by Luanne Rice
Where was she? All the words Christy wasn’t saying to his paying customers seemed to back up, like logs in a river eddy, waiting to spill over to Catherine. He had so many things to ask her, so much he wanted to tell her. But she didn’t come.
It took a few days for everything to become untangled: the investigations completed and the paperwork filed. Danny was held for observation at St. Vincent’s. Tests were performed, results analyzed. Finally, he was released. He moved back into Mrs. Quinn’s, to regain his strength and spend time with his family. In spite of the joy, these were uneasy times.
“Pa, what will happen?” Bridget asked on Christmas Eve. Their trees had just sold out; another year’s work was behind them. Now supper was finished, the night drawing to a close. Midnight would be upon them before they knew it, and then it would be Christmas.
Christy glanced across the sitting room at Danny, sitting in a chair, looking through his photographs. They had been returned to him by the police, now that the investigation was over.
“That’s up to your brother,” Christy said.
“But about us,” Bridget said. “Are we all in trouble?”
Christy gazed at her. How could he explain to his twelve-year-old that there was trouble—and there was trouble? What had possessed her to steal the cashbox? His heart had been aching since he’d seen it fall from the pillowcase.
“Bridget,” he said, “you tell me.”
Her eyebrows wiggled, and she looked perplexed. “Tell you what?”
“Everything.”
“I don’t get it.”
Danny had been fairly silent himself this last week, about the past year, about his plans for the future. He had kept to himself, sleeping long hours, as if making up for the last three hundred and sixty-five days of life on the streets of New York. But right now Christy could see that he was engaged. He had an unmistakable way of cocking his head as he pretended not to be listening.
“Why don’t you tell me,” Christy said, “what you want for Christmas?”
“Pa! How can you even ask that? We’ve had police here left and right! I committed a crime, Pa. I stole all our money. What I want to know is, am I going to jail?”
“You’re not going to jail, Bridget.”
“And how about Danny, Pa? Is he going?”
“He’s not going to jail either.”
“You, Pa? Are you going?”
“No. The city’s being lenient on me. Even though I’ve made a total mess of things. Neglected my children.”
“Pa, you haven’t neglected us,” Bridget said.
Christy stared at her. She had Mary’s eyes. Green-brown, like soft moss on the north side of a pine trunk. He’d been so busy working hard, trying to raise their kids these last years, he’d hardly had time to miss his wife. But he missed her now. Mary, in her no-nonsense way, would have known how to straighten them all out. She’d been very good at that, placing blame where it belonged. Without her there to point the finger, Christy had to do it himself.
“You’re wrong about that, my sweet girl,” he said. “I have neglected you terribly. You were so worried, and you didn’t tell me. You took matters into your own hands. What signals did I miss, that led you to take the money?”
“I did it for Danny,” she said miserably, but gazing at her brother with intense love.
“That’s true, and I know it. You had a good motive. But you did a wrong thing.”
“We read Robin Hood in school,” she said.
“Robin Hood would be on Rikers Island by now, if he lived in New York. I don’t want us confusing generosity with crime. Bridget, the child welfare people are telling me you need a therapist.”
“Pa, she’s not crazy,” Danny said.
“It’s all my fault,” Bridget said, starting to cry. “Acting insane and bringing shame on the family, when all I wanted was to help Danny.”
“No one’s insane,” Christy said, his head spinning and making him feel very crazy himself. “And everyone knows you want to help your brother.”
“Are they going to put me in an institution?” Bridget asked. “Are they going to make me stay here in New York while you go home to Canada?”
“No. They’re letting me take you with me. But they want me to find someone for you to talk to. Might be tough in Cape Breton, but we’ll manage.”
“There might be someone in Ingonish,” Danny said.
Christy glanced across the room. Danny seemed so rapt, looking at his pictures. But he kept chiming in—that had to mean something. One of the photos slipped off his lap. Christy glanced down, saw with a pang that it was a stone angel. Catherine’s assignment to his son; she had kept him fed this whole year, slipping him money in the only way Danny would have accepted it—employment.
