Sea Glass

by Anita Shreve

  Sexton sat forward. “But in essence I did. Really, what does a day or two matter — particularly since it was over a holiday weekend and business was suspended for three days?”

  “There can be no debate on this matter,” Rowley said. “As a banker, I cannot tolerate any irregularities. Seriously, Mr. Beecher, can you imagine a depositor not minding the irregularity, say, of a miscalculated sum in his passbook?” Rowley waited a moment for an answer to his rhetorical question. “No, I think not,” he answered himself.

  Is the bottle in that right-hand drawer an irregularity? Sexton wanted to ask. “Could we talk about restructuring the loan?” he asked instead.

  “No, that will not be possible.”

  The trickle of sweat pooled on Sexton’s cheek.

  “And I am afraid, Mr. Beecher, that while I have refrained from notifying the Franklin bank in hopes that you and I might reach an easy settlement here, I did have to speak with the head office of your company. We were unable to reach you by telephone, you see.”

  Sexton briefly closed his eyes and watched his life tumble away from him. His job. His car. His house.

  “You spoke to whom?” Sexton asked.

  “I have it in my notes here. Mr. Fosdick himself, I believe. Yes, that’s right.”

  Sexton took his handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the sweat from his face. Rowley too was sweating, Sexton noticed. His collar was limp and — was it possible? — dirty.

  “Mr. Fosdick has asked me to have you call him at your earliest convenience. I do encourage you in future, Mr. Beecher, if you are to continue in business of some sort, to install a telephone at your residence.”

  In business of some sort.

  “So then. Not to prolong this unpleasant matter. We should like repayment in full of the loan in question no later than Wednesday of next week.”

  “But I can’t raise that kind of money by next week,” Sexton said, stifling a note of rising panic that had crept into his voice.

  “No, I thought not. But, as I recall, Mr. Beecher, you mentioned you drove a Buick? What do you imagine it’s worth now?”

  Sexton was silent.

  “I’m trying to find a way for you to keep your house, Mr. Beecher. Frankly, I consider this an awfully generous gesture on my part. If your automobile is worth what I think it is, then it could go a fair distance toward repaying this loan we’re speaking of.”

  Sexton thought frantically.

  “So you’d say it’s worth how much, Mr. Beecher?”

  “Four hundred and seventy-five dollars,” Sexton said. “That’s what I paid for it.”

  “Well then, Mr. Beecher. If you would be so kind as to deliver the Buick to the address I have written on this piece of paper next Wednesday, we would be most grateful. As you will see, the address is that of an auction house. I can’t guarantee the four hundred seventy-five. Indeed, I should think not in this economic climate. But with commission we might net four hundred.”

  Panic blossomed in Sexton’s voice. “Without the car, Mr. Rowley, I can’t make a living.”

  Rowley winced as surely as if Sexton had begun to cry. “I hope we’re not going to have a problem here,” Rowley said quietly.

  With a supreme effort, Sexton stood.

  “Well then,” said Rowley, relief evident in his voice. And without a trace of irony added, “Good luck to you.”

  “May I help you, sir?”

  A lithe, diminutive woman, beige of hair and of face, who suddenly seems so precisely the color of the product she is selling that Sexton wonders if she has sprung to life from behind the counter, tilts her head to catch his attention.

  “Can I show you anything in particular? Are you looking for a gift for your wife? Your girlfriend? Is she tall or is she short?”

  “She’s . . . long,” Sexton says. “She’s very long.”

  The beige woman looks sharply up at him, as if she might be dealing with a fruitcake. Or a man who’s celebrated just a bit too heartily at an office party around the corner. Sexton struggles to attention. The task seems monumentally difficult, but he cannot go home to Honora empty-handed.

  “I have some marvelous chiffon hose I could show you,” the salesgirl says. “Some lovely pairs. Dressy. Quite smart. Chiffon is all the rage now. But serviceable as well. A woman must have durability, don’t you agree?”

  Yes, he does agree. Honora has durability.

