Chapter 1
Sheila was thinking two thoughts at one time. First, about that question asked on a TV show last night: men always dreamed sexy dreams about actual women they knew. Did women? The answer-no, women had a tendency to dream about sex with a faceless, unidentifiable male.
That was true, she now thought. Even her dream-and wow, was it ever sexy!-last night was with a man whose face was a total blank. Perhaps you should feel a bit guilty about that, she pondered. The only man she was supposed to be dreaming about was Andy, who, by the way, was due anytime now with a couple of juicy steaks in his hand, and an appetite to match the eagerness of her dream. She checked out the table again. All the "fixings," as her mother would have said, were there, minus the steaks. She realized, suddenly, that she had been neglecting her friend, Welma.
"Sure you won't stay?" she asked.
"Now, honey, you know I always say the right thing at the wrong time. I wouldn't think of gumming up your little man trap."
"I love you, too," murmured Sheila absently. She did. Welma couldn't possibly appreciate a man like Andy, who was saving money for that wonderful day when there would be enough for a down payment on a house, Swedish modern.
Welma had been reared in a "paid for" house, and while her family hadn't been affluent, they hadn't been tossed from riches to rags to riches, depending upon the fluctuations of the lumber market.
Sheila waved Welma off to the movies and went in to take stock of herself. She knew what she wanted: a steady man with a steady income. To have found one in her office manager, who was also good-looking, was a bonus. Welma had called him "penny pinching," and Sheila had retorted, "It isn't every man who has a penny to pinch."
Sheila slipped into a fresh summer gingham, saved for a winter house frock. A bit faded, but Andy would approve. She tried to comb her black hair into neat waves. It remained there for all of a moment, then sprang into a riot of ringlets. At least she didn't have to waste money on permanent waves.
Her dark eyes looked a little anxious. These cozy twosome dinners were so important. They gave her an opportunity to show Andy what he could expect when they were married.
The buzzer sounded. Sheila jumped, and over went a bottle of perfume-Welma's perfume, costing a phenomenal price. And Sheila went to the door smelling like the front counter of an expensive beauty salon.
There he stood: tall, blond and handsome, and neat and grave. In fact, his face was immobile, except for his nostrils which seemed to be quivering.
"Sheila," he said sternly, "isn't that-?"
"It isn't mine, Andy; it's Welma's. I knocked it over, and-"
"She probably didn't leave in the stopper. Here, pork chops. They were on sale."
Sheila fled to the kitchen. She couldn't, she simply could not eat pork. She broke out in a rash every time she ate it. And pork chops didn't go with what she had spent half of last night preparing.
"I'll sit and scan the newspaper," Andy remarked to her retreating figure. "Noticed IBM is up again. In time that will furnish, if not buy our home."
In time, thought Sheila, it would have to do more than that. Someone will come up with a machine that will do away with all clerical workers, and then where will I be?
"Sheila," Andy's voice came from the next room, "cook those chops slowly. They must be well done, you know."
Angrily, she slapped the pink and white meat into a pan, then leaned down to look into the oven. The baked potatoes were beginning to look the way she felt, shriveled. Why couldn't he have brought steaks, which she could have grilled quickly?
She must remember how much money he'd saved. She must remember the times when food of any kind had been a blessing to her family. That usually came in January or February when thoughtful relations were eating lean with no leftovers.
She remembered all through the slow cooking. She had everything else ready. She'd allow Andy one look at the table, then remove the bowl of Chinese lilies.
"Ready," she sang out, but there he was.
"How much did those cost you?" he asked, pointing an accusing finger at the lilies.
"I grew them from pups, I mean bulbs; I mean-on, what does it matter?' A person has to have a little beauty."
She pushed the offending bowl away and heard him say, "I'm sorry, Sheila. Guess I'm so anxious to give you a whole garden of flowers, I forget you have to have a few along the way or you'll forget what they're like."
Even the chops were acceptable after that. Not that she ate any; she just made a pretense and covered quickly with cauliflower. Working in the same office with the man of one's choice was a handicap, especially since the other girls knew of her allergy.
Grandma Graham, who had spent her declining years in the Norrises' home, had said one should shut out unhappy thoughts with the clamor of counting one's blessings. Sheila began counting hers.
There was this precious apartment. Of course one did have to climb steep stairs, and sometimes, when the grocer underneath didn't make a clean sweep of old vegetables, it smelled to high heaven. But there was privacy.
