Baby Under The Mistletoe

by Jamie Sobrato

  “What’s that sound upstairs? Is someone taking a shower?”

  “Yes, someone is taking a shower.” Soleil slammed the sugar container on the counter a little too hard, and the lid slipped off and clattered onto the counter.

  From upstairs, she could hear the water shutting off. She had three minutes max before West would be down here getting tortured by the great Anne Bishop.

  Her mother finished putting away the groceries and began to assemble a salad. She eyed the sugar Soleil was about to put in her tea.

  “Do you know how bad for you refined white sugar is? And for your baby?”

  “It’s pure evil, I know.”

  “Are you going to tell me who’s upstairs, or shall I wait to be surprised?”

  “It’s West, the guy who knocked me up,” she said, knowing how much her mother hated that phrase and relishing the sound of it as it tripped off her tongue.

  Knocked me up.

  So satisfying to say, and so perfectly crude, so base in its imagery. It was the perfect phrase to infuriate a feminist poet.

  Though, for West’s sake, she probably shouldn’t have been trying so hard to get under her mother’s skin.

  “Oh? So you two are still fooling around. I thought you weren’t a couple.”

  “You know how us postfeminist girls are, always having sex without commitment. It’s exactly what your generation envisioned, isn’t it?”

  “My generation did not ever envision intelligent women like yourself getting knocked up, as you put it. And we never expected those younger than us to be so entirely crude and disrespectful of all we worked for.”

  “You were working so hard for the feminist cause when you cheated on Dad, weren’t you? It was all about sexual liberation and had nothing to do with your own fragile ego, did it?”

  She hadn’t planned to say it, but now it was out there, hanging in the air between them like a rotten odor.

  Her mother spun, pinning her with a dark look as she pointed a knife at her, ever the drama queen. “I will not stand here and be abused,” she said, her voice barely steady.

  “Is telling the truth abuse?”

  “The history of my personal life is my own business.”

  “Oh? Does that mean my personal life is my own business, too?”

  “Why are you so hostile?”

  How like her mother to change the subject when the argument wasn’t going her way.

  “I’m not answering any questions while you have a knife pointed at me.”

  “And I’m not staying here if you’re going to abuse me.” She slammed the knife down on the counter.

  “I thought you enjoyed pain. Or is that just what you claim in your writing because it sounds good?”

  “Hello, ladies.” It was West, standing in the kitchen doorway.

  He must have overheard part of their conversation, because he looked as if he was about to jump into shark-infested waters.

  “Captain West Morgan, meet my mother, Anne Bishop,” Soleil said.

  “Captain?”

  “Yes, Mom. West is an air force officer,” she said, lapsing into her chirpy fifties housewife voice again. “He bombs innocent civilians for a living.”

  Her mother’s expression neutral, she looked from Soleil to West. “How nice,” she said. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be leaving now. If you care to stop acting like a monster, you can reach me via my cell phone. I’m going to find a vacation rental for the rest of my time here.”

  “You don’t want to stay here? But why?” Soleil, blinking innocently, hadn’t managed to infuse her voice with anything resembling sincerity.

  Her mother began packing up her groceries again, furiously flinging heads of lettuce and sides of meat into her shopping bag.

  West watched the whole scene, bewildered. Probably not sure if he should be offended at her description of his profession or relieved that he wasn’t in the line of fire at the moment.

  Without planning to, Soleil had rescued him from her mother, she realized. And, she understood, too, she actually wanted to be the villain in her mother’s eyes, for reasons she didn’t quite understand.

  “Ms. Bishop, I hope you’re not leaving on account of me,” West said, stepping into the room now, his voice sounding confident. “I remember reading your poetry in college. It’s an honor to meet you.”

  He’d read her angry feminist poetry…at the air force academy?

  Soleil didn’t believe him for a second, but she kept quiet. She took the kettle off the stove before it started whistling and poured the hot water into a cup with a lemon-ginger tea bag.

  Her mother could never quite hide her pleasure at being recognized as a renowned poet. She smiled stiffly. “Why, thank you for saying that. I’m sorry you’ve walked in on Soleil and me at our worst.”

  “The scene’s not much different at my father’s house, between me and him. I think it’s the holidays-this time of year makes everyone tense.”

  Her mother’s posture changed a bit, went a little less stiff.

  “Would anyone else like a cup of tea?” Soleil asked.

  No one seemed to hear her. Anne was staring at West now as if she was seeing him for the first time.

  “I’ve always said the holidays are the most miserable time of year. All the pressure to be happy and normal, to make everything perfect. It’s unnatural, isn’t it?”

  “Absolutely,” West said.

  “I’m going to leave you two lovebirds alone. I’ll be packing,” she said, sounding a lot less tense.

  “You don’t have to leave, Mom.”

  “This is one less way we have to pretend everything’s perfect, okay? We’ll both be a little saner if we have a bit of space.”

  Her mother left the room, and Soleil felt stung that suddenly she was the only one being childish. At the same time, she owed West. He’d saved her and himself.

  She mouthed the words thank you. He grinned back at her.

