Onyx (62 page)

In the course of the afternoon he spoke to Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., to General Douglas MacArthur, to Mayor Murphy, to his Uncle Olaf. He received a delegation of gray-faced dealers. Edsel Ford dropped by to inquire nervously if there was any truth to the rumor that Onyx would become a General Motors subsidiary. “Dad's not selling out, he's closing down,” Caryll reassured. “Edsel, you tell me. How do you go about closing an empire? I've been tearing out my remaining hair.” The sons of two powerful, strong-willed geniuses exchanged commiserative glances.

The butler drew the curtains at five thirty when he brought up Caryll's glass of milk, and Caryll took time to look at the clippings.

Strikers double up to save coal
was the caption of a wire-service photograph of unshaven men, thin women, and thinner children crowding around a potbellied stove.

In Hamtramck last night three houses belonging to AAW members were burned to the ground. Police are investigating arson.

CAN U.S. ECONOMY SURVIVE MINUS HALF THE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY?

NEW YORK CAR DEALER LEAPS FROM BROOKLYN BRIDGE

STRIKER BEATEN TO DEATH BY UNKNOWN ASSAILANT

A Woodland janitor was found frozen to death in his home in Inkster.

Caryll set down his empty glass carefully and hunched over, his elbows clamped to his knees.
I must have an ulcer
, he thought,
whatever the lab tests show, I must
. He was a staunch believer in the current wisdom that stomach ailments were psychosomatic: he attributed his painful gut to his adoration of his wife—he never should have let his weakness where Zoe was concerned prevent him from contacting Justin. Together, he and Justin might have averted this evil hour, this catastrophe.

He pressed his sweating forehead to his knees.

Is it too late
? he thought.
Dad had wanted to give Justin five percent of Onyx. Strange, that. Still, it proves enormous trust and respect if not affection. If Justin wrote a letter
—
Dad hasn't opened any of his letters. If Justin wrote a letter, I would read it to Dad. Force him to listen. Between us, maybe we could nudge him into some sort of compromise. Hah! That's a laugh. Dad's changed the world, but when has he ever changed his mind? Once. The time that Justin and I, together, convinced him to build the Seven. Who knows what goes on in Dad's head? Maybe he's waiting for a token submission from the other side, from Justin
.

Caryll tentatively straightened his spine. The spasm had eased. Massaging below his waistcoat, he thought:
There'll be hell to pay if Zoe finds out, but I have to try
.

He went through his dressing room into the bedroom where sweet scents and Zoe's breathy voice twined from the open door of her bathroom—she made her telephone calls during her marathon soaks.

“I have to go out for a bit,” he called.

“Hold on, Joan.” Splashing sounds. “Caryll, the Rochevilles and Artie and Agnes are coming to dinner.”

“Don't worry. I'll be back in plenty of time.”

From the heated ten-car garage he took one of the Sevens used by the servants, driving at his cautious thirty to Woodland Park, where he slowed at unlit corners to peer at street signs.

He braked at an ugly matchbox house. The door was opened by a short, broad man who clutched a napkin and stared questioningly at him. Voices, as of a party, burst out with the aroma of peppered cabbage.

Caryll was positive he had the wrong house. “Is this M-Mrs. Hutchinson's residence?”

The man examined him. “You're Caryll Bridger, aren't you?”

“Yes, I'm sorry to disturb—”

“Elisse! You have a visitor!” The call was triumphant.

IV

The huck toweling on which Justin curled did nothing to alleviate the hardness of the floor (there had been hundreds of cases of canned food stored away but no bedding), and he had the unpleasant sensation that his bones had sunk through his flesh to be embraced by dank cement. Yet he did not stir. To get up meant to put on a confident face as president of the sour-smelling, doomed Brotherhood.

The rubber shop supervisor had had a table model Radiola stashed in his filing cabinet, and this crackling link with the outside world informed them that they were striking a moribund company. The sit-downers, though, laughed at the thought that anyone, even Tom Bridger, could walk away from a cool billion. “Old Tom's playin' it cagey, this is his way of bustin' the strike” was the sanguine consensus. After semistarvation on their double work week pay, after the preying incubus of fear at losing their jobs, the wracking speedup, the humiliation of being a badge number not a name, Security's impersonal brutalizing, they had finally restored their manhood by hitting back. And despite two isolated weeks of worrying about their families, most of them were blessed with a light-hearted assuredness of victory.