  The salesgirl holds a slim pair of delicate stockings between her outstretched fingers. The chiffon flows like liquid from hand to hand. Briefly, Sexton imagines the silky feel of the stockings on Honora’s legs.

  “Sir?” the salesgirl asks.

  Above him, the chandelier seems to be burning too brightly and, for a moment, to spin. Around him there are voices, animated and brisk, rising to a crescendo. He thinks again of Honora at the house waiting for him. He cannot bear the thought of going back to her. How can he ever explain to her what he has done?

  “Get a move on,” a man behind Sexton calls out. “Haven’t got all day.”

  “I’d like two pair,” Sexton says quickly. He takes from his pocket a thin roll of bills secured by an elastic band and gives the salesgirl a two-dollar bill and a one.

  Behind him, someone cheers.

  McDermott

  It seems to McDermott that he has been waiting an age behind the man in the long brown overcoat. The customer has been staring at a pair of hose for minutes now, and McDermott can see that the salesgirl is growing impatient and slightly frantic. The line behind McDermott is five or six deep, and already someone has called out to get a move on. He himself would get out of the line if he could, but Eileen was specific: two pairs of Blue Moon silk stockings in Mirage, she said, and at the time, McDermott was happy to have instructions. Eamon and Michael were specific as well: they said they wanted jackknives. McDermott suspects that his brothers belong to one of the gangs that periodically terrorize the younger girls from the mills and steal their pay packets. McDermott has asked around for information, and if he ever gets proof or catches them at it, he’ll beat them to a bloody pulp. Just a half hour ago, McDermott bought them hockey skates in the sporting-goods department. Take it or leave it, is what he thinks.

  McDermott wishes he had twenty people to buy Christmas presents for. He would like an excuse to visit every section of the department store — men’s shirts, household appliances, children’s toys, even ladies’ hats. He admires the gaiety of the displays, the color and the glitter, the world that the mannequins, in their dressing gowns and dinner suits, offer. McDermott lets the din settle around his ears and he doesn’t strain to hear the words. It’s enough that the voices sound happy — happy mostly for the early closing, he thinks.

  The man in front of him finally makes a purchase, and someone behind McDermott cheers. The salesgirl wraps the stockings in tissue paper and then in brown paper and ties the packet closed with a string. When the man collects his package and turns, McDermott sees a face not unlike those he has seen often in the mill — a face gray with exhaustion and waxy with resignation. Poor bastard, McDermott thinks as he considers flirting with the salesgirl — though flirting is difficult for him. A fellow has to be able to hear the words that slide out of the side of a woman’s mouth, and McDermott can’t do that. He gives the girl Eileen’s instructions, and she seems relieved not to have to demonstrate her product. McDermott watches her tie his package with a string.

  “Do you have any ribbon?” he asks.

  “Ribbon in Notions on Three,” she says automatically. “Gift wrapping on Four.”

  * * *

  McDermott lifts the thin package from the glass counter. It flops in his hand. He folds it in two and sticks it in the pocket of his leather jacket. “What they’re doing to Mironson stinks,” Ross says, shaking his head. He picks his teeth, his breath as foul as a rotten fish.

  The speak is packed because of the half day and the Christmas pay packet: an extra buck, a cartwheel, they call it. McDermott did his shoppi
ng before he allowed himself a drink; he has seen too many men who have drunk their pay packets and then sobbed at closing time because they had no Christmas to take home to their wives and children.

  Ross means the stories the Ely Falls Gazette has published about Mironson’s involvement with the Communist Party, about his belief in free love, and about the fact that he’s been married three times. They followed up with an article accusing Mironson of stealing union funds in North Carolina. The bit about being a Communist is probably true, McDermott thinks, but he’s prepared to bet the rest are lies.

  “We get the weavers and the carders,” Ross says, “we’re set.”

  “But what about the others?” McDermott asks. “You can’t have a successful strike without the nonunion workers. They’re ninety percent right now.”

