Sea Glass

by Anita Shreve

  “I take the trolley. Then I walk.”

  “Kind of hot today for that long of a walk,” McDermott says.

  The boy shrugs.

  “You have money for the trolley?”

  “I keep two dimes from my pay packet.”

  McDermott lights a cigarette, drops the match on the sidewalk. “You know how to swim?”

  The boy shakes his head.

  “You ever been fishing?”

  “A couple of times,” says the boy. “With my father.”

  “I like to fish,” McDermott says.

  The boy nods.

  “Your father take off?”

  The boy shakes his head and scuffs at the sidewalk with his shoe. “He died,” he says.

  “That’s too bad,” McDermott says. “When?”

  “Last winter.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” McDermott says, and after a moment adds, “I could take you fishing sometime if you want.”

  The boy looks surprised, as if McDermott has said something that doesn’t quite make sense. McDermott can feel through his feet the creak and rumble of large wheels over cobblestones. The ice man, McDermott guesses. Working on a Sunday. He’ll be doing a good business in this heat.

  “Tell you what,” McDermott says to Alphonse. “I want an ice cream, and I want you to go get it for me, but I don’t want it unless you get one for yourself.”

  The boy looks puzzled at first, as if there might be a trick. “All right,” he says after a moment.

  McDermott feels in his pocket for the coins. “If I decide to go fishing, I know where to find you,” he says.

  Alphonse nods. He turns and begins to run. McDermott has never seen anyone sprint that fast. Too bad the kid isn’t in school, he thinks. He’d be a natural for any track team.

  But the boy isn’t in school. He works in a mill. McDermott lights another cigarette and waits for the boy to return.

  Honora

  Honora stands in the kitchen, unpacking groceries from a cardboard box, the back of her rayon blouse sticking to her shoulder blades. She tries to lift the fabric away from her skin. Sexton walks into the kitchen with a letter in his hand. He sits down as if his legs have suddenly given out.

  “What is it?” she asks.

  “It’s from the owner,” Sexton says.

  “Of the house?” Honora sets a tin of cleanser on the tabletop. “Is it bad news?”

  “I’m not sure,” Sexton says. “It could be great news. He wants to sell. In a hurry.”

  “He wants to sell the house?” Honora asks. She puts a hand on the back of a chair and sits down next to her husband.

  “For four thousand dollars. And he wants to know if we would be interested in making an offer before he puts it on the market.” Sexton stands and walks to the window. He begins to pace. He puts a hand to his forehead. “That’s a great price,” he says. “Even with the house in such bad shape. The guy must really need the money.” Sexton reads the letter again. He brandishes it like a sword, slicing the air in his excitement. In his gestures, he is athletic and precise. Even in the wilting heat, Honora thinks of him as having snap. Watching him, she is reminded of the feel of crisp beans straight from the garden and the sound they make when her mother prepares them for the pot. Snap go the heads, and snap go the tails. “We could almost do this,” he says.

  “How?”

  “We’ll need twenty percent down,” he says. “Eight hundred dollars.”

  “Where on earth will we come up with eight hundred dollars?” she asks, a little breathless.

  “The Buick’s worth four seventy-five,” he says. “I could use that as collateral for a loan — say for four hundred dollars. We’ve got a hundred in savings. That’s five hundred.”

  “And what about the other three hundred?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I’ll think of something. Maybe I could get an advance against commissions.”

  “Is that wise?” Honora asks, running her hand along the slick oilcloth.

  Over the summer, Sexton has sold a great many typewriters. Honora and he have been to Littleton and to Lebanon and to Cranston. To Pawtucket and to Worcester and to Springfield. They’ve eaten ice-cream cones in the Buick and deviled-ham sandwiches beside lakes. They have played miniature golf and gone to see Mary Pickford in Coquette. They have dined in hotels and gone dancing in roadhouses. They’ve bought roller skates and an icebox and a settee and a radio, and at night, when they are at home, they listen to Lowe’s Orchestra and to The Dinner Hour. Sexton checks the baseball scores and listens for the Motorists’ Bulletin and the racing results. Sometimes Honora feels like one of the legendary bank robbers whose exploits fill the headlines. She and Sexton go into banks. They make quick getaways. They hole up in cabins.

