Emma
It is just after midnight on Christmas and I am addicted to my new book, neatly filling in the blanks with information for my daughter.
Her name, Carolina, which means feminine.
Named After
___________________________________
I pause, recalling the inspiration for our daughter's name. The summer of my pregnancy Randy and I traveled south to visit Ricki and Ben in Nag's Head, and time and again I caught Randy singing to himself, “Goin' to Carolina in my mind.”
“What's that?” I had asked.
“A James Taylor song. Don't you know it?”
I didn't, but when we arrived in Nag's Head he picked up the CD, and it became the anthem of our summer, the song that inspired our forays in the shallow bay, our evening strolls for ice cream, our long walks along the beach beside a sky on fire with the setting sun. Our hearts latched onto that song, those memories. When the time came to name our daughter, we both smiled over the possibility of Carolina. Jane pointed out that it was old-fashioned, but any reservations fled when I saw Randy holding our bundled daughter in the hospital, crooning like James Taylor over her shiny face, his eyes wide as she twitched a smile in her sleep. “I thinks she likes it,” he said.
Now Randy's footsteps whisper down the hall, and I finish a sentence and look up from my treasured new book. “She's asleep,” he announces.
I smile. “You have the magic touch.”
“Either that or I bore her to tears.”
“No, you make her feel safe. Safe and secure,” I say, tucking my feet up under my soft terry robe. We are tired but fighting sleep, reluctant to surrender a single minute of our Christmas. Ricki, Ben, Jane and Marty left after our midnight toast, and now it's just Randy and me and baby Carolina, the light of our lives.
Randy goes over to the Christmas tree, touching the new ornament at the top, a sparkling creation of blown glass and beads. “You hung Ricki's gift. It looks good, though I still can't imagine how she does it.” The glass is shaped like a madonna with child, two figures cuddling under a cluster of tiny pearlized beads that appear to be the moon. She told me she wanted something to help us remember Carolina's first Christmas.
“Do you want some more eggnog?” Randy asks.
“Just a little, please?” I return to my new book, a gift from Jane entitled
Memories for My Daughter.
While I shunned the overly sentimental mementoes and pelican-covered wrapping papers at my baby shower, I find myself sucked in by this book, pages and pages of sentimental questions for me to answer for my daughter, romantic questions about how my parents met, how Randy and I met, the first boy I kissed, as well as pages where I am supposed to write about my feelings for Carolinaâthe moment she was born, her first steps, her first teeth, her first Christmas. I have never considered myself much of a writer, yet I feel compelled to put these records on paper for my daughter, driven to record her legacy lest it be forgotten.
Two years ago my great-great aunt Mary Jane passed away at the age of ninety-two, and I'm happy to say she passed on many a family memory before she left. She told me of secret passages in my great-grandparents' Michigan home, of the terrible flu that swept through one winter taking the lives of her twin baby sisters Viola and Geraldine. And there were colorful tales of distant relativesâa great uncle on ice skates who ran barrels of rum from Canada to Detroit across the frozen Detroit River. The forlorn wife who disparaged cleaning and left her husband in Ohio for the life of a party girl in gay Paree in the Roaring Twenties. “How she cried when the family lost their fortune in the Depression,” Aunt Mary Jane said. “I don't think she ever got over it. Kept telling town shopkeepers to put it on the her husband's tab. Spent her last years drinking martinis dressed in a fancy peignoir. She never realized she was in an old folks' home.”
I smile over my family's checkered history, glad that Aunt Mary Jane kept up the family storytelling. With our families scattered from Miami to Oregon, I worry that my Carolina will lack a sense of connection. I want her to know where she belongs in the world, that she has a full, colorful family.
“You're writing furiously,” Randy says. “At this rate, you'll have that thing filled out by New Year's.”
I keep writing. “I just want Carolina to know about her family. I mean, New Jersey is close enough but Maryland is a hike, and my mom's in Miami now, and your family is in Oregon and your sister is over in Germany. We're so scattered. Don't you worry about that?”
“Well . . . no, not really. Sometimes friends are all the family you need. Besides, the world is shrinking. By the time Carolina is ten she'll probably be doing video e-mails to her cousins.”
I sift through the watercolors on the pages, the old American homes with fat-pillared porches and climbing ivy. Paintings of girls in Victorian lace serving tea to their dolls. A silver-haired granny shelling peas in the garden.
These nostalgic illustrations are a stark contrast to my childhood memories of suburban Jerseyâstrip malls and swim meets at the Y and traveling soccer.
