by Jan Karon
After the service, he and Dooley followed the singing procession to the Methodist chapel, where the children's choir met them on the steps. "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing," they warbled, sending puffs of warm breath into the freezing air. People filled the nave and were standing in the churchyard as the ancient story of Christmas was read from Luke, and candles were lighted in every window.
Afterward, they trooped down the alleyway and across Main Street, singing to the tops of their voices in wildly random keys. They were led, at this point, by J.C. Hogan, who was walking backwards at a heedless trot while snapping pictures of the oncoming throng.
The Presbyterians joined them on the corner of Main Street and Lilac Road with ten pieces of brass, and led the frozen, exhilarated regiment across the street to First Baptist, where the the lower grades sang "O Little Town of Bethlehem," accompanied by their preacher on the guitar. They also saw a reenactment of the manger scene, for which the preacher's wife had made all the costumes.
Then, everyone clattered to the fellowship hall, where the brass band was rattling the cupboards with "Joy to the World!" The women of the church had set out an awesome array of sandwiches, cookies, cake, homemade candy, hot chocolate, and steaming apple cider.
"I think we're about to get our second wind," said the rector to his Presbyterian colleague.
"One more denomination in this town and some of us couldn't make it around. We've just clocked a mile and a quarter."
"I don't think there is another denomination, is there?" asked Miss Pruitt, the Sunday School supervisor.
"Well, let's see. There's the Lutherans!"
Edith Mallory made her way through the crowd, carrying a sloshing cup of cider. There was a certain look in her eye, as if he might be a nail and she a hammer, determined to pound him squarely on the head.
"Lovely service at Lord's Chapel," she said, coolly.
"Yes, I thought so, and how did you like the walk?"
"Walk? I never walk on the Advent Walk, I always ride."
"I see."
He turned away so hastily that he knocked the cider out of Mayor Cunningham's hand, and took refuge in helping someone clean it up. When he got to his feet again in the milling crowd, Edith had disappeared.
Keeping his head down, he found Dooley and left for home, to steam himself like a clam in the shower, and reread the letter that waited by his bed.
Dearest Timothy,
No, scratch that. My dearest neighbor,
I have been riding in taxicabs the livelong day, and have taken your advice. I pray while hailing, as it were, and God has been very gracious to send affable, entertaining, and kindly drivers. One even chased me down the sidewalk to return a scarf I left on the seat. Can you imagine? I look upon this as a true miracle.
0! the shops are brimming with beauteous treasures. I would so love to have you here! I would hold on to your arm for dear life as we looked in the windows and stopped for a warm tea in some lovely hotel with leather banquettes and stuffy waiters. You would overtip to impress me, and I would give you great hugs of gratitude for your coming.
My work is awfully labored just now. Sometimes it has the most wondrous life of its own, it fairly pulls me along—rather like wind surfing! At other times, it drags and mopes, so that I despair of ever writing another word or drawing another picture. I've found that if one keeps pushing along during the mopes, out will flash the most exhil arating thought or idea—a way of doing something that I had nevtr seen before— and then, one is off again, and hold on to your hat!
I am doing the oddest things these days. I brought home a sack of groceries from the deli the other evening and, while thinking of our kisses at the airport, put the carton of ice cream on my bed' and my hat in the freezer.
Worse yet, I'm talking to myself on the street, and that won't do at all! Actually, I'm talking to you, but no one would believe that. "Timothy," I said just the other day when looking in the window at Tiffany's, "I do wish you'd unbutton your caution a bit, and get on an airplane this minute!" How did I know a woman was standing next to me? She looked at me coldly before stomping away. I think it was the part about unbuttoning your caution that did it.
I am thrilled to hear of Dooley's singing, and especially that it ran a fine chill up your leg. As for myself, I know something is right when the top of my head tingles. In any case, I am proud with you, and can barely wait to hear him in chorus when I come home on the 23rd.
