“Walt Disney World. I’ve got the room, I’ve got tickets to the Magic Kingdom, Epcot Center, all the parks... Mickey Mouse, Robin,” he reminded her. “Phil’s going to love it.”
Of course Philip would love it. No question about that. But... “Not at Christmas, Ray. You can’t take him away at Christmas.”
For several seconds, all she heard was the scratchy sound of long-distance static on the line. Then Ray spoke again, slowly and precisely. “You have him every holiday. We’ve never fought about that. You have him for Thanksgiving, Easter, Halloween, his birthday. You’ve had him every Christmas since we split.”
She couldn’t argue that point with Ray. But the reason Robin had Philip for every holiday was that Ray had left. He’d chosen to traipse around the world, living out of suitcases, instead of establishing a home and celebrating the rituals of each season with his family. He had never once fought with Robin over custody of their child. She willingly accepted the responsibility of raising their son, and one of her rewards was to have him with her for the holidays.
Especially Christmas.
“Robin.” Ray sounded cajoling. “We’re talking about Mickey Mouse. When is Phil going to have another opportunity like this? I’d like to fly him down to Florida and spend a few days with him here. What better Christmas present can we give him?”
“He doesn’t want Mickey Mouse for Christmas,” Robin retorted. “He wants a rocket ship, and some Transformers and Legos—”
“He can have those things, too,” Ray pointed out. “How can you even consider denying him this? It’s a kid’s dream come true.”
It was Ray’s dream come true, too, no doubt. But Christmas without Philip wasn’t a dream for Robin. It was the worst nightmare she could imagine.
“Why don’t you ask him?” Ray suggested. “Ask him if he’d rather spend Christmas in Connecticut or going to Disney World.”
“That’s not fair!” Robin retorted. “You know damned well he’ll choose Disney World.”
“Then be Santa for him. Give him his wish.”
“Ray.” She squeezed her eyes shut, refusing to succumb to tears, trying to force her words past the lump in her throat. “I don’t want to deny him Mickey Mouse. But at Christmas time? You know how I feel about Christmas.”
“Yes, I know how you feel.” Ray’s tone was soft, soothing. “But this was when my colleague had the reservations, and I can’t do anything about it.” In a firmer tone, he added, “Phil’s my son, too.”
“Who’s on the phone?” Philip shouted through the closed bedroom door.
Robin shuddered. “Your father.”
Philip hurled the door open and scrambled onto the bed beside his mother. He grabbed the phone from her and hollered, “Hi, Daddy! Where are you?”
Robin kicked off the blanket, stood and stalked to the window. Pulling back the drapes, she gazed outside. The sky was overcast, gloomy with thick gray clouds hinting at snow. As if she cared whether it snowed. If Philip went to Florida, he’d have a hot, muggy Christmas. And without him here, Robin wouldn’t want Christmas at all, let alone a white one.
She let the drapes fall across the window and turned to study her son. He looked small in the queen-size bed, despite the fact that he was outgrowing his pajamas. His eyes were bright and round as he clung to the telephone, his high-pitched voice ebullient. “Yeah, school’s okay. I got a hundred on my last spelling test.... Oh, guess what? We had dinner at Jesse’s house last night. He made spaghetti and meatballs, and ice-cream.... He’s a friend of Mom’s,” Philip reported.
Great. Robin suppressed a groan. Now Ray was going to find out that Robin had a male friend. The next thing she knew, he’d be accusing her of moral turpitude, demanding a new custody hearing and taking her child away from her forever.
“Mickey Mouse!” Philip shrieked, and Robin felt her stomach shrivel into a hard, painful knot. Ray must be telling Philip about Walt Disney World. Her son’s expression was ecstatic, his eyes glowing so brightly she felt burned by them. She’d never be able to keep him home for Christmas now. “No kidding, Daddy? Really? And I could come down to Florida? Oh, wow!”
The tears rose again, causing Robin’s vision to blur. She hastily looked away. She wasn’t going to let Philip see her cry.
“He wants to talk to you, Mom,” Philip announced, extending the phone in her direction.
