“Hmmph.” She starts for her Infiniti and looks back at me.
“Your own husband loved me,” I remind her.
“I love you too, Ashley. I just don't appreciate you at times. You're self-absorbed.”
I nod. “I'll give you that one, but then again, who isn't?” I mean, the country club Christmas craft fair? I hike up the steps to Brea's house, and she meets me at the door. “What are you doing up? Get back in bed.”
She lets out a deep sigh. “I'm supposed to move a bit to keep the blood flowing. Poor Miles, he is bored to death. He wants to go see the pretty Christmas lights and maybe Santa.”
“Santa?” I ask incredulously. “Santa is definitely something he should do with his Mama.”
“It's his first Christmas, Ashley. He needs his photo with Santa and I can't go. Unless you want to push me in the wheelchair and Miles in his strollerâand my mom will take him to a cheap strip mall Santa.”
I enter through the screen door and see Miles on the floor gumming a teething ring and looking at his feet. “All right. What's he wearing?”
Brea shows me a little green and red plaid velvet suit. “Heart-strings,” she says, spouting a brand I never heard of.
“Darling.”
“So you'll take him to the mall?” Brea says like a question, but it's really more of a command. “Stanford. They have the best Santa.”
“I have to meet Kevin for lunch at one. Lucky for you, that's where we're meeting.”
“You better get moving then. I'm going to keep him in his sleeper, and you dress him there so he doesn't get dirty, okay?”
“Okay, Brea.”
Her face relaxes and a peace overcomes her. “His diaper bag is filled with everything you'll need. He needs to eat about eleven.”
“Check,” I say as Brea hands me the baby bag that would house half the free world. I place Miles in his little carry bucket seat. “Brea, you shouldn't lift this bag. My goodness, what do you have in here?”
“Make sure you comb his hair before the picture. Use the diaper in there to wipe up any spittle before the picture, and Ashley . . .”
“Yes, Brea.”
“Thank you. I know John wouldn't comb his hair, and when he got to the mall and saw the traffic, he'd just turn around.”
I'd do anything for Brea. She knows that. She'd do anything for me. It's a mutual fan club. “No problem. If there's one skill I have accomplished in life, it's maneuvering the mall. Keeping a job? Not really my thing, apparently.”
“If you marry rich, maybe you'll only need to know the mall.” Brea winks at me.
“Yeah, well, don't hold your breath. I have yet to meet the man who can keep up with my spending habit.”
We both laugh, and Brea gets all serious. “I used to say that I cared about money, and then I met John. I tell you, I'd live in a hovel to be with him.”
I hold up my hand. “Don't even go there with me. Seth had money. They say marrying rich, you'll earn every penny. And I believe them.”
“Kevin doesn't live like that.”
“Kevin's just a friend,” I say, forcing myself to avoid the obvious. The last thing I need is to be falling for a guy at this point.
“You'll figure it out. I know you will.” Brea smiles knowingly.
I'm not sure I believe that, but sometimes it's nice just to live in a little fantasy world. One where I look like a bachelorette in a swimsuit, minus the sleaze factor, and the qualified men are four-to-one.
The mall is frenzied, since it's the week after Thanksgiving. Stanford is always busy, but when there's an actual reason to shop, other than being well-dressed and/or metrosexual, then it's ridiculously overcrowded.
After circling for an eternity for a parking spot, I pull Miles out of the car in his baby seat and plug it into a stroller contraption. Takes me thirty minutes to figure this out, and I'm a patent attorney, quite accustomed to schematics and all that. Miles just gurgles during my incompetence, and I swear if I could find a man this calm, I'd marry him in a second.
We make our way across the parking lot with our gear, packed as though we could survive a surprise winter storm, though it hasn't snowed here since
I
was a baby. We get to the Santa display and the line forms in a zigzag direction that makes Lombard Street in San Francisco look like an easy downhill hike. I look down at Miles and realize he still needs his little plaid outfit.
“Let's go find the bathroom,” I soothe.
