The echoing clop of someone's wooden-soled shoes against the brick of the sidewalk below awakened him. Drawn from his sleep, he thought at first it was the sound of a horse. The Boston police still used horse patrols on occasion, and they sometimes trailed up Charles Street from the Public Garden. The dark of his room felt thickened with the dissolving of his dream.
Leaning from his bed he pushed the gray folds of curtain aside and looked out at the night. A barrier of fragile black lace—thin leafless limbs made electric by the polish of rain—separated him from the closest building across the street. There the owners had set out the traditional single light for Christmas, with the look of candles, in each window.
He was unsure of the dream he had awakened from. But one part of it he was now familiar with. This lingered with him as he sat in the chair by his desk in the dark, his eyes captured by the small window lights as they multiplied in their reflections on the thin wet limbs of the trees. Helen Mawson.
Burnt umber hair, escaping a blue twist of yarn, flowing unfettered over one shoulder—her left shoulder. The collar of her blouse was high, but open at the front, and he imagined a gap of pink white flesh below her neck. The blue of her eyes looked back at him in challenge at his own visual exploration.
Henry wondered if she had ever loved. Certainly she must have. Which one? She had declared no one a favorite in the letters they had found. Surely, someone in letters lost now. Perhaps Marcus Evers.
All they had, including the scraps from the cookbook, amounted to less than one hundred pages, written in a small and precise hand. She would have written thousands, even in twenty-three short years. She wrote every day. She was not ashamed to speak her mind—even now, to him. How old would she be? One hundred and seven? How sad only a broken fragment of the life she lived still remained.
For a moment he wished he had kept one of her letters for himself. Perhaps the account of her visit to Venice. He had always wanted to go to Venice. Morgan loved Venice and had spoken of it often. But he had given all of the letters back to Albert. Alice wanted them. At least she would take care of them. They were not lost. Alice had even asked for the Roycrofter books which Helen had annotated in the margins. Alice never did anything by halves.
The old thought returned that he would have liked to have known Helen Mawson. What would she have thought of him? She was more courageous. Fearless. Would she have cared for someone who had never escaped the world that was handed to him—never built a better one? Why would she? What quest had he followed? Good books? What grail had he found? There had been that copy of Connecticut Yankee ... Henry smiled to himself at the pettiness. What dragons had he slain? Never slain, nor a dragon fought, only a sad Englishman. How was he worthy of her? A bookman's worth? What honor was there? A book hound's honor? What honor to defend?
His doorbell rang.
The burnt umber flow of Helen Mawson's hair was erased as he flipped the switch on his desk lamp. It was only six o'clock. Not even dinnertime. On his bed, where he had fallen asleep, was the closed first-edition copy of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, which he had found only a few hours before in Cambridge. He had begun reading it as he rechecked the condition and had fallen into the story until the light had grown too dim and he had drifted to sleep.
The bell rang again. He reached for the button and pressed it as he opened his own door.
He spoke into the well of space between the stairs. “Hello?"
A woman's voice echoed back. “Hello?"
A thin slice of her face looked up at him between the banisters. Her hair was very short and very blond.
She asked, “Is the landlord here?"
Her voice was clear, precise.
He shook his head. “No. Can I help you?” He tucked in his shirt as he spoke, walking down the stairs in his socks.
She spoke back as he descended. “The building seems pretty empty. Do you know if there are any apartments available?"
It was still raining. Large dark blotches marked her coat. She backed away from the stairs as he reached the bottom, looking at him almost directly eye to eye. Brown eyes—hazel brown, he thought. The shoes on her feet could not be responsible for more than an inch of the height.
He shook his head again, but less emphatically. “No. The building has been sold. I'm the last one. They'll be gutting it the week after New Year's."
She was obviously disappointed. “You'd think with the economy supposedly so bad, there would be more places for rent."
He made an expression he hoped was sympathetic. “It'll be too expensive in any case. I have to leave here myself."
She answered quickly. “Everything is too expensive."
She was looking at his shirt. Flannel could look pretty rumpled when you slept in it. What could he say?
"It's worse here in town. Even the North End, especially now with the Big Dig almost done."
She tilted her head to the side. “But I always wanted to live on Beacon Hill. Just once in my life."
He had wanted that once as well. “It's good. It's what little is left of old Boston. I was lucky to be here awhile. The previous owner kept the rent down."
She took an unhappy breath.
She said, “I've been looking for two months. I keep raising my limit. It doesn't do any good."
