by Luanne Rice
Not with a girl—this was before Penelope—but with the city lights and everything they stood for, the hope and promises he knew they could deliver. New York City was a place for dreams.
Four years ago he had come down to Manhattan with his father and sister, not knowing what to expect. His mother had always made New York sound like a place where people lost their hearts and souls. “People’s heads get turned down there,” she’d say. “They’re so busy going for the gold ring, they forget to just ride the merry-go-round. They forget to look for the beauty.”
To Danny’s amazement, he had found the beauty in New York. He’d loved it from that first year: taking the subway underground, coming up in a park, or next to a planetarium, or all the way to the end of the line—to a boardwalk by the Atlantic Ocean; walking along one block and being able to choose between a slice of pizza, a fresh bagel, pork fried rice, or a hot dog and a papaya drink; the amazing sight of clouds drifting over the big buildings, throwing their shadows on the walls of windows; beautiful girls smiling at him, making him feel he was king of the world.
In New York, Danny had the feeling he could be king of the world. It wasn’t like home, where he had to content himself with sunshine, the smell of pine, the sensation of a breeze on his body, and the sound of waves in his ears. As much as he loved those things, he knew he could have them right here—if he went to Central Park, or took a ride on the Staten Island ferry, or rode the A train out to Far Rockaway.
But here in the city he could also have other things as well: if he worked hard, studied right, and didn’t get distracted by the beautiful girls he met—Penelope in particular—he could follow his dream, make it come true. Here in New York, it might not matter that he’d failed those two classes, that he wasn’t on track to graduate. Danny knew there were other tracks in pursuit of his quest.
Sometimes he’d literally follow clouds. He’d race them through the park, trying to measure their height or wind speed. Were they high-altitude cirrus clouds—thin, wispy, with long curled-up ends? Or were they middle clouds—altocumulus, for example—patchy and scattered, bringing light precipitation? Low clouds were the easiest to chase—big fat cumulus ones, rolling through the sky like laughing babies. Clouds brought the rain that made the trees grow. Danny was learning them all.
His secret hideout—within sight of C’s library in the Rheinbeck Tower—was a great place to watch the weather. If only she knew he was here, they could exchange signals! But Danny didn’t want to jeopardize anything, involve her in his trickery. No, it was better to be furtive and private, sit up here in his crow’s nest and stare out over the sea of trees, observe the systems coming and going. He could block out New York’s excitement—study for and pass his GED, fill out applications for the next step in his plan.
Plan, mission, dream: different words for the same thing. Danny might have added odyssey and quest to the list. This was big, for him. He envied some of the New York kids he met—Penelope, for example. Their lives were so different from his, focused almost completely on education, on their futures; whereas Danny’s life on the farm had been all about the here and now. On tilling the earth and planting the saplings, on fertilizing the rows and spraying for pests.
Hard to think about the future, when your back was breaking and the wind was blowing dirt into your eyes. When the sun was beating down and you were so thirsty you thought you’d drop, but you’d forgotten your canteen. When you were spreading fertilizer—literally acres of it—and the stench was making you sick. Hard to dream about the future when you were so mired in the present.
New York kids had it different. Not necessarily better—they didn’t have the clean, clear air, or the aurora borealis, or the endless sky. But different. Their parents took it for granted that they would leave home and go to college. Continuing education was assumed, every bit as much a part of life as the sun coming up. Penelope said it was a rare day that she and her parents didn’t discuss where she wanted to go to college.
For Danny, it had been the opposite. He hadn’t wanted to weigh his father down with his hopes. College cost money. Even more, it would take him away from the farm. Pa was getting older, and Danny knew he was counting on his carrying on. The few times Danny had tried to broach the subject, he’d seen his father’s shoulders tighten. The first time had been at the end of a day, when his father was tired from working the field. The second time had been at breakfast, when his father was raring to get out on the hillside.
