Good To A Fault Part 22

"Not bad," Clary said. "You could try it out."

She pulled the rat-tail down another line of scalp and divided off another strand of hair. Another, and another. No lice to be found. The sun shone on them, as warm as you could expect, that late in the year.

31. Potlatch.

Paul was having a party. Urgent papers all over his desk: the sermon, the call to giving. But every Christmas since his ordination, against Lisanne's yearly protest, he had held a parish party at his house on December 6th, early enough that no other party conflicted. The Feast of St. Nicholas. He had a fondness for that narrow, looming, eaves-dropping, purse-tossing, pickle-barrel bishop. Old Nick, the devil's name. Saints and demons, rewards and punishments...He could not drift off into consideration of devils and their place in the pantheon, because he was tied down to earth, to the calendar, December 6. He flung his hands up in the air, smacked them down on the strewn papers, and went home.

On the kitchen table, surrounded by cookbooks-Lisanne had forgotten those-he made a list. Chili? the heading said, and underneath, things that matched, for a good, frugal party. Then he drew a thick zig-zag through it. n.o.body likes chili. Tourtiere, for Christmas. Cinnamon sticks, eggnog, spruce boughs. His mother had always made white fruitcake, at the last minute. The battered sc.r.a.pbook of recipes fell open as it always did to the splattered card in Binnie's handwriting, Current Biscuits, with her squiggly drawing of herself: a long-haired girl waving at him, electric eyebrows surprised. He would make biscuits too.

Clary would come, with the children and Darwin. Unless he was at the hospital. These days Lorraine was fluttering through the engraftment period like a pale moth, waiting for Darwin's stem cells to be accepted by her body and begin to proliferate, cells riffling through her in cascading, exponential, astronomical multiplication. They'd said several weeks, but n.o.body had told Paul how many several was. Maybe they did not know. Lorraine was under restricted access until it had settled, so he had not visited her lately. Even when the engraftment was successful (he phrased it that way carefully in his head), the onset of graft-versus-host disease would be the dangerous time. He had e-mailed the doctor he'd become friends with during Binnie's illness, to find out what to expect, and Julian had replied quickly: GVHD can kill patients from overwhelming multisystem organ failure. The balance is to have engraftment with a little GVHD (which is difficult to control). Other scenario is horrible, which is no engraftment, leaving patient with no marrow function. Usually a terminal situation...

How much of all this did the children know, or Clary? He hated having that knowledge, the long unwinding tapestry of Binnie's life, and illness, and death. Doctors must find some way of carrying that contagious experience.

Darwin did all right with it, most of the time, but one night he had come banging on Paul's door at 2 a.m., drunk and miserable. That was the benefit of being single again: he could pull Darwin in and drink with him, listen to him rage against illness and death, and put him to bed in the spare room without having to consult or appease Lisanne.

Lisanne's lawyer had served the papers. Before vestry meeting on Tuesday night Paul had been climbing the steps of the church when a young man came up to him, looking like he might need a handout, and then slapped a sheaf of papers at Paul, crying "You're served!" on a reedy note of triumph. You're It!

No amount of delay would change any of it. He would remortgage the house, give her half, halve the RRSPs...The division of spoils was not complicated. Lisanne had bought a bright red car. She was marrying an editor. He had to a.s.sume that she had been sleeping with him for some time. You couldn't change horses in mid-gallop unless the other was saddled and ready, tlot-tlotting along beside you like the highwayman's horse, ready for Bess the landlord's daughter, the landlord's black-haired daughter, to jump over, Red Rover. Her black hair flying, a sudden laugh cracking open her face, reaching toward the other, with joy.

He would make fruitcake. Curried shrimp. Yule logs. Lark's tongues.

The kitchen was empty and cold, December clawing in under the back door. Paul put on his coat and went to shop for plates and candles, and a draft-excluder. Christmas crackers. A new cover for the duvet.

Darwin lay on Lorraine's bed, curled over her feet, almost fetal. She had been out for a long time this time; coming back to the surface was weirdly difficult. Like swimming up to the starry glittering border between out and in. If she let herself, she would slip back down and be lost in blueness, wavering down to black. Darwin's arm across her ankles was anchoring her here. Or she might be dreaming him. Dreaming the bed.

