by Luanne Rice
Bridget had just listened, not letting on that some of the smoke was from her own brother—Danny had sometimes snuck a cigarette when their father was out selling trees and Mrs. Quinn was watching one of her programs.
Right now Bridget’s attention was riveted to the TV. The Live at Five newscaster stood in front of the tree at Rockefeller Center, just thirty blocks away from where Bridget sat.
“In two days, thirty thousand bulbs will be lit on this eighty-foot Norway spruce from Wall, New Jersey,” the reporter said as the camera showed the beautiful dark tree silhouetted by city lights. Clips were shown of the tree being hoisted into place last Thursday. When the camera started panning the crowd, Bridget literally dove at the screen.
Some people held signs reading, “Hello to Brisbane!” “Hi Mom and Dad in Columbus,” “Happy Holidays to everyone in Louisville!” Bridget scanned every face, her pulse racing. She knew the person she was looking for would not be holding a sign. He would be standing in the background, trying to hide. He would be breathing in the smell of pine, gazing at the sharp black-green needles, at the bark glistening with golden sap, at the fierce point aimed straight up at the stars. He was the big tree’s guardian and shepherd.
Now the news cut to a fire on the Upper West Side, and Bridget closed her eyes, thinking about her brother. Danny had always believed that Christmas trees had souls. He’d always been fascinated by weather, and he’d make up stories about how the snow angels breathed life into the trees. Sunlight produced chlorophyll, creating cloaks of green needles. “They’ve got spirits of their own, Bridey,” he’d say. “Every last one of them. They’re alive, roots going down into the earth and branches reaching up to the sky.”
“And we cut them down,” Bridget had said, stricken. “And kill them!”
“Nah, don’t think like that. The trees drop seeds in the ground before the harvest—to make sure they carry on—depending on precipitation and prevailing winds, of course.”
“Danny … not weather again. Tell me about the trees!”
“But the weather says it all, Bridey! Remember all that heavy rain last week, how we had to wait for the low pressure system to slowly drift off the coast, bringing a slow end to the rainfall? Well, even after that, we had flash flood warnings, and NEXRAD said—”
“Jeez, Danny. Not NEXRAD. I don’t care about weather reports. I want to hear about the trees. The snow angels bring them to life, and the sun cloaks them in green needles, and we kill them!”
“The trees do die, it’s true. The minute the saws cut through their trunks—”
“That’s terrible,” Bridget had cried.
“But the thing is, Bridey,” Danny said, “they come back to life.”
“How?”
“Well, when the lights go on.”
“When the—”
“You know. When a person takes the tree home and puts lights on it.”
“When they love it enough?”
“Something like that.”
Danny was too tough to admit he was doing it, but Bridey had seen him looking over their father’s trees before they were bought. He would stand in their shadow, the air sharp and cold, waiting for someone to pass by and take one home. Perhaps, like Bridey, he’d be dreaming of the great apartments—high in a skyscraper, cozy in a townhouse—and the brilliant possibilities that could happen here in New York City.
“Just look up there,” he’d say to Bridget, pointing up at the Empire State Building, lit up green and red for the holidays. “What kind of great city would paint the sky like that? Do you know the electricity it takes? You could light all of Nova Scotia with the power it takes to do that.”
“You wouldn’t like living here, Danny! A month is one thing, but you’d never last longer than that. There are no trees here, except for our cut ones and the skinny ones growing out of the sidewalks. No forests. Where would you find owls and hawks here? Where could you watch storms coming?”
“I didn’t say I wanted to live here. But you’re wrong about the trees, and nature, and storm watching. New York has it all. There’re places,” Danny had said in his secretive way, making Bridget wonder where he went on his wanderings. Just then Live at Five ended and News 4 New York came on, with more shots of Rockefeller Center. Snow flurries falling, people skating on the ice, the statue of Prometheus gleaming gold behind them, the Christmas tree dark and majestic, rising above hordes of people waving at the camera.
