Shortest Day

by Jane Langton

  Of course, the people at Bright Day were after her. They found her right away at Harvard Towers. “Gretchen,” her counselor said, “you’re almost due. It’s not good for your baby for you to be out in the cold like this. What if you couldn’t get to us in time? What if you delivered your baby on the street? And, Gretchen, you’re missing your group discussions, you’re not doing your chores.”

  But Gretchen was loyal to Palmer Nifto. “We need you, Gretchen,” Palmer kept saying. “You’re the most important person at Harvard Towers.”

  She knew her big belly helped the cause. Already she had been photographed by the Cambridge Chronicle and the Cambridge Tab and the Harvard Crimson and even by the Harvard Gazette. She had stuck her stomach out proudly, and now she was going to be on TV, because yesterday a crew from Channel 4 had come to Harvard Towers and Palmer had pushed her right out in front.

  Bob Chumley was an old regular from the chancy world of Cambridge homelessness. He was smart and capable and could lend his hand to anything, but an addiction to cocaine kept him from holding down a job. Bob was unacceptable in the shelters of Cambridge, because he had a couple of dogs, big handsome golden retrievers, and you couldn’t have dogs in a shelter.

  Guthrie Jones was a homeless man whose beat was Harvard Square. There was a fey charm about Guthrie, but you had to be on the lookout or he would talk your ear off, wanting to tell you something, something that could never be quite articulated, something terribly important if only he could utter it, some anguished fury against the world.

  Linda Bunting should never have been homeless at all, because she was the mother of two small children. Somehow she had dropped through the cracks of the welfare system. She had a nice tent full of stuffed toys and sleeping bags, and a space heater blasting out its orange comfort twenty-four hours a day. And the children were perfectly warm. Their tiny noses barely showed between knitted hats and woolly scarves.

  Some of the other citizens of Harvard Towers were less beguiling. Oh, Vergil Taylor was all right. He made good copy, because he almost never took off his Rollerblades. Vergil skimmed around the edges of the tent city and rattled over the uneven surfaces of the brick walks and whizzed along the asphalt paths of Harvard Yard, swooping in graceful arcs, leaning left, leaning right, in a perpetual dance. He made a good courier whenever Palmer had an urgent message to deliver.

  The only other Afro-American at Harvard Towers was old Albert Maggody. No one knew his history. No one had ever heard him speak. Maggody took no part in tent-city activities and he made no response to questions. He just sat there, wrapped in layers of blankets, his face nearly hidden. Only his hand appeared when someone passed a tray of sandwiches or proffered a cup of coffee. He never said, Bless you, like some of them. Maggody was life at its lowest terms.

  To Mary Kelly, who was beginning to take an interest in the occupants of Harvard Towers, his was the most pitiful case.

  One of the homeless women was a problem for Palmer Nifto. Of course he welcomed one and all, because he was anxious to increase the population of Harvard Towers, but Emily Pollock gave him a pain. Emily had been a flower child in the seventies, but now she was a fat bossy woman in giant earrings and full skirts and big woolly caftans. She was always offering screwy advice, and making decisions without consulting Palmer first, then screeching them to the world on the open mike. “We’re going to organize a council,” bawled Emily, “and run this place democratically from now on.”

  Palmer had no intention of handing over his authority to a democratic council. And when a delegation from United Harvard Ministries came to him, representing the pastors of a number of local churches, he was distinctly cool.

  “Our coffeehouse is open to all comers,” said the minister of First Parish Unitarian, smiling at him graciously.

  “Our public-relations expertise is at your service,” suggested the clergyman from First Church Congregational, his face bright with sympathy.

  “Our copy machine is yours to command,” said the rector from Christ Church. “And our bathrooms are always open.” He made a joke. “We call it our Latrine Ministry.”

  “You must know about our free dinners,” said the priest from Saint Paul’s. “Some of our churches serve dinner to all comers one night a week. Monday at Massachusetts Avenue Baptist in Inman Square, Tuesday at First Parish Unitarian in Harvard Square, Wednesday—”

  Palmer would have none of it. “Thanks,” he said, “but no thanks.”

