Elina

“What’d you do, tell her it’d be good practice for babysitting jobs?” It’s cute, the way Katie is with Joey: she’s been helping him sound out the names of all the dinosaurs, and lecturing him on what they’d have looked like with their skins still on. He’s eating it up, even though I suspect she got half her information from Jurassic Park.

“Nah. She just loves an audience.”

“Ha—look at that!” They’re roaring at each other now, holding up their hands like claws.

“Katie, no roaring indoors.” Nick grins. “Besides, I heard this theory, a while ago, that they actually sounded more like birds. Cuckoo! Cuckoo!”

Joey and Katie look at each other and burst out laughing. They head off for the next exhibit, honking and whistling.

“Yeah... Not sure that’s an improvement.” I shake my head as Joey launches into his best crow-in-a-garbage-can squawkfest.

Nick leans in close—so close I feel his stubble on my neck—and does a Donald Duck kwaaaaaaa in my ear.

“Oh, not you too!”

Nick darts this way and that, quacking at me from all angles. The kids, of course, take note. In an instant, I’m the center of a storm of hoots and chirps and squawks. Reminds me of the time Joey got chased by a pack of aggressive geese at the park. Only I can’t distract these three with a well-aimed breakfast burrito.

Well... If you can’t beat them, join them.

I turn my back on the security guard, who’s looking at us like a pack of hillbillies invading a society ball, take a deep breath, and shut them all down with a hair-raising seagull shriek.

“Aw, Mommy!” Joey claps his hands over his ears.

Katie stares at me, round-eyed. “So, like, if we go out for lunch after, are you going to steal my fries?”

“Yep. So you’d better watch out.”

She smirks. “Hope you like vinegar and mayonnaise.” And just like that, she’s flouncing off, an adoring Joey in tow.

Nick’s watching them fondly. “Y’know, she hasn’t checked her phone once since we’ve been here.”

“Joey’s not even at that age yet, and he already knows how to take mine and look things up on YouTube.”

“Oh? What does he look for?”

“Spongebob Squarepants. Cat videos.” I grimace. “Farts.”

“Farts?” Nick covers his mouth, but I can still hear him laughing through his nose. “Sorry—I know that’s not great. But if I’d got my hands on a phone at his age, I can’t say I wouldn’t have looked them up too.”

“Can’t even imagine having one, at that age.” I really can’t—when I was Joe’s age, the hot toy was the Gameboy. And whenever I’d try begging for one, Vanya’d shoo me out in the yard to do “real kid stuff.” He and Mama had just moved in together, but he was never shy about playing dad.

Nick seems like a good father, too—the kind I’d want Joey to have. It’s way too early to be thinking along those lines, but....

He pokes me in the ribs. “Where’d you go?”

“Mm?”

“You were like—“ He taps his temple and stares off into space. “Pondering the mysteries of the universe.”

I feel myself turning a little red. I can’t possibly tell him what I was really thinking. “Oh, uh... Just thinking about when I was his age. Vanya wouldn’t let me have a Gameboy.”

“Wait, the same guy who just married your mother last year?” Nick cocks his head. “What’s the story there?”

I pounce eagerly on the diversion. “Oh, they’ve been together half a lifetime. But as far as marriage went, well, at first it was too soon. Dad was barely in his grave. I mean, it’d been a couple of years, but you know how people are. Especially with Vanya being his best friend. There would’ve been gossip. And after that... Honestly, I never asked. I think they just got comfortable.”

Nick gives me another poke and nods toward the kids. “Check that out.” Katie’s down on one knee, fixing Joey’s hair, which has somehow gone from neatly-combed to bird’s nest explosion between the last exhibit and here. Joey’s voice drifts over: he’s asking her to be his new babysitter.

“Looks like you just got replaced,” I say.

“Oh, that hurts.” He claps a hand over his heart. “You know, I think this is the first time I’ve been fired from anything.”

“First time’s always the worst.”

Joey and Katie have found a display of trilobites. She’s trying to convince him they’re called that because they try to bite, but she can’t keep a straight face, and he’s having none of it. They both agree they have weird heads and look like aliens.

“What are you doing for Christmas?”

Well, that came out of nowhere. “Oh, the usual—family, presents, food coma. No one ever told Mama stuff the goose, not your family. You?”

“Same, only the family part sort of fell through.” He frowns. “Katie’s grandparents, y’know, on her mom’s side, were supposed to come down, but her arthritis is flaring up. And her mom—well, she’s with Doctors without Borders. We don’t see a lot of her.”

“How’s Katie taking that?”

“Hard to tell. She says she’s fine as long as she gets to go on her best friend’s New Year’s ski trip, but... Doesn’t that seem sort of...un-Christmassy to you?”

