by Anita Shreve
Beside him a carder belches from having eaten his stew too fast. McDermott reaches for a pitcher of milk. He can’t get the stew down, but if he has some bread and milk, he’ll be fine. The men are squeezed around the table, more of them it seems than there were just the day before. Madame Derocher must be packing them in like rats, he thinks. Anything to make a buck.
McDermott hears the words business and machines.
He sets the milk pitcher down and searches for the speaker. A man who looks vaguely familiar to him gestures with his hand and says the word salesman. McDermott’s seen this man before, but where? He bends forward and cups his ear, turning it so that it might catch the entire sentence. The man has dark blond hair, parted in the middle, and bloodshot eyes. He gestures with a kind of military precision.
The weaver on the other side of McDermott starts to laugh at what must have been a good joke. Mule spinners and slasher tenders are knocking spoons against bowls, glasses against wood, hitching chairs forward, shouting to be heard. Someone demands more food and says that if he is paying eight dollars a week for room and board, he wants more bread. Madame Derocher sits in her chair in the corner as if she hasn’t heard a word. In the din, three words float the length of the wooden table, and McDermott strains to catch them. Three mundane words of no apparent interest to anyone except McDermott. McDermott, whose heart lifts as he takes them in.
Typewriter, he hears.
And Copiograph machine.
Alphonse
Across from him, McDermott is ripping open a waxed packet of bread. The packages are stacked by the hundreds on wire shelves, with Alphonse wedged between them like an oversized loaf. McDermott and Ross and Rasley and another guy take three slices apiece and when they are done, Alphonse will get the heels. That’s the way it goes, and Alphonse doesn’t mind one bit. He has never eaten as well as he has the last couple of months, ever since McDermott told him to walk off the job, he had work for him to do, and he would pay him the same wage he was being paid in the mill. Alphonse almost fainted with happiness because there practically isn’t anything worse than having to do bobbins.
All he does all day now is run. He runs with the leaflets and gives them to mill workers as they’re leaving the mills. He has to be quick enough to get away before any of the bosses can nab him. He puts posters on telephone poles and he is so fast it is as if the posters blossomed on the poles all by themselves. He takes messages to men in the mills and in rooms he has sworn never to talk about, and he fetches food and cigarettes and newspapers and lifts boxes and practically never leaves McDermott’s side after hours except when he is doing an errand. Shopkeepers give McDermott and his friends food, and sometimes Alphonse just cannot believe his good luck.
Ross hands him the two heels. Alphonse wishes they would break open the cupcakes, though he knows better than to ask. The secret to keeping his job, he has learned, is to say absolutely nothing. He never speaks unless it is really important, like the time he told McDermott that Father Riley came out of St. André’s and tore a poster down. Once McDermott asked Alphonse if he wouldn’t rather go back into the mill because the work wouldn’t be as dangerous and he would at least know people his own age, and Alphonse was so shocked by the question that he couldn’t even answer. He just shook his head back and forth until McDermott laughed and put a hand on his shoulder.
Alphonse wonders who the new guy is, because he looks kind of familiar. Nobody introduced him, and nobody will, Alphonse knows. In fact, hardly anybody is talking at all because it’s so noisy in the truck. A guy named Mahon is driving. Alphonse has ridden in the truck four or five times now. He loves the smell of the bread that leaks out of the waxed wrappers. He’s always hungry, even though he is eating better than ever before, and McDermott says it’s because he is getting his growth spurt.
Before Alphonse quit the mill, McDermott asked to “have a word” with Alphonse’s mother. Alphonse stood outside on the porch while they talked, and when he was allowed to come back in, his mother looked at him in a whole new way that made him feel, well, terrific, even if he was a little scared. And that’s when he stopped having to do the floors and the lunch pails and the sheets. Marie-Thérèse would do that now, his mother said, and Augustin would help her. Alphonse had other business to attend to. Alphonse will never forget the look on Marie-Thérèse’s face, and it almost doesn’t matter what happens to him on this job because just that look was worth anything he ever gets asked to do. Sometimes he sticks pieces of cheese or apples or bits of chocolate in his pocket and brings them home to his mother. He never talks to her about what he is doing, though she seems to know, and sometimes she gives him a quick hug when he leaves the house, as if she might not ever see him again, as if he might just take off like Sam Coyne’s father did.
And Alphonse can hardly believe it, but across from him, Ross is opening a box of cupcakes. Alphonse quickly counts how many there are in the box and thinks that if every man, including Mahon, takes only one then he will get the last one, and he has to swallow because they look so good. But then Ross passes the box to McDermott and McDermott does a wonderful thing. He holds the box out to Alphonse. Just then Mahon brakes the truck hard as if he had hit a pole, and before Alphonse can even bite into the chocolate, the back door swings open and he has to put an arm up to shield his eyes from the light.
Vivian
She sets the dog, who is trying to run in midair, onto the parquet floor.
“I took the sheets off, miss, like you said.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Ellis.”
“And I put milk and eggs and a nice leg of lamb and a chicken and whatnot in the Frigidaire.”
“Marvelous,” Vivian says.
