Christmas Bells

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  They walked along side by side in silence for another block before Brynn sighed and somewhat grudgingly took his hand.

  A few weeks later, Lucas realized that Brynn’s birthday was approaching, and that it fell on a Friday. “I thought I’d skip choir practice so we could go out,” he told her over the phone on Tuesday morning as he walked to class. He had wanted to discuss plans for the evening in person, but they had not seen each other in more than a week.

  “You don’t need to do that.”

  “It’s okay. They can survive without me for one rehearsal.”

  “Maybe, but—” Brynn was silent so long he thought the call had dropped. “You don’t have to. I have other plans. I’m going out with my roommate and some friends.”

  “Oh.” Vaguely reluctant, he asked, “Do you want to go out Saturday night instead?”

  “I have to study.” She sighed. “Look, that’s not all. I don’t think we should see each other unless and until you get over this thing with that choir director.”

  “What thing? What do you mean?”

  “Are you serious? All you ever talk about is Sophia this, Sophia that. Sophia the goddess of music, the passionate teacher, blah, blah, blah. I’m so sick of it.”

  Lucas felt a sting of anger. “Sophia’s my friend. She’s never done anything to hurt you.”

  “Nothing except constantly distract you.”

  “Brynn, whatever you think—” He had no idea what to say that would not make everything worse. “Listen. I haven’t cheated on you.”

  “Then let’s quit while we’re ahead, before you’re tempted.”

  • • •

  So it was that he had spent Brynn’s birthday at St. Margaret’s with Sophia and the choir, and he had not missed a Friday rehearsal since. Neither had Sophia, but after he finished warming up at the piano and as the choir filled the risers, Lucas began to think that for the first time, she might.

  “I’ll be right back,” he called over the din, rising from the piano bench and crossing to the side entrance. In the stairwell he found Father Ryan, just taking off his coat and hat. “It’s almost four thirty. Have you seen Sophia?”

  The priest regarded him skeptically. “You’re worried she might have gotten stuck in a snowdrift somewhere between here and school?”

  Lucas shrugged, feeling foolish. “You never know.”

  Looking as if he were struggling not to laugh, Father Ryan pulled his coat on again. “You stay here and start rehearsal. I’ll keep watch for Sophia.”

  “Thanks, Father.”

  The children were a bit puzzled when he announced that they were going to begin and that Miss Sophia would join them soon, but they complied, warming up their voices and filling the church with do-re-mis. Where was she? In the three, almost four, years Lucas had known her, half past four on a Friday afternoon found her at St. Margaret’s without fail. He had not felt so sick and helpless since—he didn’t need to search his memory, for he knew exactly when. Since Sophia had announced her engagement, on Christmas Eve the year before.

  For weeks they had been preparing the choir for their most important performance of the year, the concert before the Children’s Mass on Christmas Eve. The choir also sang during the liturgy, so Sophia and Lucas faced the additional challenge of choosing a program that served the spiritual needs of the parish, celebrated the reverence and joy of the occasion, and allowed the young singers to shine without taxing their stamina.

  Christmas Eve fell on a Monday that year, and after their last Friday-evening rehearsal before it, Sophia and Lucas had stayed late at the church discussing the children’s preparedness and making final decisions about the program and the assignment of solos. They were both tired and stressed from the week, for reasons having nothing to do with the choir, and so when Sophia suggested they move their meeting down the street to a café that served hot coffee and excellent pie, Lucas readily agreed.

  The change of scene relaxed them both, and they worked out the final details of the concert and mass well before they finished dessert. When conversation turned to their plans for the holidays, Sophia grew quiet and pensive, until Lucas was compelled to ask her what was wrong.

  She hesitated. “It’s probably nothing.”

  “If it’s bothering you, it’s not nothing.”

  “Okay, but don’t tell Brandon.”

  Lucas traced an X over his heart with his finger. “Promise.”

