Dear Life

very keen on going, but now I don’t seem to care so much. Do you think it’d be fun?”
    “I have to earn a living.”
    He was amazed at what he’d said, and of course it set her off giggling.
    “I was speaking in general terms,” she said grandly, when the giggling finished.
    “Me too.”
    Some creepy fortune hunter was bound to snap her up, some Egyptian or whatever. She seemed both bold and childish. At first, a man might be intrigued by her, but then her forwardness, her self-satisfaction, if that was what it was, would become tiresome. Of course, there was money, and to some men that never became tiresome.
    “You mustn’t ever mention my leg in front of Daddy or he will go apoplectic,” she said. “Once he fired not just a kid who teased me but his entire family. I mean, even cousins.”
    From Egypt there arrived peculiar postcards, sent to his firm, not his house. Well, of course, how could she have known his home address?
    Not a single pyramid on them. No Sphinx.
    Instead, one showed the Rock of Gibraltar with a note that called it a pyramid in collapse. Another showed some flat dark-brown fields, God knows where, and said, “Sea of Melancholia.” There was another message in fine print:“Magnifying glass obtainable send money.” Fortunately, nobody in the office got hold of these.
    He did not intend to reply, but he did: “Magnifying glass faulty please refund money.”
    He drove to her town for an unnecessary inspection of the church steeple, knowing that she had to be back from the Pyramids but not knowing whether she would be at home or off on some other jaunt.
    She was home, and would be for some time. Her father had suffered a stroke.
    There was not really much for her to do. A nurse came in every other day. And a girl named Lillian Wolfe was in charge of the fires, which were always lit when Howard arrived. Of course, she did other chores as well. Corrie herself couldn’t quite manage to get a good fire going or put a meal together; she couldn’t type, couldn’t drive a car, not even with a built-up shoe to help her. Howard took over when he came. He looked after the fires and saw to various things around the house and was even taken to visit Corrie’s father, if the old man was able.
    He hadn’t been sure how he would react to the foot, in bed. But in some way it seemed more appealing, more unique, than the rest of her.
    She had told him that she was not a virgin. But that turned out to be a complicated half-truth, owing to the interference of a piano teacher, when she was fifteen. She had gone along with what the piano teacher wanted because she felt sorry for people who wanted things so badly.
    “Don’t take that as an insult,” she said, explaining that she had not continued to feel sorry for people in that way.
    “I should hope not,” he said.
    Then he had things to tell her about himself. The fact that he had produced a condom did not mean that he was a regular seducer. In fact, she was only the second person he had gone to bed with, the first being his wife. He had been brought up in a fiercely religious household and still believed in God, to some extent. He kept that a secret from his wife, who would have made a joke of it, being very left-wing.
    Corrie said she was glad that what they were doing—what they had just done—appeared not to bother him, in spite of his belief. She said that she herself had never had any time for God, because her father was enough to cope with.
    It wasn’t difficult for them. Howard’s job often required him to travel for a daytime inspection or to see a client. The drive from Kitchener didn’t take long. And Corrie was alone in the house now. Her father had died, and the girl who used to work for her had gone off to find a city job. Corrie had approved of this, even giving her money for typing lessons, so that she could better herself.
    “You’re too smart to mess around doing housework,” she had said. “Let me know how you get along.”
    Whether Lillian Wolfe spent the money on typing lessons or on something else was not known, but she did continue to do housework. This was discovered on an occasion when Howard and his wife were invited to dinner, with others, at the home of some newly important people in Kitchener. There was Lillian waiting on table, coming face-to-face with the man she had seen in Corrie’s house. The man she had seen with his arm around Corrie when she came in to take the plates away or fix the fire.