"Pie," said Mrs. Brown. "Pie brings us here. George was kind enough to help me out with a big ch.o.r.e over in Plum Borough, and coming back, we decided the only way to keep up our strength and salvage the afternoon was to have some coffee and maybe a little dessert."

I noticed that we were all standing next to the Idle Hour Restaurant "They do have really good pie here," I said.

George spoke to Patty. "I don't believe we've met," he said, "unless you have changed markedly."

She laughed. "I'm Patty," she said. "Patty Tsimmicz."

"Oops," I said. "I should have done that."

"Why don't you come in with us?" said Mrs. Brown. "Do you have the time? You can tell us which kind is the best."

So we did. Think about it, though. What are the chances that we would be walking by the Idle Hour at the exact moment George and Mrs. Brown stopped there? But there we were, ordering peach pie with ice cream in a booth with yellow vinyl seats. It felt like something that was supposed to happen. I felt that George and Mrs. Brown were people I was going to keep knowing somehow. It crossed my mind that if my mother had happened to see us sitting there, I would have had a hard time explaining how I knew them. What was I going to tell her when they showed up someday at my wedding? Well, that I could worry about later. But a reflex made me wipe the fog from the window and look out. That's when I saw what I almost didn't see that day, coming down the sidewalk. I saw Glenna and Maureen and a boy with his arm around Maureen's waist, and hers around his, girlfriend-boyfriend style.

Wow, I thought Who's that?

Glenna's smile was pasted to her frozen face as she matched her pace to theirs. From behind her determined brightness peered the eyes of a frightened animal. They pa.s.sed by our window, and, for an accidental instant Glenna's rattled eyes met mine. I wanted to feel satisfaction and revenge. But it was too much like looking into a mirror. I couldn't fit any spite into the small smile I tossed out like a tiny, halfhearted lifeline.

They walked by, and I scrambled back up onsh.o.r.e.

thirteen.

"WE'RE ALL A LITTLE GREEN AROUND THE GILLS," MY MOTHER said into the phone. She was still in her pink bathrobe and slippers. No makeup yet. She was telling Mrs. Schimpf we wouldn't be in church because of the flu. She winked at me as I took a package of English m.u.f.fins out of the bread drawer. I was feeling better. And I was starved.

"Ed says he feels like he got hit with a Mack truck," Mom told Mrs. Schimpf.

My dad and Chrisanne were still upstairs in bed, limp washrags trying not to move. The house was dark and still, except for the light over the kitchen sink and the radio on low. The smell of my toasting English m.u.f.fin filled the stale air with the promise of health and life, like the first crocus of spring. But it probably made Dad and Chrisanne queasy. I needed to breathe some fresh air.

"I'm going for a walk. Mom," I said.

She tucked the phone under her chin and said quietly, "Okay, doll. Dress warm."

The whole world was gray and brown. Even if the brick chimneys had managed to reach a few inches higher and snag holes in the heavy clouds, there probably would have been more gray behind them. The trees in the front yards were bare. A few unraked brown leaves, curly and brittle, lay scattered around. My footsteps made a nice thud in the cold, motionless air, which filled my nose and lungs and made me feel sharp and alive.

I looked around and found some colors hiding in the browns and grays. Dark green pines and spruces. A red awning. A blue garage door. Red berries on a bush. The purple-black bricks of the Baxters' house. I myself was an emissary of color, moving through the world in a fluorescent red coat Chrisanne didn't know I was wearing and my eight-foot-long scarf. I trod once more over a much-trodden dirt path frozen hard as a rock through a small bunch of trees to the Boney Dump, a flat place where the power company dumps ash and kids ride their bikes on it. As I came out into the open, snow started to fall. I sat down on a rock and watched. The snow wasn't sticking to the ground yet, but I could look at the snowflakes on my coat sleeve. I knew each one was supposed to be completely different from every other one, but I couldn't see the differences that clearly. I could see that each one had exactly six skies, which seemed amazing enough for something just falling out of the sky. An extra detail, more than anyone would expect.