  The truth was, he didn’t want to share his ragtag glory with any of these clever and powerful people. Oh, the churchwomen were all right, the ones who brought food—big containers of soup and coffee and spaghetti, laundry baskets of sandwiches, big bags of muffins and cookies. And the girl who collected leftovers from local restaurants was okay too—the day-old croissants from Au Bon Pain, the sausages and cheeses from the Wursthaus, and the vichyssoise from the Stockpot. Actually, there was a run on vichyssoise, and people were complaining. “Oh, no, not vichyssoise again.”

  Palmer himself was a clever escapee from alimony and child support. He had been living by his wits on the street for years. He was contemptuous of all those people who thought there was only one way to live, who wanted to pin a person down with a mortgage and payments on a car and three levels of taxes and four kinds of insurance and lifelong responsibility for a wife and a couple of bratty kids.

  Palmer had long since sloughed off wife and kids. It had been easy, like dumping kittens from a car window.

  CHAPTER 15

  I danced with the scribe and the pharisee,

  But they would not dance

  And they would not follow me.

  “The Lord of the Dance”

  The most annoying thing about the tent city at Harvard’s very door was not its seventy-five homeless residents, it was the infection spreading in the student body and among the so-called liberal members of the faculty. Students and professors were flocking to the overpass, bringing along their expensive Arctic camping equipment, demonstrating their sympathy, sleeping out all night under the cold stars.

  “It’s politically correct, that’s why,” said Ellery Beaver, Associate Vice-President for Government and Community Affairs, in his office in Massachusetts Hall. “They’ll go along with anything dumb, as long as it’s in behalf of the retarded, the alcoholic, the criminal, the drug-addicted, the promiscuous.”

  Ernest Henshaw looked at him nervously. He had been bending over a file drawer, counting the files. “It’s too much,” he said vaguely. “It’s just too much.”

  “You said a mouthful. It certainly is a bit much. So the question is, do we talk to the ringleader, this guy Nifto, or do we just ignore the whole thing and not give it the cachet of our official notice?”

  Henshaw wasn’t listening. “All these files,” he said, making a sweeping gesture at the four large cabinets in the corner of his office, “it’s too much.” He walked to the window and stared across the Yard at the bare branches of the trees around University Hall. It occurred to him how much better they looked now than in the summertime, when they were clothed in tens of thousands of leaves. How many leaves were there really? He could imagine himself next summer, standing on a ladder to count them, one leaf at a time.

  Nature was so excessive! But people were even worse. Look at the way the mail poured in! At this time of year there were catalogues in the mail every day. And then his wife ransacked the catalogues and called an 800 number and used her credit card to order things. And the UPS truck came, and came again, and delivered things in boxes, and the boxes piled up in the back room.

  The mountain of boxes was an index of the Henshaws’ excess. There were boxes that television sets had come in, and stereos and toasters and tape recorders and clock radios and cordless telephones and microwave ovens and video-cassette recorders and exercise equipment, and all the gee-gaws his wife was so fond of—little tables and footstools and candlesticks and ornaments. The whole house was cluttered with things, the closets bulged with cl
othing. Sometimes it was difficult to clear the rooms, to shove everything out of the way into the back, the laundry, the toolshed.

  Henshaw sometimes felt he was pawing the air, clearing it of boxes. Whenever he walked into the Yard he dared not turn around, because they were trailing after him, a whole baggage train of boxes, tumbling after him, turning end over end, blowing up against the backs of his knees, heaping up behind him.

  He nodded at the file cabinets. “Just throw all this stuff out. It’s too much.”

  Ellery Beaver stared at him, murmured, “Right you are,” and hurried out of the office.

  Something was the matter with the old man. Ellery had been suspicious about the mental condition of his boss before, but now he was sure of it. Ernest Henshaw must have had a stroke or something. He was definitely barmy.

