“Are you nervous, son?”
“I think Rebekah’s a bit nervous, but I’m pleased as punch.”
“Well, what better gift could she give you?”
“I know it.”
Sargent emptied his pipe bowl and looked again into the falling
snow. He took a deep breath, put his hand on Odd’s shoulder. “Not that you asked, but let me give you a piece of advice, Odd. Someday your child will be full of wants. What they’ll want more than anything, whether they know it or not, is for you to cherish them.” He squeezed Odd’s shoulder now. “I doubt you’ll have much trouble with that.” He took his hand from Odd’s shoulder, reached into his coat pocket, and removed a gift wrapped in Christmas paper. “This is from Mother and me. For you. And Rebekah. And your child now, I suppose. Merry Christmas, Odd.”
Odd held the gift. “Thank you. Thanks for everything.” He paused, looked between the gift in his hand and Harald Sargent.
“What is it?” Sargent said.
“I’ve been wondering, why were you at the boat club that first morning? I can’t quite parse it out.”
“Well, I’ve much business at the boat club.”
“At six o’clock in the morning? On a Sunday?”
“You ask as though you’re suspicious of me.”
“I ain’t suspicious, just curious.”
Sargent smiled. “The truth is, I was there to offer you this job. The boatyard custodian is a neighbor of mine. We met in the alleyway on Saturday night, putting the trash out. He told me about your boat, said I ought to see it. So I came to see it, and here we are.”
“Why’d he say that?”
“You’re not aware of what you’ve accomplished, are you? You don’t see the beauty in that vessel you built.”
“I see a cockpit. A little more room for fish boxes. A heavier keel in big water.”
“A heavier keel. Precisely.”
“You’re speaking in riddles, Mister Sargent.”
“There’s no riddle at all, Odd. You built something worth seeing.
I thought I’d take a look. The rest of it, the fact that we’ve become friends, that you’ve ended up here —” he knocked on the wooden wall of his shop —"that’s just the Lord working in strange ways.”
“Strange ways indeed,” Odd said.
“I’m just glad it worked out, son. Now, in honor of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, take the rest of the day off. I’m closing the shop early today.” Sargent took a step toward the shop door but stopped. He turned back to Odd. “And tell Rebekah I send my congratulations, will you?”
“I will. Thanks.”
What Odd found when he returned to their brownstone could have felled him. There was Rebekah, sitting on the davenport stringing popcorn, a short and misshapen Christmas tree standing in the window. He stood in the doorway, smiling, dumb, holding the packages he’d stopped to buy on the way home like some kind of working-class Saint Nick.
After a moment Rebekah stood and crossed the small apartment. “Hello. You’re home early.”
“Sargent closed shop for Christmas. What’s this?” Odd said, nodding his head at the Christmas tree.
“Mister Johnson walked down to the lot with me and carried it home. He helped me set it up. I bought the bulbs at the hardware store on the corner. Isn’t it nice?”
Odd stepped in, closed the door behind him. He kicked off his boots and walked across the parlor. He put the packages under the tree and turned and crossed the apartment again. He took Rebekah in his arms and held her for a long time.
When finally he let her go he said, “It’s perfect. And what’s that smell?” He turned his nose to the small kitchen on the other side of the flat.
Rebekah grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the tree. “That’s a surprise. Here —” she forced him to sit on the davenport—"help me with these popcorn strings.”
Odd picked up a threaded needle and started stringing the popcorn. He’d never had the sensation of being awake in a dream but he did now. He said as much.
Rebekah sighed and said, “I’ve been difficult.”
“Well, now.”
“One minute I’m happy, the next I’m—” She turned away, her eyes widened and then closed. She shook her head and looked back at Odd. “I’m terrified of the baby. Even more terrified that this is no life I want, much as I do want you. I feel like a different person every day of the week.” She stopped talking as suddenly as she’d started, picked the strand of popcorn back up and began stringing it with a new kind of haste.
Odd did not know what to say, or at least had no words to say what he wanted.
More calmly, Rebekah continued, “It’s Christmas. I at least wanted to make a nice go of it. I thought a tree would make me happy.”
“Has it made you happy?”
“Let’s finish with the popcorn.”
So they finished their strings and hung them and stood in the end of the daylight looking at the scrawny tree. Odd was thinking it the most wonderful tree, greater than any of the two-hundred-foot white pines left in the forest. But he didn’t say anything, only stood there on tenterhooks, hoping Rebekah saw what he did.
“It needs candles,” she said, her voice suggesting nothing.
“It looks awfully good to me.”
She squeezed his hand.
“It’s early for dinner, but if you’re hungry, it’s ready.”
“The smell,” Odd said.
Now a very pleased look came over Rebekah’s face. She almost blushed.
“Rabbit stew!”
The kitchen table was so small the rims of their bowls touched. The table and two chairs, a davenport, a Murphy bed and armoire in the bedroom, these were the only furnishings in the apartment.
Their bowls were steaming. Parsnips and potatoes, mushrooms, onions and garlic, tender chunks of rabbit, barley malt, all of it held together with buttery roux. It was their secret, this feast, harkening back to their first time up at Rune Evensen’s farm.
As they sat there under the cheap chandelier, he thought her face was as changeable and temperamental as a stormy sky lowering over Lake Superior. And as distant. So except to thank her for the stew, Odd had not uttered a word since they’d sat down. He reckoned even the possibility of her contentment was better than the moods likely possessing her. She stirred her bowl of stew absently, once or twice dipping a crust of bread into it and raising the bread to her lips before setting it back on the edge of the bowl uneaten.
When Odd finished the first bowl Rebekah rose automatically and fetched the Dutch oven from the stovetop. She ladled him another helping. She also topped off his mug of apple wine.
“It’s delicious, Rebekah. A real treat.” He said this without lifting his head to look at her.
“Have more.”
He finished the second bowl and wiped it out with a piece of bread and ate the bread. He sat back with his apple wine and looked at her.
“Want your presents?” he said. “I know it ain’t Christmas morning yet, but I doubt Saint Nick will mind.”
He got up and stood before her, his hand outstretched as though he were asking her for a waltz. They walked to the davenport this way. Outside, the snow had started again. It was almost dark so he turned on the electric lamp. Odd took the gifts from under the tree. He put them next to her on the davenport and sat before her on the floor.
“I didn’t get you anything,” she said.
“As if I could want more.”
She reached down and ran her hand through his hair.
“Go on, now. Open ’em up.”
She took the smallest gift from the top of the stack and opened it. She smiled when she saw the chocolates and set them aside directly.