A Farewell to Yarns

to be true. On the other hand, it installed Bobby and Phyllis in her own neighborhood on a more or less permanent basis. Besides her own concerns with this possibility, she hated to do that to Fiona. She was a nice ladywho didn't really deserve to get stuck with Bobby as a next-door neighbor.

But Fiona had started it by mentioning the vacant house, Jane told herself. It was really her own fault, and who could tell—maybe they'd all get along great. She glanced at the Howards. Fiona was looking gracious and English and seemed to be drifting gently from slight worry to puzzlement and back. Albert, however, was gazing out at the frozen garden, stirring his tea and humming to himself. Phyllis, temporarily restored to her usual cheerfulness, had the phone receiver pressed to her ear and was gabbing away at her Mr. Whitman about the house.

Jane mentally shrugged. Whatever happens, it won't have anything to do with me, she thought.

She was seriously mistaken.

Nine  

On the drive back home, Jane mentally pre pared herself for the ordeal of helping Phyllis get her new home ready. To her astonishment, Phyllis didn't seem inclined to do anything nor, as it turned out, did she need to. During the afternoon there were two calls from a man who politely introduced himself as Mr. Whitman of Wagner Enterprises asking for Mrs. Wagner. The first time, Jane slipped out of the room to throw in a load of wash. The conversation was over when she came back up, and Phyllis made no reference to it. The second time, Phyllis took down a couple of phone numbers, thanked Mr. Whitman, said yes, she usually did prefer yellow to blue, then hung up.

Jane had the uneasy sense that someplace people were having nervous breakdowns and tearing their hair out in a desperate effort to please Phyllis, who was blissfully working on knitting a crimson sweater for Bobby.

“I heard once that Queen Victoria could sit down anytime she wanted without looking back to see if there was a chair behind her,” Jane said as she dragged out her own afghan to attack.

“How odd. Didn't she ever fall down on the floor?'

“No. That's the point. There were people around her whose job it was to anticipate her every wish and be ready for it.'

“What a strange way that would be to live,' Phyllis said. 'Whatever made you think of it?”

Jane stared at her for a moment, wondering madly whether she could possibly fail to see the parallel. Apparently she could, and did. 'I don't know. It just ran through my mind. Phyllis, do you really think you're doing the right thing to buy that house without even considering it or talking it over with Chet?'

“Oh, but I have considered it, Jane. You see, I don't believe it's over between Chet and me, but I might be wrong. I came here meaning to stay as long as necessary. Her chin was trembling again, but she plowed on. 'And if I'm right and he wants me back, having my own home will show him that I'm coming back out of choice, not because I don't have anywhere to go or know how to take care of myself. If we can reconcile, it will be better if I have this house. And if we can't—or it takes a while for him to come to his senses, I'll have a home.”

In a weird way, she was making sense. Except that her self-reliance so far had consisted of calling an employee of Chet's and asking him to make all her arrangements. 'But Phyllis, why here?'

“Because Chicago is where I feel at home.”

“Don't you like living on the island?' Phyllis put down her knitting, picked up a corner of the afghan Jane was working on, and looked it over as she spoke. 'I never thought about it. I guess I didn't like it or dislike it. It was just where we lived. As long as I was with Chet I would have been content at the North Pole. Where you live really doesn't make the least difference, you know. It's what you are that matters.”

Jane—who had grown up as a State Department brat and had lived such diverse places as Saudi Arabia, Washington, D.C., England, Brazil, and Norway—disagreed utterly but realized it would be pointless to argue that point. She supposed if you discounted climate, wildlife, geography, religion, politics, and local customs, all places were pretty much the same. You had to have Phyllis's mentality to fail to notice such differences, however.

Jane couldn't let herself get distracted from the subject at hand. 'What I meant was, don't you think you'd stand a better chance of patching things up with Chet if you stayed on the island instead of so far away?'

“I don't think so. He'll miss me a bit, and the farther away I am, the more he'll miss me. At least I hope so. And he can always just resell this house I've bought.”

Jane suddenly realized she was applying her own standards to the wrong person. Buying a house was a once-in-a-lifetime event to her. To people with the money and staff the Wagners had, it was no more significant than checking into a motel. A temporary thing.

“I've got to pick the kids up in a few minutes,' she told Phyllis, resolved not to worry about the disparity between their financial statuses anymore. 'You're welcome to ride along, but you'd have to be crazy to volunteer. This close to Christmas they're so hyped up it's like riding in a car with a herd of frenzied gazelles.'

“Thanks, no,' Phyllis said with a laugh. Then she became instantly serious. 'Jane, I so wish I'd had what you have.'

“What on earth is that?'

“Oh, driving children to school. That sort of thing. I missed all of Bobby's growing up. I wish I could have picked him and his little friends up from school.”

It was more than Jane could stand.

“Phyllis, that's the sappiest thing I've ever heard! You have no idea what you're saying. The school parking lot is the deadliest place in the world. There's always one pea-brained woman who parks blocking the drive and goes off and leaves her car. And then there's usually at least two boys who walk past the line of cars running their hands—and sometimes a sharp object—along the sides of the car. No matter how carefully you investigate the children, you end up with one in every car pool who's never ready in time—'

“Investigate the children?'

“Oh, sure. Getting into a car pool is like applying for high-level government security clearance, except it's done more subtly. From preschool on, each child and his driving parent are accumulating a performance record. Before you allow a new person in the car pool you have to know all about their past. Does the mother take her fair share of driving without whining? Can the kid be controlled in the car?

Do they live on a street that has good snow removal in the winter? With older kids, you have to take into consideration such things as whether a girl is given to wearing too much perfume—that can be deadly in a closed car—or whether the kid plays a very large band instrument. That's what counts against me, and I know it. Even when you check all that out, once a week somebody goes home with someone else without bothering to pass word along to that day's driver, and you have to comb the school building for them. They leave their books, their mittens, and their half-chewed bubble gum in the backseat. Occasionally they throw up their breakfast on the way to school. One of my girls last year managed to get her hair tangled up in the door handle, and I had to cut her loose. Her mother was furious and sent me a bill from the hairdresser for fixing up the damage.”

Phyllis was laughing and wiping tears from her eyes. 'Aren't there any good things about driving the children ?'

“Oh, yes. There's one. When a woman has her hands on the wheel of a moving car, she's perceived as part of the mechanism. She ceases to be a mother, or even a human being with ears. The kids will say anything. Things they'd sooner die than tell you, they'll talk about endlessly in a moving car. It's the only way I have any idea what my children are up to. Phyllis, I've got to get going. Help yourself to anything you want if you're hungry. I'm fixing spaghetti for dinner. You aren't allergic or anything, are you?'

“Not to anything and I love spaghetti. Say,Jane—George Whitman said Chet's son John has been trying to get hold of me. Something about the business, I think. Not that I know anything about it. But would you mind if I invited him to come over here to talk to me? Not for dinner, of course—'

“I wouldn't mind a bit,' Jane said mendaciously. Just so long as he doesn't bring along a volleyball, she was tempted to add. 'There are some cookies in that jar you can give him. I'll only be forty minutes or so.”

Shelley was just coming in her driveway as Jane got ready to go. Jane went over to Shelley's car window. 'Is there anything I can do to make up to you for this morning? Kiss your feet? Give you my firstborn?'

“You give me one more kid and I will get even. After I lined the little darlings up to