Christmas Beyond the Box by Josh Langston & Barbara Galler-Smith

Author:Josh Langston & Barbara Galler-Smith [Langston, Josh]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Janda Books
Published: 2013-11-16T16:00:00+00:00

~End~

"It's kind of fun to do the impossible." ~Walt Disney

Some idiot had pushed Aunt Althea's clunky old art table in front of her. The monstrosity took up so much space I couldn't see past it. What if she had a relapse, and we had to drag her out of bed and back to the hospital? The stupid table would just get in the way.

"'Scuze me," said Meg Something-or-other, a frumpy matron sent by the nursing service, as she squeezed past me and into Althea's room. Despite the holiday season, her red and green striped socks did nothing to make her appear elfin.

"Who dragged that in here?" I asked, nodding at the ungainly table. Built by my great uncle, the wheeled, wooden eyesore straddled Althea's bed. I'd given instructions to the staff that my aunt was too ill to bother with such nonsense.

"I had it brought in," Meg said, pulling a dead leaf from a poinsettia on the dresser. "Miz Althea said she wanted to paint." The nurse opened the heavy drapes, but the sun had already set.

"Well then, you can just haul it right back out," I said. "I seriously doubt she'll be doing any such thing."

Meg ignored me, slipped the blood pressure cuff around Althea's thin upper arm, pumped the rubber bulb, and then watched the dial as she let the air back out. All the while she moved her lips in a silent litany. She put the device back in its bag, recorded the reading on the small chart kept on the dresser and fluffed Althea's pillow.

"Well, what is it?" I asked.

"What's what?"

"Her blood pressure! What is it?" I needed to call the service; they had to do something about this woman.

"It's fine," Meg said. "Normal -- for her." She arranged the paraphernalia on Althea's art table, then backed out of the room.

Althea stared at me -- iguana eyes peering out from a thin dinosaur hide. So old, so horribly old. Ready for extinction.

"Do you really feel up to painting?" I asked.

She nodded.

It didn't make sense, but then little about Althea ever had. I remembered the woman who finger-painted with me when I was a child, who laughed with me when we smeared the colors on the floor as well as the paper. But I'd grown up, out of that life. Why couldn't she? Althea hooked a finger at me, and I stepped closer, distinctly conscious of her shallow breathing.

"It's Christmas, and I need my table," she said in a voice decades too young.

I surveyed the pitiful tools of her art: two tiny brushes, an odd assortment of water colors, and an open bottle of liquid bubble soap. No paper. No canvas.

I tried to disguise my impatience. "What are you painting?"

She smiled at me. "You'll never guess."

"You're right." She'd edged closer to the end than I'd thought.

"Don't you want to guess?"

I shook my head. It was a kindness; someone so close to death didn't have time to play Twenty Questions.

"Soap bubbles."

I blinked in consternation. "What?"

"I'm painting on soap bubbles.

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