Runaway

either of them usually talked to her. Now and then they would speak to each other, in almost a normal way. But there would be a recklessness in the room that had not yet been expressed in words. Lauren would hope, or try to hope— more accurately, she used to try to hope—that somehow they would stop the fight from breaking out. And she had always believed—she did yet—that she was not the only one to hope this. They did, too. Partly they did. But partly they were eager for what would come. They never overcame this eagerness. There had never been one time when this feeling was in the room, the change in the air, the shocking brightness that made all shapes, all the furniture and utensils, sharper, yet denser— never one time that the worst did not follow.
    Lauren used to be unable to stay in her room, she had to be where they were, flinging herself at them, protesting and weeping, till one or the other would pick her up and carry her back to bed, saying, “All right, all right, don’t bug us, just don’t bug us, it’s our life, we have to be able to talk.” “To talk” meant to pace around the house delivering precise harangues of condemnation, shrieks of contradiction, until they had to start flinging ashtrays, bottles, dishes, at each other. One time Eileen ran outside and threw herself down on the lawn, tearing up chunks of dirt and grass, while Harry hissed from the doorway, “Oh, that’s the style, give them a show.” Once Harry bolted himself in the bathroom, calling, “There’s only one way to get out of this torment.” Both of them threatened the use of pills and razors.
    “Oh God, let’s not do this,” Eileen had said once. “Please, please, let’s stop doing this.” And Harry had answered in a high whining voice that cruelly imitated hers, “You’re the one doing it—
you
stop.”
    Lauren had got over trying to figure out what the fights were about. Always about a new thing (tonight she lay in the dark and thought it was probably about her going away, about Eileen’s making that decision on her own) and always about the same thing—the thing that belonged to them, that they could never give up.
    She had also got over her idea that there was a tender spot in both of them—that Harry made jokes all the time because he was sad, and Eileen was brisk and dismissive because of something about Harry that seemed to shut her out—and that if she, Lauren, could only explain each of them to the other one, things would get better.
    Next day they would be muted, broken, shamed, and queerly exhilarated. “People have to do this, it’s bad to repress your feelings,” Eileen had once told Lauren. “There’s even a theory that repressing anger gives you cancer.”
    Harry referred to the fights as rows. “Sorry about the row,” he would say. “Eileen is a very volatile woman. All I can say, sweetie—oh God, all I can say is—these things happen.”
    On this night Lauren actually fell asleep before they had really begun to do their damage. Before she was even sure they would do it. The gin bottle hadn’t yet made an appearance when she went away to bed.
    Harry woke her up.
    “Sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, honey. Could you just get up and come downstairs?”
    “Is it morning?”
    “No. It’s still late at night. Eileen and I want to talk to you. We’ve got something to talk to you about. It’s sort of about what you already know. Come on, now. You want your slippers?”
    “I hate slippers,” Lauren reminded him. She went ahead of him down the stairs. He was still dressed and Eileen was still dressed too, waiting in the hall. She said to Lauren, “There’s somebody else here that you know.”
    It was Delphine. Delphine was sitting on the sofa, wearing a ski jacket over her usual black pants and sweater. Lauren had never seen her in outdoor clothes before. Her face sagged, her skin looked pouchy, her body immensely defeated.
    “Can’t we go in the kitchen?” Lauren said. She didn’t know why, but the kitchen seemed safer. Somewhere less special, and with the table to hold on to if they all sat around it.
    “Lauren wants to go in the kitchen, we’ll go in the kitchen,” Harry said.
    When they were sitting there, he said, “Lauren. I’ve explained that I told you about the baby. About the baby we had before you and what happened to that baby.”
    He waited until Lauren said, “Yes.”
    “May I say something now?” said Eileen. “May I say something to