"I daresay," said Reenie in a skeptical, maddening voice. To me, privately, she would say, "She's the spitting image of her mother."
I didn't go to the soup kitchen with Laura. She didn't ask me to, and in any case I wouldn't have had the time: Father had now taken it into his head that I must learn the ins and outs of the button business, as was my duty. Faute de mieux, I was to be the son in Chase and Sons, and if I was ever going to run the show I needed to get my hands dirty.
I knew I had no business abilities, but I was too cowed to object. I accompanied Father to the factory every morning, to see (he said) how things worked in the real world. If I'd been a boy he would have started me working at the assembly line, on the military analogy that an officer should not expect his men to perform any job he could not perform himself. As it was, he set me to taking inventory and balancing shipping accounts-raw materials in, finished product out.
I was bad at it, more or less intentionally. I was bored, and also intimidated. When I arrived at the factory every morning in my convent-like skirts and blouses, walking at Father's heels like a dog, I would have to pass the lines of workers. I felt scorned by the women and stared at by the men. I knew they were making jokes about me behind my back-jokes that had to do with my deportment (the women) and my body (the men), and that this was their way of getting even. In some ways I didn't blame them-in their place I would have done the same-but I felt affronted by them nonetheless.
La-di-da. Thinks she's the Queen of Sheba. A good shagging would take her down a peg. Father noticed none of this. Or he chose not to notice.
One afternoon Elwood Murray arrived at Reenie's back door with the inflated chest and self-important manner of the bearer of unpleasant news. I was helping Reenie with the canning: it was late September, and we were doing up the last of the tomatoes from the kitchen garden. Reenie had always been frugal, but in these times waste was a sin. She must have realised how thin the thread was becoming-the thread of excess dollars that attached her to her job.
There was something we should know, said Elwood Murray, for our own good. Reenie took a look at him, him and his puffed-up stance, evaluating the gravity of his news, and judged it serious enough to invite him in. She even offered him a cup of tea. Then she asked him to wait until she'd lifted the last jars out of the boiling water with the tongs and had the tops screwed on. Then she sat down.
Here was the news. Miss Laura Chase had been seen around town-said Elwood-in the company of a young man, the very same young man she'd been photographed with at the button factory picnic. They'd first been spotted down by the soup kitchen; then, later, sitting on a park bench-on more than one park bench-and smoking cigarettes. Or the man had been smoking; as to Laura, he couldn't swear to it, he said, pursing his mouth. They'd been seen beside the War Memorial by the Town Hall, and leaning on the railings of the Jubilee Bridge, looking down at the rapids-a traditional spot for courtship. They may even have been glimpsed out by the Camp Grounds, which was an almost certain sign of dubious behaviour, or the prelude to it-though he couldn't vouch for this, as he hadn't witnessed it himself.
Anyway, he thought we should know. The man was a grown man, and wasn't Miss Laura only fourteen? Such a shame, him taking advantage of her like that. He sat back in his chair, shaking his head in sorrow, smug as a woodchuck, his eyes glittering with malicious pleasure.
Reenie was furious. She hated anyone getting the jump on her in the gossip department. "We certainly thank you for informing us," she said with stiff politeness. "A stitch in time saves nine. "This was her way of defending Laura's honour: nothing had happened, yet, that couldn't be forestalled.
"What did I tell you," said Reenie, after Elwood Murray had gone. "He's got no shame." She did not mean Elwood, of course, but Alex Thomas.
When confronted, Laura denied nothing, except the Camp Grounds sighting. The park benches and so forth-yes, she had sat on them, though not for very long. Nor could she understand why Reenie was making all this fuss. Alex Thomas wasn't a two-bit sweetheart (the expression Reenie had used). Nor was he a lounge lizard (the other expression). She denied ever having smoked a cigarette in her life. As for "spooning"-also from Reenie-she thought that was disgusting. What had she done to inspire such low suspicions? She evidently didn't know.
Being Laura, I thought, was like being tone deaf: the music played and you heard something, but it wasn't what everyone else heard.
According to Laura, on all of these occasions-and there had been only three of them-she and Alex Thomas had been engaged in serious discussion. What about? About God. Alex Thomas had lost his faith, and Laura was trying to help him regain it. It was hard work because he was very cynical, or maybeskeptical was what she meant. He thought that the modern age would be an age of this world rather than the next-of man, for mankind-and he was all for it. He claimed not to have a soul, and said he didn't give a hang what might happen to him after he was dead. Still, she meant to keep on with her efforts, however difficult the task might appear.
I coughed into my hand. I didn't dare laugh. I'd seen Laura use that virtuous expression on Mr. Erskine often enough, and I thought that was what she was doing now: pulling the wool over. Reenie, hands on hips, legs apart, mouth open, looked like a hen at bay.
"Why's he still in town, is what I'd like to know," said Reenie, baffled, shifting her ground. "I thought he was just visiting."
"Oh, he has some business here," said Laura mildly. "But he can be where he wants to be. It's not a slave state. Except for the wage slaves, of course." I guessed that the attempt at conversion hadn't been all one way: Alex Thomas had been getting his own oar in. If things went on in this fashion we'd have a little Bolshevik on our hands.
"Isn't he too old?" I said.
Laura gave me a fierce look-too old for what?-daring me to butt in. "The soul has no age," she said.
"People are talking," said Reenie: always her clinching argument.
"That is their own concern," said Laura. Her tone was one of lofty irritation: other people were her cross to bear.
Reenie and I were both at a loss. What could be done? We could have told Father, who might then have forbidden Laura to see Alex Thomas. But she wouldn't have obeyed, not with a soul at stake. Telling Father would have caused more trouble than it would be worth, we decided; and after all, what had actually taken place? Nothing you could put your finger on. (Reenie and I were confidants by then, on this matter; we'd put our heads together.)
As the days passed I came to feel that Laura was making a fool of me, though I couldn't specify how, exactly. I didn't think she was lying as such, but neither was she telling the entire truth. Once I saw her with Alex Thomas, deep in conversation, ambling along past the War Memorial; once at the Jubilee Bridge, once idling outside Betty's Luncheonette, oblivious to turning heads, mine included. It was sheer defiance.
"You have to talk sense to her," Reenie said to me. But I couldn't talk sense to Laura. Increasingly, I couldn't talk to her at all; or I could talk, but did she listen? It was like talking to a sheet of white blotting paper: the words went out of my mouth and disappeared behind her face as if into a wall of falling snow.
When I wasn't spending time at the button factory-an exercise that was daily appearing more futile, even to Father-I began to wander around by myself. I would march along by the riverbank, trying to pretend I had a destination, or stand on the Jubilee Bridge as if waiting for someone, gazing down at the black water and remembering the stories of women who had thrown themselves into it. They'd done it for love, because that was the effect love had on you. It snuck up on you, it grabbed hold of you before you knew it, and then there was nothing you could do. Once you were in it-in love-you would be swept away, regardless. Or so the books had it.