The third time had been the week before the forest fire. And then the blaze had killed everything. Until Danny got here, to the city, and just decided to stay: make it happen for himself. He’d go back to his father when he’d accomplished his goal—make his father proud. So he stayed here in his hideaway, or up at C’s library, working as hard as he could.
The problem was, he got lured down to the street pretty often. The city lights almost seemed to spell out his name. He’d take the camera with him, snap pictures of building ornamentation. He loved to bump through the crowds in Times Square, all those people going to the theater, dressed up in fancy clothes his mother knew only from TV and magazines. He liked to walk up and down the sidewalk in front of the Museum of Natural History, look for the admission badges people exiting dropped on the sidewalk, use them to sneak inside.
Sometimes he’d find two, and he’d call Penelope from the pay phone on the corner, ask her to come meet him. Her family was wealthy, and she’d always offer to pay for him. Danny didn’t want that, any more than he wanted to accept public assistance or handouts from Catherine. He would use the found badges to take Penelope inside the museum, stand with her under the blue whale, and whisper in her ear about the whales he’d grown up with, playing in the Cabot Strait.
And now that his family was back in town, he couldn’t stay away from Chelsea. He had to see them as much as he could. The problem was, he didn’t want to talk to his father: he knew that his pa would lock him down, drag him home to Canada faster than he could say “blue spruce.” Danny felt so guilty for abandoning his pa, leaving him all alone to work the farm. So he had to watch from a distance—and pray that Bridey and Catherine wouldn’t give him away.
Catherine had been helping him this whole year. She asked very few questions, and Danny liked that. He had the feeling she trusted him, knew that he had to go about things in his own way. She let him use the books in the Rheinbeck Library, so he could study up. She had brought Bridey to Rockefeller Center; that made Danny happier than almost anything, knowing his sister had finally seen the great tree lighting.
Where they came from, Christmas trees meant as much—well, as anything. They were his family’s livelihood. Danny’s father had always said that their trees brought families together. “Even in bad old New York,” he’d say, “where people are always chasing their crazy dreams, piling up money, once a year they bring our trees into their homes and call their families back together.”
Danny was proud of that. Even Penelope’s apartment, up on the glittering Gold Coast of Fifth Avenue, had a Christmas tree sparkling in its window. Her lawyer father would put his deals aside for one night, staying home to drink eggnog and decorate the tree. She had confided in Danny that the Christmas tree had always been precious to her; because of her father’s importance and busy schedule, it was one of the few nights she’d ever been able to count on him being home.
Penelope was the only person he’d ever confided his plans in. He hadn’t told his father or sister, Lizzie or Lucy, even Catherine. Just Pen. He remembered the moment still—it was back in September, a beautiful late summer day, standing on the terrace of Belvedere Castle. He’d had his arm around her, pointing out high clouds, veiling the blue sky with a layer as thin as gauze.
“What are they, Danny?” she’d asked.
“Cirrostratus,” he said. “They’re high clouds, about eighteen thousand feet up, primarily composed of ice crystals. See how they don’t have distinct edges? They’re good for the trees; they block the brighte
st sun from scorching the needles.”
“It’s only September, but you’re already thinking about the Christmas trees.”
“I always am,” he said quietly. “It’s why I want to be a meteorologist.”
“Dan, Dan, the weather man,” she teased.
And he’d just smiled, because in spite of her joking, he knew that this was his life: what he had been put on this earth to do.
Now his father stopped working for a minute. He stretched, looked around. The light was red, no traffic moving down Ninth Avenue. Staring across the street, Danny saw his father spot him. His father leaned forward, peering through the snow. The hat must have thrown him off, but suddenly their eyes met. Danny’s heart was pounding. He froze, like a deer caught in headlights.
“Danny!” his father called, coming toward him.
For one minute he wanted his father to catch him—to hold on tight, take him home again. He wanted the chance to explain what he was doing, tell his father that he loved him and was, in a way, doing this for him and the farm. But he didn’t trust himself to be articulate enough to put it all in words.
