Nineteen
I’VE BEEN on the Finishing line for four-and-a-half years now, supervisor for close to two.
Years of long days on my feet, fast movements to keep up with the conveyor, soreness in my neck and my shoulders and my feet every night.
Years of Gladys serving me sandwiches and coffee with a smile, of listening to Janine’s stories of bad dates and Claud’s good advice and Ivy’s wry takes on the management and communism and the latest pictures.
Years of walking past the Listening booths, the job like a magazine ad for tranquility.
But today, when I pass them, something stops me short.
The booths are just large enough for two people, with a glass door and a curtain you can pull shut from the inside.
Most of the men leave them open, though—for light, I imagine—and it gives them the effect of being on display.
Sitting back with their eyes closed. Bent forward, tapping their feet.
Standing and stretching against one of the walls.
Today, in a booth close to the end, Kenny sits, legs crossed, with a paperback on his lap.
He holds a pen near his mouth, considering something.
Lowers it, writes. In all my time passing the booths, I’ve never seen anyone do anything with their hands.
I find him later, at lunch, at a table with the other Listening men.
“Kenny,” I say, pausing with my tray on the way to sit with the girls.
“I noticed you working on something in the booth earlier. Mind if I ask what it was?”
“Crossword puzzles,” he says. “Just took them up. They keep my mind engaged. It helps me focus on the music.”
“Ah,” I say. “Clever.”
The day goes on and an idea takes root in me: If I worked in Listening, I could draw all day.
I obsess over it for a full week. Tell Felix one evening in the living room as he rubs the knots out of my shoulders.
“Has the plant ever hired a woman in the Listening Department?” he asks.
“Never. It’s a coveted job, rarely has an opening. You sit in a booth and listen to music—all day long—and get paid as well as we do for working on the line. Probably even better.”
He sighs, kneads with his hands, relieving the tightness. “Seems you’ve given the plant enough of your physical labor. Time for a job like that one.”
“I just have to convince Mike somehow.” I turn around and face him. “Any stories from the trip?”
“One,” he says, a sparkle in his eyes. “In New Mexico, the conductor saw something big blocking the track, far off in the distance. Slowed the train to a crawl to see what it was. Any guesses?” I shake my head. “A bison.”
“Really? I thought the bison were all but extinct.”
“They are. Less than a thousand of them left in the whole country, but one of them chose to grace us with its presence. It was a grand old thing. Sure took his time getting out of the way.”
We stay up late playing Spades, playing records. “I should really resume my hunt for a chair soon,” I say. “I’ve kept that corner empty for far too long.”
On Saturday morning, he makes coffee, helps the children build a fort out of fallen palm fronds, while I stay in bed and scan the paper for yard sales.
I’m circling the promising listings, when three-quarters down the page, I see N.
Harper Ave. Delphine’s old block. I’ve stayed away all this time, but the listing’s an invitation, a spell.
I dress in a daze, wave goodbye, slip into the car.
On Delphine’s block the residents are out on the sidewalks, front yards and driveways spilling over with furniture and boxes of records, children’s toys and tricycles, roller skates and small appliances and framed artwork, pots and pans and clothing hanging from rolling racks or folded neatly atop card tables.
Naomi, who lives in Delphine’s house, is chatting with a couple on the sidewalk, while her tall, blond husband counts out change for an elderly man with a table lamp under his arm.
Linda, from two doors down, sits on her front steps with some other women, neighbors, probably, from the way they all survey the crowd.
Had life turned out differently, Delphine would have been at the center of these women, the one they turned to when they needed direction or clarity.
She’d hear confessions as often as a priest, but when they were over she’d take your hand—no guilt, no shame, no asking for forgiveness.
Just her voice in your ear: What does it matter, what anybody thinks of us?
There’s a tap on my shoulder. A short, freckled woman, curvy and smiling. “Anything I can help you find?”
It takes me a moment to remember. “A chair,” I say.
“What kind?”
“Modern. Comfortable but not too large. I don’t care about the fabric as long as the wood is nice. I plan to reupholster it.”
“Oh, I know just the one. Patty had it shipped all the way from Europe, and then her husband had some Paramount people over for dinner and got drunk and spilled his Manhattan all over it. Can you imagine?” I widen my eyes, shake my head.
She leads me to the house to the right of Linda’s, past a pile of books, a golf bag with clubs in it, a coffee table with a glass top, until we reach a chair with a brown stain in its cream upholstery. “Do you like it?”
A medium oak without any orange to it, clean lines, brass tips at its feet. I almost laugh. “It’s just what I’m looking for.”
“Patty!” She waves in the direction of Linda’s steps, and a woman in pedal pushers heads toward us. “I have a buyer for your chair.”
“How much does it cost?” I ask.
“Five dollars?” the owner says. “It’s an expensive chair. But that stain is not coming out. Ever.”
I take my purse and pull out a five-dollar bill. And then Linda’s here with us, the rest of the women trailing her.
“Hey,” she says. “You’re Delphine’s cousin, right? I knew I recognized you.”
“Yes,” I say. “Hello.”
“Did you ever find Nathalie?”
I nod. They’re gathered around me now, the women from the block, some of their husbands, too, all of them plainly curious, wanting to know everything I know.
“And how’s Delphine doing?” Linda asks.
“We still can’t believe she disappeared the way she did,” Naomi says, as though she knows anything about her.
They’re all staring, waiting. A whirring in my brain, a pressure in my chest. “I’m sorry to have to tell you.
She died in the hospital. An infection.” They gasp in chorus, murmur over each other.
I accept their condolences. Their voices sound far away.
The children play in the street, the shoppers comb through the stacks.
As someone loads my new chair into the trunk, I stare at Delphine’s house, tall and bright, as though it could reassure me that I’m only doing what she asked me to.
