Surprise Baby for Christmas

by Harmony Knight

“It’s Balto,” she says, as I draw nearer to her. She reaches out for my hand and I gladly offer it, looking up at the image of a big dog, perched high up on a rock.

  “Man, I forgot this was here,” she says, looking up at me with her eyes gleaming. “My mother brought me here when I was a kid. I can still remember it so clearly. She told me about the husky, Balto, and how he led a dog sled team through a blizzard to deliver a serum that saved hundreds of people from some sort of epidemic. And then he was immortalized here. It was the first time I ever realized that making things like this was something that people did. For a job.”

  “This your favourite statue?” I ask her, looking up at Balto.

  “No,” she says, immediately, shaking her head. “I’m not sure I have a favourite, but this has a special place in my heart. It’s by Frederick Roth. He was really incredible at capturing motion. See how he’s standing?” she asks me.

  I look up again, and sure enough, she’s right. Balto looks like he’s about to bark and leap down from the rock at any second.

  “He studied fine art and animals,” she says, as I gaze upward. “Some of his smaller works are amazing, too.”

  She leans into me, and I’m happy to stand there, looking up at Balto in silence with her, while the warmth of her small form seeps into me through the thick mass of coats between us. We only move when Frank clears his throat behind us, signalling that it’s time to move on.

  Once we’re back in the carriage, we carry on our tour. The park is all lit up and twinkling, and there are plenty of people out enjoying the crisp, winter air, or rushing through with bags full of shopping. We pass by the boat pond, and, soon enough, we’re riding by Bethesda Fountain. Pippa tells me about the statue atop it, The Angel of the Waters, and about the woman who sculpted it, Emma Stebbins, who was the first woman ever to receive a public art commission from New York City. A trailblazer. It’s enthralling, how much she knows about her craft and how passionate she is about it.

  We ride along the Upper West Side, past Strawberry Fields and Sheep Meadow and a playground full of children in mittens and hats, and eventually, when it’s drawing close to evening, we arrive back where we began.

  After thanking Frank for the ride, we walk down the street arm in arm. To say that I’m not eager for the day to end would be an understatement. I spent almost every second of that week in the ski lodge beguiled by this woman, and now I find myself in the same situation again—and then some. That week in March was mostly sex and laughter, and awkwardly avoiding any mention of our real lives to each other. The more I get to know about her out here in the world, the more I want to have her forever, every moment, every day.

  “You want to come to my place?” I ask.

  She seems genuinely regretful when she looks up at me. “I’d love to come to your place, but the deadline for the mermaid is looming. If I’m going to spend Christmas with you, I really need to get some work done on it tomorrow.”

  I’m disappointed, but I know deadlines better than most people. If anything, I admire her commitment.

  “I understand.” I tell her. “And I’m up to my neck in meetings this week, so I’m not going to be able to see you until Christmas. Which means it’s going to drag.”

  This news seems to irk her as much as it irks me, which softens the blow a bit. She sighs a resigned little sigh.

  “A farewell coffee, then?” she asks, nodding across the street to a coffeehouse.

  I smile at her and nod, and we head in that direction. Just as we get to the other side of the street, I hear her gasp. I look down, and she’s holding her gloved hand up to me.

  “Look!” she says.

  There, on her glove, is a rapidly melting little snowflake. We both look up together to see a sparse shower of snow falling from the sky.

  “It’s going to be a white Christmas!” she says, grinning up at me.

  We end up staying in the coffeehouse for a few hours, sipping different teas and chatting. The warm cups do our frozen fingers the world of good, and by the time I drop her off back at her apartment, it’s long since dark. She gives me a lingering kiss, needy and passionate and soft at once.

  As she goes to get out of the door that Dev is holding open, I grab her wrist. “Pippa,” I say. She turns to look at me, that secret little smile sparkling in her eyes.

  “I need to get a Christmas tree. On Christmas Eve. Come with me?”

  A smile blooms on her face and she nods. “Sure, hot stuff. Pick me up at the studio.”

  I pull her back to peck another quick kiss to her lips, and let her go.

