by Lea Wait
“Wow!” Four hours later, the look on Will’s face was more than worth the dress’s price. “We should get dressed up more often.”
Aunt Nettie nodded wisely. “You look very nice, dear. Will, you don’t look half-bad yourself. I’d forgotten you owned a tie.” Will was dressed in navy pants and a pale blue dress shirt (the color Maggie always thought reflected his eyes) and a red tie, topped by a tan wool sweater. For Maine, that was about as dressy as a man would get, short of his own wedding or funeral. Aunt Nettie was wearing a gray wool skirt with a red sweater set and pearls.
“Very elegant,” Maggie announced, checking them all out. “And festive.”
“It’s fun to have a party to go to Christmas Eve,” Aunt Nettie agreed.
Will and Maggie each took one of her arms and helped guide her down the now-icy ramp.
Their drive through Waymouth was as beautiful as it had been the night Maggie had arrived. Maine marked Christmas with thousands of tiny sparkling white lights woven in wreaths, trees and lamp posts, and through pine garlands and wide red ribbons bedecking bridge railings. In New Jersey most decorations were multi-colored flickering lights. Not to mention the grotesque inflated vinyl Santas and Rudolphs and Frostys that appeared on too many suburban lawns.
Somewhere in Maine there was no doubt a totally tacky lawn scene, including roof lights, complete with Santa and all eight (or nine) reindeer. But wherever that was, it wasn’t in Waymouth.
The large house where Ruth and Betty lived was on Hill Street, the highest elevation in town, lined with colonial homes built in the era when ships’ captains and owners wanted to look out over the harbor, survey their property, and watch for arrivals of schooners from distant lands and coasters from New York, Boston, and Portland.
In those days there’d been few trees in towns; the Victorians’ value of trees as landscaping had yet to be established. Trees had been cut down for use in construction or as fuel. Today’s residents of those same houses found their harbor views blocked by large maples, oaks, and pines, and by taller houses, like the one Will might buy. But the stately captains’ colonial or Federal style homes still stood, grandly looking down at a town that had grown up to them in space, but not in elegance, over the past two centuries.
Tonight Ruth’s home shone brightly, all rooms lit, electric candles centered in the wreaths hung in every window, and real candles set in the snow to mark the path to the door.
In New Jersey the path would have been marked by paper bags filled with sand to support the candles inside. Here, with little wind and ample snow, there was no need for bags to hold the candles.
“Quite a house,” Maggie commented.
“Ruth always had more money than the rest of us,” said Aunt Nettie. “Although she never acted like it made a difference. Ruth’s and Betty’s father owned Waymouth Hardware, back before everyone shopped at chain stores. And then Ruth married Jonas Weston. His father had an automobile franchise outside Portland. Jonas inherited it. Lots of money there, too. This is Ruth’s house. Betty inherited money from her parents, but she never had as much as Ruth. Ruth’s always looked out for her.”
“You said they’d lived together for years?” said Maggie, as they got out of the car and Will lifted Aunt Nettie over the snow bank onto the sidewalk.
“Since Ruth’s husband died. Their children grew up together.”
Will rang the doorbell.
A middle-aged man with a thick gray mustache and frameless glasses answered. “Welcome! Merry Christmas! I’m Ruth’s son, Brian. Ms. Brewer, I recognize you, of course. Come on in.”
“Thank you, Brian,” said Aunt Nettie. “This is my nephew, Will, and his friend, Maggie.”
A piercing cry came from deep in the house. “And that’s my unhappy son. He’s probably wet again. You’ll excuse me.” Brian headed up the stairs toward the second floor.
“Aunt Nettie, give me your coat,” said Will. “And Maggie? Yours? I assume there’s somewhere to put these.”
Ruth appeared from the room to the right. “So glad you’re here. We’re a bit less organized than I’d hoped. Will, could you take the coats up the stairs and put them on the bed in the first bedroom? That’s my room. No one should be in there.” She smiled at Maggie and Aunt Nettie. “I hope.” She bent over and whispered as Will headed up the wide staircase, “Little Jonas is a bit colicky and Jenny and Brian are nervous parents. No one’s getting much sleep, and I’m afraid everyone’s blaming everyone else.” She grimaced a bit. “I’m so glad we’d planned this party. I can use a little relief.”
