The Cost of Living Read Online Free PDF Page A

from?” Mrs. Tracy had once asked him. At this, the poor boy had drawn up his brows and looked so distressed that she had added, “Of course, it’s your own affair. But I always thought Germans were terribly healthy and went in for fresh air.” Thus did she frequently and unconsciously remind him of his origin, although part of her purpose in inviting him to spend the summer had been to help him forget it.
    Mrs. Tracy’s connection with Paul was remote, dating back to a prewar friendship in Munich with one of his cousins, a maiden lady now living in New York. Paul had been half orphaned in the war, and when his mother died, a few years later, his cousin had adopted him as a means of getting him to America. Impulsively, and with mixed motives of kindness and curiosity, Mrs. Tracy had offered to take him for the summer. His cousin had a small apartment and was beginning to regret having to share it with a grown boy.
    Paul had disappointed Mrs. Tracy. He never spoke of the war, which must surely have affected his childhood, and he had none of the characteristics Mrs. Tracy would have accepted as German. He was not fair; he was dark and wore glasses. He could not swim. He was anything but arrogant. He disliked the sun. He spent as much time as he could in his room, and his waking life was centered around a university extension course.
    Paul might just as well have stayed in town, for all the pleasure he gets from the country, Mrs. Tracy thought for the fiftieth time. Passing the last door, on her way downstairs, she heard a dull banging in Madeline’s room that was probably a hinged window swinging in the wind.
    Madeline awoke at that instant and was unable to place the banging sound or determine where she was. The days of her lifetime had been spent in so many different places—in schools, in camps, in the houses of people she was or was not related to—that the first sight of day was, almost by habit, bewildering. Opening her eyes, she recognized the room and knew that she was spending the summer in the country with the Tracys.
    Reaching out of bed, she slammed the window. The room was suddenly quiet, and through the hot-air register she could hear Mrs. Tracy downstairs, asking Doris if she had ever seen such a perfect morning. Doris’s answer was lost in the whir of the electric mixer.
    Every day of summer, so far, had been launched on a wave of Mrs. Tracy’s good will and optimism. Madeline settled back in bed and closed her eyes. Seven more days to Labor Day, she thought, and only then did she remember that it was her birthday. Three years ago, she had been fourteen. In another three, she would be twenty. She was unmarried and not in love and without a trace of talent in any direction. It seemed to her the worst of all possible days.
    Turning to the window, she looked with distaste at the top of a pear tree. Someone, Paul or Allie, was scratching at her door.
    â€œPaul, if that’s you, then come in. Please don’t lurk in the hall.”
    He slid around the door, spectacles gleaming, with an armful of books. Too wary to speak until he had judged her temper, he sat down on one of the blue-and-white striped chairs, balancing his books.
    â€œHave you come to wish me happy birthday?” Madeline asked. She sat up in bed, tugging halfheartedly at a strap of her nightgown that had broken in the night. With everybody but Paul, she was almost nunlike in her decorum, but she had decided early in the summer that he would put up with anything, and immodesty was only one of the ways she showed her contempt for his unmanliness.
    He smiled, or gave way to a nervous tic—Madeline could never be sure which it was. “No,” he said, fidgeting. “I did not come for your birthday but to ask you to read this paper and correct the English.” He seemed to Madeline doomed for life to ask for help and speak with a slight accent.
    â€œSay ‘this,’” she said.