Silver Bells

by Luanne Rice

  “Hi, Catherine!” Bridget said.

  “Hello Bridget, hi Christy,” she said.

  “You’re a vision,” he said, smiling. “Practically the only person we’ve seen on the street all morning. A reverse angel—all dressed in black. Thank you for showing Bridget such a fine time last night.”

  “Catherine, do you have on your boots?” Bridget asked, bending down to look. “Good! Come sledding with us, okay? We’re going to Central Park.”

  Catherine hesitated. Christy watched the conflict in her eyes. She was shy and sad; she wore black; she’d passed by his tree stand every morning and evening with barely a hello. Yet last night she had shown his daughter a magical time, and here they were inviting her on a family excursion. Christy found himself holding his breath, wanting her to say yes.

  Her eyes danced back and forth between him and Bridget, then up at the sky—as if she could see through the driving snow, past the winter gale, to a place of answers. She blinked, her gray eyes serious and bright.

  And then she said yes.

  Catherine felt excited, as if she were on an adventure. She hadn’t been sledding in over thirty years, since she was a child, when her father would take her to Central Park. The city had a shut-down feeling, with hardly any traffic. The snow softened all sounds, and even the buildings appeared to blend into the sky. But that wasn’t the only reason—her pulse raced because she knew that something was about to happen.

  They picked up two sleds from the basement of Mrs. Quinn’s boardinghouse—old Flexible Flyers that dated back to the days when her sons were young. Catherine had grown up in Chelsea with the Quinn boys; John had been in her class at St. Lucy’s. She felt a pang to see Patrick’s initials carved into the sled’s wood, but she said nothing.

  The E train came right away, taking them to the Fifty-first Street station, where they changed to the number six train. Getting off at Seventy-seventh Street, they pulled the sleds, cutting over to a nearly deserted Fifth Avenue, where one lone bus was creeping along and two people were cross-country skiing. When the light changed, Christy grabbed Bridget’s hand, and they ran across the avenue into Central Park.

  Christy hesitated, trying to get his bearings.

  “We were here once, four years ago,” he said. “I don’t remember which hill it was.”

  “We have to go to the same one!” Bridget said, sounding panicked.

  And Catherine’s heart lurched. Suddenly she knew. The same one … the same one that Danny would remember, too. Catherine felt excited: this was what Danny’s note had said. He was bringing his father and Bridget here, to Central Park.

  “It had a statue at the top, I remember that,” Christy said. “A guy with a funny hat.”

  “The pilgrim,” Catherine said. “Pilgrim Hill.” She led the way into the park, around the boat pond. She pointed out the elegant building across Fifth Avenue where Pale Male, the red-tailed hawk, had lived for over ten years, raising more than seventeen chicks. Christy laughed.

  “Just imagine a hawk choosing to live here in New York City, when he has the whole countryside just waiting for him … when he could fly up to Nova Scotia and have a feast every day.”

  “He’s like Danny,” Bridget said, pulling her sled. “He was tired of the wild.”

  Christy stopped smiling. Catherine saw him frown and draw his shoulders up to his ears. He didn’t look angry as much as bewildered. Bereft, she thought, her stomach flipping.

  When they reached Pilgrim Hill, they discovered where everyone else in New York had gone: the hillside was covered with people sledding. Christy dragged both sleds up to the top, with Catherine and Bridget running behind.

  “Look at these initials, carved into the wood,” Bridget said. “JQ and PQ.”

  “The Quinn brothers,” Catherine said.

  “Did you know them?” Bridget asked.

  “I did, in school. They … went their separate ways,” Catherine said. Something about her tone of voice made Christy look up. Their eyes met, and she decided not to talk about the Quinn brothers in front of Bridget. He set up Patrick’s sled, preparing to get on with his daughter.

  “Hop on,” he said, holding the rope.

  “Pa!” she laughed. “I’m going myself.”

  “You don’t want me to take you down the first run?”

  “I’m too big!”

  “Of course you are,” he said. “What was I thinking?”

  He gave his daughter a running push, then stood back with Catherine to watch her speed down the hill. They stood by the pilgrim statue, beneath the bare trees.

