The Eggnog Chronicles Page 25

  “Great!” Ben said. “Some doc friends of mine were telling me about that treatment. They call it a magic bullet, the way thyroid tissue sucks up iodine.”

  I nodded. I had been through the magic bullet treatment, getting a strong dose of radioactive iodine intended to burn out remaining thyroid tissue. Marty had been supportive throughout the strange treatment, which mostly entailed me staying away from other people until the radiation died down. Marty had enjoyed singing, “She’s radioactive . . .”

  “The thyroid situation is looking good for me,” I said. “Thank God. But I’ve got some other news.” I shot a look at Marty—warm, kind Marty. So damned smart at work, so tender and sincere in the bedroom, so amusing when he wanted to make me laugh. I wanted to cry over having reached this surprising juncture, a place where I felt mature and vulnerable and yet sure, so sure of this decision. “Marty and I, we’re . . .” My voice went hoarse as I turned toward my little sister.

  “We’re getting married. Tomorrow,” Marty said as he stood behind me and placed his hands on my shoulders.

  Ricki squealed in delight and Carolina let out a peep and there was some laughter but I couldn’t track it all with the tears that blurred my vision.

  “Janey! That’s great news.” Ricki was suddenly leaning over me, hugging me. “Why are you crying?”

  I shook my head, not sure how to express it, though Marty seemed to understand. He handed me his handkerchief, then moved up to the arm of my chair and rubbed my back while I wiped my eyes.

  “A Christmas wedding!” Ricki broke into a quick happy dance. “This is going to be awesome.”

  While the others talked plans I turned to Marty, who seemed content to sit by my side while I sorted things out. “I feel so . . . so overwhelmed,” I told him quietly. Maybe I was crying over the rite of passage, no more detachment from relationships, no more pressing late into the night in search of the wildest party. It was a huge shift for me: investing my emotions in someone else, learning to live one day at a time.

  Marty nodded, his beautiful eyes studying me. I thought of his extensive knowledge of politics in the Middle East, his passion for foreign films and pistachios, the lyrical, singsongy way he sang Hebrew at the Passover meal I had attended with his extended family. I had scratched the surface of a precious stone and found a mesmerizing gem with untold properties.

  My Marty.

  Ricki

  I have to admit, I was a little jealous.

  Oh, I was grateful that my sister had found Marty, that she’d found a man who could soothe her soul, make her laugh, cut through her cynicism and surround her with love. Janey deserved all that.

  But I was needled by the fact that she was getting married before me. Granted, she’d been married before, but I was a kid back then, out of touch with her relationship with Philip, not really tuned in until it was over and Jane was meeting with a lawyer to argue over who would keep the Mikasa and the cappuccino maker.

  Now as Ben and I rode the elevator up to our room in the Waldorf, I tried to work through the jealousy that clamped over my heart. I shouldn’t feel this way. She was my sister and my best friend and I loved her. I should be celebrating her happiness. I should be looking forward to kicking off my shoes and opening the little miniature brandy from the plane and snuggling up under crisp sheets with Ben in the early hours of Christmas. Here it was Christmas, and I was in a funk.

  Maybe the real issue was that Ben and I hadn’t even discussed marriage yet. Over the past year we’d fallen into an easy lifestyle: we shared his big wicker bed overlooking the bay, we jogged on the beach most mornings, we sampled wines and tried new recipes. Don’t think I’m complaining, because I’m not. We have something wonderful going, and I appreciate that every morning as we sip coffee and watched the sun rise over the bay.

  But my good life back home wasn’t doing much to vanquish the twist of jealousy in my stomach. Try as I might to rationalize away my bad feelings, they still gripped me like a determined shark. I wanted to pry its jaws open and fling it away, but as the bellman unloaded our luggage in the room I realized I was stuck with this evil thing clamped on my heart, at least, for the time being.

  “Where’s the brandy?” I flung off my jacket and shoes, then fished through my carry-on bag.

  “Not wasting any time,” Ben teased, opening the paper bag he’d brought from Emma’s apartment and removing a thermos. “You might want to add a shot of this.”

  “I thought you were filching Christmas cookies. What’s that?” I asked.

  He smiled, that grin that deepened the creases beside his eyes. “Eggnog.”

