go?” she said as soon as she heard him open the door. “Are you hungry?”
“Starved,” he said, sitting at the table, crossing himself, and gulping down the bread with salt and olive oil before he could speak. “I did all right. I have work for tomorrow. I found work for a week as a grinder.” He almost smiled but was too tired. “Don’t need a suit for that.”
“No,” she said sitting with him, putting her head on the table.
“How did you do? Why do you smell of sheep?”
“I washed in the river. What, didn’t help?” She shrugged. “I must get a new dress at the mission.”
“Did you get the job?”
“Sort of.” She said it without enthusiasm. “They hired me, Salvo, but they didn’t want to pay me the going rate. They said other women would get extremely upset to see a young kid like me taking away the job they spend years trying to get promoted into. It’s union work. So they said they could hire me but pay me only five dollars as non-union.”
“I hope you told them in perfect Italian what they could do with their sheep sorting.”
“Except I really want to move to a different house,” Gina said. “What I told them was I’d work part-time for five dollars. If they wanted to give me half the pay, I’d only work half the time. Then no one could complain.”
“Did they agree to this?”
“Reluctantly. The manager liked me. He thought I was productive.” She was too tired for inflection. She showed Salvo her hands, dried and abraded from the thorns and burrs, from rough wet and dry work. Hives were forming on her fingers from the sheep grease.
“Gia!”
“Well, I know. It’s not great. It’s better than being a skirter and wool washer, don’t you think? Tagging off manure-filled fleece. Yuk. And Washington has the nicest mending room in Lawrence, Salvo. That’s where I want to get promoted to. Ladies work there, and they sit behind a table and the room is sunny with big windows. I would get to dress up. So I took this, hoping in time for that.” She pulled out a large shopping bag from under the table, stuffed to the brim with clean pale fleece. “I got four more just like this. Almost a pound total.”
“You stole from your new employer?” Salvo couldn’t believe it.
“Why do you attribute the worst motives to me? I didn’t steal it, I took it.”
“Oh! Fine difference.”
“They told me I could take it. It’s the discard pile. Downrights and abbs and breech.” She shrugged. “Don’t worry, it’s been thoroughly washed.”
Salvo inhaled the bean soup, the half block of mozzarella and fell away from the table, wiping his mouth. “What are we going to do with your sheep hiding under the table?”
“First thing I have to do is pay St. Vincent’s back for your suit,” she said. “Then buy me a dress. After that I have a plan. You’ll see.”
“You and your plans.”
They fell asleep on Salvo’s couch, sitting up, leaning against each other.
2
Alice stood in front of her closet and waited for Trieste, her lady’s maid. Trieste was late and Alice was already running behind a carefully constructed schedule, though it was barely eight in the morning. She decided on a dark blue wool skirt and a white lace blouse. She kept her jewelry simple and was already putting on light makeup—by herself. She thought her face looked swollen from having slept too long on one side, having been in bed since nine the night before. She made a mental note not to sleep on her side, because it creased her cheeks, made her look puffy. But she needed her beauty sleep. She worked hard during the day and she needed to get proper rest at night. Mother said so, and it made perfect sense. Ever since she had been a little girl she loved to sleep, though the opportunities for unabashed rest were lessening with the years. Once she turned eighteen, and had gone to forty balls and functions, she just got busier and busier.
After a short knock on the door, Trieste came in with a tray of tea and soft biscuits with jam. She apologized for running late, but they couldn’t get the stove to turn on, to heat up the water for the tea. Trieste thought an engineer needed to be called in. Alice said she didn’t care about the silly old tea, “but what I do care about, Trieste,” she continued, “is that a shipment of six thousand logs is waiting for me at Roxbury, and do you know where I am? Not at Roxbury. That is my problem. I’m going to be late for all my appointments.”
“I apologize, Miss Alice. I know you like your hot tea in the morning.”
“Not more than I enjoy being on time, Trieste.”
Trieste apologized again, while quickly spreading jam and clotted cream on the scones.
“Where is your day journal, Miss Alice? Would you like to go over your schedule?”
Irritated, Alice pointed to her bedside. She had looked at the schedule the night before, but she couldn’t remember anything past the sawmill. She continued applying her makeup while Trieste read aloud the day’s events.
“At 8:30 you’re supposed to be in Roxbury …”
“Where I am not. What’s next?”
“At ten you have a late breakfast meeting at the Mayflower Club to go over the final menu for the annual fall bazaar in September.”
“How long will that take? I have lunch with Daddy at noon.”
“Lunch with Mr. Porter is at 12:45 at the Bavarian Club back here in Brookline. Your carriage will be waiting for you on Commonwealth.”
“How long from there to the Club?”
“Probably forty-five minutes.”
Alice sighed. She had a bite of scone and a sip of tea. She only liked apricot jam, and today Trieste had given her blackcurrant. Nothing was going right. She made no comment. She never forgot her manners no matter what she was feeling like inside.
“Lunch until two o’clock, at which time your father and you will ride out to Timber Mills for a board meeting on next year’s fiscal projections.”
Alice set her jaw. That was her least favorite part of her father’s business: sitting in a stuffy room with closed windows going over numbers on paper. She liked the inspection of the lumber, dealing with actual product despite the many problems that arose with shipments—the quality of woods, dampness, rot. All of it was better than board meetings, and best of all were the quarterly river drives, when she traveled to Maine for weeks at a time and oversaw the forestry operations from felling to bucking. Walking atop the huge tied-together trunks floating in shallow rivers was a joy akin to riding horses—dangerous and thrilling. She would do that every day if she could. Board meetings were another matter entirely.
“How long is that meeting?”
“Until 4:30.”
She