How was he going to prolong this conversation?
He said, “Team up. Find some roommates. I hear the larger apartments are cheaper per square foot."
That was a bit too officious. She returned a weary smile. “Right. But there are no larger apartments on Beacon Hill. It's all so old. Besides, it gets a little tiring after a few years to be listening to other people's music and cleaning up other people's dishes all the time."
How old was she? he wondered. There was a leanness in her cheeks. Perhaps thirty. She was very pretty. There were no rings on her hands.
He said, “I can't put up with that myself...."
She nodded. As he looked for more words, she studied his face. “What are you going to do?"
The thought occurred that perhaps he had made a mistake taking an apartment by himself. He said, “I just found a small place in Cambridge through a friend. That's always the best way. Check with your friends."
She flinched. “I guess I don't have the right friends."
She was turning to go.
"Well...” What more did he have to say? What excuse could he come up with to keep her a moment longer? “My name is Henry. Let me know if I can help...."
He reached into his shirt pocket. He knew a bent business card was still there, and he handed it to her.
She smiled at him uncertainly and read the card. The hope flitted across his brain that she might just say, “Oh. A bookseller. I just love books.” But she didn't.
She said, “I'm Della,” and shook his hand before turning again to leave. The grip was firm.
He looked down at his socks and wished he had put on his shoes. When he looked up again, she had the door open. He struggled for something else to say. Then she was gone.
"Merry Christmas,” he said to the closed door. The echo of his own voice in the stairwell above him made the words sound hollow. He followed the echoed beat of his own footsteps upward again.
Della. He could remember only one person by that name. Della Street. She had been the helpful secretary in the Perry Mason books.
The bell rang again, startling him, just as he reached his open apartment door. This time he grabbed his shoes as he pressed the button and skipped steps as he went down again.
But it was Leona who faced him there with a wide smile. She was holding a small gift-wrapped box. “Merry Christmas."
He kissed her on the cheek. “Merry Christmas yourself. But I thought you were through with me."
Their last argument had not ended well.
Leona nodded. “Take it as a peace offering, then.... Why are you holding your shoes?"
"I was just about to put them on."
"Going out? Can I come?"
He shrugged. “I haven't eaten."
"Me, either. I was hoping you'd ask."
There was no escape. He would rather not be alone with his thoughts just then in any case.
"Just a minute. I'll get my coat."
She said, “Open your present first!"
Leona bounced where she stood. Her enthusiasms were hard to deny. He took the thin box, pulled at the ribbon, and the top came off by itself. Inside was the gray-riddled brown of a round Irish tweed cap. He watched her expectant face as he put it on. It fit perfectly. She kissed him on the lips before he had time to move to thank her.
She said, “Tell me you like it."
He said, “I like it fine."
"I knew it would fit."
He said, “It fits fine."
Off guard, his amazement must have been obvious.
She confided, her voice lowered, “I knew it would fit because I didn't buy it. My mother bought it. She never bought wrong sizes. She had the eye."
He did not understand. She raised her arms in defense.
"I couldn't throw it away. It was brand-new, still in the box. When we were cleaning the house out, I found it in her closet and I couldn't figure out why it was there. Dad never wore hats like that. Besides, his head was smaller. Then, after I found that letter from your father, I realized. Mom had bought it for him, but he probably wouldn't take it. Anyway, I kept it. I don't know why. Well, I probably knew why. But you made that pretty easy when you complained that your dad was not even willing to wear a hat. I knew it would fit you."
Henry knew he would have to wear it, whether he wanted to or not.
Over hamburgers at the Paramount, Leona told him about her recent struggles as a single parent, including a quest to find shoes for her oldest son, who had the feet of a basketball player and the coordination of an elephant. Henry recommended Chad Humphrey, their old schoolmate.
She said, “Sad Chad. Always at the back of the band. Always holding his trumpet in one hand and that little handkerchief with the other."
Henry added, “Nice guy. Knows his shoes."
She said, “The ‘trembling trumpeter.’ Someone called him that once."
Henry remembered. “Never liked to be in front of people. Still plays trumpet."
She said, “Never married?"
Henry smiled at the thought. “Not yet. Used to talk about old horror movies whenever the conversation turned to girls."
She said, “Some subjects are too scary."
Henry said, “Girls are always pretty scary."
She rolled her eyes at that. Women never understood just how scary they could be.
She asked, “So, what did you talk about when you first met a girl?"
