Falling in Love with Natassia

by Anna Monardo

  “I OWE YOU GUYS,” Mary said to Natassia and Kevin as they walked and skidded down the frozen pavement back to the cottage. “You two really worked that room.”

  “Natassia takes the prize,” Kevin said. “I think she talked to everybody and his brother.” Natassia, grinning, breathed frosty breath up into the sky.

  Mary laughed. “Yeah, and she made sure everybody knew that her dad’s a physician.”

  “I knew they’d like that, to think that at some point in her life the unconventional Ms. Mudd had done something as conventional as marry a doctor. I didn’t mention that you never did marry him. Or that he’s also an alcoholic-pothead.”

  “Natassia, don’t talk about your father that way.”

  “But it’s true.”

  “Then especially don’t talk about him that way.”

  “Okay. You’re right.”

  Mary put one arm through Natassia’s, her other through Kevin’s. “Who wants dinner at Friendly’s? My treat.”

  BECAUSE MARY hadn’t had time to give a thought to the Christmas break, she accepted Kevin’s invitation to drive down to the city with him. She and Natassia had nowhere else to go. Some writer had invited Lotte and David to London for Christmas; Lotte had accepted, she told Mary, in order to keep David out of Mary’s hair. Nora had called and left a message that Mary and Natassia were welcome to stay in the loft during the holidays, but Nora and Christopher would not be there. “Just call Kevin first and arrange your times with him,” Nora had said, “because I offered him the loft, too.” It wasn’t until Mary, Natassia, and Kevin were in New York, in the loft, that the oddness of the situation finally sunk in. Nora and Christopher weren’t home. No one, not even Kevin, knew exactly where they were.

  The place was dusty. The mailbox was crammed full with Christmas cards. There were a dozen UPS and FedEx delivery receipts. A pile of boxes had been left for them at the laundry next door. The cat was gone.

  Standing in the kitchen loosening his tie, Kevin said, “Things are worse than I thought. The Brita filter is more than a month overdue. Under normal circumstances, Christopher would never let that happen.”

  CHAPTER 27 :

  DECEMBER

  1989

  It fell on a Sunday, but the day felt like a Saturday, as Christmas Eve always does. Christopher was hauling Denise’s artificial tree down from her attic. What he wanted was to talk her into letting him buy a real evergreen. She refused. Waste of money. He unpacked her boxes labeled CHRISTMAS so she could decorate as she and Don always had: rolls of cotton for the mantel, tinsel for the fake tree, and a hundred other tacky touches Christopher couldn’t believe were part of the house where he was spending Christmas.

  As he changed Baby Don’s diaper and bathed him in the sink, Christopher sang “Little Drummer Boy.” As he gift-wrapped a package of high-quality computer paper and a nice brass letter-opener for Denise, and wrapped a set of hand-painted German-made wooden blocks for Baby Don, along with a set of four handmade puppets, and filled stockings for them with candy and trinkets, and shoveled the walkway and driveway so he could drive to the grocery store, he sang “O Tannenbaum” and “Come, All Ye Faithful.” And the whole time, Christopher couldn’t stop thinking about what he and Nora would be doing if this were a normal Christmas Eve.

  By now they would have come home from Jefferson Market, where they always went together to buy the fresh seafood for Christmas Eve dinner. By two o’clock, Christopher would have cleaned the squid, shrimp, and scallops. He’d have some squid steaming to make into a salad, more squid ready to fry for the antipasto, and the majority of the squid ready to sauté with shrimp and scallops for the pasta sauce. By now he’d be kneading the dough to fry the zeppole, with the pan full of honey right by the stove so he could dip the fried dough while it was still hot; and then he’d call Nonna in Kansas City and tell her that his zeppole weren’t as good as hers, and she’d make a big fuss, again, about how it was her grandson, and none of her granddaughters, who cared enough to keep up the family’s traditions. By now he would already have made the angel-hair pasta and hung it to dry. He’d be stuffing the lobster tails. He’d be trying to talk Nora into doing something to help him, at least slice the mozzarella and the tomatoes, wash the basil leaves! His coconut cake would be baking. The biscotti would already be baked. He’d have the pancetta and the Arborio rice for the Christmas Day risotto. Nora, eventually, would fill vases with fresh-cut flowers. She would wrap gifts with ribbon so expensive that if Denise ever heard about it she’d choke. Nora would be answering the buzzer and taking in boxes sent by his parents, flower deliveries from their friends. She’d be futzing with the stockings, all embroidered with names, which she lined up in alphabetical order along the fake-fireplace mantel: Christopher, David, Giulia, Lotte, Kevin, Mary, Natassia, Nora, Ross. And there would be a couple extra stockings for any unexpected visitors who happened to show up at the last minute for Christmas in Christopher and Nora’s loft.

