Christmas Bells

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  The realization brought him to an abrupt halt on the sidewalk. That was exactly what he had been doing for the past three years, though he hated to admit it: He had been waiting for her.

  Maybe it was time to either tell her the truth or move on.

  “What do I have to lose?” he muttered as he continued down the sidewalk, a cup of coffee in each hand, his messenger bag full of sheet music slung over his shoulder. What did he have to lose except his self-respect, his friendship with Sophia, and his volunteer gig with the choir? He would miss the kids, so goofy and smart in unexpected ways and often unintentionally hilarious. No matter how stressful or exhausting or frustrating his day might have been, a couple of hours with the young singers never failed to lift his mood, to put everything else in perspective. Why risk losing all that to confess the truth to Sophia, when she had never—once or twice, tops—in the past three years shown him even a flicker of romantic interest?

  “Get over it,” he told himself loudly, angrily, as he passed before St. Margaret’s on his way to the side entrance.

  “Get over what?”

  Startled, Lucas turned and discovered Father Ryan at the top of the stone staircase, bundled in a black pea coat and a black-and-gold Bruins tuque, sweeping snow off the landing in front of the tall, ornate double doors marking the front entrance. For a moment Lucas groped for a plausible answer, but he had been raised Catholic and could not bring himself to lie to a priest on the steps of his own church. “You know,” he said, deflated.

  “Oh, that.” Father Ryan nodded and resumed sweeping. “You should ask her out.”

  “Are you kidding? Less than two months ago she broke up with her fiancé.”

  “Which means she’s single.”

  “It’s too soon.”

  Father Ryan rested his hands on the end of the broom handle, mulled it over, and shook his head. “I think I would’ve heard if there was an official mourning period.”

  “Sophia doesn’t think of me as anything more than a friend.”

  “Only because you’ve never given her reason to think of you as anything else.”

  That irked him, because he knew it was true. “Father,” he said wearily, “no offense, but I’m a little skeptical about taking romantic advice from a priest.”

  “Fair enough.” Sighing, mildly exasperated, Father Ryan gestured for Lucas to climb the stairs. “The front door’s unlocked. Save yourself the walk around the side.”

  “Thanks.” Lucas took the stairs two at a time and entered the warm vestibule as the priest held open a door. “You must really feel sorry for me.”

  The nave was warm and softly lit, and his footsteps echoed as he made his way to the piano, a magnificent Shigeru Kawai grand donated to the church by a wealthy parishioner. The same anonymous benefactor paid to have it regularly tuned by the most qualified expert in Boston, and its tone was astonishingly clear, rich, and harmonic, with excellent power and projection enhanced by the church’s superb acoustics. Lucas had never played a finer instrument, and it almost made him wish he had chosen to pursue music rather than civil engineering, except that urban planning and design was an equal, if less romantic, passion. Father Ryan might even say it was Lucas’s calling.

  As a kid he had drawn maps of imaginary cities with skyscrapers of apartments separated by wide swaths of land where residents could plant crops. As he had grown older, he had learned that those maps needed to include affordable housing for lower-income residents, and that his avenues of farmland displaced roads, which would be a hard sell before any planning committee. In college he had started out in architecture but switched to civil engineering when he saw how it brought together his two compelling ideals, sustainability and social justice.

  “Most people think those are mutually exclusive and competing paradigms, but they don’t have to be,” Lucas had told Sophia over Indian takeout one evening to celebrate a successful Easter Vigil Children’s Mass performance. “Granted, they’re still two separate movements, but they share enough goals in common that one day they may converge, and in the meantime, the tension between the two can be very productive.”

  He had stopped abruptly there, having reached the point where most people’s eyes glazed over, but Sophia had surprised him. “How so?” she asked, with apparently genuine interest.

  “Well, they can come together to improve neighborhoods in ways as complex as designing the layout of an entire city block or as simple as turning a vacant lot into a community garden.” For the next twenty minutes, as they sat on a park bench eating chicken tikka masala and aloo gobi from paper cartons, he had given her more specific examples, ambitious projects he had heard of and admired, others that had failed spectacularly, some that he had worked on during school breaks, a few that existed only on paper or in his head but which he hoped to launch someday. He had also told her about his volunteer work with Habitat for Humanity, and his absolute belief in the radical notion that everyone deserved a safe place to live.

  Eventually he had realized that he’d been holding an empty takeout container and that Sophia had set hers aside long ago, and that she had been sitting beside him, her legs curled up beside her on the bench, watching him with interest and not saying a word.

  “Sorry about that,” he had said, embarrassed. “I think I just gave you my entire doctoral thesis.”

  “Really? What a wasted opportunity.” She had shook her head, feigning dismay. “We should’ve recorded this. That would’ve saved you so much work. You could’ve just played it back and typed it in.”

  He had managed a laugh. “Thank you for not falling asleep.”

  “Why would I? I think your work is fascinating.”

  “You do?”

  She had smiled, amused. “Your surprise isn’t selling it very well at the moment, but yes, I do. It’s relevant and important. I never really thought about the social issues that go into—or should go into—planning a city. I’ll never look at a vacant lot the same way.”

