A Vineyard Christmas

by Jean Stone

  The “things to come” came quickly, with heavy snow and incessant, howling winds. Annie stayed burrowed, reading, for that whole first day and half the next. By Wednesday afternoon, after having consumed nearly two of the library books and never stepping out of her pajamas, the charm of the nor’easter had abated, and she began to feel edgy. Taking a shower helped. So did tying back her hair, donning clean sweats and fuzzy slippers, and spending the rest of the day cooking and baking as if she had a family of ten. But the aromas of chicken soup on the stove and beef stew simmering in the Crock-Pot, combined with brownies in the oven, followed by more cinnamon rolls, soothed her like a warm down quilt. They also provided a pleasant diversion from the fact that the cottage, too, was shivering.

  Somehow, she made it to bedtime. She crawled under the covers with just one thought: Tomorrow I will write. Tomorrow, whether or not it’s still snowing, I will stop procrastinating, relax, and get back to work.

  Soon, she fell asleep.

  Until, during the night, when she was awakened by a horrific bang.

  Her eyelids popped open.

  Her arms, her legs, her whole body stiffened.

  Her heart started to pound.

  The wind, she told herself. The wind must have loosened some shingles. Or slapped the screen door on the porch.

  Other sounds followed: footsteps.

  Footsteps?

  Really, Annie?

  But, yes, she thought as she drew the comforter up to her neck, she was fairly certain the sounds were footsteps, crunching through snow.

  Her eyes scanned the darkness in the bedroom. She had no idea what time it was. Two, three, four o’clock? She had no clue what to do. So she waited. And listened. To . . . nothing. Only the infernal wind as it rattled the scrub oaks and pines.

  Several moments passed. Then several more. And Annie knew she would not sleep again until she had investigated.

  Sucking in a shaky breath, she emerged with caution from her bed. She slid into her slippers. Pulled on her robe. Lit a small candle so as not to turn on the lights and startle . . . whatever.

  Whomever.

  She tiptoed from the bedroom.

  Panning the flickering light around the living room, she saw only darkness. But then . . . an unfamiliar shadow. Standing in front of her. She stopped abruptly, too scared to scream. Her heart threatened to burst out of her chest.

  But then an aroma wafted toward her. Not one of chicken soup, beef stew, or luscious baked goods. The scent was spruce; the shadow was the tree, standing in front of the window that looked out onto the porch.

  Quietly, she groaned.

  Once she regained her bearings, she sneaked toward the kitchen area, still not knowing what the sound had been. It was cool in the room, but not freezing: a low fire still glowed in the woodstove.

  Then, more noise. That time, it was not a bang. It wasn’t footsteps. It was a muted sound, almost like a whimper. Maybe a raccoon was trapped on the porch. Or a skunk. The Vineyard was known for those. Oh, great, she thought and warded off full-blown panic.

  But no matter what it was, Annie needed to know.

  She crept to the door and tried to peer through a small pane, but a light layer of frost clouded the glass.

  The soft cry came again.

  Turning the flimsy lock, she sucked in her breath and slowly opened the door. A crack at first. An inch. Then two. She couldn’t imagine what in God’s name had prompted her to do that. Even Murphy would have thought that she was nuts.

  Then, there it was. On the floor, right outside the door. Not a raccoon or a skunk, but a basket. A big handwoven basket, the kind her aunt had used to hold skeins of yarn. A red bow was tied around the handle. And inside was a baby, swaddled in white fleece.

  Chapter 3

  Annie stood rock-still and stared down at the basket. A baby? Really?

  She reached back and flipped on the light switch; the radiance confirmed what she had thought.

  “Well,” she said. “Well.” She stepped around the basket and peered out the screened windows. Beyond patches of ice stuck between the mesh, she could see the wind still blowing and snow swirling everywhere. But on the ground she also saw the indentations of footprints—not man-sized ones like Earl’s boots would have made, but smaller. Going in both directions. She couldn’t see too far; the porch light only revealed about twenty feet. The footprints then disappeared into the darkness.

