That’s because you’re a drunkard,
she wanted to shout.
I gave
up all of my own wishes and dreams for you!
But she bit her lip and remained silent.
Horatio finished the vodka at home that evening after locking himself in his father’s study. He didn’t come upstairs to their bedroom until after midnight. The next morning, when Bebe tried to awaken him for work, he refused to get up.
“Go away and leave me alone,” he mumbled.
“Horatio, you have to go to work. Please, for my sake . . . for Lucy’s sake . . . for your mother’s sake . . .”
He clapped his hands over his ears. “Shut up and leave me alone!”
Bebe got out two satchels and packed clothing for both of them, then shook him awake again. “Everything is ready, Horatio. We can leave for the fishing cabin right away. We’ll take Lucy with us this time. She’ll like it up there.”
“No she won’t. She’ll hate it.”
Bebe knew it was true. Even at four years of age, Lucy was as accustomed to luxury as her grandmother was. Bebe pulled back the covers and tugged on his arm. “Come on, Horatio. You need to go down to the tannery and—”
“I’m never stepping foot in that cursed place ever again!”
She remembered yesterday’s visit from the foreman and felt the pain in her stomach return. “Neal MacLeod was here yesterday, and he said there was something important to take care of at work this morning.”
Horatio sat up in bed to face her. “Don’t ever mention that man’s name to me again, do you hear me? And stop telling me what to do, Beatrice. I’m in charge of my life, not you!”
The rage she saw on his face frightened her. She backed up a step. “I know you are in charge, but—”
“All my life, everyone has been telling me what to do. First my mother, then my father, then the army officers . . . Don’t you dare start telling me what I have to do, too! This is my life, and I’m never going back to that tannery again! Ever!”
She turned her back on him and walked from the room and then downstairs to the foyer. She needed to get away from him before she said something she would regret. She grabbed her hat and shawl from the hall tree, sick with fear and worry, and hurried outside to the carriage that stood waiting to take Horatio to work. Something was terribly wrong at work, and if Horatio wouldn’t go, then she would have to go in his place. She would find out what the crisis was, then return home and beg him to take charge of it. Surely he hadn’t meant it when he said he would never go back there again.
She strode through the tannery’s main entrance, and the smell of death immediately assaulted her. As she pulled out a handkerchief to cover her nose, she spotted Neal MacLeod examining one of the huge scraping machines as if trying to determine why it had stopped. A workman alerted him to her presence, and he spun around with a look of surprise.
“Mrs. Garner, I hope nothing is wrong.”
“May I speak with you for a moment?” She led him further away from the workers so they wouldn’t overhear. “Horatio won’t get out of bed. He has started on another drinking binge. I know you said yesterday that something important needed his attention, but since it isn’t possible for him to attend to it this morning . . .” She paused to swallow her tears. “I-I wondered if you could advise me on the best course of action to take. What exactly is the problem?”
MacLeod hesitated, and she saw his back stiffen. He reminded Bebe of one of her father’s mules refusing to follow her order to plow. “Please tell me the truth,” she begged. “Is the tannery in financial trouble?”
“Let’s go up to the office.”
She followed him up a short flight of stairs to a cramped, cluttered office that was not much bigger than her dressing room. Horatio’s name was painted in gold lettering on the glass window of the door beneath his father’s name. A window on one side of the desk looked down on the tannery floor, offering a view of the workmen and blunting some of the terrible odors and noise. A window on the opposite wall looked out on the tannery yard behind the main building. But that view was far from scenic, marred by untidy storage sheds and a row of railroad cars, a smokestack and water tanks, and piles and piles of tree bark. The river in the distance resembled a sluggish brown smear. Bebe couldn’t picture Horatio working in this stifling room all day, nor working down on the factory floor or out in the filthy yard. Yet Neal MacLeod had looked confident and comfortable striding among the men and machines. His work had become part of him. She wondered if Horatio had noticed it, too.
MacLeod closed the door behind them and motioned for Bebe to sit down behind the desk. He pulled up a chair on the other side of it. “Our financial situation is not good, Mrs. Garner. We are nearly out of money. If we can’t convince the bank to extend our loan, the tannery will have to close.”
