Father Christmas (32 page)

Molly opened one eye and groaned softly.
“What time is it?” she whispered.

John twisted to peer at the clock on the
night table behind him. He cursed softly. “Six-oh-two.”

“
I warned you,” she
murmured, cuddling closer to him. He reflexively closed his arms
around her and slid one leg between hers. While John had been an
outstanding lover with only one working hand, he was even more
incredible when he wasn’t healing from stab wounds. Last night he
had loved her with his agile hands, his graceful fingers, his
mouth, his body. And this morning, she didn’t want to break from
him.

But Michael was whooping and hollering on
the other side of the closed bedroom door. John must have locked
it; given how hyper Michael was, he would have stormed into the
room if he could.

“
Go wait in the living
room,” John yelled, releasing Molly and sitting. “Give me a minute,
and then we’ll have a look at what Santa brought you.”

“
He came, he came!”
Michael shrieked, his voice fading as he ran down the hall to the
living room.

John leaned over and dropped a kiss on
Molly’s lips. Then he swung out of bed. She tried to shake off her
languor—and she tried to resist the urge to ogle him as he strode
naked to the bathroom and shut himself inside. She considered
staying in bed while John went to the living room to watch Michael
dive into his gifts. Rolling over and burrowing under the covers
might be easier than emerging from John’s bedroom and facing his
son at this ungodly hour.

But then she would miss the thrill of
watching as Michael giggled and jumped up and down and tore the
wrapping paper to shreds. The joy of Christmas wasn’t getting
gifts. It was witnessing the pleasure of others getting gifts.

When John stepped out of the bathroom, she
dove in. A quick swipe of her mouth with a toothbrush, a fast
splash of water, and she returned to the bedroom and scrambled into
the jeans and rugby shirt she’d packed in her overnight bag. John
made a half-hearted attempt to straighten his disheveled hair with
his hands, then gave up and opened the door.

Patience wasn’t Michael’s forte. By the time
they’d reached the living room, Michael had ripped apart the
package containing the toy plane puzzle and snapped the pieces
haphazardly together. He was standing on the sofa cushions in his
pj’s, waving the plane back and forth and making growling engine
noises.

“
Hey, Mike—off the couch,”
John chided.

Michael leaped down and raced across the
room to his father. “Look what he bringed me, Daddy! Look what
Santa bringed!” His gaze took in Molly, lurking nervously behind
John, and he smiled. “Look, Molly! Look what Santa bringed! It’s a
airplane!” With that, he turned and zoomed the plane back toward
the tree.

Well, that was simple enough. If only
everything could be as simple. If only John could be as accepting
of what was blossoming between him and Molly as his son was.

The next several minutes
were a blur of tattered paper, jubilant cries—”A boat, Daddy! I go
sail the boat in the sink!”—the forest fragrance of the tree and
John’s gratified smile. He handed Michael package after
package—”Look, Daddy! A sweater! I can wear it!”—and slowly eroded
the mound of gifts under the tree.
A
s the pile shrank, she caught
glimpses of the presents she’d hidden behind Michael’s last night.
She wondered when John would notice them, whether he would like
them, whether she’d presumed too much by placing them under his
tree.

He did notice them. He glanced at them, then
at her, and quirked an eyebrow. She smiled shyly, and he smiled,
too, a lot less shyly. He watched Michael twirl around the room,
moving his plane in death-defying loops and figure-eights before
navigating the vehicle into the den.

Alone for the moment, John turned back to
Molly. “What’s that?” he asked, gesturing toward the packages.

“
There’s one way to find
out,” she murmured, doing her best to ignore the anxiety that
nibbled at her. Those were the last two presents under the tree. He
hadn’t gotten her anything. She shouldn’t have given him anything,
either. Now he was going to be embarrassed, and he’d resent her for
making him feel guilty, and—

“
It’s great,” he said,
folding back the tissue paper that lined the box containing the
sweater. He lifted it and shook out the folds, then ran his hands
over the soft wool. “Or should I say, ‘Look, I can wear it!’“ he
mimicked Michael, only at a lower decibel.

