by Luanne Rice
“Chez Liz,” Catherine said.
Now he looked confused. “I don’t understand,” he said.
“Lizzie buys old hats at auction and flea markets,” she said. “She never removes the original labels, but she always adds her own mark. Red is her shop’s signature color, and she always stitches ‘CL.’ For Chez Liz.”
“Danny bought this from your friend Liz?” Christy asked, his expression exploding into joy. “Then maybe she knows something! Perhaps she’ll remember him—he’s a very tall boy, so intelligent and full of life. Let’s call her now!”
“Christy,” Catherine said, taking his hands, “she gave it to him.”
“But,” he said, his eyes clouding, “if she knew it was Danny, surely she’d have told me—or told you, and you’d have let me know …”
“He asked us not to,” Catherine said quietly.
The house was silent. Looking into Christy’s face, she saw all the blood drain out. He was pure white, and she was sure he had stopped breathing. He didn’t so much pull his hands away as let them drop, as if gravity had become too much.
“You—”
“I’ve seen him,” she said.
He waited, his eyes suddenly darkening, as if night had just fallen over an icy pond.
“We helped him last year,” she said, “after the fight between you. The police took you away, and when you got out and took Bridget home, Danny stayed behind.”
“That’s what he wanted.”
“It was,” she said. “He was”—she didn’t want to tell him about seeing his son scrounging in the dumpster behind Moore’s, the restaurant on the corner—“hungry. We helped him get food.”
“Danny was hungry,” he said, flinching. He shook his head as if it were too much to bear. “I’ve never let that happen. I never would. Does he hate me so much that he’d rather go hungry than live with me?” Christy grabbed his coat, pulled it on, tucked the hat under his arm. His eyes were filled with rage and despair. He had one hand on the brass door handle as Catherine grabbed his arm.
“It’s not that,” she said. “He doesn’t hate you.”
“He talks to you then? He tells you?”
She shook her head. “No. He hardly talks to me at all. But I know. I’m sure of it, Christy. Listen, please. I want to help.”
“Help?” he asked, the word tearing out of his mouth. In that instant she felt his hopelessness return—he had trusted her. “All this time I thought you—”
She listened, waiting.
“I thought you were an angel,” he said finally. All warmth drained from his eyes, as if he now believed in angels about as much as she believed in ghosts. He swung open the door; outside the wind howled, and snow kept falling.
“This is the snowiest December in over a hundred years,” she said suddenly.
He glanced over his shoulder, as if he thought she was crazy, as if that statement had nothing to do with the pain he was feeling. Catherine didn’t tell him that she’d read that statement, written in Danny’s hand, in his crumpled-up practice essay.
“It’s surely the coldest one,” Christy said, staring into Catherine’s eyes for one long moment. As if he couldn’t help himself, he touched her cheek. “The more so for how warm I felt with you.”
Turning up his collar, he walked away and, like his son, disappeared into the snow.
9
Christy started off running. He tore down Ninth Avenue through the snowstorm, his heart cracking like ice on a pond. The city rose around him, a wilderness of light. At each corner his country boots smashed through slush and drifts. People walked by carrying shopping bags, festive in the snow. Christy felt blinded by the truth he’d just heard.
How could he feel so betrayed by a woman he barely knew? He ran faster, his lungs searing with every breath. His shoulders and arms ached, his muscles burned from holding her, and from letting her go. He’d enveloped her with his arms, his spirit—he’d felt her need, and he’d wanted to give her even more. Yet she had stood there, calmly telling him she’d seen his son, that she had been helping Danny all this time.
When Christy had thought his son was … what? Missing, gone, dead. Couldn’t Catherine understand that? A woman in black—his sad friend. She was grieving her life away, trading in her very breath for a chance to see the ghost of her husband. She hid from life; she reached for the past. But tonight …
Christy had thought he’d reached her. Holding her, feeling her beautiful body, wanting to talk to her for the rest of the night—the rest of his time here in New York! That was how he’d felt, caressing her hair, assuring her that she was alive, that she was living and breathing and needed to choose to live. Yes, that was how he’d felt—maybe, obviously he was crazy, but he’d had that wild impulse to grab onto her, love her. For tonight, forever, what was the difference?