Pain gripped Bebe’s stomach and twisted it. “Does Horatio know the truth?”
“Yes. I’ve been begging him to sign these loan forms so we can stay in business, but to be honest, he doesn’t seem to care. It’s almost as if he wants the tannery to close.”
MacLeod paused, and Bebe was surprised to see him struggling to control his emotions. He seemed to care about the tannery’s future as much as she did. She wanted to lean on him, and put her trust in his quiet strength and competence. “In that case, you need to take control, Mr. MacLeod. You need to sign the loan forms in his place.”
He shook his head. “I can’t. I won’t be working here much longer. Two weeks ago, your husband went to see his father’s attorney to find out exactly when my contract here was finished so he could be rid of me. I don’t know what the lawyer told him . . . but that’s when he stopped caring about what happened here. That’s when he started leaving work early with headaches. I don’t have the authority to save this place, even if I wanted to.”
Bebe felt her life spinning out of control as if as she were battling a swift current. She remembered the day she had nearly drowned in the river, and once again she was struck by the overwhelming knowledge that no one was going to save her. If she yielded to the current and allowed it to carry her downstream, she would go under. But if she wanted to survive—and if she wanted her family to survive—she would have to fight to stay afloat, fight her way toward the riverbank. She would have to save herself. She gripped the arms of Horatio’s chair.
“Then I’ll do it. I’ll take over for him until he’s sober. Give me the loan forms.”
The foreman stared at her. “I don’t think that’s legal—”
“Do you like your job here, Mr. MacLeod?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then we need to make certain that you keep it. Who’s going to know that it isn’t Horatio’s signature, besides you and me?”
He didn’t reply. Their staring contest lasted several long moments.
“Are you still unmarried?” she asked him.
“Yes, ma’am.”
His answer surprised her. Why would a young, nice-looking man with a good job be unable to find a wife? “Why is that?” she asked him.
“I support my mother and sister.”
“What about your father?”
His face colored slightly, but Bebe couldn’t tell what had caused it. “He died,” MacLeod said. “Why is my personal life so important to you?”
“I’m sorry if it sounds like I’m prying, Mr. MacLeod, but I need to see where things stand. I read the newspaper every day, so I’m well aware of the bank collapse and the financial crisis. I don’t want this tannery to shut down. Too many families are depending on us, including yours and mine. Agreed?”
He nodded slightly. “Agreed.”
“Good. Then this is the way it is: Horatio has started on another drinking binge. You and I are the only ones in this place who know the truth. Neither of us knows how long it will last this time. Like it or not, you and I will have to run things until he decides to get sober again.” She folded her hands on top of the desk, trying to appear calm. “So. Kindly give me the loan papers to sign.”
She watched as MacLeod searched through the stacks of documents on Horatio’s desk. Bebe didn’t want to run her husband’s business any more than she had wanted to do her brothers’ chores during the war.
This is temporary
, she told herself—just as she had told herself back then.
It’s only until this crisis ends
—
until Horatio
pulls himself together.
The foreman finally produced the documents and spread them in front of Bebe, pointing to the lines that required a signature. She took Horatio’s pen out of the holder and dipped it into the inkwell. When she finished signing them, she stacked them in a neat pile and handed them to MacLeod.
“Kindly take these papers to the bank right away. And let’s pray that it isn’t too late.”
Bebe tried in vain to get Horatio out of bed and off to work the next morning. When he wouldn’t budge, she knew she would have to get dressed and go in his place. “Please tell the driver to prepare the carriage for me right away,” she told the serving girl.
“You mean after breakfast, ma’am?”
“No, immediately. I don’t want any breakfast.” The food would only seethe and boil in her stomach, along with her anger and fear.
“I’ll fetch your shawl and bonnet, ma’am.”
Bebe had hoped to leave quickly, before encountering her mother-in-law, but Mrs. Garner swished down the stairs in her dressing gown just as Bebe’s carriage arrived. “Where do you think you’re going?” she asked.
