On Christmas Eve

  “Home for good!” I exclaim. I am absolutely thrilled. I remember my conversation with Santa Claus. I picture him sailing over the Benjamins’ house in his sleigh, the trail of sparkling mist settling over their roof, seeping into the walls and rooms and sleeping people.

  But Sarah isn’t smiling.

  And soon she stops coming to school. She stops coming over to our house too. Ordinarily, I would ask Mom and Dad about this, but now I’m afraid. Something is happening that I don’t want to know about. I try imagining Santa’s magic. I imagine it as stronger and more powerful than ever. At night I sit up in bed, look out my window, remember Christmas Eve, and think that somehow everything will be set right. Somehow Santa will keep his promise to me. Sarah wanted only one gift. Surely he granted it to her. She isn’t greedy. And Santa is kind and thoughtful.

  But one night in the middle of March, when I haven’t seen Sarah for nearly two weeks, Mom and Dad call Evvie and me into the living room and tell us to sit down. Mom’s eyes are red, and Dad’s face is grim. I am already in my bathrobe and I twist the belt around in my hands. Then I pull Sadie into my lap and hold her close.

  Before Mom or Dad can speak, Evvie says, “It’s Mr. Benjamin, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” says Dad.

  I hold Sadie tighter.

  “Did he die?” asks Evvie.

  “Yes,” says Dad again.

  And for just a moment the only thing I can think about is Christmas Eve and standing here in the living room talking with Santa Claus. I asked him about his magic, about finding houses and jobs and making sick people well. Now I try to remember exactly what he said to me. He said he could do those things instead of leaving presents. Didn’t he?

  He said he does his best.

  My lip trembles, and I feel tears spilling down my cheeks. They drip onto Sadie’s back. “I don’t understand. Why did he leave the hospital?” I brush at the tears, and Mom hands me a tissue.

  “Because the doctors couldn’t help him anymore,” says Dad. “And he wanted to be at home with his family.”

  “When is the funeral?” asks Evvie.

  “Thursday morning,” Mom replies.

  “Will we all go?”

  “Dad and I will. I think you girls will go to school as usual.”

  Evvie and I have never been to a funeral. Mom and Dad always say we are too young.

  “Sarah will be at the funeral,” points out Evvie.

  “And she’ll need me,” I add.

  “We’ll think about it,” Dad says.

  * * *

  In the end, Evvie and I are allowed to go to the funeral. The night before, Mom looks through my closet with me. She says I must wear black to the service. The only black dress I own is the velvet one Nana Florence made. The last time I wore it was on Christmas Eve.

  On Thursday morning Evvie and I eat breakfast in our nightgowns. Then we dress for the funeral. I look at my family as we leave our house. Mom and Evvie and I are in black dresses. Dad is wearing a black suit and a black-and-blue necktie. He looks grim again, and I begin to feel nervous. I do not know what to expect this morning.

  “Will we see Mr. Benjamin at the funeral?” I ask as we settle into our car. I have never seen a dead person before.

  “No,” says Mom. “The casket will be closed.” She turns around to look at me in the backseat. “Are you sure you want to go to the funeral, Tess? We could drop you off at school on the way to the church.”

  I actually am not sure I want to go to the funeral. But I have told Sarah I will be there and I cannot let her down.

  In town we park in the lot behind our church, just as we do every Sunday. The lot is crowded. We climb out of our car and walk around to the front of the church. An usher is waiting at the door, and Dad speaks quietly to him. Then the usher leads us down the aisle to the second row of pews. We will be sitting behind Mrs. Benjamin and Sarah and Sarah’s grandparents.

  Some very nice music is being played on the organ, but I don’t pay much attention to it. I sit and stare at my hands until Evvie nudges me and I see that Sarah and her mother are being led into the church. When they sit down, Sarah directly in front of me, I lean forward and tap her shoulder. Sarah turns around and gives me a tiny wave. She’s crying. So is Mrs. Benjamin. I slide back in my seat and start to cry too. I see that Dad has slipped his arm around Mom’s shoulders, and that Mom is holding Evvie’s hand. Evvie reaches for mine.

