Gus made a gesture of pushing something away with his hand. “We ain’t steelworkers, we’re bums… Your friends the senators sure sold us out pretty. Every sonofabitch ever walked across the street with a striker’s blacklisted. The old man got his job back, way back at fifty cents instead of a dollar ten after the priest made him kiss the book and promise not to join the union… Lots of people goin’ back to the old country. Me an’ the kid we pulled out, went down to Baltimore to git a job on a boat somewheres but the seamen are piled up tendeep on the wharf… So we thought we might as well take in the ’nauguration and see how the fat boys looked.”
Mary tried to get them to take some money but they shook their heads and said, “We don’t need a handout, we can woik.” They were just going when George came in. He didn’t seem any too pleased to see them, and began to lecture them on violence; if the strikers hadn’t threatened violence and allowed themselves to be misled by a lot of Bolshevik agitators, the men who were really negotiating a settlement from the inside would have been able to get them much better terms. “I won’t argue with you, Mr. Barrow. I suppose you think Father Kazinski was a red and that it was Fanny Sellers that bashed in the head of a statetrooper. An’ then you say you’re on the side of the woikin’man.”
“And, George, even the senate committee admitted that the violence was by the deputies and statetroopers… I saw it myself after all,” put in Mary.
“Of course, boys… I know what you’re up against… I hold no brief for the Steel Trust… But, Mary, what I want to impress on these boys is that the workingman is often his own worst enemy in these things.”
“The woikin’ man gits f’rooked whatever way you look at it,” said Gus, “and I don’t know whether it’s his friends or his enemies does the worst rookin’… Well, we got to git a move on.”
“Boys, I’m sorry I’ve got so much pressing business to do. I’d like to hear about your experiences. Maybe some other time,” said George, settling down at his desk.
As they left Mary French followed them to the door and whispered to Gus, “And what about Carnegie Tech?” His eyes didn’t seem so blue as they’d seemed before he went to jail. “Well, what about it?” said Gus without looking at her and gently closed the groundglass door behind him.
That night while they were eating supper Mary suddenly got to her feet and said, “George, we’re as responsible as anybody for selling out the steelworkers.” “Nonsense, Mary, it’s the fault of the leaders who picked the wrong minute for the strike and then let the bosses hang a lot of crazy revolutionary notions on them. Organized labor gets stung every time it mixes in politics. Gompers knows that. We all did our best for ’em.”
Mary French started to walk back and forth in the room. She was suddenly bitterly uncontrollably angry. “That’s the way they used to talk back in Colorado Springs. I might better go back and live with Mother and do charitywork. It would be better than making a living off the workingclass.”
She walked back and forth. He went on sitting there at the table she’d fixed so carefully with flowers and a white cloth, drinking little sips of wine and putting first a little butter on the corner of a cracker and then a piece of Roquefort cheese and then biting it off and then another bit of butter and another piece of cheese, munching slowly all the time. She could feel his bulging eyes traveling over her body. “We’re just laborfakers,” she yelled in his face, and ran into the bedroom.
He stood over her still chewing on the cheese and crackers as he nervously patted the back of her shoulder. “What a spiteful thing to say… My child, you mustn’t be so hysterical… This isn’t the first strike that’s ever come out badly… Even this time there’s a gain. Fairminded people all over the country have been horrified by the ruthless violence of the steelbarons. It will influence legislation… Sit up and have a glass of wine… Now, Mary, why don’t we get married? It’s too silly living like this. I have some small investments. I saw a nice little house for sale in Georgetown just the other day. This is just the time now to buy a house when prices are dropping… personnel being cut out of all the departments… After all I’ve reached an age when I have a right to settle down and have a wife and kids… I don’t want to wait till it’s too late.”
Mary sat up sniveling. “Oh, George, you’ve got plenty of time… I don’t know why I’ve got a horror of getting married… Everything gives me the horrors tonight.” “Poor little girl, it’s probably the curse coming on,” said George and kissed her on the forehead. After he’d gone home to his hotel she decided she’d go back to Colorado Springs to visit her mother for a while. Then she’d try to get some kind of newspaper job.
Before she could get off for the West she found that a month had gone by. Fear of having a baby began to obsess her. She didn’t want to tell George about it because she knew he’d insist on their getting married. She couldn’t wait. She didn’t know any doctor she could go to. Late one night she went into the kitchenette to stick her head in the oven and tried to turn on the gas, but it seemed so inconvenient somehow and her feet felt so cold on the linoleum that she went back to bed.
Next day she got a letter from Ada Cohn all about what a wonderful time Ada was having in New York where she had the loveliest apartment and was working so hard on her violin and hoped to give a concert in Carnegie Hall next season. Without finishing reading the letter Mary French started packing her things. She got to the station in time to get the ten o’clock to New York. From the station she sent George a wire: FRIEND SICK CALLED TO NEW YORK WRITING.
She’d wired Ada and Ada met her at the Pennsylvania station in New York looking very handsome and rich. In the taxicab Mary told her that she had to lend her the money to have an abortion. Ada had a crying fit and said of course she’d lend her the money but who on earth could she go to? Honestly she wouldn’t dare ask Dr. Kirstein about it because he was such a friend of her father’s and mother’s that he’d be dreadfully upset. “I won’t have a baby. I won’t have a baby,” Mary was muttering.
Ada had a fine threeroom apartment in the back of a building on Madison Avenue with a light tancolored carpet and a huge grandpiano and lots of plants in pots and flowers in vases. They ate their supper there and strode up and down the livingroom all evening trying to think. Ada sat at the piano and played Bach preludes to calm her nerves, she said, but she was so upset she couldn’t follow her music. At last Mary wrote George a specialdelivery letter asking him what to do. Next evening she got a reply. George was brokenhearted, but he enclosed the address of a doctor. Mary gave the letter to Ada to read. “What a lovely letter. I don’t blame him at all. He sounds like a fine sensitive beautiful nature.” “I hate him,” said Mary, driving her nails into the palms of her hands. “I hate him.”
Next morning she went down all alone to the doctor’s and had the operation. After it she went home in a taxicab and Ada put her to bed. Ada got on her nerves terribly tiptoeing in and out of the bedroom with her face wrinkled up. After about a week Mary French got up. She seemed to be all right, and started to go around New York looking for a job.
The Camera Eye (46)
walk the streets and walk the streets inquiring of Coca-Cola signs Lucky Strike ads pricetags in storewindows scraps of overheard conversations stray tatters of newsprint yesterday’s headlines sticking out of ashcans
for a set of figures a formula of action an address you don’t quite know you’ve forgotten the number the street may be in Brooklyn a train leaving for somewhere a steamboat whistle stabbing your ears a job chalked up in front of an agency