How could they ever forget that drive back to Mapleton? The snow was accumulating on top of the ice that had coated the road even before they left the Score Board. The temperature had dropped well below freezing, the wind was blowing across the highway and the continuous stream of flakes veiled the road ahead. Melted by the heat of the defroster and swept away by the wipers, the water froze again on top of the blades and around the base of the wiper arms. Doz and Siss, who were taking turns driving, had to stop every half hour to remove the ice from the wipers so the weight wouldn't slow them down. Pulling off the road to clean the wipers exposed them to two kinds of danger: getting stuck with a spinning rear wheel or hit by another car when they drove back onto the highway. Once, when Siss tried to re-enter the highway, the right rear tire caught on the edge of the pavement, the car swerved obliquely and slid along half on and half off. The driver of a Lincoln coming up behind them jammed on the brakes and his car swerved to a position parallel with that of the Ford. It would have sideswiped them if the rear tire hadn't suddenly grabbed the macadam and kicked the Ford onto the road. Furious, the driver of the Lincoln held his horn for half a second. Twice, when Doz and Siss pulled off the road, one of the rear wheels spun, so he had to go and lean on that corner of the car until she could drive it back onto the highway. Then he had to run and jump in it before the following traffic got too close. They had to wait from five to ten minutes for a gap in the traffic, since thousands were coming home after the game. Since they had to direct the heat towards the windshield, their feet were cold and, while the passenger could stomp both feet, the driver could only stomp one. The danger of skidding frayed their nerves and forced them to travel at around 30 mph. Exhausted, they thought of stopping in a motel, but all of them displayed "No Vacancy" signs. Would they reach the Fossezes' before four in the morning? They regretted having forgotten to call Siss's parent before they left the Score Board, where getting away from their companions had distracted them. It was 4:37 when Siss eased the car up to the curb in front of the only house in the block where the lights were still on. Fuss and Maud emerged immediately, taking little steps to avoid slipping. They had forgotten to put warm clothes on, although Maude had an umbrella she forgot to open. They hugged Siss and Maud hugged Doz, around whom Fuss threw the arm that wasn't already around his daughter. Everyone was talking at once, but, when Fuss heard Doz saying goodbye, he told him he was going to spend the night in Jim's room.

Although taught nerves kept him awake for over half an hour, he slept so soundly that it seemed like a few seconds later when, reflected up through the Venetian blinds by the snow, bright sunlight flooded his eyes. It was nearly noon according to Jim's clock. Slipped under the door, a note in Fuss's handwriting told Doz where to find a bathroom and invited him to use the razor, the shaving cream, the soap, the wash rag and the towels on the table in the corner. Maud would serve brunch only when everyone was ready so don't hurry. Happy to avoid the kind of traffic jam he had encountered in Quiroga Gap, he ambled down the hall. Watching from a cracked door, however, Freddy emerged and asked if he could "help." Doz cheerfully accepted the offer, but wondered why shaving himself fascinated little boys. In addition to the items listed by Fuss, he found a deodorant called "Tiger Stripes" on the table. Puzzled, he glanced at Freddy, who grinned: "I thought you might need some." The outcome of the trip to Mountain Ridge had made everyone happy except Jim, who, on the excuse of his contempt for football, had dated a girl in Nevers. At brunch, Siss, who hadn't felt slighted, wondered what he could have done with her in a dump like that.

"Engineering!" crowed Freddy, who hardly realized the deeper significance of his joke.

"Freddy!" admonished Maud, trying not to laugh.

The confidence Fuss and Maud had in Doz allowed him and Siss to see each other almost as often as they wished and do whatever they pleased together. This liberty tried their will to behave, but, while they did a lot of engineering, they never went too far. Abstinence hardly came naturally to couples their age. If Siss tucked part of Doz's shirttail in or if he buttoned the top button of her blouse, Maud and Fuss couldn't go to sleep for over an

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hour that evening. The spontaneity and innocence with which the younger couple did such things both charmed and alarmed the older one. It disconcerted Jim, home for Christmas, and amused Freddy, who called them "the Siamese twins." If they weren't holding hands or if each didn't have an arm around the other, they usually stayed close together. If one left, whatever the reason, the other looked uneasy. Freddy found excuses to separate them, such as bringing his football to play catch with Doz. He not only enjoyed Siss's irritation over separation from Doz, but also Jim's over the frivolity of such a passtime. Fuss brought Doz home with him for lunch one day and etiquette assigned them all to the usual seats. After a few remarks about the weather, Doz pulled the sleeve of his shirt on Siss's side up revealing a bleeding scrape on his wrist. With a yelp, she grabbed his hand and pulled it her way to inspect the wound. Then she started to scramble to her feet, but Maud, who was already on hers, patted her on the shoulder: "I will get it." And she left the room. Siss continued to hold Doz's hand with the wrist turned up to keep the blood from dripping. The color combination shocked Jim and pleased Freddy, who exclaimed: "vanilla and chocolate!" After an embarrassed silence, Siss asked him:

"Your favorite flavors?"

