The gilt clock on the mantlepiece chimed midnight as Marie stood on the front porch, arm uplifted in farewell, as the last branch of her family tree piled into an ancient station wagon, and maneuvered it, coughing and sputtering, into the night. When their tail lights finally vanished form sight, and with them the last tangible ties of kith and kin on this waning Christmas Day-Night, Marie folded her arms across her chest and stood a while longer surveying her frost-nipped domain.

There had been no snow so far in the season: a great deal of rain followed by a bitter cold spell which served to kill off ever some of the hardier flora. All the world was dead it seemed, but there were no aesthetic white drifts to lift the spirits as there had been all the other years.

The wind sang madly in the streets, dodging here and there amongst the houses, playing tag with its tail and battering its head against the doors. It swooped past her into her warm house and began to play at extinguishing all her candles, but Marie hurried in after it and quickly shut the door behind her. The wind shuddered once, managed to extinguish one more candle, then expired, leaving the house as cold as a mausoleum.

Marie shuddered, and cranked up the thermostat before wrapping a wool afghan around her and pinning it snugly at her neck. With both hands free, she removed the box of matches from behind the gilt clock and knocked one of the porcelain angels askew in the process. She righted the cherub, and then methodically went from room to room, relighting all the candles.

As each tiny flame bloomed to life again, the rooms took on a warmer, more welcoming glow than before, and even the huge mess that inevitably lay in each of them seemed a little less daunting by candlelight. Cleaning was for tomorrow, she thought, surveying the damage with an air of nonchalance, and Christmas on this scale was not something she would repeat any time soon. It was doubtful she would be required to host anything of this caliber ever again, either way. After all, Marie well knew that it wasn’t her cooking that made her in-laws deign to tramp every backroad in upstate New York to get to her decidedly un-Vogue farmhouse. It was only out of deference to her dead husband that they offered her the coveted position of hostess of the annual Christmas reunion. She shrugged. Let Aunt Ivy take charge next year, what was the difference? The cliques would still be firmly in place, as well as the feuds, and the lot of them would still glance furtively at each other over their wine glasses, practiced smiles firmly in place, poison pens at the ready. Ah, she thought, one party and already I’m beginning to sound like them.

The last room to be lit was the tiny room off the kitchen, the one overlooking the backyard, where she kept her typewriter and most of her books. The night had thickened, and the hoar-frost on the cracked ground gave the terrain a bleaker, more menacing look. Somewhere hidden out there, she knew, was the tiny plot of ground where they had planted the snowdrops the year before.

Marie could not remember a time in her life when she had not had snowdrops. As a child, growing up in the Bronx, her mother had dedicated an entire window box to the happy little plant, and they always bloomed for St. Patrick’s Day. When they moved, her grandmother had sent them a flowerpot overflowing with the shimmering white heads, a gift which was all the more meaningful because of the simple fact that it take several years of tending before snowdrops begin to multiply so exponentially. When she had gotten married she had carried a few sprigs in her bouquet, and every year since then, she and Anthony had gardened together: planting roses and orchids and tulips, but always setting aside one plot of ground for her precious snowdrops. Every year they had bloomed after Christmas; A belated present, Anthony had said. So it would have been this year, as well, and though she would never have admitted it, she was waiting with bated breath for their coming. They were in some way or other a belated memory of Anthony – but how could they have possibly withstood the frost?

As she stood there thinking, the fire ate the match right down to her fingers and she yelped and dropped it into the empty fish tank. She cursed, blew on her singed skin, and retraced her steps back to the living room. The steam was whistling in the radiators, but Marie still felt the lingering chill. She sat in one of the matching wing-chairs that stood proudly in front of the fireplace. A book lay half-finished on the table beside her, but she didn’t bother to pick it up. Instead, she looked up at the festively decorated mantle, with its jungles of greenery and its squadrons of cherubim. The gilt clock whirred softly. It struck one.

(c) 1995
By Kristen M. Kane
All Rights Reserved
Biography