Baby Under The Mistletoe

CHAPTER SIX

FRIDAY AFTERNOON, Soleil was waving goodbye to her last batch of interns for the year. She still hadn’t heard from West, and her anxiety was moving into the panicked range.

The last two days of camp had consumed her, but now the hubbub was over, and the farm was, thankfully, silent except for the sound of her assistant, Michelle, swaying on the porch swing nearby.

Back from her battle with the flu, she was beginning to look like a normal human again and had expressed a strong desire to get out and go for a walk today because she was so sick of being cooped up indoors.

“So,” Soleil said, turning to Michelle. “Room service?”

The other woman rolled her eyes. Room service for them meant nothing in the way of luxury. Rather, it referred to the cleanup they had to do every time a group of interns left.

If they worked fast, they could get it done in a half hour and head for their favorite trail while there was still plenty of light.

“You’re such a tyrant,” Michelle complained, but she pushed herself off the swing and hurried inside. She liked to set an egg timer to see if they could beat their record time for getting the work done.

Soleil tried to forget her worries in the frenzy of cleaning, but as she was shoving laundry into the washer, she let her mind wander back to West. She realized with some horror that she was now even more disturbed by the prospect of him not caring about the baby at all than she was with the idea of having to fight off his well-intentioned advances.

God, she was screwed up.

Because the kids had done a pretty good job of cleaning up their rooms before leaving, Soleil and Michelle were finished in twenty minutes, and shortly thereafter, they were breathing in the fresh cold mountain air and working up a sweat as they hiked along the ridge overlooking the lake.

As they walked, Soleil filled Michelle in on the events of the days she’d missed. She desperately needed to talk to someone neutral about her West worries.

“You’re lying,” Michelle said in response to her biggest piece of news.

“I’m not,” Soleil said, shaking her head, unable to contain a grin at her friend’s shock.

“West Morgan did not just ride into town and nearly run over one of our goats.”

“Why would I make that up?”

“Because you’re cruel. Because you know this is exactly the kind of gossip I want to hear.”

The path they followed went three miles on the high country trail at the top of the ridge overlooking Promise Lake. It was Soleil’s favorite hike in the area, and it felt great to be getting some aerobic exercise finally.

“He saw that I was pregnant, of course, so I had to tell him.”

“Oh, my God. You really are serious, aren’t you?” Michelle was breathing heavily between words as they made their way up an incline in the trail, between a grove of pine trees and a poison oak-filled meadow.

“He completely freaked out.”

Michelle stopped, forcing Soleil to stop, too.

“You did it! You finally told him. Oh, thank goodness.”

Michelle had been oozing disapproval for weeks that Soleil was keeping the truth about the baby’s father to herself. Michelle was, in fact, the only person who knew until three days ago when West had arrived.

“You don’t have to make me sound so evil.”

“You know that’s not what I mean. It’s just you don’t need the stress of that confession hanging over your head. At least now things can move toward a resolution.”

“Things don’t need to move anywhere.”

Michelle stopped staring at her and started walking again. “So what did he say?”

“Oh, the usual. ‘How could you not have told me?’ and ‘Of course I’m going to be involved in this child’s life.’ Stuff like that.”

“How can you be so flip about this? It’s your child’s father-and its future. Your future.”

Her friend picked up her pace, possibly afraid of Soleil’s foot making contact with her back end.

“God, could you chill out and trust that maybe I can handle my future without anyone else’s help?”

“Okay, sorry.” Michelle was silent for a moment, then she said, “He’s going to want to marry you.”

“Shut up.”

“He is!”

“That’s my worst nightmare.”

“I know you say that, but…”

“But what?”

“You could do worse, you know.”

“That’s exactly what I hope to think about someone I pledge my life to-‘I could do worse.’”

“West is gorgeous and smart and sexy and-”

“And you already know the hundred and one reasons I’m not interested in him.”

“Let’s see…Reason number one, he doesn’t fit your fantasy of the perfect pseudo-hippie tree-hugging weenie?”

“I don’t date weenies,” Soleil said, but it somehow rang false.

“Every guy you’ve ever dated has lived in a yurt or a commune or both and wouldn’t hesitate to use the word karma in casual conversation.”

