not answer her note.
In fact, Margaret was thankful for his silence, because it was impossible—you could not broach such a subject as marriage, and then, if you did, you were bound to say something rude or inappropriate, since you knew nothing other than what Dora had revealed, and all those revelations were jokes or half-truths. Pete himself was such a suspicious character that if you did promote something, and then that something came to pass, it would be on your conscience, whatever the outcome, and the outcome was so much more likely to be unfortunate than it was to be happy. Certainly he was married already—hadn’t Dora hinted as much? There could be more wives than one, couldn’t there? And children, too. What had been easy in Missouri—introducing a name into the conversation, walking past the family home, running into this friend or that friend, wondering aloud about an incident from years gone by, even looking in the newspaper, or watching a person from afar—was impossible here. But then she thought of what was now in the papers about Ypres again, about the unspeakable horrors that would draw Dora and her little pistol and her lovely shoes. Ypres was not far from Paris—Margaret didn’t know the exact distance, but it was easy to imagine the rumbling boom of distant cannon. And no one guaranteed that Dora would stay in Paris once she was on her own.
Dora herself said nothing about going to Europe. Then she came for a weekend visit to Mrs. Wareham’s. She had infiltrated a Wobbly meeting dressed as a young man and was very pleased with herself. She had worn canvas pants and broken shoes and used a string as a belt and spoken in “low, resentful monosyllables,” saying that she was up from San Jose looking for a job. “But really,” she told Margaret, “I’d heard that Lucy Parsons might be there, and I was hoping to get a word with her.”
The Bells would have shivered in horror at the thought of Dora consorting with International Workers of the World and swooned at the thought of her sitting down with such a famous socialist and strike organizer as Lucy Parsons, but Margaret said, “You might write a book about her.” Lucy Parsons was an old woman and would not be going to Europe.
“Too much time in Chicago,” said Dora. She sighed. “The meeting was all Italian bakery-workers. And I could only understand about half of what they were saying. I was embarrassed at myself.”
Nevertheless, she had written it up for the paper, and the article was appearing Sunday, which was why she was at Mrs. Wareham’s for the weekend.
Margaret said, “I don’t—”
“It’s not as daring as it appears.”
“How do you know?”
“Nothing ever happens, does it? I should have taken you to the meeting. It was all a lot of shouting. Nothing to be afraid of. No one was drunk, so it was safer than a saloon. They want to complain. They should complain.”
“They work themselves up.”
“Or they blow off steam. That’s what I say in my little piece. They’re happier afterward.”
Dora was pleased with everything about her prank, from the way she learned about the meeting (eavesdropping) to her costume and her “acting” to her well-developed memory (she wrote the quotes down afterward, back at her apartment). The indignation about the article would come not from the Wobblies but from the industrialists, who would be upset that she had “defanged” their enemies, made them seem merely rowdy, almost good-natured.
Margaret stayed at Mrs. Wareham’s most of the afternoon, even hauling out her knitting for a bit while Dora read, but she could not think of a way to broach the topic of marriage. It occurred to her that she might enlist Mrs. Wareham, but she knew full well that Mrs. Wareham’s own marriage had not been a happy one, and as much as she loved her son, Angus, she pitied the girl he had married in Hawaii, and now there was a child, and Mrs. Wareham had sent the girl clothes and money. And Mrs. Wareham was not as set in her isolationist opinions as most people were.
Then Pete Krizenko appeared, when she had almost abandoned her plan, knocking at the front door of Quarters P while she was washing up after Andrew’s dinner. The moment she opened the door, she knew that she had no idea how to ascertain his “intentions” or to suggest some “intentions” if he hadn’t conceived any on his own. Dora was