A box has been sent to all of you, including my good friend, Barnabas, with a delicious tidbit for Jack, as well. If I were to send you everything that reminds me of you, you should straightaway receive a navy cashmere topcoat, a dovecolored Borsolino hat, a peppered ham and a brace of smoked pheasants, a library table with a hidden drawer, a looking glass with an ivory handle, a 1 Ithcentury oil of the 12yearold Jesus teaching in the temple, a Persian hall runner, a lighted world globe, and a blue bathrobe with your initials on the pocket. There!
Oh, and I haven't forgotten Puny. The truffles are for her, and do keep your mitts off them. They are capable of creating any number of diabetic comas.
Would you please have Mr. Hogan send my Muse subscription to this address? I suppose I could call him up again, but each time I've tried, there's no answer at his newspaper office. I can't imagine how his news tips come in; he must get them all at the Main Street Grill.
I will close and go searching for my slippers, which have been missing since yesterday morning. Perhaps I should look in the freezer.
With fondest love to you, and warm hellos to Dooley, Barnabas and Jack...
He didn't know how he felt about the Borsolino hat, and he already had a topcoat, but the peppered ham sounded terrific.
Humming "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing," he went downstairs, the folded letter crackling in his robe pocket. After supper with Dooley, he would sit in the study and read it again.
It was only the end of November, and a bit early, in his opinion, for stringing lights.
Mitford, however, had no such qualms—winking lights were strung from one end of Main Street to the other; fresh, beribboned greenery was hung on the light poles; and the merchants had stuffed their windows with everything from a Santa Claus with a moving head to a box of free puppies wearing red collars and mistletoe.
A Christmas tree lot was set up on the edge of Little Mitford Creek, across from Winnie Ivey's cottage, and fairly bristled with Fraser firs from the next county. In fact, everywhere he looked, he saw a tree lashed to the top of a car or truck, and an expectant driver headed home to an evening's festivity.
Carols poured from the music system at Happy Endings, enlivening that end of the street, and the town monument was respectfully draped with garlands of boxwood and holly.
Avis Packard filled the wooden bins in front of The Local with green boughs and mountain apples and ran a special on cider in the jug.
Sitting in the rear booth one morning at breakfast, he watched Percy Mosely lift the door of the hatch behind the grill and carry a box of fruitcakes down the stairs. They would be his holiday dessert special, served with Cool Whip and a cherry. Percy handlettered the counter sign, himself: You'll Be Nuts About Our Fruitcake.
The Lord's Chapel service of Lessons and Carols was coming straight ahead, and then, all the services and celebrations would be unleashed full force.
Suddenly, there was the quandry of what to give Cynthia, and what he might give Dooley, and yes, this year, he wanted to take gifts to Fernbank. The thought of it all made his head feel light and oddly empty, so that he had to go searching for sensible thoughts, as one might seek after pillowcases blown from a clothesline by high winds.
Several times, he found himself pacing the study in a circle, like a train on a track. The train! It would need to be brought down from the attic, which was a job for Dooley Barlowe. Delegate! That's what he needed to do. And why agonize over what people might want or like? Why not just ask them? He had never done such a thing, but he'd read an article recently that suggest
ed this strategy was loaded with success.
"A jambox," said Dooley.
"A what?"
"A jambox—to listen to music."
What kind of music, he wanted to ask, but didn't—and how loud?
When he talked to Cynthia that evening, she said, "A neckrub! I've bent over these illustrations for such long hours that my neck is positively stiff as a board. A neckrub would be the loveliest gift imaginable."
A neckrub. He had never given such a thing in his life. How far did one have to unbutton one's caution to give a neckrub?
He heard the strain in her voice. "I'm working very hard to get finished, and with my editor in Europe, I feel all at sixes and sevens when it comes to knowing whether it's really working. There's such comfort in having someone say, Yes, that's lovely, or good heavens, Cynthia, what could you be thinking?
"But that's enough about me. What do you want for Christmas, Timothy?"
