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By Root 2201 0

would bring her selections to a clerk and say, ' 'I suppose you expect me to pay for these," in the fake-tough tone that her brothers used when they were joking. Ira always worried she had overstepped, but the clerk would laugh and say something like: "Well, that thought had occurred to me." So the world was not as Ira had perceived it, evidently. It was more the way Maggie perceived it. She was the one who got along in it better, collecting strays who stuck to her like lint and falling into heart-to-heart talks with total strangers. This Mr. Otis, for instance: his face alight with enthusiasm, his eyes stretched into crepe-edged triangles. "She puts me in mind of the lady with the chimney," he was telling Ira. "I knew it was someone; just couldn't think who." "Chimney?" "White lady I did not know from Adam," Mr. Otis said. "She was leaking round her chimney she say and she call me to come give a estimate. But I misstepped somehow and fell right off her roof while I was walking about. Only knocked the wind out as it happened, but Lordy, for a while there I thought I was a goner, laid there on the ground not able to catch my breath, and this lady she insist on driving me to the hospital. On the way, though, my breath come back to me and so I say, 'Mrs., let's not go after all, they'll only take my life savings to say I got nothing wrong with me,' so she say fine but then has to buy me a cup of coffee and some hash browns at McDonald's, which happen to lie next to a Toys R Us, so she axes would I mind if we run in afterwards and bought a little red wagon for her nephew whose birthday it was tomorrow? And I say no and in fact she buy two, one for my niece's son Elbert also, and next to that is this gardening place-" "Yes, that is Maggie, all right," Ira said.

"Not a straight-line kind of person." "No indeedy," Ira said.

That seemed to use up all their topics of conversation. They fell silent and focused on Maggie, who was returning with a soft-drink can held at arm's length. "Darn thing just bubbled up all over me," she called cheerfully. "Ira? Want a sip?" "No, thanks." "Mr. Otis?" "Oh, why, no, I don't believe I do, thanks anyhow." She settled between them and tipped her head back for a long, noisy swig.

Ira started wishing for a game of solitaire. All this idleness was getting to him. Judging from the way those balloons were bobbing about, though, he guessed his cards might blow away, and so he tucked his hands in his armpits and slouched lower on the wall.

They sold balloons like that at Harborplace, or next to it. Lone, grim men stood on street corners with trees of Mylar lozenges floating overhead. He remembered how entranced his sister Junie had been when she first saw them. Poor Junie: in a way more seriously handicapped than Dorrie, even-more limited, more imprisoned. Her fears confounded them all, because nothing very dreadful had ever befallen her in the outside world, at least not so far as anyone knew. In the beginning they tried to point that out. They said useless things like: "What's the worst that could happen?" and "/'// be with you." Then gradually they stopped. They gave up on her and let her stay where she was.

Except for Maggie, that is. Maggie was too obstinate to give up. And after years of failed attempts, one day she conceived the notion that Junie might be persuaded to go out if she could go in costume. She bought Junie a bright-red wig and a skin-tight dress covered with poppies and a pair of spike-heeled patent-leather shoes with ankle straps. She plastered Junie's face with heavy makeup. To everyone's astonishment, it worked. Giggling in a terrified, unhappy way, Junie allowed Maggie and Ira to lead her to the front stoop. The next day, slightly farther. Then finally to the end of the block. Never without Ira, though. She wouldn't do it with just Maggie; Maggie was not a blood relation. (Ira's father, in fact, wouldn't even call Maggie by name but referred to her as "Madam." "Will Madam be coming too, Ira?"-a title that exactly reflected the mocking, skeptical attitude he had assumed toward