Silver Bells

by Luanne Rice

  “Catherine,” Lizzie said, grabbing her friend’s hands, shaking them gently. Her eyes were beseeching. “Brian … we loved Brian, we all did. But he’s gone, darling. He’s not coming back to tell you what to do …”

  “Stop! Don’t say that, Lizzie. You don’t know what he said to me. He promised—”

  “It’s been three years,” Lizzie said. “I love you so much, and every December … I watch you go away. This is the first time since Brian died that I’ve seen you return to life, have a little fun. The sparkle’s come back to your eyes, just a little. I want to see more of it, Cath.”

  “But Brian’s ghost—”

  “Catherine, Brian isn’t the ghost in this house. You are!”

  Catherine bit her lip, feeling as if her best friend had just slapped her across the face. Her whole body was shaking, and she couldn’t look Lizzie in the eye. Upstairs the girls were laughing, playing “Jingle Bells” on the piano.

  “You’re really struggling with this,” Lizzie said, pushing herself up. “I don’t have to be at St. Lucy’s for a couple of hours. Why don’t I take the girls to the diner, so you can think about it?”

  “That’s a good idea,” Catherine said, shocked by how much she wanted Lizzie out of her house.

  Lizzie pushed herself up from the floor, going to the foot of the staircase to call Lucy and Bridget. They came running down, and Catherine heard Lizzie ask them if they wanted to go out. All excited, they went to get their coats.

  “Aren’t you coming with us?” Bridget asked, looking up at Catherine with wide eyes.

  “No,” she said, trying to smile. “I have something I have to do.”

  “Does it have to do with … ,” Bridget asked, but she left the sentence unfinished, the unspoken name shimmering between them. Catherine gazed into her eyes—they were filled with unbridled hope, love, anxiety. “I love them so much,” Bridget said. “My father and my brother. Why can’t they talk to each other? I don’t understand why it has to be this way.”

  “Why does it?” Lucy asked. “I can talk to my mom.”

  “It’s different up on the farm. My pa gets up so early. Out the door before the sun is up. And then, when he gets home, he has to fix dinner for us. We talk about stuff … school, the trees. Danny used to pull out his charts and show us where the next storm was—you know, way up in the Arctic, or picking up steam over the North Atlantic. I liked that, because it always warned Pa of what was coming.”

  “That sounds important,” Catherine said.

  “It was,” Bridget said, sounding wistful.

  “But I still don’t get it,” Lucy said stubbornly, “why your brother couldn’t tell your father he wanted to stay in New York.”

  Bridget shook her head. “Danny used to say we had to solve our problems on our own, not bother him. I just wish that Danny could have talked to him about something besides the weather. I just wish my family could be together again.”

  “Just keep loving them both,” Catherine said, with Lizzie and Lucy hovering beside them. The words felt so inadequate. She wanted to hug the girl, tell her that everything would work out, that her family would be together. But knew that once people broke apart—however it happened—sometimes the closeness they’d had was gone for good.

  Catherine leaned close as Lizzie kissed her cheek, their words already blown over. Then Lizzie and Lucy bundled Bridget off, closing the door behind them. Alone in the hallway, Catherine sat down on the stairs. Shivering, she wrapped her arms around herself. Her house felt cold and empty, just like a tomb. Lizzie was right—there was no life here. Three years without any sign, and Catherine was still waiting. Christy was selling his trees just a few blocks north—all she had to do was put on her coat and go see him. She owed him the truth.

  But she couldn’t do it. Maybe she was wrong to have gotten so involved. Her heart felt so heavy; something deep inside was propelling her up the stairs, four flights to the attic room. She knew how cold it would be up there, and how lonely. But she wasn’t ready to leave it, not yet.

  Not ever.

  Over the next few days the tree business really picked up. It always did, the deeper everyone got into December. Snow fell, and every night the plows would rattle by, fire-breathing dragons with sparks flying as they scraped the snowy streets. That got people in the mood for Christmas, and they lined up at Christy’s stand.

