Shakespeares Christmas Page 0,14

time since we were giving a lift to Lou O'Shea, whose husband had dropped her off on his way to a meeting. The Presbyterian manse was a large redbrick home that matched the adjacent church. I half listened to the backseat conversation between Varena and Lou, enough to gather that Lou, like Meredith Osborn, had an eight-year-old girl and another, younger child. When we pulled into the driveway, Lou seemed reluctant to get out.

"I'm afraid it doesn't make Krista any fonder of Luke, him crying so much," Lou told us with a heavy sigh. "She's not too enthusiastic about her little brother right now."

"Krista is Anna's age, they play together a lot," Varena reminded me.

"It'll all straighten out," my mother said in her soothing way. "Sooner or later you'll find out why Luke cries all night, and he'll stop. And then Krista will forget all about it. She's a smart little girl, Lou."

"You're right," Lou said instantly, back on her mettle as a minister's wife. "Thanks for the lift. I'll see you-all tomorrow afternoon!"

When we were driving away, Varena said, "Lou'll be coming to the rehearsal dinner tomorrow night."

"Isn't it traditional to have the rehearsal dinner the night before the wedding?" I didn't want to sound critical, but I was faintly curious.

"Yes. Dill had originally scheduled it for that night," Mother said. I was being subtly reminded that the groom's family had the responsibility for the rehearsal dinner. "But Sarah May's was already booked for the two evenings before the wedding! So we just moved it to three nights, and the couple giving the supper for Dill and Varena rescheduled it to the night before the wedding, bless them."

I nodded, hardly paying attention. I was absolutely confident I would be told what to do, when. I found myself wanting to be alone so badly I could taste it. When we got to Varena's, I unloaded the shower presents with great dispatch, and at my folks' house, I said a brief good-night to Mom before heading for my room.

My father hadn't yet gotten home from the bachelor party. I hoped he wasn't drinking and smoking cigars. His blood pressure would soar.

I sat in the little chair in my room and read for a long time, a biography I'd brought with me. Then I hooked my feet under the bed and did sit-ups, I dropped and did pushups, and I did eighty leg lifts. After that, it was time for a relaxing shower. I noticed that my father had come in at some point and turned out the remaining lights.

But even after the hot shower, I felt itchy. I couldn't walk in Bartley. People would talk about my family. The police weren't used to me. They might stop me - if I saw any. The Bartley police force was not large.

I pushed the temptation away and forced myself to climb in the bed. I worked three crossword puzzles in a book I found in the bedside table drawer. Somehow, trying to think of a five-letter word meaning an earth-covered Indian dwelling did the trick. Finally, I was able to draw a curtain on a very long day.

Unfortunately, the next was more of the same.

Before noon, I decided that everyone in my family should have had to go to work until an hour before the wedding.

My father had taken two weeks' vacation from the electric company. Since my mother was a housewife, she was always at work - but still in the house, constantly thinking of things that just had to be done. Varena had just taken three weeks' leave from her job at the hospital, and even Dill was often leaving the drugstore to his normally part-time assistant, a young mother who was also a pharmacist.

More presents arrived, to be unwrapped and admired and entered on the list. More thank-you notes had to be written. The two other bridesmaids had to stop by and admire and check on last-minute plans. The minister, Jess O'Shea, came in for a minute to verify a couple of things. He had smooth dark blond hair and was quietly good-looking in a blocky, square-jawed way: I hoped he was as good as he was handsome, because I'd always imagined that ministers were prime targets for neurotic - or just hopeful - members of their congregation.

His little girl was in tow. Chunky Krista, whose hair was the same dark brown as her mother's but not as perfectly smooth, was sleepy-eyed and cross with her baby brother's nocturnal activity,