  “That’ll work.” I mixed myself a drink in the hotel glass, then sat back on the bed with a sigh.

  “Something wrong?”

  “It’s just . . . nothing. Everything.

  “Did you ever hate yourself for feeling something, and then you try like crazy not to feel it but the harder you try to resist the stronger the feeling gets?”

  He arched an eyebrow. “Sort of like falling in love.”

  “Sort of. Only this is a bad feeling.” I cupped my glass and sank against the pillows of the king-sized bed. “Wicked, nasty jealousy. Because I am such a rotten person.”

  “Oh, that.” He sipped his eggnog, as if considering the situation. “That is a problem, your wickedness.”

  “Very funny.” It wasn’t like me to be snappish, but I wanted to be alone to wallow in self-pity. I didn’t want it to be a momentous Christmas Day, didn’t want to face this gorgeous man sitting across from me, his long legs slung casually over the side of the bed, his knowing eyes peering into my soul.

  Ben scratched his head, leaving his silver hair wild and kind of sexy. “Aah, stop feeling sorry for yourself and tell me what’s really bothering you.”

  I crossed my legs demurely, not sure where to start.

  “Clammed up? Then let me guess. Is it Jane’s engagement, or Emma’s baby?”

  Was I so transparent? I squirmed back on the bed, reminding myself that Ben had lived with me for the past year. He knew me well. “It’s Jane.” I rolled my eyes. “Not that I mean to pressure you or anything, but do you ever think about getting married?”

  “Sure, I do. But remember how we hooked up? You were fresh from a dysfunctional relationship.”

  “Was not!” I defended. His eyes narrowed, the stern Ben, and I grinned. “Okay, slightly dysfunctional.”

  “Semantics. And I was married before. Didn’t want to fall into the same trap twice.”

  “Marriage is a trap?” I squeaked, suddenly concerned that we hadn’t discussed this before.

  “A bad marriage is. But I don’t see that happening with us.” He stared down at his eggnog, swirled it, then put the glass aside. “Honestly? This past year with you has been pretty damned wonderful.”

  “It has?” A thread of hope caught in my throat. “It has,” I agreed.

  Our eyes met. A moment later, we were on our feet, in each other’s arms, locked in one of the bear hugs we enjoyed. Ben leaned back slightly, tipped me off my feet, and growled.

  “So you want to get hitched?” he asked.

  “Definitely. But let’s wait at least a few months. I wouldn’t want to cut in on Jane’s glory.”

  He squeezed me tighter, then placed me back on my feet. “You’ll need that much time to plan. I figure you and Georgia will be making up hair-bobs and doodads for all of us to wear. Weaving ribbons with pine cones or something.”

  I grinned. “Ooh! I like it. You’d wear a hair-bob for me?”

  “Don’t push your luck.”

  Emma

  It is just after midnight on Christmas and I am addicted to my new book, neatly filling in the blanks with information for my daughter.

  Her name, Carolina, which means feminine.

  Named After___________________________________

  I pause, recalling the inspiration for our daughter’s name. The summer of my pregnancy Randy and I traveled south to visit Ricki and
Ben in Nag’s Head, and time and again I caught Randy singing to himself, “Goin’ to Carolina in my mind.”

  “What’s that?” I had asked.

  “A James Taylor song. Don’t you know it?”

  I didn’t, but when we arrived in Nag’s Head he picked up the CD, and it became the anthem of our summer, the song that inspired our forays in the shallow bay, our evening strolls for ice cream, our long walks along the beach beside a sky on fire with the setting sun. Our hearts latched onto that song, those memories. When the time came to name our daughter, we both smiled over the possibility of Carolina. Jane pointed out that it was old-fashioned, but any reservations fled when I saw Randy holding our bundled daughter in the hospital, crooning like James Taylor over her shiny face, his eyes wide as she twitched a smile in her sleep. “I thinks she likes it,” he said.

  Now Randy’s footsteps whisper down the hall, and I finish a sentence and look up from my treasured new book. “She’s asleep,” he announces.

  I smile. “You have the magic touch.”

  “Either that or I bore her to tears.”

  “No, you make her feel safe. Safe and secure,” I say, tucking my feet up under my soft terry robe. We are tired but fighting sleep, reluctant to surrender a single minute of our Christmas. Ricki, Ben, Jane and Marty left after our midnight toast, and now it’s just Randy and me and baby Carolina, the light of our lives.

