A Crossworder's Delight: A Holiday Novel

One

TRADITION and traditional were key words at the Paul Revere Inn. Historic, venerable, quaint, even revered might vie for the prize, but the notion of the hostelry and eatery as being paramount to the timeless traditions of Newcastle always won out. Especially on the day after Thanksgiving, when the annual Holiday Decoration Competition was in full swing, and this coastal Massachusetts city’s volunteer organizations descended en masse upon the rambling old building, dead-set on transforming it into exuberant holiday mode—a la the late eighteenth century.

The rivalry between the competing groups was fierce, culminating at the inn’s Solstice Dinner, when the civic association whose members displayed the most wizardry with garlands of greenery, cranberries strung on thread, pomanders of orange and clove, hand-dipped candles, barley-sugar figures, and gingerbread creatures was awarded the coveted silver Revere bowl. It was a contest with a capital C, and a noted lack of reverence permeated the air.

Coming through, ladies and gentlemen. Coming though. This regal voice belonged to Sara Crane Briephs, presiding Queen mum of Sisters-in-Stitches, a church sewing group that had lost the prize for four hard-luck years in a row. In Sara’s hands was a large hat box containing copper and tin ornaments in the shapes of stars and snowflakes. They were old and valuable and had resided in the attic of her ancestral home, White-caps, for as long as anyone could remember. We’ll tie them with bows and hang them from the pewter chandelier. None of the other groups have anything to remotely equal them. If I’d only remembered these things last year.…

As she spoke, Sara jostled her way through the throng crowded outside the inn’s front parlor, the room being the one assigned to the Sisters. The parlor was notoriously difficult to decorate, its focal point being a much-beloved icon: a signed original printing of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem Paul Revere’s Ride. It was Longfellow’s ode to Massachusetts’s hero of the Revolutionary War that had inspired the grandparents of the inn’s current owners to change the hostelry’s name when they’d purchased the place in the early 1920s. The treasured artifact had hung in the same spot for close to eighty years. Needless to say, its large gilt frame didn’t make for easy decorative magic.

Martha Leonetti shook her head as she watched Sara enter; Martha was the only other Sister present in the parlor, and she observed the hat box and its owner with an habitually jaundiced eye. Head waitress at Lawson’s Coffee Shop in the city’s downtown commercial center, Martha prided herself on her worldly wisdom and sassy candor. She knew the life stories of all her regular customers, what they habitually ordered, and/or wanted to order but didn’t. And she wasn’t adverse to providing much-needed advice about diets and love lives and career choices and family squabbles, or dishing out the latest dirt right along with the home fries. She would have seemed the antithesis of the patrician Sara, but the two had formed such a bond of friendship that they often appeared to be each other’s alter ego. The noted exception was that Martha had sported the same aggressively blonde beehive hairdo for the past three decades while Sara, at eighty-plus, had a coiffure that was a natural snowy white.

I don’t know, Sara. Seems to me like guests will keep bashing their heads on your do-dads. And that could lose us points, big time. The ceilings are way too low in here; and with everyone gawking at the poem and all, crowding around to read it and what have you, well, someone could get hurt.… Better put your gee-gaws out of the way—maybe up on the mantle or hang them on velvet ribbons over the windows.

But if we put them on the mantle, they’ll simply disappear within all those clusters of greens, Martha.

Didn’t you tell us gals that we should keep things ‘subtle’ this year? Wasn’t that the new stratagem?

Subtle doesn’t mean hidden, Sara countered loftily.

Hmmmph, Martha sniffed. She was standing in her stocking feet atop a step stool as she tried to drape a window with a loop of cedar garland. Reaching up to push the prickly pieces in place, her body looked dangerously unbalanced and unsteady. If I want to know the meaning of a word, I’ll ask our resident linguistic expert.… Heya, Belle, get your tush in here, pronto, Martha bellowed toward the door. Will you please explain to Her Highness here that I’m not suggesting subterfuge when it comes to displaying her prize ornaments?

Belle Graham was carrying a coiled garland of white pine as she walked into the parlor; its sap had left dark, sticky marks on her hands that had then been transferred to her face as she’d pushed her corn-silk-colored hair aside. Despite the romantic given name of Annabella, she wasn’t adept at maintaining a ladylike pose. And she never, ever called herself Annabella or Anna. Being the crossword puzzle editor for one of Newcastle’s daily newspapers, The Evening Crier, had produced one too many gibes about being Ms. Anna-Graham. What are you two quibbling about now? Belle shook her head and smiled as she spoke.