“Except West.”

“But you didn’t really date, now, did you?” Michelle chided.

“I guess that depends on your definition of the word date.”

“Alternately rolling around together naked and arguing doesn’t really count in my book.”

Soleil sighed. She’d never had such a volatile relationship with anyone before. Sure, she’d had her share of fireworks in the past, but with West it was an extended Fourth of July celebration-exhausting and explosive.

“That’s the problem when you’re with a guy with whom you agree about nothing.”

“West seems a lot more reasonable to me than you make him out to be.”

“He thinks women belong at home, barefoot and pregnant.”

“You’re halfway there, babe,” Michelle said, clearly thrilled with her own joke.

“That’s not funny.”

“What exactly did he say? I mean, did he use the words barefoot and pregnant?”

“I don’t remember, but that’s what he meant.” Even if he hadn’t, Soleil refused to concede this point to Michelle. West’s words conjured images of domestic prisons that easily fit the barefoot-and-pregnant mold.

Michelle shot her a pointed stare.

“I didn’t memorize what he said word for word, okay?”

“Weren’t you the one who told me once that you appreciated differences of opinion? That you would be bored to death by a guy who agreed with you about everything?”

“I don’t think I said that.”

“You did. You said it after your last breakup, actually.”

Oh.

Right.

“That was a long time ago. Besides, Brian was so dull he would have made anyone long for a little excitement.”

“And West excites you, right?”

“Not in a good way.”

“Since when is there a bad kind of excitement?”

“Well, let’s say you want to feel stable and secure and harmonious with your partner. Then excitement might not go hand in hand with that.”

“Maybe you haven’t given him enough of a chance yet. He seems like a great catch to me.”

“Then you date him.”

“I’m not the one about to have a baby with him.”

“Yeah. There is that.” Soleil looked out over the lake as they reached a scenic lookout spot.

To the southeast, she could see the farm, barely identifiable by its red rooftops at this distance. She’d come to love the place more intensely than anywhere else, and she wondered if she’d ever be able to love a man the way she loved her home. Certainly, she couldn’t love West Morgan enough to give up this place for him.

“Don’t you think if your baby has the chance to have both parents around watching him or her grow up, he or she deserves to have that?”

Ouch.

“You know, you’re really laying it on thick today.”

Michelle sighed. “Look, I know you have this vision of yourself as a strong woman who doesn’t need anyone, but did it ever occur to you that you might feel differently once your baby is born?”

“I might, but I’ve got friends who can help me.”

“You don’t have any family here.”

A weight settled on Soleil’s chest. No, she didn’t, and she didn’t want to be reminded of that right now.

“Thank God,” she said, trying to convince herself as much as Michelle. “If my mom was here, she wouldn’t be any help anyway.”

Which was true, but it would have been nice to have some kind of family around to help out.

Her face flushed, and she shrugged off her backpack and sat.

“Time for snacks,” she said to distract from the fact that she was getting dizzy. “Can you imagine my mother playing the doting-grandma role?”

Michelle laughed. “She’d probably try to slip a little whiskey into the baby’s bottle.”

“Or write an angry poem about how demeaning it is to be called grandma.”

Soleil took out two sandwiches and two bottles of water and began unwrapping her own turkey sandwich. Her hands were shaking from hunger, even though she’d had lunch a couple of hours earlier with the kids before they left. She took a big bite, and her shakiness began to subside.

“It’s harder than it looks, raising a kid,” Michelle said, still on her negativity kick. “Just remember that. Way harder.”

Michelle’s own daughter was eight years old, and while Soleil had been around for much of Kaitlin’s childhood, she hadn’t known their family for the first few years, before she’d moved to Promise and taken over the farm.

“I know I won’t really understand what it’s like until I’m in the middle of it. But I won’t be the first person who’s been a single parent. Look at my mom.”

“Your father was there for the early years, though, right?”

“Yeah.” It was only later, when her mother’s depression and craziness went from bad to worse and she had an affair with a temporary resident scholar in the English Department at U.C. Berkeley that they split up.

Soleil had been six at the time. She remembered it all only in a dreamlike way. And she remembered missing her father terribly, wanting him to come back home.

