Candles Burning

by Tabitha King

  I was very relieved, as the continued absence of the usual preparations suggested that the holiday was not going to be observed at Merrymeeting. Mama told me to stop being silly; we were bereaved, church-mouse poor, and Christmas had become too commercial anyway. We would observe the true religious meaning of Christmas.

  Children were rarely among the guests at Merrymeeting and I have since wondered if Miz Verlow obtained that tree only for me. It was white, and looked like the roof antenna for a television set adorned with bottlebrushes. Mama thought it vulgar. We had always had real Christmas trees.

  The fake tree was fine by me. We set it up in the larger parlor. Miz Verlow gave me a spray bottle of some clear fluid that she had compounded herself—fire retardant, she said—and I sprayed the tree. The fluid smelled like pine with a hint of peppermint in it. I wondered why a tin tree had to be fireproofed, but it was only one of the many peculiar things that grown-ups did, like throwing salt over their shoulders, or pretending that they didn’t go to the toilet.

  The decorations Miz Verlow brought home with the fake tree consisted of a string of colored lights that were supposed to look like small candles in Victorian lamps, and bubbled when they warmed up, and a dozen silver and gold balls the size of goose eggs. I managed to break eight of the shiny balls. The tree looked rather naked.

  Miz Verlow studied it for a moment, sighed, and went to the drawer in the desk where the cards were kept. She fished around it and came up with a greasy old beat-up deck. She tossed them to me. I recognized them in midair as the ones we had used when we heard Mamadee’s voice.

  I gripped them tightly. Did Miz Verlow want to invite Mamadee to speak again?

  “Jean,” Miz Verlow said to Dr. Keeling, who was ensconced in an overstuffed chair in one corner.

  Like the other guests and Mama, Dr. Keeling had been observing the assembly and decoration of the tree, but she had not participated. None of them had.

  “Don’t you know of something to do with cards?” Miz Verlow asked her.

  Dr. Keeling cocked an eyebrow and then shrugged.

  “Calley,” she said, “bring me those cards, if you will.”

  I brought them to her, and she poured them out of their faded, ragged little box and into her right hand in a single fluid motion. She let the box fall into her lap. She twitched a single card from the deck and set the remainder of the deck on the arm of the chair. Her fingers seemed to flash—I thought I saw an actual spark—and suddenly there was an odd stiff little bird sitting in her palm. She held it out to me.

  Clever folding had metamorphosed the king of hearts into this angular, unnatural bird.

  “Crane,” said Dr. Keeling. Her fingers hovered over the remainder of the deck and flickered and flashed and there was another one in her palm. “Origami.”

  “A bird,” Mama told Father Valentine. “Jean’s made a bird from a playing card.”

  Everyone was smiling, including Mama.

  “Isn’t that the cleverest thing,” Mama said.

  Dr. Keeling made the next crane in slow motion, so I could see the pattern. Then she guided me one step at a time through the folding of my first crane.

  Everybody applauded, and Mr. Quigley whistled through his long bony fingers, and everybody laughed.

  Sitting on the floor, I turned the rest of the deck into origami cranes while Dr. Keeling passed a needle and thread through each bird and looped it. Then I hung each of them on the tree, with Mr. Quigley’s help on the highest ones.

  Everything was so jolly that I let go my fear of provoking ghosts.

  When Miz Verlow turned off the lights and turned on the lights on the Christmas tree, everyone again applauded and laughed and agreed it was all quite magical. Then the lights on the Christmas tree wavered, producing a general murmur of alarm.

  Forty-three

  CALLIOPE, said a woman’s voice unlike the voice of any woman in the room. The voice was low and amused and affectionate.

  Mama bolted to her feet with a shriek. She looked around the dark room frantically.

  Another country heard from, continued the voice, which seemed to be emanating from the fake tree. Roberta Ann, get a grip on yourself. I should not like to have to ask for someone to slap you out of hysteria. Remember our talk about Shakespeare’s indelicacy? There, you see it’s only me. Only I would know about it.

  “Grandmama?” whispered Mama, more or less at the tree.

  Calliope, said the voice, I fear that paper folding is not your forte. Still, it is a charmingly eccentric tree.