  The baby whimpered again. Annie turned back, which was when she noticed a brown paper shopping bag next to the basket. What was more captivating, though, were the eyes that looked up at her. They were the same large, sad, and soulful eyes as those of the young woman at the holiday fair. The same eyes, the same basket—though the red bow had been added.

  “Well,” Annie repeated. “Hello, you. What are you doing here? And where in God’s name is your mommy?”

  The baby started to cry.

  “Damn,” Annie said. She walked back to the screen door and stared out, as if something might have changed in the last fifteen seconds. But all she could see was snow.

  The baby cried harder. Annie walked over, bent down, and studied its little face, its chubby cheeks nearly as red as the bow. She touched one lightly; it was as bone cold as the night. She quickly picked up the basket. “Well,” she said again, “I have no idea who you are or where your mommy has gone, but we need to get you inside where it’s warm.”

  Back in the living room, she turned on the lights, set the basket by the woodstove, and crouched next to it. Cupping her hands under the fleece, she lifted the baby and slid off its tiny hoodie. Beneath it was a thick crown of silky, dark hair, the same shade as the sad eyes. “Shhh,” Annie whispered as she pulled the baby close and gently rubbed its back. “Shhh. Everything will be fine.”

  Of course, she had no idea if that was true. Just as she had no idea what to do with a baby. She’d never had one, never even had been around them, except for Murphy’s twins, who Murphy had taken care of as easily as if they’d come with a tutorial.

  The only thing now about which Annie was fairly sure was that this baby was cold and terribly upset. She didn’t think it was a newborn: it seemed too big and too alert. So apparently the mother had not just given birth, wrapped the baby up, laid it in her version of a manger, and mistaken Annie’s cottage for a stable.

  With the bundle in her arms, Annie paced, her eyes fixed on the window, watching for the mother to return. Whoever she was, maybe her power had gone out or she’d run out of wood. Maybe she’d dropped off the baby, then raced back to her place for extra blankets before she would return and beg Annie to let them stay the remainder of the night. Or . . . maybe she’d needed an appendectomy and had called the On Time captain for emergency transport and knew it would be cumbersome to bring the baby with her.

  Even with Annie’s vivid imagination, neither scenario made a whole lot of sense.

  As she paced, the baby’s crying grew quieter, more pitiful. “You poor, sweet thing,” she said. She couldn’t say, “You poor, sweet girl,” or “You poor, sweet boy,” because she had no idea what gender it was.

  Touching the baby’s soft cheek again, trying to convince herself it was getting warmer, Annie straightened the blanket around the little pink chin that had a perfect dimple deeply sculpted in the center. As she fussed with the fleece, a piece of paper slid from between the folds: it was a receipt from Stop & Shop, one of only a few chain stores allowed on the island. She turned it over—a handwritten note was scrawled on the back. But Annie couldn’t make out the words without her glasses. “Damn,” she said again.

  The library book that she’d been reading was on the end table next to the rocking chair; her glasses sat on top. Fearful she’d drop the baby if she let go with one hand, she hung on tightly, sidled to the chair, and gingerly sat. She put on her glasses and, while the baby still cried in her arms, she studied the note. The handwriting was clear, the intent concise:

  Her name is Bella, after my grandmother. P
lease take care of her for a couple of days, because I can’t. I left you some supplies.

  That was all. No signature. No phone number. No exact timetable as to when she would return. No other information, except Annie now knew the baby’s name—Bella—and that she was a girl.

  With frustration rising, Annie turned the receipt over again; there was only the imprint from the store register: Baby formula. Diapers. A red bow. The customer had paid with cash.

  Then she had a disturbing thought. “Did you add the bow to make her look like a Christmas gift?” she asked the absent mother. “As if your baby was the equivalent of a scented candle or one of my soaps?”

  Leaning back in the chair, she tried to think clearly. Slowly, she started to rock. And baby Bella stopped crying. Annie looked into the shining black eyes again. “My God,” she whispered. “Is that really what your mommy wants you to be? A Christmas gift for a couple of days? Like a weekend in the Bahamas?”

