7

THE HOUSE, A WHITE Victorian with black shutters, stood on Orchard Avenue, five blocks from the edge of the Brown University campus. It was the East Side of Providence, a neighborhood of well-kept older homes. The wealthy professionals who resided there rejected the idea of a tedious daily commute into the city from Barrington, Warwick, and other outlying towns where the homes were newer, leaned heavily to split level ranches and had significantly more lawn to be cared for.

When Brad and Patricia Hanley first moved in, nine years earlier, there was a need for the four large bedrooms, three baths, and spacious family room of which the house boasted. According to the real estate guidelines, the price was more than they could afford. But they envisioned a bright future for themselves because of Brad’s new job and borrowed some money from Pat’s parents to help swing the deal. They never regretted the decision. Now, however, their oldest child, Christine, accepted a position in Pittsburgh, where the family lived before Brad was hired to be the new president of Ocean State Wire & Cable. And Christine’s two younger siblings were away at college.

Pat Hanley looked forward to this time when she and her husband could be alone again. They married when she was nineteen and he was twenty-four. The children came along right away. The youngest, Marie, arrived just sixteen months after Peter and three years after Christine. As a mom, Pat went through her full share of lying awake at night. Brad always fell asleep within minutes after closing his eyes, so the job of waiting up for their kids to get home was hers by default. She listened for the sound of one of the cars pulling into the driveway, followed by the opening and closing of the heavy kitchen door and the footsteps on the stairway. It was only then that she could relax and get some rest.

Later on, as her children went off to college, she discovered that the old cliché was true—“Out of sight, out of mind”—at least when it came time to sleeping at night. But now, Pat was troubled. Brad’s day started, as always, with his leaving the house at quarter to seven in the morning. But the twelve-hour workday schedule he was on for so long seemed no longer to exist. Instead, she became used to seeing him return anywhere between 9:00 p.m. and midnight.

Pat urged Brad to come home earlier that night, and he agreed. When he told her not to bother making dinner, she assumed they would be going out to eat. She guessed that he would take her to one of the restaurants on Thayer Street, which ran through the middle of the Brown University campus. Brad always enjoyed being in the company of young people, even if it meant just being able to observe them.

Pat arrived home shortly before five o’clock from her three-day-a-week job at the Werner Medical Lab, where she ran blood tests. Work at the lab had picked up dramatically because of the increasing amount of AIDS testing that was being done. She took a long bath before changing into a pair of black slacks and a white blouse with a multi-colored rhinestone design in front. The children pitched in and gave her the blouse on her last birthday, but this was the first time she wore it. Pat looked at herself in the mirror as she dressed and was pleased with what she saw. The good looks that attracted a long list of boys from the time she was thirteen were still there. They captivated Brad when he first saw her working as a receptionist for a Dayton, Ohio, metallurgy firm. Her brunette hair, still long the way Brad liked it, showed no trace of gray. The several lines around her eyes didn’t detract from the luminous blue color that looked out from below long attractive eyelashes. She puckered her lips, blew a kiss at herself and smiled, revealing teeth a movie actress would envy. Turning sideways, she threw her chest out a little and complimented herself on keeping an excellent figure.

Pat hurried downstairs when she heard the back door slam. She was still on her way to the kitchen when Brad called her name and announced that he picked up some food at a Chinese restaurant on the way home. They kissed each other lightly on the lips, as always, and he told her how good she looked. Pat loosened his tie for him and hid her disappointment at not going out for dinner

“How come you’re all dressed up?” he asked.

“Oh, I just felt like looking good for my man,” she said. “In case there’s any competition out there,” she added, smiling broadly at him.

“That’s something you’ll never have to worry about, and I mean never.”

They got through the appetizers on small talk: how her day went at the lab; the letter in the mail from their son, letting them know he’d be spending most of the Christmas vacation at his girlfriend’s home in Tampa; and the need to do their holiday shopping earlier than usual because they were attending a wedding on Long Island on the twenty-second of the month.

“Okay, my love, what’s on your mind?” Brad asked. “Why the early bird special?” He reached for the container of shrimp fried rice and used his fork to shovel it onto his plate.

Pat waited for him to finish before answering. When he passed the container to her, she set it down on the corner of the table. “I’m worried about you, Brad. You can’t keep up the hours you’ve been putting in at the plant the last five months. I hardly get to see you anymore, and I’m afraid you’ll work yourself sick.”

He smiled. “See what a man has to do to get some attention from his wife?”