He gives me a small squeal as a reward. We enter the bathroom, and I see I'm not the only one with this brilliant idea. There is a line for the diaper changing table. As though the ladies' rooms of America aren't busy enough, now we have to share them with infants and strollers and diaper bags swelled with designer baby items.
Our turn finally arrives. Now, changing a baby sounded easy to me, because the last time I changed Miles, he was ill and didn't struggle against the plan. Today, however, he is like a little bag of moving bones kicking at the indignity of being changed on a plastic table. I have put down his Gymboree blanket, so he'll have no idea where we actually are, but babies are like mountain lions, they understand their environment well.
After what I like to call “the plaid fiasco,” we get in the line of screaming infants, tantrum-throwing toddlers, and particular mothers, most with nannies in tow. Santa is currently on his break and the long line isn't even moving. I mutter to myself, “Brea so owes me. She owes me big.”
“Ashley!” I hear my name and turn around to see Arin heading toward me without her bindi dot and sari. She actually looks quite cute in a black sweater over a big white collared shirt. Very professional for the likes of Arin.
“Hi, I thought you were in India.” I say this as nicely as possible so as not to imply,
I thought you were in India taking off the finishing touches of Seth and his overwhelming fear of commitment.
“No, not yet. I'm staying through Christmas. My parents are coming out from Boston, and they wanted to spend some time with me first.”
I grin dumbly. So Seth is alone for Christmas. When I think of poor lonely Seth in the big country of India . . . okay, I can't help my smile, truthfully. Revenge, while I know it's the Lord's to dole out, really does feel good sometimes. We're sinful creatures. But then my heart gets the better of me, and I feel sorry for him all by himself. No job is worth being away from the life as you know it, unless you're an adventurer. Which I'm not. And neither is Seth, really.
The line starts to move, and I inch away from Arin, but she just follows behind me.
“Is this Miles?”
I nod.
“He just gets cuter and cuter. How's Brea feeling?”
“I think she's getting a bit tired of the bed rest, but she'll need it when she's got two babies to care for. She's still not keeping food down, so they have her on fluids. I can't believe how much work one of these little guys is.” As we're talking, I take out Miles's baby brush and start to comb his auburn locks. This baby is idyllically cute.
Arin clears her throat. “I think Seth is coming home from India.”
My world just collapsed. “What do you mean, for Christmas?”
“I mean, he doesn't like it there. He's coming back home. He said he tried to tell you over the phone, but you didn't seem all that interested.”
“I'm glad for him if that's his choice.” Who wants to hear you have to avoid your ex at church again?
“From the sound of it, you're not interested in Kevin either, so what does interest you, Ashley?”
“Why do you say that? That I'm not interested in Kevin?”
“Are you?”
Very good question. He's to-die-for good-looking, chivalrous to a fault, and our chemistry is overwhelmingly magnificent. So I'm at least a little interested. But I have to say, my history with Seth has me questioning the whole need for male companionship in my life. And Kevin's racist parents seem to be the Tupperware lid of closure on the deal.
“Time will tell, I suppose.”
Arin nods. “And Seth? Where does he stand?”
“Somewhere in the state of Punjab, I imagine.”
Arin seems awfully interested in my love life, and considering how pathetic and paltry it is, I wonder what she finds so fascinating.
“He loves you, Ashley.”
“Who loves me?”
She gets this look on her face, like she's going to spill her guts, and I brace myself.
“Seth does. I thought he and I had the same dynamic for ministry. I misread God's guidance. Actually, I think I didn't listen to it. Seth and I are wrong for each other.”
“Didn't you stand in front of me and tell me this same thing about Kevin? That he loved me? You know, if a guy loves me? I'm just going to have to figure it out on my own.” I switch hips with Miles, “By the way, here's a surefire clue that it's not God's will. When you have to arrange everything to your will? That's whose will it is.”
She shakes her head. “I didn't think you two were really in love.”
Can't help my smile here. “No one knows what an engineer in love looks like, I imagine.”
She nods her head, smiling at me. “I'm sorry. I toyed with Kevin's heart, and then yours. And here I stand, alone and getting sent to a foreign country to serve. I wanted to know I had a place to fall.”
