Silent Night (2 page)

It was so tall, and the lights on it were so bright, and there was a big star on top of it. But Brian didn't care about that now, or about the windows they had just seen. He didn't want to listen to the guy playing the violin, either, and he didn't feel like standing here.

They were wasting time. He wanted to get to the hospital and watch Mom give Dad the big St. Christopher
medal that had saved Grandpa's life when he was a soldier in World War II. Grandpa had worn it all through the war, and it even had a dent in it where a bullet had hit it.

Gran had asked Mom to give it to Dad, and even though she had almost laughed, Mom had promised but said, “Oh, Mother, Christopher was only a myth. He's not considered a saint anymore, and the only people he helped were the ones who sold the medals everybody used to stick on dashboards.”

Gran had said, “Catherine, your father believed it helped him get through some terrible battles, and that is all that matters. He believed and so do I. Please give it to Tom and have faith.”

Brian felt impatient with his mother. If Gran believed that Dad was going to get better if he got the medal, then his mom had to give it to him. He was positive Gran was right.

“. . .
sleep in heavenly peace
.” The violin stopped playing, and a woman who had been leading the singing held out a basket. Brian watched as people began to drop coins and dollar bills into it.

His mother pulled her wallet out of her shoulder bag and took out two one-dollar bills. “Michael, Brian, here. Put these in the basket.”

Michael grabbed his dollar and tried to push his way through the crowd. Brian started to follow him, then
noticed that his mother's wallet hadn't gone all the way down into her shoulder bag when she had put it back. As he watched, he saw the wallet fall to the ground.

He turned back to retrieve it, but before he could pick it up, a hand reached down and grabbed it. Brian saw that the hand belonged to a thin woman with a dark raincoat and a long ponytail.

“
Mom!
” he said urgently, but everyone was singing again, and she didn't turn her head. The woman who had taken the wallet began to slip through the crowd. Instinctively, Brian began to follow her, afraid to lose sight of her. He turned back to call out to his mother again, but she was singing along now, too, “
God rest you merry, gentlemen
. . .” Everyone was singing so loud he knew she couldn't hear him.

For an instant, Brian hesitated as he glanced over his shoulder at his mother. Should he run back and get her? But he thought again about the medal that would make his father better; it was in the wallet, and he couldn't let it get stolen.

The woman was already turning the corner. He raced to catch up with her.

*   *   *

Why did I pick it up? Cally thought frantically as she rushed east on Forty-eighth Street toward Madison Avenue. She had abandoned her plan of walking down
Fifth Avenue to find the peddler with the dolls. Instead, she headed toward the Lexington Avenue subway. She knew it would be quicker to go up to Fifty-first Street for the train, but the wallet felt like a hot brick in her pocket, and it seemed to her that everywhere she turned everyone was looking at her accusingly. Grand Central Station would be mobbed. She would get the train there. It was a safer place to go.

A squad car passed her as she turned right and crossed the street. Despite the cold, she had begun to perspire.

It probably belonged to that woman with the little boys. It was on the ground next to her. In her mind, Cally replayed the moment when she had taken in the slim young woman in the rose-colored all-weather coat that she could see was fur-lined from the turned-back sleeves. The coat obviously was expensive, as were the woman's shoulder bag and boots; the dark hair that came to the collar of her coat was shiny. She didn't look like she could have a care in the world.

Cally had thought, I wish I looked like that. She's about my age and my size and we have almost the same color hair. Well, maybe by next year I can afford pretty clothes for Gigi and me.

Then she'd turned her head to catch a glimpse of the Saks windows. So I didn't see her drop the wallet, she
thought. But as she passed the woman, she'd felt her foot kick something and she'd looked down and seen it lying there.

Why didn't I just ask if it was hers? Cally agonized. But in that instant, she'd remembered how years ago, Grandma had come home one day, embarrassed and upset. She'd found a wallet on the street and opened it and saw the name and address of the owner. She'd walked three blocks to return it even though by then her arthritis was so bad that every step hurt.

The woman who owned it had looked through it and said that a twenty-dollar bill was missing.

Grandma had been so upset. “She practically accused me of being a thief.”

That memory had flooded Cally the minute she touched the wallet. Suppose it did belong to the lady in the rose coat and she thought Cally had picked her pocket or taken money out of it? Suppose a policeman was called? They'd find out she was on probation. They wouldn't believe her any more than they'd believed her when she lent Jimmy money and her car because he'd told her if he didn't get out of town right away, a guy in another street gang was going to kill him.

Oh God, why didn't I just leave the wallet there? she thought. She considered tossing it in the nearest mailbox. She couldn't risk that. There were too many undercover
cops around midtown during the holidays. Suppose one of them saw her and asked what she was doing? No, she'd get home right away. Aika, who minded Gigi along with her own grandchildren after the day-care center closed, would be bringing her home. It was getting late.

I'll put the wallet in an envelope addressed to whoever's name is in it and drop it in the mailbox later, Cally decided. That's all I can do.

Cally reached Grand Central Station. As she had hoped, it was mobbed with people rushing in all directions to trains and subways, hurrying home for Christmas. She shouldered her way across the main terminal, finally making it down the steps to the entrance to the Lexington Avenue subway.

As she dropped a token in the slot and hurried for the express train to Fourteenth Street, she was unaware of the small boy who had slipped under a turnstile and was dogging her footsteps.

