The Cost of Living Read Online Free PDF

“Not ‘ziss.’”
    â€œZiss,” he repeated after her.
    Mrs. Tracy had hoped that Paul and Madeline would become friends, but, as it happened, they were without interest in each other. Their only common ground was the help Madeline could give him with his studies, and this she did with an ill grace.
    â€œThey’re nearly of an age—only three years or so apart,” Mrs. Tracy had told her husband in the spring, before she opened the house in the country. “They’re both adrift, in a way—Paul on account of the war, and Madeline from her family. A summer there might do wonders.”
    Edward Tracy had said nothing. Technically, the Connecticut house belonged to his wife, who had inherited it. Loving it and remembering her own childhood there, she looked upon her summers as a kind of therapy to be shared with the world. Edward, therefore, merely added this summer of Paul and Madeline to his list of impossible summers. These included the summer of the Polish war orphans, the summer of the tennis court, the summer of Mrs. Tracy’s cousins, the summer of the unmarried mother, the summer of the Friends of France, and the summer of Bundles for Britain.
    Paul and Madeline were less destructive than the Poles and less expensive than the tennis court. Unlike the unmarried mother, they did not leave suicide notes in the car. They were, on the face of it, quiet and undemanding. But there was an unhappiness about them, a lack of ease, that trailed through the house, affecting the general atmosphere. Sometimes Edward felt that having them there was bad for Allie, but he wasn’t certain why or how. He said nothing about it, since, as he told himself, he saw them only weekends and couldn’t judge.
    The morning of Madeline’s birthday, searching for an excuse to leave the city a day early and so have a long weekend, Edward remembered that he and Madeline had had a quarrel of a sort, and he thought, aggrieved, She is keeping me out of my own house. Edward had been drinking the evening before and felt, if not ill, at least indecisive. He sat at the dining-room table unable to drink his coffee or leave it alone, uncomfortable in the empty apartment but reluctant to go out into the heat of the street. Feeling sorry for himself, half wishing himself out of town, he thought of his last conversation with Madeline.
    He had found her before one of his wife’s white-painted bookcases. Madeline had been sunbathing and smelled of scented oil. Her hair, too long and thick for the season, had been pinned up and was beginning to straggle. Through the window, Edward could see the lawn sloping away to one of Anna’s gardens. Anna, with Allie at her heels, moved along the flower border, doing something. They were fair-haired and unhurried. Edward looked at them and approved. He turned to Madeline and frowned. She, ignoring him, knelt on the floor to examine the bottom shelf.
    â€œLooking for something special?” he asked.
    Without turning, she said, “I found one book I liked and I thought you might have another.”
    â€œWhat was that?”
    â€œYou probably haven’t read it,” Madeline said, intending the insult. “It was about a girl who worked in a travel agency and fell in love with a lawyer. It was more than that, really, but that was the main thing.”
    â€œIt sounds like a woman’s book,” Edward said. “What happened to the girl and the lawyer?” It seemed to him impossible to stop talking.
    â€œHe deceived the girl, so she ran a car into something and killed them both.”
    â€œAre you sure it belongs to us?” Edward asked.
    â€œYes. And it was good. I think someone gave it to you.” She looked at him for the first time. “I can always tell your books by the funny little plate at the front.”
    Edward looked back at her with loathing and said, “It doesn’t sound like terribly healthy reading for a young