“Your change is on the counter.”
“Terrific.”
“And Mr. Ellis got the beach wagon all tuned up. He took it to the battery station just this morning.”
“Many thanks,” Vivian says, taking a five-dollar bill from her purse. If she doesn’t tip the woman soon, she’ll have to listen to an entire litany of chores completed.
“Thank you, miss. The water and the electric are up and running.”
Vivian nods and moves into the front room. The ocean is flat and Lido blue, reflecting a cloudless sky.
“So if there’s nothing else . . .”
Vivian turns. “Oh, no, I’m fine. Absolutely fine.”
“I couldn’t help noticing you only have the one trunk this time.”
“Yes.”
“There was eight last time.”
“So there were,” Vivian says. “I don’t need much here, do I?”
“Well, that’s up to you. You’ll be wanting me to do the laundry, I expect.”
“As always.”
“Well, that’s settled, then. Glad you’re back.”
Vivian listens for the click of the latch at the back door. She sighs and unhooks the cape from her daffodil suit. She slips off her shoes and pads to the front door to let Sandy out. After five months in New York, the dog nearly levitates with happiness at being able to walk on a substance that is not concrete — seagulls! crabs! dead fish! paradise! — and something inside Vivian begins to levitate as well. The day is marvelous, the light scintillating and crisp. Tomorrow, perhaps, she will go to work, but not today. Gerald has said that if she writes every day except Sundays, she can just about complete the revision before September — a prediction Vivian thinks is wildly optimistic.
“Strengthen Roger’s character,” Gerald said. “Use fewer stage directions.”
He wanted to go into production by the beginning of December, he said, and Vivian held her breath, astonished at promising so much. Her play, Ticker, about the disintegration of a family after the stock market fiasco, pleased Gerald, but he had reservations. “This doesn’t want to be a tragedy,” he said when he had read the first draft. “It’s neither fish nor fowl right now. There’s a comedy in here trying to get out.”
Vivian had met Gerald at the Plaza Hotel in Havana one night
in January. They’d been drinking highballs with the Gibsons, and Gerald had told funny stories all night. Vivian really hadn’t noticed the time until he had fallen asleep fully clothed across her bed at six in the morning. She hadn’t actually slept with the man, and she’d more or less worked out that he was queer, which had been an enormous relief. Two nights later at dinner, Gerald said suddenly, “Tell me a play.” Vivian asked him what he meant. “Give me an idea,” he said. “You’re clever. Tell me a play.” Thinking fast, she suggested the idea for Ticker to Gerald, who everyone knew had just had a success with a mystery spoof on Broadway. The idea came to Vivian only as she was speaking, and of course she didn’t really intend it as something anyone might want to develop, never mind with her in tow.
“Good,” he said.
“Good?” she said.
“Write it,” he said. “You’ve practically written it just talking to me.”
“I can’t write plays,” Vivian said.
“Why not?”
“I can’t even write a decent letter.”
“I’ll teach you,” he said. “We’ll go to the theater. You’ll read plays. You can do it.”
After Havana, Vivian moved to New York, mostly for the promise of the theater every night and the parties to follow, and, really, she did love the Plaza Hotel. But then, one evening in March at dinner, Gerald said he wouldn’t take her to the theater anymore unless she showed him a page. The next morning, at her desk at the Plaza, Vivian began to write.
As she surveys the beach, Vivian ponders Gerald’s advice about the first draft. She agrees with him that something dark is lurking beneath the surface of Ticker, something that threatens to drag it down, give it a whiny note. She can excise it if she tries. And of course she wants to write a comedy. Truthfully, she distrusts tragedy and often finds it stilted and false: all that wailing and gnashing of teeth! Give her a razor wit any day, dialogue that crackles, characters who don’t take themselves too seriously, and the ones who do deliciously skewered. Two pages a day, Gerald said. That’s all it would take.
She stands at the water’s edge and squints back at the cottages, wondering if any of the old crowd will reappear this summer. The Nyes certainly won’t, nor will Dorothy Trafton, and Vivian thinks she might actually miss Dorothy Trafton, if only as someone to dislike. It could be terribly lonely here without the usual crowd. Dickie is in Indianapolis now, working for the Arrow shirt company. She tried to persuade him to come east for a visit, but he said he couldn’t do that, he was new to the job and had to wait at least six months before he could take a vacation. Vivian was appalled. Neither of them mentioned the house.
As she searches each cottage for signs of life, her eyes continue on to the end of the crescent, where she sees the house of the woman who collects sea glass. She sent Honora a postcard from Havana, but of course the woman had no address to reply to. Perhaps Vivian will take the beach wagon out later this afternoon, see if it’s running all right, and stop in at Honora’s house. Maybe she’ll meet the husband — the elusive typewriter salesman who was late for Christmas Eve lunch.
Vivian digs her toes into the sand. “Sandy, come here,” she calls.
The dog trots obediently to Vivian’s feet. She picks him up and walks with him into the water until her ankles are so cold they ache.