He’d thought that they understood each other, accepted the truth that life was short and precious and very, very wild. If it wasn’t, how could a young husband die at Christmastime? How could a teenage boy—the light of his father’s eye, his sister’s heart—just run off into the night, never to be seen again?
Why not grasp the chance, just the very most elusive of chances, to have the love and light that were so hard to find? He and Catherine didn’t stand a chance. Christy knew that. She was a grand lady with expensive things and a townhouse that cost more than Christy would make in a lifetime. He was a Canadian tree farmer with hands rougher than sandpaper, with bark and sap under his fingernails. But in that one moment—
He’d seen it in her eyes, he thought. She felt it, too. Catherine O’Toole Tierney, beautiful Chelsea girl, kissing him, Christopher X. Byrne. He’d felt her tremble in his arms, looking up into his eyes with the same tumultuous hope he felt inside. But then she’d told him the truth.
The truth about Danny. Had they laughed at him, Catherine and her friend? Christy knew that didn’t matter—that was beside the point. All that counted was that Danny was alive, and that Catherine knew it. Christy should be overjoyed about the first part. The second shouldn’t even matter. Not in comparison to Danny’s being okay …
Passing the Maritime Hotel with its portholes, he saw limos discharging people for a Christmas party. Something made him slow down, watch the people climbing the steps to the wide terrace. New York was a strange place indeed, Christy thought. He’d been selling his trees in Chelsea for so long, he’d watched this place go from a home for old sailors to a shelter for runaway kids to this—a fancy hotel and restaurants.
Was this what Danny wanted? Had his son spent his visits to Manhattan longing for parties and glamour? Had he watched his father selling their trees to the beautiful people—and decided he wanted to live a fancier life himself?
Staring at the people walking up to the party, Christy shrank into the shadows. They were wearing black—black suits, black topcoats, a black velvet cape, glossy black boots. His eyes were glued to them: with all the salt and sand and slush on the streets, those boots were polished to a high shine. Christy imagined the wearer stepping out from under a ritzy apartment awning into the limo, and from there onto the hotel steps. People here never had to get their feet wet.
Was that what Danny wanted? Had his life in Nova Scotia been so terrible? Christy thought of the farm, of the boots Danny had always worn. From the time he could walk, he had wanted Sorels—heavy-duty work boots, just like his father’s. Christy would hold Danny on his lap while he laced them up. Christy’s mind was full of boots now, Danny’s little baby boots, and his ten-year-old boots, and his teenage boots, all caked with mud, manure, pine needles, sap, salt, hay, soot.
He thought of the wildfires. Lightning had struck one tree, and quickly a half acre had gone up in flames. Danny had had to miss school to help out. First one day, then another, then the make-up period for his exams. Christy told himself that Danny was smart enough to catch up with his schoolwork. Then one smoky night that summer, with the fires still smoldering, he’d heard his kids talking, when t
hey thought he wasn’t there.
They were out on the porch, watching fireflies flit through the tall grass.
“Will you catch me some?” Bridget had asked her brother.
“I’m too tired, Bridey,” he said.
“I want to put all the fireflies in a big jar and throw them into the sea,” she said.
“What for?”
“To keep them away from the trees. I don’t like fire.”
Christy had held back a laugh, so they wouldn’t hear. Danny hadn’t been able to manage the same control—he’d let out a big whoop. “That’s a good one,” he’d said. “You can’t be my sister and really believe that.”
“Something keeps causing the fires!”
“Bridey, fireflies produce a substance called luciferin, and it reacts with oxygen, and that makes them glow. It’s a cold light—nothing to worry about.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” Danny had chuckled. “I learned it in science.”
“Well, what does cause the fires?”