  Bella gurgled. She gazed squarely at Annie, her small mouth revealing a tiny, almost tentative smile.

  Annie melted. “Well, you can’t stay here. I don’t have a spare bedroom.”

  Bella gurgled again. Annie lifted her to her shoulder and rubbed her back again. “Bella, Bella. Whatever will we do with you?” She would start, of course, by calling Earl. If he couldn’t help, at least he could call his son at the police station. John would take care of the problem, because it was his job to preserve and protect, or however that slogan went. All Annie needed was to get to her phone, which was on the nightstand in the bedroom, plugged in, and charging. But first, she had to figure out how to stand up from a moving rocker while holding a small baby.

  With her right elbow resting on the arm of the chair, she leaned on it and tried to boost herself up. That didn’t work.

  She leaned to the left; that didn’t work either.

  Bella let out a whimper that sounded one breath short of a full-fledged cry.

  Leaning back a little, Annie slid down a little and stretched out her right foot, grateful she had long legs. Flattening her instep, she hooked the handle of the basket and managed to drag it toward her, then gingerly set the baby back inside. She stood and went into the bedroom. And the crying began again.

  Annie cringed. She picked up her phone: the time on the screen read 3:51. Should she call Earl now, or wait until daybreak? Of course, day never really “broke” during a nor’easter, especially on Chappaquiddick, where there were no streetlights to brighten the gray air. No car headlights. No nothing. Just the infernal isolation that only days ago Annie had craved. She gazed at her phone as if it would tell her what to do. She decided that, her insecurities aside, it was almost four in the morning, far too early to phone anyone. But what would she do with a baby until the hour was “reasonable” for her to summon help?

  Then she remembered the paper bag out on the porch. It must hold the “supplies” the mother had mentioned.

  Slipping her phone into the pocket of her robe, Annie walked past the screaming infant and retrieved the bag.

  “Okay,” she said above the noise when she returned and squatted beside the basket again. “Let’s see what Mommy left for you.”

  Inside were two twelve-packs of diapers, which seemed to Annie like a lot, but who knew? She found a couple of things she knew were called “onesies,” a pink pacifier, a box of something called “rice cereal,” a plastic baby bottle, and a few cans of formula clearly marked for ages three to six months. At least she now knew Bella’s age, or at least her age range. The formula, however, felt frozen.

  But when was Annie supposed to feed the baby, how often, and how much? What was the right way to put on a diaper? How often should the baby sleep, and when should she wake her up? Why hadn’t the mother left some instructions? Then Annie remembered one time when she and Murphy were on the phone and Murphy said she had to hang up because it was time to wake the babies from their nap.

  How had she known? Had that been in the tutorial as well?

  Closing her eyes, Annie inhaled and exhaled slowly. The reality was she had no business trying to take care of a small baby. No business whatsoever. No matter how early the hour, this definitely constituted an emergency. And she needed help.

  She looked back at her phone and scrolled through her list of contacts for Earl’s information. At least he and his wife had had a child; though their son was somewhere in his forties, they’d know how to take care of a baby far better than she did. She touched Earl’s number and held the phone up to her ear. It took a few seconds to register that nothing happened. There was no indication of ringing on the other end. No beeps, no chirps, no nothing. Though the power was still on, the cell tower must have been knocked out. Blown over. Somehow gone down in the wind.

  “Okay,” Annie said again. “Okay.” She took another of the deep yoga breaths she’d learned at a class she’d attended a decade ago when her life had imploded. “Relax. All you need is to go onto the Internet and find a video on how to take care of a three-to-six-month-old baby. For God’s sake, there must be a million on YouTube.”

  She went to her desk and booted up her laptop. But the Internet, like the cell service, was down. Which meant that not only were Annie and Bella alone, but Annie would have to figure out a way to fend for them both. Unless the baby’s mother came back with the blankets Annie had dreamed up or returned from the emergency appendectomy.

  “Fat chance,” she muttered into the darkness, then returned to the rocker and plunked back down.

