Don't Put the Boats Away

by Ames Sheldon

  “Vernon, this is my daughter, Harriet. She just completed her master’s degree in chemistry with honors from the University of Wisconsin. I know she’ll be a good addition to your staff.

  “Harriet, your boss, Dr. Vernon Bryne.”

  Dr. Bryne dips his head at her. “Miss Sutton,” he says in a frigid tone of voice. He moves around his desk toward them, but he does not stick his hand out to her. “I’ll show you to the lab.”

  “Harriet,” says George, “come find me in my office at five-thirty. It’s at the end of this hall.”

  As Dr. Bryne leads Harriet down several corridors, he doesn’t say anything. Once they arrive at the research lab, he opens the door for her. “You’ll have the station on the bench that’s nearest the window. The boss’s daughter gets the best spot in the room.”

  Harriet walks over to the area he indicated. The bench is a long two-sided soapstone counter with gas, water, and steam plumbed in the center; on each side three high stools stand in the spaces between drawers that extend from the counter to the floor. Much of the bench is crowded with Bunsen burners, glass beakers and flasks, test tubes in a rack, tongs, and spatulas, but the spot Dr. Bryne indicated has nothing on it. She’s surprised to see that they haven’t prepared for her. Does that mean she isn’t really welcome here? “Dr. Bryne, where might I find glassware and tools to work with? And a lab coat?”

  “Dr. Gallagher is in charge here. He’ll explain everything to you. He’s in a meeting now with all the scientists, but they should be back before long. You can sit at your place until they return.” Dr. Bryne turns and exits.

  She’s supposed to twiddle her thumbs? That’s not very efficient. Harriet can tell Dr. Bryne doesn’t like her one bit. She doesn’t like him either. Does he doubt her abilities as a chemist because of her sex? Or is it because she’s “the boss’s daughter”? No wonder her father told Dr. Bryne she got her master’s with honors. She knows she’s lucky to have this job, but she worked hard to earn it. Did she take the job away from someone Dr. Bryne wanted to hire? She knows there are lots of men back from the war looking for employment.

  Wandering around the room, she looks over the shelves of chemicals on the wall, the fume hood, the stained sink, the refrigerator, the incubator, and, in the corners, the microscopes on the desks. What will the five other chemists at the bench think of her? She’ll need to prove herself right away.

  Fortunately, Dr. Gallagher turns out to be much friendlier than Dr. Bryne. Explaining that he was under the impression she wouldn’t start until next week, Dr. Gallagher apologizes for the fact that her station hasn’t already been set up.

  He shows Harriet where all the equipment is kept, and then he assigns her the task of assessing the water resistance of a piece of canvas that’s been treated with a new chemical coating developed in their lab. This is actually a job for a technician, not a chemist, but she isn’t affronted; she’s eager to begin.

  Each day during their drive home from work, George fills her in on the history of the company.

  On Friday George tells her, “Getting access to the materials we need, which has been difficult ever since Pearl Harbor, continues to be our biggest challenge.”

  “I can imagine,” she replies. “Even the supply of new nylon stockings is still limited.”

  George pushes in the cigarette lighter. “We’ve made the transition quite nicely from producing industrial finishes for war—for shells and bombs and gas masks and aircraft wiring systems—to peacetime uses like finishes for new cars rolling off the assembly lines. Sutton coatings that were used to waterproof fabrics and oilcloth for our fighting forces are now applied to awnings for buildings and homes and boats.”

  He pulls the lighter out, touches it to the cigarette in the corner of his mouth, and inhales. “Printing ink is our biggest seller of all, thanks to the new formulation invented by one of our chemists. Printing presses require a series of rollers to spread out the ink, but that ink used to dry on the rollers before the paper reached the type.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Sutton ink doesn’t dry at room temperature, but it dries almost instantly once you apply heat. It’s used for printing glossy magazines like the New Yorker, Collier’s, and the Saturday Evening Post.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  He taps the ash off his cigarette. “The ink doesn’t cost much to produce, and we price it as high as the market will bear. That robust profit margin has been great for our bottom line.”

