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"No, no, naughty little Sampson," I cooed while I nibbled at his chubby fingers. He
shrieked with joy, so I dropped him to the bed and attacked his cool toes.

"This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home." I wiggled the sturdy
middle toe. "This little piggy had roast beef, and this little piggy had none." By the time I
reached, "...piggy cried all the way home," he was almost convulsed with laughter and waving
his feet so that the last little piggy-toe slipped from my grasp.

I finished with kisses all over and bubbled my lips against his throat. He grabbed me
around the neck and came up, clinging to me. I wrapped one arm around him and with my free
hand grabbed a shawl from the top of the dresser and folded it around his back and chilly feet.
We were ready to go downstairs.

I knew what we looked like when we came into the living room, compared to the way
we'd left. My hair was mussed in a way that I knew David liked. Both Sampson and I were pink
from our play.

The room smelled good, and safe. David was standing at the stove stirring a pot of
beans. Amy, at the fireplace, put a log on the fire and politely nodded at us, then sat again in the
padded rocker. The room with the small fire and warm food smell was very comfortable but the
air was heavy with disapproval.

I felt I couldn't bear it if either of them mentioned the afternoon. The happiness I'd come
downstairs with slipped away. Cold fear from the pit of my stomach surged through me. I
determined to pretend nothing had happened. I blew again on Sampson's neck and he giggled,
which caused Amy to put down the book she'd picked up, and look at us, or rather, at
Sampson.

She spoke directly to Sampson. "Oh, all happy now, huh?"

He babbled at her and, forcing a laugh, I handed him to her. "He wants his Auntie
Amy." I talked to her through Sampson. "How are you, Aunt Amy?"

"Aunt Amy's just fine now." She took on the pretense, "Just a little tired."

"Well, then," I said brightly, "Mommy better help Daddy with dinner then," and turned
before she could continue.

I crossed the room and, quickly and lightly, playfully, put my arm around David's
shoulders and looked down into the pot. He didn't pull away from my touch but didn't lean in to
me, either. My arm felt heavy.

"Beans, huh." My voice was forced but my fear drove me on. He was close, but distant.
"Almost done?" I asked, softer, but it seemed that my voice cracked in an empty room. "Looks
like you used up the last of the pork."

He mumbled, "Um huh."

I ignored the briefness of his answer and acted as if we'd had a normal conversation, and
a normal day. "Well, I guess I got here just in time. How would you like some biscuits?"

A short, "Okay," from the man I loved and who now was avoiding looking at me as
much as I was avoiding looking at him.

"And a little salad?" I still had my arm on his shoulder.

"I'll go," he said, still distant but I saw and felt his body relax a little, and the fear in my
stomach loosened. He took the bucket from a nail on the wall by the door and left for the
garden.

Making the quick biscuits gave me an armor against any but the lightest talk with Amy.
That room that usually felt so spacious to me was now cramped, small. I mixed and rolled and
cut while chatting on about new clothes for Sampson. Amy fell in with it, no more eager than I to
renew the unpleasantness of the afternoon.

David came back with not only lettuce and tomatoes from the garden but new corn, a
rare thing as the coast climate made it hard to grow. He was happier, lighter than when he'd left,
perhaps because it was such a beautiful evening outside.

He put the corn on the table. It was already shucked, explaining why he'd been gone so
long. I admired the small yellow ears while he put on a pan of water to boil.

The thing I feared most was silence so I talked and talked, about the corn, the garden,
the lovely night, the baby, until finally they were drawn into the happy atmosphere I was
working so hard to create. By the time we sat down to the table for dinner, with only the lamp
and the fire for light, the coldness in my stomach had eased. Amy ate with Sampson on her lap,
feeding him a bit of mashed bean now and then to keep his hands out of her plate. David finally
gave him a scraped-clean carrot to hold and nibble on.

"Sophie and I are going to make Sampson some new clothes," Amy said.

"New clothes?" David smiled, and my spirits soared at the sight. "He already has more
clothes than I do."

