Chapter 18

Dinner was better than I thought it would be. Something had gotten straightened out between my parents and Sierra. She was talking again, and she was wearing pants.

My mom looked more like her normal self, too, except for the poofy golden hair. And my dad made a really sweet attempt to be fatherly.

“Want to play backgammon, Copper?” he asked, after he had helped clear the dessert dishes. “It’d be like Christmases past.” We used to play backgammon after dinner on Christmas Eve while we waited to go to the midnight service.

“Sure, Daddy,” I said before I could stop myself. Daddy! It had been a long time. Our eyes met, and I think all four of them twinkled. “So long as we use the doubling cube the way it was intended.”

He laughed. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “You mean I should never touch it, but if you’re winning, and you do, I have to accept?”

“Something like that,” I said, smiling. Really, my dad can be so sweet.

And so can Daniel. He took on my mother in Scrabble!

I felt like pinching myself. I was in love with a guy who had figured out that playing Scrabble with my mother on Christmas Eve was practically the key to world peace. He even invited Sierra to join them, which was even more brilliant. I knew Sierra would say no—she had to play Super Hostess on Christmas Eve, but I could tell she liked being asked.

The nicest news of the evening was that we were going to see Nicky the next day. Sierra had been visiting him every day, and Michael went most days, but the rest of us hadn’t met him yet.

“I hoped we could all go this evening,” Sierra said at dinner, “but visiting hours in the children’s wing end pretty early, and I don’t want to be rushed. If we go tomorrow afternoon, we can stay as long as we like.”

It’s amazing what power a baby has. I mean, Nicky wasn’t even there yet, and nobody knew him, but the effect was enormous. My mother had gone shopping today, and there was a Mount Fuji pile of presents under the Christmas tree. Every package had a tag that said “Nicky.” My dad had fallen under the spell, too. He spent the morning putting together a pirate ship in the living room.

Nicky even worked his magic on Daniel and me. On our way back to the Golden Nugget after church, we stopped at a drugstore on the Strip. I bought a stuffed duck and a red-and-white striped sleeper suit, and Daniel picked out a sponge frog. Really, that kid was going to get more presents than all the lost angels in Las Vegas, but I really thought he deserved them. He was the reason the whole family was making an effort to get along. It was hard to believe, but a waif who was abandoned in a shopping cart was turning out to be the prince of peace.

Church was okay, too. Saint Andrew’s was nearly full, and it actually looked pretty good thanks to a hundred or so poinsettias in red foil-covered pots, the gift of “an anonymous donor.” I couldn’t help wondering if some misguided Christmas elf had stolen them from Home Depot. The organist had practiced more than usual, and we sang “Oh Come, All Ye Faithful” in English and Tagalog. After the service, Nicky scored another heap of presents from parishioners, including an obviously “pre-owned” Big Wheel tricycle that barely fit in the trunk of Michael’s Jetta. It would be a while before Nicky could pedal the thing, but it was the thought that counted.

:: :: ::

It’s Christmas, I kept telling myself after midnight, but it was hard to believe. I had never spent a Christmas outside of New England before, unless you count the year we went to New York City with my aunt from Rhode Island. But it’s impossible not to get into a Christmas mood in New York City. We window-shopped on Fifth Avenue and went to the midnight service at St. John the Divine. More importantly, we had lunch at Rockefeller Center and watched the ice skaters. What I mean is, it was cold. Las Vegas in December is only chilly. I didn’t need a white Christmas to get in the mood, but I was beginning to think it might take something more than a cactus draped with twinkly lights.

Part of the problem was that I couldn’t be sure that same cactus didn’t have lights on it year-round. As Daniel and I cruised the Strip after church, I tried to figure out what was Christmas and what was everyday Las Vegas, but I failed. The only thing I was sure about was the cone-shaped, color-morphing, fiber-optic tree in front of Caesars Palace—definitely a Christmas addition. But I had no idea whether the faux Brooklyn Bridge was always festooned with lights, same with the trees in front of the Bellagio. And what about those little red lights outlining the top of every hotel tower? Were those airplane beacons or Christmas decorations?

