I kicked the slush off my boots onto the outside mat and stepped into the cozy warmth of the kitchen. There was something already festive about it—the spicy smells, the half-opened packages, the bright gay wrappings of things, the platters all waiting to enter the oven, the look of hectic, purposeful activity.
The moment I entered, Alice looked up. Her eye traveled immediately downwards to the box I carried. Then she gave me an anxious glance.
“Is it all right?”
“I think it’s fine. Not Savile Row, but very serviceable.”
“Oh?”
The sound of that “Oh?” was enough to cast us both into despair.
“It’ll be all right,” I said.
She looked at me skeptically. “Go look at the sweater. I fixed the antlers.”
“Where is it?”
“Out in the living room.” She looked at the gift box again. “What pretty wrapping paper that is.”
“Do you want to see the suit?”
“Do you think I ought to?”
I knew wild horses couldn’t keep her from it now. “You helped pick it out.”
“It was really your choice, dear.”
“I couldn’t have made it without you.”
We looked at each other fatuously. Then a look of alarm crossed her face. “Did he give you the same suit?”
“Of course he did.”
“Sometimes they get them mixed up. Particularly this time of the year with the last-minute rush on.”
“Well, he gave me the right suit.”
“Then I don’t have to see it. Anyway, I don’t want the wrappings ruined.”
I stared around the kitchen. It appeared a whirlwind had been through it. I stood there sniffing the air. “Something smells delicious.”
“Pumpkin pie and plum pudding.”
“Have you put the pig in yet?”
“It’s too early. About two o’clock.” She opened a closet door, then came back and flipped a towel at me. “Can you help with the silver?”
She flew past before I could answer, and I was left there watching her with the towel drooping in my hand. She was traveling in the direction of the freezer.
“Alice,” I said very softly. She didn’t hear me. So I said it again, this time more forcefully, “Alice.”
“Yes, dear.”
“Alice.”
“Yes, dear. I can hear you. I have to make the hard sauce.” She dashed past me en route to a cupboard.
“Alice. Will you stop for a moment?”
Something in my voice brought her up. She stopped in her tracks and looked at me.
I started walking toward her. “Alice,” I said, “are you happy?”
She looked at me for several moments. There was a blank expression on her face as though she hadn’t heard my question. Then suddenly her face flushed and she was smiling. “Can’t you tell?”
“Yes,” I said, just as I reached her. When I caught hold of her, her eyes were beaming. Then I kissed her. Afterwards, she stood staring blankly up at me. “Maybe I’d better see the suit,” she said.
The rest of the day was spent polishing silver and crystal, stuffing the pig, whipping cream, arranging presents under the tree, and doing the thousand and one totally unexpected chores that pop up during the preparation of such a feast.
At about five that afternoon we stood before our dinner table. It was a thing of fragile elegance. On a table cloth of exquisitely wrought Battenberg lace was displayed the very best we had to offer—our fine old George III silver, our Rosenthal, our Waterford crystal goblets, our finest damask napkins. They were beloved things—heirlooms—things we had carefully collected over the years, gathered up in our travels, things purchased at great personal sacrifice, when we didn’t have the money for such luxuries.
Above the table hung a 19th-century pewter gasolier Alice and I had found on a trip to England. Its lights cast a warm orange glow over the table; its reflections, trapped in the prisms of the crystal goblets and the silver, transformed the whole thing into something shimmering and magical.
At the head of the room, the Christmas tree, spangled with tinsel, was already glowing with its multitude of colored lights. Our few presents to each other and to Richard were already placed beneath it.
Alice looked at me a little nervously. “What time is it?”
“A quarter past five.”
“Do you think you should go down now?”
“Go down?” I asked.
“To the cellar. To give him the suit.”
“Oh, my God—I’d almost forgotten.” I started for my packages, which were under the tree. “I told him I’d come for him at seven-fifteen.”
“But he needs some time to get washed and dressed.”