  “If it’s such a good product, Father, why don’t you bring down the price so more printers can afford to use it?”

  “We need to make up for the development costs and to underwrite the cost of doing research on other new products.”

  “That makes sense. How do you decide the price for Sutton products? Do you charge the same as other companies with similar products?”

  “Proper pricing is both an art and a science. You need to know who your customers are, how much your competitors charge, and the relationship between quality and price. If you believe your product has extra value and you want it to be known for quality, you price it higher to reflect that quality.”

  “Who are our competitors?”

  Exhaling smoke, he says, “Dow Chemical and E. I. Dupont, of course. Also Union Carbide, National Starch, and Pennsalt Chemical.”

  “I see.”

  “I’d like you to investigate what we can do in the area of fungicidal coatings to preserve foods after being harvested so they survive shipping and storage without rotting. Your experience with penicillin should come in handy here.” He grinds his cigarette out in the ashtray.

  “What! You want me to develop a fungicide to inhibit mold? That’s the exact opposite of everything I did at Madison!” Immediately she feels an immense sense of resistance to this idea. It’s as though her father wants her to turn herself inside out.

  “You know something about molds now, Harriet.”

  Scrambling for something to say, she asks, “Has Sutton Chemical ever done any work with fungicides?”

  “Not yet. I want you to give it a try. Read up on the literature and then start experimenting. I think there’s a lot of money to be made in this area.”

  That night Harriet tells Frank she’d like to see a movie. From what she’s read about The Farmer’s Daughter, she hopes that watching the feisty Loretta Young character will help inspire her to figure out how to meet her father’s challenge. After they watch the movie, Frank drives his new Mercury to their private place on a deserted road overlooking a swamp. The songs of frogs fill the air—otherwise it’s quiet. Frank stretches his right arm along the back of the seat and angles his long legs toward her. She turns toward him.

  Thirty-three years old, he has a few crow’s feet at the corners of his brown eyes now, and his pale blond hair doesn’t look quite as thick as it used to, but he’s just as good looking as he was when they started dating. She feels safe with him.

  She pinned up her hair last night the way she learned from Klara so it would be wavy today, and Harriet feels quite pretty for a change. She’s even wearing lipstick and a light cotton dress.

  “You sure look nice tonight, honey,” he says.

  “Thank you, Frank.” She doesn’t know what else to say. She’s still so unsettled by her reaction to the assignment her father gave her that her mind is roiling, but she’s not going to talk with Frank about that now. He probably wouldn’t understand. She just wants him to put his arms around her and pull her to his chest and hold her.

  “Hug me, Frank.”

  He slides across the bench seat and embraces her. After a moment, he crushes her lips against his.

  She leans back. “Gentle, please!” How many times does she have to say this? She’s asked him over and over to handle her gently, but he can’t seem to do so. He’s a big strong man, and maybe it’s passion that makes him so heavy handed.

  “I’m trying to get you to kiss me back.”

  “That’s not the way to do it.”


  Removing his arms from her shoulders, he asks, “Is something wrong?”

  “No. I don’t know.” She looks down at her lap, discouraged by their inability to communicate with each other. “I should go home. It’s been a long week.”

  “Of course. We can talk tomorrow.” He turns the key in the ignition.

  Over the weekend she thinks about why she’s struggling with the idea of working on a fungicide. Eventually she realizes it has to do with intention. She loved working on the mold that produces penicillin because it was about saving lives. Now her father wants her to work on killing molds for the purpose of making money. But of course generating income is what business is all about. Her resistance was naïve. In fact, she can see that her father is smart to make use of her knowledge for the company’s benefit. And if she succeeds in discovering an effective fungicide, she will have helped ensure that people don’t get sick from eating fresh produce. That’s a worthy goal.

