“You make pennies selling their newspapers; they make dollars selling your sweat, and the sweat of a million boys like you. The free market isn’t free. You need to educate yourself, son. I did, and I started when I was just your age.”
Lee gave the Grit newsboy a ten-minute lecture on the evils of capitalism, complete with choice quotes from Karl Marx. The boy listened patiently, then asked: “So you goan buy a sup-scription?”
“Son, have you listened to a single word I’ve said?”
“Yessir!”
“Then you should know that this system has stolen from me just as it’s stealing from you and your family.”
“You broke? Why didn’t you say so?”
“What I’ve been trying to do is explain to you why I’m broke.”
“Well, gol-lee! I could’ve tried three more houses, but now I have to go home because it’s almost my curfew!”
“Good luck,” Marina said.
The front door squalled open on its old hinges, then rattled shut (it was too tired to thump). There was a long silence. Then Lee said, in a flat voice: “You see. That’s what we’re up against.”
Not long after, the lamp went out.
My new phone stayed mostly silent. Deke called once-one of those quick howya doin duty-calls-but that was all. I told myself I couldn’t expect more. School was back in, and the first few weeks were always harum-scarum. Deke was busy because Miz Ellie had unretired him. He told me that, after some grumbling, he had allowed her to put his name on the substitute list. Ellie wasn’t calling because she had five thousand things to do and probably five hundred little brushfires to put out.
I realized only after Deke hung up that he hadn’t mentioned Sadie
… and two nights after Lee’s lecture to the newsboy, I decided I had to talk to her. I had to hear her voice, even if all she had to say was Please don’t call me, George, it’s over.
As I reached for the phone, it rang. I picked it up and said-with complete certainty: “Hello, Sadie. Hello, honey.”
There was a moment of silence long enough for me to think I had been wrong after all, that someone was going to say I’m not Sadie, I’m just some putz who dialed a wrong number. Then she said: “How did you know it was me?”
I almost said harmonics, and she might have understood that. But might wasn’t good enough. This was an important call, and I didn’t want to screw it up. Desperately didn’t want to screw it up. Through most of what followed there were two of me on the phone, George who was speaking out loud and Jake on the inside, saying all the things George couldn’t. Maybe there are always two on each end of the conversation when good love hangs in the balance.
“Because I’ve been thinking about you all day,” I said. (I’ve been thinking of you all summer.)
“How are you?”
“I’m fine.” (I’m lonely.) “How about you? How was your summer? Did you get it done?” (Have you cut your legal ties to your weird husband?)
“Yes,” she said. “Done deal. Isn’t that one of the things you say, George? Done deal?”
“I guess so. How’s school? How’s the library?”
“George? Are we going to talk like this, or are we going to talk?”
“All right.” I sat down on my lumpy secondhand couch. “Let’s talk. Are you okay?”
“Yes, but I’m unhappy. And I’m very confused.” She hesitated, then said: “I was working at Harrah’s, you probably know that. As a cocktail waitress. And I met somebody.”
“Oh?” (Oh, shit.)
“Yes. A very nice man. Charming. A gentleman. Just shy of forty. His name is Roger Beaton. He’s an aide to the Republican senator from California, Tom Kuchel. He’s the minority whip in the Senate, you know. Kuchel, I mean, not Roger.” She laughed, but not the way you do when something’s funny.
“Should I be glad you met someone nice?”
“I don’t know, George… are you glad?”
“No.” (I want to kill him.)
“Roger is handsome,” she said in a flat just-the-facts voice. “He’s pleasant. He went to Yale. He knows how to show a girl a good time. And he’s tall.”
The second me would no longer keep silent. “I want to kill him.”
That made her laugh, and the sound of it was a relief. “I’m not telling you this to hurt you, or make you feel bad.”
“Really? Then why are you telling me?”
“We went out three or four times. He kissed me… we made out a little… just necking, like kids…”
(I not only want to kill him, I want to do it slowly.)
“But it wasn’t the same. Maybe it could be, in time; maybe not. He gave me his number in Washington, and told me to call him if I… how did he put it? ‘If you get tired of shelving books and carrying a torch for the one that got away.’ I think that was the gist of it. He says he’s going places, and that he needs a good woman to go with him. He thought I might be that woman. Of course, men say stuff like that. I’m not as naive as I once was. But sometimes they mean it.”
“Sadie…”