  “Seems like just last year I was watching her and her brother play in the snow here,” Christy said. “They’ve grown up so.”

  Catherine heard him stop himself; he hadn’t seen his son in a year now.

  “What did you mean,” he asked, changing the subject, “when you said the Quinn brothers had gone their separate ways?”

  “Well, John still lives in the neighborhood. He has a wife and three kids, took over his father’s hardware store.” Christy nodded that he knew that. “But Patrick joined the Harps, an Irish gang that wanted to be like the Westies—the scourge of Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen. Patrick sold drugs, became a loan shark. He went to jail at Rikers, then got sent to Sing Sing.”

  “Mrs. Quinn never talks about him,” Christy said. “Never a word. I never even knew she had a son named Patrick. She’s ashamed of him.”

  “He broke her heart,” Catherine said, and by the way Christy flinched, she could see that his own heart was in tatters. His eyes looked bruised, as if he’d been beaten. Bridget ran up, panting, saying she wanted to go again. They watched her glance around the hillside, as if looking for someone, then jump onto Patrick’s sled and take off.

  “She’s a wonderful girl,” she said carefully.

  “That she is. She misses her brother something fierce.”

  And he misses her, Catherine wanted to say. Instead she said, “Is it hard for you to be in New York?”

  “In general?” he asked, looking down at her with clear blue eyes. “Or just since Danny ran away?”

  “Both, I suppose,” she said.

  “I used to hate coming,” he said. “Back when Mary, my wife, was still alive, I’d dread the month of December. Leaving the family, leaving Nova Scotia. Coming down here, to this place. All the big buildings and taxicabs and honking horns. People hurrying to make money. Including myself, selling my trees.”

  “You don’t think that anymore?”

  He shrugged. “I like Chelsea,” he said. “For one month. More than that, it would probably wear me out.”

  “You look … ,” she began, staring at the circles under his eyes, “a little worn out now.”

  “That’s Danny,” he said. “God, I feel I’ll go mad if I don’t find him. I go looking every night. Under bridges, in parks, down alleyways. The police haven’t seen him, the child welfare people haven’t seen him.” His voice caught, and he blinked the snow out of his eyes. “At least Mrs. Quinn knows her son’s in prison. I only received the one card from Danny. I don’t even know if he’s still alive.”

  “Oh, but he is!” Catherine blurted out.

  Christy gave her a sharp look, stepped closer, and took her arm. “How do you know that?”

  Her mouth dropped open. She wanted to tell him everything—that she had seen Danny just last night. The words caught—how could she betray the boy? But she couldn’t stand the look in his father’s eyes. They were face to face; she could feel his warm breath on her skin, and she couldn’t look away from his gaze.

  Just then Bridget dragged her sled up the hill. This time she was looking wildly around, turning her head from side to side.

  “What’s wrong, Bridget?” Christy asked, dropping Catherine’s arm.

  “Just … I don’t know,” she said. “I thought, I thought …”

  “Are you cold already?” he asked. “Do you want to go home?”

  She shook her head. “No. I wan
t to take another run.” Climbing onto her sled, she pointed down the hill.

  Catherine’s heart had slowed a little, but it was still pounding. She licked her lips, knowing that when Christy asked her again, how she knew, she would tell him. But he didn’t ask. He touched her arm again, this time very gently.

  “I know that Danny is alive,” he said, answering his own question, “because he has to be. My boy has to be alive, and I know he is. I can feel it in my bones. In my blood. If Danny were dead, I would know.”

  “You’d just feel it,” Catherine said, closing her eyes, weaving in the wind as if she were a small tree, “when someone you love has died.”

  “Your husband,” she heard Christy say. Her eyes were squeezed tight, but she felt his fingers on her cheek, and she nodded.

  “I know what it is to lose the one you’re married to,” he said. “A part of your heart dies with them. You can’t quite believe you can go on breathing. Or that your heart will keep beating. It seems almost unnatural that it does.”

