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Show 169 a different background. Probably she should have been one. Was she? Sharon wondered. Did she want that? She tried to imagine herself as one of these women, moving in this world. Maybe she could-she had the intelligence, she was certain of that. But there was something else, some other aspect to these women. An independence of character. Yes, that was it. Well, she could achieve that. But again, it was not that entirely either. There was something else. Something that came with independence of character: the desire, the ability, to live alone? Or that is, without children. To basically not be committed to raising a family. This, she sensed, was the element that she was least sure of, the element she was least confident about in herself. For somewhere, out there in her future, didn't she want a family? So she would watch these women, wonder about them. She would wonder even more, she sensed, if there had been any younger women. The ones who came in all tended toward middleage, Katie's age, or older. There was a rare woman in her early thirties, never did she see a woman in her twenties. Middleage. She could not imagine being that old. It was beyond her. She could not feel it. Not really, not in the depths of her. Even though she knew with her mind that one day she would be that age. The only young woman was the occasional secretary who travelled with a group. It would not be boring to travel with such men, to assist them in their business. That she could find interesting. But never could she confine her mind for any period of time-for the rest of her life-to the drudgery of the constant, small detail that was the mainstay in a secretary's life. For her it would be deadly, intuitively |
