The room off the sacristy where the altar boys changed was six feet or so by fifteen, with a good three feet of that width taken up by cassocks and hanger space, and when he arrived all the boys in the choir — eight of them besides himself — were crammed in shoulder to shoulder, arms swinging and pivoting, trying to climb into their robes. The walls, which were unpainted cement, echoed the giggles and whispers back at them, and magnified the musical crash of metal hangers on the floor. He noticed Teddy, apparently reinstated, without surprise. Teddy’s robe didn’t fit; it hung just below his knees. His pants stopped just above his ankles, producing a silly, tiered effect. “I shoulda looked at it when I picked it up,” he said. “Or I shouldn’ta come back. Now I look like a retard.”
Father poked his head in and whispered to quiet down, and there was a good deal of accidental and intended slapping while they tried to get their arms into their sleeves. Someone hit the forty-watt bulb above them and it swayed back and forth, swinging shadows across their faces and producing an effect worthy of a horror film. “Curse of Dracula,” Teddy said. They all made what they believed to be horror-film sounds, and Father had to poke his head in again.
Once ready, they lined up in the sacristy proper to wait for the girls. “We gotta dress in a closet and he gets all this,” Teddy whispered into his ear.
Father stood before them in a white chasuble, with thick gold bands forming a cross from shoulder to shoulder and neck to hem, INRI printed at the apex inlaid with black and gold. The gold seemed impossibly rich and provoked a kind of reverence in all of them. The door leading to the spare rooms in back creaked open and Sister led the girls in, most of them looking prettier than any of the boys would have thought physically possible. Laura slipped by him, her brushed hair golden brown over the scarlet shoulders of her robe. Sister checked the formation one final time before she left them, with a nod intended to inspire confidence, and took her place at the organ. When it swelled to life, Father finally broke into a smile and said, “Merry Christmas. And sing your brains out.” He turned and took a measured step down and out of the sacristy, and they followed in a controlled mass, hands clasped in front of them as Sister had instructed.
They were singing as the congregation rose to greet them, the pews thundering dully, and they filed down the side aisle past the familiar faces of friends, relatives, and neighbors. The entrance hymn was “Joy to the World!” and Biddy was only aware of singing it halfway into the second chorus. From the side they turned up the center aisle, Christ high on his cross above them and never closer, red and white poinsettias flanking the altar like a Christmas jungle, gold everywhere and glittering with the candlelight and occasion: candlesticks, chalices, water and wine vessels, the tabernacle. They stepped up from outer to inner altar, turned in pairs past Sister to the right, and filed into the choir pews as if they’d grown up filing into choir pews. After one more chorus the singing stopped. The lay reader announced — because of the special treat of a real choir this year — a second entrance hymn, number 36 in the missalettes: “Angels We Have Heard on High.” As they rose to sing he glanced down the row of faces alongside him with a growing happiness and pride that one could only begin to feel when singing, and singing well when it wasn’t expected, in a makeshift choir on Christmas Eve. His voice rose as the highest and strongest soprano, with Teddy and Sarah Alice’s right beside it, supporting, and the others ranging alongside in chorus. They were a unit singing as a part of a celebration separate from Sister and Father and even the Mass, and yet privy to it in a more wonderful way because of that separation. He led everyone in the song through the soaring eighteen-note expansion of the Gloria and the supporting In Excelsis Deo, and back through the Gloria again, to finish by expanding the supporting phrase in a final cadence: “In Excelsis De-e-eo.”
They sat down.
“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.” Now more than ever he wanted to be in tune with the mechanism of the Mass, to see and appreciate all that had during the year for one reason or another cruised effortlessly by him while he stood oblivious in the pews. But even as they spoke the opening prayer together, he could see that the magic did not extend to all aspects of the Mass; that only the songs and the night itself would be different and so then memorable, and that would be enough. Alone, either was a great deal more magic than he had bargained for. In a vague way he wondered if it might be capable of producing some sort of change in him, and he wondered if that was what he had been hoping for all along.
Laura glanced back at him from the front row, and he smiled. They stood and sat and knelt as a group, and recited the prayers crisply without the usual murmuring and trailing off at the end, and Mass continued to glide by seamlessly.
“Be seated,” Father said. “A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke.”
“Glory to you, O Lord.”
He shifted at the podium, and began.
“Now it came to pass in those days that a decree went forth from Caesar Augustus that a census of the whole world be taken. This first census took place while Cyrinus was governor of Syria. And all were going, each to his own town, to register. And Joseph also went from Galilee out of the town of Nazareth into Judea to the town of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, to register, together with Mary his espoused wife, who was with child.
“And it came to pass while they were there that the days for her to be delivered were fulfilled. And she brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them at the inn.
“And there were shepherds in the same district living in the fields and keeping watch over their flocks by night. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood by them, and the glory of God shone round them, and they were much afraid.
“And the angel said unto them: ‘Fear not, for behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be unto all people, for today in the town of David a saviour has been born to you, who is Christ the Lord.’…
“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.’”
Father closed the book with a quiet slap. “This is the Word of the Lord.”
Biddy sat transfixed, murmuring with the rest, “Thanks be to God.”
The Homily went by unnoticed, an uneven drift of words in the distance. His mind stayed out with the flocks in the darkness under the ancient night sky, with the shepherds and stars and angel who spoke so beautifully that to his complete surprise the Gospel, of all things, had provided something as vivid as the Orioles or the Vikings and a rough hillside thousands of miles and years away had become as familiar and comforting as Three Rivers Stadium or the Oriole dugout.
It was not a moment to rush through. He stood for the Profession of Faith a second later than the others, the first moment he was aware of when the choir was not in complete synchronization.
And as he recited, he did believe: in one God, the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen. In Jesus, in his crucifixion, in the rest of the prayer, which grew progressively harder to keep concrete, to keep meaningful, until, as always, he felt even in his faith a lack of faith, a nagging conviction that he didn’t believe hard enough.
Father had begun the Liturgy of the Eucharist and was preparing the host: “The day before he suffered, he took bread in his sacred hands, and looking up to heaven to you, his Almighty Father, he gave you thanks and praise. He broke the bread, gave it to his disciples, and said: ‘Take this, all of you, and eat it: this is my body which will be given up for you.’” Biddy knelt without moving, lost in thought, and found himself mouthing along: “When the supper was ended, he took the cup. Again he gave you thanks and praise, gave the cup to his disciples, and said: ‘Take this, all of you, and drink from it: this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you and for all men so that sins may be forgiven. Do this in memory of me.’”