His eyes sparkled. Maybe he wasn’t suffering
from embarrassment or guilt.

And maybe he
should
be, if he’d neglected to get a
gift for her.

She kept her misgivings at bay as he
unwrapped the book. “Wow,” he murmured, lifting the book into his
lap and leafing through the pages. “This is nice. Very nice.” He
inched over to where she was seated on the floor, leaning back
against the couch, and arched his arm around her. “Thank you,
Molly. Merry Christmas.”

“
Merry Christmas,” she
muttered, half furious with him for not giving her a present, and
half suspicious that he was up to something.

He relaxed beside her, his legs extended,
the book and sweater in his lap and his arm draping her shoulders.
“I guess Mike liked his loot.”

“
I guess so.” She choked
on the words.

And then her suspicions were confirmed. He
frowned, squinted, and pulled away from her. “Uh-oh. It looks like
there’s something on the other side of the tree.”

She saw nothing behind the low boughs, but
John crawled over the carpet to the tree, lifted some branches out
of his way, and retrieved a cube-shaped box. “Look at that,” he
drawled, handing it to her. “It’s for you.”

Her anger fled, replaced by laughter.
“You’re a terrible actor, John.”

“
Yeah? I had you going for
a minute.” He settled on the carpet next to her and leaned back
against the cushions. “Go ahead, open it.”

She did, much more carefully than either of
the Russos. She eased off the tape, lifted the corners of the
paper, and removed it from the box without tearing it. Then she
pulled off the lid of the box. And scowled in bewilderment. Inside
were tiny tufts of foam-rubber.

“
It’s a foam pit,” he
said. “I made it.”

“
It’s...very nice,” she
managed, fingering the top layer of foam and wondering how to hide
her disappointment.

“
I like the foam pit at
your school.”

“
Yes...” The foam pit was
where they’d kissed the first time. It was where she’d realized how
attracted to John she was, how much she could care for him if she
let herself. But to fill a plain cardboard box with bits of
foam?

“
Maybe you ought to let go
and jump around in it,” he suggested.

She glanced at him in bewilderment. He was
smiling slyly, and she began to suspect that he was teasing her
again. Shaking her head in feigned annoyance, she tilted the box
and plunged her fingers into the foam. She felt something.

Gingerly, she lifted it out. A bracelet,
simple gold links with two charms dangling from them. The charms
resembled small gold stick-figures, one a girl and one a boy, the
way a young child might draw them. They hung close enough together
on the chain that their stick arms touched, as if they were holding
hands.

“
Oh, my God,” she
breathed.

His smile waned slightly. “You don’t like
it?”

“
I love it!” She flung her
arms around his neck and kissed him hard, then soft. She wound up
half on his lap, leaning back against his chest while she fidgeted
with the clasp. Her hands shook—with excitement, with love, with
the giddy panic that came from accepting all the implications of a
gift of jewelry—but somehow she managed to get the bracelet on.
“Look at it, John! It’s perfect!”

“
I saw it and thought of
you.”

She jiggled her wrist and watched the
stick-figure girl and boy dance. When they finally grew still, they
seemed to be holding hands again. They reminded her of the drawings
her students created at the Children’s Garden...but they also
reminded her of John and herself. Side by side, touching.

“
So,” he said as he closed
his arms around her and drew her back against his chest. “You like
it.”

“
Almost as much as the box
of foam,” she said solemnly.

He laughed. She smiled. She’d never felt
more content, more serene...more in love. Santa Claus seemed to
have brought her exactly what she wanted.

