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long time I heard how a once-solid woman, Gladys, her name was, could shrink through disease and bad luck and loneliness and confusion and age until she was no more than a statistic falling through the cracks. Not all her connections to reality seemed too secure, but she was very optimistic. We talked intently until a voice booming “Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night,” surprised me soundly.
    It had no effect on the crowd. The room was so flooded with goodwill there were high-water marks on the walls, and nobody wanted to pull the plug.
    However, I had late night with Mackenzie as an incentive plan for moving on, so I said good night to Gladys and stood up, the first to go.
    I wasn’t the only one leaving. Peter and Laura were at the front door. Peter had his coat on and presumably, Laura would have also been bundled up and away, but Santa had her shoulder in a vise.
    Alice Clausen had emerged. She stood by the door with her fixed and anxious smile, as if she saw nothing odd in the taut little drama before her. In fact, as if she saw nothing, anywhere, ever.
    They were like a bad, slow-moving silent film. Peter waited, tense and dangerous as a Doberman, and Laura stood limply as if all her bones had dissolved. Her father, in disgust, released her, turned and walked back into the crowd.
    “Larkly parny,” Alice Clausen said, breaking the silence. She giggled. “Lorvely parny. Party.” She hiccuped. Her eyes crossed, and she peered at me, leaning closer and closer, until I realized the rest of her was also tilting en route to the floor. I put out my hands to stop her at the same time Laura grabbed one of her arms and Peter the other.
    “Can I help?” I asked.
    Peter shook his head. “Laura knows how to handle it, but thanks anyway.”
    “I’ll—I’ll see you both tomorrow,” I said.
    Still propping up her mother, Laura turned and pierced me with a look so dark and intense it felt like a scream.
    “Save me,” her eyes cried. “Save me.”
    I would like to think that if I’d known for sure how to save her, and from what, I would have done so, instead of standing there gape-mouthed, convincing myself that what I had really seen was a desperately embarrassed teenager whose privacy I was violating.
    If I had known for sure, I would have stayed.
    That’s what I’d like to think.

Three
    AT HOME, I MARKED COMPOSITIONS AND LISTENED TO SEASONAL SELECTIONS on the radio until “The Little Drummer Boy” became the holiday equivalent of Chinese water torture. In silence, I continued working. Macavity the cat slurked over, on the prowl for moving ballpoint pens. I looked at Laura’s paper again, sighed, tried in vain to find my way through to its secret heart, then put it aside. There were other papers to grade.
    Macavity immediately sat down on her composition, purring, poised to thwack my pen the next time I used it.
    I had a few pleasant surprises that began with “I never thought I’d say this, but…” and went on to express actual pleasure in the experience of poetry.
    Not enough, though. The numbers were on the side of the maddening fakes who numbly regurgitated my words, my least favorite species of student.
    Forced to make a choice, I’d take the depressing but honest variations on “Why All Poems (Especially the One You Assigned) Are Incredibly Stupid and Boring.” For example, from the pen of Clemmy Tomkins: “A person should say what he means so normal people could understand without a teacher. Who cares anyway because mostly its about symbols and images and dumb things no normal person cares about anyway except love maybe but even then it isn’t love like for a normal guy so its still dumb.”
    I fixed his punctuation, suggested changes in wording and then gave up, since brain transplants haven’t yet been perfected, and I could think of no other method of improving Clemmy’s writing. I put the paper aside for Mackenzie, who thinks of himself as a normal guy even though he’s known