by Joan Bauer
“No.”
“When someone who’s been sat on decides they’ve had enough.”
He touched his scar when he said it—it was so long. It curved across his cheek. I didn’t mean to stare.
“You want to know how I got it?”
I looked away. “I’m sorry . . .” I studied the deep-dish pizza. “Actually, Tanner, yes. I’d like to know.”
“My father was back from jail. He and my mother, they had a fight. He had a knife. He was screaming, telling her he was going to cut her up. I stood between them. I told him no, he wasn’t—he’d have to go through me first. He got to me, but not to her.”
He tapped the table knife.
I didn’t know what to say.
“I was twelve years old. That day I knew I didn’t have a father.”
Tonight I knew I wasn’t a kid anymore.
There was too much happening; I needed to be strong and fully grown-up to handle it.
I felt like unseen evil forces were banding together. I was glad to get in my car, glad to hear the door lock click tight. The air was stuffy, but I didn’t want to crack a window.
I drove home looking over my shoulder, but only briefly. I needed to keep my eyes on the road. Every car has a rearview mirror, but if you spend too much time looking there, you’ll probably crash. You’ve got to look ahead to where you’re going much more than always checking back from where you came. Driving teaches you a lot about life, although they haven’t quite figured out all the applications in Driver’s Ed.
I turned right and headed for Michigan Avenue, drove down the Magnificent Mile with the megastores and hotels and expensive restaurants. I could see the old Water Tower lit up in the distance—it looked like a cream-colored castle. It was one of the few things still standing after the Great Chicago Fire.
Seeing the Water Tower made me think about Mrs. Gladstone and how she just keeps standing when the fires of adversity blaze all around her. I wondered if she’s afraid of anything in this world.
I headed home on Lake Shore Drive—the big apartment buildings to my left, Lake Michigan to my right.
I parked the car on the street and headed quickly inside. I didn’t know how to talk to Mom and Faith about everything, but I had to.
Faith was swirling around in front of the hall mirror. She’d placed a fan on the floor to blow her skirt up as she swished by. I held my skirt down.
“Well,” she said, “I had a life-changing experience today.” She extended her arm. “I saw Graziella Angelica Antonia!”
“Who’s that?”
Faith sighed like I was the biggest test of her life. “Only the top model in the entire world. Only my ideal. And she smiled at me!” Faith tossed her blond hair triumphantly.
“Great . . .”
“You could be a lot more excited for me, Jenna.”
Faith posed in the mirror. It was hard to believe we were sisters. She cocked her gorgeous head. “Jenna, is there anyone in this world that you want to be like?”
I put down my briefcase, turned off the fan.
“Yeah, there is. She’s seventy-three, about nine inches shorter than me, and she needs a new hip.”
Faith stood there, stunned to silence.
I brought the Chicago Tribune into the house from the lobby. There was no mention of the Gladstone mess. By now all of Dallas, Texas, had woken up to the news.
I had breakfast with Mom and Faith and told them what was going to happen. I didn’t eat my oatmeal, didn’t want one of Mom’s special carrot-zucchini nutrient-packed muffins.
I pulled up the Dallas Herald website.
There it was.
TRUSTED DALLAS SHOE FIRM GETS BLACK EYE
Complete with denials:
From Duncan McCall, the Chief Financial Officer: “We are looking into the matter. Believe me, no one will get away with this.”
From Elden: “My parents built this company brick by brick. We are shocked and troubled by these allegations. Gladstone’s remains a leader in footwear quality.”
“Mom, do I have to go to school today?”
“Yes, you do.”
“It will be an enormous waste of time.”
Mom stood. “Jenna, it’s good you take your job so seriously. You’re a wonderful employee. What’s happened is awful and immoral, but you need to let Mrs. Gladstone handle it.”
I slammed my book bag on the table.
“I have to do this in the ER all the time, honey. There are people who need me absolutely and there are those I can just spend so much time with. You’ve got to think about what’s realistic and unrealistic in any crisis.”