Martha’s insisting my handsome family ornaments should be all but hidden like snakes in the grass.

I am not, your ladyship! I’m only saying those pointy ends might prove dangerous when dangling down in the middle of the room. Poke some tall dude or dudess in the noggin, or scratch some follicly challenged baldy’s pate.

And where does ‘subterfuge’ enter into this argument? Belle asked.

It’s Martha’s term, not mine, was Sara quick retort. As you know, I’ve been advocating subtilty, because last year we made the terrible mistake of—

"Ah yes, the subliminal approach to decorating. Belle laughed. A bit subversive, don’t you think, Sara? Sub rosa, surreptitious, sly—"

"I prefer the word stealthy, dear. Sara also laughed. As Belle’s self-styled surrogate grandmother, she enjoyed tinkering with language as much as Newcastle’s celebrated word game editor. Creating artful interiors requires a certain craftiness. What else is trompe l’oeil but a means to trick the eye? A wave of the wand—or in this case, the glue gun—and then poof! Now you see it, now you don’t."

You ladies aren’t planning on making things disappear, are you? Stanley Hatch asked as he strode into the room. Stan was the owner of Hatch’s Hardware, and an honorary member of Sisters-in-Stitches. He supplied brawn (in his mid fifties, he was still slim, tall, and muscular), as well as the all-important tools of the craftsman’s trade. Because, if any of the inn’s pricey antiques were to take a powder … well, let’s just say it wouldn’t be likely that we’d be invited back next year to compete.

What a ridiculous notion, Stanley, was Sara’s amused response. "We’re here to add to the Marz twins’ furnishings, not subtract from them. Then Sara abruptly shifted her focus. Give Martha a hand with those swags above the windows, will you, dear boy? I’m afraid if she tries to reach any higher, she’ll take a tumble. And crutches certainly won’t aid in her labors at Lawson’s."

But this request met with unexpected hesitation from both the principals. Wisecracking Martha grew suddenly shy and quiet. Stan made a move to help her from the stepladder, then awkwardly withdrew his hand as Martha clamored heavily down on her own, finally making a show of searching for her shoes. She never once glanced in Stanley’s direction. Their behavior was no different than that of a couple of smitten fourteen-year-olds. It did not go unnoticed.

Sara and Belle shared a meaningful look. Stanley was a widower; Martha was also single. The two were destined for each other—at least, that was their friends’ opinion. Why it was taking the pair so long to act upon this obvious fact was beyond anyone’s comprehension, although it was Sara who felt the most frustrated at the duo’s lack of gumption. She was the one who’d originally conceived of the notion of forming a couple from two lonely people. Your shoes are under the wing chair, she told Martha with unaccustomed chilliness, where you left them, dear.

Martha dutifully retrieved her pumps while Sara released a hearty sigh; and Stan, in order to cover his own embarrassment, walked over to the wall where the Longfellow hung.

"A cry of defiance and not of fear," Stanley read aloud from the final stanza,

"A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,

"And a word that shall echo forevermore!

"For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,

"Through all our history, to the last,

"In the hour of darkness, and peril, and need,

"The people will waken to listen and hear

"The hurrying hoof beats of that steed,

"And the midnight message of Paul Revere."

He stood, studying the words. We still need stirring messages like that, don’t we?

More than ever before, Sara replied with feeling, then added a brisk, You read it beautifully, Stanley, as if she were afraid of revealing too much of her weaker nature.

Yes, you did, Stan, Martha echoed in a hushed and unfamiliar murmur.

Well, you’re the one who gave me that Kipling at the Secret Santa exchange last year, was his pleased response. And without knowing how much I liked his poems. ‘If’ always reminds me of my granddad.… Funny how that is.

But Martha’s reply to this obvious invitation to further conversation was to avoid Stanley’s glance, duck her head, and mumble a businesslike We’d better get back to work. The other Sisters will be arriving any sec, and this room’s going to get as crazy busy as Lawson’s on a Saturday morning snowfall.

If you don’t need any further verbal explications, I’ll leave you at it, then, Belle said, propping the coiled garland against the hearth. You know me around glue guns and such.…

Don’t want to fuse your house keys and car keys together like you did last year, huh? Martha jibed.

Belle chuckled. If everyone hadn’t been forced to stop what they were doing and help me out of my mess, the Sisters would have made a better showing.

That’s sweet of you, dear, was Sara’s soothing reply. However, I don’t believe your accident caused us to lose. I feel our design approach was lacking in sufficient vision.

"Which is exactly what’s gonna happen if we hang those pointed pretties of yours at eye-level, Sara.