  Randy goes over to the Christmas tree, touching the new ornament at the top, a sparkling creation of blown glass and beads. “You hung Ricki’s gift. It looks good, though I still can’t imagine how she does it.” The glass is shaped like a madonna with child, two figures cuddling under a cluster of tiny pearlized beads that appear to be the moon. She told me she wanted something to help us remember Carolina’s first Christmas.

  “Do you want some more eggnog?” Randy asks.

  “Just a little, please?” I return to my new book, a gift from Jane entitled Memories for My Daughter. While I shunned the overly sentimental mementoes and pelican-covered wrapping papers at my baby shower, I find myself sucked in by this book, pages and pages of sentimental questions for me to answer for my daughter, romantic questions about how my parents met, how Randy and I met, the first boy I kissed, as well as pages where I am supposed to write about my feelings for Carolina—the moment she was born, her first steps, her first teeth, her first Christmas. I have never considered myself much of a writer, yet I feel compelled to put these records on paper for my daughter, driven to record her legacy lest it be forgotten.

  Two years ago my great-great aunt Mary Jane passed away at the age of ninety-two, and I’m happy to say she passed on many a family memory before she left. She told me of secret passages in my great-grandparents’ Michigan home, of the terrible flu that swept through one winter taking the lives of her twin baby sisters Viola and Geraldine. And there were colorful tales of distant relatives—a great uncle on ice skates who ran barrels of rum from Canada to Detroit across the frozen Detroit River. The forlorn wife who disparaged cleaning and left her husband in Ohio for the life of a party girl in gay Paree in the Roaring Twenties. “How she cried when the family lost their fortune in the Depression,” Aunt Mary Jane said. “I don’t think she ever got over it. Kept telling town shopkeepers to put it on the her husband’s tab. Spent her last years drinking martinis dressed in a fancy peignoir. She never realized she was in an old folks’ home.”

  I smile over my family’s checkered history, glad that Aunt Mary Jane kept up the family storytelling. With our families scattered from Miami to Oregon, I worry that my Carolina will lack a sense of connection. I want her to know where she belongs in the world, that she has a full, colorful family.

  “You’re writing furiously,” Randy says. “At this rate, you’ll have that thing filled out by New Year’s.”

  I keep writing. “I just want Carolina to know about her family. I mean, New Jersey is close enough but Maryland is a hike, and my mom’s in Miami now, and your family is in Oregon and your sister is over in Germany. We’re so scattered. Don’t you worry about that?”

  “Well . . . no, not really. Sometimes friends are all the family you need. Besides, the world is shrinking. By the time Carolina is ten she’ll probably be doing video e-mails to her cousins.”

  I sift through the watercolors on the pages, the old American homes with fat-pillared porches and climbing ivy. Paintings of girls in Victorian lace serving tea to their dolls. A silver-haired granny shelling peas in the garden.

  These nostalgic illustrations are a stark contrast to my childhood memories of suburban Jersey—strip malls and swim meets at the Y and traveling soccer.

  I pull the pen to my chest and glance toward the bedrooms. “I just want her to have it all. Everything. The world at her fingertips.”

  Randy shakes his head, his blue eyes thoughtful, amused. “Never gonna happen, Emma.” He puts the eggnog down and squeezes beside me on the love seat. “We can’t give her everything. We can’t protect her from disappointments and heartbreaks. It kills me, too, but kids are going to be mean to her. Boys will break her heart. Some things are inevitable.”

  I feel a mixture of exhilaration and exhaustion, a surge of maternal adrenaline to champion my daughter’s cause. “It’s our job to take care of her.”

  He nods. “And we will. She won’t have everything she wants. But we’ll make sure she gets everything she needs.”

  He tries to close the book, but I still have one finger marking the page. “There’s a section about your family, you know. How your parents met, your childhood memories . . .”

  “Mm-hmm.” His face is close, his eyes closing lazily as he kisses me.

  “Will you help me fill it out?” I ask.

  “Sure. But can we leave it for a few weeks? I don’t think she’s going to be doing extensive reading anytime soon.”

  I laugh and his lips sink into my neck. “You think I’m neurotic.”

