Christmas in Fall River

Dess

"It's a spoon," said Colleen.

"I know it's a spoon."

"It's a wooden spoon."

"Mom, I know."

"It's been carved. Look at the handle. There's a little, I don't know, a little leaf at the end, and you can see where the knife went." Colleen turned it in the light of the kitchen window, in both hands, as if it were a relic of a minor saint. "Who does a thing like that? Who sits down with a piece of cherrywood and a penknife and makes a person a spoon?"

"Kit did."

"The boy."

"The donor. He made them for people. I think he made a lot of them." Dess leaned against the counter with her arms folded over her coat. It was Christmas Eve, four in the afternoon, in the narrow overheated kitchen in Fall River, with the windows steamed and a ham baking in the oven and a Bing Crosby record skipping on the old turntable in the living room. "Theron said his mother found a drawer of them in the workshop. Eleven. All different. He sent you the one with the leaf."

"He sent it."

"He asked first."

"He asked you?"

"I said he could send you a card. I said, one card, signed, no gifts." Dess shifted her weight. "And he sent a card. And in the card there was a spoon. And a note that said the spoon was not a gift, it was a thing that belonged to a person who would have wanted you to have it, and that if I objected he would come and collect it in person and apologize on his knees."

"On his knees."

"In a very formal tone."

Colleen set down the spoon. She put one hand flat against her breastbone, and the other over her mouth, and stood perfectly still, in her Santa apron and her gold hoops, with her eyes shining.

"Oh, Dessie," she said, through her fingers. "I think I'm going to cry."

"Please don't."

"I'm going to. I've been fighting it since the mail came. It's the handwriting. It's so polite." She snatched up the card, which stood on the sill beside the sugar bowl, and read aloud in a trembling voice: "'Dear Mrs. Rourke. I write without your leave, and I beg your pardon. You do not know me, and you have no reason to wish to. But your daughter has shown me a kindness which I cannot repay, and I would not like the season to pass without telling her mother that she is the most remarkable person I have met.'" She looked up, tearfully. "'My brother carved this spoon at twenty. I think he would have liked to know there was a kitchen in which it would be used. Yours, with respect, Theron Wexcombe.'"

"Mom."

"'With respect.' Nobody says that. Nobody has said that to me since Father Doyle in 1989." She sniffed, hugely, and dabbed her eyes with the apron. "What kind of man says with respect?"

"A formal one."

"A formal man who carves spoons."

"His brother carved the spoons."

"That's a technicality." Colleen waved the card. "A man who sends a woman's mother a spoon, in a card, with his brother's name on it, is a man who is trying to say a very large thing in the smallest possible space." She fixed Dess with a bright, wet, penetrating eye. "He's in love with you."

"Oh my God."

"Well, he is."

"He's grieving. He's a very lonely man in a very difficult position. He's the baby's uncle. He feels responsible."

"Honey, I've had five men in my life, and I've been responsible for all of them, and not one of them ever sent my mother a spoon."

"You didn't have a mother."

"Exactly. If I had, I'd have wanted one."

Dess opened her mouth, and found, to her annoyance, that there was nothing in it.

…

It was the first white Christmas Eve in six years.

The snow began at five. It started as a feathery drift, a few fat flakes wandering past the kitchen window under the streetlamp, and by six it had thickened into a steady silent curtain that sealed off the world. The street disappeared. The cars on the hill became soft white hummocks. The plastic Pilgrim on the porch put on a hat. Inside the buttercup-yellow house, every lamp was lit, and the radiators clanked, and the whole narrow warm rattling place smelled of ham and cloves and Colleen's cinnamon candles and the dry sweet scent of a spruce Ray had dragged in from the Stop & Shop lot and wedged into a bucket of sand in the corner of the living room.

They ate at seven. Ham, scalloped potatoes, a green-bean casserole with canned onions, a plate of rolls from the church sale. Ray said grace, which he did in the manner of a man giving a sports commentary: "Lord, we thank You for this food, which is excellent, and for the Pats, who are not, and for the baby, who's on the way, and for Dennis's truck, which is finally fixed. Amen."

"Amen," said Colleen.

"Amen," said Dess, trying not to laugh.

"Now," said Ray, reaching for the potatoes. "I got to tell you something. I been thinking about it for a week. And I think you're going to thank me."

"Ray," said Colleen.

"What? It's a good idea."

"It's Christmas."