She had got used to this. In the morning they were going to start giving her something different-she had forgotten. They were so careful to tell her what was happening, and so distinct, removed from her. That border lay between her and them-they were in, she was out still, still out in the blue, not well. Dying, it was possible, possible. She had to rally because she was not yet allowed to go, she had three children. She could breathe, still, she could keep breathing slowly and calm down, not be afraid, most of the time she could.

The afternoon slant of the light had not changed for hours, but it must have, it must have. This must be some other afternoon. Darwin was asleep in the chair. Look at that, he never was asleep when she was awake. He was the chain back up from her to the kids and he would not let go. She drifted to Clayton, wondering without any effort where he was, what he was doing, why he was not her anchor and never had been, but she was his. So long since she had thought of him, of what he had found to do. How he was surviving, without her or the kids to hold him steady. Clayton? she called to him through the water. Are you okay?

He would hear her, he would dream of her, or think about her while he did whatever he was doing. She could see him walking down the street, a sad body going along, slanting back while going forward, because he never wanted to be doing whatever he was doing, poor Clayton. Some square of her heart was perpetually sorry for him-it was distracting her from curing this. She had to stop that.

She fell through the ocean for a while, not knowing the word for deep. Darwin's hand moved and pulled the sheet taut over her feet and made her s.h.i.+ft under the sheet, he was pulling her back in, reeling her in again, up again into the air. It was easier to stay down but Darwin was right, she had to come up and open her eyes-the lights were on. It was darker, finally, some time must have gone by, some part of the day or evening. She had gone through another day and could float. Clayton's boat Irresolute, drifting somewhere in the fog and ice.

Paul shut the lid on a trunkful of booze, an elephant snootful. Bill Haywood had been at the liquor store at the same time, buying a specially selected case of superior red wines. Paul felt poor and young-when would he ever buy a case of wine? Two 24s of beer, two bottles of white, two red, a vodka and a Scotch, and he was out of money. This divorce business was expensive. He shrugged that off. He had room on his credit card. He would spend it all on the party if he wanted to. After decades of dry frugality, Paul felt a growing desire for profusion or purge, the need to blow everything, fill the hollow s.p.a.ce with pleasure and vengeful excess. Before the lawyers divided their a.s.sets, he would have some use of all the years of penny-pinching. He told himself that this was a common expression of sorrow, a reasonable part of the grieving process for the marriage. Whatever, his squalling monkey-mind shot back. More!

He put twenty dollars into a panhandler's cup. He was an idiot, a broken man, attempting to stave off soul-hunger and beat back the intimidation of solitude with the consolation of philanthropy.

At the butcher shop-he'd never been in there before, far too expensive-he bought a huge sirloin tip. They told him how to roast it so he could serve it cold. A ham, too; then he spent two hundred dollars in the grocery store on olives and chips-every fancy treat he'd ever fancied. He could see the festive sideboard filling, and it fed an appet.i.te he'd never had before: an overwhelming need for potlatch. Everybody was dying, or already dead, or leaving other people, and the year was dying into winter, and the only thing to do was make some noise.

Dolly was allowed to go to Ann's after school. Ann's mother had finally called back. She was a strange, dim woman, like a flashlight with the batteries almost run down. But she had said she'd pick the girls up from school, and Clary had agreed. It was an adventure, to be going to someone's house. Ann had told Dolly stories about her family, mostly made up. But if she made weird stuff up then there was other, real stuff going on. Dolly knew that Clary had meant to look Mrs. Hayter over before she let her go there, but Pearce was sneezing and crying with a little cold, so Clary was not as picky as she might have been. Mrs. Hayter looked okay, anyway, in a plain navy coat with her grey van, a special-edition one with swirly paint on the sides.

Clary told Mrs. Hayter she would pick Dolly up at suppertime, and they went off in different directions, Dolly and Ann driving away in the leather-seated van with the sunroof and the television in the back seat. The leather was really dirty, and the TV didn't work any more, Ann said. It was missing the on/off k.n.o.b and there was something crusted on one side of the screen. Ann's mother didn't pick up Ann's brothers, they came home on the bus from the high school, but they weren't home yet. Dolly was a little scared of the idea of them, plus Ann did not talk about them much, which made Dolly think they were probably trouble. Ann's mother went right to her room when they got home, without saying anything.

Ann took Dolly into the kitchen and went through the disorganized pantry closet looking for a snack, but all she found was broken crackers. She said, "Want to look at my Barbies?"