“Of course he does. I hadn’t thought of it.” I started to gather the boxes from under the tree. There were the shirts and shoes and other sundries I had brought back with me the day before. They were already gift-wrapped. “Do you think he’s down there now?” I stood there holding the boxes, utterly confused.
“I haven’t heard a sound all day.”
“I hope he hasn’t forgotten.”
“Of course he hasn’t forgotten,” Alice said, immediately dismissing the possibility.
“I don’t think so, either.”
“Just take the packages down, dear. If he’s there, give them to him. If not, just leave them someplace where he’ll find them.”
I gathered the boxes and bags and beribboned packages, while we laughed conspiratorially.
I had a giddy feeling as I descended the stairs to the cellar. I was also very nervous. It was the sort of thing I used to feel as a youth when I’d march jauntily up the walk of some young lady’s house with a nosegay of posies. It was all so foolish and funny and sad.
With all the packages trembling and rattling in my hands, I slowly crossed the floor to the black square like a votary of some ancient cult bringing offerings to an altar.
A thousand random thoughts came into my head. Was he there now, and if he was, how should I present my gifts? I didn’t want to present them in the way of a lord presenting gifts to his chattel. Nor, as I mentioned before, did I care particularly to be there as a votary. I wanted simply to give the gifts in the spirit of the season and for the pure Christian joy of giving.
I stopped before the square, holding all my packages and feeling a little foolish. My two hands were so completely occupied that I hadn’t been able to flick on the lights at the bottom of the cellar stairs. So I stood in the gloom and shadows of five o’clock in the afternoon peering into the pitchy darkness of the square.
As always, I wanted for some sound acknowledging my presence. None came. I decided to speak:
“Richard?” My voice was high and a little tremulous. “Richard? Are you there?”
Up above me, I could hear Alice’s busy, purposeful steps treading between kitchen and dining room. But no sound came from the crawl.
“Do you know what day this is?” I called into empty space, making an attempt at cheerfulness. “It’s Christmas, and—you know what that means.”
I waited hopefully. Nothing came. Perhaps, I thought, he’s gone out. I suddenly felt idiotic standing there with all my packages—like a man who shows up on the wrong day for a wedding. Perhaps, I thought, he’s forgotten; and if he hasn’t forgotten, he’ll refuse to come. And then it suddenly occurred to me with a shudder of horror, thinking of all the preparations that had gone on upstairs—it occurred to me that he never actually said yes to my invitation. He had in fact answered it with silence, and I had interpreted that silence as an affirmative. Suddenly I felt a kind of panic. “Richard, if you’re there, please don’t keep me standing here like—” My voice roared back at me through the hollow crawl. It makes me sick to think about it now. Then, once again the silence settling down all around me like dusk filtering through the twilight.
Well, I reasoned, it was entirely possible he’d gone out to do something, some errand, some duty. Po
ssibly he’d even gone to see a prospective employer. All this I tried to tell myself while my heart was sinking. All I could do was what Alice suggested—leave the packages someplace where he could find them.
I started for the crawl, and just as I did, a rock scuffled across the earth from somewhere inside the square. Then someone or something that had been crouching over the entrance to the crawl fell back deeper into it. I heard breathing—the sound of air being gulped, as if someone had been holding their breath under water for a long time.
“Richard? Is that you?”
I was standing right at the mouth of the crawl now, talking into it. The dehumidifier, which had been running twenty-four hours a day for the past several days had done its job well. There was barely the trace of an odor. Still, when you stood face to face with that square you were aware of something vaguely unpleasant.
“Richard? I know you’re there. Why won’t you speak to me? I can hear you breathing.” I laughed, making a joke of it. “You spoke to me the other day. What have I done to deserve this silence?”
Still no answer.
“Well, tonight’s the night,” I went on. “I told you I’d be by at seven-thirty to take you up to supper. It’s five-thirty now, and I’ll be by for you in two hours. Mrs. Graves has gone to a great deal of trouble. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.”
