"I'm not sure you should be quite so hard on your family, though," he said. "It seems to me that most of the town shares your tendency to see things the way they want to see them."
"Most of the town are related to us, one way or another. At least the ones who have been here a generation or two. And the rest have just been around us too long."
"That must be it," he said. "You see, shortly after I got here, something happened that seemed to give everyone the bizarre idea that I--" He froze, looking over my shoulder, and I turned around to see Samantha and one of the bridesmaids.
"Hello, Meg," Samantha said. "You look comfortable." I felt as guilty as a night watchman caught sleeping on the job.
"No reason not to be comfortable while I work," I said. "We've been discussing the gowns. Michael has some ideas for making the hoops more manageable."
I felt guilty picking on Michael that way, but he rose to the occasion. After enduring a seemingly endless conversation on how the hoops could be better constructed to allow us to fit through normal doorways, sit in the limos, and go to the bathroom without too much outside assistance, I excused myself and fled outside on the pretext of seeing if Dad needed help. Michael jumped up and followed me out.
"Nice of you to come all the way out here from town," I said.
"It's just down the street, really," Michael said. "I'm staying at Mom's house."
"Which one is that?"
"Your mother calls it the Kaplan bungalow."
"Oh, yes," I said. "Not that any Kaplans have lived there for fifteen years."
As we went out the back door, we ran into Eric, sporting an extremely large and already dirty bandage and followed, naturally, by Duck.
"Hi, Aunt Meg," Eric said. "Who's he?" I suppose he had been too concerned with his finger earlier to notice Michael on the porch.
"This is Michael Waterston," I said, in my best formal manner. "His mother runs the dress shop. Michael, this is Eric McReady, my nephew." Michael leaned down to shake the rather sticky hand Eric was offering. "And this is Duck." Michael won Eric's heart instantly by solemnly turning to Duck and offering his hand, which Duck pecked.
"I've seen you two around," Michael said. "Yes," I said, "Duck follows Eric around just like a dog."
"Duck's better than any old dog," Eric said, loyally. "Come see what he did." Eric led us to a spot in the bushes where a single duck egg was resting.
"Duck laid an egg," Eric said.
"That's very smart of her," I said. "Him," Eric corrected. I decided it wasn't my job to explain that one to him.
"What should we do with it?" Eric asked. I looked at Duck, who showed no apparent interest in sitting on the damned thing.
"Well," Michael said, "I suppose you could always eat it."
"No!" Eric wailed. "I'm not going to let you eat Duck's babies! No, NO, NO!" He flung himself down to protect the egg with such violence that I was sure he would crack it. Duck began quacking hysterically.
"Hush, Eric," I said, glaring at Michael. "Nobody's going to eat Duck's babies."
"I didn't mean eat it," Michael said, desperately, "I meant heat it! Heat it! So it will hatch."
Eric looked around, still suspicious, but with noticeably less distress.
"That's what you have to do to hatch eggs," Michael went on. "You heat them. Most ducks sit on the eggs to heat them, but Duck seems to prefer following you around, so we have to figure out some other way to keep her ... his egg warm."
"Like what?" Eric asked, sitting up and cradling the egg in his hand.
"Well, when I was a kid I had a little machine that you plugged in and it kept the eggs the right temperature for them to hatch. An incubator, it's called. I hatched some chicks from hen's eggs that way."
"Where do you get a ink-ink-was--"
"In-cu-ba-tor," Michael said. Eric mouthed it after him. I could see the dollar signs in his little eyes; he was going to dash right off and collect twenty cents from his grandfather for learning a new, four-syllable word. "Where do you get one?" he asked. Michael and I looked at each other.
"I suppose a pet store would have one," Michael suggested.
"Aunt Meg, you could find a pet store with an incubator," Eric said, in the sort of tone that implied that only his incomparable Aunt Meg could perform such a miracle.
"I suppose I could try," I said.
"Try real hard!" Eric pleaded.
"I will, I promise."
"And soon!" he wailed. "What if Duck's egg gets cold while you're looking?"