Just then the bus came, and Danny jumped on board. When he did, the hat fell off. His last look, out the back window of the bus, was of his father picking up the black derby in his hands, clutching it to his heart as he tore down Ninth Avenue, yelling after the bus.
His own heart breaking, Danny jumped off at the next stop and did what he did best: disappeared into the city, losing himself down an alley, behind a building, over a fence … like a cloud in the sky, like a scrap of mist caught in the branches of a white pine. You might see it, might even think you can grab it, but you’d better not try: it’ll just disappear.
That’s what clouds do.
And they didn’t call him Harry Houdini for nothing.
That night Catherine was late leaving work. She hoped that Danny would show, but he didn’t. She took her time walking through the snow to the subway. When she got off the train in Chelsea, she walked slowly down Twenty-third Street. Slower and slower as she got closer to Christy. In contrast to her pace, her heart sped up. At the sight of him, she stopped dead.
“I saw him,” Christy said to her.
She spied him holding the hat Lizzie had given Danny, and her stomach dropped.
“How did you get that?” she asked.
“It fell off his head as he ran away from me. He doesn’t want to see me. He practically broke his neck running for the bus.”
“The bus?” she asked, noticing how strongly he gripped the hat, his fingers digging into the brim, as if for dear life.
“Right over there,” Christy said, gesturing through the veil of snow, at the stop across Ninth Avenue.
“Can you come with me?” she asked. When he didn’t respond—he seemed so numb, as if in a dream—she slipped one of her hands into one of his and pulled gently.
He followed her, just left his tree stand the way it was, the string of lights twinkling in the cold night air. They made their way down Ninth Avenue, onto Twentieth Street. Her pulse racing, she didn’t know what she was going to do or say—she only knew that he was hurting badly, that she had to be with him right now.
Underfoot, the snow was turning icy. Catherine slipped, and Christy caught her. They held on for a minute, standing under a streetlight. His arm was around her; when they started walking again, he didn’t let go. Danny’s hat was in his other hand.
They climbed her front stairs, and she unlocked the door and turned on lamps. The house was warm, the wood floors gleaming. Christy stood in the front hall, looking around, still holding the derby.
“You can put it down,” she said, but he wouldn’t let go.
“It’s all I have of him,” he said.
Catherine shook her head. “That’s not true,” she said. “You know it’s not.”
Christy looked down at the hat. “Once when Danny was a baby, he had a fever. It got very bad—nothing we did brought it down. We live far away from the hospital, but I drove him there, him and his mother, as fast as I could. The doctors weren’t sure what it was, so they kept him overnight. Mary stayed. When I got back home, I found his teddy bear. I thought … I thought I’d never see my son again, that his teddy bear was all I’d have of him.”
“And now you feel that way about his hat,” Catherine said.
Christy nodded. He couldn’t take his eyes off the derby, even when Catherine walked over to him and stood there.
“It’s all I have of him,” Christy said again, this time his voice breaking.
Catherine gently removed the hat from his hand, laid it carefully on the hall table. He was trembling—she felt him shaking through his heavy brown canvas jacket with its leather collar. Reaching up, she unzipped the jacket, eased it off him slowly. She shook away the snow, hung it in the closet with her coat.
“I want to tell you something,” she said.
He gazed at her, his blue eyes blazing with ferocious hopelessness. She knew that feeling, knew it so well. It was as if loss had taken hold of his soul, emptied him from the inside out. Catherine took a step closer, and something made her stand on her tiptoes, put her arms around him. She told herself she wanted to look him straight in the eyes and support him with her strength.
They were heart to heart, and she felt his pounding against her chest. His eyes burned into hers, and the moment was so charged and intense, she nearly gasped. Instead, she touched his face. His skin felt so cold, from being out in the snow all day. She told herself she wanted to warm him up. That’s all it was, she thought as she stood on tiptoes to press her lips to his cheek.