But Dolly didn't want to bother with Barbies, they were childish and boring. Instead, with a kind of pride, Ann led her to her father's den in the bas.e.m.e.nt, to a big black chest of drawers. In those drawers were flat arrays of dirty pictures. Dolly had seen Playboys before at houses where her mom cleaned, but these creeped her out totally, yucky black and white things with naked people fighting and other stuff, with masks on their faces-Dolly almost gagged.

She said, "This is lame," in a scornful voice that she knew would make Ann stop showing them to her. Ann was easy to boss. It was cold for playing outside, but they got their boots and coats on again and wandered around in the pink playhouse in the back yard, but it was dirty too and sharp with the stale winter smell of plastic. Dolly had nothing to say to Ann after looking at those pictures. They opened and closed the shutters for a while, and then Ann said they should go back inside. There wasn't anything to do out in the yard, anyway. Ann had her hand on the back doork.n.o.b when they heard a crash in the front hall, and two big boys yelling at each other.

Ann dropped her hand but stayed staring at the door.

Dolly said, "I know!"

"What?" Ann's eyes never moved, even though she was listening to Dolly.

"Let's take the bus downtown and look at the Christmas decorations."

"On the bus? By ourselves?"

Ann looked at Dolly then, a narrow blankness in her eyes like she was adding things up in her head. She looked in the window at the kitchen clock. "Yeah, okay," she said.

"Only we don't have any money," Dolly said. "We'd have to walk."

"I hid five dollars in the playhouse," Ann said. "We can get down and back on that."

She dug underneath the plastic window edging, and came away with the five dollars in her hand. They went out through the snowy back yard into the alley, down the alley to the street, and around the corner to c.u.mberland. It was only a block to the bus stop, and the bus came along pretty quickly. The driver didn't question them, but sighed when he gave Ann change.

It was the first time Dolly had ever been on a bus. The bus swung left at University and went piling along through the snow-slushed street, and all along the way Dolly knew the hospital was coming and looked, or didn't look; but no matter where her eyes went it was still there. She could get off and go in. They'd only stayed five minutes when Clary took her the last time, and she hadn't been allowed to hug her mother, only to wave at her from the doorway with scrubbed hands. She hadn't even dared to blow her a kiss in case germs went with it.

Ann started to cry. What did she have to cry about?

"What?" Dolly said. "Are you scared?"

"My mom is going to kill me," Ann said.

"Don't be stupid. We'll be home before she knows we're gone." Dolly hoped that was true, because Clary was coming to pick her up at 5:30 and if she wasn't there, Clary would freak. But if they did get into trouble, she could phone and Clary would come get them, right away, no matter what was happening. She could say to people, I live with Clara Purdy. She was stronger in the world than Ann, not just from her ordinary brain but now also from Clary's place in the city.

They got off the bus downtown and zig-zagged on foot for blocks and blocks, trying to find decorations to look at other than the wreath-lights on the lampposts, but the only colour was neon until they found themselves at the decorated skating rink between the pine trees at the Bessborough Hotel.

Ann trailed behind Dolly, as if she'd never had an adventure in her life and never wanted one either. The skaters went around and around and Dolly let her eyes focus and unfocus on the swirl of black pants and bright jackets, like twirling on the little merry-go-round in the park by Clary's. A tall old man skated by, a moving castle, his legs big scissors, long and dark and straight. His skates seemed to go slow while they cut long skirls of ice.

Dolly was happy to stand and watch the skating, but Ann kept whining about the cold. Then an older teenage boy came over to talk to them. He was not skating, just hanging around the little cabin where the fire was. His nose was round and fleshy, and he stared too hard.

"Want some gum?" he asked, talking to Ann, not Dolly. He had thick lips like that bad John Reed guy in Jane Eyre.

Dolly couldn't believe it when Ann took a piece. Didn't she know anything?

"Want to go in the hotel?" he asked, still to Ann. "I got a friend who works in the kitchen, we can get a snack."

"Forget it," Dolly said. She pulled Ann's arm, but Ann pulled back, like she wanted to stay talking to the guy. Not getting it at all. The boy turned his weird stare onto Dolly.

"You're ugly," he said. "But you can blow my friend." He grabbed his crotch.

Dolly was scared, partly because he was wearing a lot of black eyeliner. She pulled Ann away onto the ice, thinking they could cross the rink to get to the road.