Alice Willard
Dear Honora,
I thought I would just write you a couple of lines. Seems hardly time enough even to do that these days. Harold isn’t at all well. He has lost a great deal of weight and as you know there wasn’t much there to begin with. He said to me last week that he has not truly felt like a man since Halifax. This morning he said, “Life is a long ladder, Alice, and I’m not afraid of the top rung.”
If you should get a chance to send him a note I know that he would appreciate it very much.
Are you eating well? I worry about this most of all, because I know how tight money is for you. I don’t know what we’d have done without the produce from last year’s garden. If there is any way you can make a garden for yourselves, even by the sea, you might want to try. Get Sexton to dig it for you.
We all have been hard hit around this area. The mill in Waterboro closed it doors and so did the bank, and here in Taft the bank is paying depositors 50 cents on the dollar and will close July 1. Bernice Radcliffe said the other day that she never wanted to see another raisin again, and I know just how she feels. In May, you could get raisins and honey for a good price, and that’s all anybody ate for weeks.
Richard told us a funny story last night about how when his brother Jack was visiting and they were headed back to the house, they didn’t think they had enough gas to make it, so Jack turned his Model T around and backed it up the hill since the gas tank is under the front seat. Gas is 19 cents a gallon now.
Vinegar is cheap, so make sure you have some handy. It keeps apples from turning brown, as you know, and it is a good meat tenderizer. A dash of it in breads and rolls will make them crusty. Also, a tablespoon in place of cream of tartar in meringue makes it beautifully high.
Here is a good recipe for English Monkey that I clipped out of Estelle’s Ladies’ Home Journal that doesn’t need too many ingredients. Soak one cup of bread crumbs in one cup of milk. Melt one tablespoon of fat. Add one-half cup mild cheese, grated. Add it to the crumb mixture. Beat one egg and add to the above with salt and pepper. Cook three minutes. Pour over toast and serve.
Love,
Mother
Honora
Honora lets the letter fall onto the kitchen table and thinks of Harold. Harold, who stood in as best he could for her father in life as well as in the church. Harold, who has not felt like a man since Halifax. Harold, who has character, who can be trusted.
She puts her handkerchief back into her sleeve. She thinks for a moment about making the pie. She has already prepared the rhubarb; she has only to fix the strawberries and roll out the dough. She stands and removes the covered dish of rhubarb from the icebox, the fruit looking like a slimy sea creature in the shallow white bowl. But she is just too hungry and too tired to make a pie. She finds the box of Saltines in the cupboard, spreads some rhubarb between two crackers, and eats it. She chews experimentally and then with more enthusiasm. The stewed-fruit sandwich is delicious. She stands at the window, looking out at the pink beach roses, which have just come into bloom, and she has an idea. A very good idea, she thinks.
She finds the butter yellow wedding suit in a shallow closet in an empty room upstairs. She has the paper bag the dry goods came in from Jack Hess’s store. In her bedroom, she cuts the bag to make wrapping paper, puts the suit inside, and writes a note.
Dear Bette,
I am sorry to have kept this suit so long. It is still in pretty good condition. I don’t want my money back. I hope everything is going well at the store.
Sincerely,
Honora Willard Beecher
She ties the package with string and sets it on her night table.
There, she thinks. That’s done.
She turns and looks into the mirror. Her face is narrower, more hollow cheeked than it normally is, and her skin is still winter white despite several long walks along the beach. And there is something else, something that wasn’t there a year ago — a tension in the muscles, a niggling unease.
When were you going to tell me about the strike, Sexton?
She will not meet her husband’s trolley tonight; indeed, she has probably already missed it. That might alarm him some, at least make him wonder. She doesn’t have a dinner planned either. Let him eat boiled rhubarb and Saltines like she just did.
She walks to the window, the one that overlooks the ocean. The sea is flat tonight, a blue suffused with pink. She watches a fisherman on a lobster boat drawing in his pots. Usually, she sees the lobstermen when she wakes at daybreak. She likes the way they are always intent upon their methodical work, and she wonders if they hate lobsters as much as she does.
Oh, it is just too bad, she deci
des, moving to the bed and sitting at its edge. She loves this house, she loves it, and now they will lose it, and who knows what the future will bring? What if the strike drags on for months and all the mills close as a result? She has heard of strikes that have exhausted, decimated, whole communities. She supposes she and Sexton could always go to Taft and live with her mother, find work there. No disgrace in that. Not really.
She hears a deep rumble and grind, as if from a truck changing gears, then a short screech of tires. Honora heads toward the hallway. She hears the slam of a metal door, voices through an open window. She realizes that there are men in her house, downstairs.
“Honora,” Sexton calls up to her, his voice more buoyant than she has heard in months. “Honora.”
Three syllables. A lilt.
She walks to the railing at the top of the stairs. She has an impression of dark coats and caps, a restless moving about in a confined space. She sees Sexton peering up at her, and for a moment, he seems not to remember what it is he wants to say. She thinks his face will lapse into its former shape, the shape that has greeted her since Christmas, and that she will see, as always, the evasive glance, the set jaw. But he holds her eyes, balancing on a tightrope somewhere between fresh start and perhaps despair.