Crossing the room, Christy picked up the picture. He looked at it long and hard. Catherine’s spirit seemed to fill the angel’s face. He could almost see her clear gray eyes gazing back at him, guiding him in this moment. His heart was pounding as hard as it ever had as he opened his mouth.
“You coming back home with us?” Christy asked. “To help look after your sister?”
Danny shook his head. “Not yet,” he said in a voice almost too low to hear.
“What’s that?”
“I said ‘not yet,’” Danny spoke up louder.
“What are you saying?”
“You asked Bridget what she wanted for Christmas,” Danny said, sitting up tall and facing his father. “A few minutes ago. Remember?”
“I remember,” Christy said.
“I probably don’t deserve anything, but were you going to ask me, too?”
Christy was unprepared for his son’s directness. This year on his own had made Danny a man. “I want to know,” Christy said, “what you want.”
“I want you to trust me, Pa.”
Christy frowned. Trust him? He felt himself sliding, right to the edge of a cliff. All Christy wanted was to hold on, grab with all his might, keep everything from falling, falling, into nothingness. He thought of Catherine, of the way he’d felt when he’d found out she’d been helping his son—and he felt himself at the precipice.
“I want to stay here,” Danny said. “Not forever—just till I can learn what I need to know.”
“Know for what?”
“I want to be a meteorologist. I see what you go through, Pa. Trying to farm the trees, fighting the elements—Pa, it’s like you’re fighting demons. Wrestling with lightning, hurricanes, drought—you can’t stop any of it. But if we knew more about how to predict it, things would be easier for you. You and all the other tree farmers.”
“Danny,” Christy said, his heart squeezed, as if the hand of God had reached down to take it and rip it right out of his chest, “I want you with me. Me and Bridget. We’re a family.”
“Pa, don’t you think I know that? I know it so much. That’s why I have to do this. I’m doing it for you!”
“He is,” Bridget said, starting to sob.
“Why couldn’t you have told me what you wanted?” Christy asked. “Last year, before all of this happened? Why didn’t you talk to me?”
“I didn’t want to bother you.”
“Bother me?” Christy clenched—thought he’d have a heart attack right then and there. “Am I that terrible, that you can’t talk things over with me? Don’t you know I love you more than that?”
“You love us so much, you’d kill yourself,” Danny said. “You work till after dark. You’re out in the field before the sun is up. There’s just no time, Pa. No time to talk. I didn’t want to worry you with helping me make a decision, when I knew what I was going to do anyway.”
“We could have talked, though,” Christy said.
“You’d have told me I couldn’t do it,” Danny said.
And Christy began to cry himself, because he knew it was true. It hurt so much, to love someone as much as he loved Danny—and to watch his path diverge, to see him going in a different direction from Christy and Bridge
t.
“Didn’t you ever have a dream, Pa? Something you knew you had to do?”
Christy thought about that. He’d been too hungry to dream. He’d been too focused on taking over his father’s farm, keeping everything going, putting food in his babies’ mouths to ever have a dream. And yet …
The photo of the angel was right there, between him and Danny. Christy stared down at her, through tears. How crazy his heart felt. If ever he’d had a dream, a desire, this was it. And more than a dream, it could never be. Danny had more chance at learning everything there was to know about the weather than Christy had of being with a woman such as Catherine.
“Pa?”
“Maybe I have a dream now,” he said.
“You’ve got to go for it,” Danny said, “if you have one.”
“Make it come true,” Bridget said.
Christy looked up. His children were staring at him with such intensity, he felt a great shiver go through his bones. Did they know his dream? It wasn’t possible. Was he so transparent? He felt himself turn bright red.
“See these pictures?” Danny asked.
“Yes.”
“I took them all,” Danny said with a strong trace of pride.
