Runaway

circumstances,” she said. “If you mean the fact that we’re not married, it’s hardly anything to take into account. Where we live, the people we know, it is not a thing anybody thinks about.”
    “Suppose not,” said Sam. “Was he married to the first one?”
    Juliet had told them about Eric’s wife, whom he had cared for during the eight years that she had lived after her car accident.
    “Ann? Yes. Well, I don’t really know. But yes. I think so. Yes.”
    Sara called into the front seat, “Wouldn’t it be nice to stop for ice cream?”
    “We’ve got ice cream in the fridge at home,” Sam called back. And added quietly, shockingly, to Juliet, “Take her into anyplace for a treat, and she’ll put on a show.”
    The windows were still down, the warm wind blew through the car. It was full summer—a season which never arrived, as far as Juliet could see, on the west coast. The hardwood trees were humped over the far edge of the fields, making blue-black caves of shade, and the crops and the meadows in front of them, under the hard sunlight, were gold and green. Vigorous young wheat and barley and corn and beans—fairly blistering your eyes.
    Sara said, “What’s this conference in aid of? In the front seat? We can’t hear back here for the wind.”
    Sam said, “Nothing interesting. Just asking Juliet if her fellow’s still doing the fishing.”
    Eric made his living prawn fishing, and had done so for a long time. Once he had been a medical student. That had come to an end because he had performed an abortion, on a friend (not a girlfriend). All had gone well, but somehow the story got out. This was something Juliet had thought of revealing to her broad-minded parents. She had wanted, perhaps, to establish him as an educated man, not just a fisherman. But why should that matter, especially now that Sam was a vegetable man? Also, their broad-mindedness was possibly not so reliable as she had thought.
    There was more to be sold than fresh vegetables and berries. Jam, bottled juice, relish, were turned out in the kitchen. The first morning of Juliet’s visit, raspberry-jam making was in progress. Irene was in charge, her blouse wet with steam or sweat, sticking to her skin between the shoulder blades. Every so often she flashed a look at the television set, which had been wheeled down the back hall to the kitchen doorway, so that you had to squeeze around it to get into the room. On the screen was a children’s morning program, showing a Bullwinkle cartoon. Now and then Irene gave a loud laugh at the cartoon antics, and Juliet laughed a little, to be comradely. Of this Irene took no notice.
    Counter space had to be cleared so that Juliet could boil and mash an egg for Penelope’s breakfast, and make some coffee and toast for herself. “Is that enough room?” Irene asked her, in a voice that was dubious, as if Juliet was an intruder whose demands could not be foreseen.
    Close-up, you could see how many fine black hairs grew on Irene’s forearms. Some grew on her cheeks, too, just in front of her ears.
    In her sidelong way she watched everything Juliet did, watched her fiddle with the knobs on the stove (not remembering at first which burners they controlled), watched her lifting the egg out of the saucepan and peeling off the shell (which stuck, this time, and came away in little bits rather than in large easy pieces), then watched her choosing the saucer to mash it in.
    “You don’t want her to drop that on the floor.” This was a reference to the china saucer. “Don’t you got a plastic dish for her?”
    “I’ll watch it,” Juliet said.
    It turned out that Irene was a mother, too. She had a boy three years old and a daughter just under two. Their names were Trevor and Tracy. Their father had been killed last summer in an accident at the chicken barn where he worked. She herself was three years younger than Juliet—twenty-two. The information about the children and the husband came out in answer to Juliet’s questions, and the age could be figured from what she said next.
    When Juliet said, “Oh, I’m sorry”—speaking about the accident and feeling that she had been rude to pry, and that it was now hypocritical of her to commiserate—Irene said, “Yeah. Right in time for my twenty-first birthday,” as if misfortunes were something to accumulate, like charms on a bracelet.
    After Penelope had eaten all of the egg that she would accept, Juliet hoisted her onto one hip and