Aqua - Christmas in New York City (Aqua Romance Travel Series) (2 page)

Yesterday, after lunch at the Ritz, they had left the old-world ambience and strolled to Wollman Rink, in Central Park and strapped on their skates. Harry crossed his hands in front of hers, and they glided across the ice as figure skaters would before a big leap. It was something they couldn’t do at the Rockefeller Centre with the crowds and at times Casey felt that it was just the two of them under a warm noon sun. Harry had thought of everything including a steaming
thermos of hot chocolate from a cafe in the Queen’s. It only had two ingredients but Casey detected bright raspberry and citrus notes when she took a sip of the Madagascar dark chocolate blend. It had been the perfect fifth day of Christmas.

Two children played hide and seek among the book stacks, and she watched the little boy as he held a hand over his mouth, giggling. He looked like Harry, the jet black hair, the big wide eyes, the strong jawline.
If we had a child, he would look like that.
If.
Casey didn’t trust her own mortality, not since her gene mutation diagnosis. Why should she bring a child into the world if she were to die years later? She didn’t want a son or daughter to suffer without a mother as she did. Nor did she want to leave Harry with the burden of raising their children on his own.

She looked over at Harry, who was helping the boy hide by blocking the little girl’s view. Was she being fair to Harry?
 

Her fear was that he wanted children too badly. He had so many plans to give them a better life and in doing so, he was setting himself up for disappointment. No matter how they raised them, their children would choose a partner he didn’t like, find different paths for employment, adopt their own religion. If she had to admit, Harry reminded her a bit of her father that way. Her dad saw life through his eyes and how he felt it would be best. She knew it was Harry’s wishful thinking at this point, but would he harden over time if his children chose a different path or failed where he succeeded?

It was yet another time where she missed her mother. She had no idea what her father was like before her mother got sick - Casey had been too young at that time. She had fond memories where her father had been as fun-loving as Harry was, but everything changed when her mother died.
 

The thought made her shudder. If Casey were to die of cancer as her mother and aunt did, she would never want it to affect Harry where he would change into a different person. It was yet another reason to keep children out of their life.
 

The library bell rang and her face folded. “We have to go.” She pulled away from the glass display.

“Not you and I.”

Casey raised an eyebrow at Harry. By this time, after the surprise of a shopping spree along Fifth Avenue for the third day of Christmas, who knew what he was up to.

Harry smiled and grabbed her hand. “Come!”

They’d walked only a few steps when a bookish woman greeted them. “Harry, wonderful to see you again.”

He kissed the woman on both cheeks, then turned toward Casey. “This is Cassandra.”

The woman handed her white gloves. “I’ve heard much about you.” She unlocked the case and lifted the glass cover. “You can’t turn the pages, but you can touch it. See it up close.” She turned to Harry. “I’ll be back in ten minutes. Merry Christmas.”

Harry nodded and turned toward Casey who already had tears in her eyes. He whispered in her ear, “Cassandra, I’d give you everything if I could, but this is as close I can get to bringing your mom back.”

Casey leaned into him, not saying a word.

THE LIMO pulled away from the Morgan Library and Casey was still deep in thoughts of her mother. She had such a happy childhood, such a treasured connection with her mother into her teens, and then, it all dissipated.
 

For a while she was silent as they drove through streets adorned with lights and red bows, Santas on street corners and candles flickering in windows. Her thoughts turned to her mother’s the last night, when Casey held her hand and her mother came in and out of consciousness. At that point, she didn’t see that well, and all day long Casey described the city, street signs bent over with the weight of snow, glittering lights wrapped around buildings, bushes swallowed up in snowdrifts. All her mother wanted to do was spend one more holiday with Casey but she died late November.
 

It was the saddest Christmas Casey ever remembered. The emptiness pervaded a fully decorated Christmas tree, her favorite carols and even her favorite foods. Nothing soothed, not even boxes of chocolates.