One can't help but feel for Arin, with her brilliant blue eyes and Ivy League education. She's been so used to having her way in life, it just never occurred to her that God would change her course. I'm with her. I hate that too. Is there anything worse than discovering you can't really control anything? That you just have to dive into God's current, and enjoy the ride?
Miles starts to cry, and I switch him to the other hip and wrap his blanket about him as I face him toward the colorful, glittering Santa display.
“I'm apologizing, Ashley. Not too well, but I got in between you and Seth. On purpose.”
“If Seth truly loved me, nothing could have kept us apart . . . if that had been God's will. It wasn't. I assure you with all I know to be true, Seth had to go searching. He had to cut bait.”
“What?”
We get to the front of the line, and Miles spots Santa. He watches the red suit and scary white beard and starts to whimper as if to say, I'm not going up there. Don't you make me go up there. He looks up at me with his eyes wide and his nose red, as if saying
NOOOO!
like Luke discovering Darth Vader is his real father.
“I thought you should know,” Arin finally says. “It's you Seth loves, not me.”
I laugh. “Seth loves himself, Arin. He'll do whatever he has do to protect himself from the likes of me and real emotions. Learn this lesson young, Arin. If a man doesn't want you? Move on, because God has something much better planned for you.”
“You're so mature, Ashley. I hope I'm like you when I grow up.”
“I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.”
“Which package would you prefer, A, B, or C?” an overly enthusiastic elf asks me, and Miles starts to scream at the sight of her.
“C,” I say, not even glancing at the package. It's the most expensive, and from my experience with Brea and baby photographs, she wants the most possible.
I hand Miles to Arin for a moment. She shows him the blocks and he starts to simmer down, being an equitable distance from the man in red. Grabbing him back, I smile at Arin. “Thanks for telling me all that. I appreciate your honesty.” But my mind is with the elf.
“I'll see you Sunday, Ashley.”
I take Miles back and lift him up to the Santa platform, and he starts to scream like a horrified victim. I try to calm him down, but his face gets redder. “Can I just walk him a bit?” I say to the sprightly elf.
The elf looks at the crowd. “You gotta be kidding me.”
“It's for my best friend, and she'll kill me if he's screaming. Let the next person go. Please.”
I walk Miles up and down the walkway and he's like an on/off button. Every time we move away from Santa he calms, and every time we get close he starts to bawl.
“I'll be back,” I say with all the confidence of Arnold Schwarzenegger. I walk Miles until he falls asleep in my arms. I take him back to Santa and we take the picture with Miles sleeping peacefully in the Christmas icon's lap.
I feel like I've just climbed Everest. In every way. My muscles hurt from heaving the healthy baby Miles around the shopping center and my feet ache, even in my Kate Spade flats. But really, I'm thinking about Seth, and his coming back. What if he really does love me? Can I ever forget that he dumped me with a simple phone call and left me with sole custody of our puppy? I'm thinking no.
W
hen I arrive for lunch at Fresh Choice, I'm lacking the lady-of-leisure look I was hoping for. Frankly, the look a currently unemployed woman
should
have. My hair is flying in inexplicable waves with no time for a comb, as it took me another half an hour to figure out how to secure the car seat. And simply because sparring with an elf about Santa photos takes something out of you. My lipstick has long since faded into oblivion and I don't even want to look for my compact. I've dug through the diaper bag forty times, and I just don't have the energy to tackle my handbag too.
In my mood, this date is more like a sentence than a date. Miles is not in particularly good spirits either. But I cart him into the loud restaurant with a prayer that he'll stay asleep during our meal. The Santa tantrum took a lot out of him, so I'm hopeful.
Kevin greets us with his warm smile and I must admit I melt a bit. Just mop me up off the floorâhe has the ability to bring light into a room. Like the sun coming out, Kevin's smile makes you feel warm inside. As I continue to remind myself, I'm usually immune to the woefully gorgeous types, but not Kevin. Could it be I'm suddenly immune to bald men? Like, Seth was the vaccine? You get a little in your system, and then your body rejects it.