She took a big bite of sandwich. Her own child wouldn’t miss what he or she had never known, right? It would be different. For one thing, since Soleil worked for herself, she could be around all the time. Even if she had to hire a nanny part-time, she’d never be farther than a quick jog away from the baby.

Michelle took off her jacket and spread it on the ground, then sat and twisted her long dark hair up into a bun.

“I’ll be around to help, but honestly, Soleil, I don’t know how I would have survived the baby years with Kaitlin without Daniel to help me.”

“So divorce Daniel and marry me. We can make the lesbian thing work, can’t we?”

Michelle gave her a look. “Maybe you can, but men have certain…qualities…that I can’t do without.”

“Oh, sure, rub it in that you’ve got certain qualities to keep you entertained in bed at night while I’m all alone.”

“By choice,” Michelle reminded her.

“The weird thing is, I thought I’d be hearing from West again right away. And I haven’t.”

“You freaked him out, of course. Can you imagine having someone tell you out of the blue that you’re about to have a baby? Talk about the shock of a lifetime.”

Something else was nagging at her. West wouldn’t be back in town at this time of year unless something was wrong. She hadn’t even bothered to ask what that might be.

She should call him, she decided. Invite him to go to her next ultrasound appointment on Monday.

That would kind of, sort of, make up for a few things, wouldn’t it?

Maybe not, but it was a start.

WEST STOOD in the doorway and looked across the floor of his father’s kitchen, where a river of milk meandered across the tile, curving its way past islands of oat-bran cereal.

“Dad, what happened?”

“Huh? Oh, that.” His father edged past him into the kitchen. “Somebody’s damn cat tripped me.”

“Where is the cat?”

“I locked the ornery thing outside where it belongs. Don’t know what it was doing in here in the first place. Is it yours?”

“Yes, he’s mine,” West lied, hoping it would keep the cat safe for the time being. They’d been going around and around about Moe the cat for the past few days. It was crazy-making how conversations they’d had minutes earlier would resurface, again and again and again and again, ad infinitum.

“I’d appreciate it if you’d let him stay inside when it’s cold out.”

“I never did like cats,” the General grumbled as he peered in the refrigerator.

Entirely untrue. His dad had adored Moe.

Had? The word sent a chill up West’s spine. He’d begun to think of his father as if he was already gone, as if this belligerent man a few feet away wasn’t actually the General.

He was, but he wasn’t. All the things that had made him who he was were fading fast, leaving behind a person West barely recognized. His father had once been a passionate duck hunter, a fisherman, an avid golfer, a reader of historical biographies, a lover of talk radio and a dispenser of unwanted advice. He’d been a doting cat lover who spoiled Moe with fresh fish and frequent brushings. He’d been pushy and pigheaded and arrogant, always. But he’d also been a man of unwavering moral fortitude. There had never been an ounce of doubt in West’s mind that his dad tried his best to do the right thing.

And now…How could he have lost the essence of himself? Where had his dad gone?

West grabbed a handful of paper towels from the counter and began cleaning up the mess on the floor. Thank God his father hadn’t tripped over the cat, or slipped in the milk and suffered a fall.

He’d gotten the cereal and milk halfway cleaned up when he heard the doorbell ring. His father ignored the sound, so West stood and went to the front door, wet paper towels still in hand.

He found his mother standing on the front porch.

She gave him a grim look.

“What’s wrong, Mom? What are you doing here?”

“Oh, nothing’s wrong,” she said. “It’s just odd being here again…” She was looking around as if seeing everything for the first time. “I don’t think I’ve come back to the house since the divorce.”

He absorbed this information. And it was true-it was odd having his mother standing on the porch of the last home where they’d been a family. She should have fit right in here, but she didn’t anymore, not when she looked so whole and healthy and set apart from the decay that had overtaken the place.

“Did you come here to see me?”

“I came to see you and your father both.”

West was stunned silent. His parents hadn’t exactly had an amicable divorce, thanks mostly to his father’s unwavering insistence that he was right and Julia was wrong about everything. As a result they didn’t stop by for impromptu visits with each other.

“I’ve thought about your dilemma, and I’ve decided to help with your father’s care.”

His silence grew louder, and he realized his mouth was hanging open.

