Sea Glass

by Anita Shreve

“The stock market crash. The aftermath.”

  “Oh,” Honora says, pulling her dress up over her knees.

  “I worry about making light of other people’s tragedy,” Vivian says quickly.

  “It’s a comedy?”

  “Not yet, though I think it wants to be. Not sure if I can write comedy, actually. It’s a bit of a mess right now.” And likely to remain a mess if she doesn’t settle down to work, she thinks. “You’ve had it somewhat rough,” Vivian says boldly, and Honora looks quickly over at her.

  “Yes,” Honora says truthfully.

  “Your husband lost his job?”

  “He did. The day I last saw you, as a matter of fact. Christmas Eve.”

  “Oh, I am sorry,” Vivian says. She remembers the tree with its presents neatly arranged beneath it, the mincemeat pies on the counter.

  “It was dreadful,” Honora says, sighing, and Vivian wonders if this is the first time she’s spoken about it.

  “What happened?”

  “He was . . . laid off, I guess you could say. He was, I don’t know the right word, crushed. It took weeks for him to recover, even partially. He tried to find a job in sales, but no one was hiring. And then he went to the mills and tried to get a job in one of the offices, but they weren’t hiring men in the offices either, and then he had to go into the mill itself. He’s a ring spinner.”

  “Oh,” Vivian says, letting Sandy drink from her cup of water. “But you’ve managed to keep the house.”

  “Just.”

  “And now this strike,” Vivian says. “I hope it doesn’t last long.”

  “No,” Honora says.

  “If ever you should need . . . ,” Vivian begins.

  “Oh God, no,” Honora says quickly. “Don’t even think about it.”

  Vivian wants to ask Honora about her marriage, but senses that now is perhaps not the time. Though she can never make out what couples see in each other, she is particularly puzzled by Honora and Sexton. Of course, he is a handsome man, but there is something a bit . . . well . . . oily about him that is somewhat off-putting, at least to Vivian. He seems too eager to please, yet hardly to notice when Honora is in the room.

  “Are you bothered about all the men in your house?” Vivian asks after a time.

  “I’m not sure I understand what the consequences are. I have a feeling that they’re all keeping something from me. I felt it when Quillen . . . well, I can’t call him Quillen, can I, he hates the name, McDermott then, when he was talking. And then again when Louis . . .” She pauses. “You really gave Louis what-for yesterday,” Honora says.

  “Oh, I was only half serious,” Vivian says. “He’s adorable. A saint, really. I’ve no experience with selfless men. They’re remarkably unsexy, don’t you think?”

  “Vivian, you know that he’s a Communist.”

  “Well, yes, I more or less worked that out.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Honora asks. “You of all people?”

  “Well, I don’t take this whole thing too seriously. It’s a lark, isn’t it?”

  “But it’s your class they’re after.”

  “Well, Louis is. And in a rather abstract way, I think. He’s more like me than you might think. As for me, well, last year I nearly died of boredom. Besides,” she adds, leaning closer to Honora, “I just adore you and Alphonse.”

  Honora smiles. “I worry for Alphonse,” she says. “He seems so young.”

  “He’s devoted to McDermott,” Vivian says.

  “For good reason, I think.”

  “And your husband doesn’t mind all the men here either?” Vivian asks tentatively, thinking that one’s husband might have every reason to mind.

  “No,” Honora says. “He doesn’t. To be perfectly honest, he seems happier than I’ve seen him in months. Since the late fall, really.”

  “We had quite a party last night.”

  “I counted eight bottles this morning,” Honora says, lying back on the blanket and shading her face with her hat. “What happened to that man?” she asks. “The one who owned your house?”

  “Dickie? Oh, poor Dickie,” Vivian says. She thinks of Dickie the last time she saw him, in January. Dickie with his pasty complexion, his waxed mustache, his malacca cane, and his Haskelland-Haskell tie with a spill of what looked to be tomato sauce on it. “He was ruined, really. He’s working for the Arrow shirt company in Indianapolis now. As a salesman, I think. A friend of a friend got him the job.” And then immediately Vivian realizes the insensitivity of referring to a man who has a job as a salesman as ruined. “I didn’t mean . . . ,” she says.

