With the approach of the holidays, business grew increasingly busy, and though we welcomed the revenue, I found myself working long days and returning home late each night. In my frequent absence, Keri had established the habit of sharing supper with Mary in the downstairs den. They had even adopted the ritual of sharing an after-dinner cup of peppermint tea near the fire. Afterward Mary would follow Keri into the kitchen and help clean up the supper dishes, while I, if home by this time, would remain in the den and finish the day’s books. Tonight the snow fell softly outside, contrasted by the sputtering and hissing of the warm fire crackling in the fireplace. Jenna had been sent up to bed, and as Keri cleared the table, I remained behind, diving into a catalog of new-fashioned cummerbunds and matching band ties. Tonight Mary also remained behind, still sitting in the antique chair from which she always took her tea. Though she usually followed Keri into the kitchen, sometimes, after she had finished her tea, she would doze quietly in her chair until we woke her and helped her to her room.
Mary set down her tea, pushed herself up, and walked over to the cherry wood bookshelf. She pulled a book from a high shelf, dusted it lightly, and handed it to me.
“Here is a charming Christmas tale. Read this to your little one.” I took the book from her outstretched arm and examined the title, Christmas Every Day by William Dean Howells.
“Thank you, Mary, I will.” I smiled at her, set the book down, and went back to my catalog. Her eyes never left me.
“No, right now. Read it to her now,” she coaxed. Her voice was fervent, wavering only from her age. I laid my text down, examined the book again, then looked back up into her calm face. Her eyes shone with the importance of her request.
“All right, Mary.”
I rose from the table and walked up into Jenna’s room, wondering when I would catch up on my orders and what magic this old book contained to command such urgency. Upstairs Jenna lay quietly in the dark.
“Still awake, honey?” I asked.
“Daddy, you forgot to tuck me in tonight.”
I switched on the light. “I did, didn’t I. How about a bedtime story?”
She jumped up in her bed with a smile that filled the tiny room. “What story are you going to tell?” she asked.
“Mary gave me this book to read to you.”
“Mary has good stories, Dad.”
“Then it should be a good one,” I said. “Does Mary tell you stories often?”
“Every day.”
I sat on the edge of the bed and opened the old book. The spine was brittle and cracked a little as it opened. I cleared my throat and started reading aloud.
The little girl came into her papa’s study, as she always did Saturday morning before breakfast, and asked for a story. He tried to beg off that morning, for he was very busy, but she would not let him . . .
“That’s like you, Dad. You’re real busy too,” Jenna observed.
I grinned at her. “Yeah, I guess so.” I continued reading.
“Well, once there was a little pig—” The little girl put her hand over his mouth and stopped him at the word. She said she had heard the pig stories till she was perfectly sick of them.
“Well, what kind of story shall I tell, then?”
“About Christmas. It’s getting to be the season, it’s past Thanksgiving already.”
“It seems to me,” argued her papa, “that I’ve told as often about Christmas as I have about little pigs.”
“No difference! Christmas is more interesting.”
Unlike her story’s counterpart, Jenna was long asleep before I finished the tale. Her delicate lips were drawn in a gentle smile, and I pulled the covers up tightly under her chin. Peace radiated from the tiny face. I lingered a moment, knelt down near her bed and kissed her on the cheek, then walked back down to finish my work.
I returned to the den to find the lavish drapes drawn tight, and the two women sitting together in the dim, flickering light of the fireplace talking peacefully. The soothing tones of Mary’s voice resonated calmly through the room. She looked up to acknowledge my entrance.
“Richard, your wife just asked the most intriguing question. She asked which of the senses I thought was most affected by Christmas.”
I sat down at the table.
“I love everything about this season,” she continued. “But I think what I love most about Christmas are its sounds. The bells of street-corner Santa Clauses, the familiar Christmas records on the phonograph, the sweet, untuned voices of Christmas carolers. And the bustling downtown noises. The crisp crinkle of wrapping paper and department store sacks and the cheerful Christmas greetings of strangers. And then there are the Christmas stories. The wisdom of Dickens and all Christmas storytellers.” She seemed to pause for emphasis. “I love the sounds of this season. Even the sounds of this old house take on a different character at Christmas. These Victorian ladies seem to have a spirit all their own.”