  They pointed out the trees they wanted to see, and he’d cut the twine that bound them, shake out the branches to give them some fullness. He did it to one white spruce, and a saw-whet owl flew off into the night. The tiny fist-sized predator had been trapped inside the tree, traveled all the way down from Nova Scotia. Christy watched it fly, wished Danny could be there to see it.

  The people would pay their money and cart their Christmas trees home. With every transaction, Christy found himself looking up and down the street—watching for Danny, he told himself.

  And he was … but he was also waiting for Catherine to come by.

  He hadn’t seen her in several days. And they hadn’t talked since they’d gone sledding in Central Park. For a day or so after that, she had walked by, waving, with her great, warm smile—sending a jolt straight through him. What was that for? He’d feel it every time, an electric shock pulsing over his skin. He remembered how his body had curved over her on the sled, his arms had gone around her; how she had leaned back, pressing into him, her hair tickling his face. The feelings were so surprising—and all it took was her smile to bring them on.

  Then suddenly he didn’t see her at all. Was she sick? Had she changed her route?

  At night Christy went out wandering. Funny, but he always seemed to start on the seminary block—West Twentieth, the street he’d seen Catherine turn down that night a couple of weeks earlier. It was always late by the time he got his nightly start—closing up shop, getting Bridget down and all.

  This centered him, beginning his night’s journey on Catherine’s block. He’d breathe in the cold air, let the day’s tensions slip out of him. He felt her presence, as surely as if she’d come out to stand on the step. It comforted him, just knowing she was there, nearby.

  All the houses looked so cozy. Smoke drifted from their chimneys. Christy was a country man, but when he walked down her block, he could almost understand the draw of the city. He could imagine families living in the townhouses, playing in the small playground across the street on the seminary grounds.

  Tonight, crossing Catherine’s block, he felt very tired. He had a long night ahead of him; the more he searched for Danny and didn’t find him, the more discouraged he felt. Days were slipping by without Danny.

  When he got to the middle of the block, he felt a gust of wind. It blew off the Hudson River so hard, it stopped him in his tracks. Christy leaned forward, head into the howling wind, trying to stand upright. Branches shook and rattled; a slate shingle blew off a roof and shattered at his feet.

  Suddenly the wind stopped blowing, but the temperature had dropped several degrees. It felt close to zero. Christy looked up at that moment, at Catherine’s brick house directly across the street, completely dark except for that one window on the top floor.

  She was framed by the small panes of glass. All he could see was her face; she must have heard the wind, come to stand by the window and look out. Christy put up his hand to wave but stopped himself. She was looking way off—far beyond the street. He sensed terrible yearning, a desire for something she couldn’t have.

  He felt the same longing in himself—he couldn’t put it into words. Staring up at Catherine, he felt shaken by a force even stronger than the north wind. He just stood there, riveted for a few minutes, unable to move. But the night was long, and he had a whole city to search. Dead ahead, the abandoned elevated railroad was silhouetted by streetlight—old iron bones, he thought, feeling spooked.

  He forced himself to continue on.

  At work, Catherine found it almost impossible to focus. She was dying to see Danny so she could convinc
e him to do the right thing—and talk to his father. For several days she had avoided Christy entirely, going around the block to bypass his stand. Now Mr. Rheinbeck stood at her desk, perusing her most recent additions to the Look-Up list.

  “This is charming,” he said, tapping his finger on a black-and-white photo of two stone bells. “Where did you find them?”

  “Um … ,” Catherine said, turning red.

  “I like bells,” he said. “Bells are symbolic. They call people to devotion, to celebrations … They are powerful—tools of the spirit! When marauders have attacked places of worship, they always destroy the bells. Because bells ring out the good news—you see? This image is superb. Perfect for our Look-Up Project. Where in the city are they located?”

  Catherine pretended to look through her notes. Meanwhile her mind was racing. Danny had found them. One of the ways she gave him money was to “hire” him—to be on the lookout for gargoyles, angels, stone carvings. She had given him a camera to use, and he had delivered this picture several weeks earlier.

