Sea Glass_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [75]
“I guess you didn’t get your wish,” he says.
She turns, her hands still over the sink. “I’m sorry?”
He takes a quick pull on his cigarette and blows the smoke out the side of his mouth. It pauses at the window and then coils back into the room, as if with a life of its own. “At Christmas,” he says, flicking his ashes into a glass ashtray on the table. “You said you wanted a baby.”
She smiles. “Oh,” she says. “I guess not.”
She has the sleeves of her pink blouse pushed up to her elbows. The skin on her forearms has delicate dark hairs. “How about you?” she asks. “You wanted peace and quiet.”
He shrugs. “Still looking for it,” he says.
She has to turn back to the sink to finish her task, and he can see that carrying on a conversation is going to be impossible if he sits at the table. He crosses the room and leans against the wall near the sink, one hand in his trouser pocket, the other still holding the cigarette. “You’re a good sport,” he says. “All of us barging in on you like this.”
“It did take me by surprise,” she says. “I’m just worried I won’t have enough food.”
“That woman, what’s her name, Vivian, she’s gone back to her house to get some stuff.”
“Yes.”
“She’s a friend of yours?”
“Sort of. A new friend. She was there that day, at the airport.”
“Really?” He doesn’t remember her. He remembers the woman pilot in her flight suit, the boy looking pitiful but happy.
Honora rinses a potato. “I was kind of surprised when I saw you just now,” she says.
He nods, though actually he was more than surprised — he was stunned. He had just worked out minutes earlier where he’d seen the new guy who was riding with them in the bread truck: he’d had an image of the man downing the three shots in the speak, leaving with the English girl. He’d recalled the package the man had left on the floor — all of which had meant nothing to McDermott in the bread truck. He was just glad he’d managed to remember, because something like that could drive you nuts all day — a face you couldn’t place, a song you couldn’t quite get the name of. But then when they all stood in the hallway and the woman walked down the stairs — and he knew right away she was the woman in the airport; how could he ever forget that? — and the guy went over to the woman and kissed her on the mouth and said Happy anniversary, McDermott felt the word no shoot through him, right up from his feet.
“And the boy,” she says. “How is he?”
“He’s fine, I think,” he says. “I’ve got him working for me. Well, for us. I think he’s better off than in the mill. He’s happier, anyway.”
“Is it safe, what you’re doing?”
McDermott pauses. He stubs out his cigarette. He has a quick flash of the sledgehammer to Tsomides’s head. “More or less,” he says.
“Do you mind my asking you what you are doing?”
“No, I don’t mind,” he says. “You have every right, us using your house and all.” Though he cannot for the moment think of how to phrase exactly what they are doing. He watches her rinse her hands under the tap, give them a quick shake, and dry them on a dish towel. She takes a pan from a shelf and fills it with water. “You know about the strike on Monday,” he says.
“I do now,” she says, putting the potatoes into the water.
“We’re trying to get out leaflets and a newsletter. The unions have voted to strike, but they represent only ten percent of the mill workers in the city. We’re trying to form an industrial union of the unorganized workers. The Ely Falls Independent Textile Union, we’re calling it.”
“You’re striking because of the wage cut?”
He takes the heavy pot from her and carries it to the stove. “The wages in Ely Falls are the worst in New England. Well, you