A Light in the Window (20 page)

He had stumbled around in her basement under a 25-watt bulb, plowing through marked boxes. Though some attempt had been made to stack them in alphabetical order, Christmas Lights were nonetheless on top of Mud Room Odds and Ends.

If there was ever a task that wanted teamwork, it was stringing tree lights. When he got the box upstairs to her living room, he saw that she had put them away like so much cooked vermicelli.

It was a full three hours before the bushes on either side of her front stoop were glowing warmly. Life in the little house, at last! He stood back and blew on his frozen hands. Not a car had been up the street; there was not a soul to see the handiwork that cheered the whole neighborhood and proclaimed something wonderful. If it weren’t so late, he’d drag Dooley over to look.

He went inside to her living room, switched off the lights on the bushes, and locked the front door. The house was hollow as a gourd without her, yet everywhere he looked, she had made it her own; it couldn’t have belonged to anyone but Cynthia. He moved to the mantle and peered at a picture he hadn’t seen before. She must have been sixteen or seventeen, and looked out at him with a poignancy that gripped his heart. Her blond hair was long and free, and her eyes full of hope.

“Cynthia,” he said aloud, touching the frame.

There were other pictures on the mantle, one of her nephew, most likely, and one of her parents, her mother wearing a flamboyant shawl with fringe, holding on to the arm of a man who looked like Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., in a double-breasted suit. He saw that they were looking away from each other, and the small girl standing beside them seemed forlorn.

He turned the lights off in the living room and walked down the hall to her studio. It was bare of her drawing board and chair and many of her books, yet a light fragrance of wisteria greeted him.

“Cynthia!” he said, feeling a lump in his throat.

Why shouldn’t he go to New York for a day or two, after all? It was not inconceivable. He had been far too hard on Emma, in the tone of his voice, chiding her for a foolish idea. But was it foolish?

He might take Cynthia to dinner at some legendary restaurant like Sardi’s or the Stork Club. Was the Stork Club still in existence? If not, they could go to the Plaza, which he knew for a fact was still there; he had read about it in a magazine. Perhaps snow would fall, and they would ride in a carriage in Central Park, bundled under a lap robe. Perhaps they would look in the windows at Tiffany’s, and perhaps, who knows, they would go inside and he would buy her something wonderful, something that would make the top of her head tingle.

He didn’t want to think of the “men in publishing” who might, in actual fact, be seeking her company for dinner or a play or a concert. But why shouldn’t she have the company of suave, dynamic movers and shakers, rather than languish in a strange apartment every evening, struggling to earn her very bread?

He stood by the phone in her studio and inhaled the scent that had become as much a part of her as breathing. He removed a card from his billfold, dialed the number written on the back of it, and charged the call to the rectory.

A man answered. It was such a shock to hear the deep, baritone voice, that he nearly hung up.

“I’d ... like to speak with Cynthia Coppersmith, please.”

“Cynthia? Oh, Cynthia’s dressing just now, may I have her ring you tomorrow?”

Tomorrow? The word struck him with an odd force.

“Thank you, no,” he said, slowly. “She needn’t ring me.”

He watched a sheep trot briskly toward the nave, trailed by two spotted cows, a donkey, and a camel. He noticed that the camel’s hump had slipped and was bumping along the floor, but it was too late to do anything about it.

The wise men were already processing down the aisle to the altar, where the angel Gabriel and a heavenly host stood precariously on stepladders, gazing at the manger scene.

In the quarter-hour it would take for the children to deliver the pageant, he would just pop back to the parish hall for a drink of water and collect his sermon notes.

How extraordinary, he thought, entering the darkened room. It appears there’s an angel in my chair.

Four-year-old Amy Larkin was curled up on the cushion of his favorite armchair, the pale organza wings trembling with her sobs.

“Amy,” he said, going down on his knees. “What is it?”

She looked at him with streaming eyes and nose. “Them big angels hurted me! They pushed me and runned in front of me and wouldn’t let me in my place! I was in the hall and they runned in front of me and ... and ...”

“And?”

“I gotted lost!” she wailed.

He lifted her from the chair and consoled her. He was struck by the happiness that flooded him at merely holding a child.

At the end of the pageant, he walked down the aisle at the rear of the procession, carrying Amy in his arms. As the acolytes settled into their places, he turned to the congregation.

“This small angel got separated from the heavenly host. Margaret Ann? ...” He searched the pews for her mother.

