Not contrite. Not contrite at all.

On the morning of Christmas Eve, Linda fails to meet Thomas at the bottom of her street as planned. Eileen has just walked in the door, back from New York for the holiday, and Linda cannot bring herself to leave, particularly since it seems to be Linda whom Eileen most wants to see. Though, in truth, they are strangers. Linda has been careful that day not to wear anything that once belonged to Eileen (not wishing to seem a diminished model of the older cousin) and has dressed in clothes bought from her tips: a slim gray woolen skirt and a black cardigan, the sleeves rolled. She is saving up to buy a pair of leather boots.

Linda needn't have worried. Eileen comes home in tie-dye, fresh from Greenwich Village, where she now lives. She doesn't wear a bra and has on long leather boots like the ones Linda wants. There are beads around her neck and not a trace of makeup on her face. Linda, with her hair curled for the holiday, looks her cousin over carefully after they embrace.

In the privacy of the girls' room, Eileen speaks of head shops and sensual ma.s.sage. Of a band called "The Mamas and the Papas." Of hash brownies and a job with a project called Upward Bound. She has a boyfriend who plays harmonica for a blues band, and she likes the music of Sonny and Cher. She talks about why women shouldn't use mascara and why hair is a political statement. Why Linda and Patty and Erin also shouldn't wear a bra.

"Don't be ashamed of your past," Eileen says privately to Linda when the others have left the room. "It was just your body acting, and you should never be ashamed of your body."

Linda appreciates the kindness inherent in the advice but is more than a little worried about what Eileen thinks she knows.

During Christmas Eve dinner, Jack bounces back from the door to the apartment to say that Linda has a visitor. She freezes in her chair at the kitchen table, knowing who it is.

"You'd better see to it," the aunt says after a time.

Thomas stands outside in the hallway, a small package in his hand. The box is inexpertly wrapped with a noose of Scotch tape. He has his overcoat on, the collar up, his ears reddened from the cold.

She is embarra.s.sed at the thought that she has nothing for him.

"I couldn't get away," she says. "Eileen had just come."

He looks hurt all the same. She has hardly ever seen him look hurt, and the knowledge that she has caused this squeezes her chest.

He holds the box out. "This is for you," he says.

Embarra.s.sment and remorse make her forget manners. She opens the package in the hallway while he stands awkwardly, his hands in his pockets. It takes an age to excavate the package through the noose of tape. Inside the box is a gold cross with a tiny diamond in its center. A gold cross on a chain. A note reads, "For Magdalene."

She shuts her eyes.

"Turn around," he says. "I'll put it on for you."

At the nape of her neck, she feels his fingers - - too large for the delicate clasp. "I'll do it," she says, when Jack, whose curiosity can't contain itself, opens the door to get another look at the mysterious stranger. Linda has no choice then but to invite Thomas in. too large for the delicate clasp. "I'll do it," she says, when Jack, whose curiosity can't contain itself, opens the door to get another look at the mysterious stranger. Linda has no choice then but to invite Thomas in.

She sees it all from Thomas's eyes: the wallpaper, water-stained in the corner. The Christmas Eve dinner table next to the sink full of dishes. The counter littered with pie crust and potato skins, crusted fish in a frying pan. The lamp hanging over the center of the table, knocked so often the shade has split.

They walk into the den with the plaid sofa. The smell of cigarette smoke is a pall in the air. The TV is on, a Christmas special.

Linda introduces Thomas to the cousins and the aunt, the cross like a beacon at her throat. The aunt is reserved and wary, taking in the good overcoat and the Brooks Brothers shirt, the leather gloves and the best shoes. Jack is levitating from excitement: here is an older boy who talks to him, winks at him. Thomas nods to Michael, then sits, still in his overcoat, on the plaid sofa answering questions put to him by intrepid Eileen. The aunt, in red lipstick and tight curls, watches all the while. Giving no quarter.

Linda, in a white noise of mortification, watches as from a distance. Watches Thomas shed his coat and bend over from the sofa to race tiny metal cars with Jack. Watches an eerily knowing glance pa.s.s between the aunt and Thomas. Watches as Patty and Erin, saddled with dish duty in the kitchen, peek in from time to time, clearly intrigued by the handsome boy.

In an hour, Thomas has Jack on his knee, and they are listening to Bing Crosby.