  Pippa

  December 17, 2018

  By the time Monday rolls around, I’m really starting to miss Aiden. Saturday in the city was magical, even if we didn’t end up ice-skating. Or buying any gifts. Or doing anything we’d planned to, really. The tour of Central Park really reminded me how great this city is and how many gems it hides in its busy streets. Which would all be fine, if it didn’t make me even more fretful about losing the studio and having to look for something further out. Fortunately, I’ve been able to throw myself into work and mostly forget about it.

  The mermaid is looking much more mermaidy by the time my tummy gives a loud rumble and I look up at the clock. It’s 3 pm and I haven’t eaten since breakfast, so I wipe the excess clay off my hands and sit down on the battered old couch to eat my turkey sandwich. I’ve just taken the very first bite, when there’s a loud banging at the studio door. Sighing around a cheekful of half-masticated crust, I put my sandwich down on the arm of the couch and get up to answer the door.

  “Heeey, Pippa!”

  It’s Lexi, standing in the snow, smiling and waving at me, looking as perfectly put-together as ever.

  “Sorry to drop by like this, but I had a meeting canceled, so I thought I’d slot you in now, if that’s alright?”

  I can feel myself staring at her, and I know that my face looks strange. One of my cheeks is bulging out with the turkey sandwich inside it, and my eyes are wide like saucers. She was the last person I expected to see. Realising I’m being rude, I swallow in one big gulp and smile at her. Purely out of habit, I wipe my hands down the front of my clay-smeared coveralls and hold one out to help her in from the snow.

  “Sorry,” I say, once we’re safely inside and the door is closed. I lead her through to the main studio where the quiet hum of an electric heater is the only sound. “I wasn’t expecting anyone. Did we have an appointment? Aiden didn’t mention anything…” I trail off, and watch her as her eyes start to flit here and there in the studio, first to the almost-mermaid in the middle of the room, and then around at the other completed pieces I have displayed around the perimeter.

  “Hm?” she says, looking back to me. “Oh, no, darling. Sorry, I should have explained myself properly. Shall we sit?” she asks, looking over at the threadbare couch.

  “Oh lord, did I interrupt your lunch?” she asks, noticing the sandwich sitting on the arm of the couch. “Please, don’t put it off on my account. Eat up.”

  She’s not rude or domineering, but she’s definitely type A. Within seconds, I’m being led to the couch in my own studio, and sitting down while someone I wasn’t expecting starts conducting a meeting.

  “The thing is,” she begins, placing her purse on her lap. She picks up my sandwich and hands it to me, and I take it without thinking. Too curious about why she’s here to protest or actually do anything with it, I hold it in my hand, and listen. “Well, Aiden told me about your work. And I have to agree with him, even just on first glance. There’s some stunning stuff here, Pippa.”

  She’s smiling warmly, and I can feel myself smiling back. I’m proud of what I’ve made in this studio, and of the commissioned pieces that have found their home elsewhere.

  “Thank you,” I say, hoping I’m not blushing too much.

  “I want to run a profile piece on you,” she says.

  I can feel my brows raise almost to my hairline, and I don’t know what to say.
/>
  “On me?” is what my brain comes up with.

  “Well, it’ll be a series,” she says. “I’ve been planning it for a while. Artists of New York City, showcasing a different high-talent, low-profile artist every week. When Aiden mentioned that you’re a sculptor and that he loved your work, I just knew it was fate.”

  “Wow,” I breathe. I really don’t know what to say. Lexi’s magazine is one of the biggest in the country. I can barely begin to imagine what that sort of exposure would do for me. It’s an artists dream, for sure, but I’m so blindsided by it I can’t find the right reaction.

  Lexi must be used to this sort of thing, because she sits there, patiently, waiting for it to sink in a bit, before she goes on.

  “I’d need to bring a photographer here. And arrange a proper appointment with you for an interview. Aiden says you’re on a tight deadline at the moment with the mermaid,” she says, looking over at it. “Beautiful piece, by the way. So… are you in?”

  Whatever trouble my brain is having connecting with my mouth, it doesn’t have the same issue with my head. I nod a few times, and then my mouth catches up.