"That's why it's a good idea." He heaped his plate. "Dessie. Listen. I got a friend, right? Name of Phil. Phil's a lawyer. A real one. He's got an office on Pleasant Street. And Phil tells me that in a case like yours, with a rich family and a, a situation, a girl can get a pretty good settlement. I'm not saying take the two and a half. I'm saying that's the first offer. That's what they call an opening bid. You come back with five, and you settle for four, and you're set for life."

Dess put down her fork.

"Ray," she said, very pleasantly. "Where did you hear about the two and a half?"

"What?"

"Two and a half million. I told Mom. In the kitchen. At Thanksgiving. She said she wouldn't repeat it."

"She didn't." Ray took a large bite of ham and chewed with great speed. "I just— It came up. Around. You know how it is. Nobody keeps a secret in this town. I mean, I heard it from, uh, Dennis."

"Dennis."

"Yeah. His buddy at the plant."

"Which plant?"

"The, uh, the fish plant. The, you know. The one on Water Street." He took a swig of beer. "Does it matter? The point is, it's out there. It's public. And there's a family with money who wants something, and Phil says—"

"Ray."

It was Colleen. She had not raised her voice. She sat at the end of the table in her red sweater with her hands folded in her lap and her gold hoops swinging, and she was looking at him with an expression Dess had seen exactly twice in her life: once when a man named Gary had called her a stupid cow in front of company, and once at a church bake sale, over a disputed lemon bar.

"Yes, honey?"

"It's Christmas Eve."

"I know that, hon—"

"It's Christmas Eve, and my daughter is thirteen weeks, and a man has sent me a spoon." Her voice was dangerously soft. "I don't want to talk about settlements. I don't want to talk about Phil. I want to eat my ham. Can you do that for me?"

A pause.

"Sure, hon," said Ray. "Sure. Sorry. I was just— I was thinking of the baby."

"I know you were."

"I only want what's best."

"I know."

"Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas." Colleen lifted her glass of eggnog. "Pass the rolls."

He passed the rolls. The talk moved on. Somebody mentioned the Pats. Ray told a long story about a man in Swansea who had hit a deer with a golf cart. But Dess, across the table, with her fork in her hand, sat watching him laugh, and seeing, as clearly as if it had been written on his forehead, the quick bright flick of his eyes toward the window, toward the telephone on the wall, toward the dark.

Fish plant, she thought. On Water Street.

Dennis's buddy.

In the long invisible ledger, she wrote a line. Ray: asked about money. Three times. Lied once.

She drew a box around it.

…

She woke at 1:40.

At first she did not know why. The house was dark and very quiet. She lay in the narrow single bed in her childhood bedroom, under a quilt printed with faded ducks, with a night-light shaped like a seashell throwing a pale pink glow across the ceiling, and listened to the wind. Snow ticked on the window glass. Down the hall her mother snored in a soft, steady, whistling rhythm. Somewhere below, a clock said the half hour and was answered by a pipe.

Then it came again.

A cramp.

It was low and deep and sudden, a hard, hot, clenching pull, as though a hand had reached inside her and twisted. It took the breath out of her. She curled on her side with her knees up, and held very still, and waited for it to pass, and it did, in about eight seconds, and she lay there in the dark, with her heart thudding, and thought: That's nothing. That's gas. That's the ham.

It came again.

She sat up.

That's not the ham, said the dry voice in her head, and for the first time in her life it sounded afraid. That's not normal. That's low. That's the wrong place.

She put both hands on her stomach. It was hard under her palms. She pressed. A flash of pain, sharp, side-ways, a stitch from hip to groin. She gasped. She did what she'd been told, in all the pamphlets, in the little booklet from Dr. Pratt that she'd read until the corners curled. She counted. She breathed. She told herself: Round ligament. Round ligament pain. Very common. Very normal. Stretching. But the pamphlets had not said it would feel like a knife. They had not said it would take her by the middle and shake.

She swung her legs out of bed.

The floor was freezing. She stood on it, bent double, with one hand against the wall, and a third pain came, sharper, blinding, a hot red blade through the left side of her pelvis, and she cried out. She clapped a hand over her mouth. The sound was tiny and terrified, a mouse's squeak in a dark kitchen.

Don't wake her. Don't wake Mom. She'll lose her mind.

Call Joelle.

Joelle was on shift. Joelle was in the middle of a Christmas Eve night on the labor floor, and her phone was in her locker, and she was elbow-deep in somebody else's miracle.

Call 911.

She thought about it.

She thought about the ambulance, the lights, the siren in the snow, her mother in a nightgown at the door, Ray in his undershirt asking if there was a situation. She thought about the ICU of her mind, where the worst case lived in a cold bright room with a machine. She thought: If I call, it's real.

