“Don’t mind if I do,” Brigid said. She nodded when she saw the big kettle sticking up out of the kitchen sink, which was not very deep, and smelled the acrid odor of the dye still hanging in the air. “Och, I did enough of that and to spare, so I did.”
“As long as I’m doing things, I don’t have to worry about what happened,” Sylvia said. “And so I keep finding things to do.” She waved a hand. “This place has never been so clean.”
“My flat’ll never be clean, I’m thinking, but then I’m after having three boys,” Brigid Coneval said. “But I do know what you’re saying, indeed and I do. In bed of nights, I keep thinking What if he’d stopped to piss? or What if he’d fallen down before that damned bullet came by? or-or I don’t know what, but anything to make it different than it was.”
“Anything to make it different,” Sylvia echoed. “Oh, Christ, yes. What was that stinking English submarine doing where there hadn’t been any English submarines? It had no business being in that part of the ocean. The Confederates had already given up, and-”
“It does no good-dwelling on it, I mean,” Brigid broke in.
“I know that. Sometimes I can’t help it, though,” Sylvia said. “Sometimes even when I’m working…I was thinking about that damned submarine”-she brought out the word not casually, as her friend had done, but with savage relish-“even while I was dyeing my dress.”
“It does no good,” Brigid Coneval repeated. “Well, the truth is, there’s not a thing that does any good, but there is a thing, sure and there is, that keeps you from thinking so much about it.” She opened her handbag and pulled out a flat pint bottle of whiskey.
Sylvia got up, went over to the cabinet by the kitchen sink, and brought back a couple of glasses. She watched as the coppery liquid gurgled into them. She didn’t drink that much or that often, not least because whiskey tasted like medicine to her. But Brigid was right-whiskey was medicine here, because it kept her from thinking clearly when clear thought was the last thing she wanted.
“Ahh!” Brigid smacked her lips and poured another shot into her glass. She thrust the pint toward Sylvia, who shook her head. Brigid Coneval shrugged and drank. She wasn’t shy about whiskey: on the contrary.
George, Jr., came in. “Hello, Mrs. Coneval,” he said.
“And hello to you,” she answered with an extravagant gesture that almost sloshed the refill out of her glass. “What a fine, polite boy y’are.”
The fine, polite boy had a new bruise on his cheek, very possibly gained by roughhousing with one of Brigid Coneval’s sons. He wrinkled his nose and said, “That dye stinks, Ma.”
“I know it does,” Sylvia answered. “It can’t be helped, though.” She looked toward the clock. “Go find your sister and tell her to come in. It’s later than I thought. I’ll feed the two of you and get you ready for bed. I have to go back to work tomorrow, and you’re going back to school.”
“All right,” he said, and hurried away. He liked the idea of going back to school. Sylvia wondered where he came by that. School had always bored her to tears, and George had never been any sort of scholar, either.
“A good boy. A fine boy.” The whiskey made Brigid Coneval even more emphatic than she would have been without it. She got to her feet. “You tend to your wee ones, now. I’ll have to be laying hold of mine before long, too.” Sylvia also rose. The two women hugged each other. Brigid left, heading back to her apartment with great determination.
Mary Jane was mutinous when she came back with her big brother. “Did you really tell him I had to go in?” she demanded of Sylvia, and looked surprised and disappointed when her mother nodded. Not even fried scrod for supper did much to cheer her up; she seemed convinced Sylvia had betrayed her.
Nor was she enthusiastic about going to Mrs. Dooley’s the next morning. Once Sylvia warmed her bottom for her, she moved well enough. George, Jr., got off the trolley and bounded toward his school. He’d grown tired of being cooped up at home.
At the shoe factory, everyone greeted Sylvia with a warm show of sympathy. Gustav Krafft, the foreman, was a man of few words. Even he was kind. “From your fellow workers,” he said as he handed her an envelope. It not only crinkled, but also clinked.
“Thank you so much,” Sylvia said. “Thank you all so much.” Money could do only so much, but she was glad to have it. No one could do much without it. Eventually, she would get a payment from the government, but God only knew how long that would take. If the Coal Board was any indication, it might take forever.
“You poor dear,” Emma Kilgore said. “Jack’s coming home, thank the sweet Lord, but I know how you got to feel, Sylvia, sweetheart. If it was me, I’d be out of my mind.”
“I feel like I am, sometimes,” Sylvia answered. The redheaded woman at the sewing machine next to her did not know how she felt, regardless of whether she thought she did. She was counting the days till her husband came back to Boston from Tennessee. What did Sylvia have to count? Nothing at all.
The work was steady, and demanded enough concentration that Sylvia couldn’t let her mind drift, as she often had back at the mackerel-canning plant. Thinking about anything except the pieces of leather in front of her was asking for a punctured hand. She couldn’t dwell on losing George, not unless she also wanted to dwell on what the doctor would have to do to repair her.
Toward the middle of the afternoon, the woman who had hired her came into the factory hall and said, “May I see you for a moment, Mrs. Enos?”
“Of course. Let me finish this first, please.” Sylvia joined the pieces of leather together and tossed them into the box by the machine. Then she caught Gustav Krafft’s eye. Only after he nodded permission did she rise and accompany the hiring clerk. As she did, she said, “I hope nothing’s wrong.”
“You’ve done a very good job with us, as a matter of fact,” the woman said as they left the factory floor. If she noticed Sylvia was wearing mourning, she didn’t mention it. She waved her to a chair: the very chair in which she’d been sitting, in fact, when she was hired.
“Miss, could you please tell me what’s going on?” Sylvia asked.
“Yes, I will tell you,” the hiring clerk answered. “Like I said, all the reports on your work have been very good, and Krafft isn’t easy to please. But our orders have been cut because of peace, and we have men coming back, and you are one of our most recent employees. And so-”
“You’re letting me go,” Sylvia said dully.
“I am sorry,” the woman said. “I do feel bad about it, because you’ve worked out very well here.” That did Sylvia exactly no good. The woman who’d hired her went on, “I wish we could keep you, but business doesn’t allow it. And our brave men in uniform will be returning, looking for the jobs they-”
“My brave man in uniform won’t be returning,” Sylvia broke in, “and my children and I will be going hungry because of this.”
“I am sorry,” the woman repeated. “I’ll be happy to give you the very best of good characters, which will surely help you get a position at a firm that is hiring.”
“But firms aren’t hiring,” Sylvia said. “Firms are letting people go. Firms are letting women like me go so they can hire men, like you said.” She sighed. “I’ll take that good character. It won’t do me any good, but I’ll take it.” What am I going to do now? she asked herself. What can I do now? The question was far easier to ask than to answer.
Cincinnatus was walking to the trolley stop when someone whistled behind him. He looked back over his shoulder and saw Lucullus, Apicius’ son, waving at him. He didn’t grimace-not on the outside where Lucullus could see. Instead, he waved. Lucullus came toward him at a heavy trot: he was on his way to putting on his father’s massive bulk.
“What you want?” Cincinnatus asked him. “Whatever it is, you better make it snappy, on account of I’m gonna be late for work if I miss this here trolley car.”