Weeks go by, and each time I pass the booths I slow to glance at Kenny and his crosswords.
Don’t even dream, I tell myself. Dreaming will only make it harder as I sweat each day on the Finishing line, use my hands to slip records into jackets instead of to draw, endure the thunder of machinery when I could be listening to music.
And then comes a call from Claire, inviting us over on a weekend.
“Bernard’s setting up the kiddie pool out back and some sprinklers to run through.
Thought us sisters could have some time inside to catch up.
” I would drive, but Felix is out with the car, so we walk the half mile over, Nathalie and Clément ahead of me on the sidewalk.
Nathalie’s leading him in Al Martino’s “Here in My Heart.” It’s a ballad, number one on the charts to everyone at Columbia’s dismay, off a small Philadelphia label, a complete wild card.
Clément sings dutifully, precisely, but Nathalie’s soul is in it, as though she knows something of the kind of love they’re singing about.
She’s just turned seven, and I see a hint of the older girl she’ll become.
When they sing the last lines, Clément claps for Nathalie, even though he was singing, too.
Claire greets us at the door, Baby Sebastian on her hip. Her hair’s swept up and pinned back, lovely. She’s wearing a light-blue dress and a string of pearls. Sebastian leans to me and I scoop him up. He squeals. As chubby and perfect as can be. I kiss him on his cheek and he smiles.
“Your other cousins are outside already,” Claire says to Nathalie and Clément. “Did you bring your bathing suits?”
“They’re on under their clothes,” I say.
“I want to listen to records,” Nathalie says.
“A little later,” Claire says. “For now, the children will play outside.”
Nathalie glowers. I put my hand on her head, pull her close to me. “Rudy loves to sing,” I tell her. “Why don’t you try a duet?”
She considers. Gives me a reluctant nod. Follows Clément.
“Odette,” Adele calls from somewhere farther inside the house.
“You’ve got to come see.” She’s in the doorway to the kitchen, waving me over.
“It’s unbelievable,” she says, looking at the floor.
It’s the same green-and-beige checkered linoleum that Bernard laid when they bought the house, but now it’s as though there’s a layer of perfectly clear ice over the whole thing. It shines and reflects like a mirror.
“How did you do it?” I ask.
“Bruce cleaning wax,” Claire says. “It cleans as it waxes.”
“Did you apply it yourself?”
“I did. A bunch of times. Every day for a week to build up the shine.”
“Does the wax make the floor slippery?” Adele asks.
“Not at all,” Claire says. “See?” She takes a step across it, twirls a bit. “Come try.”
“I’m afraid to,” Adele says. “I don’t want to do a thing to mess it up.”
“Same here,” I say.
Claire laughs. “As though Bernard isn’t walking across my kitchen floor all day. Can’t keep that man away from the refrigerator. And Sebastian is crawling all over it now.”
We settle in Claire’s living room, a view through the glass doors of Bernard and Al and the children outside, Sebastian playing at our feet.
“Well, this is nice,” Adele says. “What a good idea.”
“Look at Sebastian,” I say. “Such a big, healthy boy.”
“He played peekaboo yesterday. And took a bite of oatmeal with a spoon.” She smiles, her expression so bright and cheerful that I almost forget all it took for her to get here.
We don’t talk about the injections and the years of hoping and the miscarriage, just like we don’t talk about Papa or Delphine.
We talk instead about floor wax and the strange spots on Claire’s ginkgo tree.
I tell them about finally finding my chair, and how I bought fabric for it. A garden motif. Birds and flowers.
“Al and I are going to roof the patio,” Adele says. “For shade.”
For a while, she talks about the dimensions of the frame they’ll build, and Claire talks about a neighbor a few doors down who just did the same and how it’s nice except that some of their flowers aren’t blooming because they aren’t getting enough sun.
“The worst part is,” she says, “they got a dog, and when they were gone one day the dog chewed the base of the frame. Can you imagine? Bite marks all over it.”
“I see that the men are out of iced tea,” I say. “I’ll go refill their glasses.”
“Are you bored of us?” Adele asks.
“I could never be bored of you,” I say. And I’m not. It’s more of a general restlessness. One that burrows into me and stays and stays. A relief now, to step out into the heat with the pitcher of tea.
“Did you hear?” Bernard asks me as I refill his glass. “A thousand records, in the trash.”
“No,” I say. “What do you mean?”
“The Johnnie Ray,” Al says. “There was a problem with the master and nobody in Listening caught it. Production turned out a thousand records with a pop so bad in the third track they were unusable.”
“Now Production and Listening are battling it out over who’s to blame,” Al says. “Someone’s gotta pay for it.”
A tingle at the base of my skull.
Al holds out his glass for me.
“Listen, listen!” Nathalie says, running up.
Her hair’s grown darker since she’s been with me, her cheeks fuller.
She still likes her bangs cut short, the striking arch of her brows visible.
The same arch as Delphine’s and my sisters’ and mine, and Papa’s and Auntie Bertha’s before us.
“Rudy, come on!” Rudy follows her, older and taller but doing as he’s told.
“We’ve been rehearsing,” she says. “It’s time for the show. ”
“Auntie Odette, will you get Mama?” Rudy says. “And Auntie Claire?”
“They might not want to be disturbed,” I say. “But then again, if it’s for a show…”
I fill Al’s glass and go back inside to get them.
Claire sighs, looks to the clock. “Well, they gave us an hour to ourselves. Not too bad. And I’ll need to get Sebastian down for his nap soon anyway.”
They rise, and I go to the kitchen. I fill three glasses with ice and pour the last of the tea into them for Adele and Claire and me, set the empty pitcher in the sink. A thousand records, in the trash. When I turn to go, my reflection is clear and sharp across the shiny floor.