Father Christmas (2 page)

“
No.”

“
Yes.” As Mike zoomed the
plane past John he reached out and swiped it.

Mike’s face crumpled into a grimace and he
howled. “No, no, no! No clean-up time!”

“
Yes clean-up time.” One
of the things that bothered John about being a father was that his
verbal skills frequently deteriorated until he was speaking like a
toddler. On the job, he talked like a normal adult. But at home,
where there were no other adults, he found himself mimicking Mike’s
immature language. It made John feel as if a part of his brain shut
down when he was with Mike, the part that knew how to construct
sentences and paragraphs.

“
No, no, no!” Mike stormed
across the room to where a trio of Fisher-Price people lay in
ambush behind the CD rack. He swung his foot, sending the brightly
colored, stupidly grinning figures in three different directions
with one kick. Not bad for a soccer player, but unacceptable for a
two-year-old a half hour past his bed time.

“
Clean up now,” John said,
his voice dropping in volume. The angrier he got, the quieter he
got.

“
No! I want Mommy! I want
Mommy!” Mike barreled past John and out of the den, leaving the
mess behind like a tornado seeking new trailer parks to
destroy.

Hearing Mike beg for his mother raised
John’s anger to such a level that he could not speak at all. He
simply stood amid the ruins of Mike’s toy airport and gulped in
deep breaths of air.

So Mike wanted his Mommy. Well, of course he
did. What two-year-old kid didn’t?

But Mike’s Mommy had been gone for six
months, and the letter John had received that evening from her
lawyer announced that she was gone for good. A person could still
get a quickie divorce if she wanted one, and Sherry had wanted one.
She’d wanted one so badly she hadn’t given a thought to the
innocent son she’d left behind.

Which was also John’s fault, he told
himself, feeling the ache return to his temples, intense little
drum-rolls of pain. He gazed about him at the disorderly room, the
scattered sofa cushions, the war-torn airport, and decided the mess
was his fault, too. Everything, with the possible exception of
Norma’s grandchild’s premature arrival, was John’s fault.

He stalked out of the den in search of his
son. Mike had slammed himself inside his bedroom. Evidently he
could hear John’s footsteps in the hall, because he shouted through
the closed door, “I want Mommy!”

“
Mommy isn’t here,” John
shouted back. “How about a bath, and then some milk and
cookies.”

“
Mommy gives me a
bath.”

“
Mommy isn’t here.” He
could say it a million times. He could chant it like a mantra,
recite it like liturgy.
Mommy isn’t here.
Sooner or later, Mike was going to realize it was
true, she wasn’t there, and he was stuck with Dad for better or
worse, for baths and cookies.

“
Where Mommy
go?”

“
To Las Vegas.” As if that
was going to mean anything to Mike. “It’s just you and me. Open the
door.”

Mike waited a long time before saying, in a
tremulous whimper, “I want cookies.”

The hell with the bath. John would give him
cookies. It was the least a boy needed when he had to confront the
fact that Mommy was in Las Vegas and wasn’t coming back. Cookies
for two-year-old boys, and beer for thirty-two-year-old boys.

“
Okay,” John called
quietly through the door. “No bath. Just cookies.”

Mike made him sweat it out for a few
minutes. Then he opened the door. John could have opened it
himself—he’d removed the doorknob lock a long time ago—but honoring
a closed door was a way of showing his respect for Mike. Maybe in
time, Mike might show some respect for him, too.

Tearful and wary, Mike slid his tiny hand
into John’s and accompanied him down the hall to the kitchen. He
kept his gaze on the burgundy carpet—not the shade John would have
chosen, but Sherry had decorated the house according to her tastes.
In the kitchen, John switched on the light and lifted Mike into his
booster seat at the table. “Cookies,” Mike said. It sounded like a
warning.

“
Chocolate chip or
sandwich creams?”

“
Choco-chip.”

John pulled the bag of chocolate chip
cookies from a cabinet and counted out three cookies. He filled a
toddler cup with milk, snapped on the lid, and set it before Mike.
Given the kid’s mood, if John had asked him whether he wanted milk,
he would have said no. Being two meant saying no a lot.

