A Light in the Window (27 page)

In other years, he had often felt a great fatigue after the midnight service. Tonight, he could have shouted through the streets, blown a trumpet, waved a banner. His Christmas adrenaline was up and pumping, and so was Dooley’s.

“Well done, old fellow!” he said as they headed toward the rectory. “I heard you hang those high notes in ‘Once in Royal David’s City.’ ” He put his arm around the boy’s shoulders. Here was another miracle, walking right beside him. “Why don’t we open just one present tonight?”

“You ain’t goin’ t’ like what I’m givin’ you.”

“That’s what you said last year, and haven’t I carried that glasses case with me everywhere, even to Ireland and back?” When would this boy stop shooting himself in the foot? “I’ll tell you one thing—you’ll jolly well like what I’m giving you.”

Dooley looked up and grinned.

Sitting on the floor in the study, the winking tree lights reflected in every window, he unwrapped the book on veterinary medicine. It was true. He didn’t like what Dooley gave him.

“Now you can doctor Barnabas if he gits sick.”

“Aha.”

“You can doctor ol’ Vi’let if she’s tryin’ t’ puke up a mouse.”

“I’ll let you handle that.”

“Looky here. It tells how you can fix up Jack if he gits worms or mange.”

“You’re the doctor in the house, not me.”

“Yeah, but I might not always be here.”

“Not always be here? And where might you be?”

“When Grandpa gits well, I guess we’ll be goin’ back t’ ’at ol’ house, if it ain’t fell in.”

He could tell this had been on Dooley’s mind for some time, but he hadn’t been wise enough to sense it. “We’re going to do something about that, but I don’t know what exactly. I want you to stay here, for things to stay the way they are.”

“Good,” said Dooley. “Where’s my present?”

He was sitting on the side of the bed, taking his shoes off, when the phone rang. It would be Walter, who often phoned after the late service. “Merry Christmas, potato head.”

“Timothy?”

“Cynthia!”

There was an awkward pause.

“Are you all right?” she said. Her voice sounded new to him somehow.

“Yes! Yes, we’re fine. A rough go in some places, but fine. I turned your faucets on to drip and put the thermostat at sixty-two ... shouldn’t be any problem. I think the worst is behind us.”

“Thank you. I appreciate it.”

“I thought you were Walter. That was ... ah, what I used to call him.” He could tell the conversation was having trouble pushing off, like a sled poised at the top of a hill but snared on a rock.

“I hope you’re not disappointed that it isn’t Walter.”

“Why, no. Certainly not! And you—are you all right?”

“I haven’t had any spills on icy sidewalks, or power outages, or empty cupboards, if that’s what you mean. But my heart is not all right—not in the least,” she said coolly.

He felt his own heart pound as the sled pushed off. He sensed that this would be Olympic tobogganing, as opposed to a playful dash down Old Church Lane on a biscuit pan.

“Why don’t we start where we ended, all those days ago?” she said. “You were asking me a question.”

That question, once so alive in his thoughts, was now a fossil. He was embarrassed even to think how peevish it would sound.

“Yes, well. It’s really not worth asking again.”

“It must have been worth something—it cost days of trying to figure out the answer.

“The answer, Timothy, is that the man you spoke with on the phone was my editor and friend, James McNeely. He came back from Europe on business in New York, where he rang the bell of his own apartment, only to find me in a bathrobe, with my face set like papier-mâché in a green mud pack. He needed something in his desk and said that if I’d consider washing my face, he’d take me to dinner.

“It was terribly late, but I was wild to be out of here and have the lovely privilege of talking about my work to somebody who not only understands it but is vastly interested.”

“Of course,” he said, barely able to speak.

“I didn’t even hear the phone ring while I was getting dressed. I had my head stuck so far in the sink trying to dissolve that mask! Days later, I called him in France, wondering if he’d answered my phone, and he said he’d asked whoever it was to leave a message.” There was a pause. “So, why didn’t you leave a message?”

“I don’t know.”

He felt as if he had committed a schoolboy crime, like smoking on the bus or putting a frog in the girls’ toilet. He fairly squirmed with the agony of having made so much ado about nothing.

He knew he would have to hold on tight and steer. “If I had it to do over, of course, I would insist on speaking with you. ‘Haul that woman out of the shower or wherever she is, and put her on the line—at once! This is her neighbor calling!’ ”

She laughed the breathless, throaty laugh he loved.