  “A few days ago, we were at the jewelry store. I was helping him pick out a Christmas gift for his mother.” Her expression was troubled, with an undertone of embarrassment. “We were browsing, looking at the rings and bracelets and necklaces displayed in the cases, when suddenly I saw something that I thought would be the perfect gift for Brandon. You know, to show him how I feel.”

  When she fell silent, Lucas prompted, “A gold-plated calculator?”

  She smiled wanly. “No, silly. That’s what I got him last year.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Yes, I am.” She took a deep breath. “So I called him over, and I took his hand, and I said, ‘This is what I would want to give you, even if I had to sell my hair to buy it.’ And I showed him—”

  “A fob chain.”

  Her eyes widened. “Yes. Yes, exactly. It was even made of platinum. So you get it?”

  “Of course I get it. ‘The Gift of the Magi,’ one of the greatest Christmas stories ever written. The wife sells her beautiful hair to earn enough money to buy her husband a fob chain for his most prized possession, a gold watch that had been in the family for generations. What she didn’t know was that her husband had sold the watch so he could buy her a set of combs for her beautiful hair.”

  “So it’s not a completely obscure reference, especially at Christmas.” Suddenly her air of vindication vanished, and she looked utterly miserable. “I felt so stupid. I still do.”

  “Why would you feel stupid? It was a very nice thing to say.” It was more than nice, but that was the best Lucas could manage while forcing back his jealousy.

  “Because Brandon didn’t understand at all. He just gave me this blank look and said that he didn’t own a pocket watch, he didn’t know anyone who did, and he was surprised that the jeweler would carry a fob chain for something no one used anymore.”

  “Oh.” Lucas inhaled deeply and ran a hand over his jaw. “Wow. Well, maybe he isn’t a fan of O. Henry.”

  “Evidently not, but even after I explained the story to him, he still just shook his head, completely bewildered. He couldn’t understand that the point of the story is that Della and Jim loved each other so much that each sacrificed their greatest treasure for the other.”

  “Right, because the other person’s happiness was more important than their own. The other person’s happiness was essential to their own.”

  “Yes, exactly.” Sophia reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “Thank you for confirming that I’m not crazy.”

  He held his hand perfectly still, unwilling to do anything that might encourage her to move hers. “You’re not crazy. You just . . . have a better grasp of literature than Brandon.” He forced himself to add, “That doesn’t make him a bad guy.”

  “No, of course not, but I was really disappointed when—” Sophia sat back, cupped her hands around her coffee mug, and frowned into it.

  Lucas could not resist. “When what?”

  “When he said that the entire problem could have been avoided if they had just taken the precautionary measure of exchanging Christmas lists.”

  “Precautionary measure?”

  “That’s an exact quote. When I tried to explain that their gifts were a symbol of their profound love for each other, he got this panicked look on his face and asked me not to cut my hair, because he prefers it long.” She shook her head, and for a moment Lucas thought he glimpsed tears in her eyes. “Th
en, as we were leaving the store, he said that the wife came out ahead in the deal, because her hair would grow back, but the husband’s watch was long gone.”

  “Sophia, I—” Lucas sat back in his chair, shaking his head. “I’m really sorry. I’m sorry he didn’t understand, but you shouldn’t feel stupid.”

  “And yet I do,” she said, forlorn. “To top it all off, we were so busy arguing that Brandon forgot to buy his mother’s present, so the entire trip was a waste of time.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lucas said again.

  “You know something?” Sophia brushed her long hair away from her face and studied him. “Sometimes I wish Brandon could be more like you.”

  Pained, Lucas managed a shrug. “That’s not really fair to Brandon. It’s taken me years to achieve this level of awesomeness.”

  She smiled then, and he felt both rewarded and profoundly sad.

  It wasn’t until much later, after he had seen her home and had returned to his own apartment, strewn with his books and papers and maps and models, that his churning thoughts settled upon one irrefutable fact: He loved Sophia, and he was tired of her not knowing. He would never deliberately create a rift between her and Brandon, but evidently one already existed. Nothing prevented him from telling her the truth. Lucas would tell Sophia how he felt and let her decide if instead of wishing her boyfriend were more like him, she would choose him to be her boyfriend.