"Those are baby clothes. He's getting to be a little boy."

We were in such a hurry for him to grow up.

"His knees are red from crawling and I think a pair of pants would suit him just fine,"
Amy said.

"Pants?" David pretended to be shocked. "Why, I didn't wear long pants 'til I went to
school."

"David, this is 1919, not the 1880's."

He started to protest but Amy cut him short. "We're going to cover his knees and that's
that."

"Well," he said firmly, trying to maintain his control of things, ignoring our grins, "A
big boy with long pants shouldn't be sitting on laps at the table." He reached over and tickled
Sampson on his belly. "I'll start on your high chair tomorrow. How about that?"

Sampson arched his back and the carrot flew across the room. David got it, washed it,
and handed it back. He promptly dropped it again. Sampson's game went on until David took
him on his lap and held him until dinner was over.

The evening was quiet with Amy reading, me cleaning up and then sewing, and David
trying to figure what he needed for the chair. Sampson lay rolling around his feet, playing with a
stuffed doll.

We went to bed early with me deciding to have the baby in with me. I was glad it wasn't
my night with David. I opened the window that looked out upon the ocean. The air was glorious
and warm, reminding me almost painfully of the night on the beach that now seemed so long
ago, when being here was all new, and I'd not yet met David. I wanted time before we slept
together again. I wanted to snuggle close and if he'd pulled away, it would have scared me. Still,
as always, I missed him and was grateful for the quiet snoring sound from Sampson's cradle
close to my bed.

Life seemed to be again as it had been before the bad day but I noticed a strain in our
easy-close feeling towards each other. I grew sharper with the baby as he started getting into
things and it became more of a chore to keep him clean and unhurt. At seven months, Sampson
was walking around the furniture, pulling himself up on the bookcase and pulling things down.
By early December, going into his eighth month, we had to watch him all the time to keep him
from crawling upstairs, or if someone went outside, he would scoot for the open door.

I started to feel like I had to do everything. Amy was approaching her seventh month,
and, by the doctor's orders, she rested a lot, downstairs. She watched Sampson and played with
him when she wasn't sewing, or reading, or writing. The main job, of course, of taking care of
him was mine. David spent hours painting in their room because the coop was too cold. If the
weather was even halfway decent I went out, taking Sampson, or, braving the cold wind, with
David.

We'd pass my old cabin, with me feeling sorry for it being empty. I worried about the
flowers. The rose bushes stayed hardy through the winter but they suffered as the wind sculpted
them to parallel the house.

Whether with David, or with him and Sampson, when we got down to the sand I was
always cheered. I loved the briny smell of the ocean and the noisy waves, but I only needed a
little bit of it. I worried about Sampson getting cold, or I'd start to think about making the bread
to go with the soup we most always had simmering. I'd want the warmth of the house and back
we'd go.

When Sampson wasn't with us, David and I once in a while stopped at my old cabin on
the way back, to build a fire to warm the cabin and stave off the coast mold. "Just keeping it up
for Mrs. Hawley." There I'd let David have his way with me--or I'd have mine with him--as the
cabin warmed and dried. I loved being alone there with him, but as Amy's time grew closer so
did our concern about leaving her for too long.

David enjoyed the winter, his first with two women and a small child to keep him
company. I felt better than I had the previous winter, naturally, but there were more and more
days of fog and rain which made me feel closed in. The last winter I'd hated because I'd been so
terribly lonely and afraid. This winter was much easier, but still, by Christmas I was restless and
we still had at least two more months of coast winter, and Amy's birthing to get through.

For Christmas David killed another hen, and I braved the cold to walk to the store in
town to buy a small ham and apples. I made applesauce with cinnamon. David dug the last of our
garden carrots. Amy boiled them and added butter and brown sugar. I made a rice pudding that
Sampson loved--all over his face. We celebrated, as David said, "in style." Our gifts were few. I
remember that Christmas so well.

