I said, Maybe; who knows?

"I, of course, am an offspring of the famous Karl-with-a-K Berry," he added.

"Famous mushroomer," I said.

"You know about that?"

I said I had corresponded with him a few times over his column in the newsletter.

"I think I knew that," Kris said vaguely, then grinned. "I knew some little brown-noser was writing to him about her science projects." He began moving his lips without making any sounds until he murmured, "Oy gvald."

I asked where he had picked that up.

"My college roommate."

"Was he Jewish?"

"He wasn't, but he was from Brooklyn, so he pretended to be." He said he knew a few more words, but they weren't for mixed company. "What's the in-law word again?"

"Meck-oo-tun-im."

"Too bad the Fifes aren't Jewish. Then I could really impress them: 'What time will the mekhutonim be arriving, Mrs. Fife?' 'How are your mekhutonim enjoying the amenities of the Inn?' "

"Excellent," I said.

"Shmuck, I know," mused Kris. "And tush, of course."

I said, "Who doesn't?"

"What does shlep mean again?"

I said, "Drag. Go somewhere unwillingly: shlepping to the bus station to pick up wedding guests."

"Not at all," he said.

Suddenly we were at the lake. A new circular driveway took us right up to the steps of the main building, where s.h.a.ggy pine, red-ribboned wreaths hung on every window and electric candles flickered on every sill. Kris said, "My mother goes a little crazy with the Christmas decorations.... Hope you don't find it a bit too much."

I said most of the world decorated for Christmas, and I looked forward to it. I liked blue lights best, or white when they outlined a house and all its shrubbery. No, I said, it wasn't too much at all: It was beautiful.

People looked up from their eggnog and their sprinkle cookies to view the arrival of the new guest. Ingrid glided over with a smile meant for someone else, easy and gracious. I plucked off my right mitten and extended my hand. "Ingrid. Natalie Marx."

"Karl!" she called sharply, in a voice that might have been summoning security. That impression pa.s.sed in seconds, because the next thing Ingrid did was hug me. Mr. Berry hurried to our side with a gla.s.s for me and blushed as I kissed him on one cheek. I asked if he remembered me, the Natalie who wrote him those show-off letters about mushrooms?

"You're so tall," he said.

"She was always tall-"

"And lovely," said her husband-which made Ingrid stare at me, evaluating the compliment, and then check her son's face for signs of confirmation.

I said, "The place looks every bit as charming as I remember it."

"Does it?" asked Ingrid.

"More contemporary, of course, but just as comfortable." My hostess waited, unblinking, so I continued. "Love the circular driveway"-then a quick survey of the room-"and isn't this new furniture?"

"New slipcovers," said Ingrid.

"And you've paved the access road," I gushed.

"How's the driving?" Mr. Berry asked Kris.

"Fine. No worse than this morning."

"Have you seen the bridegroom yet?" his father asked me cheerfully.

I had, from the corner of my eye. It was most a.s.suredly Nelson on his knees in front of the stone fireplace, feeding what looked like wedding trash-silver-belled wrapping paper and flattened gift boxes-into the flames. I watched him stand, replace the screen, survey the room. Spot me. We both smiled.

He was, once and still, adorable, much the same as the teenage Nelson on the dock, which meant not only a diver's stride in my direction but the mixture of wholesomeness and s.e.x appeal that few boys of my acquaintance had ever possessed. He kissed me lightly, releasing an acute pang that had no business surviving for a decade. "Robin's talked about nothing else since you RSVP'd," he said.

I murmured, "Nothing else? You poor guy."

"It's true! She called me from the store that day you turned up and had me paged, which she never does."

"And you knew who she was talking about?"

"Immediately."

I took a sip of eggnog, which had a fleck of carton wax floating on its surface. "You have a good memory for stray guests," I said.

Nelson raised his punch gla.s.s and said, "I'm glad you could come."

I smiled, the wistful kind of smile that dismisses an untenable subject. I asked if any of the Fifes were here yet.

Nelson raised his voice, "Are there any Fifes here yet?"-a cue for the broadly smiling, portly, and mostly bald man standing a few feet away to open his arms.