"They have always been mine," said Fuss, relieved.

Everyone except Jim pressed Doz to spend Christmas with the family. Though thankful, he would have declined if Siss hadn't given him a look he

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had never been able to ignore. Encouraged by Maud and Fuss, Freddy even talked him into sharing his room with him on Christmas Eve. How could he resist the overtures of this future brother-in-law? Freddy seemed like the little brother he had never had and even more than the younger orphans he had befriended. When Doz and the Fossezes came downstairs on Christmas morning, there had to be presents to and from him under the tree, didn't there? Siss informed them that she and Doz would give and receive as if they were one. After all, they were one, weren't they? "Almost," "nearly" and "soon," the others answered, even Jim who saw engineering elegance in Siss's solution. Yet she had to explain it to Doz who, like the other orphans, had never received more than one present at Christmas. The one he remembered most fondly was the razor and package of blades he had found in gift wrap under the orphanage tree at fifteen. The sisters played Santa anonymously, but he had noticed that the darkening fuzz on his chin had caught Sabrina's eye. When he told Siss the story, she proposed that they send her a present and announce their engagement at the same time. They could enclose a snapshot of themselves, so Sabrina could thumbtack it to the bulletin board, where the other sisters and the orphans could see it. This would be the first Christmas he hadn't celebrated with them.

Siss introduced Doz to Christmas shopping in America, which bewildered him even more than the ZU-ZTech game. In fact, the decorations both dazzled and revolted him. Never before had he seen reds, greens, golds and silvers as garish as these. Even communist crimson paled in comparison to the capitalist equivalent at Christmas. The clutter of ornaments beckoning for attention provoked a spontaneous rejection by Doz. Disgust with cardboard angels, stars, bells, tinsel and signs wishing him a "Merry Christmas!" drove his eyes up to the sky, where he found a refreshing glimpse of blue. Cardboard reindeer drew cardboard Santas on cardboard sleighs through cardboard snow, while human Santas rang their begging bells. A small chorus dressed in dark red uniforms were singing Christmas carols, some of which Doz recognized by their distorted melody. Show windows displayed piles of boxes wrapped in shiny colored paper, small evergreens covered with ornaments, hung with dry icecycles and flashing with colored lights. An elaborate, ornate crèche filled one window, where pious humans and tender animals admired the baby. In another window, a miniature train dashed around a figure eight, passing through town and country paper maché. When Siss took him to Sedgwick and Crompton, Doz hoped for better taste because he saw "founded 1907" on a

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brass plaque beside the entrance. A worse glitter and clutter confronted him inside, however, where he found himself confined with the amplified wail of popcarols and surrounded by a crowd so dense that people had to turn sideways to brush past each other. The curiosity and preoccupation of the shoppers flowing back and forth through the aisles contrasted with the stationary allure of the salespeople behind the counters of their rectangular islands. Doz followed Siss around as if in a trance and she had to address him two or three times to get his attention. His distraction might have irritated another companion, but it made her laugh. Once when he looked at her as if he had forgotten who she was, she burst out laughing and passers-by wondered what she thought was so funny. Even when she wasn't laughing, however, they drew unwitting attention, not only by the contrast between her good humor and his perplexity, but also by the difference between lithe and muscular physique, feminine grace and masculine energy, and the colors of their skin. 

At first, the present for Sabrina seemed to confront them with insoluble problems. It had to suit her vocation and it had to be something that she could share with the other sisters. Almost everything that beckoned to them in Sedgwick and Crompton failed both tests. How could they send her the beautiful, dark-red Cashmere scarf they admired, for instance? Or the elegant and austere writing paper on which they could have had her name and address printed? Doz was afraid it might seem like a hint to write him or, worse, to indulge in vain correspondence. Having given up on the department store, they lingered, but only a minute in front of a store that specialized in pious things. Then they came to a neogothic building, which housed the most reputable bookstore in Mapleton. If Campbell's didn't have a book in print on the shelf, they ordered it for you in a week. Siss wondered if Sabrina would like a book of photos that gave her and the other sisters an idea of the city where Doz lived. Of course she would! he replied, enthusiastic. They found one that impressed them by the choice of subjects and the quality of the photography. The author had discovered interesting and unusual views of buildings and sites with architectural, historical or cultural merit, such as the Fitzhugh Building where they were now. The aerial closeup showed the facade and one side of a downsized Rheims, built for business and adapted to the sale of books. Thumbing through the volume, Siss and Doz also found a synagogue built before Zenia had become a state and still attended by descendants of the founders. The photo did justice to the dark red of the old brick, the vertical lines of the