  June 23

  Dear Harry,

  I have a job! Thanks for your idea. The referral from Dr. Callahan at Madison led me to the St. Joseph’s School of Music in St. Paul, where I will start teaching this fall. Mother sent me some money—don’t tell Father about the dough!—so I quit the mill and moved up to the Cities. I’ve enrolled in the summer school program at the University of Minnesota and found a room to share with some guys near campus. Everything is coming together. Now I just need to find a jazz combo to play with.

  I’ve been thinking about what you said, Harry, and you were right. Father really did set me free. I can do whatever I want with my life. I can even go to music school once I figure out how to pay for it. I am the master of my own fate.

  Thank you for all your help along the way, Harry. It means a lot to me.

  Love,

  Nat

  One steamy morning in July, George tells Harriet to wear her new suit. “We’re going to meet with my banker today.”

  “You want me to accompany you?” She’s surprised.

  “Absolutely! This will give you a look at another aspect of our business.”

  She and her father go into the plant for a couple of hours, which she spends reading about fungicides. At ten when she heads for George’s office, a hat on her head and her purse on her arm, she encounters Dr. Bryne in the hall.

  “Where do you think you’re going, Miss Sutton?”

  “My father asked me to accompany him to a meeting in the city, Dr. Bryne.”

  His face turns red. “I see. I guess I have nothing to say about that.” He changes direction and walks away.

  On the train into Manhattan, she asks George, “Does everyone report to Dr. Bryne, Father?”

  “Yes, but I’m contemplating some changes in his position. He has too many people under him now that we’ve hired all these new men.”

  “What will Dr. Bryne think?”

  “Doesn’t matter. We need to be able to grow. One of my most important responsibilities is to select, train, and motivate the right people, who are placed in positions they’re capable of handling.”

  “I see.”

  George is finally treating her like a capable adult. She’d better not disappoint him.

  The meeting with his banker takes place in a corner office on the top floor of Manufacturers Bank at Fifty-Five Broad Street in Manhattan. They enter a large room with huge windows on one wall, prints of sailboats on another, and bronze statues of ducks and pheasants on a credenza against the third wall. A trim gray-haired man in a crisp seersucker suit strides toward them, hand extended. “Georgie, good to see you.”

  Wearing a white shirt, club tie, and navy blue suit, George is taller and he looks even more impressive to her than the banker. Her father shakes the banker’s hand, then says, “Ben, my daughter, Harriet. Harriet, this is Ben Goodrich—we were at Yale together.”

  “How do you do, Mr. Goodrich.” And how, she wonders, do you keep your suit so impeccable in this heat? Her beige linen suit is already a mass of wrinkles. She just hopes her Tampax doesn’t leak onto the back of her skirt.

  Mr. Goodrich leads them to stuffed chairs facing each other around a table, where they all sit. “Coffee?” he asks, gesturing toward the carafe.

  “No thanks,” says George.

  She shakes her head no.

  A fan on the credenza turns slowly, moving air across their faces as Mr. Goodrich and George exchange news about classmates from Yale and then comments about what the Soviets are up to in Germany. When George asks Mr. Goodrich how business is going, Mr. Goodrich talks for several minutes, using technical terms she’s never heard before. She’s delighted to discover how charming her father can be, and he must be asking good questions, because Mr. Goodrich answers at length.

  Finally George says, “I don’t want to waste your time, Benny. I’ve come here today to see about a loan. Now that we’ve moved out of war production, we’re experimenting with new uses for our products, and we’re doing a lot of hiring in the research and development areas. Our new hires are impressive. These men have learned to follow orders, and they’re motivated to work hard after fulfilling their military obligations. In this last fiscal year, sales topped $6 million. Now we need to expand our factory in Bayonne so we can accommodate all this growth.”

  “What was your net income last year?”

  “After expenses, $250,000, which we’re plowing back into the company.”

  Mr. Goodrich nods.

