She had fallen by degrees into the habit of telephoning Monica every evening around seven, when Monica was certain to be back from school. (Unless of course she was out for the evening: which Sheila would want to know.) Just to say hello, just to see how Monica was. As for herself, why things were going well, things were going as well as one might expect, perhaps it was best not to inquire. . . . Sometimes, unlocking the door of her house, Monica heard the telephone ringing and felt an immediate pang of dread; of apprehension. She was exhausted from her day at the school and she was exhausted by the thoughts that spun about in her head and she was exhausted, exhausted by . . . But she couldn’t not answer the phone: Sheila might know: Sheila might understand.

Perhaps because she wasn’t working very steadily now—Monica gathered that was the case—Sheila had become unnaturally sensitive to nuances of meanings, to slights. If she asked Monica politely whether Monica was too tired to speak at the moment, her pose was misleading, for Monica didn’t dare admit to being tired, on the contrary Monica was obliged to assure Sheila that she wasn’t at all tired, not at all: in fact she was delighted to hear from her since she had intended to call Sheila herself, in another ten minutes.

“Are you certain?” Sheila asked doubtfully. “I can call back another time. I can call back tomorrow.”

“Not at all,” Monica said, “—let’s talk now,” leaning her forehead against the cold metal of one of the cupboard doors, closing her eyes, feeling an old headache resume. It was almost comforting, that old dull ache.

Sheila was in zestful high spirits, Sheila was moody, depressed, “down.” She’d heard from a friend but it was bad news; or, perhaps, good news—with the promise of changing her life. (“But only after I get my exhibit hung,” she said mysteriously.) How was her work going?—well, how was Monica’s work going? (This said with an air of innocent malice.) Most of the time she fended off Monica’s concern with a flippant reply but occasionally she said, flatly, quietly, that things were not moving along as she had hoped, not at all as she had hoped, in the early morning, before dawn, she lay in bed paralyzed with dread at getting up and going across to her studio and beginning another morning. “Still, suicide requires magnanimity of spirit, don’t you think?” she said. She extended her hands—stretched out her fingers—contemplated them—glanced at Monica.

“I don’t think I’m capable of ‘magnanimity of spirit,’ do you, dear little Mary Beth?”

“I can’t answer that,” Monica said, suddenly helpless. “I don’t really know you that well.”

“Oh, as to ‘knowing’—!” Sheila said. “I think we all ‘know’ one another only too well.”