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structure and the blue, stained-glass star of David above the altar. Siss, who had never heard of the South Street Synagogue, suggested that they visit it on a weekend afternoon. Next they admired a two-page photo of Greenly Street in Wheatfields near the Fossez office and warehouse. The three-story brick buildings on either side still housed a variety of tradesmen who lived in the upper stories and plied their trade on the ground floor. On another page, for instance, they found a photo of Clarence Field Buttons, a shop where rare and old buttons were reproduced and sold. Clarence Field III had descended from the original owner. The conversion of the gas streetlights to electricity hadn't spoiled the wrought-iron design by the amateur urbanist, Fulham Greenly, who had built the whole. Mapleton school children knew that he had made a lot of money dealing in horses and reinvested some of it in projects like Greenly Street. A photo of Amos Fletcher Park covered with fresh snow focused on the frozen lake, where all kinds of people in colorful clothing were skating, except for a few who had fallen. These awkward exceptions enhanced the harmony of the whole, to which the graceful posture of the individual skaters contributed. How long had the photographer waited, how many photos had he taken in order to achieve a result that resembled Renaissance paintings of winter recreation in Holland? Turning a few more pages, Doz and Siss discovered the Mapleton Public Library which, unknown to them, had a reputation as an example of early twentieth-century public architecture. In a photo of the reading room, they found the desk where they always sat together. Despite the weight and cost of the book, they didn't hesitate to buy this perfect gift for Sabrina.

Choosing a gift for Jim had seemed easy and proved hard once they had considered and rejected several possibilities. Such as a shoeshine kit suggested by Siss and rejected by Doz on the grounds that Jim might think they were making fun of engineering. They were beginning to feel desperate when Siss remembered some towels they had seen in Sedgwick and Crompton. Returning to the Bath and Shower Shoppe -- Siss explained that the old spelling implied quaintness -- they found towel sets that included a bath towel, a face towel, a wash rag and a pouch to pack them in. A pocket inside the pouch also packed a bar of fragrant soap, which came with the set. Soft and thick, the cloth invited stroking. Among several enticing colors, Siss chose a caramel she knew Jim would like because it predominated in the design of his favorite tie. Tired but satisfied, they counted their blessings coping with the traffic, as heavy going as it had been coming that morning. They were planning to dine in the Orchid that evening and go to Amahl and

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The Night Visitors afterwards. Before dropping Siss so she could dress however, Doz invited her to tea in his apartment. In his mailbox, he found a letter from Carminia, which he took upstairs and threw on the table. Although he invited his guest to sit down, she lingered around the kitchen trying to help as usual. Waiting for the water to boil, he took the letter, tore it open and read it. Siss, who was watching the kettle, realized that he had been quiet too long. He was staring out of a window at a brickwall with his hands, including the one with the letter, hanging at his sides. His voice sounded hollow: "Sister Sabrina is dead."

Whenever Doz had felt desperate, the thought that no parents or family cared tormented him. Yet the conviction that Sabrina, the other sisters and his fellow orphans did care consoled him and encouraged him to overcome his despair. When he had run out of money, couldn't find work, went hungry and had no shelter, this encouragement had always enabled him to get by. Although Sabrina admonished him gently for not coming to her, she took pride in his pride and told the other sisters, who shared her feelings. He imagined that the security of knowing that he could always rely on her, his gratitude for her kindness and their mutual affection resembled the relations between a real son and mother. How could she have died? The thought that he would never see her again, hear her voice again and speak with her again drove him to disbelieve her death. He kept taking Christina's letter back out of his pocket and trying to find words that might confirm that she hadn't died. Driving to work the next morning, he nearly collided with a car that had stopped in front of him because he was trying to reread the letter. The initial phase of his grief confronted Siss with a lover whom neither she nor he himself had ever known. In his distress over the loss of Sabrina, he craved her company. He was holding her hand as if he were afraid she would slip away from him. Twice they sat for over an hour in St. Francis of Assissi, while he stared at the altar in a trance that ended only when she shifted in her seat. Fuss, Nelly and his fellow workers noticed that, while he did his job as conscienciously as ever, his mind wandered at times and he made a few blunders. On an estimate, he listed and stickered a grand piano twice, both at the beginning of his inventory and at the end. He didn't notice the first sticker on one side when he stuck a second one on the other side. A little girl asked whether he had put two stickers on her piano because it was bigger than the other furniture. Although Doz joined in her parents' laughter, the mistake embarrassed him and he promptly deleted the extra weight and cost. He made a worse blunder while supervising the crew one day when

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Fuss had some business to attend to. They were removing the furniture from an apartment where he overlooked a child's bedroom next to the master bedroom. He assumed that the door, which was closed, opened on a closet. Mack discovered the discrepancy when he saw that he wasn't going to fill as much space in the truck as indicated by the estimate. Doz hadn't noticed an extra page at the end of the estimate that listed the furniture in the child's bedroom. The mistake didn't cost much time and money, but it tended to undermine the confidence everyone had in Doz. Only then did Nelly see fit to tell the other workers about his loss.