  “Yeah! Yes. I mean, wow, Lexi. That would be great, but…” my brow furrows.

  “It’s nothing to do with you and Aiden being an item,” she says, as though reading my mind. “He’s just how I found you. I’d be here if it was anyone else whose opinion I trusted, too. So put that out of your mind.”

  I can see how she got as far as she has. She’s perceptive and sharp and confident. I smile at her, even if the smallest bit of my mind is still lingering on the fact that she called Aiden and I “an item”.

  “Alright then,” I nod. “Great. Thank you. I could really use this. More than you know.”

  “The studio?” Lexi asks. “Sorry. Aiden just mentioned something about it after he’d seen you one day. He was so mad. Will you let me look into it for you?”

  “Uh, sure,” I say, figuring that whatever can be done to try to help me stay here is worth a shot. I doubt I have a leg to stand on, given that there’s no actual lease or contract, but I’m not quite ready to accept the inevitable yet.

  “Great,” says Lexi. “Awesome.” And then there’s a minor shift in her demeanor, almost imperceptible. Her shoulders drop maybe a half-inch and she leans back, and professional Lexi is suddenly replaced by personal Lexi. “Aiden says you’re coming to us for Christmas,” she says. “I was so thrilled to hear it. And I’m so glad you found him. Or he found you. Or however that happened. He was unbearable for months after he met you at the lodge.”

  “Really?” I ask, leaning forward. The sandwich is still in my hand. The parts that are in contact with my fingers are starting to get sticky.

  “Mmhmm,” she says, nodding. “He told me about your agreement, and I told him he was an idiot to go along with it. But I guess everything worked out. I haven’t seen him this happy since…” she hesitated. “Well. A long time.”

  “The serious girl in college?” I ask, desperate for more information about Aiden from someone who knows him so well.

  Lexi nods, and there’s something sad about the upturn of her lips that makes it not quite a smile. “Yes. Sophie,” she says. “I’m surprised he mentioned her to you. He still finds it painful, even after all these years.”

  I frown, trying to imagine what sort of hellish breakup it could have been to still be affecting him. “Was she awful to him?” I ask, already feeling mad at whoever Sophie is for having hurt Aiden.

  “Oh, no, Pippa. No, no. She was wonderful to him. They got together when they were nineteen. Second year of college. Everything was great, at first. They got on like a house on fire. She came and met our parents, he went and met hers. They were completely smitten with each other.”

  “What happened?” I ask, confused by how fondly Lexi speaks of the woman who’d obviously broken her brother’s heart.

  “She died,” she says, softly, and I feel like someone’s knocked all the air out of me. “She got sick. Started getting some cramps and twinges in her legs, at first. Dropping things. She eventually went to the doctor, but there was nothing they could do. Some sort of motor neuron disease. I forget the name of it, but it progressed way faster than even the doctors were expecting.

  “Of course, Aiden insisted on caring for her, and she insisted he not burden himself with it. She stopped him from visiting the hospital in the end, when she was so sick she couldn’t bear being seen. So security would come and take him away every time he tried to get in. It just completely devastated him.”

  Lexi’s eyes look watery and haunted with the memory of it. I can feel a huge, gnawing grief in the pit of my stomach at the thought of how bad that time must have been for Aiden. And for Sophie. I can barely imagine how it must have been for Lexi, watching her brother go through that.

  “He was in no state to study after she died,” she says. “Took a year out and spent it up at the resort with Dave, helping out. He taught people to ski and did odd jobs around the place. Dave said he barely stopped from dawn ‘til dusk, just threw himself right into it so he could block it out all day, and then be too exhausted at night to do anything but sleep when he was alone with his thoughts.”

  “Jesus,” I breathe.

  “Yep,” says Lexi, sniffing. She composes herself a little. “Anyway, he went back to college after that year, but just threw himself right into it the same way. Then threw himself into work when he graduated. It’s like he’s been running away from the possibility that anything like that would ever happen to him again. And then he met you,” she says, smiling at me.

  I smile back at her, but I feel the smile contort on my face. “Oh, God,” I say. I press my hands to my face. “And I had my stupid rules because of a petty breakup with a nobody.”

