Christmas Bliss (13 page)

“It’s just a technicality,” he said.

“About the baby?” I heard my own voice, shrill and pinched.

He nodded, looking truly miserable.

“Tell me,” I whispered.

“It’s just that … well, there’s a statute in Georgia that states that any child conceived or born during marriage is presumed by law to be child of the husband and wife.”

“But that’s crazy,” I protested. “I haven’t seen Richard in years and years. He’s been in prison! I thought we were divorced. This baby is ours. Mine and Harry’s.”

“I’m sorry,” James said, reaching across the desk to take my hand. “I’ll start the paperwork today. We’ll track your ex down, serve him notice, and in sixty days, you’ll be divorced.”

“But in the meantime…” I had to swallow to choke back the wave of nausea threatening to engulf me. “If something were to happen to me … that’s what you’re saying, isn’t it? If something were to happen to me, before the divorce … Richard could claim to be the legal father of my baby?”

“But he wouldn’t, would he?” James said soothingly. “He’s had no communication with you, and clearly, the last thing he’d want is a newborn baby. And anyway, nothing is going to happen to you.”

“No,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Nothing is going to happen to me. I promise you that.”

“Good,” James said.

I released his hand and stood, somewhat unsteadily.

“I’ve got to go. But you’ll call me, right? When you have any news at all?”

“I will,” James said. “I definitely will.”

Chapter 14

Weezie

I sat on the edge of the severely modern (and severely uncomfortable) sofa bed in Daniel’s speck-sized apartment on my first full day in New York and watched as he hurriedly pulled on his black-and-white-checked pants and white chef’s jacket.

“But I thought you didn’t have to go in this early,” I protested.

“I don’t, normally. But that text was from Carlotta. The sous-chef has the flu, and our fish order didn’t come in, so now I need to go to the Fulton Fish Market and the green market to pick out the stuff for tomorrow and get everything prepped. But don’t worry, it’s not for the whole day. I should be back midafternoon.”

He sat down beside me on the edge of the bed and kissed me gently. “I know it’s not how you planned it, but when I get back, we’ll go out and have some fun. Get a late lunch, some shopping. Didn’t you say you want to see all the Christmas windows?”

He was right about one thing. Nothing about this last-minute trip had gone exactly as I’d planned, starting with our reunion.

“It’s just like the movies,” I exclaimed as we got out of the cab on Monday. “Like Meg Ryan’s place in
You’ve Got Mail
.”

Daniel’s apartment was in a picturesque ivy-covered nineteenth-century brick building, with a high marble stoop and charming window boxes planted with dwarf evergreens. A huge boxwood wreath with a discreet bow of olive-colored satin hung on each side of the dark-green-painted double doors.

“It’s okay, I guess,” Daniel said. I followed him up the steps as he fumbled in his pocket for the keys. He opened the door and I followed him inside to a high-ceilinged vestibule with checkerboard marble floors and flocked damask wallpaper. We faced two grandly carved doors, with brass nameplates and knockers, but he opened neither one of them.

Instead, he unlocked a not-so-grand door, and I found myself standing in a dimly lit stair hall.

He gestured toward the stairs. “Sorry. It’s on the top floor.”

“How many floors?”

He winced. “Four.”

When we reached the top floor, he was pale and wheezing, and I was just plain exhausted. He pulled out his key ring again, then touched my cheek lightly.

“Look,” he said, “I don’t know what Meg Ryan’s place looked like in that movie, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t look like this one. This is what they call a junior studio in New York. Carlotta just keeps it for when she has out-of-town company. It’s nothing fancy. I think it was probably actually the servant’s quarters for one of the bigger apartments, back in the day.”

“I don’t care,” I assured him. “As long as we can be together.”

He gave me a glum look. “We’ll be together, all right.”

Nothing could have prepared me for what I found on the other side of that door.

We were standing in a single narrow windowless room. The walls were painted a pale gray. There was a gray carpet on the floor, and a charcoal-gray sofa with an unmade pulled-out bed. There were some framed photos of the New York skyline on the walls and a small, wall-mounted flat screen television.

“Home sweet home,” Daniel said, throwing his arm across my shoulder.

“You’re kidding,” I said finally. “Where’s the rest of it?”

