Dear Life

living once, though not enough to hang on to all through a life. An announcer whose voice had been familiar on the radio years ago during the war but whose vocal cords were shot to pieces now. Most people probably believed he was dead. But here he was in his bachelor suite, keeping up with the news and subscribing to
The Globe and Mail
which he passed on to Jackson in case there was anything of interest to him in it.
    Once, there was.
    Marjorie Isabella Treece, daughter of Willard Treece, longtime columnist for the
Toronto Evening Telegram
, and his wife, Helena (née Abbott) Treece, lifelong friend of Robin (née Shillingham) Ford, has passed away after a courageous battle with cancer. Oriole paper please copy. July 18, 1965.
    No mention of where she had been living. Probably in Toronto, with Robin so much in the picture. She had lasted maybe longer than you might have expected and might even have been in reasonable comfort and spirits, till of course near the end. She had shown a certain gift for adapting to circumstances. More, perhaps, than he possessed himself.
    Not that he spent his time picturing the rooms he’d shared with her or the work he’d done on her place. He didn’t have to—such things were often recalled in dreams, and his feeling then was more of exasperation than of longing, as if hehad to get to work right away on something that had not been finished.
    In the Bonnie Dundee, the tenants were generally uneasy about anything that might be called improvements, thinking that these might cause a raise in their rent. He talked them around, with respectful manners and good fiscal sense. The place improved and became one with a waiting list. The owner complained that it was getting to be a haven for loonies. But Jackson said they were generally tidier than average and old enough not to misbehave. There was a woman who had once played in the Toronto Symphony and an inventor who had missed out so far with his inventions but was hopeful, and a Hungarian refugee actor whose accent was against him but who still had a commercial running somewhere in the world. They were all well behaved and somehow scared up the money to go to the Epicure Restaurant and tell their stories through the afternoon. Also they had a few friends who were truly famous and might show up in a blue moon for a visit. And not to be sneezed at was the fact that the Bonnie Dundee had an in-house preacher on shaky terms with his church, whatever it was, but always able to officiate when called upon.
    People did get in the habit of staying until his final offices were necessary, but it was better than skipping and running.
    An exception was the young couple named Candace and Quincy, who never settled their rent and skipped out in the middle of the night. The owner happened to have been in charge when they came looking for a room, and he excused himself for his bad choice by saying that a fresh face was needed around the place. Candace’s face, not the boyfriend’s. The boyfriend was a jerk.

    On a hot summer day Jackson had the double back doors, the delivery doors, open, to let in what air he could while he worked at varnishing a table. It was a pretty table he’d got for nothing because its polish was all worn away. He thought it would look nice in the entryway, to put the mail on.
    He was able to be out of the office because the owner was in there checking some rents.
    There was a light touch on the front doorbell. Jackson was ready to haul himself up, cleaning his brush, because he thought the owner in the midst of figures might not care to be disturbed. But it was all right, he heard the door being opened, a woman’s voice. A voice on the edge of exhaustion, yet able to maintain something of its charm, its absolute assurance that whatever it said would win over anybody who came within listening range.
    She would probably have got that from her father the preacher. Jackson was thinking this before the whole impact hit him.
    This was the last address she had, she said, for her daughter. She was looking for her daughter. Candace, her daughter. Who might have been travelling with a friend. She, the mother, had come here from British Columbia. From Kelowna where she and the girl’s father lived.
    Ileane. Jackson knew her voice without a doubt. That woman was Ileane.
    He heard her ask if it was possible for her to sit down. Then the owner pulling out his—Jackson’s—chair.
    Toronto so much hotter than she had expected, though she