Ben and Marilyn came out of the apartment then, pulling the couch.
“Help us,” they said, and we moved the table and chairs out into the store by the tree.
Ben set the table and Marilyn and Mother brought food and I brought a lamp out and put it on the table. When it was done and ready, Ben carried Matthew out and put him in blankets on the couch. The little sleep had made the medicine wear off, and he smiled at us.
Then we ate some soup with dumplings, and potato sausage that made me burp, and some smelly fish called
lutefisk
that I had never tasted before and wouldnot want to taste again, and some dough folded over something sweet, and milk.
We ate and ate by the tree with the angel looking down, and when we were done Ben sat on the couch by Matthew’s feet and Mother and I sat on the floor and the stove was warm and it was hard to stay awake. But Ben opened a book and read a poem about Santa Claus and the night before Christmas, and I looked at Matthew, who listened to each word of the book, every and each word; and so did I, and I thought, it didn’t matter.
It didn’t matter if there was a Santa Claus or there wasn’t a Santa Claus. It would not make the food different or the tree different or the angel different or how it felt to lean against Mother and listen to the story as it named the reindeer and told how they came in the night. I looked at Matthew, who was seeing them the way I was seeing them all.
In the tree.
When it was done and Ben closed the book because all the words had been said and all the pictures had been seen and it was time to close the book we all sat quietly, just sat and felt the heat from the stove. I thought of Christmas and how it was and what it must be like in the war for Father, and hoped he had a tree and somebody to read to him out of a book.
“Merry Christmas,” Matthew said in a whisper to me, and I shook my head.
“It’s not Christmas yet. We have to go to bed and wait and then it will be Christmas.”
But we didn’t go to bed, even though it was late and warm and we were sleepy. I saw that Matthew’s eyes were closing and I couldn’t keep my eyes open either and closed them, closed them just a little.
“What’s that?”
Ben stood up and I didn’t know if Iwas asleep or not, but I opened my eyes and Matthew did the same and I felt Mother move next to me.
“What?” Matthew asked.
“I thought I heard bells,” Ben said, holding up his hand. “Outside. I thought I heard sleigh bells.”
And he made the face grown-ups make when they are making things up so they think you’ll believe them, and Matthew looked at me and I saw he didn’t believe it either.
“No. Listen.”
And I heard them. Heard the bells. Ringing low, and somehow coming from all around.
“Let’s see, let’s see.…”
Ben motioned with his hands and picked Matthew up, wrapped in his blankets, and we all followed him through the store to the front door, where he stood aside and let Marilyn open it.
Cold air came in along the floor and I went up next to Ben’s legs and looked out.
I didn’t see anything at first. There was a moon that made all the snow white, and the moonlight mixed with the light coming from the front of the store to make puddles of light places on the snow, but I didn’t see anything.
Then something moved.
“What—”
I heard Matthew. He was higher than me because Ben was holding him up and he could see better, and I heard him start to say something and then nothing. Just his breath sucking in.
But something moved and I heard the bells again and it came then, came into the moonlight and store light, into the puddles of light, and I saw it as plain as anything.
It was a reindeer and then another reindeer and two more, and they were walking, and they had harnesses on and theywere pulling a sleigh and it came, too, came with them and pulled up right in front of the door.
Right there.
Right there in front of the store. And I know they weren’t flying and
James S. Malek, Thomas C. Kennedy, Pauline Beard, Robert Liftig, Bernadette Brick