  “I can’t remember, Mr. Rheinbeck. I’d better search my files.”

  “A church, perhaps?” he asked, using Catherine’s magnifying glass to examine the picture. “Very intriguing. Could be liturgical. See this band around the rim of the bell on the left? Those are words, and they look to be Latin.”

  Just then Mr. Rheinbeck’s son—Sylvester Jr.—walked into the library. He had the eyes and bearing of a tiger shark—sleek, economical, and always ready for the kill. Among the company it was well known that Sylvester Jr. disliked his father’s projects. He saw the earth strictly as something to build upon, the sky as space to be filled. Money was to be made, saved, and invested—not spent on ridiculous programs to help city residents become dreamers.

  “Hello Ms. Tierney, hello Father,” he said.

  “Look at these bells, my boy,” old Mr. Rheinbeck said, passing his son the glass.

  Sylvester Jr. just laid it down, staring at Catherine instead. “I was passing by the tower on my way home from The Nutcracker last week,” he said, “and I saw the library lights on.”

  “And how was The Nutcracker?” Mr. Rheinbeck asked. “I remember so well, the first time your mother took you to see it. She was all agog.”

  Catherine was nervous, but she couldn’t help registering Sylvester Jr.‘s facial tic—he recoiled from the memory—and she wondered whether it had to do with the fact that it included only his mother. The world of big business had kept his father away.

  “Petronia Boulanger danced the Sugarplum Fairy,” Sylvester Jr. said. “She and her husband have put in a bid for the penthouse in our Sutton Place tower. She gave me tickets. What was I supposed to do—decline? Hardly a good PR move. They were good seats, though. House seats. Now, about—”

  “Sylvester, you could consider enjoying yourself now and then. Not everything has to be public relations. The ballet is meant to enlighten and enliven, to awaken joy! Isn’t that right, Catherine?”

  “Absolutely. I was just remembering how my father took me to see The Nutcracker for the first time,” she said, relieved to be off the hook.

  “Father, I don’t think we need to drag Catherine into a discourse about the ballet. Now, about those lights,” Sylvester Jr. said harshly, with obvious discomfort, fixing Catherine with a probing gaze that excluded his father.

  “I must have been working late,” she said, her heart flipping, wanting to cover herself but also feeling sorry to see another father and son have trouble connecting. She’d been watching these two for years.

  He shook his head. “I had my driver stop, and I checked the security log. You had signed out.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her cheeks burning. Security had gotten so tight during recent years. She knew that she was skating on thin ice. “I must have left the lights on by mistake.”

  “There was no one else up here?” Sylvester Jr. asked, peering darkly.

  “Who would be using the library at night?” Catherine asked, skirting the lie.

  “Marvelous image,” the old man interrupted, thrusting the picture into his son’s hand. “This really epitomizes what we’re trying to do for this city, doesn’t it? Ring out the news that life is short, and that we waste too much of it rushing around. Refresh your memory on where these bells are located, Catherine. I want to see them in person.”

  The two Rheinbeck men, father and son, left the library. Catherine was sweating. She had the oddest feeling that Sylvester Sr. had saved her on purpose. Did he know something? She thought of the practice essay she’d found crumpled up next to those meteorology books Danny had left on the table last week. Catherine had left them there, intending to shelve them. Old Mr. Rheinbeck had walked right over to them on his morning visit that day, tapped them with his long finger, and said, “It takes a smart boy to know that answers are in the sky!”

  She shivered, unable to make sense of any of it. She just prayed that Danny would show up soon—she couldn’t bear to think of Christy going through another day without news.

  8

  Danny stood at the corner of Twenty-third and Ninth Avenue, pretending to wait for a bus. He wore a hat Lizzie had once given him, a derby. “For the mysterious Danny ‘Harry Houdini’ Byrne,” she’d said, adding that it reminded her of a painting by Magritte—of a man standing still before clouds, wearing a derby, his face completely obscured by a huge green apple. Secretly watching his father, Danny was hiding now. He thought the hat helped.

