The Night Bell (28 page)

Not every family ate Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve, but hers did. The huge meal provided fuel for the long
but happy process of opening presents the next morning. The sluggishness induced by the previous night’s meal invariably peaked around lunchtime on Christmas Day. On Christmas Day, only Alan attacked his food with his usual enthusiasm.

Her parents had done everything they could for the new member of their family. But they had chosen to. She hadn’t. Watching him play with his new things – things he could never have dreamed of – made her at last feel love for him. She made herself a promise that as long as she was alive, he’d never go hungry again.

One way to get Alan’s co-operation was to withhold dessert until he had helped clear the table. Their parents went upstairs to nap after lunch and told Hazel to encourage him to go outside and burn off some of his energy. Alan hobbled back and forth between the dining room and the kitchen, stiff with a full belly. “I want some trifle and custard as well,” he said.

“You’ll get dessert when the lunch things are put away. But be quiet, Mom and Dad are sleeping.”

He walked as slowly as possible to the kitchen and back. “You know Mr. Bannerman?”

“Who is Mr. Bannerman?”

“Dad says he’s rag-picker.”

“I don’t know what that is, Alan.”

“He has a dirty store on Main Street.” He kept talking as he walked away from her.

“I can’t hear you anymore,” she called. “You know sound doesn’t jump up over your head and come back to me, right?”

“I’m not dumb,” he said, red-faced, from the doorway. “His store is across the road from Herbert Lim’s. Dad says they think he did it.”

“Did what?”

“They think he hurt Carol Lim.”

“Come here.” He approached her. “I’m going to tell you a secret, but you have to keep it to yourself for a while. Carol is fine. I met someone who knows her in Toronto. She gave me a note Carol wrote to her parents.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“She’ll have her necklace when she comes back.”

“I guess –”

Without warning, Alan threw his arms around her and began to sob. “I lied!” he said in a tight, small voice between gasps of air. “I lied!”

Their parents were still upstairs. It seemed a long nap, but Hazel was grateful they were not seeing Alan in such a state. “Let me show you,” he begged her. “Get Daddy’s keys.”

“He’ll notice they’re gone,” she said.

“We’ll be back before he notices. Please!”

His anxiety was so acute, she felt she had no choice. She
went into the closet by the door and felt up the wall inside until she came to the hook where her father’s keys were. She took them down, afraid that they would jingle and attract attention, and clasped them tightly in her hands. She whispered to Alan, “Put on a coat and gloves,” and she looked backward nervously as they left. The house was dark and silent behind them and the streets were almost empty. The occasional car passed them with a muffled sound – rubber tires on new snow.

She led her brother down Candlestick Alley and they stood for a moment at the mouth of it, looking out at Main Street for anyone who might recognize them. “OK, go,” she said when she was sure the coast was clear.

They walked up the street to the heart of town, where the family store was. It was dark behind the glass and the mannequins in the window stood in shadow. They ran up to the door in fast, light steps. Hazel knew which key opened the main lock and she turned it until she felt it give under her hand. She took one more look at the street and then pushed the door open and held it for her brother.

Inside, it felt like an empty museum. Round racks of shirts repeated in hunched silhouette down the middle of the store. Usually when they were there, it was abuzz with light and talk, and fragrant with the smell of perfumes and colognes and
people
, their father presiding with a smile over it all. He had the knack for sales and didn’t even have to try: he’d told her many times it is easy to sell when you
love your own wares. He was being honest when he told a customer how fitting a certain colour was, how handsome you were in a worsted vest, how those shoes completed your look. He took pleasure. It mattered to him how people felt about themselves when they left his store.

The silence was particularly imposing in the dark. She felt Alan slip his hand into hers. “What is it you want to show me? I don’t think we should be here long.”

“We have to go in the back.”

She was reluctant to go any deeper but Alan pulled her onward. At the back of the store were the changerooms, and behind them the stockroom where extra wares were kept. She was worried that he wanted to show her what was in one of the fitting rooms, and the idea that he might draw a curtain away and reveal something she wasn’t ready to see kept her moving very slowly.

