Sea Glass (15 page)

  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 shopping 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.”

“Why?”

“The winds, I think. That big red one there? That’s a Fokker Thirty-two. Wingspan ninety-nine feet. It has four rooms, a kitchen, two lavatories, and sleeps sixteen. That one there — taking off? — that’s a Travel Air open cockpit. One hundred and twenty-two miles per hour. That’ll be headed out to New York. Most of these planes, they go to New York or to Boston, and then the passengers make a connection to another plane and go off to Miami or Saint Louis or Havana. There should be a crowd of people in the waiting room today, all trying to get home for Christmas. That one there? Coming in? That’s a Boeing mail plane. Pretty plane, isn’t it? It’ll be loaded with cards and packages today.”

Alphonse and McDermott walk through the snow, and even though it goes in the sides of his boots and sometimes reaches above his sock line, Alphonse doesn’t care. He can see a man in the tower with a microphone in his hands. To think that the airfield has been here all this time at the end of the trolley line and Alphonse hasn’t known it! Even if he was too shy to go all the way to the building he could have stood at the end of the field and watched the planes taking off and landing.

McDermott steers Alphonse into the waiting room. The warmth is a surprise, though everyone still has a coat on. In the corner there’s a woman in a fur coat talking to a woman in a cloth coat and when Alphonse looks at them again he notices that the woman in the cloth coat is the same woman who was in the brown bathing suit at the beach that day, the one who dug her hands and knees into the sand.

Alphonse worries that someone will come over and ask McDermott and him to leave, because everyone in the room is so beautifully dressed and there he is in shoes without laces and his pants not even reaching his socks, and McDermott — well, McDermott looks better than Alphonse does, but not as good as the people standing around drinking coffee and chatting as if they did this every day. And then Alphonse glances down and spots the light green sweater with a frill, which everyone can see now because he’s opened his jacket in the warmth, and he freezes the way a dog does when it knows it has done something bad.

“I’ll get you a cup of hot chocolate,” McDermott says.

Alphonse wraps his jacket tight across his chest and nods. He should have let his mother fix the zipper. McDermott goes to the counter and comes back again with a white china cup that has a blue line and an airplane on it, and Alphonse takes a long drink of the hot brew and thinks that it is just about the best thing he has ever had to drink in his whole long life.

The schedule is printed in chalk on a blackboard beside the ticket agent’s window. The 2:15 flight to New York has been crossed out twice and now reads 3:35, which is only ten minutes away. The woman in the fur coat says something to the woman beside her, and when they laugh, Alphonse imagines bits of beautiful glass falling through the air.