Two  

"Phyllis Wagner was from somewhere back  East and had come to Chicago to live with an aunt when she was a teenager. When we were both newlyweds, we were neighbors," Jane said, hanging onto the afghan and trying to work without consciously thinking about it. Surely it was possible. Surely a grown woman who could manage the rococo complexities of carpooling three kids could crochet without talking to herself.

“We lived in a ratty apartment building in the city. Mostly elderly people and students. You know the kind of place. Steve was still in school then, and I was working at one of his family's pharmacies."

“Was Phyllis a student, too?"

“No, Phyllis wasn't the student type. And she didn't work either. Back in those days, if you recall, women weren't expected to, unless it was absolutely necessary. As far as I could tell, she spent her days visiting with other people in the building. She brightened a lot of lives. In the evenings she visited me or we went to movies or something. Steve was studying all the time and hardly noticed that I was gone."

“And Phyllis's husband?"

“She'd only married Chet Wagner a few months before they moved into the apartment building. He was much older. Phyllis was only nineteen or so, and Chet must have been in his mid-thirties. That seemed downright ancient to me then. Chet was never home either. As I recall, he'd lost everything, including his sons and his business, in a divorce and was starting over. That's why they were slumming it with us. He was involved in starting a company that had something to do with computers."

“Not a bad time to start in computers."

“I'll say. He made an absolute fortune in no time.