Candles Burning

Forty-five

THE clock seemed to have stopped that Christmas, for when I came downstairs again in the early afternoon, after dinner, the stockings still hung from their hooks and none of the gifts under the fake tree had been opened. It was the first time that I realized that grown-ups did not have to struggle to postpone opening their presents. Such an indifference to the excitement of Christmas morning shocked me, and made me feel sorry for them to have it mean so little to them. It seemed to me in that instant of realization that this was the clear dividing line between being a child and being an adult. Adults were people who had lost the innocent greedy joy of Christmas morning.

Still wearing the previous day’s clothing, and looking like an unmade bed, I’m sure, I was fortunately disinclined to mourn my future, thanks to the hunger of a healthy growing child unfed since Christmas Eve’s supper. I rummaged myself a bellyful in the kitchen and then wandered to the parlor, where the tree stood forlornly, its odd and gaudy fruit strewn meagerly about it.

Father Valentine sat alone in his favorite chair, wearing his blind-man’s dark glasses, and doing nothing. He heard me enter, of course, and grinned.

“Is it Rip Van Calley?” He cackled. “I thought you’d be sitting here with everything all opened when I came down this morning.”

“Merry Christmas,” I said.

“And to you,” he replied. “It had ought to be merrier, really, in Merry Verlow’s house. I believe I like the smell of the smoke from this wood fire as much as I do the warmth from it. Nostalgic.”

“What’s that? Nostalgic.” I twiddled my sock dangling from its hook under the mantel.

“The way you wish it once was, but of course it wasn’t. Bring me my stocking, Calley. I’m tired of waiting for it.”

Father Valentine never hesitated to play at being childish, and when he did there was a quaver in his voice that was as good as a wink. It was a relief to have a grown-up at least willing to fake a little Christmas excitement.

Using a hassock as a step stool to reach it, I unhooked his stocking. It was mysteriously lumpy but even though the fabric was stretched thin to near transparency, I could not make out what was in it.

He took it eagerly and ostentatiously felt it all over.

“Grand,” he said. “Just what I wanted. So thoughtful.”

As if at a signal, the rest of the household began to filter into the parlor, greeting me with Merry Christmases and joshing about Father Valentine and me getting the jump on the presents.

Dr. Keeling paused by her chair to ask, “What do you have there?”

“Mine to know and yours to find out,” said Father Valentine. His hands clenched around his stocking. “It’s mine and you can’t have it.”

“Don’t want it,” Dr. Keeling answered, “but I’d take it if I did.”

“No squabbling, you two,” Mr. Quigley said. “Not today.” He took down my sock and gave it to me.

Miz Verlow and Mama arrived lastly, after the Slaters.

I squatted on the turkey rug with my sock at my feet. There was a rectangular box in it, the corners catching in the fabric, requiring me to work it out a snag at a time. I had it in the grasp of thumb and forefinger when Miz Verlow walked in. She paused to flip a switch and the lights on the aluminum tree bloomed like a dozen candle flames. The cranes on the tree wavered slightly as if on a passing air, but it might have been an illusion caused by the sudden multiple sources of light on the highly reflective tree.

The sock clung to the rectangular box, which was about the size of a pack of cigarettes. Miz Verlow stooped over me to seize the toe of the sock, and the box slipped out into my hand.

She was smiling at me. If she had been angry or suspicious earlier, there was no sign of it.

“Merry Christmas,” she said, and uncurled the fingers of her free hand.

Two AA batteries rested in her palm.

Hastily I ripped the paper from the box and tore it open, to see the transistor radio that the batteries would power.

The guests all laughed and applauded.

“I’m not going to listen to that hurdy-gurdy day in and day out,” Mama said. “You hear me, Calley?”

All too clearly, somewhere in my inner ears, as if she were sticking pins in them.

Miz Verlow winked at me.

I remember nothing else that was given me that Christmas, except for the sweater and watch cap that Mrs. Llewellyn had sent. It seems to me that there were no real toys—suitable for my age, I mean. No dolls, no children’s books, no records of children’s songs, certainly nothing as extravagant as a bicycle. My memories of later Christmases with the same guests, though, assure me that what I received were make-do tokens, like something a parent might pick up at an airport notions kiosk on the way home from a trip, after having forgotten to obtain a real souvenir: a fresh pack of cards from the Slaters, probably one of the several that they always brought with them, a secondhand science-fiction novel from Dr. Keeling, a little cheaply framed watercolor seascape from Mr. Quigley, a chocolate Santa Claus from Father Valentine.

Mama always told me that we couldn’t afford Christmas presents. Every year I made something in school for her—a paper ornament, paper angel, a sachet made of a scrap of cloth and filled with the pine needles and rosemary that were commonplace on the island, or a newspaper mâché pot painted with primary colors that began to flake off as soon as the paint dried.

It was always Miz Verlow who gave me something that I wanted, and other gifts that I needed. Sometimes I thought that I loved Miz Verlow more than I did Mama, or even wished that she was my mama, instead of Roberta Ann Carroll Dakin. Of course, I always felt guilty for loving her more than Mama, and wishing such a thing. I feared her more than Mama too, for as I grew, I began to perceive Mama more and more as a paper tiger.

That Christmas, that first Christmas, I unhooked the paper cranes from the fake tree and smuggled them to the linen closet, where in a very high, hard to reach corner, one that I nearly brained myself climbing to, I stashed them in the box that had held the sweater and cap from Mrs. Llewelyn. If I kept those cranes that once had been playing cards, if I had the right candle, I might be able to ask more questions of my great-grandmama Cosima. If I ever felt brave enough. I wished that if she had to speak to me, she would do it without hocus-pocus, like all the other whispering or chittering voices that I heard. Of course I worked mightily to ignore them but now that I knew her voice by name, I would recognize it. Of course. How could I be so stupid? She had spoken to me first by way of introduction. The proof would be when I heard her voice again, and knew it for hers.

And then, oddly, or perhaps not oddly, given what I have learned, the visitation of my great-grandmama, my vigil and my visitor and what she told me that Christmas, went out of my head. I remembered it only in dreams. When I dreamt it, I promised myself to remember when I woke but then, did not. It took a great many dreamings before I did. Before I remembered that I was supposed to listen to the book.