Kathleen Creighton - The Black Sheep’s Baby

Thus prompted, Lucy went on to talk about past Christmases when her children had been small and the household had included Great-aunt Gwen, and even farther back in the past when she and her brothers had been the children and their parents still alive. Boisterous Christmases, then, when the farmhouse had been crowded with children and noisy with laughter and music.

Listening to her, Devon felt a heaviness around her heart. Memories…everything here is memories, she thought.

What was it Eric had said about memories making people who they are? Who, then, am I? she wondered. The heaviness became an ache.

When the salad was finished, Lucy handed her a stack of plates and bowls and asked her to set the table. “That was always the children’s job,” she told Devon with an impish little smile. “First Ellie’s, then Eric’s.”

Devon smiled back, but it felt bleak and fraudulent. The children’s job. Did I do this when I was a child, in my own parents’ house? she wondered as she arranged plates, bowls and napkins, knives, forks and spoons on the red plaid tablecloth. I must have, and probably Susan, too.

But if I did, why don’t I remember?

She had no appetite for dinner, and had to force herself to choke down polite helpings of Lucy’s delicious homemade beef stew and the fresh green salad she’d helped to make. There was no reason for it; the atmosphere in the kitchen was comfortable and welcoming, as always. In spite of the baby she insisted on holding in her lap, Lucy bounced up and down, back and forth between tending to Emily’s needs and everyone else’s, and ignored everyone’s urgings to relax. Eric chatted with Mike about computer things and avoided Devon’s eyes. They all reminisced-incessantly.

But Devon realized that, there in the midst of Eric’s family, surrounded by unself-conscious love, easy conversation, affectionate teasing and warm remembering, she felt alienated…left out. And envious.

After dinner, Devon insisted on doing the dishes. “You must have other things you need to do,” she told Lucy, nodding toward the baby she held casually cradled in the crook of one arm. “This is about the only way I know of to help. Please, it’s the least I can do.”

So, with twinkling eyes and secret smiles, Mike and Lucy vanished like co-conspirators behind the closed door of their bedroom, taking Emily with them. Eric went back to traipsing mysteriously up and down the stairs. Up to her elbows in soapy dishwater at the kitchen sink, Devon could hear him whistling tunelessly each time he whisked past the open doorway.

And each time he did, her heartbeat accelerated.

Dammit, she thought, staring into the froth of bubbles. Dammit. It felt like failure to her, this inability to forget the delicious warmth of his hand on her neck, the demanding weight of it on her belly, the tingling rush that lifted the fine hairs all over her body, the thumping ache of desire between her thighs. What irony, she thought bitterly. I’m a failure on the one hand because I can’t remember, and on the other because I can’t forget.

Devon wasn’t accustomed to failure. She desperately wanted to blame someone else for it. Blame Eric, blame his parents, this farm, the entire cotton-pickin’ Midwest, for that matter. One thing she knew for certain: she was sick to death of all of it. She couldn’t wait to get away from these people and their old-fashioned corn-fed ways, their constant conversation and mushy Christmas songs, their house cluttered with holiday decorations, and a kitchen that always smelled of something cooking. Something fattening, naturally. She couldn’t wait to be back in L.A., back at her job where she was almost never a failure, back in the solitude of her own cool, quiet apartment with its uncluttered serenity, everything in its place and classical music playing on the stereo.

She shivered. I can’t wait.

Footsteps passed by in the hallway, and a rush of tuneless whistling, like a playful gust of wind. Her heart quickened, and her cheeks grew hot. “Dammit,” she whispered to the sinkful of soap bubbles. “Dammit.”

Later, still dodging Eric like a character in a French farce, Devon listened at her bedroom door until she heard him go downstairs, then quick-stepped down the hallway to knock on Lucy and Mike’s door.

“It’s me-sorry to bother you,” she said in a low, urgent voice in answer to Mike’s cautious “Who is it?”

The door opened halfway and Mike’s face appeared, wearing a look of cordial inquiry. “Hey, Devon-what can I do for you?”

Behind him, Devon could see a bassinet beside the bed, and an overflow of pastel blankets, and Lucy sitting crosslegged on the floor in a sea of wrapping paper and stick-on bows.

