Dear Life

musical. So she was brought up in a different way and the brother and sister had nothing in common and that was really all that she—Aunt Dawn—knew about it. Except that my uncle would not like it that she had told me even that much.
    “He doesn’t like that music?” I said. “What kind of music does he like?”
    “Sort of more old-fashioned, you could say. Definitely not classical, though.”
    “The Beatles?”
    “Oh goodness.”
    “Not Lawrence Welk?”
    “It’s not up to us to discuss this, is it? I shouldn’t have got going on it.”
    I disregarded her.
    “So what do
you
like?”
    “I like pretty much anything.”
    “You must like some things better than other things.”
    She wouldn’t grant more than one of her little laughs. This was the nervous laugh, similar to but more concerned than, for example, the laugh with which she asked Uncle Jasper how he liked his supper. He nearly always gave approval, but with qualifications. All right, but a bit too spicy or a bit too bland. Perhaps a little over- or possibly undercooked. Once, he said, “I didn’t,” and refused to elaborate, and the laugh vanished into her tight lips and heroic self-control.
    What could that dinner have been? I want to say curry, but maybe that’s because my father didn’t like curry, though he didn’t make a fuss about it. My uncle got up and made himself a peanut butter sandwich, and the emphasis he put into this did amount to making a fuss. Whatever Aunt Dawn had served, it wouldn’t have been a deliberate provocation. Maybe just something slightly unusual that had looked good in a magazine. And, as I recall, he had eaten it all before pronouncing his verdict. So he was propelled not by hunger but by the need to make a statement of pure and mighty disapproval.
    It occurs to me now that something might have gone wrong at the hospital that day, somebody might have died who wasn’t supposed to—perhaps the problem wasn’t with food at all. But I don’t think it occurred to Aunt Dawn—or, even if it did, she didn’t let her suspicion show. She was all contrition.
    At the time, Aunt Dawn had another problem, a problem that I wouldn’t understand until later. She had the problemof the couple next door. They had moved in about the same time as I had. He was the county-school inspector, she a music teacher. They were perhaps the same age as Aunt Dawn, younger than Uncle Jasper. They had no children either, which left them free for sociability. And they were at that stage of taking on a new community, where every prospect looks bright and easy. In this spirit they had asked Aunt Dawn and Uncle Jasper around for drinks. The social life of my aunt and uncle was so restricted, and so well known around town to be restricted, that my aunt had no practice in saying no. And so they found themselves visiting, having drinks and chatting, and I can imagine that Uncle Jasper warmed to the occasion, though without forgiving my aunt’s blunder in having accepted the invitation.
    Now she was in a quandary. She understood that when people had invited you to their house and you had gone you were supposed to ask them back. Drinks for drinks, coffee for coffee. No need for a meal. But even what little was required she did not know how to do. My uncle had found no fault with the neighbors—he simply did not like having people in his house, on any account.
    Then, with the news I had brought her, came the possibility of a solution to the problem. The trio from Toronto—including, of course, Mona—was performing at the Town Hall on one evening only. And it so happened that that was the very evening when Uncle Jasper had to be out of the house and had to stay out fairly late. It was the night of the County Physicians Annual General Meeting and Dinner. Not a banquet—wives were not invited.
    The neighbors were planning to attend the concert. They would have had to, given her profession. But they agreedto drop in as soon as it was over, for coffee and snacks. And to meet—this was where my aunt overreached herself—to meet the members of the trio, who would also be dropping in for a few moments.
    I don’t know how much my aunt revealed to the neighbors about the relationship with Mona Cassel. If she had any sense, it was nothing. And sense was something she had plenty of, most of the time. She did, I’m sure, explain that the doctor could not be present on that evening, but she would never have gone so far as to tell them that the