The snow fell more thickly. The hills, then the houses at the far edge of the Boney Dump, disappeared behind curtains of falling flakes. It felt private, like a room, with walls you could walk through. And then someone did Up out of the woods, just twenty feet away. I caught my breath for a second and ail the old warnings about the hoboes who were supposed to be loitering dangerously around the railroad tracks jumped into my mind. I had never actually seen a hobo. And I didn't see one now either. I saw Mr. Schimpf, of all people, huffing up out of the woods, in boots and floppy overcoat and hat with earflaps down and red nose and steamy clouds of breath. He must have walked four miles from their house in Birdvale to get there.

"Mr. Schimpf!" I said to him. "Why aren't you in church?"

"I am in church," he said.

"Me, too," said I.

He hiked on, vanishing behind the walls of snow. I wondered what had possessed him to walk so far on such a cold morning, but then look at me: I was sitting on a rock, getting acc.u.mulated on.

I sat there a little longer. The ground was white now; everything was white. There was something churchy about it. Everyday cares and troubles floated out of me, just far enough away so they looked interesting and manageable, none of them hopeless. Then they floated completely out of sight. Maybe I was just going into a state of bliss before freezing to death. But no, this was a peaceful, holy moment, a peaceful, holy place. I sat there a few minutes more; then I went back home.

By early afternoon the sun came out; everything was frosted and glittering. It reminded me of a department store window display of snow because it was so fresh and dean and perfect I guess it's supposed to be the other way around, the window reminding you of the real thing. But the real thing doesn't usually stay perfect for as long. At least not in Seldem. Maybe nowhere.

fourteen.

FRAN HAD CHRISTAAAS EVE AGAIN THIS YEAR. LAST YEAR SHE skipped it because it is such a ton of work. So we were all thrilled when she turned from her spaghetti sauce one day and said, "I'm thinking I'll have Christmas Eve, Helen. Can you come?"

My mother wrapped both hands around her coffee cup and studied an invisible calendar in s.p.a.ce.

"Well," she said, "we're not going anywhere, but my mother will be here."

"Your mother will come, too, of course," said Fran. "You can bring a ham. And cookies. I'll need your oven."

"And card tables," said my mom. "You'll probably want both of ours."

"Do you still have those folding chairs from your church?" asked Fran.

Chrisanne and Tesey and I pa.s.sed smiles across our soup; once they got this far, there was no turning back. A notepad and pen materialized in my mother's hands, and she and Fran started going over all the details.

There were a lot of details. A lot of them had to do with fish. Italian Christmas Eve dinner is about fish. Unlimited fish. Soft, fat potato doughnuts stuffed with anchovies, called cullurelli. Baccala, which is dried cod that has to be soaked in water for a week, and the water changed every day. And calamari. This is like lasagna, and Fran made me taste it the first time and say how good it was before she told me that the noodles were pieces of squid. More squid and more baccala get tossed with spaghetti. And there is fresh cod, and smelts.

Then, because some people don't like fish, there is regular lasagna and spaghetti, ham and a stuffed turkey. Salad, vegetables, garlic bread, little crystal dishes with olives and pickles. Mountains of fruit and nuts. Everyone brings some dish prepared with patience and great care. We all clatter down into Fran and Danny's bas.e.m.e.nt and sit at tables connected by overlapping tablecloths into a long, uneven line, squeezed in between the storage area on one side and the freezer, washer, and dryer on the other skie, and we eat.

The food has a magical effect of making us feel we must be the most fortunate human beings living on the earth, because what it really is, is love, disguised as food. It holds all the love we didn't find words for this year. Or maybe food is just a better way to express it.

Anyway, the words are busy doing other things. Fran is telling everybody what and how mach lo eat (more, of everything). Her brothers are having big arguments about which turnpike exit has a Sunoco station or which moment of which day of which year the helicopter landed in the field behind Grandma Spina's backyard.

Here's how many conversations each person is having: Weddings, hairdos, illnesses, new babies, new storm doors, new cars, car trouble, bad weather, bad luck, good luck, work school, vacations, movies, TV.

Danny makes sure each gla.s.s is full of wine or pop.

