(All I Want Is) You For Christmas
"That's it, Alice! You can do it!"
Alice looked highly doubtful of this prospect, to say the least. She swayed a little, side to side, and her tiny fingers clutched the edge of the chair with no sign of letting go.
"Come on, sweetie! Come to Mummy!" Neela crouched a few baby steps away, arms extended. She called out, "Get the camera, I think she's going to do it!"
From the kitchen, Ray called back, "She's not going to do it."
Neela frowned, turned around and looked down the hall. He was standing in the doorway with a dishtowel, watching them. "She's thinking about it," she argued.
He shrugged and threw the towel over his shoulder. "Yeah, she's thinking about it," he agreed. "She wants to do it. But she's not going to do it. Not yet, anyway." He waved to his daughter, and said, "Are you, Al?"
Alice said, "Dadadadada," and continued holding steady to her position, though she started smacking one palm against the wooden seat.
"How do you know?" she asked him, simultaneously irked at his certainty and genuinely curious.
"Because I know that look."
She had been wearing a very serious face for an almost-ten-month-old. "What look? I've never seen that look before."
"I didn't say I knew it from her."
She almost got cross with him, but even from two rooms away she could see his raised eyebrows and soft half-smile, so instead she creased her brow, and sighed. "Last week she was standing on her own and now she's back to this." She reached over to scratch Alice's back, and asked, "I was trying to be encouraging. Am I pressuring her? Was that pressure? Oh, God," she said, alarmed. "Am I my parents?"
He laughed. "Relax, babe, you're fine. She just needs a little more time. I don't blame her. Learning to walk? Is freaking hard."
Alice said, "Zszssshhh," and plopped onto the rug. Neela pulled her into her lap and rubbed her chin gently on the top of her downy head. A determined little hand reached for her mother's hair, and Neela redirected it into a wave. The baby grabbed at the air in the general direction of her father, and Neela mirrored the gesture with her own free hand as she smiled up at him.
The satellite radio hipster holiday station changed from the McGarrigles to "Christmas in Hollis" without any pretense of a segue, and the doorbell rang.
"We expecting anyone?"
"Abby and Joe," she said, "but not 'til tomorrow." She reached down to straighten Alice's monkey socks, and Ray went to answer the door.
He was a little surprised at who he found on the other side. "Hey. Thought you had that big party tonight?"
"On my way there." Morris stepped into the kitchen and began to shed his overcoat, but to do so he had to hand Ray the package he was carrying: a small wicker picnic basket with a fluffy red towel peeking out from under the lid.
"Stopping off at Grandma's house first?"
"I thought I'd drop by and give the princess her Christmas present. You are letting her have Christmas, right? Not just weird Sikh holidays?"
Ray rolled his eyes. "Yeah, we're doing Christmas. We're not really doing the princess thing, though, so if you could—" He looked down at the basket, startled. "Did this thing just move?" When he lifted the lid and looked inside, he said, "Holy shit." He held the basket at arm's length, laughing. "Dude. You are in so much trouble."
"What?" Morris took the basket back and held it against his chest. There was a muffled mew! "This is an awesome present!"
"Uncle Archie is here," Ray called, and started toward the living room, shaking his head. "So much trouble."
Alice and Neela were in the middle of the living room floor, occupied for the moment with a board book on the subject of farm animals, although mother was more interested in demonstrating the sound a sheep made, while daughter preferred chewing on the pages. Neela looked up at Morris and said, "Hello. Don't you look dapper."
He smoothed the front of his suit jacket—sharp, but conservative—and said, "Thank you," then immediately folded himself into a cross-legged position on the floor, sliding the basket behind him. "I've got some holiday festivities to attend this evening. I see you ladies are keeping it chill."
Ray settled in a nearby chair, and smirked. "Morris brought Alice a Christmas present."
"Did you? Well, that was nice, wasn't it, Al? Can you say thank you?" She couldn't, but she could crawl over and drool on his knee.
"You might want to hold off on the thanks," said Ray.
She turned to ask, "Why?" and when she turned back, Morris was reaching into the wicker basket and extracting...
"A cat!? Oh, no. No." She turned back to Ray. "Did you know about this?" He raised his hands in protestation of his innocence. "No," she repeated to Morris. She grabbed Alice and pulled her onto her lap.
"It's a kitten. An adorable kitten! What little girl wouldn't want a kitten?"
