Or I would walk along the main street, giving serious attention to what was in the shop windows-the pairs of socks and shoes, the hats and gloves, the screwdrivers and wrenches. I would study the posters of movie stars in the glass cases outside the Bijou Theatre and compare them with how I myself looked, or might look if I combed my hair down over one eye and had the proper clothes. I wasn't allowed to go inside; I didn't enter a movie theatre until after I was married, because Reenie said the Bijou was cheapening, for young girls by themselves at any rate. Men went there on the prowl, dirty-minded men. They would take the seat next to you and stick their hands onto you like flypaper, and before you knew it they'd be climbing all over you.
In Reenie's descriptions the girl or woman would always be inert, but with many handholds on her, like a jungle gym. She would be magically deprived of the ability to scream or move. She would be transfixed, she would be paralysed-with shock, or outrage, or shame. She would have no recourse.
The cold cellar
A nip in the air; the clouds high and windblown. Sheaves of dried Indian corn have appeared on the choicer front doors; on the porches the jack-o'-lanterns have taken up their grinning vigils. A week from now the candy-minded children will take to the streets, dressed as ballerinas and zombies and space aliens and skeletons and gypsy fortunetellers and dead rock stars, and as usual I will turn out the lights and pretend not to be home. It's not dislike of them as such, but self-defence-should any of the wee ones disappear, I don't want to be accused of having lured them in and eaten them.
I told this to Myra, who is doing a brisk trade in squat orange candles and black ceramic cats and sateen bats, and in decorative stuffed-cloth witches, their heads made of dried-out apples. She laughed. She thought I was making a joke.
I had a sluggish day yesterday-my heart was pinching me, I could barely move off the sofa-but this morning, after taking my pill, I felt oddly energetic. I walked quite briskly as far as the doughnut shop. There I inspected the washroom wall, on which the latest entry is: If you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all, followed by: If you can't suck anything nice don't suck anything at all. It's good to know that freedom of speech is still in full swing in this country.
Then I bought a coffee and a chocolate-glazed doughnut, and took them outside to one of the benches provided by the management, placed handily right beside the garbage bin. There I sat, in the still-warm sunlight, basking like a turtle. People strolled by-two overfed women with a baby carriage, a younger, thinner woman in a black leather coat with silver studs in it like nail-heads and another one in her nose, three old geezers in windbreakers. I got the feeling they were staring at me. Am I still that notorious, or that paranoid? Or perhaps I'd merely been talking to myself out loud. It's hard to know. Does my voice simply flow out of me like air when I'm not paying attention? A shrivelled whispering, winter vines rustling, the sibilance of autumn wind in dry grass.
Who cares what people think, I told myself. If they want to listen in, they're welcome.
Who cares, who cares. The perennial adolescent riposte. I cared, of course. I cared what people thought. I always did care. Unlike Laura, I have never had the courage of my convictions.
A dog came over; I gave it half of the doughnut. "Be my guest," I said to it. That's what Reenie would say when she caught you eavesdropping.
All through October-the October of 1934-there had been talk of what was going on at the button factory. Outside agitators were hanging around, it was said; they were stirring things up, especially among the young hotheads. There was talk of collective bargaining, of workers' rights, of unions. Unions were surely illegal, or closed-shop unions were-weren't they? No one seemed quite to know. In any case they had a whiff of brimstone about them.
The people doing the stirring up were ruffians and hired criminals (according to Mrs. Hillcoate). Not only were they outside agitators, they were foreign outside agitators, which was somehow more frightening. Small dark men with moustaches, who'd signed their names in blood and sworn to be loyal unto death, and who would start riots and stop at nothing, and set bombs and creep in at night and slit our throats while we slept (according to Reenie). These were their methods, these ruthless Bolsheviks and union organisers, who were all the same at heart (according to Elwood Murray). They wanted Free Love, and the destruction of the family, and the deaths by firing squad of anyone who had money-any money at all-or a watch, or a wedding ring. This was what had been done in Russia. So it was said.
It was also said that Father's factories were in trouble.
Both rumours-the outside agitators, the trouble-were publicly denied. Both were believed.
Father had laid off some of his workers in September-some of the younger ones, better able to fend for themselves, according to his theories-and had asked the remainder to accept shorter hours. There just wasn't enough business, he'd explained, to keep all the factories going at full production capacity. The customers weren't buying buttons, or not the kind of buttons made by Chase and Sons, which depended on high volumes to be profitable. Nor were they buying cheap, serviceable undergarments: they were mending instead, they were making do. Not everyone in the country was out of work, of course, but those with jobs did not feel very secure about holding on to them. Naturally they were saving their money up, rather than spending it. You couldn't blame them. You'd do the same in their place.
Arithmetic had entered the picture, with its many legs, its many spines and heads, its pitiless eyes made of zeroes. Two and two made four, was its message. But what if you didn't have two and two? Then things wouldn't add up. And they didn't add up, I couldn't get them to; I couldn't get the red numbers in the inventory books to turn black. This worried me horribly; it was as if it were my own personal fault. When I closed my eyes at night I could see the numbers on the page before me, laid out in rows on my square oak desk at the button factory-those rows of red numbers like so many mechanical caterpillars, munching away at what was left of the money. When what you could manage to sell a thing for was less than what it paid you to make it-which was what had been going on at Chase and Sons for some time-this was how the numbers behaved. It was bad behaviour-without love, without justice, without mercy -but what could you expect? The numbers were only numbers. They had no choice in the matter.
In the first week of December, Father announced a shutdown. It was temporary, he said. He hoped it would be very temporary. He talked about retreating and retrenching in order to regroup. He asked for understanding and patience, and was greeted with a watchful silence by the assembled workers. After the announcement he went back to Avilion and shut himself up in his turret and drank himself blind. Things were broken up there-glass objects. Bottles, no doubt. Laura and I sat in my room, on my bed, holding hands tightly and listening to the fury and grief rampaging around up there, right above our heads, like an interior thunderstorm. Father hadn't done anything on that grand a scale for some time.
He must have felt he'd let his men down. That he'd failed. That nothing he could do had been enough.
"I will pray for him," said Laura.
"Does God care?" I said. "I don't think he gives a tinker's damn, actually. If there is a God."
"You can't know that," said Laura, "until after."
After what? I knew well enough, we'd had this conversation before. After we're dead.
Several days after Father's announcement, the union revealed its power. There was already a core group of members, and now they wanted everyone in. A meeting was held outside the locked button factory and a call issued to all the workers to join up, because when Father reopened the factories, it was said, he would cut to the bone and they'd all be expected to take starvation wages. He was just like all the rest of them, he'd stuff his money into a bank in hard times like these, then sit on his hands until people were beaten down and driven right into the ground; then he'd seize the opportunity to grow fat off the backs of the workers. Him and his big house and fancy daughters-those frivolous parasites who lived off the sweat of the masses.