Father Christmas (22 page)

So he spent the day in the
den with Mike, watching through bleary eyes as the kid fire-bombed
make-believe airports, drop-kicked Duplos, drew a crayon
self-portrait on the front page of the
Arlington
Gazette’s
Metro section and watched the
video of
Mary Poppins
that John’s
mother had given him for his birthday, singing harmony with Julie
Andrews on “A Spoonful of Sugar” and mimicking the chimney sweeps’
dance in “Step In Time.”

John popped pain-killers and sipped
ginger-ale and every now and then dozed off. He gave his statement
to the department clerk who showed up with a laptop, and he fielded
a call from the doctor who had stitched him up. The doctor wanted
to have a look at John’s wounds tomorrow. John said sure, hung up,
and listened to Mike mangle “Supercalifragilistic” at the top of
his lungs.

It was for situations like this that a man
needed a wife—not for himself but for his son. If Molly hadn’t
accompanied him home from the hospital last night, he wouldn’t have
been able to fix a real dinner for Mike, not even a snack as
trivial as soup and a grilled-cheese sandwich, and he would have
had to put Mike to bed without a bath. John wouldn’t have made it
without Molly yesterday. He could barely make it without her
today.

Odd, how when he thought about a wife, he
didn’t think about Sherry. If she’d been around yesterday, she
would have seen the knife assault as just one more bit of proof
that cops existed in a world she wanted no part of. She had always
resented the special demands of his job. “Why can’t you work nine
to five like a normal person?” she used to complain. “Why don’t
they pay you more? Why can’t you get a real job?”

Because a cop was what he was, he would tell
her. A cop saw the world a certain way, just as an artist did, or a
fisherman, or a priest. It was a calling, something you did because
it was the only way to make sense of your life. People didn’t
become cops for the money or the hours. They didn’t do it because
they thought it would make their wives or husbands happy. They did
it because they had to, because not to do it would be a kind of
death.

It was something non-cops couldn’t
understand. He doubted Molly would understand it. Her sister, that
cool blond lawyer who made a living defending scum like the guy
who’d sliced open John’s arm, sure didn’t.

By the time he put Mike down for the
night—skipping bath time—John decided the day qualified as one of
the longest of his life. The night felt even longer. He lay in bed,
ignoring the pain in his arm for the deeper discomfort of his
thoughts about Molly. Those who didn’t feel the calling never
understood those who did. They might respect a cop, but they
couldn’t really understand one.

He didn’t want Molly’s respect. He wasn’t
even sure he wanted her understanding. He wanted her passion, but
he would probably have to settle for her knowledge of children and
bath toys.

He had no right to ask for more from her
than her expertise. If he did ask, she would have every reason to
say no.

***

ELSIE PELHAM WAS RANTING about the latest
indignity her ex-husband’s lawyer had inflicted on her when a
familiar-looking man with salt-and-pepper hair and a neatly trimmed
mustache came into the Children’s Garden Friday morning. Next to
him, chattering at full volume, was Michael.

Molly held up a finger to silence Elsie and
turned to the man. “Bud Schaefer,” he identified himself, extending
an envelope to Molly. “We met at the hospital the other day.”

She nodded, remembering. He was one of the
officers in the emergency room waiting area—the one with John’s
clothes. She opened the envelope and slid out a sheet of lined
paper. In a barely legible scribble, it said, “Bud Schaefer has my
permission to pick up Mike. John Russo.”

“
He’s not too good writing
with his left hand,” Bud explained.

Molly smiled, amazed that he could remember
to send a written note about releasing his son to someone other
than himself. He certainly had enough else on his mind right now.
And with his injured right hand, he could have telephoned to let
her know he authorized his friend to fetch Michael at the end of
the day. Ordinarily she wanted written permission, but John’s
circumstances weren’t ordinary.

“
How is he?”

“
Miserable,” Bud reported
cheerfully. “He’s got a doctor’s appointment today. They’ll let him
know how he’s doing.”