  Nora would have candles set in candlesticks everywhere. She would be wearing some new sexy underwear, because that was one of the ways she surprised Christopher every Christmas Eve night. They’d be listening to Italian Christmas music on the CD player. Somehow, during their years together, Christmas had become Italian: the stacks of cookies, the rolls of dried figs, the baskets of fruits.

  And, always, Christopher’s festival of food. At the end of his dinners, people scraped their plates with their forks. Every year—it was tradition by now—Ross picked up his plate and licked it.

  All of this should be going on. All of this was Christmas. None of it was happening this year.

  A few days earlier, Christopher had stopped in a market in Nyack and found a big panettone. When he brought the cake home, Denise had said, “Why’d you spend the money? We have all those cookies my sister-in-law sent.”

  “I like the smell of panettone when you slice it open.”

  “I bet you spent ten bucks on that, and just to smell it? We’ll never eat all this.”

  He had to cut down his enthusiasms. He had to cut down his spending, which was difficult. Christopher had never felt as generous and full-hearted as he did these days every time he held Baby Don.

  But away from the baby, Christopher had never felt sadder in all his life.

  Or more scared.

  JUST A FEW HOURS EARLIER, late morning on Christmas Eve, he’d come home with groceries and found that things at Denise’s had turned a little strange. When he walked in the front door, there was a votive candle lit in front of Don’s photograph in the hallway. A four-foot-by-three-foot painting Christopher recognized as one of Don’s had been hauled up into the living room from the basement. The canvas had cobwebs in its corners; the surface of the painting had been dusted off in streaks.

  Christopher stood in the living room with his boots off and his jacket on, holding four grocery bags. “Denise,” he called. “You didn’t carry that up here yourself, did you?”

  Her voice came from the kitchen. “I dragged it, I didn’t carry it.”

  When Christopher entered the kitchen, Denise didn’t turn to look at him. She was sponging off the counter. The kitchen was a mess in some way he’d never seen it before.

  “Denise?”

  “Would you check on the big guy? I put him down for his nap, but I think I just heard him fussing.” She started opening cabinets, closing cabinets.

  “What are you looking for?” he asked.

  “Stuff I need. I’m baking Don’s sister’s turkey stuffing. And we need salt for the driveway; you probably didn’t get any, did you? That’s okay. Maybe next door those people have some extra next door.”

  She was still in her robe. Her bare feet, Christopher noticed, were dirty. “Denise?” He walked up to her, and she moved away, but as she did, there was a scent around her. Something gingery but not quite innocent. Something stuffy, like a closed-in closet.

  And then her foot shuffling over the floor caught on the leg of a chair, and she screamed,
“Fuck shit fuck,” curses completely unheard from her before, and Christopher felt the first clutch of fear in his stomach. As she grabbed at her foot, she stumbled and then lowered herself onto the step stool, almost missing it. When she looked up at the ceiling, Christopher saw that her face was red, very red. Ruddy, overheated, not right.

  “Denise, have you been drinking?”

  She burst out laughing. She was hugging her foot; her bathrobe opened, showing her thighs. “I’m not sure,” she said in a voice detached from her, not speaking to him, “what you mean by that question.”

  LATER, AFTER SHE finally agreed to go lie down in her bed, after he diapered the baby and put him down again to nap, Christopher found an uncorked bottle of port in the basement. It was a souvenir bottle, shaped like a painter in a beret holding a paintbrush, and it was sitting on a shelf next to Don’s tools. The bottle was half empty.

