“Good night, Gracie.” The dark-haired young woman hugged nine-year-old Little Bit Powell tightly and smoothed her soft brown hair. “Sleep well. Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas, Mel,” replied the girl with a shy smile. She stepped the few paces toward Charity Adams and embraced her, too. “Merry Christmas, Charity.”

“An’ you, too,” said the sandy-haired leader of the Bay Ridge newsgirls. “Merry Christmas to all, an’ to all a good night. Ain’t ‘chu headin’ up to bed, Mel?” A single flickering oil lamp on the battered wooden coffee table was all that remained to press the darkness out of the lobby, and it cast prettily shifting shadows over Charity’s brown-gold hair and tired green eyes.

Melanie shook her head quietly. “I’m going to church,” she explained, picking up her worn but heavy knit wool wrap. Buttoning the jacket over her blue-grey blouse, she smiled at the younger girl. “They have a very pretty midnight mass on Christmas Eve at the Cathedral of St. Mary down by the harbor.”

“’Dat’s an awful long way t’walk by yahself in ‘da dark,” mused Charity, resting one hand on the wallpapered plaster wall near the stairwell.

“It’s not bad. It’s not so very cold, and the snow is a bit melted, so I’m sure it’ll be an easy walk.” Melanie shrugged a little, tugging a handmade wool hat down over her dark hair. “Don’t anyone wait up for me. I mean it.” She eyed the sixteen-year-old warily. “That includes you.”

“When’ll you be back, you t’ink?” Charity asked nonchalantly, turning her body so she could lean her back against the wooden doorframe, keeping her bright green eyes fixed on Melanie.

“Probably around two o’clock. Possibly a bit later; it’s hard to judge.” Melanie leaned over and blew out the lamp, shrouding the two girls in total darkness.

Blinking into the velvety black that surrounded her, Charity nodded her head invisibly. “All right. Good night, Mel. Merry Christmas.”

“You too, Charity. One thousand times merry.” She smiled, though it could not be seen through the black, and stepped out into the brisk nighttime December cold.

First Nocturne

Her hands were so stiff from the outdoor frigidity by the time she reached the church that Melanie could scarcely grasp the door-handle hard enough to turn it.

“Thank you,” breathed a middle-aged woman with creamy brown hair tied up in a bun at the back of her head. Several tendrils of hair straggled down her neck and the infant she carried watched them, mesmerized, as the tiny strands floated on the currents of air when she passed through the door. Three small children, the oldest probably nine or so, followed her through the door in silent awe of the gigantic building. Melanie waited, too cold to even shiver, until the last had passed before stepping into the warm church foyer herself.

Someone collided with her and she stumbled, catching herself on one stone pillar with her frozen hands. She couldn’t even feel the impact. “’Scuse me,” he mumbled nervously before passing on. She nodded a little, straightening up.

“Are yah all right?” When Melanie turned to see where the voice was coming from, she saw no one. Shifting her gaze, she saw an approximately seven-year-old boy with curly reddish hair spilling out of his cap standing before her, offering her a hand.

“Yes. Yes, I am. Thank you.” She smiled at him, her eyes bright, and accepted his hand, although she had already righted herself. “Thank you very much. Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas, lady,” he told her sincerely, and then merged into the people foaming through the doors of the church.

Melanie dipped her frozen fingers into the holy water and blessed herself, walking down the center aisle. There was room for one person in the first row, as the usher was signaling, and so few people needed one-person space that she felt almost obliged, being alone, to accept it.

“Just right here, thank you, ma’am. Have a very merry Christmas,” the usher stated with a smile visible beneath his white moustache. Melanie nodded to him and knelt quickly, crossing herself before she took the seat at the end of the pew. The couple beside her paid her little mind, although the blonde-haired woman gave her a tight-lipped smile of greeting before returning to the quiet conversation she’d been having with her husband. Their heads bent low, they even kissed each other once. Melanie swallowed hard and looked up at the alter, her breath taken by the magnificence with which the front of the church was decorated. Enormous pine trees stood as tall as the edge of the dome ceiling, ringed by beautiful leafless birch and aspen trees; it was spectacularly beautiful, and she allowed her vivid blue eyes to roam the span of the church.

Music started-flute, it sounded like, and a harp. The midnight mass always drew the most wonderful singers and musicians in the city, as well as the largest number of attendees. People were overflowing the immense building, standing in the back of the chapel and along the sides.

