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By Root 2225 0

people into their lives. She didn't feel a mere husband was enough, he suspected. Two was not a satisfactory number for her. He remembered all the strays she had welcomed over the years-her brother who spent a winter on their couch when his wife fell in love with her dentist, and Serena that time that Max was in Virginia hunting work, and of course Fiona with her baby and her mountains of baby equipment, her stroller and her playpen and her wind-up infant swing. In his present mood, Ira thought he might include their own children as well, for weren't Jesse and Daisy also outsiders-interrupting their most private moments, wedging between the two of them? (Hard to believe that some people had children to hold a marriage together.) And neither one had been planned for, at least not quite so soon. In the days before Jesse was born, Ira had still had hopes of going back to school. It was supposed to be the next thing in line, after paying off his sister's medical bills and his father's new furnace. Maggie would keep on working full time. But then she found out she was pregnant, and she had to take leave from her job. And after that Ira's sister developed a whole new symptom, some kind of seizures that required hospitalization; and a moving van crashed into the shop one Christmas Eve and damaged the building. Then Maggie got pregnant with Daisy, another surprise. (Had it been unwise, perhaps, to leave matters of contraception to someone so accident-prone?) But that was eight years after Jesse, and Ira had more or less abandoned his plans by then anyhow.

Sometimes-on a day like today, say, this long, hot day in this dusty car-he experienced the most crushing kind of tiredness. It was an actual weight on his head, as if the ceiling had been lowered. But he supposed that everybody felt that way, now and again.

Maggie was telling Mr. Otis the purpose of their trip. "My oldest, closest friend just lost her husband," she was saying, "and we had to go to his funeral. It was the saddest occasion.'' "Oh, gracious. Well, now, I want to offer my sincere condolences," Mr. Otis said.

Ira slowed behind a round-shouldered, humble-looking car from the forties, driven by an old lady so hunched that her head was barely visible above the steering wheel. Route One, the nursing home of highways. Then he remembered that this wasn't Route One anymore, that they had drifted sideward or maybe even backward, and he had a dreamy, floating sensation. It was like that old spell during a change of seasons when you momentarily forge> what stage the year is going through. Is it spring, or is it fall? Is the summer just beginning, or is it coming to an end?

They passed a modern, split-level house with two plaster statues in the yard: a Dutch boy and girl bobbing delicately toward each other so their lips were almost touching. Then a trailer park and assorted signs for churches, civic organizations, Al's Lawn and Patio Furnishings. Mr. Otis sat forward with a grunt, clutching the back of the seat. "Right up-air is the Texaco," he said. "See it?" Ira saw it: a small white rectangle set very close to the road. Mylar balloons hovered high above the pumps-three to each pump, red, silver, and blue, twining lazily about one another.

He turned onto the concrete apron, carefully avoiding the signal cord that stretched across it, and braked and looked back at Mr. Otis. But Mr. Otis stayed where he was; it was Maggie who got out. She opened the rear door and set a hand beneath the old man's elbow while he uncurled himself. "Now, just where is your nephew?" she asked.

Mr. Otis said, "Somewheres about." "Are you sure of that? What if he's not working today?" "Why, he must be working. Ain't he?" Oh, Lord, they were going to prolong this situation forever. Ira cut the engine and watched the two of them walking across the apron.

Over by the full-service island, a white boy with a stringy brown ponytail listened to what they asked and then shook his head. He said something, waving an arm vaguely eastward. Ira groaned and slid down lower in his seat.

Then here came Maggie,