“Well, at least it’s a winter sport.” He’s right, though: you can go skiing any time there’s snow. Christmas is meant to be special. “That reminds me of something we used to do in our neighborhood—not sure if they still do, but it was a big deal when I was growing up.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Mm... They’d round up all the pensioners with nobody left alive to remember them, and all the kids whose families were—who couldn’t afford much of a Christmas. And they’d rent a hall, throw this massive banquet, with all the trimmings. The kids got new coats, a toy or two; the old folks... Well, honestly, more than a few of them got drunk. Someone always snuck in a flask. But the idea was for them to have the next best thing to a family holiday, even if they didn’t have anyone.”

Nick looks thoughtful. “We deliver a ton of food to people like that. Through the food pantry, I mean. Old people living alone.” He’s watching Joey and Katie with a faraway look on his face. “I did a lot of the holiday deliveries last year. Some of them... It broke my heart. Their faces lit up when they saw the Christmas extras in their boxes... But they didn’t have a single decoration up. Like they couldn’t see the point, just for themselves.”

“I wouldn’t, either, if it wasn’t for Joey. Not having anyone to share it with—I wouldn’t want to be reminded. Wouldn’t want to look at the decorations, and think....” I swallow hard. There’s suddenly a lump in my throat.

“The families with kids are just as hard—some of them are struggling so bad....” Nick turns to me. “We should do your neighborhood thing. Through the food pantry. I mean, they all come in there—the old people, the kids, the families. It’d just be a matter of getting them together. We could do a neighborhood party for each location.” He clears his throat. “If you want to, I mean. Sorry—I get carried away sometimes when I get an idea. Not sure if you have time, or—“

“I have time.” I really don’t. But I love the idea. And, hell, he should do it. This is what he’s truly passionate about. He should get to see the smiles he puts on people’s faces for once. If I can help with that—

Joey runs up, tripping over his shoelace and catapulting into my arms. I catch him neatly. “Hey. No running.”

“Sorry! But I wanna show you—“ He straightens up and holds out his hand, an expression of intense concentration on his face. I watch him walk a quarter over his knuckles—well, sort of. He helps it along with his thumb, and it falls off halfway through, but it’s still pretty impressive for a kid with tiny hands.

“Katie show you that?”

“Yeah. And she let me keep the quarter.”

“You remember to say thanks?”

He takes his time thinking about that. “I think so. Maybe? I forget.”

“Well, you’d better go back over there and make sure. But first—“ I bend down and retie his shoe. He knows how to do it himself, but he does a crappy job. I don’t want his memory of this afternoon ruined by skinned knees or a bumped head.

The afternoon does end up perfect: we stop for a late lunch/early dinner after the museum, and Nick offers to drop Joey home with Maria, so I won’t have to do the usual mad rush for work. It’s so perfect it’s almost... I don’t know. Too perfect?

A chill goes down my spine as we stand beside his car saying our goodbyes. I glance around: nothing’s threatening, nothing’s out of place, but I can’t quite shake that sense of dread. On impulse, I snatch my lipstick out of my purse, flip it open, and apply a tiny smear to Nick’s cuff. He cocks a brow. “What was that for?”

“Okay—don’t laugh. It’s just... You know on TV, when two people share this incredible day, and you just know one or both of them’s about to be written off the show in a horrifying way?”

“Oh, yeah—like, that impossibly beautiful, sugar-crusted moment, where they’re saying the perfect goodbye, without a clue that’s what they’re doing?”

“Exactly.” I take my thumb and smear the lipstick around. “So I’m making our goodbye that tiny bit shitty, so this won’t be the part where we kiss and never see each other again.”

“Don’t even say that.” He leans in and kisses me and doesn’t let go till we hear wolf-whistles. We’re both slightly flushed when he lets go. “Even if you stepped back and fell into a manhole that went all the way to hell, I’d be like Orpheus, rescuing you from the underworld.”

I can’t quite shake that uneasy feeling. “That story didn’t end well.”

He pulls me close again, kisses me on my forehead, both cheeks, and the tip of my nose. “This one will.” He presses even closer, to whisper in my ear. “Your cruel master wouldn’t let you vanish into the pit.”

That gives me a whole different kind of frisson. I smile, relieved, and in that moment, the sun breaks through the clouds. My anxiety seems foolish in the warm, bright light. That chill down my spine—cold, and nothing more. I’m just doing that thing I do, where I freak out over stuff that hasn’t happened yet, and probably never will.

When he gives me a last lingering hug, a smudge of lipstick transfers itself from his cuff to my shirt. I choose to take that as a sign everything’s going to be fine.