"I can't say that I haven't thought about it. I want you and Dooley and Barnabas, and a fire in the study, and a splendid dinner, and peace. The peace of having you home again, of seeing the boy finding his own peace, and feeling your contentment in having a rough task behind you. That, and nothing more."
"How dear you are to me."
"Am I? I wish I could imagine why."
"Perhaps if you could imagine why, it would spoil everything."
That, he admitted, was a thought.
"Isn't there any family left for you, except Walter and Katherine? Are we both so nearly alone in the world?"
"My mother had three sisters, but only one had children."
"Then you have other cousins!" She seemed hopeful for him.
"One of Aunt Lily's kids vanished after a divorce, another died in a train accident. At fortyfive, Aunt Martha married a man thirty years her senior, and Aunt Peg was what we used to call a spinster. Immediately after college, she had her linens monogrammed with her own initials, declaring she would never marry."
Cynthia laughed. "What became of her?"
"She grew prize asters and headed up the local D. A. R."
"My!" said Cynthia, not knowing what else to say.
"So there you have it. No kin to speak of, except for that rowdy bunch in Ireland, of course. As I recall, Walter and I were related in some way to almost everyone at the tea party."
"I love the Irish!"
"The Irish would love you," he said.
A neckrub and a jambox made a wildly intriguing start to his gift list, he thought as he dialed Miss Sadie.
"What do I want? Oh, dear, I suppose I should spend more time thinking of my wants instead of my needs. I'd be more interesting, wouldn't I, Father?"
"It would be impossible for you to be more interesting."
"Oh, pshaw! Well, let's see." There was a pause. "I haven't the faintest idea! Let me ask Louella. Louella, what do I want for Christmas?"
"New stockin's, new rouge, and a new slip," came Louella's quick response from the background.
Miss Sadie put her hand over the receiver, but he heard the muffled conversation.
"I can't ask my priest for stockings and a slip!"
"Well, then, ask 'im for rouge, you lookin' white as a sheet."
"Louella says ask for rouge, Father. Not too red and not too pink. Oh, dear, this is embarrassing, maybe just some candy from the drugstore, we like nougats."
He sat back on the sofa, laughing. It had never happened in just this way before, but he was definitely getting the Christmas spirit.
He called Dora Pugh at the hardware and asked her to order a sack of special rabbit food; then he called Avis at The Local, and ordered five pounds of Belgian chocolates—four for the nurses at the hospital, and one for Louella. He asked Avis to put together enough food items to fill a dozen baskets, and to reserve his choice beef bones, starting now.
He had no intention of asking Walter what he might like. No, indeed. Walter would want a cashmere sweater, a blazer from Brooks Brothers, or a Mont Blanc pen. He might very well ask for a lighted world globe on an antique stand, or a leatherbound atlas, or both.
He ordered a desk calendar for Walter's law office, and a leather rrame for Katherine, to hold the photo of the three of them in front of the family castle. They had given a pound note to a passing Irish lad, who used Walter's Nikon with the most amazing results. In the color Drint, in which they had all appeared to be years younger, one could see :he crumbling remains of the castle in the background. Even now, he suspected with wry affection, this priceless photograph was swimming about in one of Katherine's jumbled drawers, getting dogeared.
He went to the bank and retrieved five crisp onehundred dollar sills, and stopped by the drugstore for a compact of rouge,
There. He was nearly done, he thought. He whistled all the way to :he Grill.
Grinning, Emma stood in front of his desk, and rattled a bag from vVesley's department store.
"It's your Christmas present," she said. "Guess what it is!" She rattled .t some more.
Every year, as much as six weeks before Christmas, she couldn't ;tand it any longer and gave him his gift. Worse still, she never had gifts o( her own to open on Christmas Day, as she always tore into a present :he minute she received it.
"I can't guess," he said, dolefully. "A tie?"
"Wrong."
"Shaving lotion!"
"You're not trying."