  He had studied her appraisingly. “I’m never completely sure when you’re joking and when you’re being serious.”

  She had bent close to his ear and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “The real trick is to do both at the same time.”

  She had straightened, smiling, and had begun gathering up their takeout trash, but for a long moment he had only sat watching her. She had brushed her hand against his leg when she had leaned toward him, and he still felt it, the pressure and the warmth. At that moment he’d realized, with a curious mixture of exultation and alarm, that even though he had a girlfriend and she had a boyfriend, he was coming dangerously close to falling for her.

  • • •

  They had met only a few weeks before, not long after Professor Callaghan had assigned Lucas’s History and Theory of Historic Preservation class a research paper on a local building of historical significance and its role in the community. Lucas chose St. Margaret’s from the list of options because it was reasonably near his apartment, and he admired the architecture whenever he passed it. He called to arrange a site visit, and after the chipper little nun on the other end of the line assured him that he was welcome anytime, he stopped by on a Tuesday afternoon on his way to meet his girlfriend for a quick supper during the brief interval she allowed herself to emerge from the law library.

  The vestibule was empty, but as he passed through another set of doors to the nave, he spotted an older, well-dressed couple sitting in a pew near the back. Their heads were bowed and they sat closely together, the man leaning slightly against the woman as if she bore him up. Something about them seemed familiar, but rather than intrude upon their privacy, he quickly glanced away and continued up the center aisle. He had almost reached the front pew when he spotted it—the gleaming, ebony grand piano near the rows of choir seats behind the altar.

  He halted, his gaze fixed on the piano in stark admiration. From off to
his right came the soft, muffled boom of a heavy door falling shut; a moment later, a short, stoop-shouldered elderly woman in a plain gray dress and white wimple walked stiffly but briskly in. “Ah,” she exclaimed when she caught sight of him. “Admiring our lovely piano, I see.”

  He recognized the cheerful, quavering voice from the phone call. “Yes, I am. It’s a beauty.”

  She put her head to one side and peered at him with friendly curiosity through horn-rimmed glasses fastened about her neck with a silver chain. “Do you want to try it out?”

  “I’d love to.” He glanced at the couple seated in the back of the church, their faces indiscernible in the dim light. “But I don’t want to disturb anyone.”

  “It wouldn’t be a disturbance, not at all.” The nun glanced back at the couple too, then returned her gaze to Lucas, smiling. “He loves to hear people play his piano.”

  Puzzled, Lucas lowered his voice and indicated the older man with a subtle tilt of the head. “The piano belongs to him?”

  “Of course not.” The nun clasped her hands together at her waist, lifting her chin proudly. “It belongs to the church.”

  “Oh, okay.” A moment later, Lucas figured it out. He had not detected the capital H in “his”; she apparently meant that it was God’s piano, or Jesus’s. “Sure, I’d love to play it.”

  She beamed and gestured for him to proceed, and as he sat down at the piano, she settled into the front pew and watched him expectantly. He began with a Chopin étude, then played a Bach sinfonia, thinking it suited the setting and the nun might like it. He had just begun the Christmas Sonatina by Carl Reinecke when he realized that someone else had joined the audience, standing in the aisle near the nun, her hand resting on the back of the pew. A surreptitious glance revealed a young woman so beautiful, so radiant and rapt, that he stumbled over the rest of the measure and came to an abrupt halt.

  “Don’t stop,” she protested. “You play beautifully.”

  “Yes, that piano has never sounded better.” The nun gave a little start and glanced to the back of the church, where the couple sat utterly still, either watching them or lost in thought, Lucas could not tell. “Or rather, it’s rarely sounded better.”

  The younger woman dropped her bag on the front pew with a solid thunk and joined him at the piano. “Please tell me you’re Sister Joanne’s replacement.”

  “Who?”

  “Sister Joanne. She was our accompanist for years, but ever since she retired last month, I’ve been on my own at choir practice. I can play, but not as well as she does.” The young woman regarded him with such candid admiration that he was more than a little flattered. “And definitely not anywhere near as well as you.”

  “Thank you.” He rose and stepped away from the piano, and the sense that he was making a terrible mistake did not prevent him from adding, “But I’m not an accompanist.”

  Her smile faded. “You mean you weren’t responding to the notice in the church bulletin?”

  “Sorry, I wasn’t.” He realized then that he actually was sorry. “I’m here on a research assignment. I’m not a member of this parish.”

  “That’s not a requirement for the job,” the nun piped up.

  Just then, a side door opened and a dark-haired boy of about ten strolled in, followed by a girl of around nine with a younger boy, their ginger hair so alike in color and curl that they had to be brother and sister.

  “How well do you sight read?” inquired the nun as more children filed in and took their places in the choir seats.

  Lucas hesitated, reluctant to deceive the nun or to diminish himself in the eyes of the pretty choir director. “I’m not bad,” he admitted, and before he knew it he was seated at the piano again, running through scales as the children warmed up, and accompanying them as they sang a few pieces of sacred music suitable for Holy Week. He had expected the children to be all over the staff with their pitch, but they were actually quite good, and Sophia proved to be an energetic and effective teacher, drawing the best out of each young singer.