“I’m serious, Brad, so no jokes. This is something we have to talk out right now. I know you’re under stress, but there’s got to be a limit on how much time you spend there.”

As she spoke, he took food from each of the other containers, sprinkled a few drops of mustard sauce on top and mixed it in. “Your turn,” he said, pushing everything closer to her. Pat knew he wouldn’t give her an answer until she scooped some food onto her dish.

“Look,” he said, after she helped herself to a little of everything, “I appreciate your concern and I love you for it. But I told you before that I’m trying to do everything I can to keep this year from being a disaster for the company. We’ve lost money two years out of every three since I took over. At least the red ink has always been a reasonable number. I mean there was always the chance the good year would wipe out most of the losses from the other two. That seemed to satisfy the Platt brothers. Their other businesses in Connecticut made enough money to let them accept the losses at Ocean State and wait for the demand for wire to pick up again.

“But the recession we’re in has been hurting everything they own. I can tell they’re panicking when I start to get faxes on a regular basis asking me what orders we’ve got coming in for the next month and how much production we turned out week by week, sometimes day by day. That never used to happen! I can only guess that they’re in a cash flow crunch like a lot of other big companies. I’m sure no one in the Connecticut office has forgotten that I bought three percent of this business when we came here. But you’d think from some of their memos that I didn’t give a damn about what was happening.”

Brad needed time to calm down a little. He went to the refrigerator, took out a bottle of root beer and got a large glass from one of the cabinets. He half filled the teakettle with water, lit the front burner on the stove and brought a cup and tea bag to the table for Pat. He didn’t say anything more until he was back in his chair and filled his glass.

“Listen to me, Pat. The numbers for the first six months of the year were the worst we’ve ever had while I’ve been here. That’s for two reasons. The first is that the Canadian wire plants are bidding everything to our customers at lower prices than what we have to charge just to break even. And the second is that the wire manufacturers in Ohio and Illinois are killing us. Their new facilities are automated. That means low labor costs. And they don’t have the heavy freight expenses we’re stuck with when we ship from Providence to customers in the Midwest and the West Coast.”

Pat started to say something, but he cut her off.

“Let me finish. A lot of what’s happening is my fault, and I can’t duck it. I got the employees to throw out the goddam Steelworkers Union. I convinced them they’d have better job security because we could run the place more competitively without a thousand union work rules. It was true, and it would have worked.

“But then I screwed up everything. I knew the Tarantinos were nervous about buying thirty-five percent of the company from the Platts, and I was anxious to show them they made a good deal for themselves. If they hadn’t come in with that cash when they did, the Platts might have shut the place down to stop the bleeding. I should have been happy just to get control of everything from the union over a one- or two-year period and have the employees doing things my way. Instead, I began pushing for profits right away. It was an ego thing. I know that now. I was just too stupid to see it then. So I cut wages more than I planned over the first couple of years and made everyone on the factory floor start contributing a piece of what the health plan cost. We showed a good profit the first year because sales took a nice jump at the same time I was cutting costs. The year after that wasn’t as good. But I took too much money away from those production people too fast. I might as well have sent out an invitation to the Machinists’ Union to come in and represent them.”

Caught up in his review of the events that transpired, Brad forgot about the food on his plate. Pat didn’t attempt to interrupt him.

“You have no idea how much more it costs to run that place after the contract we signed with the Union three years ago. What a mistake that was. It might not have been so bad if we let them go on strike for a while. I was ready to bring in as many new employees as we could hire if the production people walked out. That would have given us much more leverage in the negotiations with the Union. George Ryder, the lawyer the company uses, was all for my doing just that. But the Tarantinos got the right to call the shots on labor matters when they bought in, and they were against our letting a strike get started. Ryder told me off the record that Doug Fiore, the managing partner of his firm, probably pushed the Tarantinos in that direction. Maybe Fiore wasn’t thinking about what was best for Ocean State. Maybe he just didn’t want to take a chance on the strike forcing us to close the plant and costing his firm a good client. I hardly know the guy so I can’t be sure one way or the other. And maybe Ryder’s feeling about Fiore isn’t right either. I just don’t have the answer.”

Hanley finally paused and took a long drink of his root beer. When he finished, he returned the bottle to the refrigerator and sat down again. “I’m just about done,” he said. “Since I knew we had to avoid a strike, all we could do to keep the Machinists from robbing us blind was talk tough at the bargaining table and threaten to put a lock on the door if our costs went too high. But the employees weren’t afraid of striking, even though they had to worry about losing their jobs if they walked out. They’d had it with me and the company and were ready to risk everything. So they stuck to most of their demands and came away with a hell of a contract. Now, in a couple of months we’ve got to negotiate with them all over again and who knows how much worse things will get?”

