He nodded. “And you were in a panic because you thought she swallowed it?”
“And Budgie found it in his stocking where she spit it out?”
She looked up at him for a moment and then looked away. “That was when we were in the rented house at the corner of Castle and Prine.”
She took the lid from a box of ornaments inside the bigger box. They were clever and rather beautiful ornaments. She clapped the lid back on.
“Taking those?” he asked.
“No.”
“Those were new last year.”
“Not last year, Paul. The year before. We bought them for the first Christmas in this house. I'm afraid they’re too... big for the tree Mother bought.”
“Why didn’t you say what you started to say, Martha?”
“Please, Paul. There’s not much point in it, is there?”
“I... guess not. Sorry.”
“Let me see now. Lights. Two boxes of ornaments. Another box, I guess. I can’t undo this knot. Would you cur it for me, please?”
He took out his pocket knife and cut the cord. She opened the box. She had thrown the scarf aside. A sheaf of the blonde hair, lightly threaded with grey, swung forward as she dug around in the box. There had always been an odd quality of eagerness about her. A very young eagerness. But this past year had killed that beyond recovery. He wanted to turn and smash his fist against the stone of the fireplace.
Instead he merely turned and looked into the fire.
He heard the small sound in her throat and turned quickly. She tried to put the object she was holding into a box very quickly.
“What’s that?”
She held it so he could see it. He remembered it, and wondered how on this night he could ever have forgotten it.
“We forgot to buy one, until the stores were closed,” he said.
“And it was our first tree and we didn’t know at first what was missing,” she said in a far-off voice.
“You thought of it first and then I helped you,” he said.
“Yes, you drew the star and cut out the cardboard.”
“The tinfoil came from cigarette packs,”
“And then we were so proud, Paul, because it looked lovely on top of the tree.”
“A table tree. Fifty cents at the grocery store on the corner.”
And then they were both standing, somehow, and he was holding her by the wrists, very tightly. Firelight glittered on the tear paths on her cheeks. He was not such a fool as to think that one close moment would wipe out all the pain of an endless year, or take the scar tissue from her heart. But he did hope that in this moment they had turned about and taken the first hesitant step that might one day lead them back to what they had been before.
“Merry Christmas, darling,” she said, and in her voice was the ghost of the eagerness of Christmases before.
He held her close and saw on the rug behind her, the cardboard star. He marveled that the tinfoil was as shining bright as on that night twelve years before.
