by Lynn Bulock
“Not even one plaid bow?”
Mike sighed. “If he’ll let you put it on, you can do that. And of course you can brush him. But no jingle bells or pine roping or anything.”
His mother gave a very unladylike snort behind him. “Pine roping. Who does he think I am?” Even though he was headed out of the room, Mike already knew that Dogg’s big head was in her small hands. They both loved the attention. “You’d eat pine roping. And mistletoe is poisonous, so we can’t have you wearing that, either. Let’s go find that plaid ribbon, the one with the gold edges, shall we?” Mike heard the sound of Dogg’s nails ticking down the hardwood hallway as they both went their separate ways to prepare for Christmas Eve.
An hour later they were all in the dining portion of the big country kitchen. Mike tried to disguise his exhaustion with aftershave and a bright red sweater. It might work, depending on how close Mom was paying attention.
There were candles everywhere there was flat space in the kitchen. It did seem kind of quiet, just two people and one dog, even if he took up more floor space than one of the people. Maybe his mom was right about the lack of grandchildren. A few rug rats would definitely spice up the holidays. Of course he’d have to meet the right woman first. One that would pass muster with his mother, as well as being able to put up with all his foibles. And it wouldn’t hurt if she were soft and small and easy on the eyes, too. That would take another couple of decades at least.
As a special treat, Dogg got a little veal stew on top of his kibble. He inhaled his food and stretched out on the rug with a sigh. Mike ate in silence for a while, then pushed back from his place. “I’m probably going back to the hospital tomorrow to get Lori. She and the baby are both healthy, and I expect they’ll be ready to discharge her by noon. She doesn’t have much in the way of insurance and there’s nobody she can stay with.”
“She’ll need people around. Don’t take her straight to that empty house. Bring her here and I’ll stretch out Christmas dinner.”
Jumping up from the table and hugging his mom felt like a good idea right now. But that would not be Gloria’s idea of good dinner decorum. Better to stay seated. “Great. I can’t thank you enough for being understanding about this. I know I don’t usually bring fire-and-rescue home with me, but this time something was different.”
“I’m glad you’re reacting this way. I can honestly say I’ve been where this young woman is, and it’s not a pretty place to be.” Gloria looked down at her plate. As usual she’d stirred around a small portion of dinner, hardly seeming to eat.
“At least you had money to fall back on. I don’t think there’s any there.” Mike looked at his mother. Did he dare ask a question he’d wondered about for years? Hey, it was Christmas. Why not? “And you just had me. Did you ever regret that I was an only child?”
Gloria’s smile was crooked. “All the time. Except maybe that year your dad died. Then I was thankful I didn’t have any littler ones to deal with. You were a little old man by then, so serious. I couldn’t imagine having a baby or a toddler in that situation.”
“Well, try a five-year-old, a baby, one junker car that I could see out there in the middle of nowhere and only the possessions that fill a very small mobile home that ceased to be mobile during the Nixon administration.”
Gloria actually grimaced. “Definitely bring her here. I wonder if there was any Christmas for the little boy.”
“No idea. I pretty much doubt it.” Sitting there contemplating the Harpers’ Christmas made his head hurt. “Could we have coffee and some of those Christmas cookies I know are on that tray on the countertop? I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck all of a sudden.”
Gloria got up briskly and cleared the plates before Mike could move. Putting them next to the sink, she flipped the switch on the coffeepot, which hummed to life. “I had it all set up. I figured the day would catch up to you sooner or later.” She walked over to him at the table and massaged his shoulders. Her hands were so fine boned. “Think you’ll still be awake when the carolers come?”
“Only if they make it in the next half hour. Otherwise I’m joining Dogg under the tree so we can look up at the pretty blinking lights.”
Gloria looked at the bubbling pot. “I should have brewed more coffee.” Even as tired as he was, Mike had to laugh. His mother was ever the hostess. Even with just the two of them there on Christmas Eve.
“Hey, for your sake I’ll try to stay awake until at least nine. And then we’ll open gifts. Can Dogg unwrap his this year?”