Once he had accepted the fact that Sabrina was dead, the second phase of his grief began. This acceptance brought him no peace because it confronted him with the dogma that the sisters had sweetly and patiently inculcated in him. Until now, he had always assumed that Christians like Sabrina rose from death and lived an eternal happy life. Pious descriptions of that life had satisfied him as long as only people he didn't know died. When he tried to imagine Sabrina living such a life, however, the same notions seemed absurd and doubts, of which he felt ashamed, assailed him. The resurrection of her body made him wonder if she would hide it in heaven too. She had dedicated her life on earth to a discipline founded on the essential wickedness of this body: how could resurrection sanctify it? Which of her bodies, moreover, rose from death? The aged and decrepit one that had died would hardly allow her the happiness of an eternal reward. Wouldn't a restoration of the healthy, youthful one, on the other hand, reinvigorate her senses and torment her anew with the temptations she had spent this life overcoming? Besides, judging by the old photos he had seen, she had had none of the charms with which Siss enchanted him. Whatever the age of resurrected bodies, the differences between them would restore one of the worst kinds of inequality on earth. People were born physically and mentally unequal regardless of their theoretical equality as members of the same species. So what was the point in resurrecting Sabrina? Doz's perplexity forced him to consider the resurrection of her soul alone, a possibility denied by the Church. But how could it exist without sensual contact with a body? There were saints who had claimed to have escaped from dependence on their senses by the intensity of their meditation and attained a degree of happiness otherwise impossible. As an anticipation of heavenly bliss, however, their testimony incited Doz's skepticism. The only evidence of it was the testimony of individuals each of whom claimed to have experienced it. How could such claims be verified? Wouldn't pride in

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such a performance spoil the virtue of achieving it? The admiration of and veneration for such saints must have tempted ambitious liars. Who knows? Perhaps they were all ambitious liars.

When he went to bed, he fell asleep for an hour or two, but then he woke up and couldn't get back to sleep for three or four. During these insomnias, one of several remembrances assailed him repeatedly and relentlessly. Such as the time when he was a little boy in bed with the measles and Sabrina caught him reading. Nothing could have been sweeter and kinder than her rebuke and, for that very reason, remorse had tormented him then and it came back to torment him now. Not because of the danger to his eyes, but rather the guilt he felt. When he couldn't stand it any longer, getting up, wandering around, even a walk outside helped. In bed again, however, his devils came running with their pitchforks again. Nelly was the first to notice the circles around his eyes: "Doz, you ain't sleeping."

He tried to smile.

He shrugged as if it didn't matter.

"Sister Sabrina... "

Two big tears slipped from the corners of his eyes and down his cheeks before he could wipe them away. He was mortified.

Astonished, he nodded.

"... I don't know where she is."

Startled: "... Are you sure?"

He nodded.

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He took Siss to the library that evening. Unable to concentrate on moving works of art, he persuaded her to take a walk despite the cold and falling snow. He repeated what Nelly had told him, she asked him what he thought and he said he didn't know... "Maybe Nelly is right."

She looked worried.

"I'm sorry."

"I don't know. They didn't tell me."

"I never thought orphans were dumb and silly. I thought some of the day students at our school were dumb and silly."

"Maybe you were."

"Nelly's medicine?"

"Will we make love in heaven?"

"Would you have served me lunch in the Orchid?"

"And if only souls went to heaven?"

Accustomed to cold weather, Doz was surprized when he heard Siss's teeth chattering.

Slipping his arm around her: "We better go somewhere warm."

"Where shall we go?"

She looked at her watch under a streetlight, which revealed the snowflakes as they slanted down through the cone of light.

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"We still have an hour before they send the cops after us."

"It will be too cold in the car."

Although neither had ever sat on it in the other's presence, they made love on it to the limit of Nelly and Maud's rules. Then Doz took Siss home in time to keep Fuss from grabbing the phone. They did spend even more time than usual saying goodnight just inside the front door. Upstairs in bed, Fuss wondered why the hell they were laughing so much. Actually, they were guessing that there wouldn't be any sofas in heaven. Besides, it wouldn't be fair to send them there without their consent. Wouldn't they die all over again from boredom?

Suddenly Siss riveted Doz's eyes: "Promise that you are not going to die on me."

"Die on you? I'm healthy."

"I don't want to die before I'm an old man, but how can I promise that?"

"How old do I have to promise? 80?"

"I promise I will not die before 85. Now you promise that you won't die before me."

"... Maybe two would be enough."

"Then promise me that you won't die having any of them."

"Promise that you will die after me."

