Sea Glass_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [74]
She hears a deep rumble and grind, as if from a truck changing gears, then a short screech of tires. Honora heads toward the hallway. She hears the slam of a metal door, voices through an open window. She realizes that there are men in her house, downstairs.
“Honora,” Sexton calls up to her, his voice more buoyant than she has heard in months. “Honora.”
Three syllables. A lilt.
She walks to the railing at the top of the stairs. She has an impression of dark coats and caps, a restless moving about in a confined space. She sees Sexton peering up at her, and for a moment, he seems not to remember what it is he wants to say. She thinks his face will lapse into its former shape, the shape that has greeted her since Christmas, and that she will see, as always, the evasive glance, the set jaw. But he holds her eyes, balancing on a tightrope somewhere between fresh start and perhaps despair.
“There are people here,” he says.
She descends the stairs, holding on to the railing. A figure steps out from behind Sexton. The word you is on her lips, and perhaps it is on his as well. It seems another life in which she met this man, gave him a ride into the city. Near the bottom of the steps, she notices the boy, who is looking at her with his mouth open.
“Honora, these are men from the mill. This is . . .” Sexton appears to have forgotten the man’s name already.
“McDermott,” the man says, stepping forward. “Quillen McDermott.”
“Hello,” Honora says, and looks to see if the boy will remind them that they have already met.
“And this here is Alphonse,” Sexton is saying. “And, well, everybody, this is my wife, Honora.”
Honora nods in the direction of the others, who have removed their caps and are looking down at the floor.
“They’re from an organizing committee,” Sexton says quickly. “There’s going to be a strike, and these men need to get out leaflets, and they’re interested in seeing the typewriter and the Copiograph machine.”
Typewriter? she thinks. Copiograph machine?
“In the attic,” he says, glancing away.
She finishes her descent so that she is in the hallway with the others.
“I’m going to take them up to the attic,” Sexton says. “To see the machines.” He seems like a boy with a treasure in his bedroom that he wants his new friends to admire. Shyly, a man steps forward with a box of chocolate cupcakes in his hands. “These are for you, ma’am,” he says.
And, oh God, what will she feed these men? she thinks, for surely they have not yet had their dinners.
Sexton reaches across the space between them and kisses her on the side of her mouth. “Happy anniversary,” he says.
McDermott stands to one side, holding his cap behind his back. The boy scuffles his feet against the wooden floor. And then, through the open door that nobody thought to close, the figure of a woman, impossibly sleek and shiny, emerges into the crowd of gray and brown men.
“Yoo-hoo,” Vivian calls brightly. “Anybody home?”
McDermott
He sits in a wooden chair in the kitchen and smokes a cigarette. Over by the sink, the woman is peeling potatoes. She peels slowly and methodically with a small paring knife, leaving as little potato on the peel as possible. The kitchen has an icebox and shelves with oilcloth on them, and every surface, as far as he can tell, is clean. Through the window, the June air is darkening.
He can see only the back of the woman at the sink, the pink blouse tucked into a gray skirt that falls just below the knees. She has on ankle socks and brown pumps, and the skin between her socks and skirt is bare. Maybe he should offer to help, but he senses that she would say no. Just a minute earlier, Ross and the new fellow,