Free Father Christmas by Judith Arnold

long time since a woman cared
that way about him. A long, long time. He’d almost forgotten how
nice it felt.
    ***
    “ MICHAEL NEEDS A TIME
OUT,” Amy announced, nudging the sulking little boy into the front
room.
    Molly rose from her chair behind the desk
and scrutinized the child. His hair was mussed, his lower lip
curled in a profound pout. Tears had left glistening streaks on his
skin. He glowered at her as if daring her—although what he was
daring her to do, she couldn’t guess.
    Despite their dampness, his eyes were his
father’s, dark and defiant, seeing too much and revealing too
little. Molly had spent the better part of the morning thinking
about Michael’s father’s eyes, his low voice, his tentative smile.
His steel-hard control. The utter incongruity of a man like him
playing Santa, and the equal incongruity of Santa chasing down a
pick-pocket. The danger he’d put himself in. The courage he’d
displayed. The way he’d referred to his divorce only in terms of
his son’s well-being, not his own.
    “ He and Dana both wanted
to play with the same toy airplane,” Amy reported. “Michael
resorted to pushing and shoving. He grabbed the plane and swung at
Dana with it. He missed, but...”
    Molly gave Michael her sternest frown. “Is
that true, Michael? You tried to hit Dana with the plane?”
    Michael’s lower lip protruded even farther,
but he wouldn’t apologize. “My plane,” he said in a wobbly voice.
“I play with the plane.”
    “ School toys have to be
shared,” Molly reminded him. “And you aren’t allowed to hit other
children. You know that rule, Michael. Hitting isn’t
allowed.”
    “ I play with the plane,”
he repeated. “I had it first.”
    “ Go sit in the chair,”
Molly ordered him in a firm but gentle voice. The chair she’d
pointed to was an adult-size piece of furniture, upholstered in a
tweed fabric to match her desk chair and positioned in the corner
of the entry, within sight of the desk. Sometimes children had to
be removed from the activity of the main room to compose
themselves, to calm down and chill out. In this case, Molly hoped
that a few minutes by himself in the chair would give Michael a
chance to reflect on what he’d done wrong.
    She watched as Michael plodded to the chair
and climbed up into it. With a nod to Amy, who departed from the
office, she settled herself back at her desk. She pretended to
work, reviewing accounts in the computer. But the sorry truth was,
she’d been pretending rather than working ever since she’d returned
to the school from her bank errand. All morning and well into the
afternoon, she’d been restless, distracted, lost in memories of her
brief encounter with John Russo downtown. Calculating the school’s
monthly accounts hadn’t been enough to contain her thoughts. They’d
kept wandering to John, lingering on him, obsessing about him.
    Now her thoughts journeyed from him to his
son, dwarfed by the too-big chair. His legs stuck out straight and
his shoulders reached only the middle of the seat back. His gaze
locked onto her, still holding a challenge.
    She resolutely swiveled her chair back to
the computer and tapped at the keys. She could almost hear
Michael’s respiration; she could almost feel it, even though he was
eight feet away from her. She was acutely conscious of him moping,
even though he didn’t squirm, didn’t speak, didn’t do anything to
call attention to himself. His mere presence was enough to distract
her, just the way thoughts of his father distracted her.
    She entered a few more numbers onto the
computer spread sheet, then yielded to Michael’s silent summons and
lifted her gaze to him. He was still sitting, one sneakered foot
jiggling slightly, his hands gripping the arms of the chair. Tears
cascaded down his cheeks, twin rivers of sorrow.
    Molly recognized the thin line between
caring for her students and losing her objectivity. She might be
about to cross that line, but she couldn’t just sit