"Promise that you will die after me and I will make any promise you ask, even if it's dumb and silly."

Although Fuss couldn't hear what they were saying, he wondered why she had stopped at the peak of her intonation. Alarmed, he sat up and Maud grumbled:

"Damn it, Fuss!"

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The third phase in Doz's grief had begun that evening. He addressed a letter of condoleance to Christina and the sisters, which he enclosed, together with a picture of Siss and him, in the package containing the book about Mapleton. Every day, he stopped at St. Francis for a quarter of an hour and, on Christmas Eve, he took Siss to midnight mass. When he had nothing to say, she knew he was thinking of Sabrina. Occasionally he recalled something about her, such as the time she had cheered, clapped her hands and jumped up and down when he scored a goal playing soccer. Mother Christina had frowned at her. Siss imagined an elderly woman enveloped in a gray habit that undulated in the breeze and enthusiasm awakening an austere face framed in white starch. They were dancing together at the Christmas party in the community center of Pentacost Tabernacle, when she put her lips to his ear: "Let's name her Sabrina."

"... Our daughter?"

"... What if we have five boys?"

"Is that the second promise that you promised me?"

They enjoyed much popularity at this party, where everyone admired the harmony of the contrast between them, the spontaneity of their affection for each other and the modesty of their charm. Doz felt at ease in the Free Faith Assembly now, while his relations with the Catholic Church hadn't surpassed attending mass and remembering Sabrina in St. Francis. The bishop, who had found him his job, had received him cordially a few weeks after his arrival when Doz called on him to express his gratitude. Yet this visit had led to no further contact with the clergy and he had procrastinated over confession to priests that he didn't know, until he finally realized that he didn't want to confess. Wouldn't it imply that he accepted the authority of the Church and hence the duty of a Catholic marriage and education for his children? His devotion to the sisters in Carminia and his duty to attend mass regularly didn't dissuade him from embracing the Free Faith.

The two sisters who did the gardening erected and decorated the orphanage Christmas tree every year, a task that had never attracted much attention. Fuss surprized Doz, therefore, when he invited him to help set the tree up. Doz and Jim followed him to the back yard, where the tree leaned against the wall in a pail of water where ice had formed. Though smaller than the ones in the orphanage, it was fuller and had a better shape. According to

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Siss, Jim had always helped his father shop for a tree, bring it home in his pickup, make a stand for it, carry it into the living room and erect it. This time, however, the engineer acted as if he expected his father to help him. Instead of holding the butt while Fuss sawed it off evenly, Jim asked him to hold it while he sawed. He also took charge of sawing boards for the stand, nailing them to the butt, taking the tree through the back door, the kitchen and the hall, erecting it in the usual corner of the living room where you could glimpse it from the street out front. The tone of cordial authority in which he told his father to do things that Fuss had been doing longer than Jim had been alive shocked Doz, but Fuss took it as a joke. As for Doz himself, Jim left him as little to do as possible and even asked him to pick the pieces of sawed-off wood up and throw them in the trash can. Once father and son had erected the tree, mother and daughter inspected it critically while Doz observed a rite new to him.

"It's too tall, Dad," the engineer observed. "There isn't enough room for the star." He turned on his heel and went upstairs leaving everyone shocked.

Fuss shrugged ironically: "Maybe he should have done his two years in the army before he went to college."

"Why was he in such a rush?" asked Siss.

Siss had noticed that the Christmas decorations downtown had shocked her lover. "How do you think a Christmas tree should be decorated, Doz?"

"I have never decorated a Christmas tree."

"Then I wasn't very polite."

"Didn't you have a Christmas tree in the orphanage?" hinted Maud.

"Yes... There were so many colors that you could hardly see any green."

"Yes... but I can't tell you how to decorate your tree."

"You can if we ask you to," said Fuss.

Raising his eyes, Doz no longer saw a tree, but rather a medium susceptible to artistic creation. Siss and Maud opened some cardboard cartons on the dining room table and showed them to him. After Doz had inspected the contents, he asked.

"May I choose some?"

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Everyone encouraged him, so he chose five red and three yellow glass balls slightly smaller than baseballs and, with their help, hooked them on the tree in places roughly equidistant from each other. He left the rest of these balls as well as the blue, green and white ones in the box. Next he chose nine red and five yellow balls slightly larger than pingpong balls and spaced them out somewhat equidistantly from the others and the larger balls. Finding six strings of electric lights tangled together in another box, he chose three with small clear bulbs and left the others, which were colored, in the box. From the top of a stepladder, he wound one of them back and forth around the three exposed sides of the tree, Fuss did likewise with the second and Freddy, with the third. Encouraged by Maud, Doz tore open a package of red-and-white striped sugar canes, chose seven out of fifteen and hung one at everyone's eye level. Then he climbed the stepladder and hung the seventh one near the top.