  I hardly hear a word the minister says during the service. I am thinking about Sarah and her father, and about Christmas and wishes and believing, and about the one thing, the one thing, I asked Santa for. It wasn’t even my wish. It was Sarah’s. And it wasn’t granted.

  I lift my head as the minister is saying, “… will always be remembered,” and see Sarah’s shoulders shaking.

  This must be the saddest day of her life.

  After the funeral, time seems to move slowly. Each day crawls by.

  Sarah comes back to school, and everyone is very nice to her. The girls offer her erasers and gum. The boys choose her for dodgeball teams, and in class they never pull her chair out from under her. But something unexpected happens. Sarah and I begin to have trouble talking to each other. Maybe it’s my imagination, but Sarah seems grown-up now. Being with her is like being with Mom and Dad, who can vote and drive. Since I have never done these things, I feel separate from them, and also like a little kid. And that’s how I feel with Sarah.

  Sarah has become very serious. She doesn’t laugh, and she gets mad at me when I haven’t done anything at all. One day I say to her, “Why don’t you come over this afternoon? You haven’t been to our house for so long. In December you came over all the time.”

  Sarah glares at me. “Dad was in the hospital then. Remember?”

  Well, of course I remember.

  I try again. “We can make doll clothes,” I suggest.

  “That’s for babies,” says Sarah.

  * * *

  In April we have a week off from school, which means nine days of vacation, including the weekends. Mom and Dad decide to take a trip to Florida. “We’ll ask Sarah and her mother to come with us,” says Mom.

  I groan. “Can’t we just go by ourselves?”

  Mom looks at me over her glasses, and I don’t say anything else.

  * * *

  We stay in a big old hotel on the beach, and Evvie and I are given our own room. It connects to Mom and Dad’s room by a door that is usually left open, but Evvie and I are still thrilled. We pretend we are French sisters on vacation by ourselves.

  Sarah and her mother are staying in a room across the hall.

  On our first morning in Florida, after an evening during which Sarah and I barely speak, Mom says, “Tess, have you and Sarah had a fight?”

  “No,” I say, which is the truth.

  I put on my bathing suit and my terry-cloth robe, and Evvie and I take towels and books outside to the beach. I spread my towel on the sand, sit down, turn my face to the sun, and realize that this is the first warm air I’ve felt since September.

  “I’ll be right back,” I say to Evvie.

  I run inside, knock on Sarah’s door, and call, “Sarah, Sarah, you have to come outside right now! The sun is out, the sand is hot, and there are shells everywhere!”

  “Really?” says Sarah.

  That morning Sarah and I walk up and down the beach, putting shells into a plastic bucket. Sarah says she is going to make a collection for her father. I’m not sure what she means by this and I decide not to ask her.

  All that week Sarah and I play on the beach. We go swimming. We eat fried clams. We make up plays with Evvie and put them on for our parents. On our last day in Florida, Evvie tells Sarah a joke that makes her laugh so hard she falls over in the sand. Then she begins to cry. Then she laughs again.

  * * *

  When the vacation ends and we return to Hopewell, Sarah and I start spending the afternoons together like we used to do. One day Sarah shows me a large cardboard
carton that she has placed in the corner of her bedroom.

  “Look inside,” she says. “This is the collection for my father. I’m filling this box with things he would have liked.”

  I lift a flap. I see a painting of a tree that Sarah made in art class, a white marble, a blue jay’s feather, a stone that looks like a cat’s ear, and all the shells she found in Florida. I move the painting to one side and find a red-and-green macaroni chain, the chain Sarah made at my house on the day I had the first sign that I would see Santa Claus.

  I lift the chain out.

  “Remember when we made all those decorations?” asks Sarah.

  I nod. I can barely think about Christmas now, and I haven’t looked at my special calendar in weeks. I had planned to cross every day off of it until Christmas. The last day I crossed off was February 23rd.

  I drop the chain back into the box, but Sarah lifts it out again and looks at it with a small smile before placing it carefully by the painting.

