Of them all, Steven hadn’t changed. He was still shy, quiet, concerned—vividly aware of nuances, comfortably silent about them. You forgot your tenseness with Steven because of his very receptiveness. Elizabeth was totally unprepared when he let the memo flutter to the coffee table and took off his glasses with a driven air and said, “Look here, Elizabeth, let’s do this some other time. You’ve probably gathered that this isn’t what I came about at all.”
Somewhere in the middle of that, Oliver was standing in the open doorway, and in the near distance Noreen’s voice said hurriedly, “Oh, I think Mrs. March is—” and then died.
It was almost, thought Elizabeth, as though the girl had tried to thrust herself bodily between Oliver and the porch door. Surely Noreen wasn’t mad enough to think—
She hadn’t time for that because Oliver, packages in his arms, was smiling at her inquiringly and Steven was standing, bundling the synopsis back into its envelope. “I’m just on my way—I’ve been trying to get your wife back to the grindstone.”
“Where she belongs,” said Oliver mildly. His eyes weren’t mild. Bluer than Maire’s, bluer even than Jeep’s, they rested briefly on Elizabeth and it was almost like a quick angry touch of his hand. His gaze flicked to Steven, he said politely, “Time for a drink?” But it was only that, the barest politeness.
Steven was aware of it; his glance at Oliver was quiet. “Can’t, thanks, I’ve been too late as it is. I’ll leave this with you, Elizabeth, and give you a ring in a day or so. . . .”
He was gone, and there was a moment at the door when Elizabeth felt as though she, too, should be saying good-night to the overcoated stranger beside her. Then the door closed, and Oliver was again her husband, a man she loved through a glass wall; and Oliver was saying, “Are you really back at work? Good. . . . Let’s have the birthday and then a drink. Where are the kids?”
They usually flew to the door; with instinctive perversity they hadn’t tonight. “Up in their room, I guess. I’ll get them,” Elizabeth said, and escaped up the stairs from Oliver’s brilliant scrutiny. If there was to be this, an awkwardness every time she discussed her book with her editor—
Maire was sitting on her bed, ruffling through a book of animal photographs; Jeep, chanting tonelessly, was involved with plastic scissors and a magazine on the floor. He had a dull and thwarted look because the scissors wouldn’t cut, none of his usual loud fury. Noreen, folding laundry into the bureau drawers, looked up and smiled with an air of held-in excitement. Elizabeth said brightly, “Daddy’s home, and it’s Jeep’s birthday. Happy birthday. Jeep. Aren’t you going to come down and see what you’ve got besides cake and ice cream?”
They came, lethargically. Noreen, smiling and scolding anxiously, hurried down the stairs to set the table in the dining-room. Elizabeth, wondering, watched Jeep unwrap his presents—a fleet of tiny trucks, a dog whose tongue lapped in and out when you pulled him, a miniature merry-go-round. There was no spark anywhere; it was as though Jeep had been waked up in the middle of the night and brought down to admire his toys, puzzled, sleepy, half resentful.
Elizabeth glanced alertly at Maire and saw the same thing. She had scoured the town for a pig of suitable size and expression, and had found at last a calico animal with lifelike white lashes and a foolish smile tucked under its snout. Maire opened it and said with a glimmer of animation, “Pig,” and then put it carelessly down on the floor. Noreen said softly, “Oh, darling, what a beautiful pig.” Her eyes met Elizabeth’s, apprehensively.
Oliver said, “Looks like we’ve come to the wrong party. Maybe the ice cream . . . ?”
Constance had come down; she said sedately, “Happy birthday. Jeep,” and presented a rubber fire truck. Noreen brought in the cake and lighted the candles and put ice cream in two dishes. Oliver watched the children mounting the unaccustomed chairs and said suddenly, “Know something? They’re sick.”
“Nonsense,” said Elizabeth, firm but worried. “What have they had today, Noreen?”
“Just their lunch, Mrs. March, and a light one—bacon and string beans and custard—because I knew they’d be having their birthday supper. But they do look—”
It wasn’t long in the deciding. Maire fiddled with her spoon; Jeep, gluttonous, swallowed two fat mouthfuls and returned them with a surprised air to the rug. Noreen sprang for cloths, Constance said thoughtfully, “Well, you know, they didn’t seem quite—” and Oliver transported Jeep to the bathroom.
Elizabeth, oddly frightened, said, “Maire, you’ve been eating something, both of you. What was it?”
And Maire, pale and docile, said, “Candy.”
“Show me.” Elizabeth was crisp and commanding, not letting the panic show. It was a mark of how dreadfully familiar she was growing with her enemy, the subtle creator of her other world, that she never for an instant doubted the source of the candy.
But this was the first time it had touched the children.
There had evidently been a great deal of candy—bon-bons, from the look of the crumpled foils, purple and green and silver, stuffed in a greedy shining heap into the bottom of the children’s toy chest. Not the kind of candy you gave wholesale to children, unless you wanted to bring about exactly what had happened.
Elizabeth looked hard at Maire and gradually her legs stopped trembling; the child’s eyes were heavy and a little glazed and she had one hand pressed exploringly to her stomach, but—she could say it now, she could face it in her own mind—the candy hadn’t been poisoned.
The door opened and Oliver thrust Jeep into the room. “He’s empty,” he said briefly, and met Elizabeth’s eyes. “I’ll leave this to you, shall I?”
Elizabeth turned down Maire’s bed, lifted Jeep into his