  “What do you want, Grandmama?” Mama asked. “Why are you here?”

  To play the part, the voice replied. A lovely tinkling laugh like a piano glissando shivered the air. Of the Ghost of Christmas Past, dear child.

  Mama cried out in frustration. “You’re talking in riddles!”

  You could call it that, agreed the voice. Let the child stay up tonight to watch that the candle in the window does not go out. I would not care to be responsible for the consequences, should it be extinguished.

  Miz Verlow spoke abruptly from the darkness. “As you wish.”

  She sounded rather frightened, to me.

  Thank you, the voice said. Calliope, the flap of a wing, a passing breath, a draft from a closing door, could bring down more than darkness. Is there anything drearier than a snuffed candle? A puddle of viscid cooling wax peppered with smuts from a vanished flame? Promise me.

  I hesitated and then whispered, “I promise.”

  The Christmas tree lights flickered on again. Miz Verlow hastily turned on the other lights. The tree looked utterly fake and trashy.

  Miz Verlow looked around the room. “Well,” she said calmly, “I think it’s time for mulled cider.”

  “Here, here,” said Father Valentine. “Nothing like mulled cider to speed a spirit on its way. I’ve never seen a more beautiful woman of any age. Who was that extraordinary woman? And when did she die?”

  “You saw her?” I asked Father Valentine.

  “Of course I did.” He chuckled. “No point in being blind except to see what the sighted don’t.”

  Mama flung up her hands and said, “You are all nuts.”

  Mr. Quigley and Mr. Slater got up to move a chair next to the window in the foyer where the candle burned.

  “Calley is not sitting up all night next to that silly candle,” Mama said.

  “Yes, she is,” said Miz Verlow, which produced visible relief in everyone else except Mama.

  “I am her mama—”

  “Miz Dakin,” Miz Verlow said, “I am not feebleminded. Please restrain yourself from saying the obvious.”

  “I will decide when she goes to bed—”

  Miz Verlow said nothing. No one else spoke. Mama looked around nervously. Everyone was studiously solemn and disapproving, except me. I was about to pee myself.

  “Excuse me,” I cried in a panicky voice, and raced for the powder room under the stairs.

  Father Valentine rumbled a laugh behind me and the tension among the grown-ups broke at once.

  On my return, none of the guests said a word to me about what had just occurred. They ignored me with an almost religious fervor, as if I were the ghost in the house. Much was made of the mulled cider, and the savouries that Miz Verlow and I put out with it. All their conversation sounded like beans in a rattle to me, a panicky clickclick-snicksnick.

  When bedtime came, Mama went upstairs without a word, and without me.

  Miz Verlow brought me a chamber pot and a thermos of coffee.

  “Calley Dakin, if you find yourself becoming sleepy, give yourself a slap across the face. Pinch yourself between your fingers.” She slipped a straight pin through the collar of my pajamas. “If all else fails, prick yourself with this pin. Between the fingers, between the toes, anywhere really sensitive.”

  The double pocket doors into the large parlor stood open, allowing me to see the fake Christmas tree. Miz Verlow had turned off the parlor lights but left on the Chris
tmas tree lights. It was not quite a Christmas card, for the hooks under the fireplace mantel sported socks, real socks. One of Father Valentine’s black nylon socks, one of Mama’s silk stockings, one of Mr. Quigley’s long brown cotton knit socks, one of Mr. Slater’s navy-blue socks, one of Mrs. Slater’s nylon stockings, one of Dr. Keeling’s white ragg wool socks, one of Miz Verlow’s knee-highs, and one of my pink cotton socks. The whole business was my doing; I had asked Miz Verlow if we were going to hang stockings. Rarely was Miz Verlow disconcerted but that question unsettled her, though she tried to cover her confusion with a quick of course. It made me wonder if Miz Verlow had ever celebrated Christmas or even believed in Santa Claus.

  Staying awake all night was harder work than I had ever imagined. After everyone had gone to bed, it was boring. I could not read or do anything that would take my eyes away from the candle in the window. I sipped at the heavily sweetened coffee, and listened to the house and the people in it.