Now, eyes glued to her TV, Bridget prayed to see her brother. He hadn’t come to find her yet—and she and her father had been back in New York for a whole day. Her fingernails dug into her palms. “Danny, Danny, I have to see you,” she said. She stared into the crowd of happy faces, people visiting from all over, here to experience the Christmas magic of New York City: magic so powerful, it had captured her brother, taken him from his family.
“Where are you, Danny?” she asked the television set with her throat aching as she watched the snow catching in the spruce needles and thought of her brother’s snow angels. “Will you come back to us? You have to …”
The tree was dark. Its spirit was dead and wouldn’t come alive for two days—until the lights were lit. Bridget knew that her brother was there. He might not come back to Chelsea right away—he’d be remembering how mad their father had been last year. But when he did return, Bridget was ready to celebrate. She’d brought all her finery. The whole family would go to the Plaza for tea—it would be wonderful and special. But until then Bridget imagined him standing guard over the big tree in Rockefeller Center. Watching it get covered in snow …
She was so intent, watching for Danny on TV, that she didn’t hear the footsteps in the alley outside. One of the garbage cans rattled—that got her attention, and she looked up. She heard a scratching sound, like fingernails scrabbling on wood, but she attributed it to Mrs. Quinn’s little dog, Murphy. Murphy was always wanting to go out … In fact, there she was, barking now.
“Did you hear that?” Mrs. Quinn asked, walking straight through the sitting room, Murphy at her heels. Murphy jumped up on the chair beside the window, acting very brave and barking ferociously, as if she were a German shepherd instead of a tiny Yorkshire terrier.
“I didn’t hear anything,” Bridget said, eyes on the screen.
“Those street people, going through the garbage,” she said, getting started on one of her pet peeves. “Looking for empty cans to return again. I wouldn’t mind them so much, if they wouldn’t leave such a mess.” Just then she must have noticed the TV turned on. “Now, what’s this, young lady? Aren’t you supposed to be doing homework?”
Bridget couldn’t reply. She didn’t dare turn around. If she did, Mrs. Quinn would see that her eyes were red and full of tears. Didn’t Mrs. Quinn know that Danny was a street person now? Where was he sleeping? What was he eating? The shepherd of the trees, the boy who loved to watch storms, needed to stay strong and to be safe.
Oh, Danny, Bridget thought silently, tears starting to flow as she gazed at the crowd on TV.
3
Every Thursday morning Catherine and Lizzie met for breakfast at Moonstruck, the diner on the southwest corner of Twenty-third Street and Ninth Avenue. On her way there, Catherine passed the tree man. A light snow had fallen during the night, blanketing Chelsea in white.
The man, unaware of Catherine approaching, stood very still, holding a cardboard coffee cup. She saw the steam rising, imagined the cup warming his hands. He was gazing at his trees—covered with snow, silver and white ice crystals glinting in the early morning sun as if the pines were still growing on the farm in Nova Scotia.
“Good morning to you. Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?” he asked as she drew near.
“Morning,” she said, picking up the pace.
“Maybe you’ll buy one on your way home tonight!” he called after her.
By the time Catherine got to Moonstruck, Lizzie had already dropped Lucy off at school and was in a booth by the window, reading the Times
. She wore a dark green satin vest over a sleek maroon challis dress. Her green Bavarian-style hat matched the vest and had a small red silk poinsettia pinned to the taffeta band. Catherine pulled off her black coat, scarf, and gloves, hung them on the wall.
“Now, tell me about the message you left on my answering machine,” Lizzie said, the instant Catherine sat down. “About what happened yesterday—the caroling incident.”
Catherine heard the slight tease in Lizzie’s invisible italics but ignored it and ran through the story of what she’d seen in the lobby of her building yesterday—the little girl singing off-key. “You should have seen her face—the color just drained out of it. She was so upset—all the other kids just kept singing their hearts out, and she just stood there trying not to cry. I wanted to literally wring the choir director’s neck.”
“But you didn’t?”
“No.”
“And you didn’t rescue the girl and take her to a better choir that would appreciate her more?”
“No.”
