"Who's David?" Morgan asked.
"Katie's boyfriend, Morgan. Pay attention. This is really very simple." Then after supper one of the grandsons either broke a toe or didn't break a toe, no one could be sure, though everyone agreed that broken toes required no splints anyhow, so there wasn't much point in troubling a doctor outside office hours. Actually, Morgan would not have minded-driving the boy to the hospital, which by now he could have found in his sleep. He needed air. The living room was a sea of bodies-people reading, knitting, wrestling, quarreling, playing board games, poking the fire, lolling around, yawning, discussing politics. The shades had not been drawn, and the darkness pressing in made the house seem even murkier. Louisa's black Labrador, Harry, had chewed a Jiffy bag into little gray flecks all over the carpet.
Morgan went upstairs to his bedroom, but two toddler girls were standing at the bureau trying on Bonny's lipstick. "Out! Out!" he shouted. They lifted their smeared faces to him like tiny, elderly drunks, but they didn't obey. He left, slamming the door behind him. In the hall he was hit by the lingering smell of ham, which made him feel fat. He heard the baby fussing in an edgy voice that clawed at the small of his back. "It's too much," he told this what's-his-name, this David, a thin, studious young man who was just descending the third-floor stairs with a paperback book in his hand. David was too polite to say anything, but there was something about the way he fell in with Morgan, going down the next flight of stairs, that made Morgan feel he sympathized.
Bonny was walking the baby hi the entrance hall, which seemed to be the only space left. "Could you take Pammy for a while?" she asked.
"Pammy. Ah. The baby." He didn't want her, but Bonny looked stretched and gray with fatigue. He accepted the baby in a small, warm, wilted clump. No doubt she would spit all over the shoulder of his pinstriped, head-of-the-family suit that he always wore for these occasions. "Bonny, I think we may have carried things too far, this visit," he said.
"Now, Morgan, you always tell me that. Then the next day after they leave you wander through the house like a dog that's lost its puppies."
"Yes, but every visit there are more, you see," he said, "and they seem to hang around for a longer spell of time." Molly came through from the kitchen, carrying a bucket. "Christopher's thrown up," she said.
"How does the world strike you so far?" Morgan asked the baby.
The doorbell rang. Bonny said, "Who can that be?"
"It must be Liz's roommate."
"Morgan, honestly. Liz's roommate is sitting in the living room."
"She is?"
"She just had supper with us, Morgan." Morgan opened the door, one-handed, Emily stood waiting. She landed in his vision like a pale, starry flash of light He felt everything around him lift and brighten. "Oh," he told her. She smiled at him. She was holding a package tied with pink yarn, (In some illogical way, it seemed the gift was for him. It seemed she was the gift.) Then Bonny said, "Emily!" and stepped forward to kiss her. Emily looked at Morgan over Bonny's shoulder. Grave as a child, she drew away and turned to him and patted the baby's bare foot.
"She's beautiful," she said. She was gazing into his eyes.
The baby had been cranking up to cry again, but gave a sudden hiccup and fell silent-taken aback, maybe, by the icy wind from the door, or by the touch of Emily's cold hand. "Come on inside," Bonny told Emily. "You must be frozen! Did you drive? Have you ever seen such weather?" She led Emily into the living room. Morgan followed. He felt that Emily was the single point of stillness. Everyone milled around her while she stood upright at the center. There was something wonderfully prim about the way she offered her package to Liz, as if she weren't sure it would be accepted. But Liz was already exclaiming as she took it. (Motherhood had enlarged her, fuzzed her edges; she was a flurry of bathrobe and milky smells.) And of course she loved the lamb puppet inside. Everyone had to pass it around and try to work it. The lamb's quilted face was nuzzled to the baby's cheek. The baby started and batted the air with both fists. "Offer Emily a drink, will you?" Bonny told Morgan.
Morgan stooped to lay the baby in Louisa's lap. Louisa took her uncertainly, one gnarled hand still clutching a glass of port. "What is this?" she asked.
"It's a baby, Mother."
"Is it mine?" He reconsidered, took the baby back, and gave her to Brindle. Brindle was reading a mail-order catalog and passed her on to a twin. Throughout all this the baby looked better entertained than she had the whole day.
"She's the image of Liz," Emily said. "Isn't she? She's just like her. But with Chester's eyes."
"Emily, honey, where's Leon?" Bonny asked. "And where's Gina? Didn't she want to see the baby?"
"She has a science report due Monday. She's been working on it all weekend," Morgan imagined the hush in their apartment: the bare, clean living room, Gina concentrating on a single book.
"But Leon, at least," Bonny said. "You could have brought Leon."
"He wanted to watch this program on TV. If I waited till it was finished, the baby would have gone to bed, I figured." Two years ago the Merediths had bought a small television set. Morgan tended to forget that. Every time Emily referred to it, he mentally blinked; he felt himself having to make some disruptive inner adjustment. He went to the sideboard and poured her a glass of sherry-the only drink she'd ever been known to ask for. When he handed it to her, she was just slipping out of her coat. "Let me hang that up," he told her.
"Oh, I'll keep it. I can only stay a minute." She sat on the couch, talking to Bonny and Liz, and Morgan harumphed his way around the living room. He stepped over a Monopoly game, threw another log on the fire. He wound the clock on the mantel. He squatted, grunting, and picked up the discarded paper from Emily's gift and folded it carefully for future use. She must have decorated the paper herself, or bought it from Crafts Unlimited, It was patterned with a block print of little bells. He loved her old-time, small-town manners-her prompt gifts and cards and thank-you notes, her Christmas fruitcake, her unfailing observance of every official occasion. She was the most proper person he had ever met. (A while back, she had angled a night away from home-their one whole night together. They were so tired of snatched moments. She'd told Leon she was going to Virginia. She'd met Morgan at the Patrician Hotel and insisted on signing her true name in the register-her name and address and telephone number, all written with the pen held perpendicular to the page in a stiff, quaint manner that delighted him. He'd asked later, why not a false name? It wouldn't be right, she had said.) "I parked the car at the corner/' she was telling Bonny, "and just as I got out I saw this little family.