Robert Masello - The Medusa Amulet

And he loved her more than anyone in the world.

Their father had gone AWOL when he was just a toddler, and after their mother succumbed to the disease, it was Sarah who had pretty much raised him. He owed her everything, and there was nothing he could do to help her now.

Nothing, it seemed, that anyone could do.

He was just stamping the slush off his boots when she opened the door. Around her head, she was wearing a new silk scarf in a wild paisley pattern. It wasn’t great, but anything was better than that wig.

“Gary gave it to me,” she said, reading his mind as always.

“It’s nice,” David said, as she smoothed the silk along one side.

“Yeah, right,” she said, welcoming him in. “I think he hates the wig even more than I do.”

His little niece, Emme, was playing tennis on her Wii in the den, and when she saw him, she said, “Uncle David! I dare you to come and play me!”

She reminded him of Sarah when she was a little girl, but he sensed that Emme didn’t like it when he said that. Was she just showing her fierce independence, or was it a sign of some subliminal-and justifiable-fear? Was she aware of the terrible ordeal her mother was going through and trying to separate herself from a similar prospect? Or was he imagining the whole thing?

Eight-year-old girls, he recognized, were beyond his field of expertise.

A few minutes later, right after David had lost his first two games, Gary came in from the garage, carrying a bunch of flyers for the open house he was holding the next day. Gary was a real-estate broker, and by all accounts a good one, but in this market nothing was selling. And even when he did get an exclusive listing, it was usually with a reduced commission.

He was also carrying a pie he’d picked up at Bakers Square.

“Is it a chocolate cream?” Emme asked, and when her dad confirmed it, she let out an ear-piercing squeal.

Over dinner, Gary said, “It’s the Internet that’s killing the real-estate business. Everybody’s convinced they can sell their houses themselves these days.”

“But are there any buyers out there?” David asked.

“Not many,” Gary said, pouring himself another glass of wine and holding the bottle out toward David, who passed. “And the ones that there are think no price is ever low enough. They want to keep making counteroffer after counteroffer until the whole deal winds up falling apart.”

“Is it time for pie yet?” Emme asked for the tenth time.

“After we’re done with the meat loaf,” Sarah said, urging David to take another piece. There were dark circles under her eyes that the overhead light only made worse. David took another slice just to make his sister happy.

“Save room for the pie,” Emme said in a stage whisper, just in case anyone had forgotten about it in the last five seconds.

When dinner-and dessert-were over, and David was helping to clear the table, Gary disappeared into the garage again. By the time he came back in, he was dragging a six-foot-tall tree.

“Who wants to decorate a Christmas tree?” he announced.

“I do! I do!” Emme shouted, jumping up and down. “Can we do it tonight?”

“That’s why your uncle David is here,” Gary said. “To help us get the lights on. You mind?” he asked, and David said he’d be glad to help.

“Hope you’re not starting to feel like a hired hand,” Sarah said, taking a plate David had just scraped clean and putting it in the dishwasher.

“I’ve got to earn my keep somehow.”

“You do that every day,” Sarah said sincerely. “Without your help, I don’t know how any of us could have gotten this far.”

David gently rubbed her shoulder, wondering not how they’d gotten through this far but if it would ever end. She’d been through the mastectomy, and all the rest… but what happened next? He knew that when their mother had been diagnosed, things had gone downhill rapidly-she was dead within eighteen months-but that was then, and this was now. Surely the odds and the outcomes must have improved since then.

Gary hauled out a box of Christmas tree lights and ornaments, and while David held the tree straight, he positioned it in the stand, screwing in the bolts from three sides. Emme was already trying to attach some ornaments, and her dad had to tell her to wait until the lights were on. Gary had the old-fashioned kind of lights that David liked, big thick bulbs that were green and blue and red and shaped like candle flames-none of those fancy little twinkling white lights-and the two of them wrapped the strings around the tree, handing the cord back and forth. Once they were done, Gary said, “Go for it!” to Emme, and she started sticking the ornaments on as fast as her fingers could get the hooks around the boughs.

Sarah, watching from the sofa, sipped a cup of herbal tea and offered the occasional instruction. “Spread them out, honey. You’ve got a whole tree to cover.”

David and Gary took care of the upper limbs, and when David took a silver papier-mache star out of the box, he stopped and showed it to Sarah. It was the star she had made in grade school and that they’d always put on the very top of the tree. It was a little bent now, and he straightened it gently before putting it in place.

“I made that in Mrs. Burr’s class,” she said.

“And I had her four years later, but what happened to my ornament?”

“A mystery for the ages,” Sarah said. It was the same conversation they had every year, but it wouldn’t have been Christmas without it.

Once the ornament supply was exhausted, and the tinsel flung, Gary said, “Are we ready?” and Emme raced around the room, turning off all the lights except those on the tree. The evergreen sparkled in the dark, its boughs giving off a rich, outdoorsy scent. David sat down next to his sister, took her hand, and intertwined their fingers.

“You know how many years we’ve been recycling that star?” Sarah said.

David did a quick calculation. “Twenty-four years.”

“Next year we should celebrate its silver anniversary.”

“Yes, we should,” David replied, eager to endorse any implicit hope for the future.

“When do we put out the presents?” Emme asked eagerly.

“That’s Santa’s job,” Gary said, and Emme made a face.

“I like it better when Santa comes early,” she said, in such a way as to indicate that the Santa bit wasn’t working for her anymore.

“They get so cynical, so fast,” Sarah said, with a rueful smile. “I believed in Santa until my senior prom.”

“Remember the time you got up on Santa’s lap at Marshall Fields’ and wouldn’t get off?”

Nodding, she said, “Remember Marshall Fields’, period?”

They were both nostalgic about the pieces of Chicago history, such as its flagship department store, which had disappeared over the years. Fields had become Macy’s, and as far as David and his sister were concerned, the magic was gone.

But the magic of a lighted Christmas tree, festooned with homemade ornaments and strings of tinsel, was as powerful as ever, and Gary flopped down in his armchair with a sigh. Even Emme lay down on the wall-to-wall carpeting, with her chin in her hands, gazing at the tree. Taking off the glasses she’d just started wearing that year, she said, “Oooh, this is even prettier. All the colors get kind of blurry. Try it, Uncle David!”

He took off his wire rims, said, “Yep, it’s way better,” then cleaned them on the tail of his shirt.

“You’ll scratch them,” Sarah said.

“Only the finest Old Navy fabric,” David said.

“I gave you handkerchiefs for your birthday. What did you do with them?”

David couldn’t answer that one. Presumably, they were somewhere in his dresser, under the pajamas he never wore, or the old track jerseys he had retired. But he liked having Sarah ask, probably as much as she liked nagging.