  His father was working hard. Although it was freezing cold, with light snow falling and four more inches before midnight, fifty-eight percent humidity, his father was sweating—Danny could see the sheen on his face. Showing trees to people, sawing off the lower branches, wrapping the trees up, hoisting them onto carts or the tops of cars. Danny should be there helping. That’s what his father wanted him to do. Danny did want to help. Just … not in the way his father had planned.

  Growing up in Nova Scotia, Danny’s future had seemed obvious: he would take over the tree business, live on the same island peninsula where he’d grown up. Cape Breton was rugged, and life was dictated by the elements. Tree farmers learned to keep an eye on the sky—prepare for gales, nor’easters, hurricanes, blizzards, droughts. One dry summer could compromise a decade’s work.

  Danny went to school, but the farm always came first. Two Junes ago lightning had struck a big pine, and the whole grove had gone up in flames. Danny had seen the smoke from his school bus stop, turned around, and run to help his father and the fire squad instead. It had taken all day for them to put out the fire; Danny missed two final exams. Although he’d had all vacation to make them up, summer was the farm’s busiest time.

  His father thought the fire was out—and that one was. But Danny stayed up late one night, fooling around with an almanac and some printouts from the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing at Natural Resources Canada. He played around with some fire-detection algorithms, combined them with the almanac’s plain wisdom, and predicted to his father that this would be the driest summer in fifteen years—with the highest wildfire danger.

  And it was. No rain fell in July. His father had needed help irrigating the trees and putting out brushfires. They were on duty day and night, so Danny never managed to make up the exams. He failed the two classes. And Danny saw each failure as a nail in the coffin of his dream. He wouldn’t tell his father directly, but life on the farm was killing a part of his spirit.

  His father was aware, though—and Danny knew it. It was unspoken between them. Last year Mrs. Harwood, Danny’s homeroom teacher, had called his father in for a conference. Danny had felt so nervous—it was after the forest fire, and he thought maybe they were going to kick him out for bad grades, or skipping class—that he’d hung around outside the classroom, trying to overhear.

  “Your son is an excellent student,” she had said. “He tests in the highest percentiles, and he works very hard in his classes. He’s particularly strong in science. His project on cold
fronts was so innovative, we featured it in the school paper.”

  “I know that,” his father had said. “I’m proud of him.”

  “We need to think about his future,” Mrs. Harwood had said.

  “His future is running the farm.”

  “That may be. But what about university? He’s already missed some critical tests and papers. He can make them up, but he needs to be more careful, moving forward. We’d like him to apply to McGill. We think he has a good chance of earning a scholarship, and—”

  Danny’s heart had skipped—missed beats, soaring for joy—as he heard those words. But less than a second later his father’s words had halted his happiness with a cold dose of reality.

  “He’s not going to McGill, or anywhere else. I know he’s smart—he could get in anywhere he set his mind to. But we run a small farm. I can’t spare him for a whole day, never mind four years. Do you understand?”

  “No, Mr. Byrne. I don’t. And more to the point, I don’t think you understand. How do you think Danny will feel—maybe not right away, but in years to come—when he realizes you’ve held him back? He has a wonderful mind and spirit, and he deserves this chance.”

  At that moment his father had happened to glance at the door—and he saw Danny looking in. Their eyes met—his father’s were burning bright with the anger and shame of having a teacher talk to him that way. Danny half wanted to run in, defend his father to Mrs. Harwood. But he held back. His teacher’s words were ringing in his ears. Danny wanted that chance.

  They’d stared at each other for a few long seconds—and then his father had looked away. Danny had kept waiting for his father to bring it up, the conversation with Mrs. Harwood, but he never did. And now it felt to Danny like a deep cut that had scabbed over. His father didn’t seem to realize that Danny had started living for that one month a year when the family would go to New York.

  Danny hadn’t counted on falling in love.