They flew inside the whirling circle of skaters, Christmas lights blinking between bodies and shadows like slides. Ann was heavy to pull, and Dolly's boots slid, useless on the ice. The weird boy's high Doc Martens had better traction. He was dodging between skaters to catch them. But the tall old man glided toward Dolly, long legs, long skateblades crossing, and swirled around her and crashed into the boy, who went down yelling on the ice. The old man was stooping to help the boy up, or to get in his way.

She ran, yanking Ann, off the ice on the other side and onto the hard-packed snow. It was getting dark. It would be a long way to run to the bus mall, now-but there was the church. They would take care of you, there was a word for it. She ignored Ann's whining to slow down, and half-dragged her across Spadina Avenue to the big red church, around the brick corner of it and up the main steps. The door to the church was locked. But the boy wouldn't know that. He probably wouldn't follow them here. She hauled Ann past the big steps and made her crouch down behind them. Safe for a minute.

Dolly was tempted to go into the church office. The lights were on. She could ask them to call Paul, they would know him, and he'd come and get them. But he'd have to tell Clary, they'd better not.

"Can you run now?"

Ann shook her head. Her nose was running.

"Well, we'll have to walk fast. That guy isn't going to follow us any more. He'll be scared by the church. Hey, spit out that gum! Don't you know they can stick stuff in drinks? They could do it in gum too."

"My mom is going to kill me, if she wakes up," Ann said.

"Maybe you'll be dead already from the gum. It's five o'clock," Dolly said, hearing the church bells begin. They were in so much trouble. She stood up like a gopher checking out of its hole. No guy.

In the distance, there was the bus barrelling toward them.

"Quick! We can make the bus!" They ran like racers, even Ann. They reached the stop just before the bus, and it cranked to a halt, and they climbed on-and Ann had lost the change.

Dolly said, playing it with everything she had, "We are in so much trouble, we've got to get home, and we lost our money. Please, can we pay twice next time?" Well calculated, she thought, for the prim-looking bus driver. Already heading down Spadina, he checked their clothes-Dolly's clothes, at least; Ann was sliding behind her-and Dolly's face.

"Sit down, girls," he said. "You can owe me."

It was because she didn't look like the kind of person who would cheat the bus system. Clary looked after her now, and she looked rich. But she could have done it before, anyway, even living in the Dart-made him believe that she was trustworthy.

Dolly sat back on the red vinyl seat, not touching any part of herself to Ann who was such a stupid idiot, and decided that she was pretty lucky. They would make it back before Clary came to get her. She wondered how she had gotten to be such a good liar, but when she went back over what she'd said, she hadn't told any lies at all that time.

32. Twelve layers laying.

On the morning of the party Trevor helped Clary make a twelve-layer chocolate torte to take with them. They drew circles on skinny stiff paper and Trevor spread the dough inside the circles with the back of his spoon, his tongue sticking out at the corner of his mouth to get them perfect. Into the oven-out of the oven! Stack them on the racks. Another, another, another, six sets of twos. Six plus six was twelve. He was way ahead in math.

The fancy plate was in the top cupboard. Clary had to climb on a stepladder, not just a chair, to get it. Her smooth arm when she strained for the top shelf, the way her head had to turn away so she could stretch farther, her foot on the ladder: Trevor could not say even to himself how beautiful she was. He was so lucky. She had tied her hair with a black ribbon and one of the tails of the ribbon sat on her shoulder, curling towards her ear.

Clary found the pedestal plate, her mother's wedding present from an Irish cousin. There was an envelope taped onto the plate-she flipped through it. Seven hundred pounds! Old sterling, from the 70s. A nest egg of her mother's for a trip to England, maybe. Worth far less now, too bad. But it would be useful. She turned awkwardly to get down without breaking anything, and saw Trevor staring at her. "Are you all right?" she asked him.

"Yes," he said. She was not his mother and you could not be saying you loved Clary. Instead he loved the carvey gla.s.s plate with one leg. They whipped a mountain of whipped cream and Clary let him fold the chocolate into it, slow and light, piling it on the spatula and turning it carefully. When it was all emptied out on the cake, he would get the bowl and Dolly would get the spatula. Even while he folded, Trevor's mind stumbled blindly off, his tongue buds leading him down to that dreamy future, twelve layers, six plus six was twelve. Twelve layers dancing, like in the song for the school concert. Twelve lays a-laying.

The torte a.s.sembled into a towering improbability of cinnamon-smelling dark and light stripes, pastry flake held together by chocolate air. Clary was pleased with it. She showed Dolly how to make the chocolate curls, pulling steadily to peel chocolate pencils off the marble slab. This was an occasion, Paul's party. He must be still bruised from Lisanne's leaving. Time for a party. In a post-lice fit of celebration she had bought the children Christmas clothes, the same red as her red silk. They would be a fine crowd.