The pressure of everything was just too much. “Okay, I’m going!” I slammed my dishes in the sink.
Mom shouted, “Don’t drive when you’re upset!”
“I plan to be upset for a very long time, Mother! If that’s the case, I might never be able to drive again!”
Chapter 22
By the time I got to work, the newscasters had picked up the story and protesters were in front of the store with signs proclaiming, HUMAN RIGHTS FIRST.
They glared at me when I went in. Murray sat in a chair in the empty store; he looked like he’d had his blood drained.
“Get ready, kid. This is just the breeze before the big storm knocks the power lines down.”
I ran upstairs to see Mrs. Gladstone. She had a phone to her ear, talking loudly: “You can very well say that, but I’m not going to. I don’t give a bloody rip what the company line is supposed to be.”
She hung up and looked at me.
I smiled weakly and sat down. “Hi.”
“Hi, indeed.”
All the phone lines were ringing.
“I want you to know, Jenna, that I’m going to have to take a stand publicly on this, and I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“Okay.” I tried to get comfortable in the chair and couldn’t.
“I’m not sure that this company will want me to stay on the board of directors or be part of this organization after I’ve spoken.”
“Wow, Mrs. Gladstone. That’s intense.”
“This is as intense as business gets, Jenna.”
She picked up a report on her desk, Corporate Response to Thailand. “This just arrived, courtesy of Elden.” She looked at it like it had been sprinkled with poison. “If someone from the media came up to you and asked you what you thought about our company manufacturing shoes in a Thailand sweatshop, what would you say?”
Man . . .
“I’d say that what’s happened is wrong and that this company has to do everything we can to make things right for the people in that factory.”
“That’s a good answer. Would you like to know what Elden is suggesting we say?” She read from the paper: “ ‘The Shoe Warehouse and Gladstone Shoes are fully investigating these allegations. No one in our company was aware of any human rights violations in any factory at any time. We are proud of our contribution to the shoe industry and will continue to maintain our standard of excellence throughout the world.’ ”
“Are you going to say that?” But the minute I asked, I knew.
“No, I’m not. They’re not going to like at all what I’m going to say.”
I wanted to march outside and tell those picketers that there was another side of Gladstone’s. But I didn’t have to do that. Mrs. Gladstone rose and grabbed her cane.
We walked to the elevator, rode it one flight down in silence. We walked through the back room and onto the sales floor. More protesters were lining up.
An unwelcome presence pushed through the line. Our eyes met briefly—it was similar to the time I’d made eye contact with a king cobra in the Reptile House at Lincoln Park Zoo.
I sensed the rattling of his tail getting louder as Elden Gladstone slithered into the store, walked past me without a nod, marched up to Mrs. Gladstone, and said miserably, “Mother. We need to talk.”
“What has happened,” she said, “is unconscionable.”
He sighed. “We’ve got a fast cleanup job to do.”
Her eyes turned to slits. “Is that what you call this?”
“No, I’m just trying to save us a little time and cut to the chase.” A protester held up a sign: GLADSTONE’S ABUSES CHILDREN.
Mrs. Gladstone’s face crashed in when she saw that. I looked away.
Tanner walked in, his face determined.
Elden shouted, “We need to talk, Mother. Behind closed doors. Are you coming? ”
Tanner moved instinctively beside Mrs. Gladstone and flexed his muscles.
Mrs. Gladstone smiled at Tanner. “Am I coming, Elden? That’s an interesting question. First I want to let this young man know that great trouble is visiting our company and we’re going to get to the bottom of it, but until we do, no employee of ours will be asked to work here if they don’t feel safe or comfortable.”
“My God, Mother.” Elden leaned against the wall, snake eyes darting.
Tanner looked around the store, looked back at the protesters. “I’m working,” he said.
Mrs. Gladstone smiled. “I appreciate that, Tanner.” She turned to Elden. “Now I’m coming.”