Thomas stays until the aunt begins ordering the cousins to dress for the cold. They will take the bus to church for midnight Ma.s.s, she says, Thomas pointedly uninvited.

Before they all leave, Thomas and Linda kiss behind the kitchen door. "Merry Christmas," Thomas whispers, a sentimental boy after all. Even for all the Lowell and the O'Neill.

"Thank you for the cross," she says. "I'll always wear it."

"I like your cousins," he says. "Jack especially."

She nods. "He's a good boy."

"Your aunt doesn't like me," he says.

"It has nothing to do with you," she says.

"Can you get away tomorrow?" he asks.

She thinks. "In the afternoon, maybe."

"I'll pick you up at one o'clock," he says. "We'll go to Boston."

"Boston?"

"I love the city when it's shut down," he says.

In the hallway, after Thomas has left, the aunt slips on her coat and says so that only Linda can hear, "He's the type that'll break your heart."

They walk empty streets, the rest of the world trapped inside by the cold that whistles in from the harbor and snakes through the narrow lanes of the North End. Christmas trees are lit in windows, even in the middle of the day. Linda imagines mountains of torn wrapping paper, toys hidden underfoot, a scene she's just come from herself. Eileen gave her a tie-dye shirt; Michael a Beatles alb.u.m; Erin a hat she knit herself. The aunt gave her sensible cotton underwear bought on discount at the department store and a missal with her name printed in gold letters in the lower right-hand corner. Linda M. Fallon. Linda M. Fallon. The The M. M. for Marie, a confirmation name she never uses. for Marie, a confirmation name she never uses.

Linda shivers, the peacoat hopelessly inadequate in the chill. She has on Erin's hat, but her hair flies in the wind all the same. She has deliberately not worn a scarf so that the cross will show, but now she has to hold her coat closed with her hand. With her other hand, she holds Thomas's. Glove to glove.

The emptiness is strange and magnificent. Snow falls and sticks to eyelashes. The entire city is ensconced within a bubble of intense quiet, with only the odd, slow rolling of chains on the tires of the intermittent cabs. It's not hard to imagine the city as a stage set, with all the shops shuttered, the cafes closed. People existing only in the imagination. All the bustle and the smell of coffee needing to be guessed at.

"This is perfect," Linda says to Thomas. "Absolutely perfect." She means the sense of endless time, the promise of possibility, the clarity of the air.

They walk up the back end of Beacon Hill and then down Beacon Street itself. They stroll along the tree belt on Commonwealth Avenue and imagine what it would be like to have an apartment in one of the townhouses. They have vivid imaginations and describe to each other the mantels, the covers on the bed, the books in the bookcase. They agree they will always be friends, no matter what happens to them. They walk along Boylston Street and up Tremont along the Common and stop in at the only place that is open, a Bickford's across from the Park Street subway station.

Stragglers and winos sit in chairs set apart from each other, their watch caps still on, the tips missing from their mittens. They have come in to get out of the cold, and one of them is drinking milk. The smell in the restaurant is of unwashed bodies, old bacon, and sadness. The bacon, doubtless cooked earlier in the day, lingers like a layer of air they might have to breathe. The sadness is thick in the atmosphere and cannot be ignored. The cafe feels to Linda oddly like church, with the men sitting in their separate pews.

Linda and Thomas take a table near the entrance, as far into the restaurant as Thomas is willing to go, an innate claustrophobia making him more comfortable near exits. They order hot chocolate and sit in the quiet, for the moment not speaking, the only sounds the clinking of silverware against china, the register drawer popping open. She watches Thomas watch the b.u.ms, and she has a clear sense that he knows more about what has happened to the men than she does, that he instinctively understands, that his skin might be more permeable than hers. There is something in the shape of his mouth that suggests that he contains within himself some great corruption, not related necessarily to s.e.x or to alcohol, but to chaos and subversion.

Beloved, she wants to say aloud, not knowing how or why the word has sprung to her lips. she wants to say aloud, not knowing how or why the word has sprung to her lips.

There is a duffel bag in the backseat of the Skylark, a tan bag with a zipper and a handle. It might be a sports bag, though it is made of such heavy and thick canvas, it reminds Linda of the army.

"What's in the bag?" she asks.