Pearce clamoured for some taste, something to be doing, so Clary put a dollop of cream on his nose and watched his eyes cross to find it, his tongue reaching, reaching for whatever treasure it might be. It took him a long time to use his fingers to find it. He seemed to be convinced his tongue would have a lizard's length, if he could only work it right.

Six p.m., and people would be coming at seven. Paul looked around his empty house. They might suppose that he'd taken the dining room chairs away on purpose to make buffet-style simpler. But the hollow sh.e.l.l of the living room had to be addressed. He'd put pine boughs along the mantel and up the stair rail, magazine-style, but even with borrowed church-hall chairs there were not enough seats for the older people. A new carpet sat blankly in the middle of the floor, like the raft of the Medusa.

In a flash of inspiration, using the folding luggage trolley, he brought his grandmother's loveseat in from the garden shed, where it had sat for years. Dusted off and covered with a navy sheet it looked all right, he thought. Loveseat, the seat of love. Tell me, Where is fancy bred? Or in the heart, or in the head? The cheap carpet smelled strongly of chemicals, even though he had left the windows open all day. He brought the spice bottle from the kitchen and sprinkled cinnamon all over it. n.o.body would notice, brown on brown. Cloves would be even stronger. He sprinted back to the kitchen.

The doorbell rang while he was still dressing the carpet with cloves. Bill and Iris Haywood, their children behind them carrying trays of fruit and cheese and sausage. Bill said he would set up the bar, and Iris went straight to the kitchen, children like tugboats afore and aft her.

Paul let them go and ran up the stairs two at a time to change his s.h.i.+rt and put on his red tie.

Then there were more people at the door, Frank Rich the people's warden and his family, with their famous fruitcake, all wearing identical Santa hats. Not St. Nicholas's mitre, but never mind.

Candy Vincent was at the door, giving Paul a hug-a wash of perfume and a painful sc.r.a.pe of sequins from her glittering sweater. "The place looks so empty!" she cried. "We're going to have to drum up some furniture for you, Paul! I'll see what I can find in Uncle Joe's things. Can't have our priest living like a monk, what would the Lutherans think of us?"

He took her coat and hung it up, turning away with that vacant smile on his face that he struggled against. A Christmas party was no arena for strict honesty. Iris Haywood handed Candy a tray of hot hors d'oeuvres and asked her to find a place for it in the living room, so he was rescued. But quick, coats, because the door was filling again, old Mrs. Varney, Sally King and saintly Mary Tolliver, all carrying Tupperware, the whole parish tramping onto the porch. Still no Clary, no Darwin. Kerry Porter and her two monstrous little boys. The Carvers behind them, and the Newtons: benefactors of the church hall, but people he genuinely liked, and he turned to greet them with some non-building-fund grat.i.tude.

Mrs. Pell wanted to go too. She had stumped herself over to Mira-Cal beauty school that morning for Seniors' Day, and they had curled her hair, for heaven's sake. She was wearing a purple outfit from the Goodwill store, and looked strangely presentable. There was no reason why she should not go, except that she was as unpredictable as a chimpanzee.

Clary shut her eyes to the purple suit and managed to be glad that Mrs. Pell could hold the chocolate torte in the car. They got her seatbelt fastened (she complained, so there was some predictability in her) and Clary ran back for the torte. She almost tripped coming down the porch steps in unaccustomed heels, but she recovered, and showed Mrs. Pell where not to put her thumbs, and they were off.

Paul's house! A party! Clary had a vibrating beat of excitement under her breath, under her thoughts. People would be there, would they see that she and Paul were friends? She tried to erase that, but it kept popping back under her thoughts like an Internet ad screen.

The street was full of cars. Clary parked in the next-door driveway. Her father's old friend Melvin John lived there; he spent every winter in Arizona, but of course he had a boy come and shovel the driveway anyway, in case thieves should see that no one was home and make off with the Zenith clock radio or the ten-year-old sixteen-inch colour television set. On this wintry Advent night, streetlights s.h.i.+ning on floating snowflakes, household anxiety-any anxiety-seemed foolish. The Holy Spirit hung over the world, hidden or revealed, watching them all.