“I know this is unexpected,” she said calmly. “But it’s what my conscience is telling me to do.”

“But…Mom, I don’t know. Things are difficult here.”

“I’m better equipped to deal with him than most people are.”

“You got divorced for good reasons.” West shook his head, trying to absorb this new, bizarre turn of events.

Maybe his mother was losing her marbles, too. But standing there in her red wool coat and with her gray hair perfectly neat and her brown eyes so warm and alert, he couldn’t see the slightest hint of craziness.

And he was relieved to see her. She was capable. She’d know what to do.

“I don’t expect you to understand now, but you will someday, once you’ve been married to someone for a good portion of your life.”

She said this with such finality, West knew better than to argue. His mother didn’t make any decision rashly. She’d probably been up all night thinking about it.

But this…

This didn’t sound like his mom talking.

“What do you mean by help?” he finally asked.

“I mean, I’m volunteering to be his primary-care person until he needs more intensive care than I can provide.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea. He’ll drive you crazy,” West said, his voice lowered so that his father couldn’t overhear.

“You said he’s been sexually harassing his caregivers, right?”

West nodded, not all that inclined to discuss the matter further with his mother.

“I’m the one woman he’s sure not to sexually harass,” she said as if that decided the matter.

Okay, so maybe she just needed to see for herself what she was getting into.

“Mom…”

“Don’t argue with me. My mind is made up.”

He was silent, trying to decide what he could say.

“West, please, don’t make this any more difficult than it already is.”

“If you’re sure about this…”

“I am.”

“Come on in and have a visit with your new patient then.”

Her expression grew the faintest bit uncertain. “Will he recognize me, do you think?”

“Yeah, I think he will,” West said, though he didn’t know anything about his dad for sure these days. “I’ll get you a cup of coffee, and you can say hi to him.”

He stepped aside and motioned her in.

His mother looked even more apprehensive now, but she took a tentative step forward, then another, until she was all the way inside.

She looked around at what had changed and what had stayed the same. He recalled how the foyer used to be filled with the scent of fresh flowers, where now there was only a stale odor of last night’s dinner mingled with the faint scent of cat pee.

To their right, the formal living room looked nothing like it used to, West recalled. It had gone through the decorating changes of two wives, along with his father’s own sparse tendencies. Where once there had been family photos on the mantel, now there was nothing but an antique clock because his father didn’t see the point of having so many “dust catchers” sitting around.

To the left the study, which had always been his father’s domain, had barely changed in all the years he’d owned the house. Same imposing desk, same shelves of books, same military awards and prints covering the walls, same air of severity that had always dominated his father’s life…until recently.

“He’s in the kitchen,” West said, leading his mom down the hallway, toward the sound of his father muttering.

“Was that his cat I saw on the front lawn?”

“Yeah, he’s banished from the house right now because Dad doesn’t remember having a cat,” West whispered.

His mother’s expression turned even darker. “I’ll be sure and pick up some allergy medicine today,” she said, her light tone sounding forced.

“Who’s there?” his father called as they entered the kitchen.

West held out a hand to keep his mom from stepping in the spilled cereal.

“Dad, it’s Mom. She stopped in to say hi.”

His father turned, scowling, toward them. “Julia, where the hell have you been?” he demanded, as if she’d stepped out for groceries and had stayed gone for ten years.

She looked from the General to West, bewildered, but she answered, “Oh, here and there. How have you been, John?”

“Awful,” he muttered, taking out a pan now and putting it on the stove.

He cranked up the knob on the front of the stove and a flame burst up around the pan.

“Hey, Dad, why don’t you let me do that.” West made a move for the knob to turn it down, but his father waved him away.

“Leave me the hell alone and let me cook my own eggs.” He turned down the flame, put a pat of butter in the pan and fumbled with the egg carton on the counter.

West looked over at his mother, and they winced at each other.

“I remember how much you loved my omelets,” Julia said. “Sure you wouldn’t like me to whip one up for you?”

For the first time since West had been back home, his father smiled.

“Now that you mention it, that sounds perfect.”

She went to the refrigerator and brought out the mushrooms and cheddar cheese West had bought yesterday. West sat and watched a disconcerting time warp occur right in front of him.