Christy kissed her. His lips touched hers—such a soft, gentle kiss. His fingers traced her cheekbones, her throat. His mouth was hot, melting her into his arms. The snow tapped against the windows, orange streetlight slanting through the panes, but Catherine saw stars.
His arms and back so hard under her hands. She couldn’t stop touching him, didn’t even want to. Christy was strong from swinging his ax, hauling wood, doing hard labor on his farm—she felt all of that as she held him, as he kissed her insistently.
She heard him say, “Catherine.” No man had said her name in this house for so long …
“Three Christmases,” she whispered.
“What?” he asked.
“I haven’t, I haven’t,” she began, still clutching him.
“It’s okay,” he said, stroking her hair. “Whatever it is.”
And she listened to him. She hadn’t believed in “okay” for so long. He smelled of pine, snow, and leather. Pressing her face into his neck, she breathed deeply and thought of the north woods. Getting lost in his scent and the feel of his body, she saw nothing but branches and starlight. He felt so solid and real—she never wanted to let go.
“I’ve hoped,” she whispered, “to see my husband’s ghost.”
“And you haven’t?”
She shook her head.
“Maybe that’s because you’re not supposed to. Maybe you’re supposed to stay right here, with your feet right on the ground. You’re a living, breathing woman, Catherine Tierney. If you saw your husband’s ghost, you might want to fly away with him.”
A living, breathing woman. Her mind swirled with images, and her body tingled with feelings: she remembered holding Bridget’s hand at Rockefeller Center, hugging Danny in the Rheinbeck Library, sledding down Pilgrim Hill with Christy’s arms holding her tight. She’d felt dead, worse than a ghost—earthbound, buried in sorrow. She’d felt like one of Bridget’s Christmas trees, cut down, dragged from the forest, but unclaimed and unlit.
Christy kissed her again, in a whole new way, as if he’d just reminded himself that he was a living, breathing man. His lips opened, his mouth and tongue so hot, touching her with a desire that matched her own. This feeling of life had been gone for so long—she felt a long shiver go down her spine. Her skin rippled, the way a cat can seem electric when it’s purring.
The moment gripped them, and Catheri
ne opened her eyes to make sure it was real. Christy leaned back, still holding on to her. They smiled at each other. She didn’t want to let go of his arms—it would break the spell if she did. Was his heart beating as hard as hers? She pressed her hand to his chest, and he did the same.
“You’re giving me a heart attack,” he said.
“I don’t want to do that,” she said, stepping back.
“I want you to,” he whispered, kissing her again. His lips were tender, his arms encircling her in a way that made her want him never, never to let go. But then her gaze fell upon Danny’s hat, and she made herself speak.
“Christy,” she said.
“Catherine.”
“There’s something I have to tell you.”
He nodded, smoothing the hair back from her eyes. She’d had her glasses on the whole time, and he straightened them on her nose. The gesture was so gentle, she couldn’t breathe.
“That’s right,” he said. “You told me you’ve something to say.”
She swallowed, went to the chair, picked up the derby. Glancing inside, she saw the white satin lining—streaked with sand and salt, from where it had fallen off Danny’s head—and bright red embroidery. The derby was antique—Lizzie sometimes picked up interesting old hats at the Sixth Avenue flea market—and bore the name of the original hatmaker, Motsch et Fils, Paris.
Catherine handed Christy his son’s hat, gesturing for him to look inside. She watched him examine the headband and label.
“It’s a French hat,” he said. “I was surprised to see Danny wearing something so stylish. It made me not recognize him at first.”
“The embroidery,” Catherine said, her lips dry, pointing at the delicate crimson stitching. Her heart was skittering in a whole new way, with such nervousness, she wasn’t sure she could speak.
“‘CL,’” he said, reading the red letters, looking up at her with bright blue eyes. She expected his gaze to be filled with confusion, but it wasn’t. It was total trust, as if he thought whatever Catherine might tell him was bound to help him in his search for Danny.