  * * *

  In May our class starts to plan an end-of-the-year program for our parents. Miss Sullivan says that everyone has to participate in the program. We can perform alone or in groups. I do not want to perform at all, but performing with someone else is better than performing by myself, so I ask Sarah if she wants to do choral speaking with me. But Sarah says she wants to recite “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost, which was her father’s favorite poem. And that she wants to do it alone.

  I am disappointed, but I remember Sarah’s collection and understand that this is something she must do for her father. I decide to work with three other kids who have written a skit about a family who gets a pet cat. They want me to be the cat, which is fine because I won’t have to say any lines.

  On the morning of the last day of school, Sarah cries and tells me that this is the first time only her mother will be able to see her in a program. I don’t know what to say to Sarah. It’s true. This is the first time. There will be lots of other times, lots of things her father will miss. This is a sad day, and I wish it could be different. Finally I say that to Sarah: “I know. It’s really sad. I wish things could be different.”

  Sarah sniffles, then smiles at me. “I feel kind of like my father is with me, though. And he’s going to hear the poem this afternoon.”

  At the end of the day, when it’s Sarah’s turn to perform, she stands up in front of our class and our parents, and says, “I’m going to recite ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,’ by Robert Frost. This was my father’s favorite poem, and I’m dedicating it to him.” Then she says the whole poem without even a sniffle, and at the end she smiles at her mother.

  * * *

  Summer comes, and as if to make up for our extra-cold and snowy winter, it is the hottest summer I can remember. Dad puts fans in the kitchen and all our bedrooms. He even puts one in the dining room, although to escape the heat, we eat most of our meals on the screened porch. Sarah’s mother gets a part-time job, so Sarah spends lots of time at our house.

  One lazy day when Sarah and I are so hot we can think of nothing to do except lie in the grass and watch the clouds, Sarah says to me, “You know what I can’t wait for?”

  “Your birthday?” I ask. Sarah’s birthday is in August, and every year her mother says she can have whatever she wants for her birthday dinner, and Sarah always chooses chocolate cake and a lobster.

  “Nope,” replies Sarah. “Christmas.”

  I sit up and look at her. “Really? Christmas? But this …” I am trying to think of a tactful way to mention that this will be Sarah’s first Christmas without her father.

  “I know,” says Sarah. “Dad won’t be here. But I still like thinking about getting a tree, and our house when it smells like gingerbread, and having secrets from Mom. I already decided what I’m going to make for her this year.”

  “What?” I ask.

  “A photo album, with pictures of us and Dad in it. There are all these photos in a box that Mom keeps meaning to put into an album, but she never gets around to it. So I’m going to make one for her. I’ll color a cover for it and maybe decorate the pages, and write captions for all the pictures. She’ll probably cry when I give it to her, but that will be okay.”

  I lie down in the grass again and think about trees and decorations and our church on Christmas Eve and snowy walks with Sadie. I decide that before I go to bed I will find my Christmas calendar and start crossing off the days again.

  Summer vacation ends, and in September Sarah and I start fourth grade together in Mrs. Thompson’s class. Evvie begins seventh grade at Hopewell Junior High. She says she’s nervous about going off to the bigger school with the older kids, but as she boards her bus on the first day, she doesn’t look nervous at all.

  The warm weather lingers. Autumn is slow to arrive, and when it does come, it isn’t as chilly or as snowy as the one before. October turns to November, and I faithfully cross off each day on my Christmas calendar. One evening, after I have crossed off another box, I count the boxes remaining before December 25th. Forty-three. Forty-three days until my next chance to see Santa. I remember last year — how I felt the magic building all fall, felt it building around me, in the snow and the wind and the air.

  This year is different. I think I know why. It’s because I’m not the same Tess. I’m not the Tess who believes that anything can happen if you wish hard enough. I understand now that Santa can do lots of amazing things, but he can’t do everything. And that sometimes he brings wonderful gifts, but they’re not exactly the ones you asked for. I still believe in magic, though, and I still believe in Santa. I hope Santa knows that, knows that I still truly believe.

  * * *

  One day in early December Sarah comes home with me after school. The snow is flying now, flying as hard as it ever flew last year.

  “Let’s play outside!” says Sarah as soon as we’ve finished our snack.