  “They look to the unions,” Ross says. “It happened in Gastonia. It happened in New Bedford.”

  “Beal wouldn’t picket.”

  “Mironson won’t either,” Ross says. “You read about how they stripped that woman who was a scab? Stripped her naked right on the street.”

  A movement catches McDermott’s eye. A man in a now-familiar brown overcoat takes a table by himself. In the heat of the basement speak, he shakes the coat off and yanks his tie through its knot. He puts his hat on the table, runs his fingers through his hair, and then pats it down. His face is no less waxy than it was at the hosiery counter.

  “The Francos don’t trust Mironson anyway,” McDermott says.

  “They don’t trust anyone who isn’t Franco,” Ross says. “If we strike, we’ll go to our own. The church, the Ladies’ Aid Society, St. Vincent de Paul. When the strike is under way, we’ll call for help from the TWU. They’ll want to move in and take over, and by that time everyone will be more than happy to let them.”

  The English girl, without her glasses today, slips into the empty seat at the table with the waxy-faced man. McDermott watches the man order and then drink in quick succession three shots of whiskey, the next as soon as he puts down the first. The English girl has on the orange lipstick, and when she smiles, McDermott can see a bit of it on her eyetooth.

  “The thing we need,” says Ross, “is propaganda of our own. We have no way to get information to the workers. It’s all rumor.”

  The English girl and the man are laughing. The English girl isn’t stupid: a woman can jack up the price for a stranger in a gabardine coat and silk tie who downs three straight shots.

  “We need a press. For leaflets and posters,” Ross says.

  McDermott gazes over Ross’s shoulder at the shoes passing by the basement window. He likes to imagine the people inhabiting those shoes, particularly the women, and particularly the women in the pumps or the pretty fur-lined boots. It’s a fleeting pleasure: one minute the ankle and calf are visible, the next they’re gone; McDermott has only a second to imagine a face. He watches a pair of impractical high heels mince along and imagines a blonde in pink lipstick. He sees a pair of serviceable brogues cross the window and thinks of Eileen.

  “What are you doing for Christmas?” McDermott asks.

  “Go to church,” Ross says. “Eat a meal. We’ll go to my brother’s for the meal. I got Rosemary a watch. Six bucks at Simmons.”

  “Nice,” McDermott says.

  The man whose face now has a bit more color stands with the English girl and lifts his coat off the back of his chair. McDermott watches the man walk away, only then noticing a slim packet on the floor. He dips his eyes for just a second to catch a light from Ross and when he looks over at the table, thinking to call to the man with the English girl, McDermott sees that the package has already been snatched. He quickly scans the faces of the men sitting nearest to the table, but not a one gives away his sleight of hand. He hopes the man realizes he has lost the package before the stores close.

  McDermott glances up at the window, thinking he might see the man pass by, though what McDermott could do by then he has no idea. Beyond the passing feet, he can see a newsstand, and occasionally, he can read the day’s headline. New England Business Outlook Good. A slight figure moves in front of the headline. Spindly legs stick out below a pair of pants that are too short and into boots with no laces. Boots McDermott would know anywhere. He tosses a few coins onto the table.

  “Merry Christmas, Ross,” he says.

  The boy has the sleeves of his jacket pulled down over his fists for warmth, and his nose is running in the cold.

  “Hello there,” McDermott says.

  The boy looks up. He wipes his nose on his sleeve.

  “What are you doing?” McDermott asks.

  “I’m supposed to go to Tsomides Market for my mother.”

  “And what happened? You lost the money?”

  The boy opens his fist. McDermott counts the coins. “Then what’s the matter?”

  “She told me five things to buy, but I wasn’t paying attention and now I can only remember four. If I go home with only four she’ll be mad and give me another chore to do or she’ll send me to church to say the rosary.”

  McDermott knows that Franco parents send their children to church when they misbehave. Sometimes, when McDermott passes by St. André’s in the summer and the doors are open, he sees a dozen kids just sitting in the pews, holding their beads. Not such a bad deal, McDermott thinks. Sit in a quiet church for an hour, maybe even say a rosary if you have to. It beat the belt any day.