“My, you’re making progress!” Lizzie said, grinning as the waiter came to take their order. They both got the same things: coffee, fresh orange juice, and toasted poppyseed bagels with butter.
“It made me think of Lucy,” Catherine said.
“Lucy would have ignored her and started singing twice as loudly.”
“And it made me think of Brian.”
“Everything makes you think of Brian,” Lizzie replied softly.
“He wouldn’t have been able to stand by, you know? He never could take any kind of injustice. Even in a choir.” Catherine closed her eyes, to conjure up Brian’s face. She saw his bright green eyes, dark hair, square jaw. She saw him in his suit and tie, charging in to save the day. He had left his lucrative law practice to work for an education advocacy program because he believed in helping people, and she had fallen in love with him because … he was Brian.
“Cath, you have to stop this,” Lizzie said.
“It was the way the choir lady gestured at her,” Catherine said. “So sharp and mean—she made the little girl cry. What’s the point of leading a group of kids, helping them to shine, to sing, if you’re not going to do it nicely?”
“I know,” Lizzie said. “Sounds as if she’s missing the spirit of the season.”
Their breakfasts came, and they started to eat. Catherine thought about Lizzie’s words: the spirit of the season. Catherine used to have it, but it had been in short supply these last three years. As she chewed her bagel, her gaze drifted out the window, to the Christmas tree man.
“Have you seen the tree guy?” Catherine asked. “He’s back—there he is, right in front of your shop.”
“Sure, I’ve noticed him. How can I not? He’s hot—I sit in my shop and stare out the window, picturing him without his jacket on. Without his shirt on. Cutting pine trees in the burning Nova Scotia sun. His muscular forearms getting all nice and tense, sawing branches. Sweaty …”
“Stop it.”
Lizzie waved her hand. “I’m single, why shouldn’t I?”
Catherine didn’t really have an answer for that. Lizzie had just broken up with a man she’d loved for too long. He hadn’t wanted to marry her, take on raising Lucy, a readymade family, a fact that Catherine thought made him dumb, bad, and foolish.
“What am I supposed to do? Sit around and pretend to be a tree? Made of wood and bark and needles? Instead of a woman with hormones and emotions and a need to be noticed? Does he check you out when you walk by?”
“The tree man?”
“Whose name we both know is Christopher Byrne, by the way. But yes—the tree man.”
“I guess. He wants to sell me a tree.”
Lizzie tilted her head. With her hat already fashionably askew, her head looked as if it were about to fall onto her shoulder.
“You could be kind to him, oh you of the bleeding heart.”
“It’s easier not to. All I have to do is remember last year.”
Lizzie shook her head. “He tried to hold on to his son. He didn’t want his kid to stay behind in New York and become a street urchin. Do you ever think of it that way?”
“Brian would have stepped right in and broken up the fight,” Catherine said, and just saying his name filled her with so much emotion, she had to pause and let it pass.
Lizzie let a few seconds pass, and then she spoke. “We’re coming up on Brian’s third anniversary, I know.”
“I saw the first ghosts last night,” Catherine said.
“They always come the first of December,” Lizzie said, “at the same time as the Christmas trees.”
Catherine glanced out the diner window. The sun had risen above the low buildings and was melting the snow on Christopher Byrne’s row of trees. Maybe that was why she didn’t like seeing him—his arrival always reminded her of losing Brian.
“Father Cusack asked for you last night,” Lizzie said, changing gears. “He said the soup kitchen needs you.”
Catherine missed standing in the big kitchen at St. Lucy’s, helping to cook and serve meals, feed the hungry. She and Brian had done it together, every Sunday night, since they’d first gotten married, nine years ago. Then, when he left Slade & Linden to start work at the Family Orchard Program, he had more work than he could handle. Catherine had understood, so she had enlisted Lizzie to join her on Sundays.
“I pass by St. Lucy’s and think of our wedding,” Catherine said. “The most beautiful day ever, so full of love that was supposed to last forever. Blessed by Father Cusack. And as he said, by God and St. Lucy and all the angels and saints. I think of that day, and all the other happy days—Lucy’s christening, with me and Brian as godparents … and then I think of Brian’s funeral.”