Leona knew the answer to that. Why did he have to say it?
"Books. Remember?"
Her smile faded.
"Yes."
There was no sadness left in him for this. She wanted something that was long gone from both their lives. A moment of innocence. Simple love. But there was none of that left in either of them.
He kissed her at the entrance to the subway. With Chanukah already past, he wished her a Merry Christmas once more. It was half a smile she returned, with one lift of her hand for a wave. He tipped his new cap to her. She had come by to be with him, and he was in fact sorry he was not in the mood for conversation or much else.
Walking back through the Public Garden, he wished it would snow and clean all the darkness away, or at least dress the world again the way it had been when he was young enough to be led by the hand beneath the Christmas lights on the Commons. The colored lights strung there blazed starkly behind the darker silhouettes of the nearer trees of the Garden. He looked for the Swan Boats, as he always did, even when they were gone from the pond for the winter. A glaze of gray-mottled ice trimmed the black water, and this was decorated with a spill of color angled from the distance.
Out loud he said, “Della."
Wasn't it odd that she should still be occupying some space in his mind? He was wrong. Of course! He did want company. But not Della. And not Leona. The person he had wanted to speak to more than once over the last week was Ranulf.
There was some unfinished business there. There was something left to say. What?
That there was no revenge. That there was none to be had. Morgan had been a casualty of life itself. As if she had been taken by an undetected cancer as well. That Ranulf's loss—that Henry's loss as well—was something grown out of the same life that had benefited them all.
Still, it was odd that he was thinking about Della. The mind was a funny place.
Passing Deluca's Market, he stopped impulsively and went in without an aim, bought a carton of eggnog, a bottle of Jamaican rum, and a package of cigarettes and went on home.
After closing out the street noise behind him with the door, a sound wafted from high in the stairwell. Certain it was from within the building, Henry left his package on the floor and stepped lightly upward. Something was pulled across rough boards. Someone was in the attic.
The last steps were steeper, angling over the stairwell below. He had always hated heights, and looking down gave him a shiver at his spine, even with the hot air at the top. The skylight close by caught the sound of cars from the street and dampened the noises from the open door. He knocked on the frame with his fist.
"Jesus!” came a voice. Someone stumbled. Something fell. Something else fell.
Henry said, “Hello?"
The voice was high-pitched with surprise.
"Who's there?"
"Henry Sullivan."
"Sullivan?"
A face poked around the door frame. The close-cut red hair was receding on a broad pink forehead covered with sweat.
Henry said, “I live on the third floor—until next week."
The man said, “I thought you were gone."
Henry answered, “Nearly. And you're Richard Prowder. Mary's brother."
Richard Prowder took a breath of relief. “Right. Can I help you?"
The irritation in his voice was clear.
Henry had intended to come up sometime during the week to retrieve some of his own things he had stored away. He had to wonder why Richard Prowder would be there now.
"As a matter of fact, I have some books up here. Your mother let me store them."
Prowder shook his head with a jerk of disgust. “Christ. She was worse than my sister."
Henry lowered his voice. “What do you mean?” He stepped into the low space which diminished into the dark.
Richard Prowder kicked at a box. “Keeping stuff. She kept everything."
The landscape of the attic was a range of various boxes, some marked by red crayon, others not marked at all. When Henry had last been up here, the boxes were still on the shelves that now were in the shadows behind them. Each shelf had been carefully labeled. Henry had thought it the most well-organized attic he had ever been in.
Most of the tops of the scattered boxes were open. Odd corners of cloth protruded in dark tongues beneath the single light by Richard Prowder's head.
Henry asked, “What brings you up here on a rainy Christmas Eve?"
Prowder turned to survey the mess he had made.
"Something ... Just something I wanted. With all the crap up here, you'd think the one thing I wanted would still be here."
Despite the mess, it did not appear to Henry that anything had been removed.
He said, “I thought your sister was having it all taken away."
Prowder's disgust returned. “She never finishes anything. It's always up to me."
Henry decided to avoid arguing. “She was pretty wiped out by the downstairs. She probably forgot about this."
The assessment produced a mutter in response, and Henry moved toward the pile of boxes under one empty angle of roof. Broken chairs and cracked flower pots were piled neatly together beside an old radio, the wooden cabinet of a television, and bundles of hangers. The television reminded Henry of a black-and-white model they had still used at home when he was very young.
Prowder suddenly said, “Have you seen a boat up here?” The renewed irritation in Prowder's voice made the question seem comic to Henry.