I pull the pen to my chest and glance toward the bedrooms. “I just want her to have it all. Everything. The world at her fingertips.”
Randy shakes his head, his blue eyes thoughtful, amused. “Never gonna happen, Emma.” He puts the eggnog down and squeezes beside me on the love seat. “We can't give her everything. We can't protect her from disappointments and heartbreaks. It kills me, too, but kids are going to be mean to her. Boys will break her heart. Some things are inevitable.”
I feel a mixture of exhilaration and exhaustion, a surge of maternal adrenaline to champion my daughter's cause. “It's our job to take care of her.”
He nods. “And we will. She won't have everything she wants. But we'll make sure she gets everything she needs.”
He tries to close the book, but I still have one finger marking the page. “There's a section about your family, you know. How your parents met, your childhood memories . . .”
“Mm-hmm.” His face is close, his eyes closing lazily as he kisses me.
“Will you help me fill it out?” I ask.
“Sure. But can we leave it for a few weeks? I don't think she's going to be doing extensive reading anytime soon.”
I laugh and his lips sink into my neck. “You think I'm neurotic.”
“You're a wonderful mother,” he says. “But it's Christmas Eve and I figure we'd better make good use of our time before Santa comes down the chimney and wakes up the baby.”
I unbutton his shirt, still thrilled at the feel of his warm, bare skin under my fingers. Can I stave off tomorrow? Close the doors on my worries over Carolina's childhood, the soaring rents in the city, our scattered families, my daughter's delicate developing psyche?
“Close your eyes, Emma. Close your eyes and remember our Christmas sky.”
And I do. I turn off the cry of maternal responsibility, the song of mothers through generations, and listen for the sounds of the moment. They thread gently through the old apartmentâthe sweet wisps of baby breath over the monitor, the buzz of street traffic, the low murmur of Christmas carols from the apartment next door. Under the Christmas sky I press my lips against his and fall into the moment, tasting only my man, smelling the sweetness of baby and the lingering scent of nutmeg.
And I realize I have it allâmomentary blissâand I must scramble to soak it up and revel in my happiness before the sun rises, before Carolina wakes up, before the Christmas sky fades away until next year. So much to celebrate, so little time.
Please turn the page for
an exciting sneak peek of
Carly Alexander's next novel
The Secret Live of Mrs. Claus
coming next month in trade paperback!
Chicago, November 2003
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If Santa Claus flew over the city of Chicago with a Christmas-spirit detection device, the needle would have gone wild as he passed over the blockwide structure that housed Rossman's Department Store on Michigan Avenue. Although November had just blown in with a snappy, windy cold front, Rossman's was fully decorated for the holiday season: Outdoor speakers trumpeted a joyous melody in three-part harmony, complete with liquid violins, dancing woodwinds, and a bright brass ensemble. A giant red ribbon entwined the building like a gift package. The overhang of every revolving glass door was topped with a pyramid of holiday trees, decked with thick gold ribbons and white lights that glimmered in the wind.
Inside the store, ribbons from the same gold stock streamed down from garlands of fat, shiny ballsâin red, gold, green, and purpleâthat looped round every pillar and linked along every yard of molding and trim. Every floor display was topped by these same ornaments, flowing from sleigh-shaped crystal bowls. The red ball at the top was capped by a Santa cap.
Nowhere was the spirit more evident than the ninth floor, the traditional “Santa Land” where staffers were putting finishing touches on the multichambered gingerbread house that would allow various SantasâAnglo and African-American, Asian and Spanish-speakingâto privately greet their young guests and carry on the long-standing tradition of asking if they'd been naughty or nice and whether they hoped to see a truck, a doll, or an electronic robot this Christmas.
“Fabulous, ladies and gents,” one designer announced, inspecting the giant sleigh full of toys at the exit of Santa's gingerbread house. “It's really coming together!”
“I hope the rugrats appreciate all this,” one store clerk said as he glued a giant Styrofoam peppermint over the window of Santa's house.
His boss took the hot glue gun from his hand and fixed the drooping jaw of a wooden soldier. “You'd better just hope the Rossmans approve,” she said. “They're the ones who control Christmas, at least around here.”
Four stories below, Evelyn Rossman stood up from the conference table, smoothed the skirt of her navy Pendelton wool suit, and summoned the others: her husband Karl, brother-in-law Lenny, nephew Daniel, and daughter Meredith. “Let's go up and check on their progress,” Ev said, eager for Christmas to begin.