I was suddenly aware of all the packages in my arms. “You said you had no clothes? Well, that’s all taken care of now.” The sound of my voice boomed back at me through the crawl.
I put the packages down on the lower frame of the square and stacked them there neatly. “You’ll find a suit and several other things. There are some toiletries in there, too. I imagine you’ll want to wash up a bit before you put on your new clothes.” I was afraid that might have sounded rude. Nevertheless, I rushed right on. “As soon as I leave here now, Mrs. Graves and I will go directly upstairs and get ready for supper. The downstairs bath is ’all yours.” I peered into the darkness, listening to him breathe. It was a curiously animal-like sound. “Do you still want me to come down and get you at seven-thirty? Or perhaps you’d prefer to come up by yourself?”
My heart sinking, I waited for some response. None came.
“Very well, then. Shall we say you come up at your convenience.” I started to turn, then turned back. “I want you to know, Mrs. Graves worked very hard on this Christmas dinner. Seven-thirty is a good time for her. You see, we’d like to finish in time to clean up and go to midnight services. You won’t disappoint us, will you?” I suspect by that time I was pleading. There were no answers, no sounds, nothing. When I turned and crossed the basement and mounted the cellar stairs, I was sick to my heart.
I was now absolutely certain he had no intention of coming. Just as the evening before I’d interpreted his silence as an affirmation, I now interpreted that same silence as rejection, an icy rebuff. The whole thing had been a misunderstanding. And not on his part, but on mine. What a fool I’d been. I knew all along, deep down, that he’d never come. He never said he’d come. I merely read it into his silence because it suited me.
When I got back upstairs, I could barely face Alice. Before all this, we had planned a simple, modest supper for the two of us—a roast of some sort and the requisite bottle of good, but not superlative, wine. Now on the basis of some communication I imagined I’d had with Richard Atlee several nights before, we’d purchased about a hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of men’s clothing and prepared a dinner, something in the style and magnitude approaching a Roman banquet.
When I came up, I went directly to the kitchen. Alice was there, on a chair, wrestling a large roasting pan down from a cabinet. She looked up, her face flushed from exertion and the heat of the kitchen.
“What’s wrong, Albert?” she asked, but she didn’t have to. She could see it all in my face. She pushed a wisp of hair out of her eyes. “He’s not coming, is he?”
“Let’s go upstairs,” I said very softly. “I’ll tell you there.”
I took her arm and lead her up the steps. She permitted herself to be guided like a child.
“It’s all my fault,” I said when we’d got upstairs and closed the door. “I simply assumed—”
“But why? Why? Did he give you any reason?”
“He wouldn’t even speak to me.”
That appeared to confuse her. I went on trying to clarify. But things only got murkier. “The truth of it is, I don’t know if he’s coming or he isn’t.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“Just that.” I threw my hands up in despair. “He wouldn’t talk to me or say one way or another. I know it sounds incredible. I’m trying to think what I did between yesterday and today that offended him.”
“Is he there?”
“Of course he’s there.”
“How do you know, if he didn’t talk to you?”
“I could hear him breathing, moving around.” I was suddenly furious. “What the devil are we doing with this boy in our basement, anyway? How did we get into this thing?”
She sat down on the bed, her shoulders slumping wearily. “Well, I’m just sick to my heart.”
“I’m sorry, Alice. It’s all my fault. When I invited him and he said nothing, I simply assumed that by his silence he meant yes. Don’t ask me why.” I put my hand on her shoulder and she pressed it there with her own. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, dear, any more than it is mine. We both wanted this thing very badly. So we stretched facts a bit.”
I sat down on the bed next to her and took her hand, and we were silent together.
After a few moments I spoke: “I did exactly as you suggested. I left the packages where he could get at them easily. Then I restated the invitation to him. I offered him the downstairs bathroom to clean up in if he wanted it.”
“Well, then, we’ve done all we can.”
“What shall we do now?” I said.