Bebe hesitated, forming her reply. Horatio needed to stop drinking and take responsibility, but that would never happen if she lied for him and pretended nothing was wrong. She needed to tell her mother-in-law the truth.
“I’m not going to cover up for Horatio anymore. He is on a drinking binge, and he is unable to run the tannery.”
“That’s a lie!” She rushed toward Bebe as if she wanted to strike her. “Horatio has always had health problems, but to accuse him of drinking—”
“This isn’t a health problem, it’s a drinking problem. He drank so much last night that he can’t get out of bed and go to work this morning. So I’m going to work for him.”
“That’s absurd! It’s unseemly! What will people say?”
“The better question is, what will people say if the business fails and we go bankrupt? How will we continue to live in this house or pay the servants or put food on our table if the tannery closes?”
Mrs. Garner glanced around in horror as if one of the servants might have overheard them talking. She lowered her voice to a harsh whisper. “I don’t believe any of this. You’re exaggerating. What do you know about such things? You’re just an ignorant farm girl.”
Bebe held her temper at an enormous cost. The pain in her stomach burned like fire. She knew that arguing wouldn’t help any of them, and she refused to stoop to Mrs. Garner’s level and hurl insults. “If you don’t believe me, then go upstairs and speak with your son. And if you want to be helpful, talk some sense into him. Convince him of the need to sober up so his ‘ignorant’ wife won’t have to run the tannery in his place.”
“How dare you speak to me this way!”
Bebe clasped her hands together in frustration. “I don’t know how else to convince you that I’m telling the truth. This country is in the middle of an economic crisis. If things go the way the experts are predicting, we’ll have to cut back on our household expenses and let some of the help go. At the very least, you’ll need to stop buying new clothes for yourself and expensive toys for Lucy every week. And if the tannery closes, not only will your fancy dinner parties have to stop, we may not be able to feed our own family. The morning newspaper is in on the breakfast table. You can read about it for yourself.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. If my husband were alive—”
“If he were alive, he would tell you the same thing. It’s not just our business that’s having trouble, but businesses everywhere. I’m sure that finances are getting tight for your friends, too. They’re just not admitting it.” She paused and took a calming breath. The maid had returned with Bebe’s shawl and hat, holding them out to her. “Thank you. I need to leave now. Kindly explain to Lucy that I’ve gone out.”
Helpless dread overwhelmed Bebe as she rode the carriage to work. What would happen to all of them if the business did go bankrupt? Where would they live, how would they survive? Horatio couldn’t get another job in his condition even if he did manage to find one somewhere.
How had she ended up living this useless, lonely existence in the first place? She would like nothing more than to go down to the station and board the next train out of town, leaving everyone and everything behind. She was furious with her husband, sick of her mother-in-law. But where would she go? Her life had deteriorated into a huge mess, and she didn’t know what to do about it. What could she do?
Bebe dried her tears as the carriage slowed to a halt at the tannery. She lifted her chin and strode inside, passing the foreman’s desk and hurrying upstairs to Horatio’s office. She hung her hat and shawl on his coat-tree and sat down behind his desk. A moment later, the foreman knocked on her door. “Come in, Mr. MacLeod.”
He stood in the doorway, his head inches from the lintel, his broad shoulders filling the frame. “My husband won’t be coming to work today,” she told him. “I can’t convince him to stop drinking, so I’ve decided to take his place.”
“I see.” He rubbed his chin. He seemed incapable of hiding any of his emotions, and she could tell he was not happy with her decision.
“Together, we’re going to figure out a way to keep the tannery going, Mr. MacLeod, and to keep our workers employed and pay back the loan I signed for yesterday. I need you to tell me exactly what’s going on so I can decide what else I need to do.”
He hesitated for a long moment, and she wondered if he was going to become mulish again and refuse to plow under her orders. But he finally pulled a chair over in front of her desk and sat down across from her, accepting the fact that he needed to work with her.
“Business is slowing down in many industries, not just ours,” he began. “More and more of our orders are being cancelled. Customers are reluctant to spend money in this economy. The loan you signed for yesterday will tide us over for a while, but if business doesn’t improve, we won’t be able to make any payments on it. We may have to lay off some of our workers.”