  “No, no. You can’t blame yourself, Pippa,” she says. “He knew your rules, and he agreed to them. But as soon as you were gone he knew he’d made a mistake. So he threw himself back into work again.”

  “Wow,” I say.

  “Yes, but like I said earlier—I believe in fate. And if that whole situation hadn’t played out the way it did back in March, he probably wouldn’t have gone at it quite so hard with work. And if he hadn’t, then he wouldn’t have ended up moving here. So you see?” she says, reaching over and placing her hand on my arm, kindly. “The universe has a way of working itself out.”

  “Yeah,” I agree, though I feel a little guilty for being more open with Lexi about my feelings for her brother than I’ve ever been with him.

  “Hey, Lexi,” I say, finally putting the sandwich back down on the arm of the chair. There are bits of bread glued to my fingers, and I have to wipe my hands in my coveralls again before I reach for a pen and paper. “Will you do me a favor and pass a note onto Aiden?”

  “Of course,” she says, smiling. “If you’ll do me a favour and not mention that I told you all this. I feel like it’s his place to tell you in his own time. Maybe he never will. But I think it’s important for you to know.”

  My pen pauses on the paper. I try to try to get rid of the protest that’s wriggling and writhing behind my sternum. I start jotting down my number, but the nagging feeling won’t give in. It bubbles up into my throat, and I know I’m not going to be able to pretend. Steeling myself, I look up at her.

  “Lexi, look. I… you’ve been so kind to me and so cool, offering me the profile and all. But I can’t make that promise to you. I really, really like your brother. I don’t want to lie to him, you know? Or pretend that I don’t know about something this important.”

  To my surprise, Lexi nods and sighs, taking the note from my hand and folding it up to place into her purse. “Alright. I can respect that. And I guess I’m pleased you’re serious about him. No that I doubted it, but… you know. I don’t think he really knows how to do casual. I’ll tell him I told you.”

  I nod, gratefully.

  “So I haven’t actually confirmed with him that I’ll be there on Christmas day,” I say. />
  “But you will be, right?” Lexi asks. “Did your roomie say yes?”

  “Yes,” I nod. Valerie had said yes almost before I finished asking her. She’s been dying to meet Aiden ever since she found out he moved here and I’ve been seeing him again. “So just let us know what time to—”

  I cut off as a tight, sharp pain closes around my abdomen and takes my breath away. Wincing, I place my hand on my side and bend forward, shifting in the chair. There’s a flash of nausea, and little stars bloom in my peripheral vision.

  Lexi is immediately alert, sitting up straight and reaching out her hand to my shoulder. “Are you alright?” she asks, her face awash with concern.

  The pain lingers around, strange and surreal and unexpected, before it disappears just as quickly as it came, fading away to nothing in a moment. I manage to nod to Lexi.

  “I think I might be gluten intolerant or something,” I say, looking up at her face. Her expression is skeptical, but I can’t think of any other reason for it. I manage a weak smile. “It’s been happening a bit lately. I’ll get tested after the holidays. I’m sure it’s just the universe telling me to eat more salads.”

  Now that the pain has eased completely, and I’ve managed to fix my smile, Lexi looks a bit more willing to let it go. I can’t say I’m not worried, but I really can’t afford to be sitting around in doctors’ offices while this deadline is looming and my studio is on the line.

  “I’ll make us a drink,” says Lexi, getting up and moving to the makeshift little kitchen in the corner of the studio. It’s really not much, but there’s a small kettle, a counter-top fridge that occasionally rattles, and enough breakfast tea and coffee to keep the rare visitors happy.

  “I’m not going anywhere until I know you’re alright,” she says. “Coffee? Or tea?”

  She reminds me so much of Aiden with her sudden need to care for me and make sure I’m alright, I almost laugh. I ask for coffee, and for the next hour we sit and chat, about the magazine feature, about the bastard who now owns the studio, about Christmas and gifts and life in general. She cancels two meetings while we’re sitting there, chatting and laughing, but she finally decides I’m alright when I’ve made it through three cups of decaf pain free, and she gets up to leave.