| TITLE: The Top-Ten List AUTHOR: Kasey SUMMARY: Snowed in at the White House, the gang retells the stories of the top-ten worst Christmases of all time (Show THAT to Letterman!) RATING: PG-13, ESF, EMF, ELF, EJF, ETF, EDF, EPOTUSF, ECJF...woulda been just quicker to say evil to everyone, wouldn't it? Also S/M, J/Do, CJ/Da, L/Jenny, POTUS/FLOTUS (Though I don't know why I have to note that, I don't know a single person who's opposed to that union!) DISCLAIMER: The TWW cast doesn't belong to me. Gee whiz, never woulda guessed. NOTES: I switch PoV a lot in this, designated by the ~*~*~*~. THANKS TO: My truly great friends, betareaders, countrywomen, lend me your ears! Dis and Lt., you guys are absolutely amazing, and I thank you dearly. There were no smiles in the residence that night. Aside from the president and first lady. Their plans hadn't been abruptly changed. They hadn't had plans to get out of the town and head to see their family, their daughters were already in and they were preparing for Christmas anyway. Well, and neither Mallory nor Leo looked too unhappy. They would've been back up there in the morning anyway. And then there were the rest of us. Sam was supposed to be going out California. He hadn't seen his sister since she graduated college, she was working in France, teaching English or something, and was coming in for Christmas. Not to mention who knew HOW long it had been since he'd seen his parents. At least five years, probably more like 7. He laid on the bed, Mallory sitting beside him, their hands intertwined, which caused Leo to continuously glance over nervously. Josh had been looking forward to his time away from the White House. Rumours had it that he was going to redecorate his apartment, and Donna was going to help. Who knew why, since none of us were ever home enough to notice a redecoration, but he was angry about that, at any rate. He was also sprawled on the couch, his head in Donna's lap. Toby hadn't said anything about his plans except to say he had them. Other than that, no one was sure. He sat at the small table, his chin resting in his right hand. Ainsley had been planning to head to North Carolina to see her father. She didn't mention her mother, just talked about how excited her father was to have a White House Counsel in his house for the holidays - even if it was a Democratic White House. I think he thought she was changing our minds on things and making us TRULY more bipartisan, not just pretending to be as such. She sat on the carpet, her legs curled beneath her. And then there was me. I'd been heading to St. Barts, actually. A few days to have as "me time". But it had been Danny's fault. Wasn't it always? He'd stopped me on the way out to give me Gail's present - a larger fishbowl, more fishfood, and little monuments to put inside the bowl. And it had been because of him that I'd missed being out of here by a matter of ten minutes. He stood behind me, playing with my hair as I sat in the large chair, until I shot him a dirty look and he finally got the hint and slinked over to lean against the wall. The President, who was poking his head in and out of the bedroom in which we'd all congregated, had told us to make ourselves at home, that there were plenty of rooms if we wanted to sleep, and that we could have anything we wanted sent up by the kitchen. He'd already made sure there were plenty of drinks and Christmas cookies in the room. "I believe this is the worst Christmas I've ever experienced," Ainsley piped up in her bizarre combination of southern accent and iambic pentameter speech pattern. Iambic drawl, I'd started to call it. "Not the worst," Josh whispered, and I couldn't be certain, but I think I saw tears in his eyes, as well as in Mallory's. "I mean, or Channukkah, whatever." "Definitely not the worst," Mal whispered, and Leo winced, looking grim. Sam nodded weakly in agreement. "Yeah." Toby's monosyllabic reply eluded to a sort of dark mysterious memory. Even though I had a clue what it might have been. And I didn't know what everyone had gone through. But this Christmas, so far, DID suck, I had to agree with that. ~*~*~*~ My family had a sort of Channukkah tradition when I was growing up. On the last night, whatever night of the week it might be, we all got together at our house and had what most people would consider a sort of Christmas dinner and present exchange. That probably came from my father being half Jewish and half Catholic growing up, but at the time I didn't care. All I knew was that my mother and grandmother would take off the day and spend it cooking, and when I got home from school the house smelled great, and then everyone would begin to come over, depending upon how far they lived. Dinner was served at exactly sundown - which came early in the winter in Connecticut - and my sister would sing the prayer in her beautiful soprano voice. And then we'd all feast until we felt we might burst, and then we lit the candles, followed by the presents. I seriously grew up believing it WAS Christmas, that I was one of the lucky few kids who celebrated both holidays and that it just always fell on the same day. All of the joyousness vanished the year I was seven, though. My hand was still bandaged from the burn I'd sustained in the fire which had killed Joanie only a few weeks earlier. My parents had