Runaway

communicated itself to Irene, however. She said in a more subdued voice—but with an undertone of defiance—“That’s just the way they get. When they’re sick like that, they can’t help it. They can’t think about nobody but themselves.”
    Sara’s eyes were closed, but she opened them immediately. “Oh, my dear ones,” she said, as if laughing at herself. “My Juliet. My Penelope.”
    Penelope seemed to be getting used to her. At least she did not cry, this morning, or turn her face away.
    “Here,” said Sara, reaching for one of her magazines. “Set her down and let her work at this.”
    Penelope looked dubious for a moment, then grabbed a page and tore it vigorously.
    “There you go,” said Sara. “All babies love to tear up magazines. I remember.”
    On the bedside chair there was a bowl of Cream of Wheat, barely touched.
    “You didn’t eat your breakfast?” Juliet said. “Is that not what you wanted?”
    Sara looked at the bowl as if serious consideration was called for, but couldn’t be managed.
    “I don’t remember. No, I guess I didn’t want it.” She had a little fit of giggling and gasping. “Who knows? Crossed my mind—she could be poisoning me.
    “I’m just kidding,” she said when she recovered. “But she’s very fierce. Irene. We mustn’t underestimate—Irene. Did you see the hairs on her arms?”
    “Like cats’ hairs,” said Juliet.
    “Like skunks’.”
    “We must hope none of them get into the jam.”
    “Don’t make me—laugh any more—”
    Penelope became so absorbed in tearing up magazines that in a while Juliet was able to leave her in Sara’s room and carry the Cream of Wheat out to the kitchen. Without saying anything, she began to make an eggnog. Irene was in and out, carrying boxes of jam jars to the car. On the back steps, Sam was hosing off the earth that clung to the newly dug potatoes. He had begun to sing—too softly at first for his words to be heard. Then, as Irene came up the steps, more loudly.
    “Irene, good ni-i-ight,

Irene, good night,

Good night, Irene, good night, Irene,

I’ll see you in my dreams.”

    Irene, in the kitchen, swung around and yelled, “Don’t sing that song about me.”
    “What song about you?” said Sam, with feigned amazement. “Who’s singing a song about you?”
    “You were. You just were.”
    “Oh—that song. That song about Irene? The girl in the song? By golly—I forgot that was your name too.”
    He started up again, but humming, stealthily. Irene stood listening, flushed, with her chest going up and down, waiting to pounce if she should hear a word.
    “Don’t you sing about me. If it’s got my name in it, it’s about me.”
    Suddenly Sam burst out in full force.
    “Last Saturday night I got married,

Me and my wife settled down—”

    “Stop it. You stop it,” cried Irene, wide-eyed, inflamed. “If you don’t stop I’ll go out there and squirt the hose on you.”
    Sam was delivering jam, that afternoon, to various grocery stores and a few gift shops which had placed orders. He invited Juliet to come along. He had gone to the hardware store and bought a brand-new baby’s car seat for Penelope.
    “That’s one thing we don’t have in the attic,” he said. “When you were little, I don’t know if they had them. Anyway, it wouldn’t have mattered. We didn’t have a car.”
    “It’s very spiffy,” said Juliet. “I hope it didn’t cost a fortune.”
    “A mere bagatelle,” said Sam, bowing her into the car.
    Irene was in the field picking more raspberries. These would be for pies. Sam tooted the horn twice and waved as they set off, and Irene decided to respond, raising one arm as if batting away a fly.
    “That’s a dandy girl,” Sam said. “I don’t know how we would have survived without her. But I imagine she seems pretty rough to you.”
    “I hardly know her.”
    “No. She’s scared stiff of you.”
    “Surely not.” And trying to think of something appreciative or at least neutral to say about Irene, Juliet asked how her husband had been killed at the chicken barn.
    “I don’t know if he was a criminal type or just immature. Anyway, he got in with some goons who were planning a sideline in stolen chickens and of course they managed to set off the alarm and the farmer came out with a gun and whether he meant to shoot him or not he did—”
    “My God.”
    “So Irene and her in-laws went to court but the fellow got off. Well, he would. It must have been