After dinner, little gla.s.ses of Galliano are poured for the adults from a tall, skinny bottle. It's a sticky yellow drink that tastes like licorice. This year Chrisanne got her own gla.s.s. Tesey got one, too. I got a sip, which was all I wanted, really. It's interesting but I'd rather eat the cookies. You wouldn't think I'd have room, but I did, at least for nibbling. Biscotti, jumbrelli, ingenetti, and thumbprints. (Guess which kind we brought, being only honorary Italians.) Candlelight full stomachs, and sips of Galliano warmed and melted the tangle of noisy talk down into one conversation that stretched from end to end. It thickened into the middle as people moved into seats left empty by Tesey, Chrisanne, and the cousins, who drifted upstairs to play cards and wash dishes. I was going to go, too, but Fran was telling about the plastic tomatoes my dad tied to her tomato plants and about how she changed the labels on our cans while we were on vacation, and I wanted to hear her tell it.

"Can you believe it?" she said. "I'm such a wimp. After Helen came over with the second can, I couldn't stand it anymore, and I gave her the list I actually kept a list, that's how compulsive I am, of what was really in each can."

"She handed me this list," said my mother, laughing, with tears spilling from the corners of her eyes. "And I just looked at it. I thought. How does she know what's in my cans? It took me five minutes, even after she explained to me how she cut the labels off the cans with a razor blade and glued them on different cans-"

"You didn't think I could think of something like that, did you, Helen?"

"I couldn't believe anybody would think of something like that."

"I had to tell her. She was ready to take the cans back to the A and P. I was afraid Joe down there would have a stroke; it would overload his brain, trying to figure out what happened. And then it would be my fault!"

"Hey, Fran," said Aunt Angie. "Speaking of strokes. Did you know that Vincent Peretti is in the hospital? I was at the desk when they brought him in. He had a stroke. A mild one, though. He's doing good. You should stop in and see him."

"No kidding," Fran said. "When did that happen?"

"Thursday night," said Aunt Angie. "Uncle Vincent. I was married to Tony five years before I realized he wasn't his real uncle."

Uncle Tony laughed. "You were married to me five years before I realized he wasn't my real uncle."

Grandma Spina smiled. "That's because he practically grew up in our house, with our family. His dad was no good. A b.u.m. Always drinking. Vincent was afraid of him." She shook her head. "I never understood how such a kind boy come from such a mean father. Well, his mother was a nice woman, poor thing. I guess that's how."

My dad and Mrs. Tovelli blew puffs of smoke from their cigarettes and tapped them into an ashtray at just the same time, in twin movements. Mr. Tovelli's cigar added smoke to the cloud that formed there, then thinned to a haze. Grandpa Gliamocco spoke to Grandma Gliamocco in Italian, and she spoke back to him. He translated.

"Tilda say, 'Joe Peretti wasn't mean when he wasn't drinking. The trouble was, he was always drinking." He looked around the table. "What do you do with someone like that?"

In the quiet of Fran and Danny's bas.e.m.e.nt, there was only the m.u.f.fled blur of laughter and shouting from upstairs. Here below there were a few murmurs of bafflement. No one seemed to know. Who could even think about it after all that good food?

"I was like that." It was Mr. Tovelli.

Fran said, "Oh, Frank, you were never like that."

"Sure I was," said Mr. Tovelli. "When I got back from the war. For about six months. If it wasn't for the guy I was working for, I'd be dead. He dragged me out of the bar one day and said to me, 'Frank, I'm watching you kill yourself. And not only am I watching you, my money is buying the weapon. I don't spend my money like that.' He took me to his house. He said, 'You're living here for a while.' Every day after work I went home with him. His wife fed me. I played with his kids. I slept on their couch. For three months. Then I met Joanie, and things started to make a little more sense, it got easier. I can never forget what he did for me, though."

It got quiet again then, the kind of quiet where people are wondering What do we say now?

Finally, Uncle Tony said, "What made you drink like that, Frank?"

Mr. Tovelli shrugged his bulky shoulders. "Oh, you know. It was the war. The war was not glamorous for me, where I was. It was not exciting. It was pretty lousy, where I was. I couldn't get it out of my head; it made me a little crazy, I guess."

"That wasn't Joe Peretti's problem," said Grandma Spina.

"Maybe not," said Mr. Tovelli. "Maybe n.o.body ever asked him. Did anybody ever ask him? That's all I'm saying."

My dad spoke. "My mother nearly always had someone sleeping on our couch. Half the time we didn't even look to see who it was."