Her phone was on the nightstand. She reached for it with a shaking hand.

She did not decide.

She would think about that afterward, for a long time, with a kind of baffled wonder: that she had not chosen. Her thumb simply went to the one contact at the very top of her recent calls, the one that had occupied it for three weeks, and pressed.

It rang once.

"Dess."

His voice was hoarse with sleep and already, absolutely, awake. She heard a rustle, a click, a thump, the unmistakable sound of a man sitting bolt upright in the dark.

"Theron," she said. "Theron, I'm— I think I need—"

"Where are you?"

"Fall River. My mother's. I'm in my room. It's— I'm having pain. It's low. It's on one side. It comes and goes. It's really bad and I'm really scared and I don't want to wake my mother and Joelle's at work and I don't know who else—" Her voice cracked. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's Christmas. It's the middle of the night. I shouldn't—"

"Dess."

"Yes?"

"Stop apologizing."

"Okay."

"Are you bleeding?"

"I don't— No. I don't think so. I haven't looked."

"Look."

She looked. She stood in the pink glow of the seashell night-light, and pulled up her nightshirt, and looked, and checked, with her hand shaking so hard she nearly dropped the phone.

"No," she said. "No blood. Nothing."

"Good." He drew breath. She heard it, slow and deliberate, in the dark: a man bringing himself under control by main force. "That is good. That is very good. Now, I want you to do three things. Are you listening?"

"Yes."

"First, sit down. On the edge of the bed. Not lying. Sit."

She sat.

"Second, breathe. In for four. Out for six. As we did on the terrace."

She breathed.

"Third." He paused. "Is there a hospital near you?"

"Charlton. It's ten minutes. It's— Theron, it's snowing. There's four inches. The roads—"

"I know. I'm looking at the window."

"You're— You're in Providence."

"I am putting on my coat."

"You can't. It's forty minutes. It's a blizzard."

"It is a snowfall of moderate intensity. I have driven in worse." There was a rustle, a clank, the sound of keys. "Wake your mother. Quietly. Tell her that you wish to be taken to the emergency room as a precaution. Tell her that a doctor has advised you. Do not say my name. Do not mention me."

"Why?"

"Because she will be frightened enough." His voice was perfectly steady, and very low. "And because I do not wish to be a thing she must also think about. I will meet you at the door of the hospital. I will be there in thirty-five minutes. If you need an ambulance before that, you will call 911, and you will not argue, and I will meet the ambulance."

"Theron—"

"I asked you, in the café, to let me be of use. You said yes. This is use." A pause. "Dess."

"What?"

"I am coming."

The line went dead.

She sat on the edge of the bed in the pink glow, with the phone in her hand and the pain coming and going in her middle like a tide, and breathed. In for four. Out for six. In for four.

A line from a long time ago went through her head, in her mother's voice, soft and wondering, in the dark of a Warwick motel. Look at that, baby. It just goes and goes.

She stood up.

She knocked on her mother's door.

…

Colleen came out of sleep like a woman coming out of a well. She sat up in bed in a flannel nightgown with a pink hair net, and her mouth fell open, and in the space of five seconds she went from deeply unconscious to wholly, ferociously, terrifyingly alert.

"What? What is it? What happened?"

"It's okay. It's probably nothing. I just have a pain."

"A pain where?"

"Low. On the left."

"Is it the baby?"

"It's— I think it's the ligament. It's just— Mom, I'd like to go to Charlton. Just to be safe. Can you drive?"

"Of course I can drive!" Colleen was already out of bed. She had the nightgown off and a sweater on and one boot laced before Dess could blink. "Ray! RAY! Get the car! Get the car warm! Dessie, sit. Sit down. Don't move. You're white as a sheet. Do you have your insurance card? I'll get your purse. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I knew we shouldn't have had the ham. It's the salt. Women in your condition aren't supposed to have the salt—"

"Mom."

"I'll call the doctor."

"Mom, it's Christmas Eve, he's not on call—"

"I'll call him anyway!"

"Mom." Dess took her mother's hands. They were small and cold and shaking. She looked down into the frightened bright face, and the hair net, and the lipstick that had not quite come off, and she felt something in her chest turn over with great tenderness, and a kind of pity, and the first tiny bud of an enormous love. "It's going to be fine. I promise. I'm okay. I just want to make sure. It's the sensible thing."

"I'm so scared."

"I know."

"I can't lose you. I can't lose either of you."

"You won't."

"I'm not good at this. I never was. I'm good at crying." Colleen's voice broke. "But I can drive. I can drive like hell."

"Then drive."