“O come, o come, Emmanuel,” sang the cathedral choir, and hundreds of people flipped through their small books before joining in, “and ransom captive Israel. Who mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appear. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, oh Israel.”

The parishioners fell silent as the choir continued in a fancier arrangement of the tune, and the song’s mournful melody knit itself into the fiber that made Melanie as strong as she was. She felt herself melting, ever so slightly, into the music. Her voice was a faltering soprano, worn to almost nothing by much disuse. “O come, o flow’r of Jesse’s stem. From every foe, deliver them that trust your mighty pow’r to save, and give them vict’ry o’er the grave. Rejoice! Rejoice!” Melanie shivered and pulled her jacket tighter. It felt cold in the church all of a sudden. “Emmanuel shall come to thee, oh Israel.”

There were more verses, many more, as the processional with its banners and its candles and its many, many choir-members flowed down the center walkway and up the stairs, its constituents bowing before turning to place their items in the appropriate locations. Father O’Connor took his place at the front of the church and began to speak, inviting the congregation to bow their heads as he recited the opening prayer-an invitation to partake in the festivities of awaiting Christmastide, Jesus’ birthday, the beginning of Christian salvation. Melanie closed her eyes and dropped her head low, her chin nestling in the soft wool of her coat, and listened. The not-quite silence that is generated by so many silent people pressed in around her. She tucked her hands into her pockets and toyed with the wool of her hat, jammed into one of them.

Further singing, many readings, more caroling, a few choir arrangements, communion, and several musical interludes passed, and then a soft, multilingual rendition of “Silent Night” began the closing processional.

Second Nocturne

“Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht. Alle schläft, einsam wacht.” The little girl singing at the front of the church could not have been any older than Lucy Morgan, but her young voice carried phenomenally in the enormous expanse of space before her. “Nur das traute, hochheilige Paar. Holder Knabe im lockigen Haar.” On that line-on that word-on that precise note of the song, the world dropped out of Melanie’s consciousness and she literally fell to her knees, banging her forearms on the wooden rail in front of her as she burst into tears.

Third Nocturne

In the aftermath of it all, she was grateful that Catholic tradition placed kneelers in front of each pew, because hers caught her fall neatly and proceeded to hold her up for the remainder of the procession. The lovey-dovey couple next to her hardly glanced at the sobbing eighteen-year-old. In fact, not one person paused in their exodus from the cathedral to even glance at her tragic figure save one.

“Mum?” The person speaking to her had to be at least her age, if not older. A brown-haired young man, olive-skinned, with frank dark eyes, had crouched down in the aisle beside her and was looking at her with concern.

“Mum?” was all she said, mumbling it into her hands so that it was nearly too garbled to be recognizable by the time the man heard it. She didn’t dare to look up again, and she couldn’t stop the tears from dripping through her fingers onto the rail before her.

He just put a hand on her shoulder and stood back up, telling her “Merry Christmas” and then moving back a few steps. She could hear him standing there and then, “Truly.”

That was all he said. His receding footsteps echoed off the walls of the nearly-empty building, and Melanie held her breath, trying with every ounce of strength left in her to stop crying. The effort was in vain, and she continued to weep into her hands, her dark hair damp with the saltwater of her tears, hiding her vision in a world of dark that she would not leave.

“Ma’am?” The voice was female, slightly sharp, and Melanie did not raise her head for fear that she would not be able to deal with the woman’s anger; she could not get up just yet. She simply could not.

“Ma’am?” This was someone else, with a familiar sort of soothing tone to his voice. Her ears attempted to discern the sounds coming from around her and she finally turned. Dear Lord. That was Father O’Connor. In full Christmas mass regalia, with his salt-and-pepper hair and round wire-rimmed glasses and intelligent smile. Dear Lord.

“Father,” she murmured, and a fresh wave of tears struck her. She just let them drip down her cheeks, silently looking up at the enlightened and holy person standing next to her.

“There’s better places to cry,” he told her quietly. “Quieter. Less cold, empty air.” He motioned for her to step out of the pew and she did, shakily honoring the cross before following him. His embroidered white robes swept the air around him and she was so tremulous that she could hardly walk properly. With her sleeve, she scoured her eyes and cheeks, but for naught; new tears wet them as soon as she dried off the old.