***

IN THE EVENING, after a dinner of ham and
potatoes, an eggy bread, a spinach salad and peppermint-stick
ice-cream, he drove her home. She’d packed only one night’s worth
of necessities into her bag, and, she wanted to give Gail a call at
the ski lodge to wish her and her friends a merry Christmas.
Michael asked if he could come for the ride, but, as John had
complained to Molly, he hadn’t had a moment alone with her since
six a.m. The high school girl he’d paid so generously last night
was more than happy to come back to John’s house and watch Michael
for a couple of hours.

A couple of hours. In a couple of hours, she
could invite John into her condominium, into her bedroom. Or maybe
not the bedroom. Without Michael to interrupt them, they could make
love anywhere. On the living room floor. On the kitchen table.
Well, no, it wouldn’t bear their weight, but the counter would.

She was astonished by how deeply, how
crazily, how single-mindedly she wanted him. But then it occurred
to her that the reason she was so drawn to him physically was
because she was so drawn to him in every other way. Roasting a
Christmas ham with him had seemed so natural. Playing with Michael
in the den, where they all watched a video of “Frosty the Snowman,”
had felt so right. Waking up with John that morning had been as
glorious as going to bed with him the night before. Adorning her
wrist with the bracelet he’d given her made her feel magical.

He was wearing the sweater she’d given him.
She doubted it made him feel magical—sweaters didn’t have the same
powers that bracelets had—but she was touched that he’d put it on,
and it looked splendid on him. In fact, she couldn’t wait for him
to take it off.

“
That’s my street,” she
said, pointing to the plank sign bearing the name of her
condominium development. It stood on the corner, nestled into a
cluster of rhododendrons half-buried beneath the most recent
snowfall.

John nodded and turned onto her street. It
meandered in a picturesque route past staggered rows of shingled
townhouses with sloping roofs and vest-pocket front yards.

“
My unit is just around
the curve in the road. See where all those cars are?” She noticed
at least a dozen cars parked along the curve in front of her home.
“Someone must be having a party.”

John was forced to park half a block a way
because of all the cars. As soon as she shoved open her door, she
heard rock music pounding through the open front window of the unit
directly across the street from hers. She knew the family who lived
there, a usually quiet middle-aged couple, with a son away at
college.

He was obviously home from college now.
“That must be Andy and his friends,” she said. She’d seen a fair
amount of Andy last summer, when he’d lived with his parents and
taken a job at a sporting-goods shop in town. He was a jock,
according to his parents, attending college on a lacrosse
scholarship.

“
What a racket,” John
muttered.

“
I’m sure they’re just
having fun,” Molly defended him. “Andy’s a good kid.”

“
Why does he have the
window open? It’s twenty degrees out.”

“
It’s probably ninety
degrees inside. Look how crowded it is in there.” They could see a
mass of silhouettes against the drape covering the window, and hear
dozens of voices shouting to be heard above the loud
music.

Molly doubted she and John would be bothered
by the noise once they got inside. She was going to keep her
windows firmly shut, and if the temperature rose to ninety degrees
in her home, passion would be to blame. “Forget it,” she cajoled
John, who seemed distracted by the rowdy bash across the
street.

He followed her up the steps to her front
porch, glanced over his shoulder one final time at the party, then
turned his back on it and eased her key from her hand. He slid it
into the lock, twisted the door knob—and flinched at the sound of
crashing glass.

They both spun around. Someone had thrown
something through the window and onto the street. A beer bottle, it
appeared.

She sensed energy coiling inside John. His
hand fisted around the doorknob as he stared at the shards of green
glass scattered across the asphalt, glinting in the light of a
street lamp. “Those kids are drinking.”

“
Well, they
probably—”

“
Someone’s going to get
hurt. Are the parents home?”

“
I have no idea, John.
Come inside. If you’re really concerned, we can call the
police.”

He turned back to her, his
expression stern and stone-hard. “I
am
the police.”

“
Yes, but—but you’re
off-duty. Come inside, please. We’ll call and let someone else
handle it.”

“
Molly.” He pushed open
her door and nudged her inside. “You stay here. I’m going to go
over and break up the party before someone gets hurt.”