“
He’s going to drive to
the doctor’s office?”

Bud shrugged. “I’d drive him, but I don’t
think we can afford the manpower right now. We’ve got our hands
full with all those street punks he collared last week during his
Santa gig. Besides—” he grinned “—none of us wants to get stuck
wearing the Santa costume, so we’re all keeping as busy as we can
on other projects, if you know what I mean.”

Molly knew what he meant:
John was a nobler cop than the rest of them. He was willing to take
the toughest jobs. She would have assumed that the toughest jobs
for a cop involved raiding crack houses or hunting down mass
murderers. Evidently, the
really
tough jobs included dressing up in a silly Santa Claus
costume.

“
Does he—do you think he’d
mind if I called? Just to see how he’s doing,” she explained,
smiling blandly. She didn’t want this friendly police officer to
know how concerned she was about John, how deeply she admired
him...how much she cared.

“
I wouldn’t advise it,” he
said, casting a quick look down the hall at Mike, who was engaged
in a one-on-one with his left boot on the floor next to his cubby.
He turned back to Molly. “He’s been sleeping a lot. And when he’s
not asleep, he’s grouchy as hell.”

Molly nodded, trying not to let
disappointment show. What selfishness, that she should place her
own longing to talk to John ahead of his need to be left alone. She
thanked Bud for bringing Michael to school, waved him off, and gave
herself a stern mental lecture about not letting John preoccupy her
all day. At night, alone in her bed, she could think about him. But
not today, with Cara out sick with bronchitis and a school full of
rambunctious children, and Elsie Pelham resuming her rant about her
protracted custody battle.

And really, she told herself, why did she
want to bother him with a phone call, anyway? If he wanted her to
know how he was doing, he would call her. He had more important
things on his mind than putting her worries to rest. She pictured
him storming around his house, growling and snarling, and decided
that she probably didn’t want to talk to him, after all.

He hadn’t been growling and snarling when
she’d been at his house. The way he’d gazed at her, and touched
her...

He had obviously been too delirious to know
what he was doing then. Now he was recovering, and his first task
as he fought his way back to health was to reconstruct all his
defenses. She had better things to do than to try to breach
them.

When Bud Schaefer returned to the school at
five-thirty to pick Michael up, Molly politely asked him to pass
along her good wishes to John. She waited until all the children
were gone, then locked up the school and drove home. Yesterday’s
snow had melted, leaving nothing but ugly mounds of slush along the
curbs. The festive holiday lights and decorations hanging in the
shop windows along Dudley Road depressed her. They made her think
of street-corner Santas, which in turn made her think of one
particular Santa who could have used his gun but hadn’t. Who could
have kissed her but hadn’t.

She wasn’t going to think about John
anymore. She wasn’t going to think about the brush of his thumb
against her lips. She’d helped out a school parent, period. She
would have done as much for Abbie Pelham’s mom, or Dana’s, or
Keisha’s. Instead, she’d done it for Michael’s dad, and now it was
time to forget about it.

Or so she resolved as she headed off to her
weekly Daddy School class Saturday morning. She was calm and
composed, fully prepared to lead a discussion on ways to counteract
the overwhelming materialism of the holiday season, how to shop for
toys that would hold the children’s interest for more than ten
minutes on Christmas morning and how to counteract the barrage of
commercials the kids saw on TV.

The last thing she expected was for John
Russo to show up for class.

“
I GOT MIKE A TREE,” he
said.

Most of the other fathers had left; the two
that remained were huddled with their young daughters near the
front door, negotiating the details of a play-date. John loitered
in the Pre-K classroom with Michael, who was seated on the floor
near the gate, working up a sweat trying to get his feet into his
boots.

John looked markedly better than he’d looked
Wednesday evening. He was clean-shaven, his hair relatively neat,
his right hand wrapped in less bulky bandages. His eyes were still
shadowed, his face a bit drawn, but his complexion had regained a
healthy undertone, and his lips were no longer pinched with
pain.

