Sea Glass_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [82]
All weekend, Alphonse had to remind himself that the strike was going to happen on Monday, because just looking at the men and Miss Burton getting drunk and laughing so much, and even Mrs. Beecher giggling at dinner, no one would ever have the idea that tough times were ahead.
This morning — his second morning in the house — Alphonse was the first one down to breakfast because Miss Burton had gone home and all the men were sleeping late and would probably wake up with terrific headaches. Mrs. Beecher sat with Alphonse at the table and asked him all the usual questions, and Alphonse considered telling her about wanting to be a doctor, because he knew she was going to be disappointed about the weaver, but when the time came, he just couldn’t bring himself to lie to her and so he kind of shrugged and hoped she wouldn’t ask him again what he wanted to be when he grew up.
Now they are all on the beach on blankets that Miss Burton brought from her house, and Alphonse thinks it is kind of amazing how lively she is considering how much he personally saw her drink last night. In fact, she’s a lot more lively than some of the men, like Ross, who couldn’t even eat his breakfast, and Alphonse imagines she must have some sort of vitamin tonic at her house for times like this. Mrs. Beecher and Vivian packed up sandwiches and made salads and deviled eggs, and even though they are all only sitting in front of the house and could go right inside and eat at a table if they wanted to, they are having a picnic as if it were a day at the beach, which he supposes it is. Mr. Beecher has on his bathing suit and the other men have their pants rolled, and Ross was pretty funny when he stood up and walked into the ocean in his clothes and then hopped around like he’d been electrocuted. But when he came out he looked so much better than when he’d gone in that Mahon and McDermott and Mironson went into the ocean in their clothes too. Mr. Beecher ran to the water’s edge and dived in and that was when Alphonse worked out where he’d seen the new guy before — at the beach that day last summer, swimming through the water like a shark. McDermott and Ross came out and got Alphonse and carried him kicking and screaming into the water and then just dumped him in too. And holy Joseph, it was so cold that Alphonse couldn’t breathe and when he came up and got the water out of his eyes, Ross, McDermott, and Mahon and even Mironson were dripping like wet ducks and laughing like they’d never seen anything so funny in their whole long lives, and Alphonse thinks that if this is what it means to go on strike he wishes that the strike would go on forever.
Vivian
“They’re little boys, aren’t they?” Vivian says, watching the men throw Alphonse into the water. And indeed, though she means Aren’t they silly? she does think they are all so very, very young. Honora and McDermott are only twenty-one, Louis twenty-five.
“In their way,” Honora says.
“Poor Alphonse. Do you think he knows how to swim?”
“Doesn’t look like it,” Honora says.
“I’ve hardly been outside in months,” Vivian says, stroking Sandy’s fur.
“You’ve been in Boston?”
“No, in New York,” Vivian says, slightly envying the men in the water. She wishes she had brought her bathing suit so that she could take a dip herself. “I’m trying to write a play.”
“For the theater?”
“Well, it’s the most remarkable bit of good luck — or bad luck, I’m not sure which. I met this fellow in Havana who’s a producer in New York, and one night at dinner