  Honora waves away her concerns. “It’s all . . . Idon’tknow . . . relative, I think.”

  “I suppose it is,” Vivian says, looking down at Sandy. “This poor dog is just panting.”

  “Why don’t we throw him in?”

  “He hates the water.”

  “Do him good,” Honora says.

  Honora

  The beach is flat, stripped clean but for curved white shells, smooth oval pebbles. She walks north and east along the crescent, the sun behind her, her shadow growing to one side. At the ridge of the beach, where the soft sand begins before it hits the dunes, there are groups of people here and there, summer residents, newly arrived, looking white and overdressed and slightly shell-shocked in their canvas chairs. Honora hugs her arms, trying to ward off an east wind that has just come up and is blowing the tips off the waves. She has on only a rayon skirt she made herself and a cotton sleeveless blouse. She left her shoes on the blanket after most of the men, Sexton included, fell asleep on the beach and Vivian went back to her own cottage with her wet dog. Honora walks slowly with her head bent, glancing up from time to time, always surprised, no matter how many times she sees it, by the navy of the water — a blue that appears to be alive. A sail-boat, leaning into the wind, zips along the shoreline. Tomorrow the strike will begin. It seems hardly possible.

  Honora has been into Ely Falls only a few times since Christmas. It is, she thinks, an undistinguished city, dominated by its mills, long flat buildings with enormous windows and smoke billowing from their chimneys. The tenements, brick and wood, are built into the hills surrounding the city center — charmless houses with no yards, the wash hung on lines over what look to be perilous wooden porches. She has never been inside Sexton’s boardinghouse, though she has seen it from the outside: a brick building, one of many similar structures built in terraced rows. She couldn’t go inside, he said, because only men were allowed.

  A chunk of bottle green glass snags Honora’s attention, and she bends to retrieve it in the wet sand. She rubs it between her palms to clean it. It is a satisfying shard, nearly half an inch thick. She tries to imagine what it might once have been. Though it looks like a bottle, it’s too chunky. Can’t be a window either. A jar of some sort? Perhaps a kind of dishware? The casing of a lantern? Something from a ship? She picks up a large white shell and lays the shard inside, cradling the shell in her palm.

  “What have you got there?”

  Honora flinches, startled by the voice. McDermott is slightly winded and bends for a moment to catch his breath. His hair, stiff with seawater, has dried into a comical shape. He has on a blue shirt, the sleeves rolled well above the elbows.

  “Sea glass,” she says.

  “What’s that?” he asks.

  “It’s glass that’s been weathered by the sea and washed up on a beach. I collect it.” She holds out the shell with the piece of bottle green glass inside it. He studies it in her palm.

  “Where’d it come from?” he asks, touching the shard.

  “A shipwreck, maybe? Something that someone tossed overboard? A fire along the shore? Sometimes I find pieces that have melted and have charred bits inside. That’s the mystery of it, isn’t it? — the not knowing where it’s from.”

  “A secret it won’t tell,” he says. His skin has pinkened from the sun. He squints in the bright reflected light from the water.

  �
�Something like that,” she says, lowering her hand. “You were all sleeping.”

  “We’re leaving now,” he says. “I came to say good-bye.”

  “You’re going?” she asks, surprised.

  “We have to be in place early in the morning when the strike begins. To make sure no one goes into the mills. To distribute the leaflets.”

  “Oh,” she says, mildly disturbed that Sexton didn’t tell her they were leaving before dinner. She wouldn’t have made the lemon meringue pies if she’d known. To be fair, Sexton may not have known either. “I’ll walk back with you, then,” she says.

  “Thanks for putting us up,” he says as they set out. “Especially last night. We were all kind of wild.”

  “Everyone was having a good time,” she says.

  “I’m sorry?”

  She remembers that she has to look right at McDermott when she speaks to him. The muted roar of the surf makes conversation difficult even under the best of circumstances.