  “Business is great,” Sexton says. “I’ve made more money in the last month than I made all of last year. And my line has expanded. I’m doing all business machines now — not just typewriters.”

  “Thank you very much, Honora,” she says from the table.

  Sexton bows. “Thank you very much, Honora,” he says. He glances around the kitchen. “Just imagine,” he says. “This could be ours one day.”

  Honora follows her husband’s eyes. The kitchen has a kind of rudimentary cheer now. She has tacked brightly patterned oilcloth to the shelves and put on rickrack as an edging. The walls have been painted yellow, and she’s made gingham tea towels that complement the oilcloth. The dishes on the shelves, though mismatched, are neat and tidy.

  “It feels like ours already,” she says.

  She picks up Sexton’s newspaper, intending to fold it and use it for a fan. She glances at the headlines. 204 KILLED BY ENFORCING PROHIBITION, she reads. SOUTHERN COTTON MILL STRIKERS START RIOTS.

  Alice Willard

  Dear Honora,

  I will write you just a quick note before you come. I don’t think it would be a good idea to bring pies. Unless you are coming directly, they would not keep well in this heat. Yesterday, the temperature reached 100 degrees, which as you know is quite a record for Taft. I was in the garden digging out the potatoes and I had to sit down because I felt a spell coming on. Estelle has had the heat stroke, and I never knew how dangerous it was, but she has been laid up all week with strict orders not to go outside. Richard had to buy a fan to keep her cool, and he has been down to the ice house any number of times. If it is too hot, you and Sexton will want to sleep on the porch. I will make up the divan there just in case. It is a narrow bed and not too comfortable, but I think you won’t mind too much. Sleeping upstairs has become very unpleasant. I rigged up that old fan Myra gave us in the attic, and at night we get a bit of a breeze running through the house. This heat can’t last much longer I don’t think and maybe by the time you get here we’ll have had a storm and the heat will have broken.

  I have that recipe you wanted out and a few others besides that have been in the family for some time. I used to make your father the Company Chicken and he liked it very much. It will be a change to have people to cook for, even though it is hot. Harold eats hardly anything these days and never seems to want a real meal.

  I wish I could tell you to take your time with buying the house, but if Sexton is determined and thinks you and he can afford it, then who am I to tell you different? You have a good head on your shoulders, Honora, and sometimes a wife has to be the voice of reason in a family, though it is always best to do so in such a way that the husband doesn’t feel that he is not the boss. Also you don’t want to be thought of as someone who wears the pants. You know what that’s like from watching Estelle and Richard. The poor man, he is run off his feet sometimes.

  I’m glad you’ve decided to stay home more and let Sexton do the traveling. Automobiles have always made me nervous.

  It is just too hot to eat. I think I will make up some cucumber sandwiches. Harold doesn’t like them too much, but I feel in the mood for them today.

  We might get a radio. What do you think about that?
r />   Love,

  Mother

  Sexton

  Sexton parks the Buick behind a J. C. Penney store. A large elm tree provides a canopy of shade. The parking lot is nearly deserted on this Friday afternoon before the Labor Day weekend.

  “How long will you be gone?” Honora asks.

  “Forty-five minutes at the most,” Sexton says. “Want some gum?”

  “I’m set.”

  “Cigarettes?”

  She holds up her pack of Old Golds. “I’ve got my magazines,” she adds.

  He leans across the front seat and kisses his wife. She is happy. She is going home to see her mother. Her mouth tastes like Wrigley’s Spearmint gum. Her hair has lost its sheen in the heat, and her skin is damp. Lately, they have taken to sleeping outside, on the porch. At night, there is sometimes the suggestion of a breeze from the water. The mosquitoes are fierce, but sleeping inside these days is unthinkable.

  Honora waves him away with her hands. “Go,” she says, smiling. “I’m fine.”