“They’re very good,” Christy said, composing himself. “If this weather thing doesn’t work out for you, you can always get a job taking photos.”
“Yeah. I was thinking the same thing. Put myself through school, you know? Anyway, I have to make up a list. For the Rheinbecks. About where I took each picture. Mr. Rheinbeck wants to publish a book, hand it out in the schools. Even on street corners, I think. To get all the people in New York to look up.”
“And see all the wonders,” Bridget said, her eyes shining with love for her brother.
“Right, Bridey,” Danny said. “Anyway, I’ve got the list in my mind. See this angel?” He pointed at the black-and-white photo—the smooth sculpture, the shadows in stone, the wings spread wide, the steady and somehow warm granite gaze.
“Yes,” Christy said, staring at the angel and seeing Catherine instead.
“She’s a statue by a bridge in Central Park. This one”—he shuffled the pictures, found another angel—“is carved into a church up on Lexington Avenue. And see this gargoyle? It’s actually a gryphon, chiseled into the portals of an office building on East Forty-second Street. These demons, or whatever they are,” he said, paging through the sheaf of pictures, “are cut into the stone right beside the entrance to Mangia, a restaurant on West Fifty-seventh Street. And these bells …”
“The mystery bells!” Bridget said excitedly, quoting a recent Daily News headline. The story had focused on the picture of stone bells Penelope had been holding in her hand when Danny took his fall off the roof. She had stayed silent about it, and so had Danny. No one knew where in the city the stone bells were located.
It had become a passionate Christmas scavenger hunt. The city was on fire, questing for the bells. Mr. Rheinbeck himself couldn’t be more thrilled—his Look-Up Project was in full swing, even without the final compendium of photos being published. People in all five boroughs were gazing up at buildings, up toward the sky, in search of the stone bells.
Brooklyn residents were convinced the bells were carved into Grace Church, or the Brooklyn Academy of Music, or the great stone footings of the Brooklyn and Williamsburg bridges. One Queens woman claimed that the photo had been taken at a crypt in Flushing Cemetery, right near where her parents were buried.
A young Jesuit was positive the bells were located at Mount Manresa Retreat house, on Staten Island, and Christmas retreatants found spiritual power in walking the grounds, looking through the house. One wise old priest stood on the hill overlooking the lights of Manhattan, across the water. He knew the exact location of the bells—and it wasn’t here. He had seen them when he was a young man growing up in Chelsea.
Minnie Maguire, in the Bronx, walked the whole length of Bainbridge Avenue, positive that if she located the bells, her son Desmond would quit his drinking, take the cure for good.
One couple had found a single bell carved into a granite arch at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Moved by the discovery, the man had proposed—a Christmas betrothal inspired by the quest. Right move, wrong bell.
“You going to tell us where they are?” Bridget asked.
“Maybe,” Danny said, giving a devilish grin.
Bridget hit him with a pillow. “Come on!”
“I like keeping it a mystery,” he said.
“You have to at least tell Catherine,” Bridget said. “After all she’s done for you.”
“Yeah,” Danny said. “She deserves to know.”
Christy waited, watching the look pass between his two children. Danny’s grin was catching—Bridget now had it, too.
“She does,” Bridget said.
“Pa, you could show her the bells,” Danny said.
“I don’t know where they are,” he said. He saw his son and daughter smiling at him, and he felt himself redden.
“Danny could tell you, Pa,” Bridget said.
“I could,” Danny said. “If you’d show her where they are, I’ll tell you where to find them.”
And as Christy listened, Danny did just that.
16
Every Christmas Eve, Lizzie and Lucy joined Catherine for a special dinner. They always wore beautiful clothes, including hats, and their best jewelry. They ate oysters, capon, and one truffle wrapped in bacon, grilled in the fireplace embers, and thinly sliced onto the mashed potatoes. For dessert they had bûche de Noël. Before Brian’s death, they would also place the star on the Christmas tree, open presents, and go to midnight mass at St. Lucy’s.