"A boat?"
"A boat. A big boat. About two feet long. Plastic. Something I built once ... with my father."
The hesitant addition of “with my father” reminded Henry of Mary's words about their family discord.
Henry mused, “No ... I built a boat with my dad once. A sailboat. Lost it on Jamaica Pond the day the paint dried."
Prowder shook his head and knelt to rip open another box. “It sank?"
Henry smiled at the memory now. “No. It was a windy day. Dad told me not to try it. The fishing line pulled loose, and it headed right away. I think some kids got around to the other side before I did and stole it while I was busy. Dad was giving me an earful."
Prowder said, “That's what fathers were made for."
Henry nodded. “I guess. I guess I wasn't very good at listening."
Prowder waved a hand. “Does it matter? You're just supposed to do what they want you to do. Families are not a democracy."
Henry tried to keep a smile as he answered. This was not a fellow he wanted to be talking with about democracy on Christmas Eve.
"No. Democracy only works with adults. And then they have to want to be cooperative. I wasn't very cooperative when I was a kid."
Prowder stood up and watched as Henry grabbed several of the boxes of books and moved them close to the door. Henry's assessment must have sounded impersonal.
Prowder's voice calmed. “You never knew my father. Everything had to be done right. There was a system for everything. Everything had a purpose.... Look at this.” He pointed with a free hand. “Every shelf was labeled. But he was the only one who knew what the labels meant. It was his system. It was his way. Now I can't even find my own crap."
The small plea came in his tone at the very end of the words. Henry set a second box down.
"Maybe I can help?"
Richard Prowder pushed another box aside with his foot. “I don't think so."
Henry said, “I'm not in a rush. Let me see the labels."
Prowder tilted the light in the direction of the shelves. They were lettered and numbered by hand on thin strips of yellowed paper. It was a very familiar-looking code.
Prowder's voice lowered to a hopeless resignation.
"What makes it even harder is that he packed everything in old clothes.” He waved at a box by Henry's leg. “That one there is my snowsuit from when I was maybe six years old. You have to unwrap everything to tell what it is. It's filled with glasses. He even used my mother's old brassieres, for heaven's sake."
Remembering Mrs. Prowder's story of her husband's trick with a chair as he carried her mother's china to the attic, Henry pointed to an opened box close to the shelves.
"What was in that box there, dishes?"
"Yes. How did you know?"
"The call number behind it. See? ‘NK.’ Its the same subject code they use in libraries. At some point when I was a kid I stumbled on the code for china—as in porcelain. It was on a removable label in a brass tag at the end of a row of shelves at the library. I used to switch it over to the ‘DS’ section, to Chinese History. My idea of stupid fun. Mrs. Smith, the librarian, would go bananas. She finally caught me. She banned me. She kicked me out of the library for six months. I've always been thankful."
Prowder frowned. “Why thankful?"
Henry said, “Because it made me buy more books. And then I had to sell them to get the money to buy more."
Prowder rolled his eyes. “I forgot. Mary told me you were a bookseller."
Henry said, “So what would your father call a boat—nautical—naval. Look for a code that starts with the letter v."
Prowder wiped the moisture on his forehead with his sleeve.
"A toy. He called it a toy. That's why I left it up here. I told him I was putting away my toys."
Prowder's voice had grown suddenly tense. Even so, that was a memory Henry shared as well.
"Why do you want it so badly just now? You want to give it as a Christmas present to someone?"
Prowder shook his head. “No. No. I just wanted it for myself.... It was probably the last thing we ever really did together."
Henry nodded and scanned the labels. He was not sure of the code for toys. His own father was never too fond of buying toys. Matthew Sullivan gave his son tools for Christmas, and his daughter as well. A set of screwdrivers. Three different types of hammer. But it was true that they had made toys together.
Henry said, “My dad was a pain in the ass, but he left me alone, mostly. I think that's what bothered me more, when I was a kid. He let me roam a little too much. He only had a few rules. No smoking in the house. No girls in the house. No drugs anywhere, and be home by seven in the winter and nine in the summer. Period."
Prowder said, “You had it easy."
Henry answered, “I broke every rule I could get away with."
Prowder asked, “What did your mother say?"
Henry scanned the semidark with a squint.
"She was ... gone then. She died when I was twelve."
Prowder's voice sharpened. “Oh ... Well, your dad was just trying to make it a little easier on himself that way—trying to keep it simple."