“Your laughter is the Christmas music I’ve been longing to hear. I’m sorry, terribly sorry to have been so petty. Please forgive me.”

“Oh, Timothy! How awful it’s been, not being able to get home, not hearing from you, getting that dreadful little frozen note that I stuffed in the incinerator, and wondering what was wrong. And all the circuits busy for days, and no way to talk ... to make contact. And your Christmas present sitting here on the sofa ... I’ve felt so alone, so isolated from you ...”

“I miss you,” he said. Without meaning to, he said, “I need you ...”

“Can you imagine how I love hearing you say that? That is the Christmas music I’ve longed to hear.”

“I have no photograph of you. Sometimes I can’t remember what you look like—do you mind my saying it? I want so much to see your face.”

“I’ll pop into one of those little booths and make dozens of funny faces and send them out as soon as the snow melts.”

“Wonderful! And when will you come home? Soon?”

“Not until March. If I could get home now, I wouldn’t have but three days. And the ice and rain have begun here, and the work is pressing me so ...” She sounded anguished.

“What can I do for you. How can I help?”

“Love me! Long for me! Yearn for me! Oh, Timothy, you were jealous, weren’t you?”

“Yes. Terribly. It was churning around in me for days, and when you answered the phone, it just popped out. I didn’t mean for it to come out that way at all.”

“How lovely that you can still surprise yourself. I couldn’t love you if you were completely buttoned up. It’s that little place you can never quite manage to get closed that makes me love you.”

“But it’s such a small place. Wouldn’t you rather it was a bigger place?”

“Infinitely rather, my dearest.”

He felt a kind of thaw, a snow melt. Something was being released and healed, and he sank back on the pillows.

“I love you, Timothy.”

“I love you, Cynthia. Truly I do. You are a godsend.”

“Do you think God would have me batter through your locked doors?”

“I think that you and only you could do it. I read something the other day—‘What is asked of us in our time,’ the writer said, ‘is that we break open our blocked caves and find each other. Nothing less will heal the anguished spirit, nor release the heart to act in love.’ Locked doors, blocked caves, it’s all the same. It is so hard to ...”

“To be real.”

“Yes. Terribly hard. Frightening. But there’s no other way.”

“Ah, you talk tough now, you big galoot, but wait ’til I come home and fling myself into your arms ... will you run?”

“The very thought takes my breath away,” he said, meaning it. “And I don’t know if I’ll run. I don’t want to. But ...”

“But it could happen?”

“The odd thing is, I don’t trust myself with you—yet I trust you. I trust you to be real with me, but I’m afraid that I can’t give that back ...”

“You’re giving it back right now.”

“Yes. But it’s ... frightening.”

“Hold me, Timothy. Just be still with me. Where are you, dearest?”

“Lying on my bed. Can you hear Barnabas snoring?”

“No, but I should like to. I should like to be there with you, only holding you and you holding me.”

All the tension of the past weeks, the angry weather, the increased duties of church, the luncheon speeches and invocations, the conflicts of his heart—all had concentrated to feel, somehow, like an inpouring of cement. Now, at last, came the outpouring.

“I need you,” he said again, warmed and happy.

“Let’s burn ’em ol’ tables!” Dooley shouted over the music on his jam box.

“Let’s burn ’at ol’ jam box!” he shouted back.

Actually, the folding tables made one of the finest fires they’d had all winter.

With the Christmas Day service behind him, he did something he’d nearly forgotten how to do. He undressed and put on his pajamas and robe and made a pot of Darjeeling. He at last sent Dooley to his room, where all he could hear of the music was boom, boom, boom.

There was only one thing for it.

He put the disc on his player in the cabinet and, smiling, fell sound asleep listening to the rhumba—or was it the tango?

Jena Ivey of Mitford Blossoms didn’t have the faintest idea which florists in New York would be certain to send roses that didn’t drop their heads, but he remembered a magazine article he’d read in the dentist’s office that said the Ritz-Carleton was known for its stunning flower arrangements. So he called the hotel manager in New York, was given the name of a florist, and proceeded to order a dozen red roses and a bouquet of fresh lavender, at a price he at first thought was a joke, to be delivered in a box tied with a satin ribbon—and step on it.