Dear Life

knew Ontario, had grown up there.
    She wondered if she could possibly ask for a glass of water.
    She must have put her head down in her hands as her voice grew muffled. The owner came out into the hall and dropped some change into the machine to get a 7UP. He might have thought that more ladylike than a Coke.
    Around the corner he saw Jackson listening, and he made a gesture that he—Jackson—should take over, being perhaps more used to distraught tenants. But Jackson shook his head violently.
    No.
    She did not stay distraught long.
    She begged the owner’s pardon and he said the heat could play those tricks today.
    Now about Candace. They had left within the month, it could be three weeks ago. No forwarding address.
    “In such cases there usually isn’t.”
    She got the hint.
    “Oh of course I can settle—”
    There was some muttering and rustling while this was done.
    Then, “I don’t suppose you could let me see where they were living—”
    “The tenant isn’t in now. But even if he was I don’t think he’d agree to it.”
    “Of course. That’s silly.”
    “Was there anything you were particularly interested in?”
    “Oh no. No. You’ve been kind. I’ve taken your time.”
    She had got up now, and they were moving. Out of the office, down the couple of steps to the front door. Then the door was opened and street noises swallowed up her further farewells if there were any.
    However she had been disappointed, she would get herself through it with a good grace.
    Jackson came out of hiding as the owner returned to the office.
    “Surprise,” was all the owner said. “We got our money.”
    He was a man who was basically incurious, at least about personal matters. A thing which Jackson valued in him.
    Of course Jackson would like to have seen her. Now that she was gone he almost regretted his chance. He would never stoop so low as to ask the owner was her hair still dark, black almost, her body tall and slim and with very little bosom to it. He hadn’t got much of an impression of the daughter. Her hair was blond but very likely dyed. No more than twenty years old though it was sometimes hard to tell nowadays. Very much under the thumb of the boyfriend. Run away from home, run away from your bills, break your parents’ hearts, all for a sulky piece of business like the boyfriend.
    Where was Kelowna? In the west somewhere. Alberta, British Columbia. A long way to come looking. Of course that mother was a persistent woman. An optimist. Probably that was true of her still. She had married. Unless the girl was born out of wedlock and that struck him as very unlikely. She’d be sure, sure of herself the next time, she wouldn’t be one for tragedy. The girl wouldn’t be, either. She’d come home when she’d had enough. She might bring along a baby but that was all the style nowadays.
    Shortly before Christmas in the year 1940 there had been an uproar in the high school. It had even reached the thirdfloor where the clamor of typewriters and adding machines usually kept all the downstairs noises at bay. The oldest girls in the school were up there—girls who last year had been learning Latin and biology and European history and were now learning to type.
    One of these was Ileane Bishop, who oddly enough was a minister’s daughter, although there were no bishops in her father’s United Church. Ileane had arrived with her family when she was in grade nine and for five years, due to the custom of alphabetical seating, she had sat behind Jackson Adams. By that time Jackson’s phenomenal shyness and silence had been accepted by everybody else in the class, but it was new to her, and during the next five years, by not acknowledging it she had produced a thaw. She borrowed erasers and pen nibs and geometry tools from him, not so much to break the ice as because she was naturally scatterbrained. They exchanged answers to problems and marked each other’s tests. When they met on the street they said hello, and to her his hello was actually more than a mumble—it had two syllables and an emphasis to it. Nothing much was presumed beyond that, except that they had certain jokes. Ileane was not a shy girl but she was clever and aloof and not particularly popular, and that might have suited him.
    From her position on the stairs, when everybody came out to watch the ruckus, Ileane was surprised to see that one of the two boys causing it was Jackson. The other was Billy Watts. Boys who only a year ago had sat