  He forgot about his research project and his dinner date until a few minutes before six, when parents began drifting into the church to pick up their children. Rehearsal ended promptly on the hour, and as the young singers closed their binders, thanked Miss Sophia, and darted off to join their parents, Lucas hastily rose and closed the lid to the keyboard. If he hurried, he could still meet Brynn for supper. He would have to defer his tour of St. Margaret’s to another day.

  Sophia approached him as he slung the strap of his messenger bag over his shoulder. “Well?” she asked, her expression tentative but hopeful. “What did you think?”

  “That was actually a lot of fun,” he admitted.

  “The job’s yours if you want it. We rehearse on Tuesdays and Fridays from four thirty until six, and we sing at the nine o’clock Mass every Sunday morning, and at the afternoon vigil Mass the first Saturday of the month. We also have a few concerts throughout the year for holidays—Christmas, Easter, the usual.”

  He knew he was too busy and ought to refuse, but Sophia’s smile was fading, telling him he had hesitated too long. “Sure, why not?” he heard himself say. He couldn’t bear to turn her down and watch her smile disappear entirely. “I’ll see you Tuesday.”

  “See you Tuesday,” she echoed, and for a moment he stood there grinning back before he remembered with a jolt that he was expected elsewhere.

  He hurried to the law library, composing apologies and inventing excuses for his tardiness. Fortunately, he needed none of them. When he found Brynn at her usual table—laptop open, books spread around, long, fine blond hair tucked behind her ears as she fixed her gaze alternately upon page and screen—he discovered that she had been so focused on her studies that she had not missed him.

  Over supper, he amused Brynn with the story of how he had been coerced into performing for the choir rehearsal, entirely neglecting his research in the process. Without deliberately meaning to do so, he made Sister Winifred the clever mastermind and Sophia a secondary character, scarcely more than the nun’s sidekick.

  “I can’t picture it,” said Brynn, slipping her hand into his as they left the restaurant. “You, playing hymns in a church with a bunch of kids.”

  Bewildered, Lucas halted in the middle of the sidewalk. “I love kids. I have four nieces and two nephews, and I’m crazy about them. I think I’m going to enjoy working with the ones at the church.”

  “You didn’t agree to do it.”

  “I did, actually.”

  “You can’t,” she protested. “Your schedule is much too full to squeeze in a regular commitment like that. Anything that doesn’t directly contribute to finishing your degree is a waste of time.”

  “I don’t agree, and I can manage my schedule.” When Brynn sighed and shook her head, he added, “They need an accompanist, and some of us—” He squeezed her hand and raised it to his lips. “Some of us actually enjoy a break from work now and then. You’ll laugh, but I feel like I’d be giving something back to the community.”

  She did laugh, but then she kissed him. “You’re such a bleeding heart. It’s adorable.”

  He invited her to their performances, but she always declined, citing dozens of other obligations. He accepted that. The choir was his thing, not hers, and third-year law students were notoriously busy. Then one Friday in September she surprised him by suggesting that they meet at St. Margaret’s after rehearsal and go out to dinner and a concert. He half expected her to cancel at the last minute, but she surprised him anew by arriving in time to observe the last half hour of rehearsal from the third row.

  Brynn looked beautiful in a light flowered dress and a little sweater, her long hair held back from her face by a complicated-looking clip and flowing like gold down to her shoulder blades. Lucas proudly introduced her to Father Ryan, Sister Winifred, a few of the kids who were brave and curious
enough to want to meet her on their way out, and, of course, Sophia. Everyone was kind and welcoming, but they could not resist embarrassing Lucas by praising his playing well out of proportion to his talent and thanking Brynn for sharing him with them. Brynn endured it with her usual grace and poise, so well that they were halfway to the restaurant before he realized she was upset.

  “You never mentioned that Sophia was gorgeous,” Brynn said tightly as they waited at a crosswalk for the light to change.

  “Is she?”

  The light changed, and she began briskly crossing the street. “You also never mentioned she was young.”

  “She’s our age, twenty-eight, maybe a year or two younger.”

  “Yes, I know that now. You made her sound like she was ready for the geriatric ward.” They reached the opposite curb, where Brynn halted, planted a fist on one hip, and frowned up at him. “I thought she was a nun.”

  “Why did you think that?” He might have omitted certain significant details, but he never would have described Sophia that way. “I talked about Father Ryan, Sister Winifred, and Sophia. I never called her Sister Sophia.”

  She said nothing for a long moment. “Lucas, should I be jealous?”

  “Of course not.” He reached for her hand, but she would not let him take it. “Sophia has a boyfriend.”

  Brynn’s long, golden hair spun out in a fan as she turned and strode quickly down the sidewalk away from him. After a moment, he hurried to catch up with her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Sophia’s a friend and a colleague. That’s all. That’s not just her choice. It’s mine too.”