Amy tightened an arm around his neck and announced in a loud voice, “I was with them big angels, and they runned in front of me and left me and I gotted lost!”

“It occurs to me,” he said, “that many of us may be leaving small angels behind. As mature Christians, are we neglecting to help those who would benefit from our love and witness?”

He set Amy down as her mother came quickly along the aisle from a rear pew.

“Just a thought,” he said, smiling at his flock.

He couldn’t help but notice that Olivia was wearing one of her great-grandmother’s hats this morning. On her, it was not merely an antique curiosity but lent a definite mystery to her violet eyes and striking beauty.

He saw from the pulpit that Olivia was holding Miss Sadie’s hand, while Hoppy took Olivia’s and Miss Sadie held tight to Louella’s. A fine kettle of fish, he thought.

Though the facts of their kinship would almost certainly remain a family secret, Miss Sadie had told him her plans. “When Olivia gets married, I want to open the ballroom and give them a grand reception! It will be the first time it’s been open in more than twenty years, and it will surely be the last. Do pray, Father, for it will demand a great deal of energy from these old bones. I wish I’d known about my great-niece before I got so decrepit. I could have done so much more!”

After the coffee hour, he was rinsing his cup at the sink when Edith carried in a tray of coffee cups. Though several people still mingled in the parish hall, they were alone in the kitchen.

She talked to him as she put the cups in the dishwasher, but she did not look at him. Her voice was cold and quiet. “Timothy, I know you are a man of passion. I’ve always seen this in you.”

She spoke as if she might be reading aloud from a legal document. A fine chill raced through him.

“You know that I want you, Timothy, and I have every reason to believe you want me. I’m expecting you to get over this silly little game of cat and mouse and show me how you really feel.”

“Edith ...”

“You are behaving as if Pat were still alive. Pat is not alive. He is quite dead.”

As he stood there, loathing the way the skin stretched over her face, he felt a sudden, warming sense of power, the conviction that he could face and handle anything. There was even a peculiar sense of being taller.

“Edith, there’s something you need to know.” He heard the ice in his own voice.

“Whatever it is,” she said, continuing to load the dishwasher, “don’t bore me with your priestly airs. I can’t abide any more of your priestly airs.”

“Oh, Father!” Ron Malcolm came into the kitchen, putting on his topcoat. “Before I leave, I need to talk to you about a little problem on the hill. Could we step up the hall a minute?”

He could have hugged his pink-cheeked building chairman on the spot. There was, however, a drawback to this providential escape, which he realized as he walked up the hall.

Standing at the sink, he had felt a surge of complete control; he had total confidence that, once and for all, he could tell Edith Mallory what was on his mind and in no uncertain terms.

He chose to believe he had not missed the moment.

The contents of Cynthia’s gift box vanished rapidly. Puny shared the truffles with Joe Joe, Barnabas wolfed down the contents of the deli package inscribed with his name, and Dooley disappeared up the stairs with more than a fair share of cookies, candy, nuts, and chips.

His own portion was put in the cupboard, except for the elaborately boxed cookies that he stashed in his nightstand. Though they were utterly sugarless, he found them addictively delicious. He began to look forward to having one with a cup of tea before bed, while dreading the time they would all be eaten.

Don’t think of it that way, he told himself. Think of it this way:

When the box is empty, she’ll be home.

Stuart Cullen would arrive on Thursday for an overnight at the rectory on his way to a meeting down the mountain.

“Th’ pope’s comin’,” he heard Puny announce to her sister on the phone.

“Stuart’s not a pope,” he told her, “he’s a bishop. It’s the Catholics that have a pope.”

“My grandpa said he never met a Catholic that knew pea turkey about th’ Bible ...”

“Well, then,” he said, heading off a diatribe, “let’s do something with the guest room. It’s been awhile since we had a guest.”

“Never had one, period, since I been here. Needs airin’ out, turnin’ th’ mattress, needs flowers—where’ll they come from in th’ dead of winter? Holly! We could use holly and save you th’ florist bill.”

“You’re a good one! Let’s do it. And let’s put a copy of the Muse by the bed. Stuart likes a good laugh.”

Puny would spend Thursday baking bread and a cake, and he would roast a tenderloin and do the potatoes. When he went by the Local, Avis gave him a bottle of Bordeaux, on the house.

“Seein’ as it’s th’ pope,” he said.