"Hello," Chang answered, his English flavored with an accent unlike any other Cincinnatus had heard. "We talk a few minutes?"
"Sure," Cincinnatus said in some surprise. "What's on your mind?"
"Your son Achilles ask my daughter Grace to go to the cinema with him," Chang replied. "What you think of this?"
" Did he?" Cincinnatus said, and the other man solemnly nodded. Achilles had said he thought Grace Chang was cute. As Olaf Thorstein had remarked, there weren't that many Negroes in Des Moines. If Achilles found somebody he might like who wasn't a Negro… Well, if he did, what then? "What do you think of that, Mr. Chang?" Cincinnatus asked.
"Don't know what to think," Chang said, which struck Cincinnatus as basically honest. He went on, "Your Achilles good boy. I don't say he not good boy, you understand? But he not Chinese."
Cincinnatus nodded. He had similar reservations about Grace. He asked, "What's your daughter think?"
"She is modern. She wants to be modern." Mr. Chang made it sound like a curse. "She says, what difference it make? But it makes a difference, oh yes."
"Sure does," Cincinnatus said. The laundryman gave him a surprised look. Perhaps Chang hadn't thought a Negro might mind if his son wanted to take a Chinese girl to the cinema. After scratching his head, Cincinnatus went on, "Maybe we just ought to let 'em go out and not say anything about it. Going to the moving pictures together ain't like gettin' married. And if we tell 'em no, that'll only make 'em want to do it more to rile us up. Leastways, Achilles is like that. Dunno 'bout your Grace."
"Her, too," Chang said morosely. "The more I do not like, the more she does. Modern." He made the word sound even worse than he had before. Now he screwed up his face. "Yes, maybe we do this. I talk to my wife, see what she say." By his tone, whatever Mrs. Chang decided would prevail.
"Fair enough," Cincinnatus said. "I'll talk to Elizabeth, too-and to Achilles."
His wife wasn't home yet. Neither was his son. After graduating from high school, Achilles was doing odd jobs and looking-along with so many others-for something more permanent. He got home before Elizabeth did, and set two dollars on the kitchen table, where Amanda sat doing homework. He was a good kid; he brought his pay home every day he worked.
As casually as Cincinnatus could, he said, "Hear you're goin' to the pictures with Grace Chang." Amanda dropped her pencil.
Achilles glared defiance. "That's right. What about it? I think some of the money I make ought to be mine to have some fun with. Don't you?"
Having fun with the money wasn't the point. Having fun with Grace Chang was. But all Cincinnatus said was, "Reckon I do. It's all right with me. Just wish I'd've heard about it from you and not from Grace's pa."
Set for a fight, Achilles didn't seem to know what to do when he didn't get one. "Oh," he said, and left his mouth hanging open. After a long moment, he added, "I figured you'd have a fit." Another pause, even longer. "Maybe I was wrong."
"Maybe you was," Cincinnatus agreed. "No matter what you think, son, I ain't quite one o' them dinosaur things. Not quite." He waited out one more pause. At last, Achilles nodded. His agreement made Cincinnatus feel he'd done a few things right after all.
T hanksgiving was supposed to be one of the happiest days of the year. When Chester Martin and Rita went to his parents' apartment for dinner, that was in the back of his mind. In the front of his mind was the chance to stuff himself till he was about ready to burst at the seams. The money his father had given him let his wife and him keep their own apartment and keep eating. It didn't let them keep eating well. He was sick of cabbage and potatoes and boiled noodles and day-old brown bread.
"Turkey," he said dreamily as he and Rita got off the trolley and walked toward the block of flats where he'd lived so long. The weather was sunny but crisp-a perfect late November afternoon. " Roast turkey. Stuffing with giblet gravy." He'd eaten a lot of giblets since losing his job, but they belonged in gravy. "Mashed potatoes. Sweet potatoes. Rolls and butter. Pumpkin pie. Apple pie, too. Whipped cream."
"Stop it, Chester," Rita said. "I'm going to drool on my shoes." A motorcar went by. Somebody inside waved. The Chevrolet parked in front of the apartment building. "There's your sister and her husband and little Pete."
"I see 'em." Chester waved back. His brother-in-law, Otis Blake, worked in a plate-glass plant and still had a job. He'd never given Chester a hard time about losing his. He couldn't very well, not when his own brother was out of work.
"Uncle Chester! Aunt Rita!" Pete Blake, who was five, hit Chester in the knees with a tackle harder than a good many he'd met on the gridiron.
"Careful there, tiger." Martin ruffled his hair. "You almost knocked me on my can. You gonna be a tough guy when you grow up?"
"Tough guy!" Pete yelled. Then he gave Rita a kiss. Either he wasn't so tough yet, or he knew a pretty girl when he saw one.
Chester hugged Sue and shook hands with her husband. Otis Blake had his blond hair permanently parted in the middle by a scar from a scalp wound during the war. An inch lower and he wouldn't have been standing there. "How are you?" he asked now.
With a shrug, Martin answered, "I'm still here. They haven't knocked me out yet."
"Good," Blake said. "That's good."
"Come on. Let's go up to the place," Sue said. She turned to Pete. "You want to see Gramps and Grandma, don't you?"
"Gramps! Grandma!" Pete was enthusiastic about everything. Chances were he'd never heard of a business collapse. If he had, it meant nothing to him. Chester wished he could say the same.
Wonderful smells filled his nose as soon as he walked through the door. When he saw his mother's face a moment later, he knew something was wrong no matter how good the odors wafting out of the kitchen were. She looked as if she'd been wounded and didn't want to admit it even to herself. After the hugs, after the kisses, Martin asked, "What is it, Ma? And don't tell me it's nothing, on account of I know that's not so."
Sue and Otis exchanged glances. Whatever it was, they already knew. Louisa Martin spoke in a low voice, as if in a sickroom: "Your father's been laid off."
Five words. Five words that changed-ruined-not just one life but at least two, maybe four. "Oh," Chester said, a soft, pained exhalation-he might have been punched in the stomach. Rita's lips skinned back from her teeth. Like her mother-in-law, she was trying to find out how much it hurt.
Laid off. It hurt bad. Martin didn't need to find out how much. What, after all, was the difference between bad and worse? Not enough to matter.
A toilet flushed. Out came Stephen Douglas Martin, rubbing his hands together. One look at Chester's face told him everything he needed to know. "So you heard already, did you?"
"Yeah," Chester said harshly. "I heard. What are you going to do, Pa?"
"Darn good question," his father replied. "Wish I had a darn good answer to go with it. Almost forty years at that place, and then-" He snapped his fingers. "I'm scrap metal. That's what I am now, scrap metal. Yesterday was my last day. But I tell you one thing: I'm going to have the best darn Thanksgiving anybody ever had, and you can take that to the bank." If Louisa and Sue and Rita hadn't been there, and especially if Pete hadn't, he might have expressed himself more pungently.