Shakespeares Christmas Page 0,7

would divide that silver between us, and the care of it would be on our shoulders; that heavy, ornate silver that was too fine and too much trouble to use.

I got my suitcase and my hanging bag out of the backseat and went up to the front door. My feet felt heavier with every step.

I was home.

Varena answered the door, and we gave each other a quick look of assessment and a tentative hug.

Varena was looking good.

I had been the prettier when we were girls. My eyes are bluer, my nose is straighter, my lips are fuller. But that doesn't have much meaning for me anymore. I think it still matters very much to Varena. Her hair is long and naturally a redder brown than mine had been. She wears blue contacts, which intensify her eye color to an almost bizarre extent. Her nose turns up a little, and she is about two inches shorter, with bigger breasts and a bigger bottom.

"How is the wedding process?" I asked.

She widened her eyes and made her hands tremble. On edge.

Beyond her, I could see the tables that had been set up to accommodate the presents.

"Wow," I said, shaking my head in acknowledgment of the sight. There were three long tables (I was sure my folks had borrowed them from the church) draped in gleaming white tablecloths, and every inch was covered with consumer goods. Wineglasses, cloth napkins and tablecloths, china, silver - more silver - vases, letter openers, picture albums, knives and cutting boards, toasters, blankets ...

"People are being so sweet," Varena said, and I could tell that was her stock response; not that she didn't mean it, but I was sure she'd said that over and over and over to visitors.

"Well, no one's ever had to spend anything on us, have they?" I observed, raising my eyebrows. Neither Varena or I had ever been married, unlike some in our high school circles who'd been divorced twice by now.

My mother came into the living room from the den. She was pale, but then she always is, like me. Varena likes to tan, and my father does inevitably; he'd rather be out working in the yard than almost anything.

"Oh, sugar!" my mother said and folded me to her. My mother is shorter than me, bone-thin, and her hair is such a faded blond it's almost white. Her eyes are blue like every member of our family's, but their color seems to have faded in the past five or six years. She's never had to wear glasses, her hearing is excellent, and she beat breast cancer ten years ago. She doesn't wear clothes that are at all trendy or fashionable, but she never looks frumpy, either.

The months, the years, seemed to dissolve. It felt like I'd seen them yesterday.

"Where's Dad?" I asked.

"He's gone down to the church to get another table," Varena explained, trying not to smile too broadly. My mother suppressed the curve of her own lips.

"Is he rolling in this wedding stuff?"

"You know it," Varena said. "He just loves it. He's been waiting for this for years."

"This'll be the wedding of the decade in Bartley," I said.

"Well," Varena began, as we all started down the hall to my old room, "if Mrs. Kingery can get here, it may be." Her voice sounded a little whiny, a bit flat, as though this worry or complaint were so long-standing she'd worn out the emotion behind it.

"Dill's mother may not come?" I asked, incredulous. "So, she's really old and sick ... or what?"

My mother sighed. "We can't quite decide what the problem is," she explained. She stared off into the distance for a moment, as if the clue to Varena's future mother-in-law's behavior was written on the lawn outside the window.

Varena had taken my hanging bag and opened the closet to hook the hangers over the rod. I put my suitcase on the triple dresser that had been my pride and joy at age sixteen. Varena looked back at me over her shoulder.

"I think," she said, "that maybe Mrs. Kingery was just so crazy about Dill's first wife that she hates to see her replaced. You know, with Anna being their child, and all."

"Seems to me like she'd be glad that Anna's going to have such a good stepmother," I said, though in truth, I'd never thought what kind of stepmother Varena would make.

"That would be the sensible attitude." My mother sighed. "I just don't know, and you can't ask point-blank."

I could. But I knew