“Lightning, heat, drought. I was using the computer at school early this spring, checking out this new sensor aboard the NOAA satellite. See, the forest fire research group has plugged in some cool new smoke detection algorithms into the AVHRR/3 transmitter, and I swear, if I’d been able to access that site, I’d have been able to warn Pa about the fire danger here. There’s this mid-infrared channel that I think—”
“Whoa, Danny! What are you talking about?”
Christy had hung back, amazed and impressed. What was Danny talking about? All along Christy had taught him that farming required lots of scientific knowledge, but toward one specific end: growing trees. So they could be sold for lots of money. Danny was speaking about science in such a different way, with a passion for learning and discovery.
When Christy was honest with himself, on nights when he couldn’t sleep, he admitted, deep down, that he worried he might be holding his son back. How could he ask a boy with a mind like that to make his living with a rake and a saw? The questions made him shake inside right now: in his core he knew that he’d driven his son away.
Across the street the people streaming into the hotel looked chic in their black. Now Christy’s mind shifted from Danny to Catherine—his sad, shy girl. She’d been chic, too. But he’d never, not for a moment, thought she was wearing black for anything other than mourning. Tonight she’d told him about Brian.
She had seemed so gentle and sincere. Christy had had the feeling it was costing her a lot to get the words out, to confide in him about wanting to see Brian’s ghost. And it had given Christy such a feeling of goodness to be able to hold her and assure her that life would, and should, go on, that her sorrow didn’t have to destroy her.
Right now Christy felt that it was destroying him. He didn’t understand people. Losing Mary, he’d done his best to raise their children. Dutifully he’d maintained his schedule, coming down here to New York, selling trees to all the wealthy people. He had thought he’d instilled good values in his children. And he thought he had better judgment about friends.
About Catherine.
Just then he noticed a patrol car slowly cruising down the avenue. Christy saw the officers looking his way. One was Rip Collins, and he rolled down the window.
“What’s happening, Christy?” he asked.
“Just out for a walk,” Christy replied.
“Nice night for it—if you’re from Canada,” Rip said, grinning.
Christy knew he didn’t mean anything rude by the comment, so he tried to smile.
“Still looking for your boy?” Rip asked.
Christy shrugged to hide his feelings. The sight of Danny running to make that bus felt like ice in his heart.
“It’s tough, this time of year,” Rip said.
Every time of year, Christy wanted to reply. He thought of Catherine, waiting for her husband’s ghost. How could a woman who’d do that not understand what Christy was feeling about Danny?
“Yeah,” Christy said instead.
“Call it a night,” Rip suggested. “You left your tree stand untended, and it’s all lit up.”
Christy started—was it possible? He’d been so undone by seeing Danny get on the bus, that when Catherine came by, he’d walked away, literally leaving everything. He’d lost his mind, he really had. His cashbox was there!
“Thank you,” Christy said to the cop, then turned and hurried up the avenue. When he got to his corner, the snow was coming down so hard, the trees were all but obliterated. The string of white lights was a blur. Christy flew to the spot where he hid his cashbox.
It was gone.
He found the indentation where it had sat in the snow, under the lowest branches of a small white spruce. Sticking his hand in deeper, he thought maybe he’d inadvertently pushed it back. As he groped around, branches and needles scratching his head and neck, he realized that the box wasn’t there. When had he emptied it last? With all his worries about Danny, and amid his feelings and seeing stars over Catherine, he’d left it with about a week’s take inside.
Seventy dollars for a big blue spruce, eighty dollars for the Fraser and Scotch pines, ninety for the Douglas firs, fifty for the big balsams, forty for the white pines, thirty for the small table-sized trees—he’d lost thousands.
Who knew he hid the box there? No, it couldn’t be Danny—it couldn’t be. But Christy was always so careful. He’d take the customer’s cash, stuff it into his pocket, and transfer it into the box when he was sure no one was looking.
His thoughts were a maelstrom—suddenly he found himself thinking of the Quinn boys. Their sleds, carved with their initials, JQ and PQ. John and Patrick. One brother took the right path, the other took the wrong.