A short, heavy man wearing a Red Sox hat and a Patriots sweatshirt came out of the living room. He had two cookies in one hand and a glass of soda in the other. “Mrs. Weston? How many cookies can I have?”
“It’s a party, Billy,” she answered, patiently. “I told you. Have as many cookies as you want.”
“Can I have all of them? Can I take them home with me?”
“Oh, no! I didn’t mean that. Where’s your mother, Billy?”
“She’s with Ms. Hoskins. She’s giving her a shot. She told me to talk to you.”
“I see. Well, why don’t you eat those two cookies, and drink your soda, and then come back and talk with me again. Or maybe your mother will be free by then.”
“All right, Mrs. Weston.” The man wandered off down the hall, dripping cookie crumbs on the Oriental carpet as he went.
“I haven’t seen Billy in years,” said Aunt Nettie. “He’s gotten…even bigger.”
“Fatter is the word you’re looking for,” said Ruth without hesitating. “Carrie lets him do and eat whatever he wants. And you haven’t seen him because he’s always with her. He follows her around and copies whatever she does. I’m surprised he isn’t with her now. I guess the desserts and drinks were too tempting. Usually we don’t have those in the house, with Betty being diabetic, and Billy eating like a whale.” She glanced down the hall. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t kind. It’s a sad situation. I should go and check on Betty. It shouldn’t take this long for Carrie to test her levels and give her that insulin. Betty’s exhausted, like the rest of us, because of the baby’s screaming all night, but she should be out here with our guests, and Carrie should be keeping her eye on Billy. You both go on in and get something to drink. I’ll be right back.” Ruth hurried off down the hallway.
“Tell me about Carrie and Billy,” Maggie whispered as she and Aunt Nettie went into the living room. “Before Ruth comes back.”
“Let’s sit on the couch over there.” Aunt Nettie pointed. “Carrie Folk used to nurse at Rocky Shores Hospital, but after Billy was born she started working with private patients at their homes. She’s been taking care of Betty for over a year. Maybe two. You could see Billy’s what I think they’re now calling ‘intellectually challenged.’ One of the conditions Carrie has in her contract is that if you hire her you get Billy, too. He’s with her all the time. Always has been, ever since he was born.”
“What about when he was in school?” Maggie’s friend Gussie’s nephew, Ben, had Down Syndrome, but had graduated from high school. Not the college track, but he’d been in school until he was eighteen. He was in Special Olympics, helped Gussie with her antique doll and toy business, and did odd jobs for others in their Cape Cod community. He certainly didn’t need someone with him all the time.
“Billy never went to school. I don’t know the whole story. I do know Carrie’s husband left her a year or two after Billy was born. He wanted to put Billy in an institution. Carrie refused to consider that. I don’t know what Billy’s capabilities are. Once years ago I asked Carrie if he could read, and she said he couldn’t. That he didn’t need to. She read to him. That when he was born the doctor told her Billy’d never be able to take care of himself, so it was her job to do that.”
“Sad,” said Maggie.
“What’s sad?” said Will, joining them. “Sad that two such lovely ladies are sitting by themselves and don’t even have glasses of wine?”
“I like a problem I can solve,” Will said. “Red or white? Or a cocktail?”
“I’d like an Old Fashioned,” requested Aunt Nettie. “I haven’t had one of those in years.”
“Red wine for me,” said Maggie. “In honor of Christmas.”
“And it’ll match your dress,” Will approved. He headed for the corner, where, as Ruth had promised, a complete bar was set up.
If this was the house where Ruth had brought up her children, they must have had a less formal room for playing, or she’d redecorated when they’d grown. The room they were in was handsomely paneled in Federal style, with tall period windows equipped with folding inside shutters to shield occupants from winter winds. The fireplace, now glowing with a warm fire, would have been the only heat in the room when the house was built.