insisted that we still have the celebration as usual. And it seemed okay at first. My grandmother and mother still cooked, my aunts and uncles still seemingly poured in by the truckload through our front door. And it was almost normal. Until it came time for the prayer. We all expectantly looked over to Joanie's usual seat beside my father at the head of the table. They'd been especially close, so it had been a logical place for her to sit, and handy for the prayer in which she'd step over closer to my father so she was technically at the head of the table. But no music came. The seat remained as empty as it had been for weeks, a painful reminder of what had happened. Of the evilness and sin I had brought upon the family, as I believed. As I believe. "...Someone should do the prayer," my uncle whispered, but the thought of anyone except Joanie doing it made us feel an emptiness inside. She'd loved singing the prayer, she'd go around the house singing it for weeks, even though my mother told her not to sing it when she meant not to pray. She'd loved music, anything to sing...She wouldn't have wanted to go with a spoken prayer. "...I'll do it," I said quietly. I was seven years old, I didn't know what I was singing or even all of the words, I knew how they sounded and I could imitate it. Not like Jo, she knew it all, she knew what it meant, she'd even translated it to English and kept the melody at one point. Her Bat Mitzvah had been less than a year before, and she'd done so well, when she'd spoken in Hebrew it had sounded like the most beautiful thing in history. Which was a weird thing to think about my sister, but it was the first thing that came to mind. And so I began to sing. I knew I was horrible at it, that I could never be half of the musician that my late older sister was, that I'd never be half the PERSON she was. But I sang it anyway, because someone had to. Because I felt bad that she wasn't the one singing it, and I wanted to try to make it up somehow. It wasn't nearly so great as she had done it. But when I looked around at my family, tears in their eyes which had formed as they'd heard me singing, I knew it didn't matter. ~*~*~*~ I'd always loved Christmas, from the time I was very little. The carols, the food, the presents, the family. Everything. The fact that I got a few days off from whatever I was doing, be it math class or a case at Gage Whitney. There was only once I didn't get that holiday. We were less than a month away from the inauguration. Lisa and I had bought a lavish house in the suburbs of DC and finished moving our stuff over Thanksgiving. Josh had gotten a small apartment, as had Toby and CJ, and we were all down there - well, for some of us it was "back east", and for Josh it was "back home", but for Lisa and I, it was down there. She hated it. I knew she hated being down there, away from the hustle and bustle of the city, and I'd hated to make her move...but this was the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity I'd wanted since I was ten years old. I wasn't about to give that up. Sure, she'd reassured me over and over that it was okay, but I knew it wasn't. I knew she didn't like it at all. We'd been married exactly three months on Christmas Eve. I came home with a beautiful gold locket, etched with flowers on the front, with pictures from our wedding inside. I knew she'd love it, it was exactly the sort of thing she liked. I walked in the door. "Lisa? Honey, I'm here..." There was no answer. I looked in the kitchen and living room and bedroom, to no avail, calling her name. I was about to try to call her cell phone when I saw a note by the phone. "Sam - I can't do this anymore. The late hours, the living down here and being alone. I never thought this is what we'd become when I accepted the engagement. So I'm sorry, but I have to go. You can reach me at the Westin. -Lisa" I had to read the note seven times before I was certain I'd read it correctly. And I had. Aside from in court, I never saw her again. I went slowly to the tree as I set down her note. Her favourite porcelain ornament was hanging in the front. It was a set of four pink hearts, strung on a creme ribbon, and she'd had it her entire life. I took it from the branch and just held it in my hand, staring at it for a moment or two. And I hurled it at the wall, reveling in the sound of the shattering ceramic. ~*~*~*~ When I was ten years, upon begging my mother, I was admitted to a boarding school about an hour from my home. I loved it there, it became my safe-haven, more of a home than my real house in Boston. Why? Because at Hawken, as the school was called, there was no alcoholic and drug-addict father. Going home at Thanksgiving was optional, and I usually chose not to. Parents could come up on weekends, and my mother would do that frequently. She'd tell my father she was going out with her friends to shop, but she'd come to see me, and I loved that. I could see her without having to worry about my father. She knew it was hard on me, and I knew the same was true of her, but she told me she hoped someday she could get him help. I could only hope. Going home at Christmas was mandatory, as was summer vacation, and I hated that. And so, on the Friday before Christmas when I was 12, Mom came to pick me up and I put my suitcase in the trunk and rode in