For the third time in a row, Violet fed her card into the Scranton Lace Company’s time clock, without result.
“There’s a trick to it.” The next woman in line reached over Violet’s shoulder and wiggled the card till the machine chomped 7:51 a.m. onto the line for Monday, August 8.
“You’re a real lifesaver,” Violet said.
The woman brushed off the gratitude. “Name’s Doreen.”
“A pleasure. I’m Violet.”
Doreen reached into the pocket of her dress, pulled out a peppermint, and popped it into her thickly lipsticked mouth. “Do people ever call you Vi?”
“Not often.”
“When’d you start?” Doreen asked.
“Five weeks ago. They made me a temporary utility girl. Put me anywhere I was needed. Mostly over in lace.” The pair hung their purses in side-by-side employee lockers before heading out the door and up a flight of steps. “When they shut down at the end of July for vacation, I prayed they’d bring me back.”
“Well, Vi, I’d say those prayers got answered.”
“Talk about relief. The foreman called last night to say he’d found me a permanent spot in the Vinylite department.”
“Not for nothing,” Doreen said, “but as short as we are on help, you were always coming back. Heck, they’d let Lizzie Borden take a shift, providing she left the axe at home.” They both laughed. “So what do they have you doing?”
“I’m going to be a cutter,” Violet said.
“Makes sense.” Doreen walked through the doorway to the factory floor and Violet followed. “We’ve been down one since Roxanne ran off with the barber.”
“Roxanne?”
“I’ll fill you in at lunch. Let’s just say her husband got the surprise of his life.” Doreen stopped at a bank of sewing machines. “This here’s my stop. You’re at the end of the line.” She cast her gaze to the far side of the long room where large bolts of colorful vinyl fabric waited to be cut into shower and bathroom curtains. “Have Arlene tape your fingers before you start using those machines. It’ll take a good week for your hands to callus up.”
“Arlene?”
“Arlene Wardell, my older sister. Know her?”
Stanley’s married girlfriend, Violet thought. At least she was this past spring, but there’d been talk in the neighborhood of a falling-out. One thousand employees at the Lace Works, and Violet got assigned to the same department as Stanley’s Arlene. Talk about a kick in the teeth. “I know the name. She was a couple of years behind me in school.”
“Arlene’s the floor lady. Runs a tight ship, but she’s fair. You’ll get on with her, as long as you make your quotas.” Two more women came in and sat down at sewing machines. Doreen turned and faced them. “Annie, Babs, this is Vi. She’s taking Roxanne’s place.”
“Pleased to meet you.” The seamstresses nodded.
Violet smiled. “Likewise. Thanks again,” she said to Doreen before continuing on.
“Find us at lunch,” Doreen called out. “I’ll save you a seat.”
As Violet approached the cutting tables, she recognized Arlene standing near an office, clipboard in hand. Her Bettie Page bangs framed her heavily made-up eyes.
“Mrs. Davies,” Arlene said while staring at her paperwork, “I’m Mrs. Wardell.” She aimed her clipboard at a piece of equipment that resembled an oversized drill press with a long wavy blade instead of a bit. “I’m starting you on the straight knife cutter. Doesn’t take much skill.” She set down her notes and stood the machine on its base so the blade hung vertically. “Watch what I do.” With the switch turned off, she gripped the handle and mimicked a skater’s figure eights on top of the bare table.
After Violet saw the trick of it, her eyes followed the knife’s cloth-covered cord from the back of the motor, up to a series of electric sockets in the ceiling beams. Rows of pendant lights with black-enameled shades dangled alongside them. Violet returned her attention to the cutter before glancing at the clock. Eight on the dot. Suddenly, scores of machines roared to life inside the room.
“Let’s see what you can do!” Arlene yelled over the din. She handed the device to Violet for practice while she grabbed a stack of four-by-four vinyl squares already cut from the large bolts.
Once Violet got a feel for the knife, Arlene set the pile on the table. “I’m starting you off easy. Window tiebacks and trim. Top one’s marked,” she said, in reference to the pattern traced onto the first ply. Let that be your guide.” She took the machine, turned on the switch, and cut through the layers as smoothly as she would a devil’s food cake. “Your turn,” she said, handing the cutter over and grabbing another vinyl stack.
As simple as the process looked, it took Violet the better part of half an hour to figure out how to keep the fabric from bunching up at the knife. It didn’t help that Arlene’s mouth pinched tighter with each failed attempt. When Violet finally managed to produce her first clean edges, Arlene scribbled something on her clipboard and scurried into her office.
At ten o’clock, a bundle boy came by with his cart and started tying Violet’s work off with twine and tagging it for the seamstresses. “First day?” he asked.
“In this department, yes!” Violet shouted to be heard over the clanking of the die cutter one table over. “How long have you been here?”