  “Five years from now, if things go according to plan, I expect we’ll take the company public.” George turns to her. “Wouldn’t it be great to see Sutton Chemical on the New York Stock Exchange, Harriet?”

  She smiles. She doesn’t presume to interject anything into this conversation.

  Mr. Goodrich says, “Let me know when you go on the market—I’ll certainly want to invest in Sutton. How much do you need, George?”

  “One million dollars, payable over five years.”

  One million? The number shocks her.

  “No problem. We’ll charge two percent.”

  “Understood.”

  “I’ll have the papers drawn up and get them to you tomorrow. How soon do you need the cash?”

  “A week from today.”

  “Right.”

  Both men stand and shake hands. Startled by the speed with which they conducted their business, she jumps to her feet as well.

  Back on the train, George says, “Ben’s a good man, and he’s done very well for himself. He married a wealthy woman, and he’s made a lot of money at the bank. I bet he brings home $100,000 a year, on top of his investments and real estate.”

  “That is a lot of money,” she agrees, comparing that to her annual salary of $4,800. George certainly likes to talk about money—this is something she never really noticed until she started working for her father, but now that she thinks about it, she realizes it’s always been true.

  Doing research on fungicides turns out to be quite fascinating. In the course of her reading, Harriet learns all sorts of things. Wax coatings were applied to preserve citrus fruits as early as the twelfth century. By the 1930s growers in the United States were spraying a thin film of hot-melt paraffin wax on their fruits to preserve them, which allowed the fruit to respire. Like anything living, fruit that’s been harvested continues to breathe throughout its life. During respiration, carbohydrates are broken down to produce energy to operate cellular processes, keeping the cells alive. Respiration is also essential to the ripening process. She’ll have to think about other possible waxes she might use to provide a carrier for the fungicide.

  Late one afternoon as Harriet exits the building with George, she remembers that she forgot to put the Agatha Christie whodunit she was reading over lunch into her purse. She hurries toward the lab, but when she hears her name, she stops outside the open door.

  She recognizes her colleague Mark’s voice. “… Miss Sutton’s spot. Why is Dr. Bryne suddenly spending so much time in the lab now, asking questions, nosing aroun
d the bench—especially Miss Sutton’s spot? What’s he looking for?”

  Dr. Gallagher replies, “Bryne made a huge mistake last month when he ordered three times the amount of ore we’ll need for production of titanium dioxide in the coming year. Mr. Sutton was furious. The price of the ore is likely to come down as mining operations and shipping become normalized, so Bryne cost the company a lot of money. He’s probably trying to make up for that error by paying more attention to everything we do in here.”

  “Why focus on Miss Sutton?”

  “She’s the newest hire. He wants to make sure of her work.”

  Harriet is skeptical about Dr. Bryne’s motivation. She suspects he’d be delighted to see her fail.

  Deciding she can read something else tonight, she tiptoes away.

  The next night when Frank calls, he asks Harriet to go for a drive with him. He sounds so serious that she assumes he’s going to propose. As she dresses for their date, she feels anxious. She’s not ready to say yes. What’s wrong with her? He’s a good, honest, honorable man, and he seems genuinely to care for her. What’s holding her back? Does she feel she should be more established in her career first? Or maybe she’s simply afraid of commitment.

  When she greets him at the door, she sees he isn’t smiling.

  As he walks around the back of the car, she repositions the rear-view mirror to inspect her face, searching for whatever he must have found disappointing about her appearance tonight.

  After he gets in and starts the car, she asks, “Is everything all right, Frank?”

  “Sure,” he says, glancing at her before he heads down the driveway.

  The way he’s acting makes her nervous. “Where are we going?”

  “Our usual spot—it’s a good place to talk.”

  She stares out the window at the passing scenery, trying to appear unconcerned. Why hasn’t he called her honey?

  Once they reach their destination, Frank turns off the car. He takes both her hands in his.