While Mike glowered at John and ate his
snack, John pulled a cold bottle of beer from the fridge. On the
tile counter next to the fridge lay a cream-colored business
envelope containing the letter from Sherry’s lawyer. John had read
it twice, then refolded it along its creases and tucked it inside.
He wished he could seal it and mail it back to the lawyer. But that
wouldn’t change anything.

And really, he didn’t want Sherry in his
life, not at this point. It was too late. Too much damage had been
done.

“
How are the cookies?” he
asked, wrenching the cap off the bottle.

“
Okay.” Mike couldn’t sulk
when he was eating cookies. It was physically impossible. He looked
as if he was trying to pout, but each nibble of cookie forced his
mouth into a smile. Above him, the Tiffany-style lamp—another of
Sherry’s decorating choices—sent a cone of amber light down onto
the table, teasing reddish highlights out of Mike’s brown hair. A
year ago, his hair was a honey-colored reflection of Sherry’s blond
tresses, but it was growing progressively darker. In another few
years, it might be as black as John’s.

He took a sip of beer. The sour bubbles
nipped at his tongue. Behind him on the counter, the lawyer’s
letter nipped at his conscience.

He waited until Mike had devoured his second
cookie before saying, “Michael, I know this is going to make you
sad, but Mommy isn’t coming back.”

Mike fixed his round brown eyes accusingly
on John. His eyes were already as dark as John’s, and his jaw
already hinted at the angularity of his father’s. In time, once the
baby fat melted from his face, he would have the unmistakable face
of his father. All traces of Sherry would be gone.

“
She had to go off and do
other things,” John explained delicately. “I told you about this
when she left. Remember?”

Even a cookie couldn’t erase Mike’s
pout.

“
I got a letter today that
says she’s not coming back. I’m sorry, Mike. I don’t know how else
to tell you.”

“
Mommy is coming
back?”

“
No.”

“
How come?”

“
She...”
She
was having an affair, remember? She found a man who could give her
what I couldn’t, and she fell in love, and they ran away. Remember,
Mike? Remember that day I came home from work, and I found a note
on the door saying Mommy brought you to Norma’s, and then she’d run
away with that guy—the stud from the auto-body shop.

Maybe it was just as well if Mike didn’t
remember. John would remember for both of them.

“
She decided she needed a
different kind of life,” he told Mike.

“
When she coming
back?”

“
She isn’t.” John heard
his voice crack. He wasn’t feeling any grief for himself. Just for
Mike. Just for this little boy who couldn’t believe his mother was
gone.

Mike sucked on his cookie. A chocolate chip
smeared the corner of his mouth. He chewed, swallowed and said, “I
get a new mommy?”

“
I don’t know about that.”
Hell, he didn’t even know about where Mike was going to get a new
baby-sitter. “For the time being, it’s you and me. Just
Daddy.”

“
You’re police,” Mike
pointed out.

John nodded.

“
I got a police. I need a
mommy.”

Well, that sure summed it up. John shrugged
and took another drink. “I don’t know. We’ll see.”

“
I need a mommy and a
plane.”

“
You have a plane,” John
reminded him. “It’s in the den.” Upside down, in the middle of a
toddler-size crash site.

“
I need ‘nuther one. Two
planes. Norma can be my mommy.”

“
Norma—” Oh, God, he
couldn’t do it. He couldn’t tell Mike that Norma was going away,
too. “Norma’s taking a vacation.”

“
What’s that?”

“
That means she’s leaving
Connecticut for a little while. She’ll be back though.”

“
She go with
mommy?”

John had conducted less complicated
interrogations with serial rapists. He’d had an easier time telling
Mary Balfour that her parents were dead. He didn’t believe in lying
to his son, but he didn’t know how to phrase the truth in words
Mike would understand. “Ladies go away sometimes,” he finally said.
“Some ladies come back and some don’t. Maybe it’s best not to get
too attached to them.” Cripes. John ought to keep his cynicism to
himself. Mike was too young to start distrusting women.