But it was still Christmas, even when I found myself alone in a casino hotel bed. When we got back to the Golden Nugget, Daniel stayed downstairs to play poker. It was possible that he was beginning to understand how important the Victoria McKimber affair was to me. Even so, lying alone in a big strange bed didn’t do much toward putting me into a jingle bell mood.

I was just dozing off when Daniel burst through the door. He had a pair of plush antlers clipped on his head and a glass mug of eggnog in each hand. Setting the drinks on the dresser, he took off all his clothes except the antlers. Then, retrieving the mugs, he joined me in bed.

“I’m dreaming of a tight Christmas,” he said, handing me a mug and clinking his own against it. “I think if I really want to be serious about poker, I’m going to have to start saying no to all those cute cocktail waitresses.”

“Like that’s going to happen.”

“The eggnog’s not bad,” he said. “They started bringing it around after midnight.”

“And the antlers?” I asked.

“I have no idea how I sprouted those,” he said. “I didn’t even realize I was wearing them until I saw myself in the elevator mirror.”

Fortunately, Daniel had always been a sweet and dopey kind of drunk, and alcohol never affected his powers in bed. Suddenly, it was a season to be jolly, and afterward, I slept in heavenly peace.

:: :: ::

In the morning, we dutifully headed over to the vicarage, where Sierra served a Christmas breakfast that should have won her a Betty Crocker kitchen makeover. After we’d polished off the last perfect maple-walnut cinnamon roll, we headed into the living room and destroyed the wrappings on a couple hundred thousand Christmas presents. Most of them were for Nicky, of course, but my mother had done a good job shopping for me, too. Among a raft of other household accoutrements, I scored a new coffeemaker, a new blender, new wineglasses, and even a full set of new dishes. It was like a bridal shower, and I wasn’t the only one who noticed the similarity.

“The groom shouldn’t be here,” Sierra commented as I opened up a box containing six placemats and napkins, “and we really ought to be playing some silly games.”

Fortunately, Daniel isn’t flustered by such comments.

“I’m not the groom,” he said. “I’m the stud.”

It was great! Sierra was the one who blushed, and my parents pretended not to hear. Black family rule number three: If you pay no attention to rude comments or body noises, they never happened.

When all the presents had been unveiled and everyone else had found a good napping spot on a sofa or comfy chair, Daniel and I escaped to my apartment. We only had an hour or so before we were all supposed to head up to the vacant lot at the corner of Craig and Twelfth for “Christmas at the Crossroads.” We were going to serve Christmas dinner to the homeless, and then we’d go meet Nicky at Sunrise Children’s Hospital. In the meantime, it was actually kind of nice to be in my own apartment, and Daniel was eager to use my computer to catch up on email.

Sekhmet—I still didn’t like calling her Delilah—showed up with the top half of a pigeon as I was unlocking the door. It was gross, but I also felt a tiny bit flattered. As soon as she got inside, she stretched out on my TV. She was acting like she was my cat, even though I didn’t deserve it.

I had just finished washing and drying my new “authentic French bistro” wineglasses from China by way of Target when Daniel said, “God, aren’t you going to love living in Berkeley?”

I looked at him. I could see his smile over the top edge of my laptop screen, nicely illuminated by the glow.

“Me?” I asked. “When am I going to live in Berkeley?”

“I guess I’m asking you to,” Daniel said. “I won’t know until March or so, but I’m sticking with botany, and the only person I want to work with is Karl Erickson. If I don’t get into Berkeley, I’ll bum around another year and try again. If that doesn’t work, I guess I’ll give up and go to med school.”

I had just finished setting the last wineglass on the shelf above the sink when I felt Daniel’s arms around me.

“It’d be fun, Copper,” he said. “We’re good together.”

I turned around and looked in his eyes.

“Most of the time we’re even excellent, Danno,” I said. “I love you.”

“So, Berkeley, then. Won’t it be great? San Francisco a bridge away?”