Nodding, she swallowed and crossed the room. She sat gingerly on the edge of the mattress, took the receiver from Philip and pressed it to her ear. “That was low, Ray,” she muttered. “You shouldn’t have mentioned it to him before we’d worked it all out.”
“He wants to come,” Ray told her—as if she hadn’t already figured that out. “Who’s Jesse, by the way?”
“You heard Philip,” she said impassively. “Jesse’s a friend of ours.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” Ray hastened to placate her. “It’s about time you started dating.”
“I’m not dating,” she retorted. “He’s just a friend.” Whether or not that was an honest response, she wasn’t about to provide Ray with explanations he didn’t deserve. Right now, the man deserved nothing, nothing at all. “So, now that you’ve shot your mouth off to Phil about Disney World—”
“He wants to come,” Ray repeated. “He’ll hate you if you stand in his way.”
And I’ll hate you if you take him, she nearly screamed. But she couldn’t verbalize such an ugly thought in front of Philip. She couldn’t even allow herself to think it. Philip wanted to see Mickey Mouse, and Robin would never stand in his way. Ray was right about that.
A low, tortured breath escaped her as she resigned herself to the miserable prospect of a Christmas without her son. “What’s the plan?” she asked listlessly, trying unsuccessfully to ignore Philip, who was bouncing on the bed and chanting, “Mickey Mouse! Mickey Mouse!”
“Today’s the thirteenth,” Ray outlined. “My ticket will get me to Florida on the twenty-second. Phil can fly down the twenty-third, and I’ll be here to meet him. I’ll arrange for a ticket out of LaGuardia or Kennedy. Which is better for you?”
She sighed. “LaGuardia.”
“Fine. I’ll call you in a couple of days, after I’ve finalized things. I don’t know whether it’ll be warm enough to swim, but the hotel has a pool. So pack his bathing suit.”
“Yeah.”
“Robin.” That soft, gentle, tone again, so sweet and syrupy she nearly gagged at the sound of it. “I’m sorry it’s happened now. I know you’re sad. I know how you feel about the holiday. But think of how much fun Phil’s going to have.”
“Thanks for the counseling session,” she snapped. “I’ve got to go.”
“I’ll be in touch,” Ray said before hanging up.
Robin dropped the receiver into its cradle and sighed again. She attempted a smile for Philip’s sake and twisted to face him. “Quite a surprise, isn’t it,” she murmured.
He jumped off the bed and indulged in a giddy dance around her bedroom, his bare feet bouncing and his belly exposed in the gap between the top and bottom of the pajamas he had all but outgrown. “Mickey Mouse! I’m gonna see Mickey Mouse for Christmas!”
“I guess you are,” she conceded, wiping her hand across her damp eyelashes and reaching for her bathrobe.
She went downstairs and made Philip breakfast—a heaping bowl of Cheerios, a bagel, two glasses of orange juice and a cup filled half with coffee and half milk. Exciting events always made him gluttonous. Robin herself barely managed to consume two bites of her own bagel and a cup of black coffee. Some exciting events stirred her appetite, too, but this one left her feeling distinctly nauseous.
After eating, Philip went to his room to get dressed. Robin poured herself a second cup of coffee, stared at it for ten minutes, and then dumped it down the drain. Then she wandered into the living room and glared at the magnificent tree, the ribbon-and-holly-trimmed balustrade, the decorative candles in the windows. She inhaled the tangy scent of pine.
&nb
sp; Christmas without Philip. She couldn’t bear it.
Returning to the kitchen, she reached for the phone. Perhaps ten o’clock on a Sunday morning was too early to call Jesse, but in another half hour, she’d have to shower, get dressed, summon Kate O’Leary and leave for Woodleigh’s. She scrolled through her contacts on her cell phone until she located Jesse’s number, then pressed the connect button.
He sounded reasonably awake when he answered; Robin took comfort in that. “Hello, Jesse—it’s Robin, and I...” A fresh lump of tears took up residence in her throat, and she was unable to continue.
“What happened?” he asked, sounding worried.