All of a sudden, he was transported back over a decade and a half. His parents hadn’t divorced. They’d just aged. Two more marriages and years of bitterness didn’t lie between them.

His father, for the first time in ages, looked sort of…content.

It was heartbreaking.

And he wondered if any woman would ever love him enough to show up and take care of him when he’d become too impossible to care for. Or vice versa.

Could he love Soleil this way?

Or was this even love he was witnessing?

It resembled it, but it also resembled something his parents were far more familiar with: duty.

And right now, he wasn’t so sure there was much difference between the two.

He hadn’t gotten in touch with Soleil since she’d told him about the baby, partly because he was terrified, and partly because he was trying to take his mother’s advice and give the matter time and space, take things slowly, try not to force a resolution.

Everything in him wanted to force a resolution, and he knew if he called Soleil, he’d find it nearly impossible not to start steering the situation in the right direction. Marriage, harmony, family.

Leaving it alone hadn’t been so hard, thanks to his father, who’d kept him busy. Margie, the temporary attendant, had bailed yesterday when his father had groped her then an hour later tried to hit her for attempting to help him in the bathroom.

And now here was his mother, the latest candidate for the attendant job, and by far the most experienced.

Did the idea make sense, or was it crazy?

“So, has West told you his big news?” she asked the General, interrupting West’s brooding.

Oh, God.

What was she thinking? Of course he hadn’t told his dad.

“What? What’s she talking about?” His father gave him a confused look.

“Oh, actually, I haven’t mentioned it yet.” He gave his mother a little glare when she glanced at him from the stove, and she raised her eyebrows in silent reproach.

“Well?” she nudged. “I think he deserves to hear the good news.”

“Dad, my, um, girlfriend and I are going to be having a baby in May.”

“What girlfriend?”

“You haven’t met her. I’ll have to introduce you soon.”

“You got some girl pregnant, and you’re not even married? Who is this girl? Why the hell haven’t I met her yet?” His father banged his fist on the kitchen table to punctuate the rant.

“I don’t really want to get into it right now, Dad. I’ll introduce you soon.”

“Since when is it okay for an air force officer to go around having babies out of wedlock? In my day, an officer didn’t do that kind of thing.”

“I know, Dad. But things happen. Soleil and I haven’t worked out how we’re going to handle things.”

“What the hell’s a So-lay?”

“Soleil is my girlfriend’s name. It’s a French word. It means sun.”

His father still looked perplexed, then, predictably, angry. “What is she, some kind of hippie?”

West ignored that. He glanced at his mom, whose expression was worried now. She turned her gaze from West to the omelet she was watching in the pan. She knew better than to jump into the middle of things.

“You mean to tell me, you got some girl pregnant, and you’re not even marrying her?” He slammed his fist on the table again, causing the salt and pepper shakers to jump this time. “What kind of man are you, anyway? You’re not a man I raised, that’s for damn sure.”

Before West could react, his father pushed himself to his feet and walked out of the room, down the hall to his study. It wouldn’t do any good to follow him, so West simply let out a ragged breath.

“Mom,” he said. “Why…”

He didn’t even have the energy to say the question out loud. But she knew what he wanted to know-why’d she have to go and tell the General?

“Better to get it out in the open now, rather than later. It would only get harder to explain.”

“You could have let me do it in my own time.”

She eased the omelet off the hot pan and onto a plate. “West, dear, I’m sorry. I think I saved you some trouble, though. If you’d tried to tell him on your own, he’d have been worse. With me here as a buffer-”

“Yeah, okay, you’re right.”

And she was. Since childhood, her presence had been the buffer between himself and his father. When she was near, the General was slightly less hostile, slightly more tolerable. Some things never changed, apparently.

As he watched his mother carry the plate to the study, he recognized he definitely didn’t belong here. He didn’t want to be in the middle of this family drama anymore.

Maybe his mother was crazy, too, showing up out of the blue, whipping up an omelet as if she’d never left the place-a mad Betty Crocker bent on reconciliation. Had loneliness finally gotten to her? Was this the first sign of her own mental decay?

He craved an escape from this place. He was tired of trying to please his father, and he wasn’t going to do it anymore.

What that would mean, though, he couldn’t say.