Maggie admired the mahogany Queen Anne card table and chairs arranged as though someone was about to begin a game of chess, and the portraits on the wall. “Ruth’s family?” she asked Aunt Nettie.
“I don’t know,” Aunt Nettie answered. “But I doubt it. Money only came into both sides of Ruth’s family two generations ago. Those paintings look older than that.”
Maggie nodded. “Mid-nineteenth century or earlier.” Probably, she thought to herself, what antiques dealers called “instant ancestors.” Portraits that came out of estates and were bought by people who didn’t care who the subjects of the paintings were. They just liked the look of oil portraits on their walls. Or wanted people to think they’d come from a family wealthy enough to commission oil portraits several generations before.
“Ruth made a lot of changes in the house after her children left home,” Aunt Nettie said. “Hired a decorator I think. I remember her saying she paid a lot for the hunting prints in the dining room.”
“I’ll look when I get there,” Maggie said. There were no well-known American hunting prints unless you counted twentieth-century prints of hunters shooting deer and partridge. She suspected those would not fit with this décor. On the other hand, it wouldn’t be unusual to see Chinese prints on a New England wall, as so many captains had been involved in the China trade.
Will hadn’t returned, and smells from the buffet table in the dining room were wafting her way. “Would you like me to fill a plate for you?” she asked Aunt Nettie.
“Why don’t we wait until we’ve had a drink?” Aunt Nettie looked across the room where Will had stopped for a few minutes, filled glasses in hand, to chat with Nick Strait. Nick must have gotten the evening off.
Maggie was tempted to go and greet him, but she didn’t want to leave Aunt Nettie alone.
“That’s Nicky over there with Will, isn’t it, Maggie,” said Aunt Nettie, following her gaze. “I’m guessing Doreen must be here, then, too. I wonder if they convinced Zelda to stop in as well.” Just then a young woman with bouffant blond hair wearing a gold lamé sheath and holding a small baby walked in and immediately became the center of attention.
“That must be Brian’s new wife, Jenny, with baby Jonas,” said Aunt Nettie. “You go and admire the baby with the others. No reason for you to be stuck here with me.”
Excused for the moment, Maggie went and looked over several sets of shoulders at the youngest Mr. Weston. He was two or three months old, and his clearly doting mother had dressed him in a tiny red sweater and pants for his first Christmas and wrapped him in a red blanket, no doubt for both warmth and for protection of his mother’s rather dramatic (at least for Maine) outfit. His recent screams had reddened his cheeks to match his clothing, but now he’d settled in with a bottle.
Maggie left the admiring throng and headed for Will and Nick. Babies. Children. It seemed no matter where she was they surrounded her. More reminders that next year she, too, would be a mother, although her child or children would be far beyond the bottle stage.
Her eyes filled. Where were her daughter, or daughters, this year? Were they happy? Were they safe? Were there gifts under a tree somewhere for them?
She stopped in front of the wide-boughed Christmas tree to blink away a couple of tears. The tree was decorated with colored lights, tinsel, and ornaments of all sorts. Some were delicate Victorian blown glass, the sort collectors looked for at auctions or in antiques shops. Of course, when this house had been built Waymouth would not have celebrated Christmas with a tree. Christmas in early nineteenth-century Maine would only have meant a special church service on Sunday. A few gifts might have been exchanged on New Year’s Day.
No trees would have been decorated in this home until at least the 1850s. Queen Victoria’s Prince Albert had brought that custom with him from Germany, and it had spread rapidly throughout England and then to the States.
But the ornaments Maggie found herself drawn to weren’t the Victorian ones. They were the clumsy ones made with uncooked macaroni and papier-mâché and clam and mussel shells and construction paper; the ones Ruth’s and Betty’s children had made. They’d been treasured and saved, and although some were now faded and torn, they’d been hung here, next to the valuable Victorian ornaments, in an elegant, formal room. She looked for the crayoned signatures. Brian, she’d just met. Stacy. That must be another of Ruth’s children. Miranda, whose ornament was covered with glitter. And Noah, the third of Ruth’s children. Did the two who weren’t here tonight have children of their own? Were they remembering Christmases spent in this house?