"Mr. Fife?" I asked, pretending to be astonished.

He alternately hugged me and inspected me like a long-lost favorite graduate who had returned to student-teach. Throughout the extended greeting, I marveled at the depth of his unearned affection for me-the friend of Robin who'd spent one week a decade ago feeling persecuted while under his supervision. I joked between hugs, "Boy, I'd like to see you with someone you spent two weeks' vacation with."

"Why, Natty," said Mr. Fife. "We may not have seen you as much as we might have liked, but we've always felt very close to you, and your parents, too."

It gave me the second pang since my arrival-Mr. Fife's asking so little in the way of friendship, and my feeling even less in return. I wanted to say, "But we're not close. We hardly know each other. Spending a week together a decade ago does not exactly make you Uncle Donald."

I said instead, "Congratulations. You must feel as if Robin's marrying into the family of your oldest friends in the world."

"You're right about that," chortled Mr. Fife. "We were already one big happy family."

Kris called my name from the punch bowl. He held out a refill in one hand and coughed into his other fist with a guttural explosion that only I would hear as "mekhutonim." I laughed.

Mr. Fife volunteered that Mrs. Fife was upstairs attending to some mother-of-the-bride business, and Robin was driving up first thing in the A.M. with the boys, who, believe it or not, had become doting big brothers.

Ingrid interrupted with, "Maybe Natalie would like to change before she officially joins the party." I was wearing jeans and a purple parka. I said, "I would like to change, thank you," picturing the clash of my short orange part-angora sweaterdress among the embroidered jumpers of Santa red.

"We're getting up a group to go to vespers for anyone who's interested," she added.

I didn't know what vespers were and didn't ask. Mr. Fife confided that it was a late afternoon/early evening service, more singing than scriptures today.

"Show Natalie to her room," Ingrid ordered any male Berry within hearing range.

When Kris and I both reached for the suitcase handle, he offered dryly, "Um, I believe this is my job, miss."

"We should leave no later than three-forty," said Ingrid.

Kris said to me, "There's no hurry. I mean, it's optional. Some of us aren't going."

I said, "I'm game. I like Christmas music." I stopped at the first landing and surveyed the room below. Almost nothing had changed, except that the wallpaper was no longer murals of Natchez but fronds that looked like juniper or weeping willow. Ingrid was gesturing and organizing the transportation: I would join the boys and Mr. Berry in the van. She would lead the Fifes, and we'd caravan.

"Gretel's a soloist," said Mr. Berry proudly.

"You remember our Gretel, don't you?" asked his wife.

Mr. Berry, next to me in the backseat, said, "Maybe Natalie doesn't want to talk about it, boys." He meant the circ.u.mstances of my job reversal, a short conversational journey from his question "So, what do you do, Natalie?"

I said I didn't mind. In fact, I was pleased. In the few weeks since I'd erased Ten Tables from my resume, I had discovered that people found this chapter in my employment history something close to enthralling. I chose my verbs carefully in front of Mr. B.: Monsieur P. demanded that I have ... that I go to ... that I have relations with him in exchange for the granting of this weekend off.

"This weekend?" Mr. Berry repeated.

I nodded.

"You quit in order to come here?"

"What choice did she have, Dad?" said Nelson.

"Boy," said Kris, "this better be one great weekend," drawing a swat from his brother.

"I asked six weeks in advance, as soon as the invitation came."

"Could you have said no to the s.e.x and kept the job if you had backed down on the time off?" asked Kris.

I said, "How could I stay after that?"

"How could you even ask her?" said his father.

"Did he try to talk you into staying after you called his bluff?" Nelson asked.

I said, "No. He was angry."

"He didn't call you up and apologize after he cooled down?" asked Kris.

I said, "No, although I had secretly been expecting he would."

"It may still happen," said Kris.

Mr. Berry, patting my arm, said, "Of course you couldn't stay after that, working for such a man. You had no choice."

Kris said, lowering his voice to a stage whisper, "Dad, you didn't make any s.e.xual demands on Mrs. Knickerbocker, did you?"