This year there was a new level of festivity. For one thing, Lizzie was very excited about her new boyfriend. During all the time he’d spent patrolling Chelsea, Officer Rip Collins had never seemed to look twice at Lizzie. But this year, because he’d had to stop by Christy’s tree stand so often, he’d finally gotten up the courage to ask her out.
“He took me for a ride in his police car,” Lucy said excitedly. “He showed me how to do the perp walk.”
“Let’s hope that’s a skill you’ll never need,” Lizzie said with a wry look at Catherine.
“Where is he tonight?” Catherine asked.
“On duty,” Lizzie said. “Keeping our streets safe for Santa Claus.”
“He said he’d bust Santa if he double parks his sleigh,” Lucy giggled.
“I think Santa gets special treatment here in Chelsea,” Catherine said. “Considering this was where he was made famous. ‘‘Twas the night before Christmas,’ and all that.”
“All that,” Lizzie said.
Catherine smiled to see her friend so happy. And she knew that Lizzie felt the same way, guardedly, about her. Something had shifted in Catherine this year. Although she hadn’t told Lizzie the details about Brian’s visit, Catherine knew that her friend could see that her spirit had lightened.
“It’s almost time to go to church,” Lucy said, looking at the mantel clock. It was ten-thirty; midnight mass would be crowded, and they wanted to get a seat.
“We should get going,” Lizzie agreed. “Are you coming, Catherine?”
Catherine thought. She wanted to. This year so many things had changed. She didn’t dread Christmas anymore. She hadn’t gotten a tree, so they wouldn’t hang the star. And she hadn’t bought too many presents, except for some skeins of Icelandic yarn for Lucy, and a silver bracelet for Lizzie. She had thought she would go to midnight mass with her friends this year, but the tight feeling in her chest made her shake her head.
“I need to stay here,” she said.
“You could go to see them,” Lizzie said, reading her mind.
“The Byrnes?” Lucy asked.
“That’s who you’re thinking about, isn’t it?” Lizzie asked.
Catherine nodded. “They’re leaving tomorrow,” she said. “I thought they would have come to say good-bye by now.”
“Helpful, isn’t she?” Lizzie asked as she pulled on her coat and walked with Lucy to the front door.
Catherine tried to smile. She’d been keeping the faith ever since that night when she’d locked the attic door. “I just thought he’d have stopped by before now,” she said.
“Well, Merry Christmas,” Lizzie said, peering out the window.
“What?” Catherine asked.
And then her best friend opened the door. Christy stood on the top step.
“I was afraid it might be too late,” he said, looking at his watch. “But I saw your lights on.”
“It’s not too late,” Lizzie said. “Merry Christmas, Christy!”
“Same to you,” he said.
“Give our love to Bridget and Harry!” Lizzie said, smiling as she grabbed Lucy’s hand and ran down the steps.
Catherine smiled, opening the door wider—to let Christy enter. “Please, come in,” she said.
“Actually,” he said, holding out his hand, “will you come with me?”
“Right now?” she asked as the wind blew around him, making her shiver.
“Yes,” he said. “I have something to show you.”
She hesitated, looking into his bright blue eyes. She felt his excitement, and she began to smile. “I’ll get my coat,” she said.
They got a cab right away, and Christy told the driver to take them to the southeast corner of Central Park. He and Catherine sat in the backseat, not really saying anything, not even daring to look at each other. All those words Christy had wanted to say before escaped him now. He was tongue-tied, lost in a million thoughts. Dreams didn’t come with a script. Maybe that’s what poets were for, he thought. Poets and songwriters. The cabbie had the radio tuned to a station playing Christmas carols, one after the other.
“What’s your favorite?” he asked finally, because he felt so nervous.
“My favorite?”
“Carol,” he said. “What’s your favorite carol?”
“Hmm,” she said. “I’ll have to think about that. I like so many. How about yours?”