Free Any Minute I Can Split by Judith Rossner Page A

come back or we won’t let them stay. Then there’ve been others . . . the winter is pretty rough here, some of the others just couldn’t take it.”
    Margaret was silent, her mind blown. We were married for a brief time, actually. Dolores. Which one was Dolores? Had she met her yet?
    â€œAre you going to stay through the winter?” Mira asked. Her manner was solicitous but Margaret felt that her intentions were not.
    â€œI don’t know,” Margaret said. “I haven’t made any plans.”
    â€œYou don’t need to,” De Witt said.
    Margaret beamed at him.
    â€œWhat about David?” Mira asked.
    â€œWhat about him?”
    â€œWell, I mean, will he be staying here with you?”
    â€œI thought he was staying with all of us,” Margaret said, but then for De Witt’s sake added, “I met him onthe road. He was the one who told me about this place.”
    Mira nodded. “He knows Mitchell. Do you happen to know how he knows Mitchell?”
    Margaret shook her head.
    â€œDo you know if he plans to stay through the winter?”
    â€œI don’t know. We just happened to meet and come here together. He’s free to do what he wants and I’m free to do what I want.” Was she really lying here in a bed, a baby sleeping on either side of her, describing freedom to someone who’d been living in a commune for two years?
    â€œWhat he wants,” Mira said, “is to sleep in this room with you.”
    â€œFine,” Margaret said calmly. “What bothers you about that? Aesthetics or morality?” Whoops. She was playing Roger to Mira’s Margaret. Maybe that was what bothered her so much about the other woman—that she was a fun house reflection of all the hypocrisies in herself that Roger had made her ashamed of.
    â€œOh, dear,” Mira said, “I see I’ve offended you. I didn’t mean to do that.”
    Like hell you didn’t.
    â€œIt’s just that Paul and Starr have given up this room for you,” Mira went on sweetly, “and we were just wondering whether they should think of the new arrangement as permanent.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” Margaret said, truly contrite, “I didn’t realize . . .”
    â€œThere’s nothing to be sorry for,” De Witt said. “Butterscotch gave them her room with the double bed she didn’t need anyway, and she’s going to sleep on the cot in Dolores’s room.”
    â€œAnd nobody minds?”
    â€œAnd nobody minds.” He smiled at Margaret in a manner which, if it had been her own husband smiling at some other woman, would have been upsetting to her, but Mira registered calm.
    â€œI have a favor to ask of you,” Mira said—as though the previous conversation hadn’t taken place.
    The moon? The stars? Leave immediately?
    â€œYes?”
    â€œThe children are so anxious to see your babies.” She was positively winsome. “Do you think they might come up now? They’ve been asking all day.”
    Margaret laughed. “Are you kidding? People’ve been in and out of here all day, saying hello and everything.”
    â€œI know, but I thought the noise might bother you, you know how children are.”
    â€œSure,” Margaret said. “Of course. They won’t bother me at all.”
    â€œOh, I’m so grateful to you,” Mira gushed—as if it had been the moon and stars she’d requested and Margaret had given in. She left to find the children.
    â€œThese should do for two or three months,” De Witt said, tapping the wicker baskets. “We don’t have to think past then, for now.”
    Margaret thanked him. “Does it really not matter?” she asked. “That I don’t know what I’m going to do?”
    â€œNot to me, it doesn’t. Especially since you’re paying your own way. To someone who worried ahead, it