  “I’ll have a cup of that tea,” he said. “Oh, and before I forget, my mom asked me to invite you and your mother to her Christmas party this coming Saturday night.”

  “That’s sweet of her.”

  “It’s from six to whenever. No gifts or anything-just show up. She lives at the Redwood Shores condominium complex on the north side of the lake. She’s in unit seven.”

  “I think I can remember that.”

  “I was thinking, um, I’d like to come by the farm some more, you know, to help out around here.”

  “That’s not really necessary. I’ve got the routine down, for the most part.”

  Except she hated getting up early and at this time of year tended to be slack about farm upkeep.

  “How about cutting yourself a break? You run this place on your own, you’re almost six months pregnant and you’ve got an eager farmhand willing to help out for free.”

  He had a point there.

  “Okay, if you really want to help out…”

  “I’ll come by in the morning then,” he said, probably trying to seal the deal before she changed her mind.

  As she’d feared, she was being railroaded, but for some reason she wasn’t able to muster up the will to protest.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  JULIA HAD TAKEN to avoiding her computer entirely. After her first date with Frank, she’d lost the nerve to respond to his calls or e-mails. She felt terrible about it, but she’d feel even worse if she were going on dates and falling in love while her ex-husband sat with mashed potatoes crusted on his face and no one allowed near to tell him he needed to wipe his mouth.

  These were the kind of humiliating issues he faced on a day-to-day basis now. A once-great man-albeit an impossible one-reduced to childhood problems.

  Okay, maybe she was crazy. Or maybe she was a coward. But Frank surely couldn’t have been as perfect as he seemed. She was simply saving herself the trouble of a big letdown later.

  She was too old for romance anyway. That was a notion best reserved for the young and fo
olish.

  But still…She felt terrible when she thought of Frank.

  So, she stayed away from her computer and cringed when she checked her voice mail.

  It was Julia’s night off from General duty while West stayed with his father. She was hosting her annual Christmas party in four more days, and some people would be RSVPing via e-mail, so she had to go online.

  This year, she was in no mood to host, but it was a party she always threw, and people looked forward to it. She couldn’t let them down. Being with John again put her in a terrible mood, frankly. She could hardly stand herself the past few days.

  She reluctantly sat at her desk and started scanning her in-box for responses, studiously trying not to look at the couple of messages from Frank Fiorelli, which she hadn’t even opened yet.

  But curiosity finally got to her, and she clicked on the most recent one.

  Dear Julia,

  I’m sorry I haven’t heard from you. Regardless of whatever changed your mind about seeing me again, I want you to know I think you’re a lovely person. It was my pleasure to meet you, and I wish you a life filled with love and joy.

  Yours,

  Frank

  Shame washed over her. She’d never ignored a letter in her life, and it nearly killed her to do so now. What was she to say? Oh, sorry, but I’ve been too busy taking care of my ex-husband to go on a date with you.

  Nothing made sense, and it all seemed like proof that she was too old to date. At her age, women were caring for their aging husbands, not having coffee-shop meet-ups with their online-dating buddies.

  Have a nice life, Frank Fiorelli, she thought. I’m sorry I won’t be a part of it.

  WEST CLOSED the gate on the goats, who were staring at him warily with their strange eyes through the four-rail fence. He bent to give Silas a rub, and the dog seemed to smile at him.

  He’d shown up at the crack of dawn to get the animals taken care of because he wanted to do it then leave, to make the point to Soleil that he wasn’t coming around to see her, that he really, genuinely wanted to help.

  Okay, maybe there was something a little dishonest there. Because he did want to see her. But this was their baby’s future he was fighting for. He had to do whatever it took to make sure Soleil accepted him as more than some “coparent” who saw his kid on holidays and vacations.

  He’d never imagined himself to be the kind of guy who’d enjoy agricultural work, or living on a farm, but he found himself wanting to be here far more than he wanted to be at his mother’s or father’s house right now. That probably had more to do with the people in each location than anything else. And the physical labor allowed him to focus all his energy on something besides brooding over his problems.

  Being here gave him a glimpse of a life he might have lived, had he had different parents, a different upbringing and different career aspirations.

  He crossed the lawn to the house and stopped on the porch to remove his work boots. Soleil was inside doing something in the kitchen, he could see through the window, and he wanted to say a quick hello before heading to his father’s house.

  Also, he’d made an appointment for a tour at a nearby nursing home tomorrow, and he wasn’t sure he could go there alone. Since his mother would never forgive him for even considering the place, he couldn’t ask her to go.

  He knocked, and after a few seconds Soleil opened the door.

  “Wow, thank you so much,” she said. “You didn’t have to get here to do chores so early.”

  “It’s really nice here at dawn, with the mist hanging over the hills. I enjoyed it.”

  She smiled. “Yeah, it is beautiful.”

  Another thing he loved about Soleil-how passionate she was about her farm. It was hard to imagine her living anywhere else. Which certainly made a strong point in favor of her never wanting to join him in a military life.

  “Would you like to have some breakfast?”

  “Thanks, I’d love to, but I have to get back to my dad.”