Christy thought of his children. Bridget was home now, just upstairs in the boardinghouse behind him, and Danny was God only knew where. Christy would have sworn on his mother’s grave that his children were as good as the day was long. He would have given any odds that his children would turn out right and happy, that in spite of his son’s very bright mind, he and Danny would be farming the trees from now until his last day on this earth.
But right now Christy Byrne didn’t trust himself about anything. He could never have imagined a year without his son.
He still couldn’t.
Losing the money seemed like nothing in comparison. But what if his wonderful, intelligent boy had taken that wrong turn? What if Christy’s inability to know what his own son wanted had driven him in a bad direction? Kids stole money for drugs—Christy had heard of it happening, even back home. God, what was Danny doing? Life on the streets had to be hard, terrible. How would Danny get food, shelter? What did he do just to live?
When Christy glanced up and saw Rip’s police car coming toward him—he must have driven around the block—Christy felt his stomach clench with shame. The officers stopped and got out of the car. They knew by the look in Christy’s eyes that the money was gone. Rip took his pad out, and Christy could do nothing but tell him the truth.
An hour later, after some newspeople had heard the report over the police scanner and come to take pictures—Christy wanting to break their cameras, stunned by the flashes, by the audacity and intrusion—the cops finally left. Christy slogged up the stairs into Mrs. Quinn’s boardinghouse.
“What’s wrong, Pa?” Bridget asked the instant he walked in. She was curled up on the sofa in Mrs. Quinn’s sitting room, Murphy on her lap. Her big green eyes looked alarmed, as if she saw her father’s defeat.
“Didn’t you look out the window?” he asked, knowing she would have seen him talking to the police. Must’ve been a slow crime night, because not only had Rip and his partner been there, but three or four other squad cars. Not to mention various news teams and a whole gaggle of neighborhood onlookers.
“No,” she said, looking scared. “Why? What’s wrong?”
Christy tried to smile but found he couldn’t. The sitting room was in the back of the house, facin
g the courtyard—just as well she hadn’t seen. Having his money stolen was the least of it; all the neighbors had been kind, telling him they were sorry, offering to buy him a meal. The cops had asked him who knew where the money was, and he’d said no one. He wasn’t about to mention Danny. Why had he been in Chelsea at all that day, if he wasn’t going to say hello? Had he been planning the theft all along? It all felt surreal to Christy. His body still felt electric from holding Catherine. And his mind was a black hole from what she’d told him about Danny.
“Nothing’s wrong. It’s snowing hard out,” he said to Bridget.
“What’s that you’re holding?” Bridget asked, gesturing at the black derby.
“It’s—it’s your brother’s hat.”
“Danny! Did you see him, then?”
Christy nodded. He felt weary, taking his jacket off, hanging it on the peg behind the door. He laid the hat on the top of a bookcase. “I saw him.”
“Where? What happened? What did he say to you?”
“He ran away from me,” Christy said. He had to stop speaking for a minute, to get the emotion under control.
Bridget didn’t speak, but just stared up at him. Christy wondered why she didn’t look more surprised. As he stared at her, two red patches fired her cheeks. Embarrassed, she buried her head in Murphy’s fur.
“You’ve seen him, too?” he asked with disbelief.
“Uhhhhnnnn,” she said with her face pressed into the dog’s back.
“You, Catherine, and Liz?”
“And Lucy,” Bridget said, her face popping up.
“But why?” he asked, sitting down heavily on an old wingback chair. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because Danny wouldn’t let us.”
“Am I an ogre?” Christy asked. He was beyond numb. His hands gripped the chair arms as he stared into his daughter’s eyes.
“Don’t think that, Pa,” she beseeched.
“I must be,” he said. “Everyone’s afraid to talk to me. My own son—”
“We just don’t want to bother you,” she said, “when you work so hard.”
“I work so hard for the two of you! Don’t you know that?”