"Who is that one for?" asked Freddy.

"The angel," said Doz. "She is the only one who can fly up and get it."

"That's a star," said Freddy.

Doz looked at the spike at the top of the tree. "Jim is right. There isn't any room for it." He looked satisfied.

"How about this?" asked Maud showing him a package of tinsel strips.

Doz had a blank expression on his face.

The blank expression continued.

"Do you have something white to wrap around the bottom of the tree?" Doz asked.

"Yes," said Maud. She brought an old sheet and they wrapped it around the bottom.

Plugging the lights in, Doz stepped back and looked at the tree like an artist wondering whether he had finished his work. At first the others doubted that it was finished, but, one by one, they decided that it was, Siss being the first and Fuss the last. All of them admired the interest each ornament had acquired by selection and isolation. Just as they began to admire Doz's achievement of more with less, Jim came running downstairs and stopped in the living room to inspect the tree.

"You still have a lot more to do." And he was gone.

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After looking at each other a second, the others began to smile.

Siss: "I want to be here when he comes back."

Freddy: "Me too."

Maud: "It will probably be past your bedtime."

Fuss: "Maybe we ought to let him stay up so he can see for himself."

Doz: "This must be the first time he hasn't helped you decorate the tree."

Freddy: "He hasn't grown up yet."

No one wanted to laugh, but finally everyone did.

Fuss left them abruptly for the kitchen and everyone, except Doz, seemed to know where he was going. Taking Doz with them, they gathered next to the sideboard in the dining room, where a punch bowl waited expectantly with glasses around it in a semicircle. Arriving with three milk bottles, a bottle of cognac and a box of netmeg on a tray, Fuss started pouring and mixing.

"Rotten eggs!" exclaimed Freddy with a grimace.

Siss: "I do like it, but Dad uses too much cognac."

"You mean to rot the eggs."

"Hey! Where's mine?"

Maud: "You aren't old enough."

"You let Siss drink some when she was my age."

"Girls mature faster than boys."

"Where did you get that from?"

Maud: "Unh hunh!"

Siss put her arm around Doz: "You don't even like girls yet."

"Yet! I have a right to drink eggnog."

Freddy raised it: "Here's to my brother-in-law!"

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"Hey! I'm the father of this family. I make the toasts around here."

The Fossezes always went to a concert together on Christmas Eve. This year they had chosen a program of early music at St. Edward's, an episcopal church with a boys choir. Doz had done a lot of singing at the orphanage, but the sisters hadn't gone to much trouble to choose the music or teach them how to sing it. They only wanted the orphans to sing, together and loudly. Doz had never heard a boys choir. The blend of a dozen sopranos moved him, while the Freddys with their rounded mouths, angelic faces and white gowns amused him. He and Siss couldn't resist a furtive squeezing of fingers. They were sitting at the end of a row in a section of the balcony on one side of the church, the seats downstairs having been reserved for parishioners. At the other end of the row sat Jim and Liz, whom, in Siss's confidential opinion, her brother had invited to offset Doz. This scheme backfired, however, when Liz mentioned that, if her mother hadn't been ill, she and Jim would have sat in the family pew downstairs. She sat like a cadet in an academy chapel, so Jim, unable to decide whether to straighten his back or be comfortable, kept shifting from one postion to the other. During intermission, she embarrassed him further downstairs by introducing him to friends he didn't know, who gossiped about others he knew even less. Curiosity over Siss and Doz kept him busy trying to change the subject without appearing to. Siss and Doz stayed upstairs with the rest of the family discussing the music and the similarity of the church with Catholic churches. "We were once all Catholics," said Fuss, whose ancestors had been Huguenots.

"Do you sing in a choir like that?" Doz asked Freddy.

"Me? Why would I sing in a choir like that?"

Siss, Maud and Fuss laughed.

Fuss: "He has a cute little voice too."

"Come on, Dad!"

Maud: "How nice you would look in one of those white gowns!"

"Hey! What is this?"

Siss: "You have a right to sing in a little boys choir."

"When is my voice going to change?"

Siss: "Maybe you will be a soprano the rest of your life."

Maud: "A contra-tenor."

Fuss: "What is that?"

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Maud: "An adult male soprano."

Freddy looked horrified.

After the concert, Jim left with Liz for a party with her friends. She invited Doz and Siss too, but they declined because they had planned to attend midnight mass at St. Francis. Although Liz looked genuinely disappointed, Jim was relieved. Maud and Fuss asked Doz and Siss to stop by the house before they went to midnight mass. Everyone except Doz seemed to know why. Leaving him in the living room, they went upstairs and, after a few minutes, came back down, each with his gifts for the others. Siss brought those she and Doz had bought and wrapped. They put the presents around the tree, where each member of the family had his pile, except Siss and Doz who had one together. Jim would add his later. Holding a big one back, Maud gave it to Doz: "We want you to open this one now." 8"x12"x18", it was wrapped in blue paper with a yellow ribbon and the tag read: "From Maud and Fuss to Doz." He had never received a present nearly that big. Both grateful and embarrassed, he hesitated.