They walked to the elevator. Tanner and I followed.
Elden stormed into her office.
Mrs. Gladstone told him, “Keep the door open, please.”
He slammed the door shut.
A moment later Mrs. Gladstone opened it.
Elden shut it again.
Tanner opened it this time and walked right up to Elden. “The lady says she wants it open.”
Elden snorted. “Back off, kid.”
“I don’t think you heard me. The lady wants the door open. We’re going to respect that.”
Elden took a big step back. “Mother, we cannot conduct business with—”
“Tanner and Jenna,” Mrs. Gladstone directed, “I’d like you to remove this door immediately. There’s a tool kit in the storage room.”
Elden was shouting how his mother had gone crazy.
I’d never removed a door before. I bet Tanner hadn’t, either. But we smiled like we did this every day.
I got the tool kit.
Tanner grabbed a screwdriver and started unscrewing the bolts. Elden screamed, “If you take that door off, you’re both fired.”
Mrs. Gladstone pounded her cane on the floor. “Then I’m fired, too!”
“This is crazy, Mother!”
“This is my office and I am introducing an open-door policy in the midst of this crisis. I don’t want anyone to feel that we’ve got anything to hide.”
Elden retreated like a snake in the grass.
I wasn’t sure if we were fired, but it didn’t matter now. I got a screwdriver, too; took the bolts out of the bottom hinge. With two of us working, that door came off quickly.
Mrs. Gladstone sat in her white leather chair as Elden sputtered.
“You know, I think that actually brings more light in here. Don’t you, dear?”
If this were a cartoon, steam would be rising from Elden’s ears. “Okay, Mother. I’ll play your little game. You want the world to hear our strategy? Here it is.
“We had some outsource people go too far in meeting our deadlines and bringing in a profit. We didn’t know about Thailand. We didn’t ask them every question we should have, clearly, but no one in Gladstone’s knew about this. No one.
“As a firm, we’ve taken a hit. But this isn’t the end of the world. The average Thai worker isn’t working for ten to twelve dollars an hour like here. They make a dollar twenty an hour and they’re happy to get it. That’s the way of life for those people—they don’t know another way. It’s not like those kids have a lot of options. This is as good as life gets for them.”
Mrs. Gladstone’s voice rose. “Well, we’re going to show them there’s a much better way. We’re going to show them that there are people who want to help—”
Tanner was at the door, listening.
“We don’t have the money to save Thailand’s children, Mother.”
“Then we’ll start with my salary. I’ll work for a dollar a year.”
“That’s absurd!”
“I’m rich, dear. I don’t need more money.”
“You can’t just stop these things, Mother. Change takes time.”
“Well, you see, Elden, we’re not going to let those abuses continue. We’re going to pay those workers properly—not the dollar twenty per hour, but a fair, living wage. And we’re going to prosecute the ones who have been managing them—they aren’t going to get a dime. They’re breaking the laws of their country and ours. We’ll see how quickly things begin to change.”
Tanner grinned. “Go, Mrs. G. Go!”
“But we need shoes to sell!” That was Elden shrieking.
“We’re going to have to have a few less shoes to sell.”
“But the stock will be affected!”
“What a shame.”
“But you don’t have the authority.”
“Don’t I?”
Mrs. Gladstone headed out the door—or what once was the door.
Elden shrieked, “Mother, I am the general manager of this company, and—”
But she’d already rounded the corner with Tanner, her bodyguard, at her side. I backed toward the stairs, keeping an eye on Elden, who stood there like the emperor in the fairy tale who was wearing absolutely no clothes.
Unlike the kid in the fairly tale, I decided to keep my mouth shut about it.
Mrs. Gladstone took a deep breath. She held her head high and walked through the glass doors with Tanner close behind. She stood in front of those protesters, who raised their signs angrily.
She lifted her hand. It took a while for them to quiet down.
