Sea Glass_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [108]
“Is it really so bad?” Honora asks.
The woman wipes her nose on the back of her hand, and Honora gives her a handkerchief. “My husband has been on the picket line since the beginning. He’s been arrested twice,” she says. “We got evicted from our apartment. He said we could come out to the beach and live in the abandoned cottages, but then the owners started returning and we keep having to move. We have five girls with us. We’re at the other end of the beach, and we don’t have water, and we are having a terrible time of it.”
“Is it near the house that sits up on the dunes?”
The woman takes a bite of baked beans and is silent.
“It’s all right,” Honora says, “you can tell me. That cottage that has pale blue shutters, with a porch on the second story facing the ocean?”
The woman, who can’t be much older than twenty-eight or -nine, nods.
“If you go there, to that house with the blue shutters, the woman who lives in it will give you water. Her name is Vivian.”
“Thank you, miss.”
Honora has hardly wrapped up the food and packed it in a paper bag when the woman finishes her meal and stands. “Take this with you now,” Honora says. “I’ll put the jars out by the back door and I’ll cover them. You can come back for them later.”
“I will, miss.”
“You can use the jars when you go to fetch water at Vivian’s. She won’t mind. In fact, I think she has a faucet outside for showers. Just tell her that Honora sent you.”
“You are a saint, miss,” the woman says.
“Hardly,” Honora says.
“I have to go into Ely Falls to get my emerald ring sized,” Vivian, who is bandbox smart in nude silk shantung, is saying in the hallway. “I’ve been meaning to do it all summer, but somehow the time has just gotten away from me. Thought I’d drop by on the way and say hello.”
“Come in,” Honora says immediately, thinking that only Vivian would consider going into Ely Falls to get a ring sized when there is a strike on. “I just made a sandwich for lunch. Can I make you one too?”
“I ate before I came. I’ll have a cup of tea to keep you company, though.”
Vivian follows Honora into the kitchen and sets her silk-and-bone purse on the table. “Have you heard from Sexton? From any of the fellas?”
Honora shakes her head and fills the kettle. There’s a slight commotion at the back door, and the woman of earlier, now with a man in tow, picks up the jars and begins to walk back to the beach with them.
“Who’s that?” Vivian asks.
“Squatters living in one of the cottages on the beach. Near you, in fact. I hope you don’t mind, but they don’t have water, and I said they might ask you from time to time for water. Was that all right?”
“My dear, yes. They have no water at all?”
“None. And she said they have five girls with them. You wouldn’t have believed how quickly she ate the plate of food I put in front of her. They’re from one of the mills in the city. Got evicted and came out here looking for somewhere to stay.”
“Good heavens,” Vivian says, sitting.
Honora puts the kettle on and sits at the table with Vivian. Honora studies her sandwich as if it were a foreign life form.
“Eat,” Vivian says. “You’re looking very peaked, if I may say so. You take such marvelous care of everyone else, but sometimes I just wonder if you take care of yourself at all.”
“I’m not sleeping well,” Honora says, taking a bite. “And then, during the day, I seem to want to sleep all the time.” She puts the sandwich down. Perhaps she is not hungry after all.
“Still no word from Sexton? No word from McDermott?”
“Nothing from Sexton,” Honora says. And then, her heart kicking up a notch, “And why would I hear from McDermott?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Vivian says vaguely. “He seems the sort of fellow who would make sure you knew what was going on.”
Honora nods.
“Thought there might be big doings in there this week,” Vivian says, “but Jack Hess says the strike leaders are really trying to keep a lid on everyone’s temper.”
“I hope they do,” Honora said.
Vivian takes a cigarette from her silver