"A solar calculator."
"Ha! Wrong again." She opened the bag and dumped something on his desk. Her presentation skills had never been noteworthy. "A restaurant guide to New York City!"
He looked at it without speaking.
"I know you've never been there before, so when you go visit your neighbor, you'll know how to do." She was as pleased as if she'd given him a Rolex watch.
"Who says I'm going to New York?"
"You mean you're not?"
"I most certainly am not."
"Not even for a weekend?"
"You said it."
"You mean you're going to let her stay in that godforsaken place all by herself, with no relief from home? Have you seen the kind of men they have in the publishing business up there? Handsome! Intelligent! Tall!"
She used this last jab for all it was worth.
"And what, may I ask, do you know about the publishing business?"
"I do watch TV, you know, which is more than I can say for some people."
"Aha. So men in the publishing business are often on TV?"
"All the time! Very goodlooking and smart as whips."
"From what I've seen in the bookstores lately, they're on TV because they have nothing better to occupy their time. As for myself, Emma, I am presently occupied with five holiday services, a music festival, a youth choir concert, a baptism, a party at the hospital, a discussion topic for the men's prayer breakfast, and an overnight visit from the bishop. Thank you for your gift, and please—I beg you—take the morning off."
He had stumbled around in her basement under a 25watt bulb, plowing through marked boxes. Though some attempt had been made to stack them in alphabetical order, Christmas Lights were nonetheless on top of Mud Room Odds and Ends.
If there was ever a task that wanted teamwork, it was stringing tree lights. When he got the box upstairs to her living room, he saw that she had put them away like so much cooked vermicelli.
It was a full three hours before the bushes on either side of her front stoop were glowing warmly. Life in the little house, at last! He stood back and blew on his frozen hands. Not a car had been up the street; there was not a soul to see the handiwork that cheered the whole neighborhood and proclaimed something wonderful. If it weren't so late, he'd drag Dooley over to look.
He went inside to her living room, switched off the lights on the ,bushes, and locked the front door. The house was hollow as a gourd without her, yet everywhere he looked, she had made it her own; it couldn't have belonged to anyone but Cynthia. He moved to the mantle and peered at a picture he hadn't seen before. She must
have been sixteen or seventeen, and looked out at him with a poignancy that gripped his heart. Her blond hair was long and free, and her eyes full of hope.
"Cynthia," he said aloud, touching the frame.
There were other pictures on the mantle, one of her nephew, most likely, and one of her parents, her mother wearing a flamboyant shawl with fringe, holding on to the arm of a man who looked like Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., in a double-breasted suit. He saw that they were looking away from each other, and the small girl standing beside them seemed forlorn.
He turned the lights off in the living room and walked down the hall to her studio. It was bare of her drawing board and chair and many of her books, yet a light fragrance of wisteria greeted him.
"Cynthia!" he said, feeling a lump in his throat.
Why shouldn't he go to New York for a day or two, after all? It was not inconceivable. He had been far too hard on Emma, in the tone of his voice, chiding her for a foolish idea. But was it foolish?
He might take Cynthia to dinner at some legendary restaurant like Sardi's or the Stork Club. Was the Stork Club still in existence? If not, they could go to the Plaza, which he knew for a fact was still there; he had read about it in a magazine. Perhaps snow would fall, and they would ride in a carriage in Central Park, bundled under a laprobe. Perhaps they would look in the windows at Tiffany's, and perhaps, who knows, they would go inside and he would buy her something wonderful, something that would make the top of her head tingle.
He didn't want to think of the "men in publishing" who might, in actual fact, be seeking her company for dinner or a play or a concert. But why shouldn't she have the company of suave, dynamic movers and shakers, rather than languish in a strange apartment every evening, struggling to earn her very bread?
He stood by the phone in her studio and inhaled the scent that had become as much a part of her as breathing. He removed a card from his billfold, dialed the number written on the back of it, and charged the call to the rectory.