Gloria made a face. “Only if you feel like vacuuming before you go to bed.” His mother loved him. But she was definitely still the mother he’d grown up with. Somehow that gave Mike more comfort than if she would have said yes to his goofy request.
“C’mon, Dogg, let’s go plug in those tree lights.” The big beast’s ears perked up and he padded behind Mike into the living room, where they could both take an after-dinner nap.
Gloria liked her bracelet. Of course, she would have professed to like anything Mike gave her if he’d picked it out himself. But Mike could tell once she’d seen the delicate serpentine gold chain with its Victorian slide charms that she approved. It went on immediately with several exclamations.
Dogg helped unwrap his present after all. He could smell the basted rawhide bones through the package, and nosed his way into Mike’s lap to help with the paper. “Take that into the kitchen,” Gloria cautioned him. Mike didn’t bother answering because he knew she was speaking directly to the dog. And he listened, too. One prized bone in his mouth, it never touched the carpet in his trek to the right spot on the woven rag rug in front of the sink.
“Aren’t you going to open yours?”
“Sure.” Mike eyed the box. “Bet I can guess what it is anyway.”
Gloria shook her head. “I bet you can’t.”
It was on the tip of Mike’s tongue to describe in detail the baseball jacket he expected. Surely it was there in red splendor, complete with the number 25 of his favorite St. Louis Cardinals player.
But something held him back. That was his fantasy. His mom was not likely to know that’s what he’d been looking at in store windows, nor believe the kind of money to be spent on such foolishness, at least in her eyes. One look back at Dogg decked out in gold-edged plaid told Mike he was going to be vastly disappointed if he expected that jacket.
So while he unfastened the neatly taped edges of the paper, he rearranged his expectations. It was easier than asking to exchange a present from Gloria. When he opened the bulky box, there was a jacket inside. A beautiful salt-and-pepper herringbone tweed in soft wool. He didn’t even have to look inside to know that it was the 46 long he wore. “All right.” He held up the garment, trying to inject as much enthusiasm as he could into the statement. “This is some jacket.”
“You’d been hinting about needing a new one. If it doesn’t fit, you’ll have to go into St. Louis to exchange it, because nobody around here had anything nearly good enough.”
They wouldn’t, not for Gloria. “Thanks, Mom.” Mike got up and went to her chair, leaning down to kiss her cheek. “I’m sure it will fit, though.” It would also hang in his closet about twenty-nine days out of thirty until he was escorting his mother to some business-related function, but he wouldn’t bring that up.
“I think I’ll call it a night. Guess I’m going to miss those carolers after all.”
“You do look tired. Merry Christmas, dear.”
“Merry Christmas.” It sounded hollow somehow. And once he was in his room stretched out on his bed, sleep wasn’t quick in coming. He was exhausted. How could he not sleep? Easy. All he had to do was take his imagination across town to the hospital. Up to the third floor to where he knew a young woman was probably staring at a ceiling with the same intensity he was.
After half an hour Mike surrendered. He picked up the cordless phone on the bedside table and punched in the numbers of the hospital. The switchboard was long closed and he got
the long series of recorded instructions. While he listened to them drone on, he cast about frantically in his memory for Lori’s room number.
Finally at the point where the recorded message was repeating itself and he was sure he didn’t remember the number, it popped into his head and he punched it in. One ring, then two. What if it wasn’t the right number? He had this vision of waking up somebody that had finally taken his or her sleeping pill and drifted off.
“Hello?” That was Lori’s voice, wasn’t it?
“Lori?”
“Yes.” She sounded puzzled. But then, Mike reasoned, the woman had no family around here, and precious few friends. It was probably kind of odd to get a call in the middle of the night in the hospital, on Christmas.
“It’s Mike. Mike Martin. I couldn’t sleep, and I wondered how things were going. I woke you up, didn’t I?”
“No, you didn’t. We’ve got Tyler on this cool fold-out recliner thing, and he’s sound asleep. Mikayla is in her bassinet, and she’s asleep too. She’s fun to watch sleep, Mike. I’d forgotten what kind of squinchy little noises newborns make. They squeak.”
