Makin' Whoopee by Billie Green Page A

had something to do with her niece's continuing pelvic problems. "Marilyn didn't even know where she was. She got lost from her friends and ended up with a sailor in the House of Horrors. As soon as my sister, Voncile, wrote me about it, I told her right then and there, 'Marilyn's going to have female trouble all her life.' It was plain as day to anyone who knew the signs." She shook her head at the foolishness of people who didn't listen to her. "Now, Harmen—Marilyn's husband—is a good sort, but he's just a boy. He doesn't know how to cope with Marilyn's spells."
    Irma began to wash vegetables vigorously. "Two kids playing at marriage. When they moved out here, I told Voncile I'd watch out for them, but it's not easy. Young people all get newfangled ideas."
    Irma always talked about Marilyn and Harmen as though they were children. "How old are they, anyway?" Sara asked, gazing at Irma over the top of her glass.
    "She's twenty-one. He's twenty-four."
    Not exactly babies, Sara thought. "Didn't the doctors say she has a recurring infection?"
    "Doctors." Her tone was abrupt and filled with contempt. "Didn't they tell my cousin Winifred that all she had was a virus?" This was Irma's second-favorite story. "I told her, 'Winnie, you mark my words, that's no virus. It's your ovaries acting up.' And what did the doctors tell her the very next week?"
    "That her ovaries were acting up?" Sara guessed, recognizing her cue.
    "Exactly," Irma said with satisfaction as she pulled the core out of a head of lettuce. "Winifred learned to listen to me. And so did Haroldine Simpson."
    Oh, Lord, Sara thought. Moral tale number three. But before Irma could get started, the doorbell rang, and Sara allowed herself an audible sigh of relief. The story of Haroldine Simpson— whoever she was— was particularly gory, and Sara didn't know if her stomach was up to it.
    After the older woman left the kitchen, Sara sipped her orange juice, smiling wryly. Irma had been with her for two years, ever since Sara's purchase of the house. Irma's husband had passed away two years before that, and in order to keep herself busy, Irma had become general factotum to Sara and counsel to anyone who happened to come within lecturing distance.
    Her personality was down-to-earth and remarkably even-keeled. No highs and lows for Irma. As far as Sara knew, her sister, Voncile, and her niece, Marilyn, were her only immediate family, but in her own bland way Irma cared about everyone she encountered in her structured life.
    "Gotcha!"
    Sara jumped, spilling her orange juice, when Charlie appeared before her. Placing his hands on either side of her, he trapped her against the counter with his body.
    "You can't run away forever, Sara m'Love."
    "Don't be an idiot," she said. She tried to move sideways but found herself blocked by his arms.
    "Define idiot," he said, and suddenly he was lifting her so that she was sitting on the counter and he was standing between her thighs.
    "Let me down," she said firmly.
    "Didn't anyone ever tell you the story of the Princess and the Idiot?"
    "Charlie," she warned in a steely voice.
    "Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess. She lived in a faraway land. A land where it was against the law to laugh. She had read about laughter, but since no one had ever taught her how, she thought it was just a rumor."
    "Charlie."
    "Wait. I'm just getting to the good part. One day she was walking in the garden—it was a sad garden, because no one ever laughed in it, and it's a scientific fact, verified by thousands of documents, that giggling makes plants grow. Anyway, it was her birthday and she was thinking how dull it was ... no kind of birthday for a princess. She didn't know that at that very moment an idiot was fighting dragons—frowning, crabby dragons—just to get to her side. Finally he fought all the dragons and burst into the garden. Their eyes met, and there was a long silence. And then he reached out slowly and . . . tickled her like