  “Here,” he says, stepping ahead of her and turning. “I’ll just walk backward like this.”

  “Are you sure?” she asks.

  “I do it all the time.”

  His shirt is stiff and wrinkled with salt as well, she notes. His trousers are rolled to midcalf. It is awkward going, McDermott walking backward and Honora stepping forward, and it is slightly uncomfortable as well — having her face so closely looked at to make sure that her words are seen.

  “I was just saying that it seemed like everyone was enjoying themselves,” she says, aware that she is overenunciating each syllable. She tries to relax her mouth.

  He shrugs. “We drank too much.”

  “Yes.”

  “You want some gum?” he asks, holding out a pack.

  “Sure,” she says.

  He unwraps two pieces and gives her one. “That was nice back there,” he says. “The way you were trying to teach Alphonse to swim.”

  Honora tied her skirt up and waded out with Alphonse and told him to lie as flat as a board. She would hold him up, she said, and she wouldn’t let him go until he was ready. But every time he nodded and she removed her hands, his feet sank immediately to the bottom. “He needs a bathing suit,” she said. “His trousers were dragging him down.”

  “He needs a lot of things.”

  “You care for him, don’t you?”

  McDermott shrugs. “I suppose I do.”

  “He was terrified of the water,” Honora says.

  “Is this it?” he asks, bending to pick up a speck of grass-green lying in the sand. She inspects the shard between his thumb and forefinger. “Yes,” she says. “That’s a beautiful color. Not very common.”

  “Well, here,” he says, handing it to her. “Keep it for your collection.”

  “Thank you,” she says.

  “Actually, I came to find you because I wanted to tell you something,” he says. “Friday night, when we first got to your house and you and I were talking in the kitchen, you asked me if it was safe, what we were doing, and I told you, more or less.”

  Honora nods.

  “Yeah, well.” He looks away. “It’s not,” he says.

  Honora slows her pace.

  “It’s dangerous,” McDermott says. “I thought you should know that.”

  “Oh,” she says.

  “We’re using you.”

  For a moment, she is taken aback by the bluntness of his statement. “I understood that,” she says. “Just like Louis is using you.”

  “But we’re using Mironson, don’t forget.”

  “Are you a Communist?” she asks.

  “Hell, no,” he says. “A good Irish Catholic like me? No, I’m loyal to the union, not the Reds.”

  A man and a woman, both in straw hats and walking at a normal pace, draw up alongside Honora and McDermott. He waits for them to pass by before he speaks again. “It’s perfect for us, a house far from town. Your husband says he’s never told the mill where he lives and that the only address they have for him is the boardinghouse. So if we can keep this place a secret . . .”

  Honora nods.

  “The organization Mironson works for is sending up a press from New York, and we’ll probably bring it over sometime this week,” he says. “Obviously the Copiograph machine can’t keep up with the volume we need.”

  “No,” she says, brushing her hair off her face. She has goose bumps on her arms from the east wind. She rubs them to warm them up.

  “The reason I say it’s dangerous,” McDermott says, “is that we had a press set up at a warehouse in the city, and one night some men in masks came in and destroyed the press and all the other equipment with sledgehammers. One of our men was hit as well. He’s still in the hospital.”

  Honora stops in the sand.

  “Look,” he says, “if you tell me now that you don’t want us here, I’ll make sure none of us ever comes back and bothers you again.”

  “Who were the men?”

  “We don’t know,” McDermott says. “They were sent by the bosses who own the mills. Vigilantes. I think one of them was the chief of police, though it was dark and it was hard to tell.”

  “You were there?”

  He nods.

  “And you weren’t hurt?”

  “I got out.”

  “Oh, I’m very surprised by this,” she says, putting a hand to her chest. “Though I don’t know why I should be.”

  McDermott is silent, watching her.

  “It’s really my husband’s decision,” Honora says.

  “If we use your house,” he says, “you’re involved as well.”

