nose with thumb and finger. What was it they expected him to do with these? A shotgun, a bear, snowshoes, some pretty things and some useful: well, all right. But for the rest of it . . . He just didn't know what people were thinking anymore. But it was growing late; if they, or anyone else, were disappointed in him tomorrow, it wouldn't be the first time. He took his furred hat from its peg and drew on his gloves. He went out, already unaccountably weary though the journey had not even begun, into the multicolored arctic waste beneath a decillion stars, whose near brilliance seemed to chime, even as the harness of his reindeer chimed when they raised their shaggy heads at his approach, and as the eternal snow chimed too when he trod it with his booted feet.
Room for One More
Soon after that Christmas, Sophie began to feel as though her body were being unwrapped and repacked in a completely different way, a set of sensations that was vertiginous at first when she didn't suspect its cause, and then interesting, awesome even, when she did, and at last (later on, when the process was completed and the new tenant fully installed and making itself at home) comfortable: deeply so at times, like a new kind of sweet sleep; yet expectant too. Expectant! The right word.
There wasn't much her father could say when eventually Sophie's condition was admitted to him, he being just such a one as she carried himself. Being a father, he had to go through motions of solemnity that never quite amounted to censure, and there was never any question of What was to be Done with It—he shuddered to think what would have happened if anyone had thought that kind of thought when he was growing inside Amy Meadows.
"Well, my God, there's room for one more," Mother said, drying a tear. "It's not like it was the first time it ever happened in the world." Like the rest of them, she wondered who the father was, but Sophie wasn't saying, or rather in her smallest voice and with eyes downcast, was saying she wouldn't say. And so the matter had eventually to be dropped.
Though of course Daily Alice had to be told.
It was to Daily Alice that she took her news first, or next to first; her news, and her secret.
"Smoky," she said.
"Oh, Sophie," Alice said. "No."
"Yes," she said, defiant by the door of Alice's room, unwilling to enter further in.
"I can't believe it, that he would."
"Well, you better," Sophie said. "You'd better get used to it, because it's not going away."
Something in Sophie's face-or maybe only the horrid impossibility of what she said—made Alice wonder. "Sophie," she said softly after they had regarded each other in silence for a time, "are you asleep?"
"No." Indignant. But it was early morning; Sophie was in her nightgown; Smoky had only an hour ago stepped down from the tall bed, scratching his head, to go off to school. Sophie had waked Alice: that was so unusual, so reverse of the usual, that for a moment Alice had hoped . . . She lay back against the pillow, and closed her eyes; but she wasn't asleep either.
"Didn't you ever suspect?" Sophie asked. "Didn't you ever think.
"Oh, I guess I did." She covered her eyes with her hand. "Of course I did." The way Sophie said it made it seem she would be disappointed if Alice hadn't known. She sat up, suddenly angry. "But this! I mean the two of you! How could you be so silly?"
"I guess we just got carried away," Sophie said levelly. "You know." But then she lost her brave look before Alice's, and dropped her eyes.
Alice pushed herself up in the bed and sat against the headboard. "Do you have to stand over there?" she said. "I'm not going to hit you or anything." Sophie still stood, a little unsure, a little truculent, looking just like Lily did when she'd spilled something all over her and was afraid she was being summoned for something worse than having it wiped off. Alice waved her over impatiently.
Sophie's bare feet made small sounds on the floor, and when she climbed up on the bed, a strange shy smile on her face, Alice sensed her nakedness under the flannel nightie. It all made her think of years ago, of old intimacies. So few of us, she thought, so much love and so few to spend it on, no