  Ellery was right—something had indeed happened to Ernest Henshaw. Of course it was possible that it had been a stroke, but it was also possible that he had been granted a new vision. Perhaps he had been carried aloft to a place high above the world from which he could look down and see it truly for the first time.

  Whatever the reason, Ernest Henshaw was a changed man, unable to carry on.

  CHAPTER 16

  So all you young lasses, stand straight and stand firm,

  Keep everything tight and close down,

  For if anything happens in forty weeks’ time,

  The blame will be laid on the clown.

  Traditional British Mummers’ Play

  Sarah couldn’t keep it a secret from Morgan any longer. Her clothes were too tight. She had taken to wearing her biggest shirts and the same old skirt with the elastic waistband. The failure of the baby to thrash out with its arms and legs had become a consuming worry, as though it were a punishment for her secrecy, for not giving Morgan a chance to veto the whole idea while there was still time.

  One morning, lying warmly beside him in bed, Sarah decided the moment had come. Although it was nearly seven o’clock, the sky was still dark. The dawnlight of the dark December morning barely distinguished the objects in the room. Her desk was a gray shape, and so was the dresser and the chair with her sweater draped over the back. She could hear a car start up outside. The inhabitants of the street were already going to work.

  “Morgan,” she murmured, caressing his face, kissing the place where his beard met his bare cheek. “Morgan, darling, listen.”

  “Darling,” repeated Morgan sleepily, reaching out for her, pulling her close.

  Her voice was soft, but the words came out plain. “Morgan, we’re going to have a baby.” She kissed him again. “I’m sorry. I’ve been pregnant for five months. It’s due on April thirteenth. I know I should have told you.”

  Morgan sat up and looked at her. He was wide awake. “Oh, Sarah, my dear.” Tenderly he embraced her. “Of course you should have told me! My poor darling, are you all right?”

  Sarah said she was fine, just fine, and in a moment they were making love. Then they lay in each other’s arms and murmured about what it would mean to have a baby in the house, how they would manage. They would have to find a bigger place. They would have to move.

  Astonished and relieved, Sarah slipped out of bed and brought him the little garment she had bought for the baby. “Look.”

  Morgan laughed, and fingered the fleecy cloth. His doubts had vanished. His constricted breath was coming freely once again.

  “Let’s not tell anyone,” said Sarah. “Let’s wait till the Revels are over. Now, darling, lie down and go back to sleep. I have to hurry. I’ve got a breakfast meeting with Tom.”

  Morgan grinned and lay back on the pillow and watched her move around the room getting dressed. Who cared about Tom Cobb now? It was Morgan Bailey who was the father of her child.

  When he woke up an hour later Sarah was gone. The room was rosy with morning light. Cars were moving slowly on the street below. Sarah had left a note on the table—

  Darling,

  Meet me at three o’clock?

  I love you.*

  Sarah

  *Passionately!

  Morgan smiled, thinking of the baby. He put the precious note in his desk drawer and made himself a scrappy breakfast.

  But as he sat down to eat it, he had a queer thought. Sarah had said the baby was due on April thirteenth. April thirteenths? Then when had it been conceived?

  Morgan had a lot to do that day. He wanted to check the cornfield in Concord and take a look at the neighboring ponds. It would take him all morning and afternoon. But now he jumped up from the table and found this year’s calendar and the new one for next year.

  The gestation period in humans was 280 days. Morgan flipped the pages of the two calendars and counted back from April thirteenth. Two hundred seventy-eight, two hundred seventy-nine, two hundred eighty—his finger landed on July first. July first, this year, was when conception must have taken place.

  But on July first Morgan had been attending that conference of ornithologists at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor. There it was on the calendar, staring him in the face, a bracket around June thirtieth, July first, and July second, with Sarah’s scribbled note, Morgan in Bar Harbor.

  The pain was physical. Morgan groaned and sank his face in his hands. Furiously he ripped out the calendar page and tore it up and flung the pieces in the waste-basket. Then he ran across the room, snatched up the little garment Sarah had bought for the baby, slashed it with a pair of scissors, and dropped it on the table in plain sight. Let her see how wretched I am! Let her pity me!