  His Christmas gift would speak for him, would say all he had been unable to say for far too long. He would buy Sophia a set of exquisite combs with jeweled rims, like those Jim had given Della in the story. Sophia would understand what it meant.

  It took some searching, but Lucas was determined, and two days before Christmas he found the perfect combs in a boutique on Brattle Street. On Christmas Eve he wrapped them carefully and wrote out a card, a simple message of love and friendship. Determined not to lose his nerve, he tucked the gift in his bag with his sheet music, dressed in his concert attire, and walked to St. Margaret’s, arriving a record thirty minutes early.

  He and Sophia always went out for dessert together after the Children’s Mass, after the singers and parishioners had departed, after they had cleaned up for the adult choir’s performance at Midnight Mass. They usually went to a favorite café to celebrate with coffee and pie and to exchange gifts, usually CDs or concert tickets or books. Once Sophia had given him a huge bucket of LEGOs so he could construct a multitude of houses and cityscapes, take them apart, and rebuild anew. Anyone else would have considered it a gag gift, but not Sophia, and not Lucas. Whenever he grew frustrated with classes or work, he would pull out the little plastic bricks and build something impossible, something never before dreamt of, and afterward he would remember why he loved what he had chosen as his life’s work.

  Sophia’s gift was one of the best he had ever received. That year, he hoped to give her one as meaningful.

  His hopes ran so high on Christmas Eve that when Sophia took him aside before the concert and profusely apologized for the late notice, it took him a moment to understand that she could not go out for their customary post-concert dessert. She—she and Brandon—had to hurry off to her parents’ home to share some very good news with them.

  When she took a deep, shaky breath and clasped her hands together, interlacing her fingers, he knew what was coming before she spoke. The jewelry store—Brandon had not really been shopping for a bracelet for his mother but analyzing Sophia’s preferences in engagement rings. Earlier that day, Brandon had proposed, and Sophia had accepted.

  Lucas went numb. He could only stare at her, nodding automatically and frowning thoughtfully as if he were in a lecture hall listening to a professor expound on a particularly inscrutable architectural concept.

  “We can still do our gift exchange,” Sophia was saying apologetically. “I just can’t go out tonight. Or maybe we could do it another time?”

  “Yeah, why don’t we do that instead?” Lucas’s voice sounded as if he were strangling. “Actually I—I couldn’t believe it when I checked my bag just now but—well, I forgot to bring your gift.”

  “Oh, okay.” Smiling, Sophia reached out and touched his arm. “You look so upset. It’s no big deal.”

  He forced a smile and agreed.

  They settled on December 27 and lunch at their favorite Indian buffet, and then it was time to warm up the choir for the concert. Lucas had never played more mechanically, but somehow he got through the hours, and afterward he remembered to congratulate Sophia. Her radiant smile when she thanked him struck him like a punch in the gut.

  If he had known then that the engagement would come to an abrupt and inglorious end ten months later, he wouldn’t have shown up at his parents’ house that night in a daze of misery, wouldn’t have had too much wine at dinner and more after dessert, wouldn’t have ranted drunkenly to his brothers or cried to his sisters, wouldn’t have woken up the next morning in the bottom bunk of his old bed in his old room with a throbbing head and a sour throat. His family treated him kindly, gently, when he staggered down the stairs, knowing most of the story and piecing together the rest. They knew him, and they knew how he felt, and no one tried to comfort him with falsely cheerful declarations about the millions of other women out there who would consider themselves lucky to have him. For that, he was thankful.

  • • •

  Two days after that bleak Christmas, he had unwrapped the jeweled combs, had found the receipt in his wallet, and had made it as far as the entrance to the store before deciding not to return them for a refund. Why he had not, and why he had kept them ever since, he could not say. The exchange period had long ago expired and he could not imagine giving them to anyone else. Nearly a year later, they were still in the box, still at the back of a drawer in his bedroom.