  Sexton lifts his jacket from the hook in the backseat. He has packed the Buick for the trip to Taft and has rigged up a kind of icebox so that Honora can take her pies. If this appointment goes well — and then the next — they will be on their way to Taft by five this evening. With any luck, they will get there before eight, and already he is planning to go swimming with Honora in the lake shortly after they arrive. They will wait through all the visiting and for Harold and Honora’s mother to go to bed. Then he’ll take Honora down to the lake. He’ll tell her to forget her suit.

  He tosses his jacket over his shoulder. He turns and gives Honora a quick wave through the windshield. Because of the reflection in the glass of the dappled shade, he can see only part of her face. He thinks that she is beautiful. She isn’t classically beautiful and she isn’t magazine beautiful either, but she is wife beautiful. He loves catching her face when she is ironing or making a bed. In those moments, she will look content, and contentment suits her features.

  As Sexton walks, he rehearses his speech. Everything depends upon timing. He is counting on Rowley being half in the bag, getting a head start on the long weekend. The weekend itself is part of Sexton’s plan, and he prays that Albert Norton, the loan officer at the Franklin Institution for Savings in Franklin, won’t decide to leave early for his summer house. If Sexton can get in and out of Rowley’s office before three-thirty, he can make it to Franklin by four, which is when he told Norton he would be there. It’s a risky plan, and in odd moments it takes Sexton’s breath away, but it’s the only way Sexton can see to raise the money for the house. Besides, the deception is a minor one, isn’t it? Merely a matter of dates.

  And Sexton wants the house. He wants it so much that it sometimes makes his hands shake. He can’t explain the feeling to himself rationally. Rationally, the house is no bargain. It’s too big, too hard to heat, and in a community that virtually shuts down during the winter. And yet, if he can just secure this one thing, have this one possession, he will feel that somehow he’s ahead of the game. That he’s gotten the jump on life.

  The stone entryway to the bank feels cool, and for a moment Sexton savors the sensation. He slips his jacket on over his shirt, nearly soaked through with sweat. He tucks in his shirttails and sets his hat on his head at an angle. As he opens the large glass door to the bank’s lobby, he has a sharp and visceral memory of opening the door of the Taft Savings and Loan last March and seeing Honora across the room. Her shiny walnut-colored hair snagged his attention, and he found himself moving in her direction, even though another teller was closer to the door. Her hair was cut in a neat shingle that seemed to elongate her long white neck. He took out the roll of tens and fives and put it in the trough under the grille, and he watched her hands, the skin like smooth white silk, as she counted out the money. The urge to touch those hands shuddered through him like a punch. He left only reluctantly, knowing for a certainty that he would soon be back.

  “Hello there,” he says to the secretary who once brought him an iced coffee and to whom he has sold three of his machines. “How’s the Number Eight?”

  “It’s just fine,” Miss Alexander says. The secretary has on a green sleeveless dress today that shows the chicken wattles under her arms.

  “And the Copiograph machine?”

  “It’s made my job a lot easier.”

  “Well, that’s what I like to hear. Say, that’s a pretty dress you have on there.”

  “Oh. Well,” she says, blushing. “Thank you.”

  “I think I’ve got an appointment with Mr. Rowley,” Sexton says, putting his face close to hers. Miss Alexander, flustered, consults her book. Needlessly, Sexton thinks. How many appointments can Rowley possibly have on a Friday afternoon before Labor Day weekend?

  “He’ll see you now,” she says.

  “Thank you very kindly,” Sexton says, winking.

  As he opens the door to Rowley’s office, Sexton catches the briefest movement on the desk, a neat stack of papers quickly centered, a pen raised. But Sexton can see that the stack is too neat, the cap still on the pen.

  “Mr. Beecher,” Rowley says, looking up and then standing, pretending to be caught in the middle of his paperwork. He holds out his hand.

  “Mr. Rowley,” Sexton says.

  “It’s a pleasure to see you again. Take a seat, take a seat. How have you been?”

  Sexton listens for — hopes for — a slight slurring of words. “Just fine, Mr. Rowley. And yourself?”