  “You’re a wonderful mother,” he says. “But it’s Christmas Eve and I figure we’d better make good use of our time before Santa comes down the chimney and wakes up the baby.”

  I unbutton his shirt, still thrilled at the feel of his warm, bare skin under my fingers. Can I stave off tomorrow? Close the doors on my worries over Carolina’s childhood, the soaring rents in the city, our scattered families, my daughter’s delicate developing psyche?

  “Close your eyes, Emma. Close your eyes and remember our Christmas sky.”

  And I do. I turn off the cry of maternal responsibility, the song of mothers through generations, and listen for the sounds of the moment. They thread gently through the old apartment—the sweet wisps of baby breath over the monitor, the buzz of street traffic, the low murmur of Christmas carols from the apartment next door. Under the Christmas sky I press my lips against his and fall into the moment, tasting only my man, smelling the sweetness of baby and the lingering scent of nutmeg.

  And I realize I have it all—momentary bliss—and I must scramble to soak it up and revel in my happiness before the sun rises, before Carolina wakes up, before the Christmas sky fades away until next year. So much to celebrate, so little time.

  Please turn the page for

  an exciting sneak peek of

  Carly Alexander’s next novel

  The Secret Live of Mrs. Claus

  coming next month in trade paperback!

  Chicago, November 2003

  If Santa Claus flew over the city of Chicago with a Christmas-spirit detection device, the needle would have gone wild as he passed over the blockwide structure that housed Rossman’s Department Store on Michigan Avenue. Although November had just blown in with a snappy, windy cold front, Rossman’s was fully decorated for the holiday season: Outdoor speakers trumpeted a joyous melody in three-part harmony, complete with liquid violins, dancing woodwinds, and a bright brass ensemble. A giant red ribbon entwined the building like a gift package. The overhang of every revolving glass door was topped with a pyramid of holiday trees, decked wit
h thick gold ribbons and white lights that glimmered in the wind.

  Inside the store, ribbons from the same gold stock streamed down from garlands of fat, shiny balls—in red, gold, green, and purple—that looped round every pillar and linked along every yard of molding and trim. Every floor display was topped by these same ornaments, flowing from sleigh-shaped crystal bowls. The red ball at the top was capped by a Santa cap.

  Nowhere was the spirit more evident than the ninth floor, the traditional “Santa Land” where staffers were putting finishing touches on the multichambered gingerbread house that would allow various Santas—Anglo and African-American, Asian and Spanish-speaking—to privately greet their young guests and carry on the long-standing tradition of asking if they’d been naughty or nice and whether they hoped to see a truck, a doll, or an electronic robot this Christmas.

  “Fabulous, ladies and gents,” one designer announced, inspecting the giant sleigh full of toys at the exit of Santa’s gingerbread house. “It’s really coming together!”

  “I hope the rugrats appreciate all this,” one store clerk said as he glued a giant Styrofoam peppermint over the window of Santa’s house.

  His boss took the hot glue gun from his hand and fixed the drooping jaw of a wooden soldier. “You’d better just hope the Rossmans approve,” she said. “They’re the ones who control Christmas, at least around here.”

  Four stories below, Evelyn Rossman stood up from the conference table, smoothed the skirt of her navy Pendelton wool suit, and summoned the others: her husband Karl, brother-in-law Lenny, nephew Daniel, and daughter Meredith. “Let’s go up and check on their progress,” Ev said, eager for Christmas to begin.

  “I don’t think they’re ready for us on nine, but we can sneak a peek,” Karl Rossman said, leading the family down the narrow office corridor of the building the Rossmans had owned for more years than most Chicago residents could remember. The business that started fifty years ago with his mother’s knack for fashioning textiles and ribbons into curtains and fine home furnishings had flourished into a full-scale retail business with stores throughout the Chicago and Detroit area when Evelyn and Karl had married more than three decades ago. Back then they were the toast of Chicago, Ev and Karl, a celebrated couple, though most of society hadn’t suspected the genius that lived beneath his wife’s confident smile. With Lenny’s help, he and Ev had expanded the business through the rest of the country: two dozen stores throughout the United States and a new on opening next week on the east coast. He extended an arm over her back and gently ushered her into the elevator. Thank God for Ev—his light, his rock.