  Honora and McDermott walk on again, this time side by side, Honora silent, imagining a raid on her own house. They pass three small girls making a sand castle and have to walk around it. Then Honora pivots, facing McDermott. “What will happen tomorrow?” she asks, walking backward.

  “If New Bedford and Gastonia are anything to go by,” he says after a minute, “there will be a mass rally and then picketers will march to the mills. The strike leaders will make sure no one goes in.”

  “Scabs, you mean,” she says.

  “Yes. We know already there will be armed guards, and the picketers could get belligerent. There’s a lot of anger floating around the city. Mironson’s speeches will get increasingly Marxist —”

  “Not if Vivian has anything to do with it,” Honora says.

  McDermott laughs. “A lot of the strikers will look for work elsewhere. There will be evictions. The mill owners might use it as a weapon. Evict all the picketers from mill housing. The unions will set up tent cities. And possibly . . .” He stops.

  “Possibly what?”

  He looks away. “Possibly it will be over.”

  “That’s not what you were going to say.”

  “No one can predict.”

  “What happened in Gastonia?”

  “Some violence,” McDermott says. “There were pistols and rifles. Bayonets. Tear gas, vomit gas.”

  “How will I know?” she asks. “How will I know what’s happened?”

  “We’ll get word to you if there’s trouble,” he says. “But don’t worry about your husband. He’ll be on the picket line for the next several days like everybody else. More than likely, the worst thing that will happen to him is that he’ll get bored.”

  “And what about you?” she asks.

  “I doubt I’ll get bored,” he says.

  She walks with her arms held slightly away from her sides for balance. This walking backward is tricky, particularly in the sand and with all the shells underfoot. “How likely is it that the strike will be over soon?” she asks.

  “Not very,” he says. “The mills have a surplus of goods. In some ways, they must welcome the strike so they can get rid of the surplus without having to pay wages or keep the mill running. After a few weeks, though, when they run out of goods to sell, that’s when the strike will make a difference.”

  “A few weeks?” she asks.

  “The
New Bedford strike lasted six months.”

  “Oh, Lord,” she says, stopping suddenly. McDermott, unable to halt his forward progress, walks into her. He puts his arms out to brace himself. For a moment, he holds her arms while her palms are pressed against his chest. Both instantly move away.

  Sandpipers hop like fleas all around them. “I don’t want to worry you for no good reason,” he says.

  “We’ll lose the house,” she says. “We’re barely making the mortgage payments as it is.”

  “Mironson won’t let that happen.”

  “Well,” she says. “I suppose that’s one good thing.” She looks for the house in the distance. “Why are you doing this?” she asks.

  “Got roped into it,” McDermott says, smiling. “Been hanging out with a bad crowd.”

  Sexton

  “We really have to go,” Sexton is telling Honora in the kitchen. He is watching her wrap up a half dozen sandwiches and a couple of pies in waxed paper. He wants to tell her to speed it up. Mironson and Ross and McDermott are waiting to take off.

  “You’ll be on the picket line tomorrow,” she says.

  “I guess,” he says. “I’ll do whatever they tell me to do.”

  “Be careful,” she says.

  “I will. Don’t worry about me.”

  “The laundry is in the hallway,” she says.

  “Yeah. I saw that.”

  “Are you going to need forks?”

  “They give us forks in the boardinghouse,” he says impatiently, although he doesn’t know if this is true. Madame Derocher is a harpy. She keeps the forks locked up. Anyway, they’ll eat the pie in the truck with their fingers is his guess.

  “I can’t use all this food,” she says. “You might as well take it with you.”

  She puts the sandwiches into a paper bag. He hasn’t much liked the way the other guys have been ogling Honora this weekend when they think he isn’t looking. Though he can’t deny that he is proud of her. In a way, he would have to say that Vivian is a prettier gal — she is certainly sleeker and better dressed (and definitely funnier) — but, oddly, not as sexy, not even for all her brassy talk. And of course she’s much older — nearly thirty, he would have to guess. No, Honora is the more alluring of the two. And if he hadn’t been so drunk these last two nights, he might have done something about it.