Siss grasped his upper arm with both hands. "Open it, Doz."

"We hesitated between DC and DO," explained Fuss, "but we decided that DO would be more appropriate in cyrillic."

"It's beautiful," said Doz overwhelmed.

Siss helped him to remove his coat and held the bathrobe so he could slip his arms into it. Moving around in front of him, she spread it over his chest, pulled the ends of the belt tight and knotted it. Maud, Fuss and Freddy each had his own emotion.

Touching the cloth with the tips of his fingers, Doz observed: "It's wool."

Doing likewise, Siss added: "Cashmere!" She hugged Maud: "Oh Mom!" Then her father: "Dad! You are so sweet!" She started to hug Freddy, but he ran away laughing.

"Wait until you see what I gave you!"

Maud: "Let's take a look in the mirror. There's a big one in the bathroom."

Siss and Maud stood on one side of him, Fuss, on the other and Freddy slipped around in front. They hadn't intended to pose for a snapshot, but it

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would have made a wonderful one. They would remember it all the more vividly because they had no photo to remind them. Only Maud and Fuss regretted Jim. The beige harmonized handsomely with Doz's dark skin, as everyone noticed and no one said. They stood there silently a few seconds, then Freddy said:

"We look like we think we are something special, but only Doz is special."

Doz put his hands on Freddy's shoulders: "My brother-in-law is special... despite his size and voice."

"Awww!"

Fuss: "Promptly at seven and the men don't shave until after breakfast."

"I'm going to help Doz shave."

"I don't know how I could do it without your help."

No one took the rule to come down in pajamas and bathrobes as an opportunity to be sloppy. The pajamas looked as if they had just come from the laundry and the bathrobes, from the cleaners. Every hair on every head stayed in its place, while all visible flesh sparkled freshly and cleanly with a whiff of cologne here and there. Unshaven, Fuss exhibited some gray whiskers and, unpowdered, Maud, some wrinkles. Sleepwear became Doz and Siss so well that they distracted each other from the attention they owed the others. Freddy looked perfect, which made everyone laugh, and Jim, pluperfect, which made everyone feel uneasy. Pleased with the towel set, Jim kissed his sister for the first time since last Christmas and shook her fiancé's hand. His mother and father kidded him about saying goodnight to Liz.

Maud: "Did you sing 'Oh Come All Ye Faithful' while you were walking her up to the front porch?"

Fuss: "How many times did you kneel and stand up again?"

"They didn't have any for seven," he regretted. "The next size was twelve."

"It isn't for us. It's for them and their five kids."

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Trying to explain this figure, the others were all talking at the same time like a quartet in an Italian opera. The explanations ranged from a joke according to Fuss and a hypothetical maximum according to Doz. Since the disarray tended to confirm Freddy's assertion, it shocked Jim who had almost nothing further to say that morning. His melancholy dampened the others' pleasure. Maud and Fuss collaborated on cooking and serving a magnificent breakfast, which featured waffles and maple syrup with too much butter. Fortunately, Jim excused himself at the first opportunity. As soon as he had left, Siss recruited Doz and Freddy to help her do the dishes. Fuss accepted the proposal more eagerly than Maud, who supervised them to make sure they put everything back in the right place. Doz was thinking that you could have a good time doing almost anything if you did it with your family. He couldn't imagine one whose members disliked each other.

Maud regulated the traffic in and out of the bathrooms so that everyone had his turn. Followed by Freddy, Doz came down the hall with his shaving equipment, entered the bathroom and, turning to shut the door, saw Siss coming through it with a smile. Alarmed, he started to object, but she slipped behind him, hugged him and peered over his shoulder, so he shut the door. "Freddy let me take his place," she whispered in his ear and nibbled it. Distracted by her eyes in the mirror, he forgot the next step in his daily routine several times. He bathed his face in warm water, lathered it with shaving cream and began with upward strokes under his chin. Her eyes reminded him of other times when he had seen the same enthusiasm in them, such as the one at Lake Arthur when he had blurted out that he wanted to marry her and have five children. Other girls her age would have dropped a hot potato. He had seen her eyes flash with anger too, when for instance he had complained of exaggerated friendliness after the service in the FFA church. Feeling her body pressing against him raised his penis, so he pushed her hands up above his waste, but she slipped one through the opening in his new bathrobe and ran her fingertips over his chest. His breathing became husky, much to his embarrassment, and his fingers holding the razor trembled, endangering his skin. Anxious for her to stop and yet unwilling to tell her, he gave her a desperate look, only to find her eyes teasing him. Somehow he managed to finish the job without knicking himself. As if to punish her for being naughty, he took his brush and decorated her nose with shaving cream. After admiring herself in the mirror, she came around in front of him, touched her nose to his and embraced him as if taking possession of him. How transformed she was! They had recently celebrated her seventeenth birthday.