"I'll drive like the wind."

"Please don't. There's four inches of snow."

"I'll drive like the wind, but slow."

Dess laughed. It hurt. She bent over, hand on her side, laughing and wincing at once.

And that was how they went out into the night: a woman in a hairnet and a pregnant daughter in a nightshirt and an old parka of Ray's, and a man in an undershirt named Ray with a snow shovel, scraping the windshield of a 2009 Buick LeSabre under the porch light, with the wind whipping the plastic Pilgrim sideways and the snow coming down thick and white and silent on the hill above the mills.

…

They reached the emergency entrance of Charlton Memorial at 2:31.

The parking lot was almost empty. The snow lay unbroken on the asphalt except for a single set of fresh tire tracks, curving in from the road in a long wide arc, and at the end of them, parked at an angle beneath the portico in the amber glare of the entrance lights, stood a car.

It was not the Bentley. It was a battered gray rented Subaru with Massachusetts plates and a cracked taillight, and the driver's door was standing open. A tall man in a dark overcoat was out of it. He was bare-headed. His hair was white with snow. He stood on the pavement beside the open door with his hands at his sides, quite motionless, looking at the headlamps of the Buick as they swung across the lot, and in the moment before the light struck him, Dess saw his face.

It was gray with fear.

It was, she thought, the face of a man who had driven thirty-five miles in thirty-one minutes through a blizzard with his foot on the floor and his heart in his mouth, and who had stood here in the cold for the last twelve of them without once going indoors, in case she should arrive and he should miss it.

Colleen braked.

The Buick slid, caught, stopped.

For a moment nobody in the car spoke. The wipers thudded. The heater roared. In the back seat, Ray said, in a hushed voice, "Is that—"

"Yes," said Dess.

"That's him?"

"Yes."

"He drove here? From Providence?"

"Yes, Ray."

"In this?"

Colleen had not said anything. She sat with both hands tight on the wheel, staring through the windshield at the figure in the snow, and her face was doing something complicated.

"He's got no hat," she said at last.

"I know."

"His head's all wet."

"I know, Mom."

"That's a man who drove here in a hurry." Colleen's voice cracked. "That's a man who's frightened out of his wits. That's a man who got up in the middle of the night and put on his coat." She turned to Dess. Her eyes were bright with tears. "Honey. Get out of the car."

"Mom—"

"Go on. I'll park. Ray, you're going to sit in the waiting room and be useful. Dessie, he's waiting. Don't make a man wait in the snow."

Dess put her hand on the door.

She opened it. The cold hit her like a slap. She stepped out into the white swirl, into the headlamps' amber glare, in Ray's old parka and her nightshirt and a pair of unlaced boots, and the snow came up around her ankles. She took one step.

He crossed the rest.

He crossed it in three long strides, bareheaded, without a word, and stopped in front of her, close enough to touch. Up close, she could see the snow melting on his lashes. She could see the pulse beating in his throat. She could see that his left hand, at his side, was shaking so hard that the cuff of his coat trembled; and that he knew; and that, for once, in this moment, he did not care.

"Dess," he said.

"You came."

"I said I would."

"It's a blizzard."

"It is a snowfall of moderate intensity."

"Your head is wet."

"I forgot my hat."

She started to laugh. It turned to something else. It broke in her throat and she swayed, and he caught her. It happened before either of them thought. His arm went around her shoulders, and she put her forehead against the front of his coat, and felt the cold wet wool against her skin and the hard stuttering thump of his heart under it, running at a rate she could have counted.

"I've got you," said Theron.

His voice was very low. It shook.

"I have you. I am here. I'm not going anywhere." His hand came up and rested, with enormous care, on the back of her head, as if he were afraid that she was made of glass. "I asked, did I not? On the phone. You said yes. This is my asking. May I hold you? Only for a moment. Only until we are inside."

"Yes."

"Thank you."

"You can stop asking."

"I cannot," said Theron, into her hair. "I have not the least idea how."

Behind them, in the idling Buick, Colleen Rourke put her hand over her mouth and bowed her head, and wept, with a joyous, silent, shaking relief, into the steering wheel; and Ray Dufresne, in the back seat, with his phone already half out of his pocket and his thumb already hovering over the glass, looked out at the two figures in the snow, and thought, with a sudden slow bright surge of cunning, that he had never in his whole life seen a man look at a woman quite like that.

That's not a family looking out for a baby, thought Ray.

That's a man with a lot to lose.

He lowered the phone, and smiled, and slid it back into his pocket, and said to nobody in particular: "Well. Merry Christmas."