He had on a slate-gray V-neck sweater with a
white T-shirt underneath, and black jeans. The colorless outfit
ought to have seemed drab or even funereal, but on him it looked
vivid, a bit dangerous and rather sexy, especially when compared to
the way he’d looked in his bright Santa Claus costume.

Oh, yes, he was sexy. Molly didn’t want to
be viewing him that way, but she couldn’t help herself. After not
seeing him for several days, she only had to glance at him and her
mind was abducted by memories of his naked torso, of his thumb
caressing her mouth.

“
A tree?” she asked, her
voice steadier than her nerves.

“
White pine. Yesterday
when Bud brought Mike home, I asked him to help us get it.” He
lifted his injured hand and pulled a face. “I’m useless by
myself.”

“
You’re not useless,”
Molly corrected him, thinking of all the things he could do with
one hand, and then thinking she’d better stop thinking about it.
She distracted herself by contemplating her own failure to get a
tree.

In Decembers past, she and Gail used to
spend the holiday with their parents, but this year their parents
had decided to take a Christmas cruise with friends. Gail had
arranged with a few friends from law school to rent a cabin in
Killington, Vermont, where they could greet Christmas on skis.
Molly had declined Gail’s offer to join them, because she’d also
received an invitation from Allison to celebrate the holiday with
her, Jamie and the baby. Allison had mentioned that she and Jamie
had invited several other friends to their house for the holiday,
including—ominously—Jamie’s dear friend Steve, a classmate of his
at Dartmouth and an extremely eligible bachelor.

Molly wasn’t eager to let Allison and Jamie
play matchmaker with their respective best friends, but she was
even less eager to spend Christmas by herself.

In any case, she had seen no need to invest
in a tree when she wasn’t going to be home on Christmas eve. To
create a holiday mood in her condo, she’d decorated the living room
with sprigs of holly and hung a wreath on the front door, and she’d
placed cinnamon-scented red candles in her pewter candlesticks on
the fireplace mantel. But the place didn’t seem festive enough—and
spending the holiday in the company of Jamie’s dear friend from
Dartmouth wasn’t going to fix that.

John had a tree. He and Michael would have
the holiday spirit in their home. Molly was glad for them, but a
part of her felt wistful, wishing she could share their holiday in
some way and warning herself that she shouldn’t waste her wishes on
the impossible.

“
I don’t have any
decorations,” John broke into her thoughts.

“
No decorations? You just
said you got a tree.”

“
I have nothing to put on
it. No ornaments.”

“
Don’t you have any left
over from last year?”

“
I didn’t have a tree last
year.”

She nodded, her mind churning. Last year
Michael would have been a year and a couple of months old, old
enough to appreciate a tree. Maybe John hadn’t wanted a tree—or
maybe his wife hadn’t. Last year at this time, she might have
already been making plans to leave. It might have been the most
wretched holiday John and his son had ever endured.

Then again, John’s failure to get a tree
last year might be no more significant than Molly’s failure to get
a tree this year.

“
I was thinking,” he said
almost shyly, “Mike and I could take you out for lunch, and then
you could help us buy ornaments.”

She knew John wasn’t asking her on a date.
But the way he gazed at her, his eyes so dark and enigmatic,
communicated that this was more than just a casual invitation.

“
A bribe,” she guessed,
then grinned to calm her overactive nerves. “It’s a payoff if you
buy me lunch
after
we shop for
the decorations. But if you feed me
before
, it’s a bribe.”

He smiled, one of his rare, soul-deep
smiles, like the smile he’d given her when he’d entered into battle
with her in the foam pit. It was a smile that simultaneously
soothed and aroused her.

“
I’m bribable,” she said.
“Would you like me to drive, or can you manage it?”

They wound up driving their two cars to
Molly’s condominium development, where she parked hers by her
townhouse and then joined the Russos in their car. John insisted
that he was able to drive just fine, but once she was settled into
the front passenger seat, she noticed his slight grimace as he
attempted to wield the gear stick with just his fingertips, sparing
his palm.