“I don't think they're ready for us on nine, but we can sneak a peek,” Karl Rossman said, leading the family down the narrow office corridor of the building the Rossmans had owned for more years than most Chicago residents could remember. The business that started fifty years ago with his mother's knack for fashioning textiles and ribbons into curtains and fine home furnishings had flourished into a full-scale retail business with stores throughout the Chicago and Detroit area when Evelyn and Karl had married more than three decades ago. Back then they were the toast of Chicago, Ev and Karl, a celebrated couple, though most of society hadn't suspected the genius that lived beneath his wife's confident smile. With Lenny's help, he and Ev had expanded the business through the rest of the country: two dozen stores throughout the United States and a new on opening next week on the east coast. He extended an arm over her back and gently ushered her into the elevator. Thank God for Evâhis light, his rock.
She gave her husband a cynical look, then reached down for a handful of tush. No one else noticed, including Meredith who watched the numbers on the elevator screen blink as if monitoring a life-support system. If only their daughter could loosen up, lose some of the sternness and the fierce competitiveness she felt with her cousin. Though Ev had to admit, it was never easy being a Rossman. Ev had married into the dynasty with some concern, though she herself had been raised in a moneyed familyâ“a pickle fortune,” as her grandfather used to sayâand she'd quickly allied herself with the Rossman family values and work ethic, an ethic her daughter Meredith embraced with ease. Ev wished she could say the same of her nephew Daniel.
“Another big-budget Christmas,” he groused. “What's the damage this year?”
“Not so bad,” Lenny said, rubbing the furrowed lines in his bare forehead. “We combined some of our inventory decorations, right?”
Meredith checked her clipboard. “Right. The designers are well under budget this year.”
The elevator doors groaned shut, and Daniel let out an exasperated sigh. “We ought to fix this thing.”
“Why fix what isn't broken? It's perfectly safe, inspected every month,” his father Leonard Rossman replied.
“I'm talking upgrade. The flooring. The walls. Why don't we have paneling in our elevators?”
“Because we don't waste money on extravagances like fancy freight elevators, thank you very much,” Lenny chastised him. “We put our money into the merchandise we sell. Pass it on to the customers. Pass it on.”
Daniel slunk back against the rail. “Pass, is right. So if we want to cut costs, why don't we take a pass on Christmas?”
“Please, Daniel . . .” Karl waved him down. “You're not scoring any points with that attitude.”
Daniel turned to his cousin and mumbled so that only she could hear him, “I'll take a zero.”
“Okay.” Meredith jotted a fat zero on her clipboard, and grinned back at Daniel defiantly. The family inspection of the store's Christmas village was an annual ritual savored by her parents, disparaged by Daniel, and dreaded by Meredith ever since Daniel had been old enough to trade braid-pulling and wet willies for cynical put-downs.
The elevator doors opened on nine, where most of the floor had been off-limits to the public for the past week as store employees and window dressers scurried to stage the store's Santa land, a Rossman tradition for fifty years. Only the café at the back of nine had remained open, cordoned off so that shoppers couldn't see the Christmas kingdom until its unveiling on November 15th.
The elevator doors opened on nine, and there was a flurry of activity as the family stepped out. Someone called, “They're here!” and two elderly women paused on their way from the public elevators to the café.
“Look, Doreen, it's Evelyn and Karl.”
“Evelyn and Karl, how's everything?” one woman asked as her bag sank from her shoulder to her elbow.
“Everything is fabulous, thank you, Doreen,” Karl said, stepping forward to graciously squeeze her hands.
Her friend nudged her. “He called you Doreen. What a charmer.”
“Ladies, have you started your Christmas shopping yet?” Ev asked the women. She and her husband never missed a chance to socialize with store customers.
“Please,” Doreen rolled her eyes, “let me tell you my dilemma. My husband needs dress shirts but he refuses to go up a size, though he needs it in the neck. A very thick neck he has these days, but will he admit it?”
“Thick neck, thick head,” the other woman said.
“I'm going to buy bigger and have different size labels sewn in. What else can I do?”
Her friend shrugged. “What can she do?”
“That's clever of you,” Ev told the woman, then she went on to joke about selling label kits with various sizes just for those purposes.
“Okay, then, we're off for a nice cup of coffee,” the friend said. “Be well.”
Doreen waved, her charm bracelet jangling. “And Merry Christmas.”
“That's not P.C., Doreen. You're supposed to say happy holidays.”
“They're the Rossmans; they love Christmas.”
“Not all of us,” Daniel muttered, but no one acknowledged him as the family ducked behind a temporary wall and stepped into the transformed snowy landscape of Santa Land.