A job. The pay check wasn't made of rubber and never quite stretched to cover new clothes without something snapping some place. Yet it did provide shelter and food. And Andy. Just look at him. Sheila did all through dinner. And later, as she washed and dried dishes, she peered into the little living room where he sat relaxed, watching Welma's television.
She managed to close off the unhappy thoughts right up to the moment he left. The kiss he'd placed on her cheek made her feel stamped like a bill marked paid.
Welma, coming in almost as he went out, said breezily, "People living in two rooms shouldn't cook cauliflower."
Flower. The trigger word. Sheila brightened. Andy's kisses were like flowers. He was so anxious to give her a whole garden full he forgot a few were needed along the way. Just as he was saving money for their future, so was he saving tokens of love. Imagine having a whole bankbook of love to draw on.
Welma started to ask a question, went to the kitchen, sniffed, returned and said nothing, eloquently. "You look thoughtful," she managed eventually.
"Umhum. Thinking about bank accounts, how secure they make one feel."
"Now what?" her roommate asked as Sheila lifted a stricken face.
"I began remembering Dad's bank account; how he'd have one and then he wouldn't. A big season and it would be fat. Then someone would have adenoids or a ruptured appendix or four car tires would blow out all at once. Once a flood washed our house away. We got out, but our clothes and the food Mother had put up didn't. And poof went the bank account."
Welma nodded. "Know something, Sheila? Some people put a price tag on everything. You put on a thought tag. Come to bed; less thinking and more sleeping will up your competition value."
"That and the January sales," agreed Sheila.
Under Andy's tutelage she had become economical about clothes, and had learned to keep them until they had reached the point where they might give sudden and harrowing embarrassment by a giving way at the wrong moment. "I'm shopping Saturday afternoon," she stated firmly.
That brought such anticipation she slept to dream of happier days when there were no adenoids or appendixes and her mother would follow her father's advice to "Shoot the wad; give the kids something to remember."
They often had. Every time the Norris family had a reunion there was: "Do you remember the time Mom bought me that ridiculous pink dress? Or Jamey that silly plane with a motor?" Jamey had been in a silly plane with several motors when it disappeared over the Pacific. Yet he'd had a happy time with the toy in his childhood.
Sheila turned and tossed and finally awakened to lie staring at the ceiling aglow with reflected street lights. There was something she'd never been able to straighten out in her thinking: the fun the Norris family had had even when there was almost no money; the fun they'd had spending what came in.
Yet now, she reminded herself, Dad's on unemployment insurance, having trouble paying the rent. Maybe Andy was right. Had her folks saved their money in the good days, there would have been no bad ones.
She sat up and tried to separate the odors in the tiny apartment: perfume, cauliflower and the despised pork chops with a little diesel oil thrown in as a truck rumbled past. The medley was too much and burrowing her nose in her pillow, she sought oblivion again.
Welma brought up the subject of shopping the next evening. "What do you plan to buy?" she asked with interest.
"One good dress," Sheila replied firmly.
"Two?" suggested Welma. "I know you can camouflage with collars and costume jewelry, but you can't live in one dress. Changing back to an old one is sheer misery. And for Pete's sake, honey, buy a stunner. Stop being a mouse and try looking like a lion. Do wonders for your spirit."
"I know. But I keep thinking of the folks."
Welma threw up her hands. She'd hoped to keep a certain letter until after Sheila had shopped. Now she went to her bag. "Forgot I picked this up. Maybe your Dad has a new job; that would take the brakes off your billfold."
Instead, the news locked the brakes. Rose Norris wrote that Sheila's father was taking the bus down and would arrive the next morning. He'd reach her apartment around noon. Did Sheila have a divan on which he could sleep? He wanted to be there early Monday morning to look for work.
"He's following the pattern," Welma commented soberly when Sheila had read the letter aloud. "They all come to the city; you've seen the lines outside the State Employment Agency."
Sheila had seen them. But her father was different. He was gay, with head high and laughter in his eyes.
"He must have a tip on something," she insisted. "There are employment agencies nearer than this. Well, I'd better call Andy; we had a date for tomorrow night."
"Solves my problem," Welma said lightly. "My sister wanted me for the weekend, but I didn't want to leave you alone."
"Umhum, just as you didn't like the perfume," agreed Sheila. "You're a rare roommate, Welma."
She was rare. She left the room so Sheila could call Andy, a task she dreaded. Andy had met her family at a beach picnic the previous summer. There had been mutual approval, but Sheila still felt the strain of trying to find any subject of common interest. It would be easier simply to break her date than to live through an evening with the two men.
