Page 3 of Christmas Is All Around
Padma: You understand that, right?
Padma: Charlotte????
Padma: I don’t even understand the difference between a solicitor and a barrister!
Charlotte:
Charlotte set her phone down on the bed in Ava’s guest room, leaning back against the headboard and resisting the temptation to go to sleep right now. By the time they’d made it back to Ava’s flat, Alice had awoken from her morning nap, giving Charlotte plenty of time to bond with her niece (read: place a ginger kiss on her fuzzy head, then hold her at a safe distance and watch her warily, alert to any sudden movements, like some sort of skittish animal) before lunch. Then it was time for another nap—could Charlotte be a baby, please? They just ate and slept; it truly seemed like a dream life—which at least gave Charlotte time to shower, then a long walk around the park once Alice had awoken, which seemed to have done nothing but give her extra strength so that she could scream loud enough for four babies.
The point was: after all that, plus a transatlantic flight, she wastired, and the thought of twelve or so hours of uninterrupted, horizontal sleep was extremely appealing at the moment. Experience had taught her that going to bed at—she checked her phone—five thirtywould be a mistake, though, so she instead dragged herself down the hall to the holiday cheer that awaited.
“All right, Charlotte?” asked Kit, Ava’s husband, as soon as Charlotte dared to poke her head into the kitchen. He was wearing an apron in a William Morris print without a hint of self-consciousness, frowning down at a cookbook in a way that Charlotte found worrisome; she adored Kit—he was, truly, one of her very favorite people, and she had shed actual tears of joy for possibly the only time in her life when he and Ava had gotten engaged—but he was a bit… scattered. She wasn’t sure she loved the idea of him attempting a recipe he hadn’t tried several times previously—although she, who largely subsisted on takeout, salad kits, and meal delivery boxes, wasn’t exactly going to offer up her services as sous chef.
“Hi, Kit,” she said, crossing the room to drop a quick kiss on his cheek before heading for the fridge to see if there was any wine already open. “Where’s—”
“Waaaaaaaa!” came the howl of a banshee, or perhaps someone possessed by a demon, or even a bird of prey.
“Never mind,” Charlotte amended hastily, retrieving an open bottle of sauvignon blanc and waving it in Kit’s direction. “Want a glass?”
“Go on,” he said amiably, returning his attention to the cookbook. He looked, as usual, a bit disheveled: his curly dark hair, several shades darker than his brown skin, was in a state of disarray, and although he couldn’t have been home from work for more than fifteen minutes, there already appeared to be a disturbing, Alice-generated substance on the shoulder of his white oxford shirt. “It sounds like I’ll need the fortification.”
“Why does she sound… like that?”
He cocked his head to the side as another yowl sounded from the living room, a thoughtful expression on his face. “That’s a hungry cry,” he said wisely. “Not to be mistaken for a sleepy cry, or a needs-a-nappy-change cry, or a generalfuck you, parents who put me on this earthcry.”
Charlotte stared at him in horror, handed him his glass of wine, and said, “Parenthood is a gift. Treasure this time.” She offered a serene smile in response to his frown and ducked out of the room. Two seconds later, she heard the clicking of the gas stove, followed by a slight yelp. She immediately poked her head back in, only to find a sheepish-looking Kit hastily turning the knob. “More flames than I was expecting!” he said brightly upon seeing her. “Not to worry! I’ve sorted it!”
Not feeling remotely soothed, she retreated again; in the living room, she was greeted by the sound of screeches and baby talk mingling together, which had to rank pretty low on her list of favorite noises. At some point while she’d been settling into the guest room, Kit’s parents had arrived, and they were presently standing huddled together, cooing adoringly over the unhinged monster flailing in the arms of Kit’s mother. Simone, for her part, seemed unfazed by the fact that a small, chubby fist narrowly avoided direct contact with her eye, and she beamed down at her granddaughter. “That’s the spirit, darling!” She was a petite, elegant woman in her sixties, her auburn hair mostly having faded to silver, which she somehow managed to make look like the absolute height of fashion. She was wearing a simple black dress and Chanel flats, and made Charlotte, in the leggings and oversized sweater she’d changed into after her shower, feel distinctly underdressed for Ava’s living room.
John, Kit’s father, reached out to capture the fist in his hand. “Perhaps she’ll be a boxer!” he said cheerfully. He paused to consider. “Might be best to practice on someone other than your gran, though.” He was a tall, lean Black man, several years older than his wife, currently wearing an extremely cheerful red-and-green striped Christmas sweater that felt like a harbinger of the festive nightmarethat Charlotte was about to be sucked into. He glanced over at Ava, who was sitting on the sofa—an elegant vintage settee upholstered in beautiful pink silk—with a baby bottle in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. “Perhaps we ought to let you feed her, Ava dear?”
“Only if you value the sound of peace and quiet,” Ava informed him, extending her arms to reclaim her daughter. After a further moment of adoring exclamation—which Charlotte thought was recklessly bold on the part of John and Simone; she valued her personal safety far too much to get that close to a creature making that much noise, even if that creature weighed only about fifteen pounds—Alice was passed to her mother, a bottle was offered, and a moment of silence, punctured only by the eager grunts of a feeding baby, descended upon the room.
“I’m not sure my ears are working after that,” Charlotte said, daring to sink down on the sofa next to her sister. It dawned on her, a bit belatedly, that she hadn’t had a roommate in over four years, and had come to cherish her solitude, but was about to spend the next six weeks in close quarters with multiple other adultsandthe world’s loudest baby.
“You’ll get used to it,” Ava informed her with battle-hardened weariness.
“Hello, Charlotte!” Simone said brightly, perching on an armchair opposite the sofa with impressive posture. “Was your flight all right?”
“Were you hounded by any Christmas film enthusiasts on the plane?” John asked, a twinkle in his eye.
“Apparently no one on my flight had seenChristmas, Truly,” Charlotte said.
“Ha!” Ava said darkly. “Unlikely. What’smorelikely is that they either didn’t recognize you as that adorable, wide-eyed nine-year-old—”
“You truly did master the art of not blinking for extended periodsof time,” Simone contributed; Charlotte was honestly unclear on whether this was intended to be a compliment. It was true, however, that given her resting bitch face and general disinclination to sugarcoat anything she said, she hadn’t been described as “adorable” in a long, long time.
“—orat the very least they’re not unhinged enough to approach a perfect stranger on an airplane to harass them about their professional choices,” Ava concluded.
“One has to admire the forthright American spirit,” John said thoughtfully; this was a man who was prone to putting a positive spin on nearly everything, but Charlotte did have to draw the line somewhere.
“One doesnot,” she objected fervently. “At least, not when that means that complete strangers are sending me death threats on Instagram, and a girl who can’t possibly have been older than sixteen is approaching me in Central Park to tell me that I have ruined Christmas for her.”
“Her parents will buy her a new iPhone and she’ll forget all about it,” Ava said absently, looking down at her daughter with a soft, tender sort of expression that made Charlotte feel slightly uncomfortable every time she caught sight of it. It was strange, after nearly thirty years of knowing her sister, to watch her morph into something new before her very eyes.
“Heartwarming,” Charlotte deadpanned.
“Scrooge,” Ava murmured, smiling down at Alice.