  We take Sadie into our backyard, and she bounds around in the drifts while Sarah and I flop onto our backs and make snow angels. Suddenly Sarah jumps to her feet. “I know,” she says. “Let’s build a snow family. Let’s make one with a mother and three children and some grandparents and a dog and a cat.”

  “A snow dog and snow cat?” I say.

  “Yes!” Sarah is grinning. She kneels down and makes a snowball. “We’ll start with one of the grandfathers,” she says.

  We are rolling and patting and hauling and huffing and puffing when Sarah exclaims, “Can you believe there are only twenty-one days until Christmas? Just twenty-one, Tess. I can hardly wait. Mom bought wrapping paper yesterday. And I couldn’t help it — I played Christmas carols on our record player last night, and wrapped up two presents. It’s so exciting. You know, Mom and I are going to go to the pageant with you this year.”

  “Oh, goody,” I reply. “We can sit next to each other and watch Evvie.”

  “Maybe we better not sit next to each other,” says Sarah.

  Evvie is going to be half of the donkey (she refuses to tell us which half), and she’s not happy about it. “You and Sarah better not laugh,” she has said more than once.

  “Remember when Evvie was a shepherd?” asks Sarah. “And Mom and Dad and I went to church with you, and our parents shushed us for giggling when the Baby Jesus doll fell out of the manger?”

  “That was when we were in first grade,” I say. “And in school our class put on ‘The Night Before Christmas’ for the kindergartners.”

  Sarah grins as she plops a head onto our snow grandfather. I begin the body for a snow grandmother. I’m rolling a ball around and around the yard, and Sadie is chasing me, when I feel myself slip away. It happens so quickly that I stumble and fall on my snowball. But I don’t care. I find myself thrust back into that cold starry night, the whisperings and murmurings in the air.

  Love came down at Christmas …

  I’m in that other world for just a moment, with the doves and angels and ancient songs. And then I’m back in the snowy
afternoon with Sarah, who’s laughing. “You squashed it!” she cries. “You squashed our grandmother!”

  * * *

  That night I coax Sadie into my room and sit with her on the bed for a chat. “I have something important to tell you,” I say.

  Sadie cocks her head and gives me her full attention.

  “I understand about the Christmas magic now,” I announce. I sit back and wait for a moment, forgetting that Sadie can’t answer me. “At least I’m pretty sure I do.” Sadie stares at me with her brown eyes. “Christmas and Santa are all about hope. Did you see how happy Sarah was this afternoon? I thought Christmas would be sad for her this year, but thinking about it makes her happy. She’s looking forward to the pageant and a tree, to getting out the decorations with her mother, to shopping and baking. She’s feeling hopeful again, Sadie.” Sarah didn’t get the gift I asked Santa to give her last year, but she found hope — Christmas magic too, I think — and that is a powerful gift.

  Sadie continues to gaze into my eyes, and I’m not sure, but I believe she nods her head very slightly.

  * * *

  Now it is Christmas Eve and I am lying in my bed, feeling the shift in the air around me, the shift that tells me the magic is taking over.

  Evvie runs into my room and jumps onto the bed, shivering because she is barefoot. We are supposed to be asleep, but Evvie is all wound up, thinking about that makeup kit. Downstairs, Mom and Dad are filling the stockings and putting presents under the tree. Evvie and I whisper together until Evvie says, “I better go back to bed. Mom and Dad will be upstairs soon.”

  After Evvie leaves, I look out the window at the brightening sky. Christmas is everywhere now, in that crackle in the air, among the birds settling on the roof of the Andersons’ barn. Sadie slips into my room, and I grin at her. As the moon moves through the sky and the doves coo and something flutters just outside my window, I put my arm around Sadie and we sit together on the bed, sit together on Christmas Eve.

  About the Author

  Ann M. Martin in the acclaimed and bestselling author of a number of novels and series, including Belle Teal, A Corner of the Universe (a Newbery Honor book), A Dog’s Life, Here Today, P.S. Longer Letter Later (written with Paula Danziger), the Doll People series (written with Laura Godwin), the Family Tree series, the Main Street series, and the generation-defining series The Baby-sitters Club. She lives in New York.