The Mary chapel was a quiet, dimly lit alcove near the rectory where there was a small mahogany kneeler and candles flickered around a small statue of the Blessed Virgin. Melanie did not feel capable of kneeling any longer and collapsed onto the marble stairs at the feet of the statue, folding her knees as Father O’Connor looked over her.

“This night is very troubled for you,” he observed softly. With a bit of a sigh, he seated himself on the kneeler and watched the dark-haired eighteen-year-old staring at her hands in her lap. One unspent tear trickled down her neck.

“I-I-I-” It was all the farther she could get before she had to hide her face in her hands again, frustration drenching her.

“Shh…” He shook his head lightly. “I’m not interrogating you. Take this as an invitation. If you think I can help.”

His voice was musical, gentle, totally free of anything other than sincere interest, and she let her hands drop, resting them exhaustedly on her knees, and looked at the floor with an unfocused gaze.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said. It was all she could think of, even though she knew it said nothing. She didn’t want to dredge it all up again and tell the whole story; she just wanted answers. She drew a shaky breath. “I-I-oh, I don’t know,” she finally breathed.

“Who is your frustration with?”

“Me.” She swallowed hard. “My-my husband-” She stopped, sighing. The story. The story again. “My husband left me with my daughter,” she said. She considered her words and shook her head. “First he left me with her, and then he came back and he got her, and now I’m all alone.” She chewed momentarily on her bottom lip. “A lawyer told me I should divorce him to get her back. I told him I wouldn’t do that. It’s the church-” Her voice broke and she wiped her eyes desperately. “I don’t want to be alone for the rest of my life. And I think I could find someone-someone who-might-love me-as much-as I-loved Jason. But I can’t,” she exclaimed desperately, hitting the palm of her hand soundlessly on the marble stair. “That would be adultery.” She rubbed her eyes desperately and continued speaking in a fast, low murmur. “But divorcing doesn’t fix it. Nothing fixes it. I can’t get my daughter back until I’m twenty-one and even then, who knows. Jason will probably pull some strings and get her before then, and there’s not a single thing I can do about it, and I can’t marry again because that would be hidedus without-without-I don’t know!” she wailed. “I don’t want to do anything wrong but I’m so tired of being cornered and I’m eighteen years old and I live in a boarding house where I love my fellow lodgers and I mother them until they’re nearly blue but I want my own family and I want to be normal and I…I…” She stuttered into silence, staring at the floor.

“You want to be normal?” The priest nodded slowly and offered her a careful smile. “I don’t think that’s possible, miss, unless you have some means of traveling back in time to erase all the past. And however much some of us may wish we had such a skill, we don’t. We are only human. We make mistakes.”

“I wish we didn’t,” was Melanie’s soft response. The marble of the floor was polished to a very high gloss and it reflected the dancing yellow images of the flickering candle-flames behind her in the Mary chapel.

“But we do. That’s the beauty of humankind; we see our mistakes. We recognize them, and we learn from them. It is what makes us people. It truly defines our humanity.” Father O’Connor watched the dark-haired young woman as she picked at a thread on her skirt, twisting it nervously in her fingers.

“You think humanity is defined by mistakes?” inquired Melanie with incredulity. She raised her tear-stained blue eyes to study the preacher.

“Our ability to learn from our mistakes,” he answered, his eyes still on her. Her skepticism must have shown on her tired, rubbed-red face because he smiled. “I see you disagree.”

“Humanity has nothing to do with mistakes,” mumbled the eighteen-year-old. “A dog steps in a fire and burns his foot. He isn’t going to do it again. That’s learning from mistakes. Someone tells a three-year-old not to touch the hot stove because he’ll get burnt; he isn’t going to do it.”

“So you’re saying it’s the sharing of information and the giving of advice that makes us human.”

“I just don’t think it’s the mistakes.”

“What do you think it is, my daughter?”

Melanie stared at him for a short time, her breaths shortening. “I feel like it’s my duty to raise a family,” she finally murmured, toying with her hands. “Not in the way that a lot of Catholics see it. I don’t feel it’s my duty to raise a family because there’ll be more little Catholics.” She swallowed hard, biting her lower lip. “I just-I feel like I’m a good sort to have as a mother. I know-I know people whose mothers are terrible, and their children are just terrified of their mothers. I don’t like that. Those people-shouldn’t be mothers. But I love people. I love teaching them and helping them and seeing them happy when I do something as simple as bake Christmas cookies for them. And besides all that, I want children, and I want a husband, and I want to be married and have a family of my own.”