  The violent action comforted him. His pain diminished, and he felt an access of cleverness. The new prickles of intelligence on his scalp began to quiver.

  At Niki’s Market he wandered up and down the aisles, looking for the right kind of candy. Niki’s catered to the high-school kids from Cambridge Rindge and Latin. It was full of junk food. There they were, the chocolate bars, lined up in a row—Snickers and Milky Ways and Mars Bars and Tastychox. Morgan bought several Tastychox and took them home. Then he got to work on the delicate task of removing the wrappings very, very carefully.

  CHAPTER 17

  Christmas is coming,

  The geese are getting fat,

  Please to put a penny

  In the old man’s hat.

  Traditional nursery rhyme

  The days were growing ever shorter, the darkness settling in earlier every afternoon. For the Christmas shoppers in Harvard Square the sparkling store windows brightened the winter gloom.

  They were a magnet for Helen Henshaw, especially the clever shops in the Holyoke Center arcade, so full of charming small luxuries, fripperies from all over the world. Helen’s favorite was a shop specializing in little snow scenes in glass balls, the kind you shake to make the snow fall. She bought one to show to her favorite client, Margo Beaver, who wanted some sort of collectible for her new bedroom, something she could shop for wherever she traveled, because that would be such fun.

  To Arlo Field, Christmas meant a tense holiday with his mother in Pittsfield. Every year he connected the impossible task of finding a present for her with the shriveling of the hours of sunshine.

  Yesterday the time between sunrise and sunset had lasted only nine hours and seven minutes. A week from Friday, the shortest day of the year, the sun-starved people of this latitude would enjoy only nine hours and four paltry minutes of daylight.

  To Homer Kelly too, the season was bleak. In spite of Homer’s normal pathological elation and cross-eyed transcendental rapture, he was at heart a pessimist. The world was a perpetual glory, humankind an ongoing disappointment. In Homer’s judgment Christmas was a frantic scramble to overcome the doldrums of winter.

  His wife was optimistic by nature, but this year even Mary Kelly found the Christmas spirit hard to come by, that expensive annual befuddlement masquerading as jollity and mirth. Harvard Towers was at fault. The contrast between the gleeful people shopping in Harvard Square and the penniless inhabitants of Palmer Nif
to’s tent city made a farce out of Christmas.

  Mary would have liked to forget people’s troubles, she would have preferred not to think about homelessness and poverty, she had meant to gather around her the fantasy and ringing bells of the Christmas season. After all, that was why she had joined the Revels in the first place—to deck the halls with boughs of holly, to rejoice in a Christian fantasy about a miraculous birth, to believe for a week or two in angels and a shining star.

  But the festive illusion, thinly maintained inside Memorial Hall, was utterly destroyed outside the building by the cluster of tents on the overpass, by Emily Pollock with her shrill voice on the open mike, by the Portapotties, by the humped shape of Maggody in his blankets and the cacophony of Vergil Taylor’s ghetto blaster, and by the inscrutable dark glasses of Palmer Nifto.

  Coming out of an afternoon rehearsal into the December dark, Mary walked around Memorial Hall to see what was going on.

  The Hari Krishna kids were there, dancing and clashing their cymbals, rocking back and forth on their big sneakers, chanting something or other, their saffron robes swaying over their heavy sweaters. Linda Bunting’s kids hopped up and down, clapping their hands, and Bob Chumley’s dogs pranced on their hind legs and barked. Emily Pollock was there too, twirling and gyrating with the Hari Krishna, twisting her hands to make her bangles jingle. A woman in a purple hat caught at Mary’s arm, and pontificated on the worship of Krishna as a sacred milkman.

  “Did you know,” said Dr. Box, “that Krishna refused to worship the solar image? I am a God, he said, so why should I salute the sun?”

  “A classic case of hubris,” said Mary, shaking her head wisely. “A very dangerous attitude.” Escaping from Dr. Box, she dodged past her to the central patch of grass, where a bunch of jolly students had set up a Christmas tree. They were draping it with lights and singing “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”