Sally drank all the water in the little pitcher by the bedside. It must have been a boa constrictor, she thought. She crept down the hall to the bathroom, then downstairs to the encyclopedias on the bottom shelf of the bookcase.

“All snakes are carnivorous and as a rule take living prey only,” she read. “Many swallow their victims alive; others first kill it by smothering it between the coils of their body. The prey is always swallowed entire, and as its girth exceeds that of the snake, the progress of deglutition is very laborious and slow.”

Sally went back upstairs and crawled into bed. Certainly their marriage wasn’t the way it used to be, she thought. But was it supposed to be like that, after all this time? Wasn’t there supposed to be a lag and a droop in a marriage after thirty-three years?

It was nearly six when she closed her eyes and remembered the turkey carcass she had left simmering on the back of the stove. Would Dave think to turn it off?

Then she was smelling coffee and hearing Alice and Lauren murmuring in the kitchen, the ding-ding of the timer and the drone of the dishwasher—all the little happy sounds of a modern household beginning to stir.

The Rudolph sweater was gone and Alice was wearing serious clothes this morning, a black linen sheath and a brown silk jacket. She poured coffee and said, “I’ve been thinking.” She got the sugar bowl and the cream, and napkins. She sat down, then got back up and reached for saucers. “I’ve been thinking. If Dave is leaving you, then Dave should be the one to leave.”

“But I’m the one with family,” said Sally. “Dave doesn’t have anywhere to go.”

Alice glanced at Lauren, then jumped up and got three spoons. “This is such a busy time for us. It’s the holiday season, and Bryan is coming in tomorrow, then the wedding in February. Christmas is a time for loving, happy, family feelings. You can’t be feeling very happy right now, Sally—we’ve thought it might be easier for everybody if you stay with Aunt Ethel until you work things out.”

Aunt Ethel was an efficiency expert, famous for her rat-trap histories and her lifelong “Total Time” records. She hated waste, sloth, and sloppiness. For Aunt Ethel, making a cup of coffee was an exercise in motion mindedness. Reach, grasp, use, return—there was not a wasted movement. With one hand she poured coffee into two cups and rinsed the pot, while with the other she opened a little pocket door in the wall and tossed the coffee grounds out onto the compost heap. With a gurgling sound the rinse water trickled out through a series of pipes and tubing onto a new bed of lettuces.