them in Arnie’s brain stem. As the disease advanced, the protein clumps would eventually be found in the temporal region, making it hard for Arnie to form new memories. The doctor said the older man could expect light-headedness, a woozy feeling when he tried to move, difficulty concentrating, and then palsy, urinary incontinence, and eventually, nightmares and hallucinations.
And now things had gone from expectation to reality.
Tommy took a knee and leaned in so his father could see him. “Hey, Pops—how ya doin’?”
His father did not seem to recognize him.
“It’s me. Your son, Tommy.”
“Santa Claus was here,” his father said.
“Was he?” Tommy looked at Lucius, who nodded.
“He came yesterday to visit,” Lucius said. “They have the Christmas party early for people who won’t be here on Christmas Eve.”
“Santa was here,” Arnie repeated.
“He’s going to be pretty busy tonight,” Tommy said. “That’s why I was stopping by, Papa. Because I’m not going to be able to have you home for Christmas Eve. There’s just a lot going on that I can’t explain right now, but it’s safer if you stay here.”
Tommy had worried that his father would feel let down, but the news did not appear to register.
“Evelyn was here too,” Arnie said. “I spoke to her.”
Evelyn was Tommy’s mother, who’d died in a car accident when Tommy was in the eighth grade.
“What did she say?” Tommy asked.
“She said she was sorry,” Arnie said.
“What did you tell her?”
Arnie blew a loud raspberry with his lips. Tommy couldn’t help but smile.
“I’m a lucky man,” Arnie said. “Lucky, lucky, lucky.”
“So am I,” Tommy said. He took the jewelry box from his pocket and opened it to show his father the diamond ring. “This is the ring I’m going to give Dani Harris. I’ve been having a little trouble finding the right moment. Do you remember Dani Harris? The girl who was homecoming queen when I was homecoming king?”
Lucius leaned over to get a better view and whistled his approval.
“Did Santa Claus bring that?” Arnie asked.
Tommy’s heart sank again. He was too late; this news—the most exciting news he’d had since he’d been a number one NFL draft pick—was something he was not going to be able to share with his father.
“I’m good to stay the night, Tommy, if you need me,” Lucius said.
“No way, Lucius,” Tommy said, straightening up. “You’ve done too much already. Go home to your family.”
“My sister’s kids are going to jump all over me,” Lucius said. “Either I’m getting too old or they’re getting too big. Thanks, Tommy. I appreciate it.”
“This is for you,” Tommy said, handing his father’s caregiver a new GPhone, which Lucius received with thanks. Tommy then gave his father a GTab, essentially a larger tablet version of the phone, preloaded with all of Arnie’s favorite books, movies, and songs, and plenty of games designed for kids four through ten, simple enough for Arnie to figure out intuitively. Lucius agreed to stay long enough to help Arnie get started on it.
“Just show him the Paint program,” Tommy told his friend. “Maybe he can paint pictures.”
Tommy kissed his father on the forehead and wished him a Merry Christmas.
“Merry Christmas to you,” Arnie said, the way he might address a stranger.
“I’ll check in tomorrow,” Tommy said.
“I’m a lucky man,” Arnie said. “Lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky. Lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky.”
Tommy wanted to stay longer, but he needed to get home before darkness fell and things started crawling out from under the rocks.
It was still raining—even harder than before—as he sprinted to the Jeep. He’d been hoping for a white Christmas, he always did, but it was lucky that the temperature was unseasonably warm—if it were below freezing, they’d have been buried in snow. No white Christmas this year, he thought. But it was certainly going to be a very, very wet one.
He smiled, picturing Santa Claus carrying an umbrella.
He started the Jeep, turned on the headlights, and turned the windshield wipers to high. Suddenly he was struck by a powerful sense of déjà vu. As the raindrops splattered against the hood of his car, he remembered how many of Dani’s dreams had involved water. The night they’d had the same identical nightmare, that dream had been about a flood. Now it was December 24th, Christmas Eve, and it was pouring.
He’d been telling himself all day not to read ominous portent into every little thing that happened, but those two things were incontrovertibly true.
He and Dani had both dreamed of water.
And it never rained on Christmas Eve.