Denise was in no mood to be gracious in any event. Cross and sulky, wearing a dress with a skirt so bouffant it ballooned across the couch like a peony, she glared at all of us, as if the whole Greene family were somehow to blame for her unwanted condition. (Which, Irene informed me sotto voce when I arrived, was absolutely not to be mentioned—a totally forbidden topic.) The person who might have been to blame for Denise’s condition, Jonathan Moore, was attentive to her, and occasionally their eyes met, but there was no overt intimacy. Jonathan’s lips might have lingered overlong on the cigarette he lit for her, and her fingertips might have lingered overlong when he passed it to her, but I was probably the only one who noticed. As we drank cocktails in the living room, Leon kept his arm around Denise, gazing upon her with the single-minded adoration usually reserved for Romans gazing at Caesar in the sword-and-sandal flicks.

Phil Tobin and his wife joined us. His wife, a bubbling font of energy, insisted on rounding up Irene’s savage children to sing along while she played Christmas carols on the grand piano. I made myself a second martini before lunch and played with the slender gold bracelet I wore, my Christmas present from Terrence, sent from Alabama.

At lunch Gordon sat at the head of the table, Irene at the other end. Leon sat between Elsie and Denise. He patted her hand reflexively, encouraging her to eat, though she picked at her food, which had been expertly if soullessly catered. (I recognized as much now that I was cooking myself.) Jonathan and I sat across from them, and Phil and his wife beside us. The children were all at Irene’s end of the table, at Leon’s request. He doted on them, but they annoyed Denise. They would have annoyed a Botticelli angel. The youngest, Cindy, sat in a high chair banging on the tray. The twins were dueling with their forks. Gordon Junior picked broccoli off his plate and let it fall to the floor, where one of the white-gloved waiters picked it up and took it away. Then he dropped another piece. Irene told him if he did it again, she would have him spanked.