He wasn’t taking her to the fitting rooms, though. He went to the door that led to the stockroom. “It’s locked,” he said. “The key is on the same chain.”

She fumbled with the ring, trying different keys until she found the one that went in smoothly. “Why don’t you just tell me what’s back there? I’ll believe you.”

“You have to see with your own eyes. I have to show you.”

“How did you get back here in the first place? The door is kept locked. Did Father let you in?”

“No,” Alan said, blinking manically. “He leaves the keys
in the cash register until the end of the day. I took them when he was having lunch!”

“Why?”

“I wanted to see?” he said, hoping it was the right answer.

“Wanting to see where you’re not allowed to go can get you into trouble. Don’t you know that?”

“I know it now.”

She felt for his arm to hold. The only light was the little coming from the high windows. There was grit on the floor and their footsteps threw dull reports against the shelving. Boxes ranged up on either side of them; she imagined their lids lifting up all by themselves.

She came to a sudden stop.

“What are you doing?” he asked her.

“What are
you
doing?”

“I want to tell the truth.”

“So tell me.”

Her eyes had adjusted to the stockroom’s gloom, but she couldn’t make out his expression. Surely he wouldn’t hurt her. Surely the love she was beginning to feel for him would be in
him
too. For her.

He told her to wait, and he walked into the dark.

Hazel considered going back to the stockroom door and locking him in. But if she showed she didn’t trust him now, who would he ever trust? It had taken the better part of two years for him to open up this much. All would be lost if she showed him he didn’t belong.

She would continue to believe him. Even if it cost her.

After a moment, he returned with a small cardboard inventory box in his hands. He held it carefully, top and bottom, like it was a stack of something. “I found it when I came back here. I didn’t think anyone would care. I didn’t know.”

“It’s OK, Alan. What’s in the box?”

“I’ll hold it. You take off the lid.”

She put a hand on either side of the lid and slid it up. There were many small objects in the box, filling it about halfway. She thought at first the objects were carved Indian arrowheads or flints, like the ones they found from time to time walking through nearby fields, or at the edge of the Kilmartin River.

She reached in and touched the small, cold objects. They jingled against each other. She took one out. It was a silver pendant in the shape of a heart. She ran her thumb over the face of it and felt the rabbit engraved in it. “Oh my god,” she said. “Alan.”

“I stole one!” he cried. “Please don’t tell!”

She dug her hand into the box and scooped out a fistful of silver hearts. She almost laughed but her breath caught. She let them slide out of her hand, jingling, into the others. Her father must have bought them on one of his shopping trips years and years ago. Perhaps he’d sold a few of them – one to Carol Lim – and then forgotten the rest in the inventory. “Alan,” she said. “You should have told them!”

“I stole it,” he said, gasping and beginning to weep. “I stole from Daddy!”

She grasped him by the shoulders. “Isn’t it better that he think you a thief than a murderer?”

“A murderer!” He shrank away from her, retreating into shadow.

“Don’t you understand that
that
is what all the fuss was about, Alan? Why you had to talk to Commander Drury so many times.”

“I didn’t kill anyone!”

“No, obviously,” she said, shaking a fistful of graven hearts in front of him. “But now you have to tell them the truth!”

“Why, if you know she’s alive?”

“Before she comes home, it would be best if Mom and Dad knew where your necklace came from. Do you want to have to live with another secret?”

“No,” he admitted, cowed by her logic. “But you’re sure she’s alive?”

“Yes. And soon everyone will know. We’re going to take these home and you’re going to tell them, and then it will all be over.”

“No. You tell them if you have to.”

“Alan, you’re only twelve, and taking responsibility is hard to do, but it’s a sign of maturity. They will notice that. It’ll be OK.”

“No,” he said, jerking away from the hand she’d offered. He was suddenly terrified. “Don’t ever tell them. Promise me.”

“Why are you shaking?” Even his teeth were chattering. She put her hand out again and this time, he allowed her to touch him. “OK, OK,” she said. “I promise.”

He pushed the box away when she tried to give it back to him. “No. They’re yours now.
You
keep them!”