“Disney World happened.” With a moan, she related the details of Ray’s call to Jesse. Maybe he thought her divorce hadn’t left her bitter, but she didn’t bother to disguise her bitterness now. “Of all the times, Jesse—of all the times, it had to be Christmas. Any other time of the year, I wouldn’t have minded. But to do this—to do this to me at Christmas—”
“It doesn’t sound like he’s doing anything to you,” Jesse calmly pointed out. “It’s something he’s doing for Philip.”
“Don’t you think I know that? I hate myself for being so angry. I want Philip to have this opportunity. He’s going to love it. He’ll have a fabulous time.” She swallowed the sob that bubbled up into her throat, threatening to erupt. “But Christmas, Jesse.” She stopped short. How could she expect him to understand her despair? He didn’t care about Christmas at all.
“Oh, Robin.” Maybe he couldn’t understand, but he did sound sympathetic. “I wish there was something I could do. I don’t suppose it would help to send another navy captain a legal brief about Santa Claus.”
Of course he understood. He had been going through a similar situation with the client of his who wanted her son home for the holiday. Just because Christmas signified nothing to Jesse didn’t mean he lacked compassion for people for whom it signified everything.
“What am I going to do?” she asked, desperate for words of wisdom from him, a straw to grasp at.
He ruminated. “Maybe you could spend Christmas with your mother,” he suggested. “Would she come to Connecticut for the holiday?”
“No. She never comes here in the winter. The cold is terrible for her health.”
“You could go to Hawaii, then.”
“No,” Robin said decisively. “Christmas is all about home. I’m not going to leave home.”
“Then you’ll stay here,” he said. “And I’ll be here, and we’ll make the best of it.”
The tension in her gut slowly ebbed, replaced by a shimmering warmth. Christmas with Jesse. Christmas with a man she was only beginning to know, a man who rejected so many of the things she believed in, a man who claimed he had no soul.
Christmas with a friend. “You’ll celebrate with me?” she asked timidly.
“I’ll do my best,” he promised. “But I’m not going to strap on a false beard and climb down your chimney.”
For the first time since Ray’s call, a smile teased her lips. Feeble and forlorn, it wasn’t much of a smile, but if Jesse was willing to do his best, she would have to do her best, too. “No false beard,” she assured him. “But—I make a gingerbread house for Philip every year, and—” her voice caught in her throat, and she had to swallow again “—somebody’s got to eat it.”
“That I’ll do,” Jesse volunteered.
“Hey, Mom!” Philip’s shrill voice sliced through the air from upstairs. “You’d better get moving or you’ll be late for work!”
“I’ve got to go,” Robin said.
“I’ll talk to you later,” Jesse said before disconnecting.
Robin lowered her cell phone to the counter and closed her eyes. Although Jesse was less than a mile away and Philip was separated from her only by a flight of stairs, she felt lonely. So profoundly, so oppressively lonely that picturing Jesse impersonating Santa Claus made her want to wee[.
There would be time enough for tears once Philip was truly gone. For now, she had little choice but to get herself to Woodleigh’s and pretend to be full of holiday cheer.
***
IF I COULDN’T HAVE Philip with me for Christmas, I’d die.
Jesse picked up the piece of toast he’d been in the middle of eating, then dropped it back onto his plate as Robin’s words echoed inside his skull. She had eventually admitted that equating Christmas without her son to death was an overstatement, but her feelings had been obvious. For a woman like her, Christmas without Philip was life without a purpose.
Why was it that this one day meant so damned much to so many people? That was all it was—a day, a date on the calendar, one three-hundred-sixty-fifth of a year. In honor of that one single day, people became maniacs. They spent money they didn’t have, drank more than they could stomach, partied until they were ready to drop. They filled their homes with trees and holly, littered their floors with dead twigs and ran up extraordinary electric bills illuminating their houses with garish lights and decorations. They made promises of love and God-bless-us-everyone that were quickly forgotten.
True, there was religious import to the day. It commemorated the birth of Jesus Christ—but to accept that, you had to swallow a few myths: the myth that Jesus was the Messiah, the myth that he was actually born on the twenty-fifth day of December, the myth that snow could fall in the Middle East. Jesse was one of those people who believed that Jesus was merely a man, a preacher, possibly mystic and possibly misguided, and that December 25th was declared his birthday to satisfy a lot of pagans so it would coincide with their celebration of the winter solstice. As for snow falling in Bethlehem—well, maybe it was possible, but the Middle East was located in a pretty temperate climate.