silence home. "Don't worry about your father," she said gently. "He's gonna be okay eventually..." I sighed and stared out the window. I arrived just in time to hear a bottle break against the wall. I jumped sky-high, and cowered as I heard my father utter a string of curses. My mother immediately rushed into the living room to pick up the broken glass. "Leo!" she scolded. "Your daughter's home and what's the first thing she hears?" "Sorry," he muttered, and I could tell by his tone of voice he was rolling his eyes. I crept silently up to my room. It was the same as when I'd left, so much the same...I couldn't stand it. I spent all my time over the next three days holed up in my room, listening to my radio and reading books. At least then I wouldn't have to pay attention to my father's screaming and drinking and pill consumption. Christmas Day, however, there was no way around it. I was downstairs at exactly 9:00 as was customary in our family on Christmas, and we exchanged gifts. It was the usual stuff. Presents with both my parents names on them, but that I knew my father was too drunk to pick out. At noon, we ate our usual dinner of turkey and mashed potatoes. "So, Mal," my father said as he poured himself yet another scotch, "why haven't I seen you around these past few days?" "I've been around. Up in my room." "When are you gonna ever join your mother and me down here?" "When you stop drinking," I said instinctively before I realized what I'd even said. But the look in my father's eye...He reached for the carving knife to his left and I jumped back, knocking my chair over. "Come pick that up," he demanded. I shook my head, eyes wide. "I *said* come pick that up!" He raised the knife slightly, and I backed away, making him grow more and more angry. "Leo!" my mother cried. "Put the knife down!" He ignored her and raised from his seat. I ran into the living room, then the kitchen, then back through the dining room as he chased me with the knife. "Pick up the goddamn chair!" My mother was crying, sobbing to my father to stop, to come sit down. "Calling me a drunkard? I'm not the one who knocked over the chair!" he cried again and again, and I raced through the house at lightening speed, sobbing. Finally, I dashed up the stairs and locked myself in the bathroom. Where I remained for the next four hours. I heard a light knock. "Mal? Honey, it's me...are you okay?" I gave no answer. What did she expect. "He's asleep now, hon, I'm so sorry...He didn't mean to do it, he was drunk." "When ISN'T he drunk?!" I finally exploded. "He drinks all the time, Mom, only you're too blind to see it or you don't want to see it or something, 'cause I don't see how you could miss that so much!" I was sobbing again. No one should have to go through something like that, so why me? Why was I suddenly having to lock myself in my bathroom for protection in my own house? I was only twelve... Why did it feel like so much older? ~*~*~*~ Very few people think about how much alcohol is served around the holidays. Wine, champagne, even alcoholic eggnog for Crissake! I mean, what does everyone NEED with the alcohol then that they don't need it so much other times? Are the inlaws really THAT bad? Who knows? I'd never thought about it until Christmas of 1993. It had never mattered to me before then. I drank the same amount at Christmas as I did any other time of the year. Which was far too much, but I hadn't exactly thought about it at the time. No, not until after July. And I'd gone through rehab with flying colours and named Jed as my sponsor and made amends as best as one can with my family and decided to start over as best I could, only doing things RIGHT this time. So imagine my dilemma when I, after only five months out of rehab, was suddenly surrounded with alcoholic drinks. And knew I couldn't have them, that I shouldn't have them, that I didn't WANT them. Except I was terrified that, deep down, I did. I'd brought Mallory with me. Jenny was tired of these things, and so was Mallory, but I wanted to prove to her that I was better, that I could do this, that I could maybe make it up to her if she could find it in her heart to trust me. I decided to go the relatively safe route. There wasn't any of your usual sodas or anything I could see at the party I was at. But there was lemonade, I figured probably mixed with club soda or something as another drink. I'd seen some of the teenage children of the people I worked with drinking it. So I assumed it was okay. That was mistake number one. Mistake number two was not having enough common sense to notice that it burned the slightest bit going down. Mistake number three was to not recognize the urge to continue to drink more. I thought it was just that I was really thirsty. Mallory walked over to me after my fourth glass. She'd been at the table while I was off mingling, but had spotted me over at the table. "Dad? Are you okay?" "Yeah, Baby, why wouldn't I be?" I stumbled slightly as I turned to offer a lopsided smile at her. She blinked at me. "What did you drink?" "I didn't drink." "Then why are you stumbling?" "Stumbling?" "Like you just did when you tried to turn around." She looked at me with knowing eyes. She had seen me like that her entire life, she knew what it meant too well. "What's in that glass?" She pointed to the one in my