“Where is it that you live, again?” The priest shifted his weight ever so slightly, the heavy brocaded fabric of his robes swishing lightly over the marble stairs.

“I live in a boarding house for-for children, basically, who haven’t anywhere to live. Some of them are orphans, some have run away from home, some have been pushed out of their homes… But everyone doesn’t have anywhere else, or anyone else.” She pressed her lips together and they whitened at their crinkled edges with the pressure she put on them. “I suppose they’re like my family. But…they aren’t mine. I love them, but they’re their own people.”

“You think your children would not be their own people?”

“There’s something beautiful about…creating…your own child. Miraculous. It hurts like hell-” she flushed and backtracked “-it’s terribly painful to have children but it’s…it’s phenomenal. It’s brilliant. When I had Jane-” Suddenly she paused and held her breath a moment. “Father O’Connor…”

“Yes?” He adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his narrow nose.

“Do you believe everything the Bible says about going to hell?” Her eyes were bright and intense in the dim candlelight of the late-night church as she studied him.

“I would say I believe most of it, yes.”

“So you believe that if…if a person’s done something…that they really can’t undo…then they’re going to hell. If it’s-if it’s something bad and sinful.”

“There’s absolution.”

“If I remarried could I be absolved from that?”

“You’re a regular little Biblical scholar, aren’t you.”

Melanie shrugged her shoulders silently. “I think a lot. I’ve thought a lot-about this.”

“We’re all sinners, my daughter.”

“Or if I-did-something else that was sinful. Then could I be absolved from that?”

“The theory behind reconciliation is that you can be absolved from your past transgressions.” He allowed his gaze to study her over the rims of his glasses with sincerity. “All of them.”

“Thank you, Father,” she told him through a tight-lipped smile. “I thank you a great deal.”

“There’s confession in the morning,” he said carefully. “I ought to make my way into my place.” He crossed the marble floor with light but echoing footsteps and opened the intricately carved, dark-varnished wooden door. “Just so you know,” he told her with a meaningful smile. “It’s nearly dawn.”

“Merry Christmas,” she told him, and she opened the door on the other side of the confessional.

“Merry Christmas,” he agreed as she stepped inside and shut the door behind her.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned…”

Fourth Nocturne

“Merry Christmas!” hollered Lucy Morgan as she flew down the stairs of the lodging house with her arms outstretched. “Merry Christmas every-ooh!” She pounced on the round wooden table in the center of the lobby and snatched a crescent-shaped pecan sandie. “Mmm!” she announced when she heard footsteps on the stairs. “Merry Christmas!” She whirled around and grinned a cookie-crumb smile.

“Well, hello there. Merry Christmas to you, kiddo,” Sean Powell told her, rubbing his sleep-messy hair absently with the fingers of one hand.

“Cookies!” she exclaimed, pointing with relish to the table. “Oh, and presents!” The tiny cloth pouches were ribboned shut and she snatched one. “Oh, it’s for Slash,” she murmured, setting it back down. She moved several more aside. “Gears, Ransom, Hummer-oh, here’s yours, Sean!-Penny, Smudge, Chess…Lucy!” She pulled the little rectangular bag, sewn of green-and-gold calico, off the table and tugged at its satin ribbon drawstring.

“What’s inside?” asked Sean, approaching the table and eyeing the cookies warily. He selected a thin, pale cookie and took a lightly lemon-flavored bite, smiling as he chewed.

“A kitty!” she laughed, taking out the tiny stuffed cat, made of pieces of various mismatched fabrics and stitched with wide loops of thread. “Ooh, it’s cute,” she whispered, rubbing noses with the miniature toy.

“That is cute,” smiled Sean as he stuck the rest of the cookie in his mouth. “We’ll see what’s inside mine, huh?” He pulled the drawstring and fished inside, revealing his own tiny animal, this one-

“A mouse!” squealed Lucy happily. “It’s so cute!”

“Who made these?” asked Sean, though he had a pretty good idea who he’d guess…

“Shh,” Lucy hushed quickly, glancing toward the doorway. “Mel’s asleep.”

And indeed, curled up on the grey foam cushions of the couch in the corner lay the tired dark-haired girl, hugging a patchwork pillow to her chest with dark-lashed eyes closed fast.