His own sentiments notwithstanding, he had read the Scriptures as a youth, and the one message he’d never forgotten was that it was essential to give of yourself. Not in the hope of salvation—he hadn’t bought into that particular aspect of it—but because helping others was a decent, humane thing to do. If Robin was in pain, Jesse would help her any way he could.
He wished he knew exactly what it was he could do for her. Bringing Gerald Selby home for Christmas seemed easy in comparison, and Jesse hadn’t had much success there, yet. He’d received an acknowledgement that Captain Stevenson had received his letter, but nothing more.
Even if he could bring Gerald Selby home, what home could he bring him to? Mrs. Selby’s landlord had been in touch with his office a couple of times, but days were slipping away and the elevator still didn’t work. The trash was being picked up only sporadically, and the light bulb in the corridor outside her door hadn’t been replaced.
At least Jesse had the legal training to attempt to straighten out Mrs. Selby’s various dilemmas. His legal training wouldn’t do him any good with Robin. All he could offer her was his companionship, his support, his love.
He rested his head in his palms and gazed at the plate of toast. If he offered her all he could, maybe it would be enough. Simply thinking of her, thinking of her hope and confidence, her cheerful energy, had helped him to survive his accident. Now she was devoid of hope and confidence and cheer, and he wasn’t sure how to go about giving those precious things back to her.
Perhaps Philip could help in some way.
Philip owed Jesse a favor, after all. At his request, Jesse had stopped by the Greer house on Thursday evening while Robin was still at work and spirited Philip’s Christmas gift for his mother out of the house so she wouldn’t find it. It was a peculiar gift: a statue constructed of modeling clay and painted with a garish orange glaze, supposedly depicting a boy from Gleek, Philip’s make-believe planet. Jesse wondered whether Robin would ever be able to guess what the stout creature, with its pointy feet, wings protruding from its shoulders and seashell-shaped ears, was supposed to be.
She’d recognize the halo Philip had shaped out of wire and propped up above the creature’s head, though. Angels didn’t dwell in heaven. Evidently, they came
from Gleek.
Jesse and Mrs. O’Leary had helped Philip to wrap the awkwardly shaped object in paper, taped a lopsided bow to the package, and fastened the home-made card Philip had written. Then, vowing secrecy, Jesse had brought the gift to his condominium for safekeeping.
How would she feel when she found Philip’s gift under her tree Christmas morning? Jesse hoped she wouldn’t resent her son for abandoning her. Philip was just a kid. He couldn’t know the sorrow his trip to Florida was going to cause his mother. He shouldn’t know.
Jesse would make sure he didn’t. He would keep Robin from despairing, somehow.
***
HE’D ASKED HER several times to go out for dinner with him, but she kept refusing his invitations. It wasn’t only that piloting Woodleigh’s through the final Christmas crush consumed a disproportionate amount of her time and strength, but that, irrational as it was, she wanted to spend every spare second she had with Philip. She kept thinking that if she gathered as many memories as possible of her son, she could seal them away, store them in her brain, and then cheer herself up by breaking them open on Christmas morning and using them to get her through the day.
Such a wish was impossible, yet she couldn’t seem to stop herself. She talked to Jesse often on the phone, and he came to the house for dinner a couple of times, but even when Philip wandered into the den to watch television after dinner, Robin insisted on being in the den with him. She and Jesse would sit on the couch, and while Jesse gazed at the screen Robin gazed at her son. She’d try to memorize the cowlick at the rear of Philip’s head, the sparkle in his eyes, the scuffs on his sneakers and the faded ovals on the knees of his jeans, where the denim was worn. She would absorb his every word, his every laugh and gesture.
She actually thought about recording Philip when he talked. Then she could play the recording at sunrise on December twenty-fifth and listen to Philip’s adorable voice plying her with questions: “What does the reporter on the news mean when he says fifteen people are presumed dead? Are they dead or aren’t they?”
Comfort and Joy Page 17