“Two summers,” he said. “I graduate next year, then I’m joining up. Air Force. Going to be a paratrooper.” He replenished Violet’s station with four-by-four piles. “I want to jump out of planes like the boys at Normandy.”
“A noble calling.” Violet grabbed a stack of vinyl fabric and set it in front of her. “I remember when they made parachutes here during the war.”
“In the old part of the factory,” the young man said. “My Aunt Nancy told me all about it. Worked here forty years. Earned herself a gold watch.”
Arlene stepped out of her office and peered into the bundle boy’s cart. “Curtains aren’t going to walk themselves.” She nodded toward the seamstresses at the other end of the room.
He snapped to attention. “Yes, ma’am. On my way.”
I’m sorry, Violet mouthed to the boy as she turned her knife back on.
* * *
At noon, the Lace Works’s steam whistle blew from the clock tower, signaling the lunch hour. Violet made her way back through the room, to the doorway, and down the steps. Once she reached the cafeteria, the collective scents of turkey, dressing, and carrots delighted her senses and conspired to make her homesick. Her mother loved a hearty midday meal. Violet felt a twinge of guilt for leaving Grace alone, especially with her health such as it was, but what choice did she have? Her work for Walsh’s Portraits had all but dried up, and she refused to accept more help from Stanley. Anyway, her mother wasn’t really alone in that house. They had a telephone and a television, and besides, the widow promised to check in on her during the day.
Violet scanned the tables and found Doreen waving her over to a bench. As soon as Violet sat down, the woman launched into her promised story: “So, about Roxanne and the barber …”
Violet opened the sandwich she’d brought in her purse. Minced ham and pickle. Tommy’s favorite.
Had he really asked Stanley to watch out for her and their daughter Daisy? Yes, according to the widow who’d come over to the house in June to clear the air with Violet after she and Stanley had had their latest falling-out. Truth be told, Violet could believe it. Tommy was the kind of man who’d want to provide for his family even in death. She should have been mad at him too, for making the arrangements without her say-so, but it was easier to find fault with the living. With Stanley.
Doreen cackled. “So before she runs off with the company barber for good …” She studied Violet to make sure she had her attention.
“Wait.” Violet put her hand up. “They have a barbershop here?”
“They do, indeed,” Annie answered. “And a beauty parlor.” She started ticking off some of the factory’s other amenities on her fingers: “Basketball court, bowling alley, billiards—”
Babs jumped in: “Club rooms, lounges, a theater.”
As Annie opened her mouth for another turn, Doreen sighed heavily. “I didn’t know I was finished with my story.”
“Go on,” Babs said. “Violet needs to hear the ending. It’s a humdinger.”
“Does she now?” Doreen clenched her jaw. “Didn’t sound that way when you and Annie decided to monopolize the conversation.”
“That’s my fault,” Violet said. “I asked about the barbershop and got us off track. I’m sorry.”
“Apology not necessary, but much appreciated.” Doreen cleared her throat and tried again: “So, before Roxanne runs off for good, she drags that husband of hers to the barbershop for a trim and a shave from the very man she’s leaving him for. Thinks she’s doing him some kind of favor. Tells him he’ll have a better shot at finding a new wife if he’s all cleaned up.”
“And he went along with that?” Violet couldn’t imagine Tommy, or Stanley for that matter, putting up with such foolishness.
“Here’s the topper.” Doreen slapped the table. “The very next day, that son of a gun ran into his high school sweetheart. Turns out she was in the middle of a divorce her own self. He hasn’t looked back since.”
“And he shaves regular now,” Babs added.
“Shame about all those broken marriages though,” Violet said between bites of her sandwich. “Grass isn’t always greener.”
“Truer words,” Annie said.
“Well,” Babs said, “I think it’s a real-life fairy-tale ending.”
“Or a miracle,” Doreen offered. “Not one broken heart in the whole lot.”
“You’re forgetting about Ethyl,” Annie said. “Married to the barber almost twenty-five years, a few of them happy.” She checked the wall clock.
“Still makes for a good story.” Doreen stood up and looked at Violet. “If you need to use the little girls’ room, do it now.”
Violet balled up her waxed paper and followed the women out the door, wondering about the kind of man who’d leave his wife after twenty-five years, happy or not.
* * *
When the whistle signaled the end of the workday, Violet secured her straight knife cutter and swept up the last few scraps of Vinylite. “Shame to waste good fabric,” she said to Arlene standing next to her with her clipboard.
“And what would you have us do with it, Mrs. Davies?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Violet picked up a triangle of vinyl fabric with cheery stripes. “How ’bout a rain bonnet?” She put it on her head like one of the widow’s babushkas.
“Piecework takes both speed and accuracy,” Arlene said, ignoring Violet’s suggestion. “I’m not sure you have what it takes.” She pulled a pencil from behind her ear. “Time will tell.” She noted something on her clipboard and turned away.