“Go ahead with our plans just as if nothing had happened.” She threw her chin out jauntily. “We’ll have our pig and our port and our plum pudding and all the rest. Then we’ll go off to services. And when we come back, we’ll open our presents and have a glass of mulled cider and go to bed.”
“Just the two of us,” I said, a little forlornly.
“Just the two of us, dear. Just as it’s always been.” She said it with so much pluck and good spirits that it made me feel more miserable than ever. I put my arm around her shoulder and hugged her to me.
“Yes, Alice. Just as it’s always been.”
We bathed and dressed without a word. In anticipation of our guest we’d both planned our wardrobes the night before. I was to wear a rather formal blue serge I’d usually reserved for such occasions of state as marriages, funerals, and the like. Acquired from a Savile Row tailor on a business trip to London, it was easily the best I had.
Alice had a semi-formal gown of fine old peau de soie, I’d bought it for her in Paris only a few years before in a rather fashionable salon for the occasion of our twenty-fifth anniversary. It was by far her favorite.
Now by tacit agreement we were determined, in spite of Richard Atlee, to wear the wardrobes we had planned.
We bathed, dressed, combed and primped, all the while trying to affect an air of nonchalance. But I could tell, as undoubtedly she could, that our hearts were not in it, and that more than anything, we were both listening, hoping against hope for some encouraging sound from below—a door closing, a toilet flushing, the flow of water from a tap, anything. But the silence from below was pitiless.
We were dressed and ready to go down long before the appointed time. But we sat upstairs in the bedroom and waited, hoping—I suppose—for some miracle. Also we had the notion that if by some freakish chance he’d decided to come, and was on his way up just as we were starting down, our too sudden appearance might scare him off.
By six forty-five we could contain ourselves no longer. So together—Alice in flowing peau de soie,
wooshing about as she moved, me in stiff blue serge and feeling a trifle ridiculous and forlorn, the smell of moth balls wafting all around us—we started arm in arm down the steps. Just for a moment, one silly, giddy second, while descending, a picture of Alice and me, three decades younger, on a spring Sunday, being wed in the living room of her father’s house, flashed before my eyes.
At the bottom of the stair we looked around timorously like strangers arriving at a party too early and fighting the impulse to bolt. I started a fire on the hearth and we sat quietly together on a small love seat before it sipping cream sherry. We made a few miserable little attempts at conversation, at being cheery and casual.
I think the painful faculty of recollection was upon Alice, too, that evening. She kept harking back over the years. We chatted with a lot of bogus nostalgia about Christmases past and how we spent them. When I was a businessman I always made a point of going on buying trips around Christmas time and taking Alice with me. There’d been Christmases we’d had together in Paris, Zurich, Mexico City, Tokyo, Bombay, Rio de Janeiro, the Bahamas, Nantucket, New York. In the rosy hues of retrospection we attributed to those times wondrous, magical qualities they never really possessed.
Now sitting there that night with the snow falling silently outside we knew in our hearts that all of those past Christmases were as fake and hollow and rotten as the one we were about to celebrate. After a while we abandoned all efforts at lively chatter. Instead, we sat listening to the fire hiss and crackle and sipped our sherry and gave ourselves up to despondency.
There was still no sign of Richard Atlee at seven-thirty and so, the moment the minute hand of the grandfather clock brushed the six, we rose as if by prearranged signal. Alice took my arm, and with all the solemnity and grandeur of a wedding march, together we strode through the parlor and the library to the dining room, where we silently took our places at table.
I’ll always remember the first anguished moments of that Christmas supper. I can still hear, over the years, the lonely tinkle of Alice’s spoon striking lightly on her melon plate. It’s one of the saddest sounds I think I’ve ever heard. Seeing her in lace seated before all the resplendent finery of that table, I was afraid to look across at her, for fear that if for one moment our eyes met, we would cry. Who would ever have thought we would have taken such a wretched little incident so much to heart?
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