the general direction of the copper sauce-pans lined against the wall. 'Stop worryin' about it,' Mrs. Snell ordered. 'What good's it gonna do to worry about it? Either he tells her or he don't.
That's all. What good's worryin' gonna do?'
'I'm not worryin' about it,' Sandra responded. 'The last thing I'm gonna do is worry about it. Only, it drives ya loony, the way that kid goes pussyfootin' all around the house. Ya can't hear him, ya know. I mean nobody can hear him, ya know. Just the other day I was shellin'
beans--right at this here table--and I almost stepped on his hand. He was sittin' right under the table.'
'Well. I wouldn't worry about it.'
'I mean ya gotta weigh every word ya say around him,' Sandra said.
'It drives ya loony.'
'I still can't drink this,' Mrs. Snell said. '. . . That's terrible.
When ya gotta weigh every word ya say and all.'
'It drives ya loony! I mean it. Half the time I'm half loony.' Sandra brushed some imaginary crumbs off her lap, and snorted. 'A four-year-old kid!'
'He's kind of a good-lookin' kid,' said Mrs. Snell. 'Them big brown eyes and all.'
Sandra snorted again. 'He's gonna have a nose just like the father.'
She raised her cup and drank from it without any difficulty. 'I don't know what they wanna stay up here all October for,' she said malcontentedly, lowering her cup. 'I mean none of 'em even go anywheres near the water now. She don't go in, he don't go in, the kid don't go in. Nobody goes in now. They don't even take that crazy boat out no more. I don't know what they threw good money away on it for.'
'I don't know how you can drink yours. I can't even drink mine.'
Sandra stared rancorously at the opposite wall. 'I'll be so gladda get backa the city. I'm not foolin'. I hate this crazy place.' She gave Mrs. Snell a hostile glance. 'It's all right for you, you live here all year round. You got your social life here and all. You don't care.'
'I'm gonna drink this if it kills me,' Mrs. Snell said, looking at the clock over the electric stove.
'What would you do if you were in my shoes?' Sandra asked abruptly.
'I mean what would you do? Tella truth.'
This was the sort of question Mrs. Snell slipped into as if it were an ermine coat. She at once let go her teacup. 'Well, in the first place,' she said, 'I wouldn't worry about it. What I'd do, I'd look around for another--'
'I'm not worried about it,' Sandra interrupted.
'I know that, but what I'd do, I'd just get me--'
The swinging door opened from the dining room and Boo Boo Tannenbaum, the lady of the house, came into the kitchen. She was a small, almost hipless girl of twenty-five, with styleless, colorless, brittle hair pushed back behind her ears, which were very large. She was dressed in knee-length jeans, a black turtleneck pullover, and socks and loafers.
Her joke of a name aside, her general unprettiness aside, she was-in terms of permanently memorable, immoderately perceptive, small-area faces-a stunning and final girl. She went directly to the refrigerator and opened it. As she peered inside, with her legs apart and her hands on her knees, she whistled, unmelodically, through her teeth, keeping time with a little uninhibited, pendulum action of her rear end. Sandra and Mrs. Snell were silent. Mrs. Snell put out her cigarette, unhurriedly.
'Sandra . . .'
'Yes, ma'am?' Sandra looked alertly past Mrs. Snell's hat.
'Aren't there any more pickles? I want to bring him a pickle.'
'He et 'em,' Sandra reported intelligently. 'He et 'em before he went to bed last night. There was only two left.'
'Oh. Well, I'll get some when I go to the station. I thought maybe I could lure him out of that boat.' Boo Boo shut the refrigerator door and walked over to look out of the lake-front window. 'Do we need anything else?' she asked, from the window.
'Just bread.'
'I left your check on the hall table, Mrs. Snell. Thank you.'
'O.K.,' said Mrs. Snell. 'I hear Lionel's supposeta be runnin'
away.' She gave a short laugh.
'Certainly looks that way,' Boo Boo said, and slid her hands into her hip pockets.
'At least he don't run very far away,' Mrs. Snell said, giving another short laugh.
At the window, Boo Boo changed her position slightly, so that her back wasn't directly to the two women at the table. 'No,' she said, and pushed back some hair behind her ear. She added, purely informatively:
'He's been hitting the road regularly since he was two. But never very hard. I think the farthest he ever got--in the city, at least--was to the Mall in Central Park. Just a couple of blocks from home. The least far--or nearest--he ever got was to the front door of our building. He stuck around to say goodbye to his father.'
Both women at the table laughed.
'The Mall's where they all go skatin' in New York,' Sandra said very sociably to Mrs. Snell. 'The kids and all.'
