American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold (42 page)

  And Sylvia had a pretty good idea why Mary Jane didn’t want to keep going. She was bound to be thinking something like,
Who cares whether I can divide fractions and diagram sentences? What
difference will it make? I’m going to get married and have babies, and my husband will make
money for me.

  “You never can tell,” Sylvia said, half to herself, half to her daughter. “I thought George, Jr.’s, father was going to take care of things forever. But then the war came, and the Confederates captured him, and after that he joined the Navy, and he . . . he didn’t come home. And I’ve had to run like crazy ever since, just trying to make ends meet. If I knew more about spelling and typing and arithmetic, I’d’ve had better jobs and made more money, and we’d’ve done better for ourselves. And if you think things like that can’t happen to you and the people you love, Mary Jane, you’re wrong. I wish you weren’t, but you are. Because you never can tell.”

  By something surely not far from a miracle, she got through to her daughter. Instead of giving her a snippy answer, Mary Jane nodded and said, “I wish I could’ve known Pa better.” George, Jr., got up and set a hand on his younger sister’s shoulder. “I wish I could have, too.” His voice roughened. “But at least Ma paid back the stinking son of a bitch”—had he been out on the trawler instead of in his kitchen, he undoubtedly would have said something much hotter than that—“who sank the
Ericsson
. Everybody I sail with knows Ma’s a hero.” Sylvia brushed that aside. “It won’t get me any supper,” she said, and stood up herself so she could start cooking. She hadn’t felt heroic when she’d pumped a revolverful of bullets into Roger Kimball. She had trouble remembering now exactly how she had felt. Frightened and resigned was about as close as she could come to it. She hadn’t thought she would ever see her children or Boston again.

  But here she was, with all the same problems, all the same worries, she’d had before getting on the train
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  for Charleston. Being a hero, she’d rapidly discovered, paid few bills. When she’d come home, she had got back the job she’d left so she could go to the Confederate States. She’d made a few speeches that brought in a little money. By now, though, she was old news. Even in this presidential election year, no one asked her to come out. Joe Kennedy, for instance, had used her and forgotten about her. Every once in a while, she wondered how many women he’d really, rather than metaphorically, seduced and abandoned. More than a few, or she missed her guess.

  While washing dishes later that evening, Mary Jane asked, “Who are you going to vote for come November, Ma?”

  Women’s suffrage had finally come to Massachusetts—and to the rest of the holdout states in the USA—with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. These days, all the men who’d opposed it were busy explaining how they’d never really done any such thing, how they’d always looked out for the country’s best interests, and as many other lies as they could find.

  Most of those men were Democrats. Even so, Sylvia answered, “I’m going to vote for Governor Coolidge for president, because he’s a Democrat and he’d be harder on the Confederates than Vice President Blackford. Coolidge fought in the war, too; he didn’t stay back of the lines.”

  “Do you think Coolidge will win?” Mary Jane asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sylvia said. “That’s why they have the election—to find out who wins, I mean. Hardly anybody thought President Sinclair would beat Teddy Roosevelt in 1920, but he did.”

  “I was still little then,” Mary Jane said thoughtfully, scrubbing at a frying pan with steel wool.

  To Sylvia, Mary Jane was still little now, and would be the rest of her life. But she put that aside, and went back to the question her daughter had asked a little while before: “I do wish Governor Coolidge would be a little more . . . lively. People don’t seem to get very excited about him, and that worries me.

  Blackford and his wife can really whip up the crowds. It matters a lot.” The following Sunday, someone knocked at the door to her flat. There stood her neighbor, Brigid Coneval. The Irishwoman said, “Blackford his own self will be after speaking on the Common today at half past two. Now that we can vote and all, I’m for hearing what he has to say for himself. Will you come with me, now?”

  Sylvia found herself nodding. “I sure will,” she said. “You’re right—we ought to find out all we can about them.”

  “Indeed and we should,” Brigid Coneval agreed. A war widow like Sylvia, she hadn’t had an easy time of it since her husband was shot. She made ends meet by taking care of other people’s children—though her own boys, by now, were also old enough to get jobs of their own and bring in a little money to help.