I kept looking at him as visions of cable cars danced in my head. I’d only been to San Francisco once, and I’d never been to Berkeley. But Daniel knew Berkeley well. He went to sixth grade there when his father spent a year at the university, and he had spent some summers there, too. I think I knew Daniel wanted to go to grad school at Berkeley before I knew his last name.

“You can get a real job there, too,” he said.

I pulled away from him. “A real job?”

“Oh, come on,” he said. “You know what I’m talking about.”

Did I? All of a sudden I wasn’t so sure. Okay, being the Calendar Girl for the Las Vegas Light wasn’t the same as being a correspondent for the New York Times, but at least it was on the path.

“I mean you can work for a more prestigious paper. It’d be a step up.”

I couldn’t help thinking about David Nussbaum. He’d pretty much expressed the same idea a few days after I met him.

“Las Vegas is a small media market, but it’s got a global reputation,” he’d said. “It’s a great resume builder—a good place to be from.”

“So are you going to leave?” I’d asked David. “Is that your plan?”

“I have no idea,” he’d said, and now that I knew about his soon-to-be ex-wife, I thought I understood why. That was around the time he’d shut off the water to her backyard garden.

“I don’t know if I want to leave yet,” I said.

“Well, it’s not for another six months,” Daniel said, sitting back down in front of my laptop, “and hell, I don’t even know if I’ll get in.”

“I like Las Vegas,” I said.

“I know,” Daniel said, without even trying to conceal his exasperation. “It’s not what you thought.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And I have stuff to do here that’s very important to me.”

“Getting your face cut? Hanging out with old whores? Having your apartment trashed?”

Ordinarily, barbs like that would have found their mark, but somehow I felt like laughing.

“Exactly!”

Maybe Las Vegas really had done something to me.

“Right now, though, the important thing is Christmas,” I said. “I still have to buy stuff for Richard and Jason McKimber. And serve turkey to the homeless. And go see Nicky.”

Daniel didn’t say anything.

“You can stay here,” I said. “Or I can drop you at the Golden Nugget if you’d rather play poker.”

He let out another one of his signature huge, long-suffering sighs. “Let’s get going,” he said. “You’re going to need a Sherpa to carry the ham.”

I must have been crazy. I loved Daniel and he loved me. He had just asked me to live with him, for Christ’s sake! I thought that was my over-the-rainbow dream!

And what sane person would ever choose Las Vegas when offered a view of the Golden Gate? I didn’t just like San Francisco when my parents took me there. I loved it. We stayed at an entrancingly excellent hotel on Union Square, and we took a ferry to Sausalito. We ate at Fisherman’s Wharf, walked around Chinatown, visited museums in Golden Gate Park. If Berkeley was even half as lovely, I was sure I’d adore it. I had always loved college towns, and Berkeley had to be one of the best. It probably had bookstores on every corner and the gold standard in coffee. Why was my heart not leaping at the thought of living there?

Suddenly, two signs appeared in my mind’s eye. One was a rusty old motel arrow with lights around the edge and red neon letters flashing “VEGAS.” The other was a tasteful granite gatepost with “The University of California” spelled out in nicely chiseled glyphs. Six months before, if Daniel had asked, “Which will it be?” I would have laughed at him.

“Like you think I’d pick Vegas?” I would have said with honest incredulity.

So I guess I couldn’t really blame him for being surprised now. I was surprised, too, when I thought about it.

:: :: ::

I was actually sort of embarrassed to be a volunteer at “Christmas at the Crossroads,” because there were too many of us folks in clean suburban clothes. I felt like a fair-weather do-gooder standing there supervising disposable utensil distribution. It was a job that didn’t need doing, and I couldn’t help thinking about the other 364 days when there was no food on this corner, and the people we were serving had to fend for themselves.

It gave me the same feeling I’d always gotten back at St. Mark’s in New Canaan when we collected money for a mission somewhere in Africa. We’d watch a movie showing emaciated, fly-covered, huge-bellied kids dying of AIDS or starvation. Then everybody would toss a bill or two into the plate, chant a prefab prayer, and zoom over to the country club in their BMWs for oysters on the half shell and prime rib.