"This is... I am... Morris! Whatever gave you the idea it was appropriate to give people a live animal without asking? You don't just thrust a pet at someone!"
The prospective pet in question, a skinny, short-haired tuxedo kitten with a nick out of its left ear and a huge red bow around its neck, huddled in a nervous ball on the rug. He kicked at the bow with his rear leg, and then started turning in circles, trying to shake it off.
"Look how cute he is! What, you're not a cat person?"
"I'm not...I haven't had much experience with pets," she said, a little defensive. "Most of my dealings with small mammals have been in laboratories, and they didn't end happily." The kitten suddenly sprang into the air, and then scampered crazily across the floor, ending up under Ray's chair. This captured Alice's attention. Neela held her back as she tried to lunge toward the furry intruder.
"See that?" said Morris. "She loves him. She's got a friend for life."
"She reacts the same way to the Roomba," she said. "Anyway you don't just show up at someone's house and say, 'Here! Here's ten years of responsibility! Happy Christmas!'"
"Are you kidding? Veterinary medicine the way it's going, this little guy could make it to twenty-five."
"Even better," she muttered, glaring. "We're not keeping him." She turned to confirm this with Ray, and found he had managed to reach under the chair and scoop the kitten into his lap. "We're not keeping him," she reiterated.
Ray slid the bow over the cat's head and dangled it in front of him, causing him to bat at it so enthusiastically that he fell over onto his back, his tiny white paws flailing wildly. "What? Oh, yeah, I know."
Alice, who had caught sight of this, started squirming in Neela's lap, protesting her confinement with "Mmma!" and "Eeeehhh," so Neela let her crawl.
"You know where I got him? Found him in the coat pocket of a frozen old homeless lady. We had to put him under a heat lamp and feed him formula with a syringe. From there it was either here or the shelter. Come on, Neela. Where's your holiday spirit? He's a Christmas miracle!"
Ray looked up, skeptical. Neela scoffed, "Oh, you're full of it. That didn't really happen."
"Doesn't that sound like something that would happen?" he asked, offended. "That's totally plausible! And true."
"Well it doesn't matter," she insisted. "It was nice of you to think of Alice, really, but we can't—"
"Whoa," said Morris. "Check it out. Does she do that a lot?"
Alice was standing, wobbly but unsupported, in front of Ray's chair. Enraptured, she reached out one hand toward the kitten. She was determined to somehow cross the vast expanse of carpet—at least eight inches—between her and the object of her fascination, but obviously not quite sure how to accomplish it. She looked to her mother to quell her rising panic.
"It's all right, sweetie. Go on."
Ray scratched the kitten's head, and said softly, "Hey, Al. Who's this?"
Neela held her breath as Alice took one halting step, and then another, and then with one more decided she was close enough to fall forward and grasp at her father's pants for support. She looked around, astounded, as everyone cheered. The kitten leapt to the ground, startled by the commotion.
Ray lifted Alice into his lap and started tickling her and telling her how awesome she was. Neela wiped at her eye, and said, "I didn't even have the camera."
Morris stood, brushed off his pants, and said, "See? Best present ever."
By nine o'clock, Alice had gone to bed, Morris had gone off to his party—but not before accompanying Ray to the store to pitch in generously for cat food, a litter box, and other necessary accoutrements—and Neela had turned the satellite radio to the 'Holiday Classics' channel. Ella Fitzgerald sang "Silent Night." Neela flicked the light switch as she walked into the living room, leaving only the modest but pleasant glow of the lights on the tabletop Christmas tree for illumination. She handed Ray a beer, and settled in next to him on the sofa.
The cat dashed back and forth across the floor, occasionally stopping to attack something invisible.
"What are we going to name this little monster?"
He thought about it for a few seconds. "I don't know. Ozzy? Eddie? Mister Boots?"
"I can't believe I was suckered into this," she said.
The little tuxedo kitten mewed, climbed onto the arm of the couch, curled its front paws under its body, and stared at them warily.
"You have to admit he's cute."
"And probably more trouble than he's worth."
"Yeah. But that's pretty much what you thought of me at first, too."
She smiled wryly. Ray put his arm around her, and she rested her head on his shoulder.
"Pretty much," she admitted, and laid her hand on his thigh. His fingers crept under the hem of her sweater. "And I guess that worked out all right."