“A little excessive, isn't it?” Daniel screwed his mouth into an unattractive twist. “All the white, twinkly lights? What's this costing us in electricity? Anyone seen last year's bill?”
“Don't be foolish, Daniel,” Karl said gently. “As I always say, it's only money; we'll make more. Besides, you can't cut corners on Christmas.”
“I don't know why not,” Daniel said, looking away from his uncle. “Macy's got rid of its Santa Land. The buzz is that the Maise Company stores are going to axe them, too. I'm telling you, more and more the heartland is scaling down.”
“You think we should scale down Christmas?” Evelyn asked him.
“I'm just thinking about the customer here. If you listen to what people are saying, they're not so into it anymore. Always complaining how hectic the holidays are. Pressurized. Commercial. Too much food and drink and traffic, long lines at stores, long shopping lists to knock off.”
“He's right, he's right. I hear the complaints,” Lenny agreed.
“Christmas is our busiest season,” Meredith Rossman said, her eyes sharp beneath the lenses of her eyeglasses. “Not to reduce it all to money, but our highest sales months are November and December.”
“Yes, yes.” Lenny was nodding profusely. “So what's your point, Daniel?”
“Just that we used to wait until after Thanksgiving to start the Christmas promotions, and it probably saved us in marketing expenses. If people are going to come out for Christmas shopping anyway, why throw money into advertising and marketing?”
“You can never have enough of Christmas,” Evelyn Rossman said, her face beaming with pride as she scanned the winter wonderland of snowy white twigs sparkling with silver glitter, crystal pinecones, and white pindots of light. Every beam was hidden; every light filtered by swirls of glittering stars. “First impression is good.”
“Very good.” Her husband slipped his hands in his pants pockets as he stepped through a trellis made of giant candy canes. “It's like an enchanted lane.”
“An enchanted lane . . .” Evelyn nudged Meredith, who trailed with clipboard in hand. “Make a note of that. Great copy for our sales flyers.”
Meredith took note as the candy canes gave way to giant sugary gumdrops, then gingerbread figures who raced and tumbled and cajoled as they made their way toward the sparkling gingerbread house of Santa Land, where staff were still gluing on giant gumdrops, chocolate chips, and peppermints.
“Oh, you're here!” Rahiella, the designer in charge of window displays, clasped her hands together dramatically. “We weren't expecting you tillâ”
“Not to worry,” Evelyn interrupted. “We like what we see.”
“You do? You do? Oh, I'm so relieved! Did you see little cutout chairs for Santa's guests? The craft station where bored little children can decorate a gingerbread cookie or assemble a snowman?”
The Rossmans followed Rahiella through the facility as she explained how the line of children would flow through the snowscape, how the wait would be minimized, and how Santa's elves would keep anxious children and their parents amused and distracted. “We're in the process of auditioning elves, and we're calling back the Santas we were so happy with last year. Personnel is on it. Which reminds me, though. While we were trying to salvage items in our inventory of decorations we came across something that may have special value to you.” She summoned an assistant, who brought over a silver gift box embossed with a swirled “R”ânot the collapsible type used by stores like Rossman's, but the old-fashioned box constructed of thick cardboard with a lid that whispered gently over the top third of the box. Rahiella presented the box with a flourish, and the Rossmans gathered close as Evelyn lifted the lid.
Evelyn's dark eyes went wide with wonder at the sight of the crimson velvet trimmed with white fur. “Oh, dear . . . the Mrs. Claus suit. Where did you find it? I though it had been given away years ago.” Her hands glowed pink from the warm hue of the material as she lifted a sleeve from the box.
“Mama made it the first year the Rossman's went national,” Lenny recalled. “A very lean year, so she thought we'd better scrap together some extra Christmas spirit from the fabric leftover from the Santa suits.”
Karl wagged a finger at Meredith and Daniel. “Back then, your grandmother sewed all the costumes herself.”
“Note how the stitching is so fineânearly invisible.” Rahiella turned over the fur-trimmed lapel of the jacket to reveal the smooth seam. “And this beadwork on the jacket. See how the tiny red beads form a very subtle fleur-de-lis pattern? So subdued yet it gives a glimmering aura to the entire costume.”
“Mama had magical hands.” With great care Evelyn lifted the jacket and held it up to her chin, and everyone seemed to gently breathe in its sumptuous crimson beauty. The texture and velvety folds of the coat brought back fond memories for Ev; she had enjoyed playing Mother Christmas, reassuring nervous children and frazzled parents. She had always considered herself an ambassador of goodwill, and somehow in the Mrs. Claus suit, she felt empowered to spread her Christmas spirit without shame of appearing sentimental.