I remember my dad saying something like, “You don’t help poor people by becoming poor yourself, Copper.” I’m sure he had a point. And maybe something was better than nothing, but it never appeased my guilty conscience. I’ve always thought it would be better to make a real, long-lasting difference to one person than serve turkey drumsticks once a year to a hundred. That’s the job Daniel and my mother had been assigned. I was taking a stab at world hunger with a basket of plastic forks.

“Christmas at the Crossroads” was a joint project of the United Christian Charities of Southern Nevada, the Alliance for the Homeless, and a variety of other churches and do-gooder clubs around the valley. Channel 13 showed up, and I kept expecting to see a photographer from The Light. It might not have rated a whole story, but ladies who lunched spending Christmas with bums who foraged was a pretty good holiday photo opportunity. I was on my knees refilling my fork basket from a big box under the table when an unexpected voice fell on my ears.

“Copper! Is that you down there?”

I pulled myself to my feet. In between a lanky-haired guy in a grungy army jacket and a bald man covered in tattoos was a familiar smiling face.

“David! What are you doing here?”

“Well, Merry Christmas to you, too. Aren’t you going to offer me a fork?”

“Sorry,” I said. “I just didn’t expect—”

“David!” my mother called from the drumstick station. “Merry Christmas!”

David waved. “Merry Christmas!” he called back.

I could see Daniel’s face beyond my mom’s. It was wearing an easily recognizable “Who the hell is that?” look. Figuring the forks could take care of themselves for a minute or two, I started moving in the same direction as David.

My mother was already making introductions by the time I got past the mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce.

“Yeah, I graduated in ’01,” David was saying to Daniel.

I looked at the two of them. I had known they were cut from different cloth, but seeing them side by side was still a jolt. Daniel was nearly a head taller than David, for one thing, but I had never really realized there was such a difference in height. David never seemed short to me, and Daniel never seemed quite that tall. Their clothes were another contrast. Daniel was wearing a stone-washed waffle-knit shirt and long pants with legs that zipped off when the weather called for shorts. David had on a white button-down shirt, corduroys, and a windbreaker. They looked exactly like what they were. Daniel, who still had a slightly sunburned tan, looked like he just got back from a trip through a rain forest, and David looked ready to pull out a notebook and start interviewing somebody. It made me wonder what kind of impression I was making. I had my hair down and was wearing a red turtleneck sweater and black corduroy slacks. I guessed I looked like different things to different people. To my mom and dad, I was still the family baby, and I was pretty much still that to Michael, too. To Daniel, I was at least a little more grown-up. I mean, we did things together that would be labeled “adult” if they were on videotape. But somehow he still saw me as a kid, even though he was less than a year older than I was.

And what was I to David? I wondered. Was I a coworker? A potential roommate? Whatever it was, I didn’t think he saw me as an equal. I was just the Calendar Girl, after all. David didn’t have to fetch lattes for anybody but himself.

I was still wondering why David had shown up at the turkey feed when he reappeared at the fork station.

“I have something for you,” he said.

“What?” I said. “Don’t tell me you got me a Christmas present.”

He smiled. “Not exactly. It’s something from Ed Bramlett.”

I rolled my eyes.

“He really wanted you to get this before Monday,” David said, holding a manila envelope toward me. “Said it was life or death.”

“It’s probably anthrax,” I said. “The guy hates me.”

“Well, don’t shoot the messenger,” David said. “And anyway, I’m doing you a favor. He wanted your cell phone number, but I told him I’d deliver it.”

I stopped handing out forks long enough to peek inside the envelope. Inside was a sheaf of xeroxes and printouts of Web pages, similar to the smaller stack Ed had given me the other day. I caught a glimpse of Julia Saxon’s smiling face before I closed the envelope and slid it into my backpack.

“Thanks, David,” I said. “Really. Want some dinner?”

“No, thanks,” he said. “I usually have Chinese on Christmas. Ancient family tradition.”