“I know, darling,” Lizzie said.
“I’ll never set foot in there again.”
“Okay.”
“Right now, at work for Mr. Rheinbeck, I have to find images of all the angels in New York architecture—statues, cornices, building ornaments—and even that makes me mad. Where were the angels when Brian died?”
Lizzie didn’t reply. She just sat there across the booth listening. Catherine blinked back tears. This was such a hard time of year. Glancing out the window, she saw a customer stopping by the trees. Everyone wanted to put up holiday decorations, sing Christmas carols, feel happy. But how was that possible, when terrible things happened to the people they loved? Catherine wiped her eyes and wondered.
Checking her watch, Catherine realized it was getting late. She had to get to work, so she counted out the money for her part of the bill.
“Oh,” Lizzie said, rummaging through her bag, “I almost forgot.”
“What’s this?” Catherine asked, staring at the envelope Lizzie put on the table. It was plain white except for the letter C.
“It’s from a secret admirer,” Lizzie said.
“Harry?” Catherine asked, smiling in spite of herself.
“Houdini himself. You’ll have to let me know what he says—I was dying to open the envelope.”
“I will,” Catherine said, walking with her best friend up to the cash register. “I tell you everything.”
“About most things,” Lizzie said as they walked outside, onto the street. “But when it comes to Harry, I know you have your secrets.”
Catherine just smiled and gave Lizzie a hug and kiss, then hurried toward the subway. The sidewalk was still snowy in patches, and she nearly slipped. She ran down the stairs and jumped onto a crowded E train, just as it was about to pull away. Jostled by other straphangers, she slung her arm around the pole and managed to pull the letter open.
It was one sheet of white paper, completely blank except for one line:
“Will you let me in?”
Catherine closed her eyes, and as the subway rattled beneath the city streets, she knew she would.
Christy Byrne was out working in the frigid air, wide awake in that jangling way he always felt when he hadn’t gotten enough sleep. He fel
t hyperaware: the rising sun seemed like white fire coming up over the tops of Chelsea’s brick buildings, the sunlight spreading on the street like molten gold. The bitter-cold air seeped down his neck and up his jacket sleeves. New York was so much farther south than Nova Scotia, but the temperature seemed more frigid. Maybe that’s because Danny was out in it.
Christy said hello to the shopkeepers and delivery people, to the neighborhood residents on their way to work. He said hello to the shy, sad woman—he didn’t know her name—but she always wore black. Well, in that way, so did every stylish woman in New York. But this one was different. Christy would see her in her black suits, her black coat, her black jeans and sweater on weekends, and somehow know that she was in mourning.
Behind her silver-rimmed glasses, she had kind eyes. They were dark gray, shining. He remembered that she used to walk past with a man—they’d laugh, hold hands, and some Christmases they’d bought a tree. But the man had been gone for about three years now. Now the woman was alone. She’d stop into the bonnet shop, have tea with Liz, the store owner, and her daughter. The three of them seemed close. Christy was glad of it.
The shy woman acted unfriendly this year—as if she had seen or heard about the fight he’d had with Danny, and about Christy getting arrested. Lots of the neighbors treated him differently. It hurt him—it did. He wanted to stop people as they passed by, tell them what he’d been feeling when he’d wrapped his arms around his son, tried to keep him from wriggling free like a seal trying to escape a fisherman’s net. He wanted to tell the Chelsea residents—especially the shy woman—that he’d been torn up inside, half out of his mind, afraid of losing his boy.
But he held the words in, kept his privacy and tried to hold on to his dignity as much as possible in front of the people who’d heard him yelling, saw him wild and turned inside out last Christmas in the moments before Danny had run away, and before the cops had handcuffed Christy and put him in the squad car.
Last night Christy had gone out looking, as he had the night before and as he would until he found his son. Christy had closed up the tree stand at nine o’clock, in time to get inside to see Bridget before she went to bed. The minute he tucked her in and heard her prayers, Christy was off.