Yet how could Mike keep from becoming
pessimistic? His mother had left him. His mother had decided that
John was never going to be what she needed in a man, and so she’d
found someone who would fulfill her needs. And once she’d found
that other man, no one—not even her own son—mattered anymore.

Well, Mike mattered to John. He had
obviously been a lousy husband, and he wasn’t going to win any
awards as a father. But at least he was there, in the kitchen with
milk and cookies, answering the world’s toughest questions as best
he could. If he were the sort who ran from his responsibilities and
his fears, he would never have survived police work, let alone
earned his detective shield. He would never risk what cops risked
every day. And he sure as hell would never have married Sherry
after she’d told him she was pregnant.

He’d married her because he believed in
taking care of what was his. He’d married her and given their son a
name and a home, and now that she was gone, he would have to give
Mike more, although for the life of him, he didn’t know what to
give, or how to give it.

All he knew was that even if he gave Mike
everything he had, it would never be enough.

***

“
THERE YOU GO,” Molly
said, smoothing the adhesive strip over Keisha’s elbow, where she’d
knocked off a scab while jumping around in the foam pit. “How does
that feel?”

Keisha sniffled and flexed her arm to test
the bandage, which was bright red and adorned with stars.
“Okay.”

“
Do you think it’s going
to heal the way it is? Or should I apply the super-secret-magic
cure?”

Keisha’s eyes, tearful just moments ago,
glowed with excitement. “The super-secret cure!”

Grinning, Molly reached into the first-aid
cabinet and pulled out a hollow plastic tube filled with pink water
and glittery confetti. She kissed the tip of the wand, then touched
the kissed tip to Keisha’s bandage. “Super-secret-magic!” she
chanted. “Make Keisha’s elbow better!”

Keisha erupted in giggles. “It feels better
already!”

“
Of course it does. The
super-secret-magic treatment works very fast. Okay,” she said,
clamping her hands on the little girl’s waist and swinging her down
from the counter. “Go eat your lunch. And take it easy next time
you’re in the foam pit.”

Keisha didn’t stick around long enough to
listen to Molly’s lecture. She romped out of the back room at a
gallop, leaving Molly to put away the first-aid supplies—and the
super-secret-magic wand.

As she straightened out
the back room, she hummed along with the Sugar Plum Fairy’s dance
from Tchaikovsky’s
Nutcracker
,
which wafted down the hall from the main room. Molly always had the
teachers play music at lunch time, sometimes classical, sometimes
folk songs, sometimes jazz or Calypso rhythms or even rock music,
as long as the lyrics were clean. One of her professional journals
recently published a report about the value of harmonious music to
the intellectual growth of young children. Molly was thrilled to
contribute to the intellectual growth of the students at the
Children’s Garden Preschool, but mostly she played the music at
lunch because it kept the kids from throwing their food
around.

Closing the cabinet, she turned—and flinched
when she found the back room doorway filled with a tall, lanky man.
She hadn’t heard his approach, and his sudden appearance startled
her. He wasn’t one of the fathers who dropped their kids off or
picked them up from the preschool. Nor was he the mailman. Molly
had never seen him before.

If she had, she definitely would have
remembered.

It wasn’t that he was
outrageously handsome—which he was, but Molly wasn’t the sort of
woman who went to pieces over a handsome man. It wasn’t even his
height, which might not have been all that tall;
everyone
seemed tall to Molly, who stood
five-foot-three in her sneakered feet. He wasn’t heavy-set or
muscular. His clothing—casually tailored khaki slacks, a gray wool
blazer, a forest-green shirt and a gray tie loosened at the
collar—didn’t shout wealth or high style. His hair was too long to
look neat but too short to look pretentious, and his face was a
stunning arrangement of stark lines and gaunt angles. His eyes were
dark and deep-set, so piercing she practically felt stung by them.
When he shifted one arm, his jacket gapped enough for her to see
that beneath it he was wearing a leather shoulder holster with a
gun in it.