The Christmas I Rented The Fire Hall

“He’s real good with a masher,” she said, and her chin went.

That is how you do it. You do not offer a proud man a plate. You hand him a job.

On Christmas Eve, after the candlelight service, Mr. Kowalski caught me in the coatroom.

He is eighty-one, tall and stooped, with the big square hands of a man who worked the docks. He had his overcoat buttoned wrong, off by one, the way a man’s coat gets buttoned when nobody looks him over before he leaves the house.

“Nancy. I saw your card.”

“I hoped you would. Will you come?”

“I don’t eat much anymore.”

“Then you can come and not eat much with sixty other people.”

He almost smiled. Then he held out a paper grocery sack, folded over at the top.

“I wondered,” he said. “If it isn’t a bother.”

Inside was a tablecloth. White, with red poinsettias cross-stitched all the way around the border, every stitch by hand. It had been ironed, and not well. You could see where he had gone back over the creases and pressed new ones in.

“Dorothy made it the winter we were married,” he said. “It has been on our table fifty-three Christmases. I got it out this morning and I spread it on the table, and then I sat there. There is only me to sit at it.”

He stopped and worked his mouth a moment.

“I can’t leave it in the drawer. I can’t. Would you put it on a table? Any table. In the back is fine.”

I could not speak right off. I rebuttoned his coat for him instead, top to bottom, the way Dorothy would have, and he stood still and let me.

“It is going on the head table,” I said. “And you are sitting at it.”

---

The auxiliary women and I cooked all the day before in the hall kitchen: the potatoes peeled, the stuffing made, the pies baked, the hams sliced. Christmas morning I was back at five. Dale let me in. One turkey had gone into my oven at home at four, and the second went into the hall oven at half past five. The hams went into the roasters. By noon that building smelled the way a building ought to smell on Christmas.

At one o’clock I took off my apron.

“You’re not really going,” Joanne said.

“I am invited from two to four.”

“Nancy, there are sixty people coming here.”

“At five thirty, and you have eight women and a serving line. Baste the birds at two and at three. I said I’d be there, so I’m going to be there.”

I drove down the shore with nothing on the seat beside me but two small packages. I have not walked into a house empty-handed since I was a child. My hands did not know what to do on the steering wheel.

I sat in the car until the clock on the dash said two. Then I went up and rang the bell.

Amber answered. She is a slim, careful woman of thirty-six, a dental hygienist, and she had on a cream sweater and her hair pulled back so tight it looked like it hurt.

“Nancy. Merry Christmas. You’re right on time.”

“Merry Christmas, Amber. Your house looks beautiful.”

It did. I want to be fair to her. It was a beautiful, quiet house. The tree had white lights and silver balls, all matching. There was a table with little sandwiches, a cheese board, cut fruit and a pitcher of cider, all on white dishes. No big dinner. Soft piano carols playing somewhere. Not a single thing out of its place.