Free A Farewell to Yarns by Jill Churchill Page A

it. The second time, Phyllis took down a couple of phone numbers, thanked Mr. Whitman, said yes, she usually did pre fer yellow to blue, then hung up.
    Jane had the uneasy sense that someplace people were having nervous breakdowns and tearing their hair out in a desperate effort to please Phyllis, who was blissfully working on knitting a crimson sweater for Bobby.
    “I heard once that Queen Victoria could sit down anytime she wanted without looking back to see if there was a chair behind her,” Jane said as she dragged out her own afghan to attack.
    “How odd. Didn't she ever fall down on the floor?"
    “No. That's the point. There were people around her whose job it was to anticipate her every wish and be ready for it."
    “What a strange way that would be to live," Phyllis said. "Whatever made you think of it?”
    Jane stared at her for a moment, wondering madly whether she could possibly fail to see the parallel. Apparently she could, and did. "I don't know. It just ran through my mind. Phyllis, do you really think you're doing the right thing to buy that house without even considering it or talking it over with Chet?"
    “Oh, but I have considered it, Jane. You see, I don't believe it's over between Chet and me, but I might be wrong. I came here meaning to stay as long as necessary. Her chin was trembling again, but she plowed on. "And if I'm right and he wants me back, having my own home will show him that I'm coming back out of choice, not because I don't have anywhere to go or know how to take care of myself. If we can reconcile, it will be better if I have this house. And if we can't—or it takes a while for him to come to his senses, I'll have a home.”
    In a weird way, she was making sense. Except that her self-reliance so far had consisted of calling an employee of Chet's and asking him to make all her arrangements. "But Phyllis, why here?"
    “Because Chicago is where I feel at home.”
    “D o n 't yo u l i k e l i v i n g o n t h e i s l a n d ? " Phyllis put 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 Che t 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