In the suit, the sun glancing off it in the afternoons, a heavy set of woolen underwear beneath keeping her snug, Tante made her way through the town, thickening her skin for the inevitable refusals. She went out. She asked for work. And then one day she actually got hired.
The place had just opened, whatever it was. At first it was hard to tell what exactly was sold there. A jumble of baskets and tobacco cans spilled out onto the sidewalk. A wide front window held bolts of new fabric and neatly cut piles of old, a large tin sieve with half-moon handles carved of horn, some handmade lace, rickrack, ribbons, and a brand-new sewing machine. A placard on the door said merely Notions. Tante stepped close, entered. On the other side of the half-painted, half-scraped door, there was a battered dressmaker’s dummy, more bolts of fabric — all sorts, from wools to calico — and a display of brilliant hat trims. There were also baskets of dyed feathers, ten kinds of machine lace, a fur collar that would have looked very fine sewed to her old black coat. There were used mason jars, odd pieces of silverware, rolls of chicken wire in a corner, a perfectly good rake hanging on the wall. Squash, cucumber and pumpkin vine seeds. Scrap paper. The variety of things for sale was bewildering, cheerful, a bold mishmash. Tante walked around the small shop once and then addressed a stern and orderly-looking woman behind the counter, asked her usual question. Whether there was work to be had. The woman walked out from behind the counter, hugely pregnant, and said, “I got to stop for a while. Can you sell?”
“I can sell!” said Tante, her voice stout and grim.
“Then just a minute,” said the woman. “I’ll get my boss.”
She went behind a muslin curtain, spoke to someone, and then out walked Step-and-a-Half.
At first, Tante didn’t register the situation, and she gave Step-and-a-Half the irritated once-over, the condescending twitch of her mouth, that, at best, she gave her at Waldvogel’s when Step-and-a-Half claimed her scraps. And she waited, staring past the saleswoman, for the boss to appear. Then she looked back at the woman behind the counter, and at Step-and-a-Half, who was regarding her with a tigerish amusement.
“Well?” said Step-and-a-Half.
“I’m here to see the boss,” said Tante, her eyes flicking all around the little room.
“You’re looking at the boss,” said Step-and-a-Half.
Tante heard that. Her head swiveled, and the complicated knots of her hair fairly writhed at her sharp movement. She thought that she couldn’t have heard right, and gave a short, barking laugh.
“What do you mean?”
“This here is my place.”
The woman behind the counter blew the air out her cheeks impatiently. “Well you said you was looking for work, didn’t you?”
Tante still couldn’t take it in, but she nodded dumbly in the affirmative. Then cleared her throat and said in meek puzzlement, “Yes.”
“Can you sell?” Step-and-a-Half asked the question now.
Somehow an affirmative answer emerged from Tante.
“And do you know a damn thing about all this stuff?” Step-and-a-Half swept her arm around the festooned store walls. The supercilious grandeur that had always seemed absurd when she was a scrap hauler now seemed more appropriate for the owner of sumptuous bolts of fabric, the huge variety of extraordinary pickings and leavings stacked in piles and lovingly displayed on nails or set off in a celebratory way on shelves.
Though she still had not emerged from her shock, Tante took up the challenge. “I know much!”
“And do you have to wear that thing?”
Step-and-a-Half nodded at the metal-buttoned suit, but Tante reared back and folded her arms and shut her astonished mouth. Her need for work smacked up against her pride and drove hard against the impossible image of this tattered and flamboyant scrap hauler now mysteriously turned respectable business owner. And potential boss. Things were turned right over in her mind. Her social pride was upset. And yet she could have stood that. It was the slight of her clothing, the specific suit, which she yet wore with honor and offended loyalty, that she couldn’t bear.
“This is a good suit, and most costly,” she informed her. Step-and-a-Half waved away her stiff words and kicked her foot at a graceful, womanly, black enamel electric Singer with delicate gold flower trim and an optional wood cabinet that fit beautifully beneath.
“If you can work the thing, you can sell the thing.”
“I’ll learn to work it,” was Tante’s promise. She couldn’t take her eyes off the gleaming instrument, the very latest model, streamlined and yet familiar. The whole room seemed to narrow to that machine, as though a spotlight were turned upon it. All else fell into blackness and insignificance, even the idea of working under Step-and-a-Half, a surprise so grave that the potential humiliation hadn’t even sunk in or truly registered with Tante. The lustrous, compact little businesslike machine with its sparkling needle and shining chrome flywheel was enough, for the moment, to still the larger picture. For it made sense of her dilemma. Tante touched the cool curve where the arm accommodated the cloth, ran her hand curiously over the carved oak of the cabinet.
“Sit down at it,” said Step-and-a-Half. “Mrs. Knutson can give you the rundown.”
Charmed and fascinated, Tante sat down at the machine and accepted instructions. Even when the person she despised most in the town, Roy Watzka, stepped past her bearing in his arms a bolt of purple felt to place in the window, she hardly acknowledged him. She was learning to thread the needle.
THE COLD DEEPENED but the snow remained sparse, disheartening the sledders and the snow fort builders, though the skating was fine. The ice was dark and clear. You could see straight through the quartz gray surface into a frigid depth where leaves and air bubbles swirled, trapped in silver cracks. Franz had agreed to meet Betty Zumbrugge for a date once the school let out for Christmas holiday. On that first evening of vacation, she drove up to the shop in the big black car, parked it outside and kept the motor running, but did not come in. Franz took off his apron and hung it up. He’d told his father when he was leaving, but not with whom. Fidelis, peering out the window while he absently sharpened a knife, said, “That’s Zumbrugge.”
“It’s Betty,” said Franz.
“Why don’t she come in?”
“She’s picking me up.”
Fidelis looked hard at Franz, and his son flushed, but shrugged on his father’s worn old jacket. “Don’t get polluted,” Fidelis warned. Franz waved him off. He wasn’t much of a drinker. He went outside. There were swirls of snow in the air, bright flakes biting his cheeks. He jumped into the car and leaned his elbow on the window, held the hand strap on the passenger’s side. Betty turned the car around with a screech of the wheels and they barreled out to a little roadhouse that had once been a Prohibition blind pig. Betty jolted to a halt, laughing, and lighted a cigarette. For a while they sat together in the car just looking at the place.
“You ever been to one?”
Franz just shrugged. He never had been. The roadhouse was a low clapboard building with a thin porch tacked on all around. Betty told him about her family, her plans for nursing school, her sisters and their boyfriends, her father and his problems. Franz tried to listen with careful attention, but his mind kept drifting. At last, they got out of the car and walked up to the door of the roadhouse. They could hear someone playing a slow Canadian waltz on the accordion. Inside, the place was lit and warm, the walls full of advertisements. The chairs and tables were made out of thick, worn, battered wood. They chose a table toward the back of the room where they could see whomever came through the door, but not be spotted at once. They were served two neat whiskeys with chasers of beer.