Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson Page B

olives. When I said no, she said that she had also tried a new cake mix and it was marvelous, but of course you really needed an electric mixer, and I said my birthday was only four months off. My husband bid three hearts in a loud voice. I bid three spades, and said that I envied her the cookies she made, that my children preferred to stop off for cookies at her house because our cookies were all store-bought. She said shyly that she had made a new kind of lemon meringue tart to serve after our bridge game and my husband said oh, were we playing bridge? Her husband then bid four hearts, she bid four no trump, and I said that I was planning to get a set of demitasse cups.
    We played the hand in six spades, and made it easily, but it turns out that if I am going to get an electric mixer I shall have to shop around and get a really good one; she has a friend who used hers once and it fell apart. Of course she got a new one right away from the manufacturers, but my husband believed that if his partner had led anything except the ace of hearts . . . I took the recipe for the lemon meringue tarts, and when I got home I made a new list, which began “lemons, demitasse cups, summer coat to cleaners . . .”
    That summer coat was a good one; I had worn it my last two years in college and every summer since. With three small children I perceived clearly what I had suspected when I had only one child, and half-believed when I had only two children—that parents must automatically resign themselves to wearing every article of their own clothing at least two years beyond its normal life expectancy. During the long summers—which are hotter, by the way, than they used to be when I was a child, just as the winters are colder—I can get along nicely on my summer coat and my few surviving cotton dresses, but the winter is another thing; unless I find someone who can fix the pockets of my old fur coat I shall not even be able to carry a handkerchief any more, unless I pin it to the front of me the way I do with Jannie. However, mending a fur coat is so ridiculous in the middle of summer that I have a little list, in my top dresser drawer, which has been there for—I think-two years. “Mend fr coat,” it says.
    BY THE TIME I woke up on a summer morning-the alarm having missed fire again, for the third time in a week—it was already too hot to move. I lay in bed for a few minutes, wanting to get up but unable to exert the necessary energy. From the girls’ room, small voices rose in song, and I listened happily, thinking how pleasant it was to hear a brother and two sisters playing affectionately together; then, suddenly, the words of the song penetrated into my hot mind, and I was out of bed in one leap and racing down the hall. “Baby ate a spider, Baby ate a spider,” was what they were singing.
    Three innocent little faces were turned to me as I opened the door. Laurie, in his cowboy-print pajamas, was sitting on top of the dresser beating time with a coat hanger. Jannie, in pink pajama pants and her best organdy party dress, was sitting on her bed. Sally peered at me curiously through the bars of her crib and grinned, showing her four teeth.
    â€œWhat did you eat?” I demanded. “What do you have in your mouth?”
    Laurie shouted triumphantly. “A spider,” he said. “She ate a spider.”
    I forced the baby’s mouth open; it was empty. “Did she swallow it?”
    â€œWhy?” Jannie asked, wide-eyed. “Will it make her sick?”
    â€œJannie gave it to her,” Laurie said.
    â€œLaurie found it,” Jannie said.
    â€œBut she ate it herself,” Laurie said hastily.
    I went wearily back into my own room, resisted the strong temptation to get back into bed, and began to dress. The conversation from the children indicated that they, too, were what might be called dressing.
    â€œPut it on Baby,” Laurie remarked.
    â€œIt’s too