After supper, when the only light was from candles and reflections in glass, Hazel said that she was going to walk down the street to give Gloria Whitman her Christmas card. It was a lie.

She also wanted to be out of the house: Alan needed to be alone with their parents in case he had a change of heart. She hoped he would.

She’d been allowed to go out alone during the day since the age of nine – walking unaccompanied to school, going on small errands, visiting her father in his store. It was only last year, after she’d turned thirteen, that they began to let her go out on her own at night. That had truly felt like independence.

The Whitmans were at the “high” end of the street. The closer to the river the house, the older and finer it was. She walked all the way to Gloria’s, but then she continued on to River Street and turned left. It had snowed again after a short period of mild weather, and the ice in the Kilmartin had thinned. The new cold front gave the ice a thick coat of snow, and now the sound of the
river ran muffled below it like a voice heard through a wall.

The walk to Herbert Lim Grocery took her all of three minutes. She felt nervous going up to the closed gate beside the shop that led to their apartment door. There was a little white button fixed to the gatepost. Beyond it, metal stairs went up.

She felt in her pocket for the little bit of fraying string that held the scroll with Carol’s message on it. She rang the doorbell.

Footsteps came quickly. The door at the top of the stairs opened and Mr. Lim stepped out and shielded his eyes from the street lights. “Who is it?” he called.

Hazel stepped out to where he could see her. “I’m a friend of Carol’s.”

“You are the mayor’s daughter.”

“Yes.”

“We are closed, even for the mayor.” He sounded a little drunk.

“I need to talk to you,” she said.

“It’s Christmas don’t you know!”

“It’s about Carol.”

He went back into the apartment. Then he came down the stairs. He wore a housecoat cinched tight around his waist with the ends of the sash hanging down over his bare shins. He was in socks and flip-flops. “You are not a friend of Carol’s,” he stated flatly. He stood facing her on the other side of the gate.

“I know her a little,” Hazel said. He smelled like sweet wine and she felt a bit afraid of him now. “We were in grade school together. But I was a few years behind her. We didn’t really talk that much.”

“What do you want to tell me about my daughter?”

“I have a message from her,” she said.

He’d been looking at her with his mouth fixed in a line, but now his lips parted. “Where is she? Where did you see her?”

Hazel held her hands up. “I didn’t see her
myself
.”

“How did she give you a message?”

“I … I … met somebody when I was in Toronto yesterday with my father. Somebody who had spoken to Carol. I learned how to say her name in Chinese. Someone recognized it.”

“Who?”

“I don’t think I should say,” she said, and she began to feel a little sick to her stomach. “I have Carol’s message with me.”

He opened the gate. “Come up. You talk to her mother.” Mrs. Lim was now standing in the doorway, tying her housecoat up.

“Hello,” Carol’s mother said. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas,” Hazel said. “I’m so sorry to bother you.” They went into the kitchen and both Lims sat down in chairs facing her. “Like I said, I wouldn’t have … but I … I brought something to you from Carol. She sent a message.”

Mr. Lim said something to his wife in Chinese. “You did not see her?”

“No, but I met someone who knew her. Carol’s name is Shen Yu, right?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Lim. “Let me see the message.”

Hazel took the little scroll out of her pocket and laid it in Mrs. Lim’s papery-white palm. Carol’s mother slipped the frayed ribbon off and unrolled the message with her thumbs. Her eyes scanned it quickly twice. She pressed her lips together to hide her emotion, but when she blinked, a tear rolled down beside her nose. She looked at her husband and handed him the note. She held her hands out to Hazel. “Come here please,” she said.

Hazel went to her. She took Mrs. Lim’s hands. They were as cold as the silver hearts had been in their box.

“This is a very nice thing you have done,” said Mrs. Lim. “Mr. Lim and I are very grateful that Carol has such a good friend.”

“I wish I could have done more,” Hazel said.

“No, this is more than enough,” Mrs. Lim said. She spoke to her husband and he got up and left the room momentarily. When he returned, he was clutching a green bill with a black border. Twenty dollars.