Would her children come home for Christmas when they were adults, bringing their families, as Brian and Miranda had? Or would they, like Stacy and Noah, have reasons to stay away?
As a child she’d dreamed of living in a house like this, with a Christmas tree like this one.
With parents who’d treasure her awkwardly pasted snowmen and Santas instead of consigning them to the kitchen bulletin board for a day or two before they ended up in the trash.
For a moment Maggie grieved for the child she’d been. The child who’d been fed and clothed, but who’d longed to be cherished.
She shook her head slightly, trying to banish her thoughts. The past couldn’t be changed. Hers wasn’t a fraction as bad as that of millions of children in the world. Or even as bad as Will’s had been, with a father whose temper and drinking had convinced Will he could never be a good father himself.
No life was perfect. And now was not a time to feel sorry for herself. Now was the time to live the life she’d chosen. Which meant, tonight, that she’d better retrieve the drinks Will had promised her and Aunt Nettie.
“Merry Christmas, Nick!” she said, joining the two of them. “What are you two handsome men doing talking to each other and not to us ladies?”
Will grinned. Nick blushed from his cheeks up to the top of his thinning hair. “You look nice tonight, Maggie.”
“‘Nice!’ How’re you going to get a girl with words like that, Nick,” Maggie teased, as Nick’s face got redder. “I’d toast you if I had a drink.” She looked pointedly at the glasses Will was holding.
“Sorry. We got to talking.” Will handed her the glass of red wine and looked guiltily toward Aunt Nettie.
“And yes, I’ll take Aunt Nettie’s glass to her. No problem. You guys have fun.” She turned and walked back to the couch, where Doreen had taken her place, and handed Aunt Nettie her Old Fashioned. “Will got a little involved.”
“I saw. Thank you, Maggie.”
“You look wonderful, Maggie,” said Doreen. “I’m surprised Will even took the time to say hello to Nick.”
“I’m afraid I just embarrassed Nick. I was teasing him about having a girlfriend. Is there a special friend in his life?”
“My Nick? Heavens, no. I don’t think he’s had a date since his divorce was final, sixteen years ago.” Doreen shook her head. “A few women have been interested. But he’s always busy with his job, and with taking care of Zelda and me.” She leaned toward Maggie. “Truth be told, I think he’s a bit shy. Once burned, you know.”
“Is Zelda here
tonight?” Maggie glanced around, but didn’t see any teenagers in the room. “I’d love to meet her.”
“No; she was going to come, but she had to be over at the church, practicing.”
“Practicing?”
“She’s in the choir. They’re part of the community carol sing on the Green at seven, and then singing at the Christmas Eve candlelight service at eleven. It’s lovely. You should come.”
“I’ll see what Will wants to do. I haven’t been to a candlelight service in years.”
Her thought was interrupted as a slight gray-haired woman Maggie assumed was Carrie Folk wheeled Betty in and placed her chair next to the couch. Billy was following them, still holding one of his cookies. Or maybe by now it was another one.
Carrie bent down and said something to Betty. Then she took Billy by the hand and went toward the buffet table in the next room.
“Who are you?” asked Betty, looking up at Maggie.
“I’m Maggie,” she answered.
“Oh,” said Betty. “That’s a nice name. Where is this? It’s a lovely room. It looks like Christmas.”
“This is your living room,” said Maggie. “And it’s Christmas Eve.” She turned as Ruth joined them. “I saw Jonas. You have a handsome young grandson. And what a cute Christmas outfit.”
“Jonas? You saw Jonas?” said Betty. “He should be here to see his baby, you know. He has a beautiful baby.”
“Yes, Betty,” Ruth moved a step away from Betty before she answered Maggie. “The baby is cute, isn’t he? I bought that outfit for him. Jenny and I don’t always see eye-to-eye. I’ll admit I preferred wife number-one. But I was real pleased to see she’d put that red suit on him this afternoon.” She turned to the others. “Have you all tasted the buffet? I think I overdid it a bit with the food, and I don’t want any wasted.”