  He should give them to one of his sisters, if only to make more room for socks.

  • • •

  Lucas dragged out the warm-up as long as he could, but he finally ran out of ideas. “Well done, kids,” he said, rising from the piano bench. “As soon as Miss Sophia arrives—”

  “She’s over there,” Alex interrupted, pointing. Startled, Lucas turned to look, evoking giggles from the sopranos.

  “We’re all here now, so let’s continue,” Sophia replied as she joined Lucas at the piano, her eyes bright, her cheeks flushed, and the faint scent of cinnamon in the air about her. “Let’s begin with ‘I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.’” As the children opened their binders, Sophia inhaled deeply, sighed, and quietly added, for Lucas alone, “Some very lucky person nearby has coffee.”

  “Yes, you.” He would have handed it to her except he would have dropped his sheet music, so instead he nodded to the mug and paper bag on the floor beside his bench. “I figured your concert would run late and you wouldn’t have time to stop. There’s a cranberry scone in the bag if you’re hungry.”

  “Lucas, you didn’t,” she exclaimed, picking them up. “You’re a lifesaver, a saint, an angel.”

  “Not really. Just a guy who walked past a coffee shop on his way here.” He spared a glance for the children, who were becoming cheerfully restless. “How was the concert?”

  “The concert was great, but—” To his astonishment, her face fell. “I lost my job. Or I’m going to. In June.”

  “You’re not going to teach us anymore?” shrilled Alex. “Father Ryan fired you? He can’t do that! We like you too much.”

  “No, no, Father Ryan didn’t fire me,” said Sophia quickly. “I meant my other job. I’m not leaving St. Margaret’s. Everything’s fine.” As the anxious looks faded from the children’s faces, she murmured to Lucas, “Curse his sharp young ears. I didn’t mean for him to hear that.”

  “It’s okay,” said Lucas, his brow furrowing. “Take a deep breath. Have some coffee. We can talk about it afterward.”

  Cradling the mug in her hands, Sophia nodded, closed her
eyes, and took a long drink of coffee. Lucas hoped it retained at least some of its warmth.

  The children were waiting.

  “Trebles, let’s hear from you first.” Sophia straightened her shoulders, but her smile seemed forced. “Remember the eighth rest before you come in. Lucas, if you will?”

  He nodded, wishing he could comfort her, waiting for her to raise her baton in the signal to begin. He could not help imagining how beautiful her long, dark hair would look held back from her lovely face by the jeweled combs. He ached to run his fingers through the silken locks, draw her to him, and kiss away her tears.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  January–April 1861

  The people of the North were shaken by the news of South Carolina’s secession, but Major Anderson’s daring occupation of Fort Sumter heartened them. In Henry’s study at Craigie House, Charley and Ernest spread maps of Charleston Harbor on the floor, studied them eagerly, pondered Major Anderson’s defenses, and speculated about the likelihood of a rebel attack upon the fort, what South Carolina militia forces would be involved, and from which direction they would strike.

  “I’d love to be with Major Anderson when the battle finally opens,” Charley declared fervently, and not wishing to appear a coward, Ernest chimed in that he would too. Henry, a lifelong pacifist, recoiled at the thought of his sons marching off to war, and he said a silent prayer of thanksgiving that they were too young to enlist. Only after he murmured a final amen did he realize that he had not prayed for war to be averted. It troubled him that some element of his understanding, deep within his mind or heart, had assumed that war was the inevitable outcome of secession.

  “It pains me to admit this,” he confided to Fanny when they were alone in the parlor one snowy night early in the New Year, “for it contradicts some of my most ardent convictions, but war would be preferable to appeasement. If we simply let South Carolina quit the Union, our democracy will fail and the scourge of slavery will endure. It may even spread to the west.”