  Christopher was still in the basement, trying to figure out what to do, when the phone rang, and it was Carole, Denise’s sponsor. He heard Denise on the phone with Carole for a long time. And then he heard nothing, so he figured Denise had fallen asleep. Her bedroom door was closed. When he peeked in, she was in bed, all covered up. Christopher cleaned the kitchen. Egg yolks were floating on the counter, and eggshells were spread all over the window ledge. Bread crumbs were underfoot. On the cutting board were stalks of half-chopped celery, and a knife with a dash of blood on it. Two big bowls were greasy all over with oil or butter. A dish towel had slipped halfway down into the garbage disposal. Christopher had been gone less than two hours.

  The baby was happy that day, easily satisfied with the bottle Christopher made up from Denise’s expressed milk stored in the freezer. But as Christopher held and fed him, Baby Don looked smaller than he had the week before. “Ah, baby, what’s going to happen? What’ll I do for you, boy?” All afternoon Christopher whispered, kept the noise down, tiptoed. When the phone rang late in the afternoon, he jumped, grabbed it on the first ring. “Yes, hello.”

  “Hey there, this is Melany, Denise’s sister-in-law. In Erie?”

  “Yeah, Melany. I heard about you.”

  “You did, huh? Well, you, too. Hey, how’s your Christmas up there? Got snow coming? It’s coming down here like buckets.”

  “Yeah, a little snow. A little.”

  “So, how’s the mommy? How’s our sister doing, that nutty girl?”

  “Well, she’s…”

  “She’s not drinking yet, is she?”

  “What?”

  The woman laughed. “I shouldn’t say it, but I guess we worry. The reason I’m asking before you put her on is because sometimes at Christmas, since Don’s sickness and all, she’s had a little return of her problem. It doesn’t happen every year, but—”

  “Well, it happened this year.” Christopher had the phone receiver tucked into his neck and was burping the baby. “I came home this morning and she was…I don’t know. She’s sleeping it off. She’s been in bed all afternoon.”

  “Ah, shit. Ah, shit and shit. Reg,” the woman said to someone in the room with her, “looks like she had another slip.”

  The man’s voice came near the phone. “That guy’s there? She’s not alone?”

  “Is the baby all right?” the woman asked, a little testy.

  Already Christopher felt defensive. “Yeah, he’s fine. I’m holding him.”

  “Bless his heart, that little thing. If my brother Don could—”

  “So this happened before?” Christopher asked.

  “I told you,” the woman said, again with that tone of irritation, “at Christmas, once in a while, we’ve had a little problem with her. It just gets so she can’t handle it some Christmases and she ties on a good one. Those are her only slips.”

  Christopher heard the man’s voice again, testier than the woman’s. Christopher did need help from these people, but he was glad they were in Erie, in snow.

  “Well, right. Reg just reminded me there was that once on Don’s birthday, too.”

  The baby was turning his face in to Christopher’s chest, yawning, and Christopher imagined himself and Baby Don, Christmas after Christmas, holding on to each other, waiting for Denise to sleep it off, not able to call Nora.

  “When’s Don’s birthday?” Christopher asked, testy himself now.

  “May. Why?”

  “I just wish I’d known. So I could be prepared or something.”

  “Are you needing to leave there?” Melany asked. “Is there somebody can come by watch the baby till Denise pulls herself together?”

  “I’m not going anywhere. I’m here. I’m staying till after the holidays, till Don and Denise get settled in together. I’m not leaving them. She just had surgery.”

  There was a silence. “I’m glad you’re there with her. You sound like a nice guy. I have to tell you, we was worried.”

  Christopher didn’t like this world he and his baby were living in, and he felt a huge rush of anger at Nora. If it weren’t for her stubborn, high-and-mighty refusal to have a baby in their marriage…

  But if it weren’t for Nora’s stubbornness, this baby wouldn’t be here. Christopher hated that thought. He kissed Baby Don’s forehead. “Okay,” he said to Melany, “what do I need to know about Denise and Christmas, and what’s going to happen here? The baby and I need to be prepared.”

  “Nothing. She’ll sleep it off. I’d say, if you can, don’t leave her alone. It’s the loneliness for Don, the depression, that gets her. She likes to go to her meetings. That gal she’s got, that Carole, she’ll help you out. I’d say it’s better if you’re not drinking in the house. I know it’s Christmas—”

  “I never drink in front of Denise. There’s no liquor in this house. She found some souvenir bottle of port downstairs.”

  “Port,” the woman told Reg, “that souvenir bottle we brought Don from Vegas, remember? I told you we shouldn’t never brought it. That’s what she was drinking.