hand. "Lemonade." "Non-alcoholic?" "Yeah...I'm pretty sure..." She sighed and nodded. "C'mon, let's get you home." "I'm fine -" "No, you're not, Dad, okay?" She sounded completely exasperated, fed up with me and my drinking. Not that I could blame her. I felt like an idiot. Leave it to me to screw things up again. She led me out into the parking lot and to my car. I obediently handed her the keys as I always had done until I'd gotten out of rehab. The look in her eyes was the worst. The way she looked at me, like it was the same thing I'd done all my life, that I was back in the way I had been the majority of her life. That sad realization shone in her eyes, and made me want to crawl under the bed. I had gone to rehab because I realized what I had done to her and how much I had hurt her. I had realized the reason she'd gone away from her mother and me wasn't because she felt she wanted freedom, it was because she couldn't stand to be in the same house with me. And here we were. Back where we'd started from. Right back in the same place I'd tried to escape from. Mallory saw me in and stayed to talk to Jenny. I walked by the kitchen after a moment and saw Jenny nodding sadly, tears in her eyes. I hung my head as I walked upstairs. I had ruined everything. Again. I could hear snatches of the conversation in the kitchen through the vent. "I just can't believe he - drink again." "Me neither, Mom, but - over drinking, one lemonade after another, - started to stumble…He realized, though, I think…when I said -" "He should realize!" I Heard Jenny explode, then "I'm sorry, Mallory, I.." "…It's okay, Mom.." I rolled over and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block out their conversation. I had screwed up everything. But I would not do it again. And I did not do it again. ~*~*~*~ Christmas was supposed to be a happy time. I always had thought of it as such. Until the fates decided to kick us in the face, then pour salt in the wounds. It was supposed to be a day of celebration, as Abby had given birth to our second child, our son Josiah Jr., on the 5th, and Elizabeth turned 4 on the 20th. I'd never seen Abby happier in the five years we'd been married. Never more tired, never more radiant. Joe - as we'd taken to calling our son to greatly reduce confusion - was peacefully silent during Midnight Mass, and Elizabeth tried valiantly to stay awake, only to fall asleep before the first hymn. She woke up seconds before the recessional and walked obediently out to the car with me as Abby carried Joe. I carried Elizabeth to her room - she had fallen back asleep in the car - and put her presents from "Santa" under the tree while Abby fed Joe and put him to bed. She joined me on the couch not long after I sat down, laying against me, her head on my shoulder, gazing at the lights of the Christmas tree. "…Is it me, or is that star crooked?" I feigned woundedness. "…I tried…" She smiled. "Aw, Jed, s'okay…" "It's what you get for having me do it." "Well, if you could breastfeed, I would've…" she teased. "…The tree's beautiful, Jed." "Thank you." I smiled at her and gently stroked her hair. "You look tired…wanna go to bed? You know Elizabeth's gonna wake us up at the crack of dawn." She smiled and stood. "Yeah…I'll be there in a minute, just gonna check on them really quickly." We walked up the stairs, and I headed to our bedroom while she went first in our daughter's room, then our son's. And then I heard her scream. "Jed!" she cried as she rushed through the door of our room. "Something's wrong, he's…he's not breathing, something happened…!" It was the first time - and the only time I can remember - that I had seen her panic. And it took a minute before what she was saying hit me and my blood ran cold. I ran with her to the nursery. Joe was lying on his stomach in the crib, just like he always did, looking asleep. Only the rise and fall of his mid-section that I had often watched with a fair amount of awe was still. "I'm gonna…call the ambulance…" I was almost shaking with the impact of what it meant, of what it seemed had happened. The ambulance arrived within about ten minutes, and Abby rode along with the EMTs while I called our neighbors, the Douglases to come over and watch Elizabeth. I got to the ER and saw Abby sitting alone in the waiting room, looking like death warmed over. Bad imagery. I sat beside her. "Hey," I said quietly. "What do we know?" "…Nothing…." She whispered, wiping away the tears in her eyes only to have them be replaced immediately. "…What do you think it is?" "…Jed…" "I just mean…you're a doctor, you know symptoms…what do you think…?" "SIDS." "Who?" "Silent Infant…I can't even say it…" She started to sob, and though I certainly didn't know what 'SIDS' was, I could tell it was bad. After a minute or two, a doctor walked out. “Abby…Mr. Bartlet…” We stood. “Jerome…” Abby obviously knew him because he was a colleague. Logical. Who gave a damn about logic then I don’t know, but it made sense. “…I am so sorry…There was nothing we could do for him when he got here…SIDS strikes so quickly and so without warning…” Abby was sobbing at that point, and I’m pretty sure some tears of my own were running down my cheeks. “…Please accept my condolences…” He walked off, and I gathered Abby into a tight hug as our tears mixed, mourning for the cruel joke of Christmas-tide. |