Corpus Christmas

I

Thursday, December 10

Snow was predicted by Sunday and a chill morning rain had drenched the city streets but it had stopped by ten a.m. when Rick Evans arrived at Sussex Square, that little gem of urban felicity down in the East Twenties. He paused a moment, propped his tripod on the wrought-iron fence which enclosed the tiny park, uncapped the lens of the camera slung around his neck, and slowly pa

Unlike the broad avenues of commerce where New York ’s glamorous stores were bedizened with tinsel and glitter, Christmas down here approached in a resolutely nineteenth-century fashion that was less intimidating to someone born and reared in a small college town in Louisiana. The solid townhouses that ringed Sussex Square were built of stone, not wood; but most wore heavy wreaths of fresh evergreens, waxed fruits, and lacquered nuts that gleamed in the weak winter sunlight with a homelike familiarity.

Number 7 was twice as wide as any of its neighbors and bore a small brass plaque that informed passersby that this was the Erich Breul House, built in 1868 and open to the public since 1920.

Rick Evans focused carefully on the brass plaque, then retrieved his tripod and walked up the broad marble stoop to the recessed doorway, a doorway so imposing that he automatically wiped his boots on the outer mat before entering the marbled hall.

Black velvet ropes, looped through brass stanchions, formed a walkway to a long Queen A

From an alcove at the rear of the vaulted entrance hall, a young black woman saluted him with a friendly wave of her steno pad as her high-heeled boots clicked through a doorway that had once led to the butler’s pantry but was now the director’s office.

On the left, midway the depth of the hall, stood a bushy fir tree, at least ten feet tall, but dwarfed by the massive proportion of the carved marble fireplace. The tree was surrounded by open boxes of ornaments, a tall aluminum step-ladder, tangles of candle-shaped tree lights, and three women dressed in urban-casual woolens. As Rick Evans approached them, the light floral scent of their perfumes mingled with the fir’s woodsy aroma and for a moment he felt himself unaccountably, profoundly homesick for Louisiana and Christmas in his mother’s house.

He propped his tripod against the opposite side of the fireplace and smiled diffidently at a kind-looking brunette whose graying hair was tied back with a red silk scarf. “Is Mrs. Beardsley here?” he asked.

“Is God in his heaven?” the woman replied in an unexpectedly deep voice.

“Oh Helen, you’re awful!” giggled a shorter, round-faced woman.

“Shh!” a third woman warned.

Sensible leather heels tapped down the wide marble staircase at the right of the hall as Mrs. Gawthrop Wallace Beardsley, senior docent at the Breul House, descended triumphantly, followed by a man in dark green coveralls whose face was obscured by the boxes he carried.

“We found them,” she said, bustling over to the group. “I knew we had more decorations than these.” Her all-seeing gaze fell upon Rick Evans and she halted to consult the old-fashioned gold watch on her wrist. “Mr. Evans. Surely I told you the tree would not be ready to be photographed until after lunch?”

Rick fiddled with the lens cap on the camera still slung round his neck. “Yes, ma’am,” he admitted, “but I had some free time and I thought maybe I could shoot some of the ornaments individually or something? I mean, aren’t some of them pretty special?”

His voice trailed off in uncertainty.

The deep-voiced woman with the kind face took pity on him. “Yes, they certainly are special. Melissa, show him one of Mrs. Breul’s glass angels.”

Melissa, the widow of Dr. Higgins Highsmith Jr., whose many trusteeships had once included the Erich Breul House, plucked an ornament almost as delicate as she herself from its nest of tissue. From girlhood, Sophie Fürst Breul had collected dozens of fragile glass Christmas tree ornaments, charming souvenirs of carefree winter visits to relatives in Germany and Austria.

This particular angel had been blown from a pearly, opalescent glass and its features then hand-painted in soft pastels. Its robe was pale green and, incredible after so many years, fragile glass hands still held to those rosebud lips a gilt paper trumpet stamped with stars.

“Over a hundred years old!” marveled Melissa Highsmith. “And it’s only frayed a bit here.” Her wrinkled fingers sketched a circle around the trumpet’s flare without actually touching the tattered edge.

“Do be careful,” Mrs. Beardsley warned.

Her words were meant for the man, who was trying to set down his load of boxes without tipping them, but Mrs. Highsmith guiltily replaced the angel in its tissue as the deep-voiced woman stepped forward to help Pascal Grant.

Carefully, the workman straightened the boxes until each right corner was square with the one below, then turned to Mrs. Beardsley for approval with such i

He knew that the Breul House contained basement quarters for a live-in handyman, but had not yet met him. In listing the people who worked there, his grandfather had hesitated at Pascal Grant’s name and murmured something about a lamb of God, one of His poor unfortunates, which had led Rick to expect someone defeated or with an obvious physical handicap. A crippled alcoholic, perhaps.

Instead, now that the boxes no longer hid the man’s face, Rick saw someone who looked like one of Sophie Breul’s angels stepped down from a Christmas tree.

Pascal Grant was slender and finely built-even the coarse green coveralls he wore could not disguise that-with eyes as blue as the Virgin’s robes and golden hair like spun glass. He had a thin, well-shaped nose, a rounded chin, and an upper lip so short that his mouth was seldom fully closed.

It must be those parted lips that made him look so i

He was looking now at Rick. “Hello,” he said in a voice as light and su

Puzzled, Rick lowered the camera and extended his own hand. “Rick Evans.”

He was surprised by the unexpected strength of the janitor’s grip, and noted that Grant’s hand was calloused and that his fingertips were grease-stained beneath the ragged nails.

The women smiled approvingly at Rick. Even the patrician Mrs. Beardsley softened. “This is Helen Aldershott,” she said, gesturing to the tall, deep-voiced woman. “And Melissa Highsmith, whom you’ve just met.”

“So pleased,” murmured Mrs. Highsmith, taking his hand between both of hers.

Her thin, arthritic fingers flashed with accumulated diamonds and he sensed that several of the rings were too loose, as if fashioned for younger, less gnarled hands. He wondered briefly how many generations of Highsmith fingers those rings had adorned.

The round-faced giggler and her shusher were Mrs. Dahl and Mrs. Quinones.