Since then she had avoided Christmas festivities as they were a painful reminder. Roger obliged but with Harry it was different. He became a child at Christmas and his enthusiasm caught on and brought an influx of joy into a time when she usually retreated.
 

Harry squeezed her hand. “You okay?”

She nodded and leaned her head on his shoulder. Everything had been okay since she met him. The cruise on the Aqua was now months away but there was never a moment of doubt in her mind.

When they returned to New York, Casey held onto her brownstone in the Upper East Side and Harry kept his condo in the Upper West Side until they could find a new home that would accommodate all of their things. In the meantime, weekdays were spent at a house Harry rented close to the Locknore campus in Upstate New York, and every weekend they flew back to Manhattan. Now that the winter break was in session, they had one month together of pure enjoyment.

Casey looked at the bright band of diamonds that sparkled on her finger. The light even caught the deep red of the garnets and with each flicker her thoughts returned to that night on the sea when Harry proposed.
 

Harry brushed her bangs aside, kissed her lightly on the forehead and then whispered, “If you’re up for it, I have something else I want to show you.”

“I thought this was it.”

“Why?”

“You know, the twelve days of Christmas.”

He shook his head. “I’m giving you twelve each day.” He would give her the moon if he could but he was glad to do things slowly. Rather than rush their wedding, he had made a sizable donation to the university and they accepted their engagement as a matrimonial commitment. It gave Harry and Casey time to plan their special day and take a lengthy honeymoon during the summer break.

By the time they pulled into Dyker Heights, Casey’s eyes were closed and her mind had drifted back to Harry, who was massaging her hands and humming softly in her ear. She had come to love the sound of his voice, recognize the timbre of a note and know the song he was going to sing. Within less than six months together, she felt like they had known each other for a lifetime.
 

“We’re here,” Harry whispered.
 

The driver had stopped near 84
th
St and Eleventh. They got out of the car and when they turned the corner Casey gasped. “The Polizzotto's house!”
 

Every year, her parents brought her to Brooklyn to see the Christmas lights. They would come on the day after Thanksgiving, when the neighborhood of Dyker Heights transformed several blocks with elaborate holiday decorations. Even when her mom was sick, they bundled her up in the back of the car and pulled her on a sled.
 

Harry craned his neck to the second level where reindeer overlooked the yard, then back to the toy soldiers riding life-size horses. “Must take forever to set up,” said Harry.

“Around three days my dad told me. I mean, look!” Casey walked toward the merry-go-round and then stopped mid-stride. “Wait here,” she said.

By the time she reached the two-story tall Santa, the man had turned around, the multi-colored bobbles bouncing on his wool hat. It was the hat that drew her. She had only ever seen one like it.

As the plastic Santa sang and spread his arms out wide, they exchanged glances until he walked toward her with a slow, uneven shuffle. “I thought you didn’t come here anymore.” His voice was loud and booming.

“Same for you.”

His eyes twitched. “I got sentimental.”
 

There was an awkward silence between them. He rubbed his hands together, she fiddled with her scarf.
 

“Looks like you gained weight, Cass.”

“Just a big coat.”

His pitch was lower than usual but then it had been a few months since they talked. She nodded toward the decorations. “Still looks the same.”

He moved snow on the ground around with the tips of his boots. “He’s been decorating the house for more than a quarter century now.”
 

“Didn’t the owner pass away?”

“A few years ago but his wife continues the tradition.”

“Mom would-” They said it at the same time and then turned back toward the eighteen-foot soldiers guarding the house and watched a pair of toddlers jumping at them. He lit a cigarette and turned to her. “So when are you having kids?”

“I don’t think I’ll have any.”

“So the bloodline will stop.” He shook his head. “You come from a line of the brightest and best.”

“You’re sounding like Hitler.”
 

He rested his hands on the top of his stomach. “The family name won’t continue.”
 