  Through everything, she’d kept an infectious grin. “And besides, it’ll be fun. We can ride the subway over to the Common; there’s a station close by there.”

  “Why not?” Sylvia didn’t often do things on impulse, but this would be out of the ordinary, and it wouldn’t cost anything except subway fare.

  She didn’t like the subway. It was even more crowded than trolley cars, and noisier, too. Between stations, the tunnel was black as coal. She kept wondering things like,
What would happen if this train
broke down?
 She knew she shouldn’t. She knew that wasn’t likely. But she couldn’t help it.

  The subway train got to the Common without incident. Sylvia and Brigid Coneval emerged from the bowels of the earth into bright sunshine. It glowed off the gilded dome of the State House, in front of which Vice President Blackford would speak. “Let’s get under one of the trees,” Sylvia said, pointing.

  “We’re early. There’s still room under there. We can stay in the shade. It’ll be cooler.”

  “Well, aren’t you the clever one, now?” her friend said. They staked out their spot with no trouble at all.

  They
were
early. The crowd hadn’t really begun to fill the Boston Common. Most of the people there so soon were either Blackford’s Socialist backers or the Democratic activists who would heckle the vice president when he spoke. The two groups jockeyed for position and traded insults, mostly good-natured.

  They’d squared off against each other many times before, and knew they’d often meet again after this afternoon.

  One of the men carrying an 8 YEARS IS ENOUGH! sign was Joe Kennedy. Seeing him, Sylvia shrank back farther under the tree. She didn’t want him to see her, even though she had every right to be here.

  But he did—she got the feeling he missed very little. He saw her, recognized her, and turned his back.

  She wanted to call out,
I’m going to vote for
Coolidge!
 She didn’t. She could tell it would do no good.

  A big black car pulled up by the platform. A tall, gray-haired man and a short woman, much younger than he, got out and went to the platform. “That’s himself’s wife,” Brigid Coneval said. “A Congresswoman from New York City, she is, and a Christ-killing sheeny besides.” Sylvia didn’t care much about Jews one way or the other. She said, “By all they say, she’s done a good job in Congress. And look at her! She’s been there since the war, and she doesn’t look any older than we are.”

  “Foosh!” said Brigid, who seemed determined to stay unimpressed. “And what’s her husband, then?

  Sure and he’s a dirty old man, for I’d not care to hang since he’s seen the sweet side of forty.” Flora Blackford stepped up to the microphone. The Democrats in the crowd immediately started to jeer.

  She made as if to urge them on, and then said, “Listen to them, comrades. They won’t tell the truth themselves, and they don’t want to let anyone else tell it, either. Is that fair? Is that honest? Is that what you want in the Powel House for the next four years?”

  “No!” people shouted.

  The Congresswoman from New York City made a short, strong speech, giving the Socialists credit for everything that had gone right the past eight years: the booming stock market, laws allowing strikes for higher wages, and on and on.

  “What about the revolt in Canada? What about cutting off Confederate reparations?” the Democrats yelled. “What about the bank troubles in Europe?”

  “Well, what about them?” Flora retorted, meeting the hecklers head on. “The Canadians lost. And we’re at peace with the Confederate States, and getting along with them well enough. Isn’t it about time this country was at peace with its neighbors? As for the banks in Europe, well, what can we do about them here?”

  Most people cheered. The Democrats went right on heckling. Vice President Blackford himself stepped up to the microphone. “We’ve had eight good years!” he said. “Let’s have four more. We’ve got prosperity. We’ve got peace. Give us a few more Socialists in the Senate and we’ll have old-age insurance, too. If you want to go back to gearing up for a war every generation, vote for Governor Coolidge. He’ll give you one. If you want to make sure your sons and husbands and brothers live to grow old, vote for me. It’s that simple.”

  But it wasn’t, not as far as Sylvia was concerned. She wanted the Confederate States punished for what they’d done to the
Ericsson
, not forgiven their reparations. Hosea Blackford might not want a war, but wouldn’t the Confederates if they ever got strong again? “I’m glad we came,” she told Brigid Coneval on their way back to the subway station. “Now I’m surer than ever I’ll vote for Coolidge.”