  “Excellent, Mr. Beecher. Excellent. Apart from this infernal heat, that is.”

  And there it is. Thisinfernal.

  “This room isn’t too bad, though,” Sexton says.

  “No, it’s not,” Rowley says, moving the stack of papers to one side of his desk. “So what brings you out this way? Hey, by the way, my girl says that accounting-writing machine you sold us is just the ticket.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Sexton says, reflecting that the girl is fortyfive if she’s a day. “No trouble with it, I trust?”

  “Not a hint of trouble far as I can tell. Of course it’s my girl who uses it. That’s her department, don’t you know.”

  And doesn’t Sexton just know. If it weren’t for the girls in the outside offices, Sexton would be out of a job.

  “So what can I do for you?” Rowley asks.

  Sexton sits forward. “Well, actually, I’ve come here on a —”

  “Heeeey,” Rowley says, pointing a finger at Sexton. “Those Cubs, huh?”

  Sexton nods and points a finger back. “Really something.”

  “Charlie Root?” Rowley asks.

  “The best,” Sexton says. “And Rogers Hornsby?”

  “Fantastic. Say, you headed out for the weekend?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes I am,” Sexton says. “Headed for the in-laws in Taft.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “A bit north of here. Near Conway.”

  “Oh, yes,” Rowley says. “My dad used to keep a boat up there. This your last appointment?”

  Thiz your las appointment?

  “Yes,” Sexton lies.

  “Well, here, let’s start the weekend off right, then. You care for a shot of my best whiskey?”

  Sexton smiles and relaxes his shoulders. He sits back in the chair. “Thank you very kindly, Mr. Rowley. I surely would,” he says. Sexton watches the now-familiar ritual with the shot glasses and the bottle that has been squirreled away in a drawer. “My wife and I just bought a house over to Ely,” he says after his first good pull. The drink tastes like wood smoke going down. It’ll relax him for the next appointment, though he will have to remember to have a piece of gum on the way over to Franklin.

  “Didn’t know that,” Rowley says. “Congratulations. Business must be good,” he adds. Rowley has the face of a man who hardly ever goes outside. He’s thin through the chest, Sexton sees, soft through the belly.

  “Yes, it is, Mr. Rowley. I’m selling a lot of business machines.
”

  “Call me Ken.”

  “Well, thank you, Ken. Actually, I’m here on a personal matter. What I wanted to talk to you about is the house. The one my wife and I just purchased. It needs a new roof and we have to upgrade all the plumbing. I’d like to get this taken care of as soon as possible.”

  “The missus wants her plumbing,” Rowley says with a slight leer.

  “She does indeed, Mr. Rowley. Ken. I’ve got a contractor lined up who’ll start on this right away, but he needs to see I’ve got the cash before he’ll go ahead with the work.”

  Rowley nods slowly. “I can understand that,” he says. “You need a loan, then, Mr. Beecher?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “How much?”

  “I figure seven hundred will do it.”

  “You got a breakdown of costs with you there, Mr. Beecher?”

  “Call me Sexton if you’d like. Yes, I do.” Sexton reaches into the pocket of his jacket and takes out an envelope. “I think everything you need to know is right there,” he says, slipping the envelope across Rowley’s desk.

  Rowley opens the envelope and reads. “It says here your mortgage is with the Franklin Institution for Savings?”

  “That’s right,” Sexton says, his breath tight.

  “They hold the deed?”

  “Yes, they do.”

  “You know this man’s work? This contractor?”

  “Yes, I do. He’s renovating a house about a mile and a half from us. Doing a terrific job.” Sexton has seen the scaffolding on a house at the other end of the beach. He’s copied the man’s name and forged a signature on the estimate.

  Rowley puts the paper down. He taps a pencil against the desk. “I don’t think this will be too much of a problem,” he says. “We can advance you the cash today and get the paperwork for a lien on the house sorted out next Monday or Tuesday.” Rowley thinks a minute. “Well, probably not Monday or Tuesday,” he adds. “Might not be until Wednesday or Thursday on account of the holiday.”