  “Maybe next time.”

  “I was hoping you might do me a favor,” he said.

  “Um, sure. What is it?”

  “I’m supposed to tour a nursing home tomorrow, and-”

  “I’ll go with you,” she said solemnly.

  “Thanks. I’ll be here early to tend the animals, and then we’ll leave around ten?”

  “Sure.”

  West wanted to come up with more to talk about, to stay, linger over breakfast, take her upstairs and make love to her the way he had the day before. He’d hardly been able to sleep last night, he’d been so tormented by memories of her body.

  Being with her felt like where he belonged, and the farther he was away from her, the more unsettled he seemed to feel.

  But he needed to be at to his dad’s house. His mother was under more strain than she’d been willing to admit, and he didn’t like leaving her alone with his father for long.

  “Well,” he said, ending their awkward silence. “I’d better get going.”

  They said their goodbyes, and he left. Once at his dad’s, he found his mother looking even more tense than she had the day before.

  She was in the front yard, her shirt stained with what looked like orange juice, attempting to wind up the garden hose.

  “What’s going on?”

  “After your father flung his juice at me over breakfast, he came out here and claimed he needed to wash the car. All he did was spray the cat with the hose.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Inside, listening to the damn radio again.”

  Damn? His mother had said damn? She never used profanity.

  Ever.

  “Mom, why don’t you take a break and let me handle this for a while.”

  “I’m fine,” she said, sounding anything but.

  “Why did he throw his drink at you?”

  “Because I told him we’re divorced.”

  West sighed. “Do you think it’s a good thing that you’re here, and he thinks you’re still his wife?”

  “What can it hurt?”

  “You, for one.”

  “I said I’m fine. Now leave it alone, West.”

  He took a step back, reeling at her tone. He felt five years old again, being chastised for breaking the Tiffany lamp that she’d inherited from her grandmother.

  “Mom, tell me the truth. Why are you putting up with all this?”

  West started helping her wind up the garden hose, but she stopped and looked at him, her expression grimmer than ever.

  “You’ll understand someday, when you look back over your life and see that you’ve been married to someone most of your adult years.”

  “You’re not married to him anymore.”

  She sighed and took the wound up hose from him, then carried it to the edge of the house and hung it where it belonged. When she returned, she placed a hand on his arm. “This must be confusing for you, me here with your father.”

  “This isn’t about me.”

  But maybe it was, a little bit. He couldn’t deny that it felt weird, having his mother and father together again.

  “You’re right, it isn’t, and I hope you’ll understand that I feel I need to help your father.”

  “He’s getting worse, Mom. Can’t you see that?”

  She frowned, and he knew she’d seen it, too. “I can’t let your father be cared for by strangers,” she said, her voice growing unsteady. “And if you were the kind of man your father and I raised you to be, you wouldn’t, either.”

  His mother rarely lost her temper, and she insulted people even less frequently. Her words stung him like a slap.

  Before he could respond, she turned on her heel and marched into the house.

  He stared after her, weighing his options. In the end, he went inside because he had to make sure his father wasn’t hurling things at her or hitting her. And really, he didn’t have anywhere else to go.

  THE NEXT DAY, West was relieved to get away from his parents’ we
ird dynamic and set off to the farm again. He went about the morning chores with even more relish than usual, and when he was done, he had breakfast with Soleil. Then the two of them rode together to the nursing home on the far edge of Promise.

  “Are your siblings willing to help at all with your dad’s care?” Soleil asked as they passed the sign for the home.

  “Both of my brothers are refusing to deal with the situation. They think things are okay as they are, with Dad chasing away his caregivers. And now that Mom has stepped in, I don’t see how I can convince them that they should be anything but complacent.”

  “Does your mom like to being the martyr?”

  West had never thought of it that way. There wasn’t any other way to explain her actions now. Loyalty should only go so far.

  He turned the car into the nursing home parking lot and found a spot near the door. No, not a nursing home, the sign on the front of the building reminded him. A residential-care facility. Could they make it any more sterile sounding?

  He sighed. “This is supposed to be the best place in the area,” he said, sounding even less enthusiastic than he felt.

  “I did an internship that involved visiting nursing homes while I was working toward my master’s in social work. I know a few things to look for, to see if they’re a good facility, I mean.”

  West sighed, his stomach twisting up at the thought of putting his dad in this place.

  This was not a fitting setting for the last years of a great man’s life, or at least it didn’t look like it judging by the squat stucco structure. The building seemed nice enough, spread out before them like a ranch house on steroids. The lawn and trees were carefully groomed, dotted with benches where residents could sit and enjoy the scenery. Except no one was outdoors, and everything was eerily still, as if death hovered nearby, waiting to claim its next victim.

  “Come on,” Soleil said, placing a hand on his thigh to shake him out of his stupor. “We’re here. We may as well get out of the car and see what it’s like in there.”

  West blinked, looked down at her hand, then up at her. She gave him an encouraging smile.

  “If we sit here much longer,” she said, “we’re the ones who’re going to be spending our golden years here, not your dad.”