  Mama coughed, put out her last Kool cigarette of the day, and remarked to no one, “Damn my feet hurt and where’s Calley? Watching a stupid candle.” Later: “At least I know Grandmama is dead.”

  Father Valentine’s murmured prayers were punctuated with flatulence.

  Mr. Quigley’s snores were audible to anyone with ordinary hearing.

  Miz Verlow turned the pages of a book for more than an hour before the click of her lamp and the sigh of her relaxing into her pillow amid the soft whispering settle of her sheets.

  Mrs. Slater kissed Mr. Slater and they both turned over, away from each other, and yanked at their coverlet from either side.

  Dr. Keeling’s toenails snapped between the clippers. The clippings made a dry tick in a small glass dish. When the snapping stopped, she made an emery board grate, and when she was done with the emery board, she spilled the clippings onto a piece of paper on her dresser, folded it carefully, and placed it in her handkerchief drawer, to be burned in the morning. Then she knelt down next to her bed and prayed.

  NowIlaymedowntosleepIpraythedogmysoultokeep ifIshoulddiebeforeIwakeIpraythedogmybonestotake.

  Once under her covers, she fell immediately to sleep.

  I watched the candle burn and grew sleepier. I pricked myself with the pin. Twisting and shivering, the flame of the candle rose its inch above the melting wax spindle and the faint breath of smoke trailed away from it with my every breath.

  Calliope, said my mama’s grandmama’s voice from the candle, and she sighed. What a person has to do for a private conversation.

  “Great-grandmama?”

  What a mouthful of “grrrs” and “mas” that is. Call me Cosima.

  “Yes’m. Cosima.”

  Child, the first person who knocks upon the door on Christmas morning, you must greet with the lighted candle in your hand.

  “Yes’m.”

  Not everything that you hear is true. Don’t say yes’m, please.

  “No’m.”

  Another way to look at it is that truth is a slippery business. Be careful whom you trust. Trust no one wholly.

  “You too?”

  Facile wisecracks waste my time, little girl.

  “Beg pardon,” I said.

  Oh, that’s hardly necessary. You are the vortex, my darling child, the eye of the storm. That is not your doing, but, well, the weather. Forces flowing naturally, so to speak. Do I confuse you?

  I nodded affirmatively.

  Ah, she said. Well, you are still a child. How I wish that I could linger long enough to tell you everything.

  “Daddy,” I blurted.

  Hush, child! she cried. Call a second ghost and one of us will be obliterated!

  “But—”

  Butts belong in ashtrays!

  The candle flame flared and whipped violently for a second. I thought it would surely go out then and panic choked me. Then the flame steadied and shrank and was normal again.

  “My candle burns at both ends,” Cosima said, “it will not last the night; but, ah my foes, and oh, my love; it gives a lovely light.” She laughed as if very pleased with herself. Calley, point at the candle.

  A gentle push on my arm thrust my finger into the flame. I snatched it hastily back. The sting of the flame bit it hard, making me wince and shudder and bury my exquisitely painful, singed fingertip in the opposite fist.

  Burn bright and fierce, Calley, came the whisper from somewhere over my shoulder.

  The shock of the burn wakened me past mere wakening. A wash of energy made me intensely aware not only of the substance of the material world around me, but that I was not sleepy, not the least bit sleepy or tired. I know now that there is nothing supernatural about such a state of mind; I was merely experiencing the clarity and sense of super reality common to those who have stayed awake all night. I suspect that feeling is one of the addictions of the night owl. But then, I took it for the way that Cosima’s ghost must feel in this world.

  A glance at the mantel in the parlor showed me that each sock now hung heavy. For an instant, I thought each was filled with a legless foot. I blinked and the socks were merely laden with small mysterious objects. How they had all been filled without my seeing, I could not imagine.

  Around the edges of the draperies, I could see that the dark had thinned enough to see through. Christmas Day was at hand.