He opened a door that was painted the same gray as the walls. “Bathroom.” I poked my head inside. There was a dinky little sink, a wall-mounted commode, and a shower approximately the size of a phone booth.

“Cozy,” I managed. “Kitchen?”

He took five steps in the other direction and pulled aside a curtain I hadn’t noticed earlier. Mounted in an alcove that had once been a closet was a shallow Formica countertop. A two-burner hot plate stood on one end of the counter, and the world’s smallest kitchen sink was at the other end. Beneath the countertop was a dorm fridge.

“Le Cordon Bleu it’s not.” Daniel laughed. “But I don’t need much, because I’m not here much.”

“Where do you keep your stuff?” I asked. “Is there a closet?”

“You mean my dressing room?” He pulled the curtain a little wider to reveal a clothes pole just wide enough to hold Daniel’s three sweaters, two shirts, two pairs of pants … and, oh yes, that dinner jacket. Beneath the closet rod was a three-drawer dresser.

“Good thing I don’t have any luggage or clothes to store,” I said, trying to sound cheerful. But Daniel wasn’t listening. He was tugging me by the hand, toward the bed.

“I thought you were sick,” I said as he slid the coat off my shoulders and pulled my sweater over my head.

“I’m better already,” he said.

I touched the back of my hand to his forehead, which was still warm to the touch, but he caught my hand in his and gently pushed me backward onto the bed.

Later we slept. And Daniel decided he should prove to me how very much better he was feeling.

“You’re my penicillin,” he said, kissing my bare shoulder. “I’m getting hungry. And you must be starved. Where shall we go for dinner?”

I glanced over at the rumpled pile of my clothing on the floor. “I don’t exactly have the wardrobe to be out on the town,” I reminded him. “And what if the airline delivers my suitcase while we’re gone?”

“We’ll order in,” he declared. He climbed out of bed and walked over to the makeshift kitchen, and I sat up with the sheet gathered beneath my arms, grateful for the opportunity to appreciate his well-muscled back and buns. He turned and caught me looking, and I blushed, as I always did at such moments.

He dumped a stack of take-out menus on the covers. “Were you leering at me just now?”

“No,” I lied.

“I think you were. But it’s okay. I like that you like what you see.”

“I do,” I said. “I always have.”

He fanned out the menus. “Chinese. Thai. Pizza. Ethiopian. Sushi. Burgers. Vegan. Soup. Soul food. Gyros. What do you feel like?”

“There’s a whole restaurant that serves nothing but soup?”

He laughed. “This is New York, Weezie. Whatever you want, you can get. For a price.”

“Soup. After hanging around on that street corner, I feel like I might never get warm again.”

Daniel had chili and surprisingly decent corn muffins and I had an amazing potato-leek soup. And we ate it sitting up in bed, with me dressed only in Daniel’s one good white dress shirt, and I didn’t dare tell him how happy it made me—feeling like I was living out an old Doris Day movie, but maybe costarring Colin Firth instead of Rock Hudson.

But the best part of all came when we turned on the television. He was flipping the channels when I caught just a glimpse of a black-and-white Barbara Stanwyck.

“Ooh, stop. Back up. It’s
Christmas in Connecticut
.”

He rolled his eyes, but he flipped back in time to catch Barbara and Dennis Morgan, who were getting all cozy in a horse-drawn carriage in the midst of an obviously ersatz snowstorm that even to my untrained Southern eyes had to have been made from soap flakes.

“This is my favorite Christmas movie,” I said.

“I thought you said
Miracle on 34th Street
was your favorite.”

“I can have more than one favorite.”

“But I also seem to remember you claiming
White Christmas
was your favorite.”

“Favorite Christmas musical,” I corrected, looking up at him. “You’re such a Grinch, I bet you don’t even have a favorite Christmas movie of your own.”

“Sure I do.”

“What is it?”

He considered. “
The Ref
.”

“
The Ref
? That hideously depressing movie with Denis Leary and the nasty bickering married couple and the whole dysfunctional family thing? I know you’re not big on the holidays, but that can’t be your favorite. Come on. Pick something else. Something nice. Something cheerful.”

“I like
The Ref
.”

“No, really. You have to have a favorite movie that can be part of our annual Christmas tradition. Like, every year, when it comes on, we’ll put on our pjs and have hot chocolate and popcorn and decorate the tree.”