The torte! Mrs. Pell was struggling to get unbuckled, and the strap would behead it. Clary caught her arm in time, and said, "Wait-I'll come around and help."

Dolly helped too, taking the torte from Clary and standing in her new black shoes, their little heels making every step older and new. The world was so quiet in the snow that you could hear the noise of the party even over here, even with Granny grunting out of the car. Dolly did not know what to expect. Fancy food, probably, and people from Sunday school would be there, the Haywood girls who were snooty because their mom was the princ.i.p.al even though they went to the other school so she wouldn't have to give them detention. Her Sunday school teacher would be there, Miss Tolliver, who had said that there were two Moseses in the Bible, when Dolly asked if the baby Moses and the old man Moses were the same guy. Clary had told Dolly later that there was only one, that the baby had grown up to free the Israelites and take them into the wilderness, but Clary had promised not to mention it to Paul because Dolly didn't want Miss Tolliver to get in trouble.

Mrs. Pell was on her feet and steady enough, Pearce's seat came out without the handle jamming, and Dolly could carry the bottle of wine-wait. Clary rea.s.signed all the duties, gave Trevor the diaper bag and asked him to help his grandmother on the icy sidewalk, and then took the torte and the car seat herself, one arm for each, with the wine tucked in beside Pearce. Then Dolly had to close all the car doors, and then they were off, down the driveway and up Paul's walk.

The house was lit up, music spilling out and the porch light glowing with a wreath of berries around it. Clary had a moment of panic as they all went up the steps, stamping to loosen the snow, but she told herself it was only excitement. Trevor rang the bell, and there was Paul opening the door in high spirits, to welcome them. Surprised to see Mrs. Pell but turning it into happiness. The torte! How beautiful. Clary handed the torte off to Iris Haywood (who was suitably impressed and carried it off to the dining room respectfully). Bill Haywood shepherded Mrs. Pell into the living room and sat her beside Candy Vincent in the loveseat.

Naturally Pearce had filled his diaper in the car. The smell became obvious when they'd taken their coats off in the warm house. She swung him up the stairs ahead of her, Paul pointing to the bathroom at the back of the landing.

"Or the bedroom, or my study, whatever works," he called up the stairs. He took Trevor and Dolly to the kitchen to give them punch gla.s.ses. He had rented those, proud of himself for remembering that such a thing was possible. Anyone could give a party.

Upstairs one door stood open, all white tiles. The bathroom was plain and spare, like the rest of the place, and dazzlingly clean. It took Clary a moment to realize that it looked so white and open because there was no shower curtain. Did he not need one?

Pearce was still almost asleep from the car, but he moved his head toward the noise of men laughing, filtered up the stairs. Clary could remember hearing that noise from her bedroom, almost forty years ago. Wild parties for a while in the 60s, the house smelling of cigars and rye, her mother nervous and angry in the afternoon. What a strange changeable time that must have been, society heaving into a new world. Her mother had urged her father to invite important people, so-and-so's husband because he was head of the Chamber of Commerce. Trying to advance him to some level of prestige; not accepting for years that he did not want to be advanced. The store was the manageable world. He was president of the Chamber one year, but it meant too many meetings and he bowed out; her mother subsided from ambition and turned to ferocious bridge and organizing the life out of the Ladies' Auxiliary. How had they filled their days? How had she filled hers, till the children came? She could have grown old like Mary Tolliver, good and mild and empty.

Pearce's golden bottom was perfectly clean, a false alarm. He was not smelly at all. He regarded her with steady thoughtful eyes while she refastened his diaper efficiently. "Clah," he said, staring at her.

He was saying her name! She stared at him for a minute, then said, "Clary."

"Clah," he said again. He beamed and smacked his hands together. She almost wept but she didn't want to spoil her make-up-ridiculous to be crying just because Pearce, now fifteen months old, was finally saying her name.

She said, "Yes, Clary, that's right! Good boy!" and she popped him on her hip and took him downstairs to show him off.

As she arrived at the bottom of the stairs there was another peal of the doorbell-Darwin, taking up most of the doorway. Paul came through from the kitchen too, as happy to see him as she was.

"Darwin!" Clary cried. "Listen! Pearce, say Clary, say Clary."

"Clah," Pearce said, no bones about it.

"A genius," Darwin said, taking Pearce and swinging him up in the air. At the top of the arc Pearce's hand clutched for the mistletoe hanging from the hall light, and both Paul and Clary reached to keep it safe, their fingers touching.