“By yourself?” I said. “I mean, you could join us for—”

“No, not by myself,” David said. “It’ll be me and Clint Eastwood this year. I’ve got Magnum Force on DVD. And a big bottle of fancy vodka that Alexandra Leonard gave me. She doesn’t drink, and she’s very generous with her holiday swag.”

“Drinking alone on Christmas,” I said. “Pretty sad.”

“I told you. It’ll be me and Clint.”

“Even sadder.”

“You’re just jealous,” David said, and as he walked away, I had to admit he was almost right. Chow mein, vodka martinis, and Dirty Harry really did sound like more fun than another roundtable at the vicarage. Even with Daniel in attendance.

:: :: ::

After we’d finished passing out every last turkey wing, we all drove over to Sunrise Children’s Hospital. Sierra had headed there an hour earlier, and when we finally arrived at the right room, we found her ensconced in a recliner, smiling as she held her new son.

“This is a first!” Michael whispered as we drew closer. “They haven’t let her hold him before!”

Nicky was sound asleep under a white blanket.

Sierra shifted so we could see his face.

I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t what I saw. Somehow, “abandoned baby” had made me brace myself for the worst. I had been expecting to be overcome with a flood of pity for an innocent victim of unspeakable abuse. “I’ll love him no matter what,” I had been telling myself. “And I’ll help him love himself.”

But it was a perfect angel whose face peeked over the blanket. His skin was the color of coffee ice cream, and his lips formed a perfect Cupid’s bow. His eyes were closed, their long lashes dark against his cheeks.

“He’s beautiful,” I said, and I swear everyone else said it at exactly the same time. “He’s beautiful!”

And then I just stood there, memorizing my new nephew. I looked at Sierra, too, as she smiled down at the little boy. When I finally managed to tear my eyes away from mother and child, I looked at Michael. He was transfixed, a look of wonder in his eyes. I glanced at my parents. They were holding hands. And as I watched them, I felt Daniel take my own hand.

We probably stood there like that for only a few minutes, but it seemed like an enchanted eon. I just kept staring, completely mesmerized. Until this moment, he’d been an abstraction, an idea, a thought. Now he was real. I watched as he turned. His left hand popped out from under the blanket. Sierra leaned forward a little and kissed it. I wanted to do the same, but just then the nurse came back.

“X-ray time,” she said, lifting the child from Sierra’s arms. We all watched Nicky roll away in a special baby gurney.

Daniel and I stayed long enough to hear that Nicky was gaining weight at a nice rate. His heart surgery was scheduled for the week after New Year’s, and his doctors expected an excellent outcome.

“He’s going to be absolutely fine,” Sierra said, and I couldn’t help thinking that Nicky was going to take his new mom with him on the road to well-being. She looked happier than I’d seen her in a long, long time.

“So what do you think of my new nephew?” I asked Daniel as we crossed the hospital parking lot to the Max.

“Cute,” Daniel said, but I could tell the glow had already worn off, and he was back to feeling sulky.

“Thanks for coming with me,” I said. “And if you don’t want to go to the McKimbers’—”

“Just drive to the grocery store and start shopping,” Daniel said. “Let’s get this over with.”

As I had predicted, it wasn’t hard to find a supermarket with open doors. The shelves weren’t quite as well-stocked as usual, but I still managed to fill up a cart with a huge ham, a couple of salami nightsticks, boxes of crackers, bags of chips, jars of salsa, a log of cheese, three bags of cookies and one of chocolate Kisses, some bottles of sparkling cider, a pound cake, a cherry pie, and several cans of chili, olives, smoked oysters, and nuts. I was about to head for the checkout stand when I realized that the heap of food wasn’t going to look very festive in a bunch of plastic Food 4 Less bags. Fortunately, the store had a special on plastic laundry baskets, and I unearthed a roll of red ribbon in an already marked-down pile of Christmas leftovers. The basket was so heavy by the time I loaded it up at the side door of the Max that I was actually glad Daniel was there to lift it.

“I was right,” he said. “You did need a mule. That thing weighs more than my backpack when it’s fully loaded for two weeks in the jungle.”