It started early, with all of us up as soon as dawn broke. Amy and I were ready to open
the presents that lay under the small tree David had cut from the woods behind the house. David
wanted to eat breakfast first. Amy and I agreed that we could delay until we'd made coffee, but
otherwise, why wait? Sampson was up, feeling our excitement, babbling and laughing. Amy
looked at me in pretend despair. It was barely dawn. She flung her arms like she was giving
up.

"If I live through a hundred and fifty Christmases with you, David Smithers, God forbid,
I'll never understand--" She turned back to me, her eyes wide and eyebrows lifted. "I do
understand Sophie, I really do. He loves surprises, and he hates them." She paused.

I said, "Explain it to me then. Is it something to do with a man's stomach always coming
first?"

David was pacing from the tree to the window looking over the ocean, and back to the
tree. "Here now, you two. Don't gang up on me. I just think a little something, maybe a little
oatmeal to tide us over. You know we always--" He started toward the stove.

Amy blocked his way, her belly making a good barrier. "Yes, I know 'we always' but
this time we don't. This time we open our presents first."

"But, why?"

"Because I say so, and you know better than to annoy a pregnant woman." She gave him
a little shove that tumbled him into a chair.

"You see, Sophie," she said, as if David wasn't there, "he hates it when it's all over. He
waits so long. Christmas is his favorite day. He fumbles around the packages, feeling this one
and that, doesn't matter if it's his or not. You saw him."

I had. Just like a kid, down on his knees prowling around the tree, squeezing the
presents.

Sampson didn't know the rules. All he knew was pretty colors under, of all things, a big
bush thing in the house. We all heard a
ri-i-p
and, "Da Da," and saw Sampson waving a
harmonica. As with everything, it went straight to his mouth for a chew. One good suck in the
right place and he stopped in astonishment.

"What a smart boy." Amy handed him a present of his own. "Would you like to start
now?" She gave her gift of the harmonica to David. "Or wait 'til your son does it all for
you?"

"Seems I've got no choice. All three of you, I bet all four of you, are set on having things
your way." Still, he waited until we were almost through with opening our presents before he
started on his.

It wasn't just what we gave to each other that I remember so well from that Christmas, it
was the absence of tension. No one was worried, or testy. Amy didn't worry about her baby. I
didn't feel closed in or annoyed with Sampson, or feel left out when they talked about their baby.
David relaxed because we did, and spent the whole day with us, instead of escaping to his paints.
Sampson responded to the happiness and toys and pretty paper to throw around. David played
checkers with me, and lost, but regained his manly superiority, as he called it, when he beat Amy
at chess. The chess set was his gift to her. She teased him into another game and they were still at
it when Sampson and I went to bed. Much, much later he woke me when he slid in beside
me.

"Sorry," he whispered, "Didn't mean to wake you."

"It's okay," I whispered close to his ear. On impulse I nipped it sharply.

"Oho, woman! Think you can get away with that do you?" He tweaked my nose.

I grabbed his hand away.

He made quick little bites at my throat.

I was weak from keeping my giggling quiet and his hands to himself. Wanting him
flushed through me so that I didn't, couldn't, didn't want to stop him. Sometimes I think of David,
and that...fulfillment...that only...sexual love can know...

That night too, is why I cherish that Christmas memory so. It was the only time we
made love with Amy there in the house. Maybe if I'd been more unbending about that...

Aunt Sophie seemed confused. We were both embarrassed. The fire was about out and it
was late.

I suggested we go to bed. Quietly, we did.

After breakfast next morning, I eased her back into her memories as we worked on a
couple of casual pants-suits I'd wear at work. My job is in a camera shop. I serve customers by
day and have the use of the developing and printing equipment at night. It's an ideal setup
because I can do my own printing of the shots I take on weekends and for special occasions of
goings-on in town. The best ones I sell to our local newspaper. So far, the profits are small but
I've reached the point where I receive more calls than I make, and that's encouraging.

I was anxious for Aunt Sophie to get her story finished. I wanted to know about what
happened to Sampson? I feared the worst. It seemed more gentle, and easier, to start with the
second baby.