"Sheila, I'm surprised at you," Andy said when she called. "I want to see your father. Why don't we take him out some place? What would he enjoy?"
"Anything, everything," she replied. "He has a great capacity for enjoyment. But, Andy, let me call you around five; we'll make plans then."
Instead of shopping for clothes, Sheila shopped for food, then went into a huddle with her bankbook. Thus far her father had been adamant about not taking money from his children, but she'd find a way of getting past his stiff-necked pride, providing it were necessary.
With everything ready, she sat at the dinette window looking down on the street. She wondered why, when it rained in a country noted for sunshine, the rain seemed drearier, more depressing than elsewhere.
Across the street in an old bay-windowed house converted into apartments, a woman hung lingerie on coat hangers to dry in the doubtful air. Below, people moved sluggishly, shoulders bent to the rain.
Sheila watched one man approach. His shoulders seemed more bowed than the others; his whole being was wrapped in an aura of grey endurance.
"It can't be," she murmured. Then, as the man lifted his head to scan the numbers, "but it is Dad." Nate Norris, who'd grown up in a rainy country, had always walked jauntily, face lifted to the silver downpour.
He seemed cheerful enough when she met him on the landing, had quite a tale to tell of the bus trip. First time he'd ridden on one since they'd had their first car, before she was born. And he, who had brought ancient log trucks and trailers down impossible mountain roads, had literally driven the bus for the driver.
"If there are no holes in the floor," he said, "it's not because I wasn't footing brakes that weren't there. A man takes his life in his hands when he rides one of those."
She reminded him of a few of his escapades that had turned her mother's hair prematurely grey, and he nodded. "Guess it's the difference in hazards. Give me canyons, slides, washouts any time."
No, he wasn't hungry. But Sheila, with everything ready at the flick of the switch, insisted they have lunch, then talk, and he agreed.
She turned on the television. On her way to the kitchen she glanced back and had her first real look at her father. He sat slumped in the chair, shoulders bowed, head down, a picture of complete defeat.
For a moment she hesitated. A man had a right to privacy at a time like this, yet how could she help him if she didn't know his problem?
Switches were turned off. An ottoman was drawn up before him and a determined Sheila sat on it, staring up at her father.
"Once," she reminded him, "I came home from school all whipped inside. I wouldn't talk. I was afraid to let you know what had happened because I didn't want to hurt you. Dad, do you remember what you said to me then?"
His intense blue eyes held hers, and in them she saw mirrored the scene on that day twelve years ago.
They had been living in an abandoned house on the grounds of a mill that had closed down. No rent, so he could save money to take them to a better land where there was plenty of work, a good climate, a fine future for his young ones.
This evening he had taken her out to a stump on the edge of a mill pond, turned apricot and grey and gold by the afterglow, and he'd talked to her.
"I remember," he admitted now. "I said you can't fight to win until you get your opponent out in the open."
"And you said you couldn't act as my second until you could see the opponent. Right. Now out with it; what's wrong?"
"You know I know machinery. I could take over any mill as maintenance man and keep it in top form. I can prove it. Plenty of lumber men would back me up.
"This morning I came in on the early bus; had a ten o'clock appointment. Fellow opening a new mill to the southwest. We talked. I showed him letters from men I'd worked for. Know what happened?"
Sheila waited.
"Everything was fine right up to the minute he asked me my age. I told him the truth. He got up, right smack up, and said, 'Sorry, Norris; you're too old.' "
"Oh, but, Dad, he's only one man," Sheila cried.
"The last one, Sheila. I've been hearing this same thing for the last four years. I'm fifty-seven. I can beat any young man at his job because it's vital to me. That's not enough. So here I am, through."
Sheila waited only a moment. He'd been working for the same outfit for several years. They'd moved and taken him with them. What had happened?
"Last season," Mr. Norris went on, "I had five months' work. That's all the outfit had. Carson talked to us when the woods closed. He told us to find other work. He wasn't sure he'd open up any place next spring.
And that, Sheila, means I'm through.
"Any idea what it means to be through while you've still plenty of life and skill in you? Or how I'm going to take care of your mother for the next eight years? And then, how far my social security will go toward keeping a roof over her head with rent to pay, food to buy?"
"But, Dad-"
"My unemployment insurance runs out the first of the month. I can't even get a job ditch-digging. Machines do that these days."
Sheila drew a deep breath. "Dad, you've forgotten one asset. You have your children."