"Really, Ed?" said Fran. "Like what kind of people?"

"Oh, I don't know.... I do remember one girl, Lila something. She got in trouble, and her mother kicked her out of the house. She was with us for a long time. She had her baby in our living room, and I think the baby was walking before she moved out."

Aunt Mary said, "People don't do that anymore, do they? People don't look out for each other the way they used to."

"Sure, they do. We just don't sleep in each other's houses anymore." Fran laughed. "We have these dumb little houses." She paused. "It does seem different, though, doesn't it?"

"It's no different," said Mr. Tovelli. "It just seems different because when we were kids, everything our parents did, we thought that was the normal thing to do. Now we have to think about it. Just like they did. You think my boss didn't think twice before bringing a drunk home to live with his family, with his children? You think that was an everyday event for him?"

Aunt Mary said, "He knew you were a good person, Frank."

"He didn't know that," said Mr. Tovelli. "n.o.body knows that."

"Now that's something I don't think I could do," said my mother.

"But you washed Bobby's clothes and made him lunch," I said.

Everyone turned and looked at me. They had forgotten I was still there.

"Whose clothes did you wash, Helen?" asked Aunt Angie.

"What are you doing here?" Fran said. "You're supposed to be upstairs washing dishes. Here. Take these gla.s.ses up, and ask Tesey if the coffee's ready."

I clinked up the metal treads of the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs. As I reached the landing, I could hear my mother saying, "I just feel for the kids. It's not their fault" I carried the gla.s.ses to the sink; then I went back and sat quietly on the landing to listen some more.

After a while it was time to go home and to bed.

Chrisanne fell asleep right away, but I lay awake, looking up at the landscape on the ceiling. It was just the shadow of the curtains made by light from the electric Christmas candles on the windowsill, but it always looks to me like hills and trees next to a river at sunset golden and brown like an old painting. Peaceful.

I thought about Mr. Tovelli's story and the other stories. What was the difference between Mr. Tovelli and Mr. Prbyczka, between Lila something and Marie? Okay, so maybe Mr. Prbyczka was a jerk But maybe he wasn't. It seemed to me that the difference was that someone had cared about Mr. Tovelli, about Lila. Like the hero in a fairy tale who says to the monster, "I can see your true heart!" and then the monster turns back into some good person who was just under a spell.

But how could you know who was a good person, just under a spell?

"No one can know that," Mr. Tovelli had said. "Maybe n.o.body ever asked him."

"He was no good, a b.u.m."

"Did anyone ever ask him?"

I wondered what would happen to Marie, whether I would ever see her again. And Bobby. It seemed to me that the hero was often someone outside the monster/good person's immediate family. And that maybe family boundaries are made-up lines, like state borders. And that we all need to take care of one another, somehow. One big safety net. I tried to picture a safety net that you could help hold and be caught by at the same time. Then I decided it would be a bunch of different safety nets, maybe arranged in a circle so there would always be one underneath you. In my mind, this looked like a drawing by Dr. Seuss, and it wouldn't actually work unless the laws of gravity were changed. So maybe a safety net wasn't the best way to think about this idea. Then I thought about how the kind act can be big and dramatic or so small that only one person notices, like a smile at a hard moment. A bowl of berries.

Before I fell asleep, my mind wandered a little way into the future. It was unclear what I was doing exactly, but I was dressed like Miss Epler and I was Making My Own Life Happen. I tried to see what that meant, but besides dressing in an interesting way, it mostly seemed to mean eating pie. Oh, well, it's a start.

Patty called this afternoon, before we went to Fran and Danny's. Just to talk. She does that It's only one of the things I really like about her. I call her, too. She comes here, I go there. I have a friend again.

I have friends.

About The Author.

is the author of Criss Cross, winner of the 2006 Newbery Medal. Her first novel, All Alone in the Universe, was named an ALA Notable Book, an ALA Booklist Editors' Choice, a Bulletin Blue Ribbon, and a Smithsonian Notable Book for Children. She is also the author of several picture books, including The Broken Cat and Snow Music, a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book and a Book Sense Top Ten Pick. Lynne Rae Perkins lives with her family in northern Michigan.

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"You know," said Miss Epler, "maybe this person didn't take your friend away from you."