Page 102 of Christmas With A Stranger

"I know she would have."

She looks at the tree for a long time. Her feet slide down off the cushion and end up against my thigh, bare and cold. I feel the chill of them straight through my jeans. She doesn't move them, and I don't either.

Her head tips back against the arm of the couch. Her eyes close and open, and then close and stay closed.

I sit there with my children asleep on my chest and her feet against my leg. I stay there while the tree lights cycle across the wall, over and over, until I stop keeping track.

At a quarter to five, I get up one inch at a time.

I lay Hildie down in her bassinet in the den and Graham in his. I stand over them with my hands still out until I'm sure. Then I go back to the front room.

Mackie is asleep sideways with her cheek on the arm of the couch and her mouth open. I take the afghan off the back of the chair and cover her with it, up to the chin. She makes a small sound and pulls it tighter and doesn't wake.

There's one present under the tree, wrapped neat as a store would do it. On the other end of the couch, there's a shopping bag full of paper rolls and eleven boxes that aren't wrapped.

I find tape and a pair of kitchen scissors in the drawer by the stove, and I sit down on the floor by the tree with the bag.

I'm no good at it. My corners come out fat, and the tape goes on crooked, and I use too much paper on the first two because I don't know any better.

Most of the boxes are baby things: a stacking toy, two pairs of soft shoes, a set of cloth books about farm animals. There's a gray cardigan in a box that I figure is for Lis. I stick a note from the kitchen pad on each one with what's inside. I'm not guessing who gets what.

The last box is small and flat. It's a picture frame, silver, with the store's cardboard still in it, and under the cardboard is the picture Lis took on the balcony in August. It's the four of us, with Mackie's head on my shoulder and Graham squinting.

I don't know who it's for. I look at it long enough to know I shouldn't, then wrap it as well as I can, which isn't very well. I write frame on the sticky note and set it with the others.

Then I lean my back against the couch below her, where I can hear the den, and I close my eyes.

The next thing I know, there's coffee under my nose.

Lis is standing over me in a bathrobe, with her glasses on the chain and a mug held out. Gray light is coming through the front window. The clock on the cable box says six-twenty.

I take the mug and get up off the floor, and my knees tell me about it. Mackie is still asleep under the afghan. Lis tips her head toward the kitchen, and I follow her.

She leans back against the counter and looks at me over her own mug.

"She called you."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Good."

That's the whole of it. She drinks her coffee. Then she looks past me through the doorway at the pile under the tree.

"Did you wrap those?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Those corners are a disgrace."

"I know it."

"I'm going to leave them exactly the way they are," she says, and she sets her mug in the sink.

At seven Hildie starts up, and then Graham, and Lis and I each take one. I warm the bottles, and she checks them on her wris. We sit at the table and feed them without much talk. It’s easier than I worried it might go if we were all together. The whiteboard on the refrigerator has feeds on one side and Mackie's work schedule on the other. I read every line while Graham eats.

Mackie comes into the doorway a little before eight with the afghan around her shoulders and the pillow crease still in her cheek. She looks at the table, at her mother and me and two fed babies, and then she looks back toward the tree.

"You wrapped the presents."