Only Mr. Berry, staring forlornly, failed to laugh. I said, in the voice I had used to coax my stunned father back from a similar state, "It's okay. I got out of there in time. I'll find another job."

If ever a Jew wished that Christmas were a secular holiday, it was me at vespers on the eve of Robin's wedding. The choir, dressed as Edwardian carolers, entered from the back of the chapel, singing softly, their individual voices distinct as they pa.s.sed me, then back to a blended whole. I saw white-gloved bell ringers in black evening gowns and tails. I fell in love with an entire bra.s.s ensemble of handsome men. Most beautiful and moving in a repertoire of beautiful and moving carols was "Silent Night," in German and English, by candlelight.

I knew from the way the Berrys came to life along the pew that it was Gretel singing the solo in the choir loft. I studied everything about her, noticing, besides the resemblance to her mother, something irritating and superior about her. She enunciated the words too carefully, and looked too beatific for a member of a red-blooded college glee club. Her blond hair was ringleted, and her lips were cotton-candy pink; her white blouse was at once coyer and frillier than anyone else's. Gretel's clear soprano climbed higher up the scale than any voice before hers, distilling the whole program into one piercing note of Christmas ecstasy.

Like all the Berrys, I had tears in my eyes as the lights went back on. No one knew me, so no one knew how much of an outsider I really was. A love-in of some sort started with handshakes in the front pew and worked its way back to us. Strangers grasped the hands of those around them, saying-or so I heard-"Pleased to meet you ... pleased to meet you." How civilized and welcoming, I thought, until I realized that everyone else was murmuring a holier "Peace be with you."

Later, I would compare the evening to the funeral of someone I hardly knew: disrespectful and a little presumptuous of me to be there at all, but terribly moving just the same.

ELEVEN.

From my austere single room under the eaves, I heard the news indirectly. A far-off phone rang; not words but footsteps thundering, then crying and, unmistakably, the sounds of grief. For a quarter of an hour I surveyed the possibilities, wanting to know, gauging the etiquette of the situation. When footsteps approached my room I froze, suddenly sure that the disturbance was devastating news from Newton, for me. The footsteps pa.s.sed. I put on my bathrobe and ventured into the chilly hall holding my toothbrush and toothpaste. The sounds from below were louder but no more decipherable. After brushing my teeth, I walked down the two flights of stairs to the main floor, where I found Kris and his father on a sofa, white-faced.

I said, "What's wrong?"

Kris closed his eyes and shook his head as if the answer were unbearable. Mr. Berry said something softly, words I couldn't put together. My hearing didn't work, or refused to. I said, "No," and dropped into the nearest chair. They slid forward from the couch to prop me up. What they had tried to say so very carefully had to be repeated and amplified until I grasped it: an accident.

"Who?" I whispered.

"Robin," Kris told me, in a cry of brotherly grief that made the next question unnecessary.

Chip and Jeff were hurt but would survive. The details came from outside-newspapers and television. Robin, in the backseat with her wedding dress, had received the blunt force of a skidding car that had hit black ice and swerved into their lane. The other driver, an elderly woman, killed. No one could bear to ask questions or speak at all, including me, except to offer to go home and leave the Fifes and the Berrys to their pain.

Mostly, I stayed out of the way by cooking. Breakfast on trays, handed to Kris for delivery. Comfort foods for lunch and dinner-plain custards and clear soups that were sent without fanfare and returned untouched.

I kept asking him, then Mr. Berry and Ingrid, whose kitchen I had effectively taken over, "Am I imposing? Should I leave? I'll understand."

Someone always said, "You've been so helpful. Please stay."

I did stay, despite the chill of the poorly heated rooms and my fear that trays of food and cups of tea didn't adequately express my own sorrow.

A few wedding guests who couldn't be reached in time-it had been Gretel's job, with her trained voice and her poise, to go down the list-arrived Sat.u.r.day morning in wedding finery. The families asked if I could turn the horrified guests away, or register those who couldn't face a return trip. I did. I a.s.signed rooms in the same far-off corner as mine, and made sandwiches. In the morning, they slipped away.