The Celestials by Karen Shepard

Author:Karen Shepard [Shepard, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781935639565
Publisher: Tin House Books

Chapter Eleven

It seemed to Charlie that he did nothing in the days following Julia’s return home but negotiate and mollify. Even for a man with his abilities, the demands he encountered were a challenge. When had he ever imagined himself having to explain a situation such as this one? He professed ignorance. He promised investigation. He counseled patience and loyalty and suggested that idle speculation could do no good. On his return from the South Adams studio he had had to field dismay and upset about his haircut, and to put an end to their sense of betrayal, he had doled out their salaries, adding a little extra for each man from his own share, telling them it was a bonus from Sampson himself. He had charged them with living up to the high regard in which their employer held them.

Sampson didn’t return to the factory for the remainder of that week, and Charlie was glad of it. His growing intimacy with Julia had not meant a change in the opinions he held of Sampson. He never spoke ill of the man to others, never thought ill of him in his own mind. In fact, it was rare for him to think of Julia as another man’s wife; she seemed so much her own person, and his relationship with her so much its own place, inhabited only by the two of them. He had felt, falling in love with her, as if they had discovered a door in the familiar earth leading to another country where nothing was anything they knew.

She, he knew, did not always feel this way. And it was by way of her sadness at her betrayal of her husband that Charlie found his own guilt. Her heavy heart filled his with the same weight. He came to think of it as more evidence of their love. Now he saw Sampson not just as a model for his aspirations, but as Julia’s husband, someone who would care a great deal about Charlie’s feelings for his wife. He understood this so acutely that he marveled that he had not felt it before. He hadn’t even seen with any clarity the sort of future they might have together.

Presently, however, their years ahead were his only concern. Even the unrest among the workers could not take his mind from its one task: a life with Julia and their baby. And why not? Why couldn’t anyone’s life be his own?

And so as soon as the factory’s machines had been quieted for the week and as soon as he could extricate himself from his charges, he headed to the Wilson House, the portrait in its stiff envelope in his breast pocket like armor for the heart.

His hair was slick with Macassar oil, his recently purchased navy-blue worsted suit was pressed, his collar starched, and his tie pinned with a delicate clip of jade and gold. In a small sack, he carried offerings for the baby. He had no idea what Americans brought as gifts for the newly born, so he relied on Chinese tradition.

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