Sea Glass_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [46]
His mother would never be a scab. Tonight at dinner when they had the stew his mother said to eat up good because you never knew where your next meal was coming from.
Sam said that some of the grocery stores would let you run up really high bills and that a couple of the landlords would let you wait on the rent in case the strike was settled in a hurry, but if the strike went on for a long time the landlords would come and put your furniture outside, and if you didn’t have any relatives who would take you in, you were pretty much stuck out on the street. Which is what happened to Sam Coyne and his family, and after that his mother and Sam and his two sisters moved to Ely Falls. Sam doesn’t know where his father and his two older brothers are, and his mother said to stop asking her because she didn’t want to hear his father’s fucking name anymore. Alphonse sometimes says the word fuck in his head, especially when Marie-Thérèse is talking to him in that horrible taunting voice she has, and he says fuck fuck fuck in his mind just to make himself feel better. But Sam Coyne says the word aloud like he’s been doing it since the day he was born.
Holy Joseph, McDermott said.
His mother didn’t believe that Alphonse had caught the fish himself and he didn’t want to tell her about McDermott because then she would ask a million questions, so Alphonse kept talking about how good the fish would taste in butter and after a while she stopped asking him where he got the thing.
When they came back from fishing, McDermott said it was probably getting too cold to fish anymore, but they would see in the spring.
Alphonse watches the men come out of Nadeau’s apartment and light up cigarettes. Alphonse searches for McDermott and finds him standing off by himself under a streetlight. He has on his leather jacket and the same sweater he wore when he took Alphonse fishing. Alphonse wonders if anyone has fixed the hole.
A fine mist has started and Alphonse can see it slanting in gusts under the light of the street lamp. He wishes McDermott would look up at his window, but before McDermott even has his matches out two men go over to him and say something that must be pretty funny because McDermott throws his head back and laughs.
And that’s an odd thing, Alphonse thinks. Because nobody seems upset about the wage cut. Even though it’s raining harder now, the men just put up the collars of their jackets and stand around in groups, chatting and laughing and smoking.
Honora
For Thanksgiving dinner, Honora prepares a turkey with a breaded stuffing and bowls of squash and turnip and potatoes. She sets out a relish tray while she and Sexton drink glasses of S.S. Pierce sherry from a bottle given to him by the owner of a paper mill in Somersworth. Having practiced her crust for weeks, Honora decides that her pies are suitably flaky. Sexton, however, hardly eats a bite of the turkey or the turnip or the mincemeat. Honora asks him if he is sick and he says no, but he works at his dinner as if it were a chore, dividing the food into sections and then rearranging them until Honora can bear it no longer. She stands and runs the water in the sink, and Sexton, with obvious relief, puts down his fork.
That afternoon, before it grows dark, they drive in the Buick to a school yard with the idea that on this cold, but not unbearably cold, holiday they will do something frivolous, such as roller-skating on the school’s cement courtyard. They sit on a bench and bend to their skates, but Sexton cannot make his key work. After a time, he gives up and reaches into his pocket for a package of gumdrops. He hands them to his wife. She notices that he doesn’t keep any for himself.
Through October and November, Sexton has grown thinner.
He thought the debacle with the stock market only temporary, but now,