  “I’m sorry you know that,” Catherine said. She opened her eyes then, and she saw his blue eyes looking so deeply into hers that she felt color rise into her cheeks. “And I’m sorry about Danny. He …” she began.

  Just then a gust of wind shook the trees on the hill. It knocked snow off the branches, sent it tumbling down. The wind dislodged thousands of tiny icicles, making them ring like silver bells.

  “I think we need a sleigh ride,” Christy said. “Did you hear those bells?”

  “They were icicles,” Catherine said. “I have to tell you something.”

  “You New Yorkers are too literal,” he laughed. “If there’s one thing a lifetime of raising Christmas trees will do for you, it’s to make you appreciate hearing magical sleigh bells on a snowy hillside. Come on.”

  Christy slung the second sled down on the snow. He wrapped one arm around Catherine, easing her down onto the wood. She felt him climb on behind her, his legs around her hips, reaching forward to get her feet positioned on the crossbar. His chest pressed into her back, making her spine tingle.

  “You ready?” he asked, his mouth against her ear.

  “I am,” she said, surprising herself.

  “Okay, then,” he said.

  She felt him push off with one hand, holding on to her with the other. The sled inched through the deep snow till they hit the packed part. They gained momentum, hit the crest of the hill, and started to fly. The sled’s metal runners crunched underneath, falling snow stung her cheeks and hit her glasses, the wind filled her lungs. Catherine cried out—the shock of joy. Christy’s arms encircled her from behind, and he just held on tighter.

  Bridget was trudging back uphill after her third run, when she saw her father and Catherine go zooming by. The sight of her father grinning, as he hadn’t in a year, gave her a momentary jolt of happiness. But immediately she went back to despair. Here she had followed Danny’s directions to a T, had gotten her father to actually miss a day of work and take her to the appointed spot—and no Danny.

  She leaned against the pilgrim statue, hyperventilating from exertion. If she wasn’t so frantic to see her brother, she’d be furious at him right now. The snowstorm was blinding, but she peered through it at all the families: parents and kids, brothers and sisters. Tears popped into her eyes.

  “Your eyelids will freeze,” the voice said.

  Bridget whipped around—there was Danny, hiding behind the statue’s pedestal.

  “You’re here! Just like you said in your note,” she said, flinging herself into his arms, making the tears gush even more.

  “Stop it, stop it,” he said. But he didn’t push her away. In fact, he held on very tightly. They clung to each other for a whole minute—her eyes were closed, her cheek against his jacket, and she gulped hot sobs as she smelled his familiar smell.

  “I’m so glad to see you.”

  “You, too, Bridey.”

  “Pa’s on the hill,” Bridget said when he finally drew back. She scanned the people sledding.

  “I know. With Catherine. That’s why I have to talk fast—”

  “You have to see him, Danny,” Bridget said, feeling the panic again, not quite stopping to wonder how he knew Catherine’s name. “He’s looking for you, every night, after work. This is making him old—it really is. You’ve given him gray hair and wrinkles!”

  “He had those before,” Danny said, but he sounded doubtful.

  “Not like this. He’s … aching, Danny. You made him cry.”

  “Pa doesn’t cry.”

  Bridget clamped her lips tight. If she got started on what this last year had been like, she might start shrieking. And she knew Danny would run away again. So she just stood very still, waiting for him to speak.

  “Look,” he said, “I’m on a mission, Bridey. That’s what I’m thinking this is. I have something I have to do. If Pa sees me here, he’ll try to stop me, get me back to the farm.” He paused. “How is the farm?”

  “The farm’s the way it always is! But a mission—like what?” Bridget liked the sound of this. It sounded noble, like missionaries going to villages filled with poverty and ignorance, bringing food and schoolbooks. Or maybe Danny was carrying the message of prayer into the sinful city. But that just made Bridget laugh—at the picture of her sinful brother sneaking cigarettes and beer, skipping church, telling her his favorite prayer of a long winter was “Good God, get me the hell off this island.” But she knew he was only kidding. Nova Scotia was in his blood, as it was in hers.

  “I can’t tell you,” he said. “Not yet. Not till it happens.”

  “But in the meantime, Pa … why did you have me bring him here, sledding, if you weren’t going to talk to him?”