There was a touch of laughter in her voice. Mike marveled at it. How could somebody go through everything Lori had, and still be able to laugh about squeaky babies?
“Now that I’m talking to you, I have no idea why I called.” It felt better admitting it. “I’ll let you get to sleep like your kids.”
“No, I’m glad you called. I was lying here doing the craziest thing. You’ll think I’m even stranger than you do already, but I was connecting the dots on the ceiling tile.”
“What do yours make? Our house has this textured ceiling paint, and in my bedroom there’s a rabbit. Or a llama or something.”
“Lucky you. Best I’ve come up with is an amoeba.”
“That’s one ugly ceiling.” And one strange conversation. But somehow it was comforting. “So do you think they’ll still let you out before noon?”
“Looks like it. Everybody’s healthy, and the nurses have been so sweet about keeping Tyler here. Not that there’s much of an alternative, unless we talk about temporary foster care. And nobody wanted to do that to us at Christmas, thank heavens.”
“And you’ll let us bring you here?”
Lori sighed. “I will. I hate to take charity from total strangers, but watching Mikayla sleep has been the last straw. I can’t go back out to the country, with no phone, a car that only starts when it wants to and this tiny baby. But I am going to be doing that housecleaning by next week.”
“Next year. That could be after next week.” Or it could be in a couple months, like spring, when Mike might feel more ready to let this pixie of a woman clean anything in his mother’s house.
“We’ll see.” She was quite a determined pixie. There was a pause for a moment. “I did think of one thing we need tomorrow. Do you have access to a car seat?”
Now that had him stumped. It took a minute for the reality of this to sink in. He was bringing home a real, live newborn baby. On Christmas Day. “I’ll call Carrie. I’m pretty sure fire-and-rescue loans them out to parents who don’t have one, so that nobody goes home from the hospital without. Besides, she’ll love getting a call about six in the morning on Christmas Day.”
“You hound. Wait until at least eight or nine when she’s up. I think single people sleep in past daylight on holidays.”
“Maybe. I still think I’d have more fun my way.”
“For about ten minutes. Then she’d be figuring out ways to murder you, wouldn’t she?”
Mike had to laugh. “Yeah, she would. Even Carrie isn’t a good enough friend that she’d let me get away with that. Hey, I had one other question. What’s the Santa situation for a certain young man asleep in your room?”
“Not real great, I’m afraid.” There was sadness in her voice. “I haven’t exactly had the time or the money to go out and get much. Especially with him tagging along. He’d figure things out pretty quickly if toys that showed up in a shopping cart he was sitting in came from Santa.”
“True. There’s a lot to this kid business that I have to learn.” Mike’s own statement stopped him cold. He didn’t know anything about kids, except what he remembered from being one. And that was pretty sketchy. But how he wanted to learn, for Lori’s sake, and maybe for his own.
This was getting way too deep with somebody he’d only met this morning. Lori must have thought so, too, because she hadn’t said anything for a while. “Hey, I’ll let you go. Want me to call in the morning before I come by to get you?”
“Please. Tell the rabbit good-night for me.”
Huh? Oh, yeah. The rabbit on the ceiling. “Will do. And you tuck in that amoeba.” Mike hung up. This was way, way too deep already. And he knew things could only get deeper. Why wasn’t that bothering him?
Chapter Five
Carrie found a car seat. And two stuffed animals from the ambulance supply that they gave to transported kids. And a bright shiny red fire truck that Mike suspected came from somebody’s private stock, meant for a son or nephew. Fire and rescue folks were generous that way.
Tyler had no problem believing that Santa made a drop-off at Carrie’s house when jolly old Saint Nick found out he wasn’t home. It made perfect sense to him that his toys would find him, no matter what.
The fire truck was an instant hit. Stuffed animals were okay, and got a few seconds of perusal before being put down. But Mike could see that the kid was probably going to sleep with that fire truck before he let go of it. That small thing meant a lot to him. Kids were so resilient.
