Free Shakespeare's Kitchen by Lore Segal

into her web,” said Eliza.
    “The magic circle,” said Leslie.
    “A mandala,” said Winterneet. “Una was incorporating you. Our Una was into a little bit of witchcraft?”
    “ ‘Into’ witchcraft, as you are ‘into’ destroying the language,” said Eliza, but Winterneet said he was rather fond of this “being into” things and grinned into Ilka’s eyes. It was a nice example of what Mencken called “judicious neology,” he said, but offered to give it up if Eliza could come up with another English formulation that expressed that particular human relation to a human activity.
    “It’s a syntactic barbarism,” said Eliza. They were off. Leslie leaned back and smiled at them. Ilka was jealous.
     
     
    Ilka did not think that she had impressed herself on Una’s consciousness so she was surprised, when she answered the Rasmussens’ front-door bell, to find the girl on her doorstep. “Leslie gave me your address,” said Una. Una had come to talk about the Shakespeares. “It’s like living a who-done-it that starts with the hanging, and it’s me being hanged. I mean, what did I do? I think it was the ice cream,” said Una. “Eliza once made ice cream and it tasted lovely, and I told her it tasted lovely, but I shouldn’t have said I liked the consistency of the bought kind, because she didn’t talk to me the rest of the meal.”
    “We are so weird,” said Ilka, “the way we can none of us bear being faulted.”
    “But I wasn’t even faulting her. I didn’t say I didn’t like her ice cream; all I said was I liked the consistency of the bought kind.”
    “Say I’m wearing a blue dress,” said Ilka, “and you say, ‘Green is a nice color,’ and I think, ‘I’m never going to talk to Una ever again.’ ”
    “That’s ridiculous!”

    “That’s what I mean,” said Ilka. “We are, all of us, ridiculous. All we can hear is somebody saying we are less than perfect. And it’s not as if we hadn’t already got that figured out for ourselves.”
    “I never mind being told when I’m wrong.”
    Ilka said, “Will you forgive me if I don’t believe you?”
    “What I can’t stand,” said Una, “is not being told what I’m supposed to have done! I don’t understand people not sitting down face-to-face.” Una wiped her eyes and said, “What I actually think is, I think my opinions are too difficult for Eliza to assimilate. She’s Canadian, you know, very uptight. I threaten her because I hang loose.” Ilka looked surreptitiously at her watch, but Una was just getting started.
     
     
    Leslie beeped his horn outside Ilka’s gate Sunday. “Eliza is on a rampage.” A new phase had begun in what Eliza called the Una Wars. Leslie had gone to bed early as usual. Eliza, staying downstairs with her book, had raised her eyes and seen Una looking in the window.
    The version Eliza told Ilka and Winterneet at the kitchen table was more elaborate. “I walk into the kitchen to get myself a glass of wine, walk back into the living room, settle myself on the sofa. Where’s my book? Nothing like being in the middle of a book, and you don’t know where you put it down. I get up, I walk around, I’m looking all around and there’s this maenad—a bacchante—wild-eyed, hair full of fruit and leaves, looking in the window mouthing at me! I let out such a holler Leslie comes bounding downstairs—and it is something to see Leslie bounding in his striped blue pajamas.”
    Leslie said, “Eliza was going to call the police and report a trespasser.”
    “It was our Una peering through the cherry tomatoes! Leslie pulled on his trousers and drove her back to her hotel.”

    “My bell at the Rasmussens rang,” said Ilka, “and it was Una come to complain about you.”
    “Can’t open a door, or look through a window without finding Una on the other side.”
    The doorbell rang and Eliza said, “I’m calling the police.” It was the town deli with a delivery: Una’s peace offering, a heroic