“We apologize to the workers at our factory in Thailand. We apologize to our customers who have trusted us over the years. I don’t know who knew about this and who didn’t, but I can assure you that the buck stops right here. We will move our best foot forward into every phase of this process. I’m giving every worker, regardless of age, one month off with proper pay and benefits. We will be providing ongoing education funding for those children, and make sure they don’t need to work. That’s as much as I’ve been able to figure out right now. But, I promise you, there will be more.”
Those protesters looked shocked.
“I’m going to pull every shoe that’s come from that factory. We are not going to sell them. We’ll donate them to charity. We will not abuse any worker or any customer, ever. I can promise you that.”
I felt like applauding. I looked to my right. Tanner was listening like his life depended on it.
Mrs. Gladstone looked straight at those protesters. “I’d like to talk to you about this again after we’ve been able to make more headway. Can we agree to have breakfast here in, say, a week?”
I went inside the store, where Murray was sitting in a chair, his hands in his lap.
“The queen’s back, Murray.”
“I hope you’re right, kid.”
“She’s right,” Tanner assured him.
Chapter 23
For a slow-walking elderly person, Mrs. Gladstone sure put the pedal to the metal.
She didn’t hide from the press—she made herself available, explaining that things were going to change, and gave a schedule of when they would happen.
The operative word was fast.
There wasn’t any doubt that she had a true heart. Every time Elden got in front of a reporter, he started sputtering and sweating. After a while, he just copped out with, “No comment.”
But Mrs. Gladstone couldn’t be silenced. She had truth on her side. No matter what the criticism, she always stood tough. Even when the rumors began circulating from one of those “unnamed sources.”
That perhaps she was getting a little senile; she’d been acting strange for a while now.
Maybe that’s why she turned over the reins of her company to her son.
And then stories star
ted circulating about how she’d always been such a demanding mother. How poor Elden just never felt affirmed by her. It was like a whispering campaign that happened at school to destroy this girl’s reputation. Someone told a lie about her, and then someone repeated it, and with every whisper the lie just grew and grew.
“I’m proud to work here,” I said to anyone who asked.
“You got a problem with the old lady,” Tanner said, “you come see me.”
No one took him up on that.
It’s not always easy to say what you feel deep inside, but Mrs. Gladstone’s voice was sure and strong. I wondered where her strength came from.
I was driving her home at the end of a long day when I found out.
“You know, Jenna, my father had a sign in his office at the church. It read, ‘Woe unto you when all men speak well of you.’ When I was a child, I hated that sign. I wanted people to understand and approve of everything I did and to always think well of my father. I told him to take that sign down; it might encourage people to speak badly of him. He laughed and said, ‘Madeline Jean, I hope you’ll have the kind of life where what you stand for is so important that it makes some people outright hostile. You won’t know how strong your beliefs really are until you have to defend them.’ I ran out the door praying that would never happen to me. But here I am in the middle of this monumental mess. Floyd and I staked our reputation on quality, honesty, and fairness. I will never take that banner down as long as I live, so help me God.”
I turned onto Astor Street, pulled in front of her house. “Mrs. Gladstone, I think what you’re doing is amazing. There’s a lot of mud being tossed around.”
“I don’t believe in mud wrestling, Jenna. Only pigs enjoy that.”
Webster stood by the tree in the children’s section and pointed to the leaves.
“It’s fall,” he announced, and showed me three red leaves he’d made with the names carefully printed: TANNER, YALEY, and WEBSTER T. COBB.
He put the new leaves on a branch and stepped back, satisfied.
I smiled. “Thanks, Webster. I’ll fix the rest.”
The leaves had reached their full color in Lincoln Park when the grand jury subpoenaed all of Gladstone’s computer records. It didn’t take long before Elden Gladstone and Duncan McCall, the Chief Financial Officer, were indicted for fraud and six counts of perjury, which is a fancy word for lying, but it all came down to the fact that they stole and falsified records to cover it up.