“Women lose their maiden name at marriage anyhow.”

"Who will take care of you in your old age?" He spoke in a low reproving voice.

“That’s not why you have children.”

“What will you do when you can’t care for yourself?”

“A selfish reason for having children.”

“It’s why I had you.” He said it without apology.

The words pressed down on Casey and she folded her hands in submission. The joyful holiday music and twinkling lights contrasted with the conversation. So he expected her to take care of him?

“How’s Roger?”

“We’re not together.”

He dropped the cigarette and ground it into the snow with the heel of his boot. “You won’t find better than him.”

She sighed and looked up at the sky, swollen with snowflakes. “He didn’t want children.”
 

“He told me he would take care of his parents.”
 

“He wouldn’t even take care of me.” She said it with disdain and fury.

“He would if he had to.”

“So is that how you felt about taking care of Mom?” Her hands flew straight out into the falling snow. “You
had
to.”

He took off the hat and combed his gloved hands through his thinning hair. “Don’t go there, Casey.”

“Or me.” She said it loudly, without a care for whoever might hear. “I was the burden for you once she died.”

“Don’t start that again.” He said it as an order, as if he prided himself on not asking for a favour.

All Casey could do was watch the bobbles bounce back and forth as he gestured with it and then marched off. Each stitch had been made by her mother, carefully knitted to match his socks. She had made three pairs for each of them. After her death, her father had thrown them out, despite Casey’s pleading.
 

For the rest of the night, she walked along 84th Street and 83rd Street with Harry, but her father’s words echoed above the loudspeakers that blared carols from the twinkling decorated homes. ‘It’s why I had you.’

The whole encounter had dampened the evening. They walked up to the life size reindeer, Scrooge and his ghosts, but she couldn’t even laugh at the kitschy pieces. Harry tried to console her by saying. “We’ll bring our children here every year.”

“Children?”

“We’ve picked their names a few times.”

Casey nodded. The first time had been on the Aqua, during a moment where they were laughing at Harry’s Italian name, Arrigo. They had said they’d never choose names that were ripe for teasing in the schoolyard. They would be simple cross-cultural names. Casey even suggested that their daughter could be named Lina, after Harry’s mother.
 

Now that they were back home though, and had planned her mastectomy for the spring, she felt a weight of responsibility when they talked of children and she grew more reluctant to even consider the possibility. “I could die of breast cancer like my mother and aunt,” she said. “I have the gene mutation.”

“Won’t the mastectomy erase your fears?”

“Nothing is certain.” She looked away, thinking of all the years she stood before these lights without her mother, how she wouldn’t want her children to suffer such a loss.
 

“We will have children.” Harry said it with such certainty that it strengthened her resolve. He wiped snowflakes from her scarf and kissed her. “And you will be here for us, for a long, long time.”

It was those exact sentiments, that deep commitment to her, the belief in love, that made Casey fall in love with Harry in the first place. It was a night on the Aqua, and the stars shone bright in the sky as the cruise ship floated on the Mediterranean.
 

Her body had longed for him, her thighs ached for his touch, for him to open her up, to feel her moist skin, to be inside of her. Yet the moment he came close to her breasts, her body seized up, as if this was the one part of her yet undecided about love, the one part that could change everything between them.
 

Harry understood without saying a word. Rather than pull back when she froze, he loved her even more, as if each part of her body was a portal to love. When she froze, Harry paused briefly, then gently moved his lips toward her arm, his tongue tracing each muscle, his lips pressing in and out of her shoulder as if they were her thighs. She had never been kissed so passionately, as if her arm were her breasts, and each part of her as sensual as the next.

When they curled up in each other’s arms that night, his strong arms holding her, she felt the longing between them, but also Harry’s understanding. He kissed her gently and then pulled her toward him, his body curling around her like a shell. It was at that moment, when she felt safe and protected, that she knew Harry would stay with her through anything. It was at that moment, she fell in love.