Dinner was good, and there was plenty of it, cooked by Lilymary herself, and I think I must have seemed a perfect idiot. I sat there, with the six-year-old on one side of me and Lilymary on the other, across from the ten-year-old and the twelve-year-old. The father of them all was at the head of the table, but he was the only other male. I understood there were a couple of brothers, but they didn't live with the others. I suppose there had been a mother at some time, unless Morton Hargreave stamped the girls out with a kind of cookie-cutter; but whatever she had been she appeared to be deceased. I felt overwhelmed. I wasn't used to being surrounded by young females, particularly as young as the median in that gathering.
Lilymary made an attempt to talk to me, but it wasn't altogether successful. The younger girls were given to fits of giggling, which she had to put a stop to, and to making what were evidently personal remarks in some kind of a peculiar foreign tongue-it sounded like a weird aboriginal dialect, and I later found out that it was. But it was disconcerting, especially from the lips of a six-year-old with the giggles. So I didn't make any very intelligent responses to Lilymary's overtures.
But all things end, even eating dinner with giggling girls. And then Mr. Hargreave and I sat in the little parlor, waiting for the girls to- finish doing the dishes? I said, shocked, "Mr. Hargreave, do you mean they wash them?"
"Certainly they wash them," he boomed mildly. "How else would they get them clean, Mr. Martin?"
"Why, dishwashers, Mr. Hargreave." I looked at him in a different way. Business is business. I said, "After all, this is the Christmas season. At the Emporium we put a very high emphasis on dishwashers as a Christmas gift, you know. We-"
He interrupted good-humoredly. "I already have my gifts, Mr. Martin. Four of them, and very fine dishwashers they are."
"But Mr. Hargreave-"
"Not Mister Hargreave." The six-year-old was standing beside me, looking disapproving. "Doctor Hargreave."
"Corinne!" said her father. "Forgive her, Mr. Martin. But you see we're not very used to the-uh, civilized way of doing things. We've been a long time with the Dyaks."
The girls were all back from the kitchen, and Lilymary was out of her apron and looking-unbelievable. "Entertainment," she said brightly. "Mr. Martin, would you like to hear Corinne play?"
There was a piano in the corner. I said hastily, "I'm crazy about piano music. But--"
Lilymary laughed. "She's good," she told me seriously. "Even if I do have to say it to her face. But we'll let you off that if you like. Gretchen and I sing a little bit, if you'd prefer it?"
Wasn't there any TV in this place? I felt as out of place as an Easterbunny-helper in the Santa Claus line, but Lilymary was still looking unbelievable. So I sat through Lilymary and the twelve-yearold named Gretchen singing ancient songs while the six-year-old named Corinne accompanied them on the piano. It was pretty thick. Then the ten-year-old, whose name I never did catch, did recitations; and then they all looked expectantly at me.
I cleared my throat, slightly embarrassed. Lilymary said quickly,
"Oh, you don't have to do anything, Mr. Martin. It's just our custom, but we don't expect strangers to conform to it!"
I didn't want that word "stranger" to stick. I said, "Oh, but I'd like to. I mean, I'm not much good at public entertaining, but-" I hesitated, because that was the truest thing I had ever said. I had no more voice than a goat, and of course the only instrument I had ever learned to play was a TV set. But then I remembered something from my childhood.
"I'll tell you what," I said enthusiastically. "How would you like something appropriate to the season? 'A Visit from Santa Claus,' for instance?"
Gretchen said snappishly, "What season? We don't start celebrating-"
Her father cut her off. "Please do, Mr. Martin," he said politely. "We'd enjoy that very much."
I cleared my throat and started:
'Tis the season of Christmas, and all through the house St. Nick and his helpers begin their carouse.
The closets are stuffed and the drawers overflowing
With gift-wrapped remembrances, coming and going.
What a joyous abandon of Christmastime glow!
What a making of lists! What a spending of dough!
So much for- "Hey!" said Gretchen, looking revolted. "Daddy, that isn't how--"
"Hush!" said Dr. Hargreave grimly. His own expression wasn't very delighted either, but he said, "Please go on."
I began to wish I'd kept my face shut. They were all looking at me very peculiarly, except for Lilymary, who was conscientiously studying the floor. But it was too late to back out; I went on:
So much for the bedroom, so much for the bath,
So much for the kitchen-too little by half!
Come Westinghouse, Philco! Come Hotpoint, G.E.!
Come Sunbeam! Come Mixmaster! Come to the Tree!
So much for the wardrobe-how shine Daddy's eyes
As he reaps his Yule harvest of slippers and ties.
So much for the family, so much for the friends,
So much for the neighbors-the list never ends.
A contingency fund for the givers belated
Whose gifts must be hastily reciprocated.
And out of--
Gretchen stood up. "It's our bedtime," she said. "Good night, everybody."
Lilymary flared, "It is not! Now be still!" And she looked at me for the first time. "Please go on," she said, with a furrowed brow.
I said hoarsely:
And out of the shops, how they spring with a clatter,
The gifts and appliances words cannot flatter!
The robot dishwasher, the new Frigidaire,
The doll with the didy and curlable hair!
The electrified hairbrush, the black lingerie,
The full-color stereoscopic TV!
Come, Credit Department! Come, Personal Loan!
Come, Mortgage, come Christmas Club, come-- Lilymary turned her face away. I stopped and licked my lips.
"That's all I remember," I lied. "I-I'm sorry if--"
Dr. Hargreave shook himself like a man waking from a nightmare. "It's getting rather late," he said to Lilymary. "Perhaps-perhaps our guest would enjoy some coffee before he goes."
I declined the coffee and Lilymary walked me to the subway. We didn't talk much.
At the subway entrance she firmly took my hand and shook it. "It's been a pleasant evening," she said.
A wandering group of carolers came by; I gave my contribution to the guitarist. Suddenly angry, I said, "Doesn't that mean anything to you?"
"What?"
I gestured after the carolers. "That. Christmas. The whole sentimental, lovable, warmhearted business of Christmas. Lilymary, we've only known each other a short time, but--"
She interrupted: "Please, Mr. Martin. I-I know what you're going to say." She looked terribly appealing there in the Christmassy light of the red and green lights from the Tree that marked the subway entrance. Her pale, straight legs, hardly concealed by the shorts, picked up chromatic highlights; her eyes sparkled. She said, "You see, as Daddy says, we've been away from-civilization. Daddy is a missionary, and we've been with the Dyaks since I was a little girl. Gretch and Marlene and Corinne were born there. We-we do things differently on Borneo." She looked up at the Tree over us, and sighed. "It's very hard to get used to," she said. "Sometimes I wish we had stayed with the Dyaks."
Then she looked at me. She smiled. "But sometimes," she said, "I am very glad we're here." And she was gone.
Ambiguous? Call it merely ladylike. At any rate, that's what I called it; I took it to be the beginning of the kind of feeling I so desperately wanted her to have; and for the second night in a row I let Haroun's harem beauties remain silent on their tapes.