Thomas has come back on the team bus, Linda on the spectator bus, hers skidding into the parking lot like a skier. Thomas's hair, still wet from his shower, freezes before he can get the heat going in the Skylark. The storm came in fast from the ocean in the afternoon, and the roads are treacherous and slick. Thomas drives hunched against the steering wheel, peering through a small patch in the windshield that hasn't yet iced over. The leather top of the convertible m.u.f.fles the ping of the sleet.

"It's just something for Donny T.," Thomas says absently, concentrating on his driving.

"What for Donny T.?" Linda asks.

"Just some stuff he wants me to hold for him."

The hockey game was at Norwell, and their team lost two-zip. "Were you hurt?" Linda asks.

"What?"

Thomas inches slowly along Main to Spring, following a truck. On Fitzpatrick, the truck speeds up and Thomas does as well, thinking the roads must be better, though the visibility is still poor. Thomas takes the turn at Nantasket Avenue too fast, and the car makes a one-eighty. Linda puts her hands out to the dashboard to brace herself.

"This is insane," Thomas says.

He tries to turn the car around, but the street is so slippery that the Skylark slides across the road, and, as if in slow motion, comes to rest against a telephone pole. Thomas guns the engine, attempting to pull away, but the tires merely spin on the ice. Above them, heavily coated wires sway in the wind.

"We're going to have to walk," Thomas says. "We'll leave the car here and come back for it when they've salted the roads."

"Walk where?" Linda asks. It's miles still to the apartment.

"My house is just up the hill," he says.

All week, the newspapers have been reporting that it has been the worst January in fifty-four years. At the beach, sleet freezes a house so thoroughly that when the sun rises the next morning, it seems a castle encased in ice. The harbor freezes as well, pushing the boats trapped there higher and higher until the ice cracks the hulls. Power goes out for days, and school is canceled four times: the buses can't get through. There is a thaw, and the entire town thinks the worst is over. But then the storm comes and surprises everyone, even the weathermen, who have predicted mild temperatures.

Thomas and Linda have to side-step up the hill, holding on to tree branches. Linda has worn her new knee-high leather boots that she bought with her tip money; they have slippery soles and are useless now. Thomas, who has more traction, grips her hand so that she won't slide down the hill. Periodically, they stop for breath by a tree and kiss. Sleet runs down their necks. Snot has frozen on Thomas's upper lip, and he looks like a b.u.m with his watch cap pulled down low over his eyebrows and ears. His mouth and tongue are warm.

Though it is a miserable month for school and transportation, it has been a good one for ice-skating. In his bas.e.m.e.nt, Thomas has unearthed a pair of children's ice-skates with runners, and periodically he has come by the apartment for Jack. He's taken the boy to the marshes, where he's taught him to skate. He holds Jack's hand while the boy falls on his knees, and he skates with Jack between his legs, holding him up under the arms. The boy grows giddy with accomplishment. Thomas makes Jack a small hockey stick and arranges "games" between Michael and Jack on one side and himself and Rich, his seven-year-old brother, on the other. Linda sometimes puts on Eileen's skates and hovers near Thomas and the boys, but mostly she stays on the sidelines, wrapping her arms around herself and stomping her boots to keep warm. She watches Thomas with Jack and Rich the way a wife might watch a husband with her cherished sons. Proud and happy and feeling a sort of completion that cannot be gotten elsewhere.

The journey to Thomas's house takes nearly forty-five minutes. In decent weather, it can be done in five. Thomas's father meets them at the door, worry creasing his long face. Thomas's mouth has frozen, and he can't even make the introductions. Thomas's mother, a tall, angular woman with navy eyes that slice through Linda, brings them towels and helps them out of their coats. When Thomas can speak, he introduces Linda, whose hands are stiff and red. She hopes the red will be taken for a reaction to the cold.

"The storm came on fast," the father says.

"We worried about you in the car," Thomas's mother says.

Linda removes her boots and stands in her stocking feet in Thomas's living room, her arms crossed, tucking her hands into her armpits. She has never seen such a room, has lacked even the imagination to picture it. It is long and elegant, with banks of leaded-gla.s.s windows that face the sea. Two fires are burning in separate hearths, and at least a half-dozen chairs and two sofas in matching stripes and chintzes are arranged in groupings. Linda wonders how one decides, on any given night, where to sit. She thinks then of the den in the triple-decker, the TV flickering, the single sofa threadbare at the arms, Michael and Erin and Patty and Jack using the couch as a backrest while they watch The Wonderful World of Disney The Wonderful World of Disney. She hopes none of them is out in the storm.