  “Well, let’s see,” McDermott says. “What’s your mother making for Christmas dinner?”

  “The pork-and-fish supper.”

  “Is it the fish? Is it the pork?”

  The boy shakes his head. He sticks his hands in the pockets of his pants.

  “The coffee? . . . The flour? . . . The milk? . . . The bread?”

  Still the boy shakes his head.

  “Cream? . . . Lard?”

  Alphonse brightens. “Sugar,” he says and seems to gain an inch of height.

  “How could you forget sugar?”

  Alphonse shrugs.

  “You’d better run to the market.”

  “Thank you,” Alphonse says.

  “No need to thank me. After you take the food back to your mother, how would you like to take a trolley ride?”

  “Where?” the boy asks.

  “It’s a secret,” McDermott says.

  Alphonse

  They have good seats on the trolley, and Alphonse thinks the snow is beautiful in the sudden sunlight. It isn’t the first snowfall of the year but it’s the one that has stuck the best and already the streets are white with only trolley marks to ruin them. McDermott sits beside Alphonse and smokes a cigarette, and from time to time Alphonse sneaks a look at his face. They boarded the trolley going west, which confused Alphonse because there’s nothing in that direction from the city but pitiful farms. Maybe McDermott has a relative on a farm, Alphonse decides, and they are going visiting. That would be all right with him.

  When they set out, McDermott asked Alphonse if he had a sweater because it might be cold where they were headed. Alphonse sprinted away and was back at the corner inside of four minutes with a sweater that belongs to Marie-Thérèse, who is closest to him in size, Alphonse being large for his age and Marie-Thérèse being small for hers. The sweater is light green and has a frill down the front, but if Alphonse holds his jacket closed no one can tell it’s a girl’s. Sometimes Arnaud Nadeau wears a flannel shirt to the mill that has a ruffle around the collar. It’s red plaid, and Arnaud pretends it’s a hand-me-down from his brother, but anyone can see that the shirt once belonged to his mother.

  Tomorrow Alphonse’s family will go to church and have the pork-and-fish dinner, and his mother’s cousin will come to visit with her seven children and if Alphonse doesn’t get out pretty quick after the meal, he’ll be stuck inside until ten o’clock or so at night keeping his eye on his younger cousins and that will be the end of his holiday. It isn’t going to be too much of a holiday anyway, his mother said, because of the pay
cut. It’s hard enough just to put food on the table, she said, and they shouldn’t think about Christmas presents this year, and she didn’t want anyone complaining. Marie-Thérèse whimpered and said that she had wanted a velvet dress so bad, and everyone else was silent thinking about the thing that they had wanted so bad too. Well, it was no use crying about it, his mother said, for once looking at Marie-Thérèse, who normally got away with murder. Everyone else was feeling the pinch, his mother said. It was going to be a slim Christmas all over town.

  McDermott and Alphonse ride in silence and Alphonse watches the people getting on and off the trolley, more getting off than on as they travel farther and farther west. McDermott has a word with the conductor and offers him a cigarette and when he turns to look back at Alphonse, he points out the window. Alphonse sees a large flat field with a building and a tower and, lifting from the snow, an airplane. Suddenly the day, which until that moment has not felt one bit like a holiday, turns as sparkling as the snow.

  * * *

  “I sometimes come out here and watch the planes take off and land,” McDermott says. “They have a little waiting room inside that building there where you can get a cup of hot chocolate. I bet you’d really like a cup of hot chocolate right now.”

  Alphonse has counted seven planes already. He doesn’t know all their names, but McDermott identifies them as they walk in from the trolley stop.

  “See that one there with the Texaco star?” McDermott says, pointing to a bright red plane. “That’s a Lockheed monoplane just like the one Frank Hawkes piloted from New York to Los Angeles and back again last summer. Nineteen hours ten minutes going west. Seventeen hours thirty-eight minutes going east. West to east is faster.”