  “Sure and you can’t mean it!” Brigid exclaimed, and argued with her all the way home even though she’d mocked both Hosea Blackford and his wife. She didn’t change Sylvia’s mind, or even come close.

 
O
ver the supper table, Chester Martin grinned at his wife. “Election Day coming up,” he said with a sly smile.

  “And so?” Rita answered. But she smiled, too. “Plenty of worse ways to meet than at a polling place.”

  “I should say.” Martin had met women at worse places—and that didn’t even count the soldiers’

  brothels behind the front during the war, when you’d stand in line outside in the rain for a couple of minutes of what was much more catharsis than rapture.
At least I never got a dose of the clap,
 he thought.

  “Do you think Blackford can do it?” Rita asked.

  “Hope so,” Martin said. “I don’t see why not. Everybody’s making good money. Why should we change when things are going the way they’re supposed to?” He spread his hands. “I still don’t much like the Socialists’ foreign policy—I’d take a stronger line than they do—but that’s not enough reason to vote for the Great Stone Face.”

  Rita laughed at the nickname. “Coolidge doesn’t have much to say for himself, does he?”

  “I think there’s a reason for that, too,” Chester replied. “He’s never done anything worth talking about.”

  “Massachusetts is prosperous,” Rita said. “He takes credit for that.” After sarcastically clapping his hands a couple of times, Martin said, “He may take it, but who says he deserves it? The whole country’s prosperous, and the Socialists deserve credit for
that
.” He’d come late to the Socialists, but had what amounted to a convert’s zeal. “Look where we were in 1920, before President Sinclair won, and look where we are now.”

  “You’re preaching to the choir, you know,” his wife told him with a smile. “I’m going to vote for Blackford, too.”

  “I know, but look.” Chester felt expansive. He wanted to tell the whole world how well his party had run the country over the past eight years. Since the whole world wasn’t sitting across the kitchen table from him and Rita was, she got to listen to him. He went on, “Look how high the stock market’s risen. Who would have thought the proletariat could start owning the means of production by buying shares in the big companies? With buying on margin, though, it’s awfully easy to do.” He laughed. “If
we
can afford to do it, it must be easy to do.”

  Rita pointed to the newspaper, which lay on a chair. “The Wireless Corporation is splitting its stock again.”

  Martin nodded. “I saw that. I’m glad I got into Wireless somewhere close to the ground floor. I think it’s going to be the big thing for years and years, and those four shares I managed to buy last summer are sixteen shares now. It’s swell. Everything keeps going up and up and up. It’s like coining money.”

  “Did you see that Congresswoman Blackford is coming to town Saturday?” Rita asked.

  “No, I missed that,” he answered. “Do you want to go see her?”

  “Sure? Why not? It’ll be fun,” Rita said. “And besides, she shows what a woman can do when she puts her mind to it.”

  Although Chester wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that, he said, “All right,” anyhow, finding agreement the better part of valor. Then he added, “Did I ever tell you that I—”

  “Met Flora Blackford when she was still Flora Hamburger?” Rita cut in. “Had her brother in your company during the war?” She shook her head. Her bobbed dark blond hair flipped back and forth.

  “No. You never, ever told me that. I’ve never heard it, not even once. Can’t you tell?”

  “I can tell you’re giving me a hard time,” he answered. She grinned. So did he.

  Flora Blackford chose to speak near the Toledo city hall, in the shadow of the smaller copy of the great statue of Remembrance that stood on Bedloe Island in New York harbor. Chester found that interesting, even challenging. For more than a generation, remembrance had been the loudest drum the Democrats beat. For a nation twice defeated, twice humiliated, by the CSA and the Confederates’ European allies, it was a drumbeat that had struck deep chords.

  But now the Great War was eleven years past. The United States had won it. People still held Remembrance Day parades, but they didn’t march with flags upside down any more. Having won, the United States were no longer in distress. And, ever since the Great War ended, the Democrats hadn’t been able to find any other theme that resonated with the voters as remembrance had.