But Justin knew Tom. Tom's motivations might be complex but he never behaved deviously. Thus he shared none of the prevalent optimism. And now, feigning sleep, he saw this barren industrial complex as a metaphor for the world, the guiding hand (Tom's? God's?) absent, life bumbling along without reason or meaning.

“Hey, Prof!”

Justin groaned, blinking.

A dark, stubbled face hung above his. “Prof, wake up! Your missus is here.”

“What the devil …?”

“Over by the main door.”

Justin was on his feet, gaping at the small, pretty woman unwinding a long plaid scarf from her curly brown hair as she smiled animatedly at him. He ran clomping in unlaced boots, halting, and as she began to laugh he swept her into a hug that raised her from the ground. Reticent about public displays, Justin was conscious of the good-natured guffaws, yet he could not deny himself an extra second of holding her, inhaling her crisp, unique fragrances—and neither could he repress a tinge of anguish that this physical yearning had somehow become unilateral.

Setting her down, he demanded, “What are you doing here? How did you get past the police at the gates?”

“Magic,” she laughed. “Here, help me with my coat.”

“What have you got in this? Bricks?”

Dramatically she opened the front to show two filled pillowcases. Undoing a safety pin, she extricated an envelope folded from brown packing paper. Eyes sparkling, she said, “Mail wasn't part of the deal, so I sneaked it by the law.”

Men were converging, drawn by the swirl of excitement.

Seeing Coleman, she went to him, resting her hand on the gangling mountain boy's sleeve. “Johnny, the baby, he died … the night after the sit-down started.… The Brothers were at the funeral, so many … I …” Her voice tightened and she shook her head.

Justin, tying his bootlaces, was appointing committees to sort and pass out the letters. Elisse wiped her eyes, staring around the enormous hall with its bewilderment of conveyors and machinery.

Justin took her arm.

“It really dwarfs you, doesn't it,” she said. “Know something, I've never been inside a factory before.”

“Some confession for an organizer,” he said, beaming down at her.

“Well, I didn't come to see the sights. We have matters to discuss, Hutchinson, and I gave my word to be back at seven.”

“You'll have to work fast then, Prof,” somebody called. There was more laughter.

Elisse's face went brick red, but she managed a pert smile.

The strikers reserved the superintendent's office for committee conferences, and Justin led her to the dingy room with its metal desk, sagging couch, and wall blackboards. Closing the glass-inset door, he gripped her hands, postponing the moment when the knife-edge of reason must separate him from visceral delight.

She touched his cheek. “How come no beard?”

“I run a tight shop. We shave every day.” Razors and blades had been stacked above cartons of canned peaches.

“What an incredible place this is. The buildings go on and on forever. I'd never have tracked you down without a diagram.” She held up one of the yellow maps that Employment handed out. Her expression sobered. “Are you aware,” she asked, “that your dearly beloved leader has closed down permanently?”

“We found a radio.”

“Those newscasters get cute, don't they?” Her voice deepened into the ripely lubricated tones of broadcast. “‘We now have a new lazy man's way of striking, sitting down in a closed factory.' Justin, it's monstrous how biased the press is! They never report that Security has a regular Maginot Line, guns and all, to keep us away from you.”

“But you're here,” he said. “How?”

“Thanks to Caryll.”

“Caryll?”

She sighed. “Chicken Little was right, Justin. The sky
has
fallen in. It's been a doozy out there, especially for the tire shop families. After months on the double work week, a real doozy. Most of them were counting on their envelopes to pay for the food they ate a month ago. Welfare's broke and our treasury's stony. Daddy scrounged from the studio orchestra and the B'nai B'rith—with the proceeds I've been running a kind of soup kitchen with the Ladies' Auxiliary, but now that money's gone too.” She sighed. “They're starving us out—what a rotten way to break a strike.”

