A Farewell to Yarns

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.