  * * *

  A short time later, the scent in the room clued Annie in on the reason Bella was crying. If she could only call Murphy, she could get a quick lesson in changing a diaper. “Some friend you turned out to be!” she cried up at the ceiling, as if Murphy’s ghost were hovering in the beams. Then Annie remembered hearing her friend once say that babies cried when they were hungry, tired, or in need of a change. “Or bored,” Murphy had added. “That’s the hardest kind of crying to make go away.”

  Right then, however, while the “why” behind the crying was quite clear, the next step would not be simple for Annie. The truth was, unlike most reasonably well-adjusted, fifty-year-old adults on the planet, she’d never changed a diaper. So perhaps it was better that no one was there to watch.

  She looked over at the baby, who didn’t look as if she’d be the least bit helpful.

  So, without Earl, Murphy, or the Internet, Annie would have to be in charge. She would need to tackle this the way she wrote a book: one word, one sentence, one chapter, at a time. Baby steps, she thought, then stifled a laugh at her perfect choice of words.

  The first question was: Where to do this? Standing again, she leaned over and scrutinized the basket. Even if she were able to maneuver around the handle, she could tell that it was neither big enough nor flat enough for the baby to lie comfortably while Annie attempted the monumental task. And the bow would be in the way. But she couldn’t very well set Bella on the kitchen table—that didn’t seem either healthy or safe. Which left the cold, hard floor. Or Annie’s coveted bed.

  Looking back at Bella, Annie said, “Don’t worry. I’ll figure this out. You don’t know me, but I’m not entirely stupid. Top five percent of my high school class. Three-point-seven-nine college GPA. Author of five published novels, the last two of which reached the bestseller list. Oh, and I used to teach third grade, but I think most of my students were potty trained.”

  The baby responded by crying. Louder. Obviously, she was not impressed.

  Then Annie remembered the pacifier. Quickly retrieving it from the bag, she stuck it into Bella’s mouth. The baby looked at her a moment, sucked on the plastic apparatus, and promptly spit it out.

  “Alright, then,” Annie moaned with unmasked exasperation. “I get it. We’ll get you changed. Then get you fed, in case you want that, too. Easy-peasy, right?”

  Accompanied by a symphony of cries, she went into the bathroom and found a clean towel and facecloth. She dampened the cloth with warm
water, then snatched another towel—just in case. Using pillows as borders and two layers of towels, she set up a makeshift changing table area on her bed. When she went back into the living room, she picked up the baby and pulled a clean diaper from one of the packs. Then she walked into the bedroom, unwrapped the fleece, and lay Bella down.

  “Waaah,” the baby squealed.

  Not to be dissuaded, Annie held the new diaper between her teeth, used one hand to undo the old one, the other to clean Bella with the damp facecloth, then her third hand to . . . Right, she thought. Even real mothers only have two hands. But somehow, fueled by perseverance, she managed to get Bella relatively back together.

  The crying stopped for all of one minute.

  “Food,” Annie said. She carried her back to the kitchen, peeled open a can of formula, unscrewed the plastic bottle with her teeth, rinsed off the nipple and—Damn, she thought, this needs to be heated.

  She deposited Bella back in the basket. She located a small saucepan and added water. Then she spooned the frozen formula into the bottle, set the bottle in the pan of water, then put the whole shebang—one of her dad’s favorite terms—on a burner on the woodstove, hoping she was doing the right thing. After a few more minutes of hearing the endless crying, she tested the temperature of the formula, took another yoga breath, picked up her charge again, and settled into the rocking chair, where the baby quickly nestled in Annie’s arms and eagerly ate her breakfast. Or lunch. Whatever it was.

  Bella only took half the liquid, then burped—twice. What seemed like only seconds later, her bottom moving in tiny wriggles, she emitted a distressful wail, and Annie quickly realized that another diaper change was needed. That time, she tackled the chore without hesitation, then they went back to the rocker, where Bella—apparently lulled by the slow rocking, the full tummy, and the clean diaper—fell sound asleep on Annie’s chest.