“Could I trouble you for some of that paper?” She nodded toward the mess on the floor. “And a couple of bows, some tape and scissors… Oh-and if you have any to spare, a couple of boxes, about…yay-big?”

“Sure-help yourself,” Mike said cheerfully, while Lucy was already scolding and absolutely forbidding Devon from even thinking about giving gifts to anyone.

But Devon stood her ground. And later, back in her own room with all the gift-wrapping supplies she needed, she had the strangest feeling Lucy had been pleased to find that Devon could be every bit as stubborn and strong-willed as she was.

It was late-by Iowa farm standards, not the L.A. lifestyle Devon was accustomed to-by the time she finished wrapping her gifts for Mike and Lucy. It took her longer than she’d expected, since she didn’t normally do her own gift-wrapping, and it took her a few abortive tries before she got the hang of it. The finished product still lacked the professionalism and elegance she was used to, but under the circumstances, she thought it would do.

The house was quiet; it had been some time since she’d heard Eric’s footsteps, and there wasn’t so much as a peep coming from Lucy and Mike’s room. What better time to play Santa’s elf, Devon thought wryly as she tiptoed down the stairs to the parlor. While everyone was asleep, she’d slip her two small gifts among the growing pile under the tree…

In the parlor’s near darkness, she felt for the twin light switches beside the door and chose one. And it was the Christmas tree that sprang to life, bathing the room in the soft glow of its multicolored lights. Her breath escaped in a tiny involuntary pleasure-sound, like that a child might make, as she stood in the doorway and gazed at the shimmering tree, tiny lights reflecting off a mishmash of ornaments accumulated through generations of a family’s Christmases without regard to taste or style. And before she knew what was happening, she found herself blinking away tears.

Silly, she thought. Really-it’s just a tree. She wasn’t sentimental about Christmas-not even a little bit.

She dashed away the moisture on her cheek with a finger, but the ache in her throat remained.

Then, as she stood there alone in the doorway of that quiet, empty room, something came over her, a feeling so vivid it was more like memory than imagination. She saw the room no longer empty, but filled with people…adults in all the chairs, crowded together on the sofa-even perched on the arms-and children on the floor, all gathered around the tree. And no longer silent, but alive with laughter, and Christmas music playing on the stereo-something schmaltzy, Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas.”

And Devon was no longer alone, as someone came behind her to slip his arms around her with the ease of someone who’d done the same thing countless times before. Someone whose touch and scent, though familiar to her as her own, never failed to make her heart bump, and beat with a new and faster rhythm. His arms enfolded her in their warmth and the lonely ache inside her vanished. A smile bloomed across her face as he whispered her name…

Devon…

S he drew in her breath with a shuddering gasp. The vision vanished, and the parlor was empty and silent again.

Cold and aching once more, Devon placed her gifts beneath the tree, turned off the lights and went back up the stairs.

At the door to her own room, she hesitated. She’d left it open; she could see the peace and privacy, the order and solitude she craved right there in front of her. The neatly made bed, the leftover wrapping materials in a tidy pile beside the dresser. But now for some reason the room seemed less peaceful to her than lonely. And suddenly she knew that, on this night, at least, it wasn’t solitude she wanted.

A little farther down the hallway, she could see a narrow strip of light showing under Eric’s bedroom door. There was no sound in the hallway; she could almost hear the pounding of her own heart. A shiver went through her, and she put a hand on the doorframe to steady herself. Drawing a slow, deep breath, she closed her eyes.

Devon…

She could feel his breath on her skin…smell his clean, wholesome scent. The longing to have his arms around her, the warmth and strength of his long, angular body against hers as it had been in her vision, was so acute she nearly whimpered aloud.

Her heart thumped against her breastbone as she pushed away from the doorframe. Her legs shook as she crossed the few yards of hallway to Eric’s door. Her mouth was dry; her throat felt sticky when she tried to swallow. More nervous than she’d ever been in her life, she lifted her hand to knock.

And froze-just in time.

Above the pounding of her own pulse she could hear Eric’s voice, not the low, crooning murmur he used when he spoke to Emily, but the recognizable cadences of adult conversation. Only one voice, though, with pauses between; he was obviously talking on the telephone. Devon couldn’t make out words, but there was no mistaking the intimacy and affection in his tone.