“G
od rest you merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay
. . .” The familiar words seemed to taunt Catherine, reminding her of the forces that threatened the happily complacent life she had assumed would be hers forever. Her husband was in the hospital with leukemia. His enlarged spleen had been removed this morning as a precaution against it rupturing, and while it was too early to tell for sure, he seemed to be doing well. Still, she could not escape the fear that he was not going to live, and the thought of life without him was almost paralyzing.

Why didn't I realize Tom was getting sick? she agonized. She remembered how only two weeks ago,
when she'd asked him to take groceries from the car, he'd reached into the trunk for the heaviest bag, hesitated, then winced as he picked it up.

She'd laughed at him. “Play golf yesterday. Act like an old man today. Some athlete.”

“Where's Brian?” Michael asked as he returned from dropping the dollar in the singer's basket.

Startled from her thoughts, Catherine looked down at her son. “Brian?” she said blankly. “He's right here.” She glanced down at her side, and then her eyes scanned the area. “He had a dollar. Didn't he go with you to give it to the singer?”

“No,” Michael said gruffly. “He probably kept it instead. He's a dork.”

“Stop it,” Catherine said. She looked around, suddenly alarmed. “Brian,” she called “Brian.” The carol was over, the crowd dispersing. Where was Brian? He wouldn't just walk away, surely. “
Brian
,” she called out again, this time loudly, alarm clear in her voice.

A few people turned and looked at her curiously. “A little boy,” she said, becoming frightened. “He's wearing a dark blue ski jacket and a red cap. Did anyone see where he went?”

She watched as heads shook, as eyes looked around, wanting to help. A woman pointed behind them to the lines of people waiting to see the Saks windows. “Maybe he went there?” she said in a heavy accent.

“How about the tree? Would he have crossed the street to get up close to it?” another woman suggested.

“Maybe the cathedral,” someone volunteered.

“No. No, Brian wouldn't do that. We're going to visit his father. Brian can't wait to see him.” As she said the words, Catherine knew that something was terribly wrong. She felt the tears that now came so easily rising behind her eyes. She fumbled in her bag for a handkerchief and realized something was missing: the familiar bulk of her wallet.

“Oh my God,” she said. “My wallet's gone.”

“Mom!” And now Michael lost the surly look that had become his way of disguising the worry about his father. He was suddenly a scared ten-year-old. “Mom. Do you think Brian was kidnapped?”

“How could he be? Nobody could just drag him off. That's impossible.” Catherine felt her legs were turning to rubber. “Call the police,” she cried. “My little boy is missing.”

*   *   *

The station was crowded. Hundreds of people were rushing in every direction. There were Christmas decorations all over the place. It was noisy, too. Sound of all kinds echoed through the big space, bouncing off the ceiling high above him. A man with his arm full of packages bumped a sharp elbow into Brian's ear. “Sorry, kid.”

He was having trouble keeping up with the woman who had his mom's wallet. He kept losing sight of her. He struggled to get around a family with a couple of kids who were blocking his way. He got past them, but bumped into a lady who glared down at him. “Be careful,” she snapped.

“I'm sorry,” Brian said politely, looking up at her. In that second he almost lost the woman he was following, catching up to-her again as she went down a staircase and hurried through a long corridor that led to a subway station. When she went through a turnstile, he slipped under the next one and followed her onto a train.

The car was so crowded he could hardly get in. The woman was standing, hanging on to a bar that ran over the seats along the side. Brian stood near her, his hand gripping a pole. They went only one long stop, then she pushed her way to the opening doors. So many people were in Brian's way that he almost didn't get out of the subway car in time, and then he had to hurry to catch up with her. He chased after her as she went up the stairs to another train.

This time the car wasn't as crowded, and Brian stood near an old lady who reminded him of his grandmother. The woman in the dark raincoat got off at the second stop and he followed her, his eyes fixed on her ponytail as she practically ran up the stairs to the street.

They emerged on a busy corner. Buses raced past in both directions, rushing to get across the wide street before the light turned red. Brian glanced behind him. As far as he could see down the block there were nothing but apartment houses. Light streamed from hundreds of windows.

The lady with the wallet stood waiting for the light to turn. The WALK sign flashed on, and he followed his quarry across the street. When she reached the other side she turned left and walked quickly down the now sloping sidewalk. As he followed her, Brian took a quick look at the street sign. When they visited last summer, his mother had made a game of teaching him about street signs in New York. “Gran lives on Eighty-seventh Street,” she had said. “We're on Fiftieth. How many blocks away is her apartment?” This sign said Fourteenth Street. He had to remember that, he told himself, as he fell in step behind the woman with his mom's wallet.

He felt snowflakes on his face. It was getting windy, and the cold stung his cheeks. He wished a cop would come along so he could ask for help, but he didn't see one anywhere. He knew what he was going to do anyway—he would follow the lady to where she lived. He still had the dollar his mother had given him for the man who was playing the violin. He would get change and call his grandmother, and she'd send a cop who would get his mom's wallet back.

It's a good plan, he thought to himself. In fact, he was
sure
of it. He had to get the wallet, and the medal that was inside. He thought of how after Mom had said that the medal wouldn't do any good, Gran had put it in her hand and said,
Please give it to Tom and have faith
.

The look on his grandmother's face had been so calm and so sure that Brian knew she was right. Once he got the medal back and they gave it to his dad, he would get well. Brian
knew
it.

The woman with the ponytail started to walk faster. He chased after her as she crossed one street and went to the end of another block. Then she turned right.