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Only when they heard someone speaking elsewhere did she release him and slip out of the bathroom. Waiting inside, Doz heard Jim's voice followed by hers. Consternated, he put his ear to the door:

"You were in there with him."

"In the bathroom."

"Don't you think... "

"And that was all right?"

"It's my bathroom too."

"Your parents and your brothers live in this house too."

Freddy: "I can't either."

"If you think I have disgraced my family, tell Mom and Dad."

"I would never do that."

"I don't think you would either."

"... On Christmas Day!"

Freddy snorted.

Mortified, Jim retreated to his room.

Jim tried to be congenial with Doz, in fact he tried pretty hard, but he never succeeded in convincing anyone of his sincerity, not even himself. Thus his efforts inspired little more than sympathy. Otherwise Christmas and New Years blessed Doz and Siss with all the joy people wish each other at that time of year. When he went back to work and she, to school, they continued to meet in the library and at the Heaths' seminar on Thursday, go to movies, concerts, etc. on weekends, to mass and church on Sunday. Doz had a standing invitation to dine with the Fossezes on Sunday after church, while

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he and Siss invited Maud, Fuss and Freddy to dinner in his apartment, where they also entertained Becky, Smyrna, Barbara, Nelly and her kids from time to time. They even invited Jim and Liz once, but, despite genuine efforts by everyone, or perhaps because of them, no one felt much at ease. An invitation to Taylo and his current girl friend -- or was it one Taylo chose for the occasion? -- was surprizingly successful. After dinner and the dishes, with which everyone, including Taylo, helped, they rolled the rug back, played records, some of them brought by the guests, until midnight, a limit set by Becky. Another evening, they received Tom-Tom, who had come to Mapleton to have a bone spur removed from his elbow. He insisted on sitting on the floor, because he had broken a chair twice when people invited him. They didn't mind sitting on the floor with him, but they wanted him to sit at the table while they ate. Remembering a steel chair in Becky's apartment, Doz borrowed it and everyone was happy, including Becky who didn't like the chair anyway. Tom-Tom, who had a gift for telling stories, kept them laughing all evening. Instinctively, he choose, altered or invented details that tickled their curiosity, while warning them that, if he were in their shoes, he wouldn't believe a word of it. He cast himself as a country bumpkin stumbling over mysteries that defied his intelligence.

Most of his stories featured the preacher or the undertaker of Joshua Well, if not both. In one, for instance, the undertaker was in bed with the flu, when the preacher visited him unexpectedly.

"I heard you weren't feeling so good."

"You know things get around."

"Now she's a nice lady, you leave her alone."

"That sick? You mean you aren't dead yet."

"And I take care of those who are about to."

"I didn't know you had any."

"When I do something for God, I'm not wasting my time."

The preacher burst out laughing.

"How do you know you ain't that sick?"

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"I feel good."

"You do?"

"Then why do you look so bad?"

"Worse than I ever seen you before."

"I'm not joking. I'm dead serious."

"I don't think. I know."

"You look like a ghost."

"Fine!"

Laughing: "Just right for your job. Lilah Jones died a half hour ago. 87 years old. If you don't get well pretty quick, they will have to get somebody else and you wouldn't like that."

Doz and Siss dropped Tom-Tom at his uncle's house, where the springs rebalanced the car as he exited. His laughter echoed in their ears and graced their dreams like music accompanying ballet. It made sport of the cold, the wind, the snow and the ice in one of the worst winters Mapleton had seen in years. The harder the weather tried to spoil their fun, the more they had braving it. Everywhere they turned, they saw friendly faces and heard friendly voices. Freddy's enthusiasm over the sphagetti cooked in his pot infected his hosts and his parents. They would have enjoyed it even if it hadn't tasted as good as it did. The pleasure of entertaining together guaranteed the quality of Doz and Siss's hospitality. They delighted in the company of family and friends, but they also enjoyed the cultural opportunities available to them. Even when a concert proved noisy, a play strident, a movie sentimental, an exhibition extravagant, a book vain, they had the satisfaction of sharing their criticism with each other. Disagreements between them often resulted in playful arguments as each scored joyful points against the other. Wherever they danced, they were the life of the party, not because either was the most attractive representative of his sex, but rather because they were the happiest couple in the room. Their enthusiasm even inspired performance in Siss's studies and Doz's work. She surprized her English teacher less than her math teacher, who had

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taught few girls as adept with figures and abstractions. On the job, Doz's humor, judgment and versatility impressed his boss, his fellow workers and their customers. Doz and Siss were so happy that they only realized how much a few years later.