Thomas leads Linda to a sofa, and they sit together with the mother opposite. It feels to Linda like an examination. The father comes in with hot chocolate and seems festive with the occasion, as a small boy might be who's just been told that school has been canceled. Thomas's mother, in her periwinkle cardigan and matching skirt, scrutinizes Thomas's girlfriend, taking in the lipstick and the denim skirt and the sweater under which Linda isn't wearing a bra.

"You're new to town," the mother says, sipping her hot chocolate. Linda holds her mug with both hands, trying to warm them.

"Sort of," Linda says, glancing down. Not only has she worn a sweater through which her nipples, erect now from the cold that has penetrated her bones, are plainly visible (stupid Eileen), but the sweater has a low V-neck, showcasing the cross.

"And you live in what part of town?" the mother asks, hardly bothering with pleasantries.

"Park Street," Linda says, putting the mug down and crossing her arms over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Beside her, Thomas is flexing his fingers, trying to get the circulation back. He hasn't touched the hot chocolate. The denim skirt is too short and too tight on her thighs. Linda resists the urge to tug at it.

"That would be in ... ?" the mother asks.

"Rockaway," Linda says.

"Really," the mother says, not even bothering to hide her incredulity.

"Great storm," Thomas's father says beside them.

"I'm going to give Linda a tour," Thomas says, standing. And Linda thinks how remarkable it is to have a house in which one can give a tour.

They climb the stairs to Thomas's room, step behind the door and kiss. Thomas lifts her sweater and puts his cold hands on her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He raises the damp denim of her skirt to her hips. She is standing on her toes, up against the wall. She can hear one of the parents at the bottom of the stairs and is certain he or she will come up and enter the room. It's the risk, or the thrill, or her panic that brings the image, unbidden, to her mind: a man lifting the skirt of a dress.

"I can't," she whispers, pushing at Thomas.

Reluctantly, Thomas lets her go. She jigs her skirt and sweater down. They hear footsteps on the stairs, and Thomas kicks the door shut.

"What is it?" he asks.

She sits on the bed and, trying to erase the image, takes in the details of the room: the wooden desk, the piles of papers, the pens scattered on its surface. A dress shirt and a pair of trousers are crumpled in a corner. White curtains make a diamond of the window and seem too pretty for a boy's room. A bookcase is in the corner. "Oh G.o.d," she says quietly, and she covers her face with her hands.

"Linda, what is it?" Thomas asks, crouching in front of her, alarm in his voice.

She shakes her head back and forth.

"This?" he asks, clearly bewildered. "That?" he asks, pointing to the wall.

Footsteps pa.s.s once again by the door.

In the mirror over the dresser she can see the two of them: Thomas now sitting on the bed, his hair hastily finger-combed, his back slightly hunched. Herself, standing by the bookcase, arms crossed, her eyes pink-rimmed from the cold, her hair flattened from her hat.

On the desk next to the bookcase are pages of writing. She looks a bit closer. "Is that a poem you're working on?" she asks.

Thomas looks absently at the desk, and then stands, realizing that he's left his work exposed. He moves to the desk and picks up the pages.

"Is it something you can read to me?" she asks.

"No," he says.

"Are you sure?"

He shuffles the papers in his hand. "I'm sure."

"Let me see."

He hands her the first page. "It's just a draft," he says.

She turns the page around and reads what he has written there. It's a poem about a dive off a pier, a girl in the water in her slip. About moving lights in the background and the taunts of boys.

She reads the poem through and then reads it again.

"Water's silk," she says. "It felt like silk."

There is h.e.l.l to pay when they go downstairs: a mother who is frosty; a father who's had an earful from his wife. The father drifts into a room from which Linda can hear a television; the mother, a woman with a mission, calls a cab with chains. Linda puts her boots back on and stands, dismissed, with Thomas in the vestibule, waiting for the cab.

"In the duffel bag?" he says. "It's drugs."

The next day, in the car in back of the cottage, Thomas slides Linda's blouse and jacket off her shoulder and kisses the bony k.n.o.b there.

"I love this part of you best of all," he says.

"Really? Why?" It seems, in light of all the parts he has recently got to know, sort of beside the point.