Henry turned.
"Right! That's what he always said. Keep it simple."
Prowder said, “I wish my father had the same idea. My father had rules for when the rules were broken."
Henry ducked to where shelves filled the lowest slant of the roof. His knees cracked as they folded against the wood of the floor. He admitted, “I thought my dad didn't care. I used to think he didn't love me. That's how stupid I was then. It was just his way. He always had trouble expressing himself out loud."
Prowder stood aside to keep the light on Henry.
"Well, my father was a lawyer. He knew the Latin for everything he said in English. He had a motto for everything we should do in life."
Henry strained his eyes into the dark in front of him.
"Does ‘TIT’ mean anything in Latin? It's not a library code I know of. I would have remembered that for sure."
Richard Prowder fell on his knees and scrambled below the eave.
"Titanic. That's it!"
Putting a finger into a flap of the box, Richard Prowder dragged it out, still on his knees and pushing other boxes out of the way as he reached the center beneath the light. The dried tape fell away. With all the flaps open, Prowder removed a bleach-mangled towel and wadded bundles of old socks. Beneath them, on the bed of a blue dress that might have once belonged to his sister, was a ship.
"The Titanic.... “Henry repeated. That was something he had never thought of. “When did the Titanic sink?"
Prowder answered absently, “April 12, 1912,” absorbed with his own memories. The finely detailed ship gently arose from the box in Prowder's hands.
"Too early,” Henry said.
Prowder turned. “Too early for what?"
Henry's eyes studied the ship in front of him. “Just something that popped into my head. Someone who disappeared. It would have been very romantic if she had gone down on the Titanic."
Prowder asked, “When did she disappear?"
Henry said, “1915 ... Sometime around April, 1915."
Prowder held the boat at arm's length, the light reflecting on the painted metal work. He said, “How about the Lusitania, then? The Lusitania sank in May, 1915."
Henry bumped his head rising to his feet.
He would have fallen down the stairs had he tried to land on any one of them. His hand slid on the rail, slowing his descent until the heat of the friction was too hot, and then pushed off as he landed on his feet. His key was out of his pocket by the time he had made it down the next flight to the third floor. He did not bother to close his door. The light from the hall kept him on course to the book by the window.
It would be in the Hubbard bibliography. There was a short biography there. He had breezed through it once. He had seen something there on the Lusitania!
On May 7, 1915, the British passenger ship Lusitania was sunk off the coast of Ireland by a German torpedo. One thousand, one hundred and ninety-eight people died, among them Elbert Hubbard, his wife, Alice, and her assistant, Mrs. Evers.
He read the paragraph, just a few words, several times.
When Henry climbed the stairs again, the door to the attic was closed. He had no one to tell. Albert was home with his family. Henry could wish him Merry Christmas and then tell him, but the line was busy. He could not sit. He could not stay. The clock in his room said it was nine. Time to be home, even in the summer. But it was winter. It was Christmas Eve. He had an excuse for being late.
Henry grabbed his coat, and on the way out he grabbed the bag with the eggnog and the rum from the floor beside the front door, removing the package of cigarettes as he walked and burying them deep in his pocket. The old man did not approve of smoking. The old man would be surprised—but he needed a few surprises.
Marcus Evers, the cynic, died in France at the Battle of the Somme, July, 1916. Marcus Evers, the disappointed man, went to cover the war in Europe after finding out that Helen Mawson, the woman he loved, had died on the Lusitania. Running off to war must have been a small distraction for a heart so drowned.
"Man has created death.” Yeats had said. His mother told him that more than once, so that he might remember, because he was too young then to know what she meant. “Man has created death,” he said again, unconsciously, aloud on the trolley to Brookline. A woman ladened with Christmas packages turned to the sound of his voice and moved away. Henry smiled at her, and she shifted further.
When he was twelve, death had been given a name. He had learned that death could not be halted. The sound of death was the echo of rubber heels in empty halls. The feel of death was cold. The shadow of death was the clear cloud of space separating the darkness in the stiff plastic universe of an X-ray film. He understood that death brought an untouchable emptiness and that the threat of death was what fear was.
It was only now, so many years later, that he asked himself why he did not fear life instead. All the pain and misery was in life. In death there was nothing. All the sorrow and shame was in life. In death there was nothing. What he feared was nothing. Pain was the cut and scrape in pursuit of life. All desire was in life. All hope. And all that he could ever want or lose was in that sweet misery.