“Tom's not bluffing,” Justin said. “When did you call Caryll?” She had told him about that chance meeting in Hudson's toy department, and the friendship that had sprung up over pastry and coffee.

“Are you kidding? The AAW surrender? Never! He came to the house last night. Justin, the poor man's on the brink of a nervous breakdown. He's constantly bombarded to reopen. Which he's dying to do. And which of course he cannot do.”

“What did he say?”

“That his father, noble and generous employer that he is, has always kept our interests close to his heart. Acting in haste, he's repenting at leisure—and, I might add, comfort. You've heard he's doing a Garbo at the Farm?”

“On every news program.”

“Well, Caryll's cooked up a little scheme. It'll give the big cheese the excuse he needs to convince himself to open up if
you
write.”

Justin's lips tensed. “Caryll knows about Tom and Mother?” he asked hoarsely. “Caryll knows about
me
?”

“No, no, of course not,” she soothed. “Darling, as far as I'm concerned, the idea's absurd. If Tom Bridger felt anything for you, he could have picked up the phone at any time in nine years.”

“
I've
wanted to do that, terribly much, and couldn't.”

“Sometimes you are too fair-minded.”

“He has a short fuse. I lit it.”

“Oh, for Pete's sake! Tom Bridger starves hundreds of thousands of people and you beat your chest and cry mea culpa!”

“What have we got to lose if I contact him?”

“Your pride.”

“That's not providing many jobs, is it?”

“You're going to write, Justin, so write.”

Justin went to the desk, extricating a long pad of departmental discharge forms, tearing off the top sheet, turning it over, staring intently at the blue paper before dipping his pen in gummy ink. His hand raced.

Finishing, he read then blotted and creased it twice. He handed her the folded page, watching as she stowed it carefully in her purse.

Her cheeks still glowed from the cold, early morning walk, and under his scrutiny her lashes went down to cast shadows on the rosy flush. The soft full upper lip folded in a gentle arabesque on the lower. Without her faintly challenging expression she was a myth of femininity in this dead, indifferent place where until two weeks ago men had willingly sweated out their lives, she was comfort in this desert of dread, she raised him from his abysmal loneliness. Slowly, eyes still fixed on hers, his hands traced the curve of her breasts, and when she quivered, he dropped to his knees, burrowing his bristly cheeks in the softness. He could feel the deep, irregular reverberations of her heart. “How I've missed you,” he muttered into her pink sweater.

She put her hands on either side of his face. “I've missed you the same way, darling.” Her voice was faintly surprised, throaty.

Lust shook through him, a spontaneous surge of uncontrollable lust such as he had experienced only once before, on that morning he had nearly drowned in the strong Pacific current. His Elisse was miraculously returned to him, the long hunger of sexual frustration was over, the surcease for his brooding fears at hand. He went to the door, glancing through the wired glass to where the mail was being sorted, a magnet for the crowd. Jamming a chair against the lockless door, he sprang to Elisse, curving and straining her to him. She feverishly caressed his neck, his hair, as he pulled up her skirt. Raising her body against the wall blackboard, he pressed kisses on her throat, lowering her onto his tumescence. She gasped aloud, either in pain or ecstasy, he could not tell.

To Elisse there had been no proper sequence of events. One minute she was triumphantly repeating Caryll's message while gazing at Justin, her joy veined with guilt—wasn't she feasting herself on the sight of her husband while other wives of the sit-downers starved? And then Justin's eyes were on her in that old, meaningfully intense way, and she felt once again that dampening, that deep, delicious ache, that fierce, chaotic tumble of urges to unite with him, to be part of him, to complete herself by joining with him. Inexplicable, this return of her dead desire, but she did not question it. She forgot the cold, destroying war that capital and labor were waging, forgot the furious, didactic arguments. For Elisse there never would be any other truth beyond the small, personal truth of love. She clutched at Justin, feverishly impatient, caressing him, shoving down her underwear, curling her legs around him when he lifted her. Though she gave a whimper, she scarcely felt the pain, passion carried her, lifted her, and his ragged breath in her ear was whispering obscene endearments and she moved with him in the great, engulfing tide of life and love.