  “Yeah,” Melany said to Christopher, “you probably seen the worse. She’s never did it twice. Just once, usually late on Christmas Day. This is early. She’s going to wake up hating herself and feeling like crapola. Just feed her coffee and let her be while she pulls together. And listen, I’m real sorry we won’t be there with you guys. Reg and I are working things to be up there with her by New Year’s, so you can make your plans, too.” Melany broke off to talk to Reg. “What?” she asked him. “Can’t you see I’m on the phone? No, Reg, he’s not calling Social Services. He’s not leaving the baby with her when she’s drinking. She’s not drinking now. She’s sleeping.” Back to Christopher: “I’m sorry. He gets nuts sometimes, too.”

  “Well, I’m not leaving here until Denise feels good enough to take care of the baby.” Or until he’s old enough to take care of himself, Christopher thought as he hung up the phone. It was dark outside, time to turn on the blinking lights on the artificial tree. The baby was falling asleep in Christopher’s arms, so he spread a blanket on the floor and laid the baby down right next to him. It was hard enough to resist the urge to keep the baby in his arms; no way could Christopher sit in this sad living room by himself on Christmas Eve with Baby Don in another room. Lying on his back, the baby automatically lifted his arms over his head—a sign of surrender, defeat? The seriousness on his face during sleep made Christopher sad. Already Don seemed to understand the precariousness of his life.

  Christopher knew the 800 number for TWA by heart. He picked up the phone, dialed. By some Christmas miracle, he got a real voice instead of a recorded message. He asked about flights from LaGuardia to Kansas City. “Let me check that for you, sir. Two adults with an infant, right? One moment, please.” The TWA attendant put Christopher on hold, and then Christopher hung up. The despair had passed through him, and he’d come to his senses. As soon as he hung up the phone, his hands stopped trembling.

  There was nothing to do but sit it out—Denise’s drunk, the holidays, Baby Don’s childhood and adolescence and early adulthood. Christo
pher put pillows all around the baby’s blanket and walked across the living room to the front door. He looked back at the baby—he was safe—and then Christopher opened the front door, stepped onto the porch, went to a branch of evergreen hanging over the stoop, bent his face into the cold needles, and breathed. He rubbed his face into the snow on the branch, then broke it off and brought it into the house, stomped his shoes, and locked up the door for the night. He laid the branch under the tree, next to Denise’s fake-wood manger, then stretched out nearby so he could catch the evergreen scent.

  Christopher remembered a morning in late August, after he’d started traveling up to Nyack to help Denise get the house ready. It was very early, and he’d sat out on the front porch drinking a cup of coffee, noticing how quiet Denise’s street was compared with his street in New York. And then, within the quiet, sounds rose up and were all over him. The incessant chatter of birds, the 1960s sound of whirring lawn-sprinklers. There was the cranking of the neighbor’s garage door being lifted—one car started, one guy going off to work, instead of the hundreds of people who daily rushed by below the loft’s windows.

  In his life before Denise, Christopher would have felt sorry for any guy living in a house like Denise’s or the one next door to hers. Aluminum siding. Crooked porch with a cheap, rusty railing. A plastic eagle on the plastic mailbox. A year earlier, Christopher would have thought, Can’t these people do better? Where’s their taste? He would have told Nora, Let’s get out of here, let’s get back to the city. Fast.

  The guy driving off to work that morning had waved at Christopher. A bird landed on the overhung branch of the evergreen, not far from where Christopher sat on Denise’s aluminum lawn chair. It’s not a pigeon. It was a little smaller than a pigeon and had the muted colors of a female, some kind of dove, with a sweet bluish head, a sharp beak, a longish tail. Christopher would have liked to sketch the bird, but it was almost September, and he hadn’t finished emptying Don’s painting studio so it could be turned into a nursery—strip wallpaper, plaster, maybe even drywall. I could trim the shrubs for Denise. I should plant some hostas down the walkway. First, though, he’d have to go up into the attic and repair the rafters, then probably up onto the roof. Denise had had to buy a new furnace unexpectedly, so she didn’t have the extra money in her budget to hire people to do the work she’d planned to hire out. She’d have to dip into the money saved for the first year of day care. Christopher couldn’t let her do that.