He could see the thanks in Lori’s eyes. Of course she couldn’t say anything out loud without giving away the game. Carrie had also brought a fluffy pink receiving blanket and some amazingly tiny sleepers for Mikayla. “She looks like an elf.” Carrie settled a matching pointed hat on the sleeping baby. “Doesn’t she, Mike?”
She actually looked like a red, squashy baby to him, but he suspected admitting that would be trouble. Silence was probably the best route here. He smiled, hoping to look sincere. “Can I carry anything down to the truck?”
“Not much to carry.” Lori looked around the room. She had her hospital supplies, issued on admission, and a bag that must have contained yesterday’s outfit. It was then Mike realized that what he’d taken for a relatively attractive matching shirt and pants were hospital scrubs lent to her by a nurse. Even a day after giving birth she managed to make the outfit look like tailored separates.
“I’m sorry,” he blurted out. “We were so busy getting stuff for Tyler and the baby. I didn’t think about you.”
Lori shrugged. “I thought about calling Carrie, to have her go by the trailer, but then I realized I didn’t have a phone number for her at home.”
“You could have called me.”
Her snub nose wrinkled. “I most certainly could not have called you. I needed girl stuff, mister. It’s one thing to horn in on somebody’s Christmas dinner. It’s a whole ’nother ball game to ask a strange man to go through your underwear drawer.”
Mike could feel the color rising from his collar. “I see what you mean. Do you want to stop by there on the way home?”
Lori shook her head. “I’d like to, but I don’t think I’m up to it.”
“Let me,” Carrie said firmly. She was carrying a bag full of hospital supplies, bringing up the rear in the parade down the hall. A nurse pushed the wheelchair with Lori and Mikayla in it, while Mike followed behind with Tyler and his fire engine.
There wasn’t much activity in the hospital on Christmas Day. Everybody who could possibly go home had gone. Carrie insisted on being the one to go by the trailer, over Lori’s protests. “You have a family, and it’s Christmas. We can make do until tomorrow, and then I can get Mike or his mom to take me over there, I’m sure.”
Carrie wouldn’t be swayed. “My family is very understanding. And there isn’t that much family. They’re used to postponing holiday dinners because of my cra
zy schedule anyway. How often do you think I get a whole day off even on Christmas?”
“That’s probably true. Let me give you the key.” Lori giggled as she fished through her battered pocketbook. “I hope I remembered to lock up. We were kind of in a hurry.”
“You might say that.” Carrie’s eyes sparkled. “It was worth the rush, wasn’t it?”
“Definitely.” They both looked down at the bundle in Lori’s arms.
Mike still didn’t get it. She was probably real pretty, for a baby less than a day old. But the two women seemed infatuated by her to a degree he couldn’t understand. The nurse joined them in their cooing. He looked at Tyler.
Here he had an ally. The boy shrugged his shoulders and held on to his fire engine. “Must be a girl thing,” he said softly. Mike held back laughter as the elevator opened to let them out in the lobby of the hospital.
He discovered it wasn’t a universal girl thing when he brought everybody home. Gloria met them at the door. She was warm to Lori, and made noises over the baby. But Tyler was definitely the man she wanted to talk to.
Mike didn’t complain. Her attention to Tyler and his shiny new fire engine gave them time to get Lori settled on the leather couch in the family room, setting the infant seat beside her. Dogg padded up to greet her, sniffing the baby gently, then putting one large paw on Lori’s knee.
“Yes, she’s mine. That’s what all the hurry was about yesterday.” Lori stroked his pointed ears and Mike watched his big, tough dog melt. “Don’t you look festive.”
“Mom’s doing. I do not put plaid ribbon on Dogg, no matter what the occasion.” Lori would probably think the dog would look cute with ribbons. It just wasn’t a guy thing, though. “Can I get you something before dinner? Eggnog or anything?”
Lori shook her head. “No eggnog. I’d take a cup of tea if you can handle that.”
“I can handle that. Boiling water is my specialty.”
She had a great laugh. “Good. Boil a whole pot of it then. Sitting here on this couch with Mikayla and a pot of tea is my idea of a lovely Christmas Day.”