  Danny stared down the hill. Bridget followed his gaze, saw their father and Catherine at the end of a long run—they’d made it almost all the way to the boat pond. Through the snow, they looked hazy from this distance, but Bridget saw her father’s height and broad shoulders, and Catherine’s black coat, and knew it was them.

  She looked up at her brother. His face was thin and sharp, as if he hadn’t had enough to eat this year. His brown hair curled over his collar, and his chin was covered with a scruffy beard. Bridget wanted to tease him about it, but then she spotted the tears in his eyes. He had wanted her to bring their father here, because it was the only way he could get close enough to really see him. Danny missed him.

  “Now who’s the one whose eyelids are going to freeze?” she asked quietly.

  He shrugged. Then he kissed the top of her head and pulled the green hat down over her eyes. When Bridget yanked it up, her brother was gone.

  7

  I have to tell him,” Catherine said. “I know I do.”

  “Now slow down. Let’s think about this,” Lizzie said.

  Late Sunday afternoon they were sitting on the rug in front of the fireplace at Catherine’s house, the Sunday Times spread out all around them. Yesterday’s snow had stuck, and the seminary grounds across the street were covered in white. Lucy and Bridget were upstairs in the music room, trying to play the piano.

  “I love that,” Catherine said. “Hearing them up there. This is such a big house for one person. It needs kids.”

  “You wanted Danny to stay here.”

  “I know. I wish he would now. It would make telling his father so much easier. If only I could tell Christy that Danny has a roof over his head, that he’s safe.”

  “You’re seriously planning to do this?”

  “I have to, Lizzie. It was one thing to start off helping Danny. I didn’t really know his family then; they seemed, I don’t know, almost abstract.”

  Lizzie nodded.

  “The thing is, now I’ve spent time with Christy. He’s suffering so much. How would you feel if you didn’t know where Lucy was?” Catherine asked, her gaze boring into Lizzie—knowing the question would pierce her.

  “Okay, okay, I hear what you’re saying,” Lizzie said, shivering at the dr
eadful thought. “But what about Danny? He’s the one I’m worried about. If you betray him, he’ll really disappear. At least this way we get to keep an eye on him. He comes to the soup kitchen, and we give him clothes, and he lets you slip him money …”

  “And he uses my library,” Catherine said quietly, wishing the whole issue were simpler. Lizzie had a good point. She wondered what it said about a runaway boy that his greatest request was to be allowed access to books.

  “Do you have any idea what he’s doing there?” Lizzie asked. “Studying for his GED? Writing a thesis about life on the streets?”

  “I …” Catherine began, but trailed off. She did have an idea. The last time he’d visited her library, just four nights ago, he had left two books unshelved. Perhaps he’d been overtired, or excited about his family being back in town—he didn’t usually make mistakes like that. Catherine wanted to tell Lizzie, but this was one secret of Danny’s she would keep. “I don’t know,” she finished.

  Lizzie lay on the rug, a skeptical look in her golden brown eyes. “Mnnn,” she said, raising one eyebrow. “So. What are you going to do? Are you going to blow the whistle on him?”

  “I’m trying to decide.”

  “How was sledding with the tree man, by the way?” Lizzie asked.

  Catherine stared into the firelight. She remembered the feeling of Christy’s arms around her as they’d hurtled down the hill. They’d felt so strong, but somehow tender, as if he wanted to protect her.

  “I had a good time,” she said quietly. Inside, she felt turmoil. She had had so much fun. Christy’s muscular arms had felt so good, just to have that human closeness. She had laughed in the snow—and had so much fun. How was it possible? This was the time of year when she’d lost Brian.

  “Are you going to talk to him?” Lizzie asked.

  “Brian?” Catherine asked.

  Lizzie’s expression was steady, a bit impatient. “Christy.”

  Catherine sighed. She could at least tell Christy that Danny was alive. She wouldn’t have to reveal anything she knew about the boy’s whereabouts. “I keep asking myself, what would Brian do? It’s Christmastime—he’s always closest to me now. I want him to tell me—”