  Forty-four

  AT the first mechanical caw-caw! of the doorbell, I nearly fell out of the chair. My sudden movement sent the flame of the taper wavering, at which violent anxiety froze me in place. I could not breathe again until the flame stood up straight again. The only time that I had ever heard the doorbell previously was when I was playing with it. It was one of those old brass bells that made a charming metallic caw-caw! when its exterior wingish keys were turned. Due to the constant exposure to salt, this particular bell was rather hoarse in its chime. I remember the odd seawater taste of it very well. All one morning I had studied the mechanism, and Mama caught me licking it. She advised me that I was never to touch the doorbell again, on pain of having my hands chopped off, let alone lick it, which would cause my tongue to be cut off. Miz Verlow and Cleonie and Perdita never complained at all; indeed, I thought that they seemed to be amused, at least until Mama threatened to cut off my tongue.

  The doorbell ground out its salty caw-caw! again. Upstairs, sleepers began to stir in response.

  With my finger burnt, finding a way to pick up the candlestick with my dominant hand required considerable caution and effort. The actual gripping of the candlestick intensified the hurt. Fortunately, I was only steps from the door.

  I turned the key in its keyhole with the weaker grip of my other hand. The innards of the lock fell over; I tried the knob. It yielded slowly. I thought surely the bell would chime again, angry as the screeching pain at the tip of my finger. The door creaked on its hinges. I peered out at our first caller of the day.

  In the cold wind off the Gulf, a woman hunched shivering, her hands shoved into the pockets of a thin Windbreaker. Her face looked frozen—carved of some semitranslucent plastic, like the glow-in-the-dark Virgin Mary on the dashboard of Mr. Quigley’s Chevy Bel Air. Through thick glasses rimmed with frost, her unblinking eyes seemed more like eyes frozen in ice cubes than those of a living person. The thickly glossed lipstick around her mouth made a caricature of lips. A fancy gauzy scarf with sequins on it circled her throat. She wore tennis shoes with the rubber toes separating from the dirty canvas fabric.

  I let the door fall open and thrust the candlestick at her.

  She took her left hand from its sheltering pocket and grasped it. Instantly the candle’s flame guttered and died. Her gaze met mine and her head dipped slightly. Her knuckles were reddened and chapped from the cold, her fingernails blue with it. Like her face, her hands might have been made of holy-mother plastic.

  “Merry Christmas,” I blurted.

  In a throaty rasp that I only understood because she spoke slowly, she said Oh, is it? Is this—Merrymeeting?

  I no
dded numbly. She had been heralded by my dead great-grandmama. Like Mamadee, she was uncertain about her location. But I hardly needed to deduce that she was some kind of ghost, as I heard it in her voice. After all, I had been listening to the voices of the dead since birth and it would be peculiar if every passing day did not sharpen my sense of distinction between those voices and the voices of the living.

  I am Tallulah Jordan, she said.

  I stepped aside; she entered. I closed the door behind her against the wind.

  “No one but me is up yet,” I told her. “I’m going to make some fresh coffee.”

  I’d like that, she said.

  She was either a coffee-drinking ghost or approved of my making it.

  In the kitchen, I gestured toward Cleonie and Perdita’s little table. Tallulah Jordan placed the candlestick on it. She scraped a chair away from the table and turned it around and sat in it backward, watching me as I prepared coffee.

  “I can do tea, if you’d rather,” I said.

  No, no, coffee’s the thing for me. She took off her glasses and polished and dried them on a linen napkin, before putting them back on again.

  I prepared the coffee with one hand tucked into my armpit. Awkward as it was, I was less likely to drop something if I didn’t use the hand with the burnt finger. While the coffee brewed, I toasted and buttered some bread. When I put the plate on the table in front of her, she tucked away the toast as if she had not eaten for a week. Or years. She licked her lips. I poured her orange juice to follow her toast. She reached eagerly for the mug of coffee when I offered it.

  I took the opportunity to study her while I could. By the noises above us, I knew that we would be interrupted very soon.

  Bony chapped wrists and fingers, bony frozen face, her chinos belted with worn woven leather, she looked like death on a bad day. Tallulah Jordan wasn’t just underfed, she was emaciated. Frail. Her hair was stiff and frosted with salt blown off the Gulf. It was black hair, that solid black that shouts dye.

  I poured her a second mug, aware of her studying me as I had her.

  What’s your name? she asked. What’s wrong with your hand?