Sea Glass_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [43]
Sexton shakes out the newspaper, and from across the table, Honora reads the headlines. BLACKEST DAY ON WALL STREET IN MANY YEARS. Selling Orders Swamp New York Market. Billions Quoted. Values Fade.
“Sexton?”
He cocks his head around the paper.
“What’s happening with the stock market?” she asks.
He frowns slightly, as if reminded of a dentist appointment later that day. “A panic,” he says. “It’s nothing. It will pass. The stock market goes down, everybody sells, but they’ll start trading today like crazy. You’ll see.”
“How much do we have in the bank?” she asks.
“About thirty-five dollars. I’m due to get my commission check tomorrow. It won’t be too much, though. Not after the mortgage payment.”
“Oh,” she says.
He looks at her and seems only then to notice the lavender wool dress she has on. “Walk me to the car,” he says.
Honora puts her coat on and follows Sexton to the Buick. It’s a filthy day, just filthy. The wind is whipping so hard that she has to hold on to the fence posts as she makes her way to the car.
Sexton slides into the Buick. Honora leans on the door. He rolls down the window and tucks the tips of his fingers inside the top of her dress.
“You look like a wild woman,” he says happily.
Vivian
Dickie goes sheet white on the telephone.
Vivian glances at the mantel clock, as if fixing the moment of disaster. Nine-fifteen in the morning. She was reading in the front room in her bed jacket and Dickie was about to leave the house for a lunch at a club in Rye when the phone rang. He spoke a phrase or two and then sat down hard at the telephone table. Dickie, a man who never sat for the phone, who couldn’t bear the phone, actually.
Vivian, who can see Dickie through the open doorway, puts down her book and unfolds her legs from the divan. Sandy perks up his head.
In his wool tweed suit, Dickie sits huddled over his lap. He throws his head back and his knees fall open. She has never seen Dickie, who is nothing if not elegant, in such an ungraceful position. His hat tumbles from his hand.
“Everything?” he asks in an incredulous voice.
Vivian sits forward.
“Oh, God,” Dickie says. He puts his hand to his forehead, as if shading his eyes. “For God’s sakes,” he says.
Vivian stands. The rain pings hard against the diamond-paned windows.
“I’m getting in the Packard,” Dickie says. “I’ll be there by tonight. Stay there. Don’t leave.”
Dickie puts the telephone back in its cradle.
“What is it?” Vivian asks from the doorway.
Dickie shakes his head back and forth. He seems oblivious to her presence. When he looks up at her, he blinks.
“Be a good girl, would you, and pack me a bag?”
Vivian sees Dickie out to the car and stands in the rain in her silk bed jacket. It seems the least she can do. Dickie tries to start the car, but his hands tremble so badly that he can’t get a grip on the shift. Vivian has never seen a man so shaken before. She reaches into the car and puts her own fingers around his hand. “Steady now,” she says, as one might to a horse.
She stands and wipes the rain out of her eyes. “It’ll be all right,” she says. “You’ll see.”
But she has no idea whether or not it will ever be all right, does she? She waves encouragingly as Dickie drives away. She walks back into the house and towels herself dry. She changes into her chartreuse-and-black-checked silk, as if she needed to be ready for the worst. As if she were awaiting news of a relative’s death. She telephones her father.
“You’re sure not?” she asks, in a voice equally as incredulous as Dickie’s was.
With guilty relief, she puts the telephone back in its cradle. Never more grateful for her father’s conservatism.
The rain stops late in the afternoon, and the sun makes a brief appearance. Vivian stands at the open doorway to the porch, aching to step out onto the beach and feel the sun on her face. But she doesn’t dare be out of earshot of the telephone in case Dickie calls. She has calculated as best she can that even if he shot down to Boston, he can’t have gotten there before four