Pat saw the clouds of steam escaping from the kettle and took it off the burner before its whistle began to sound. She brought it to the table and poured a full cup for herself. “I understand everything you said, Brad, but what is it you’re doing at work all the time? Why do you have to be there hour after hour?”

The question heightened Brad’s frustration, but he took a deep breath and answered as calmly as he could. “I’m there all those hours, Pat, because I’m trying to crack the whip as hard as I can. My presence is important. Hopefully, it makes everyone realize that I’m willing to work at least as hard as what I’m asking them to do. I make sure I’m there when the first shift comes in at seven. Once they get settled, I walk around the plant and observe every one of them at their jobs. I try to have something friendly to say to most of them, but I want them to know I’m watching everything that’s being done.

“Before the first shift is through for the day, I go back and check each guy out. They keep their production figures in a notebook next to the machine. I look and see how he’s done for the day. If the numbers are on target or even better, I can wave the flag and say a few words. But if they stink, I’ve got to find out why and make sure the problem gets corrected.”

Brad picked at some of the food on his plate. “I hope you’re beginning to get the picture,” he said. He put down his fork and continued. “Let me tell you the rest. The night shift foremen come in about twenty minutes before their men start work. When they show up, we meet with the first shift foremen to plan production for that night and the next day. We look at the delivery dates that the customers were promised, figure out how long it will take to ship to Chicago or Dallas or Seattle, and decide which orders get pushed to the head of the line.

“When that’s done, I go back on the floor and check the night shift guys who are out there. I used to do it only once, but now they know I’ll be around a second time before I go home. That keeps them on their toes. It’s no secret to them when I’m in the plant. They can see the Buick parked outside in my space.”

The words came faster as Brad kept talking. “And when I’m not keeping an eye on production, I’m on the phone to the salesmen in the field who are trying to bring in some new accounts, or I’m listening to our in-house guys call their regular customers. I want to make sure they’re pushing as hard as they can for orders. I don’t want to see us lose out to the competition for two or three cents a ton. Some of those so-called super salesmen can’t seem to learn how to offer a discount on the wire we make fast and cheap in exchange for getting a foot in the door on something the customer has been buying from someone else.”

“Please, Brad,” Pat interjected at last, “I didn’t have to hear all this. Stop and eat your dinner before it gets cold.”

“You asked a question,” he said. “I’m almost through answering it. I’ll heat this stuff up a little if I have to.”

He leaned back in the chair and continued. “Other than what I’ve already covered, I’ve got to memorize pretty nearly every number on the production printouts. When someone from Platt calls or sends a fax, the answer has to be ready. I sit down with Rusty in accounting almost every day to see what checks came in. We have to decide whether or not it’s time to give the customer a call and push for a payment. He and I also figure out what bills to pay, at least in part, so the suppliers don’t cut us off. As you can imagine, those sessions are a lot of fun.”

Brad stopped, took another deep breath, and looked up at the ceiling. “Oh, yeah,” he said, “I still manage to find time for about ten cups of coffee a day and a sandwich at my desk at lunch while I speed read my way through the Wall Street Journal.”

Pat looked at her husband and didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t sure whether it was some sort of a welcome release for him to be able to detail his time at the plant as he did, or whether it just added more tension and strain to what had clearly become a very difficult and trying situation for him. She retrieved the kettle from the stove and poured some more hot water over the same tea bag.

“Do you want some?” she asked.

“No thanks.” He emptied a little more fried rice on his dish.

She hoped she wasn’t about to upset him with the wrong question. “When will it end, Brad?”

“Good question, my love. Maybe a month from now, when Platt gets to see the final figures for the year. Color them deep red. If we get past that, maybe when the union negotiations are over, if we give them anything close to what we did last time. Or if the recession keeps dragging on the way it is, maybe anytime.”

“I didn’t mean for Ocean State Wire,” Pat answered. “I meant for you. When will you stop working so many hours and coming home so late every night?”

Brad felt his wife’s compassion. He saw the mist form in her eyes while she waited for him to answer. How lucky I was to have married her, he thought. What would my life have been like without her?

“Soon, Pat,” he said. “As soon as we ship the last product in December. After that I’ve decided to limit myself to just Tuesday and Thursday nights.” He wasn’t about to tell her that those were the nights he normally left the plant at six-thirty, drove to Cranston and spent several hours betting on blackjack or craps at a private club run by the Tarantino family.