What were you thinking? Violet took off the makeshift hat, threw it in the waste basket, and walked across the now empty room. Even though she’d worn crepe-soled shoes, her feet hurt from so much standing. And her calves, she discovered on the stairs.
Once she made it outside, Violet found a bench near the original part of the plant and sat down. She had a mile-long walk ahead of her, mostly uphill, and between her aching legs and her flagging morale, she needed a few minutes to collect herself. I’m not sure you have what it takes. That had been Violet’s fear all along. So much for teaching an old dog new tricks. Then again, she’d gotten better as the day progressed. The bundle boy had said as much on his last run.
But not Arlene, Stanley’s old girlfriend. Bile burned in Violet’s throat. Could he be the reason for her supervisor’s sharp remarks? Ridiculous. Violet wasn’t even a part of Stanley’s life. She took in a deep breath and exhaled loudly. Not then. Not now. No reason at all for Arlene to have any opinion of her other than today’s work performance. Time will tell.
Violet closed her eyes and listened for the burbling river on the other side of the road. Her ears buzzed from eight hours of machine racket, but she preferred to credit the katydids. And the dragonflies, she thought, imagining their iridescent wings. After a minute, she opened her eyes and caught her reflection in the gently arched windows. She looked older than she cared to imagine. Unfamiliar, even.
On the other side of the glass, two-and-a-half-story cast-iron looms, capable of creating the most delicate lace, sat idle. Eight o’clock each morning, master weavers brought them to life like Geppetto’s Pinocchio. Violet thought about the afternoon she and her sister Daisy had visited the factory. The clock tower and the newer part of the plant had yet to be built, though to Violet’s eye, the redbrick building looked the same now as it did in 1912.
Back then, everyone in town knew Benjamin Dimmick, president of the Lace Works. His niece attended No. 25, the grammar school in Providence, so Dimmick had arranged for all the grades to tour the plant. Violet was only six, but over forty years later, she still had a clear memory of the enormous looms thundering in a room so hot her petticoat clung to her body. She couldn’t catch a good breath. The room started spinning.
Seeing Violet’s distress, Daisy had slipped away from her own class, taken her sister’s hand, and begun singing:
Jesus wants me for a sunbeam.
To shine for Him each day.
The sisters had sung the song in church on Children’s Day.
In ev’ry way try and please Him …
At home, at school, at play.
Daisy had a beautiful voice. Violet had struggled to hear the words over the clanking machinery, but nonetheless felt soothed. Her sister was with her. No harm would come. Soon enough, Daisy had drawn her attention to a weaver whose very long cigar ash was about to fall into the loom. “Shit!” the man had barked as the ash dropped onto a half-finished panel of lace. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”
The children giggled as their first-grade teacher hastily ushered them out the double doors. These doors, Violet thought, as she tried to picture her sister standing next to them in her lemon pinafore, the hulking looms visible through the window.
“Mechanical spiders.”
“I’m sorry, what?” Violet glanced around.
Arlene sat down on the bench and stared at the looms inside the building. “Some guy in the paper called them that once, and it stuck with me.” She plucked a cigarette and lighter out of a leather pouch inside her purse. “Fourteen-ton, forty-foot-long, lace-spinning spiders.”
“My mother’s home alone,” Violet said. “I should be going.”
“How’re your hands?”
“Blistered a bit.” Violet studied her palms. “Nothing a sewing needle and some castor oil won’t fix.”
Arlene’s lips clamped onto the cigarette like the jaws on a vise. “You catch on quick, Mrs. Davies.” Her thumb spun the lighter’s striker three times in quick succession before it flamed. She took a shallow drag and the cigarette caught. “I owe you an apology.”
“For what?”
“Have you ever tried to not like someone?” Arlene fanned away the smoke, and the flesh on her upper arms jiggled as if made out of pudding.
“I don’t think so.”
“I really wanted to not like you. For the record,” she poked her chest, “I am di-vorced.” Both syllables dropped from her tongue like hard pebbles. “I know people say I’m not, but I am. Took awhile, but it had nothing to do with me wanting to stay in good with the church. Trust me,” Arlene snickered, “the church never did me any favors.”
“Well, I never said …” Violet’s face flushed. She may not have spread the rumor, but she’d accepted it as truth.
“And I had grounds,” Arlene pressed on. “Abandonment. But I didn’t have the money for a lawyer.”
“I’m sorry,” Violet said, and she meant it. Sorry for Arlene’s situation. Sorry for thinking ill of the woman.
“Then Stanley came along and helped me file the papers. Hard to resist a knight in shining armor.”
So this was about Stanley after all
“Spends most of his time fighting for the little guy, or gal.” She took a long drag on her cigarette. “I fell hard,” she finally said. “But not him. That man loves you.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Because it’s true.”
“How do you know?”
“How do you not?” Arlene stood up and dropped her cigarette to the ground. “Stop by the office tomorrow and I’ll tape up those hands,” she said, stubbing out the smoldering butt with the toe of her shoe.