“You can watch your movie, and I can watch mine.”

“That’s not a movie we can watch with our children,” I said primly.

He looked so shocked I had to laugh. “No, silly. I’m not pregnant. Not yet, anyway. I’m just thinking about the future. When we watch happy, cheerful holiday movies with our pink-cheeked cherubs.”

“As they knock over the tree and spill hot chocolate on the sofa and whine about having to watch your sappy black-and-white stuff.”

“Probably,” I said, unfazed by his cynicism. “So what’s it gonna be?”

He gave a huge, martyred sigh. “How ’bout
Home Alone
?”

“Perfect.”

*   *   *

After Daniel left for work, I got dressed and walked downstairs and peered out the front window of the town house. The sky was the color of the carpet in our junior studio—dull gray. Melting snow was piled along the curb outside, and I watched as a stylishly dressed woman walked past in fur-lined boots, pushing a bundled-up toddler in a baby carriage. Why couldn’t I be the one out walking, seeing the sights of the big city at Christmas?

My suitcase still hadn’t arrived, but I wasn’t about to hang around waiting on them all day. I dug through Daniel’s meager wardrobe and outfitted myself for the weather. I pulled on his ancient black leather bomber jacket, rolling up the cuffs three times, and knotted a red wool scarf around my neck. I took the key he’d given me that morning, slipped an extra ten-dollar bill in my bra—just in case of an emergency—and went out to experience the city all on my own.

*   *   *

The subway entrance was at 8th and Broadway. I’d studied the New York City Transit Authority’s maps before leaving the apartment, and memorized my route, so I knew that if I took the R line and got off at Fifth Avenue, I would arrive at my destination.

I had the correct fare in the pocket of Daniel’s jacket, but I stood there, in a fear-induced trance, for at least fifteen minutes, trying to get up the courage to descend the stairs to the subway. People rushed by me, some of them deliberately bumping me or brushing me aside in annoyance. It was as though my feet were frozen in place. Finally, I turned to leave, my cheeks flushed with shame over being such a chicken-shit.

And then I saw them—a pair of girls no older than ten or twelve, in their parochial school plaid skirts and sweaters, swiping their MetroCards into the readers. “If they can do it, so can I,” I thought.

I followed the girls through the turnstile and we swam upstream through a stream of urban fishes until I reached the train platform. I took another deep breath and climbed aboard my train.

Chapter 15

Weezie

When I emerged from the dim recess of the subway station I found myself squinting in the sunlight and under a now crystal clear blue sky. The sidewalk was jammed with people, and it was all I could do to merge myself into the throng and hope that I was moving in the right direction.

But when I saw the tree line of Central Park and the granite walls looming ahead, I knew, without looking at the signs, that I’d arrived.

Everything about the scene there delighted me. I strolled the lineup of horse-drawn carriages, snapping photos of the drivers in top hats and mufflers and the horses, their coats gleaming in the sunlight, their harnesses and the carriages themselves arrayed with red ribbons, tinsel, and holiday wreaths. I shopped the street vendors, picking out an inexpensive pencil sketch of St. Patrick’s Cathedral for Uncle James, a sparkly holiday brooch for Mama, and a silly “I ♥ New York” onesie for BeBe’s baby.

For myself I picked up a pair of stretchy one-size-fits-all synthetic red gloves and a pair of obviously bootleg Chanel sunglasses with the interlocking C logo on the side picked out in large tacky rhinestones.

Suddenly ravenous, I bought a hot dog dripping with all the trimmings and a cup of hot chocolate from a cart, and headed into the park. Passing runners, Rollerbladers, and brigades of nannies and young mothers pushing strollers, I made my way to the Wollman Rink, found a seat on a bench, and sat down to enjoy my alfresco lunch and the ice show.

I stayed for what seemed like hours, watching the skaters twirling and circling, racing and swooping across the ice. The cold air left my nose red and runny and my toes, in their inadequate fake wool socks, numb. But I didn’t care. The prerecorded music floated out over the treetops and people drifted on and off the ice. Teenagers did crazy loops and improvised break dances to “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree,” and then the music and tempo changed.

I recognized the melancholy strains of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” just as an elderly couple made their way onto the ice rink.