Machine Dreams Read Free Page B

paycheck. I only minded our supervisor, a red-headed spinster named Lindstrom. She watched our work shifts to the minute and called us her chickens, as if the clicks and scratchings of the board were
our
sounds. She thought we were brainless, trying to take advantage. And I was so scrupulous, the perfect employee. Like a dumb kid, I was glad to work long shifts and have a lunch hour like a grown-up.
    Tom wasn’t working yet. He and Shinner Black had decided to paint houses for the summer and were looking to buy a cheap truck. But they were in no hurry, and it was around then that Tom started getting sick. He would walk me home every night from the telephone office, and we’d have to stop twice on the way up the hill for him to rest. He had chest pains and shortness of breath. After a few days he went to Doc Jonas at my insistence and was told he had gas on his stomach, to take some antacid pills and exercise. But he couldn’t; he had no stamina. He’d played sports all his life and suddenly he couldn’t run up the hill. I think he knew all along, though he may not have thought it actually possible—at seventeen. The last week, he stayed in bed most of the time. I would go by after work and make supper for him in Mrs. Black’s kitchen. One night he lay in bed sweating and would barely talk to me. I went home crying to Mother that he was going to lie over there and die if nothing was done. So she called Mrs. Black and told her to phone Tom’s brother Nate in Chapel Hill. Nate, who was a fifth-year med student, recognized the symptoms right away, and drove all night to get to Tom by morning. He examined him and hired an ambulance, made arrangements for surgery down south. Tom said he would only go if I went with him, and Nate agreed. Mother had my bag packed and they were to pick me up from work.… Tom got outof bed to comb his hair and dropped dead by the bathroom sink. That quickly. I put the call through from Black’s house, recognized Nate’s voice, and kept the key pressed down. He was calling Peggy, told her to come at once, that they were all too late, and why hadn’t she known Tom was so sick? Then he hung up and called the undertaker. I put that call through too, then left the board and went into the bathroom. I sat there dry-eyed and stared at the brooms and mops propped against the wall.
    Outside, the other girls were talking. One of them was sobbing and Lindstrom was saying there was no one to take over, I would have to finish the shift. I went back out. None of them looked at me and I finished: thirty-five minutes. I started walking home and Mother had someone meet me at the bottom of the hill, in a car. Who was it? Oh yes, Shinner. He’d been there when it happened and had seen Tom lying on the floor, then had gone to my mother in a panic. She sent him after me but he stopped the car at the hill and waited; he couldn’t be the one to tell me. We went home and sat on my bed and wept for hours. He said Tom lay there in his pants and no shirt or shoes, on his side, his feet reaching into the hallway. His face just empty, like you wouldn’t believe anything could look.
    They asked me to plan the funeral and we buried him with his parents. All of that is a blur. I’ve almost no memory of it. A few days later Peggy and I went down to North Carolina for a month, to visit Nate and his wife and their new baby. In pictures from that time, I look like somebody’s grandmother, my face puffy, my hair tied in a kerchief. And Peggy is so blond and bright, too bright, her hair perfectly curled, light blue eyes straining above a set smile. She looks perpetually surprised, but scared and insincere, like a play actor. She felt guilty because she’d insisted they sell the house; Tom was off with his friends all the time and there she was with the cleaning and the upkeep and her teaching job as well. But the fact was he’d had to move out and she hadn’t, since the college turned the place into a girls’ dorm and