Before I reached Feld's shop, I had decided to take Ruth home. It sounded sensible while I hurried through the streets: remove my daughter from a disputed floor before someone used her to reach me. Only at the stairs did I notice how close that plan lay to what I had just condemned. I stopped with my hand on the rail. Above me a machine ran in short bursts. Ruth was twenty-four, not a parcel waiting for collection. Still, I went up rehearsing the words that might get her moving before she asked why.
She stood at the bench by the north window, matching pieces beneath the steady light. Her sleeves were rolled to different heights, a habit that annoyed me when I had nothing more serious to consider. Abraham Feld was checking a bundle near the stove. I went directly to Ruth and closed the lid of her tool case. She caught it before the latch met. “I'm working.” I said she should finish elsewhere that afternoon. She looked past me at Feld. He put down his bundle. Neither appeared surprised. I understood then that their conversation had reached this point before I arrived.
“Tell me about the advance,” she said. I kept my hand on the case. “Not here.” She removed my hand, finger by finger, without force. Feld said he had explained the account because she asked when her regular pay would begin. I turned on him. “You had no business—” Ruth shut the lid herself, sharply. The machine at the other end of the floor stopped. “He had business enough to expect my work,” she said. “You can explain it where I did it.” I looked at the bench surface, where her careful chalk marks ran beside scars left by my knife.
The money had come to me during a stretch of uncertain work. Some had gone for rent, some for old bills, some for the decent clothes I believed a delegate needed. Accepting it had kept me in the favored shop and close to Bell, who valued a man with standing among cutters. Feld wanted repayment. I had told him Ruth could do finishing while she learned, that I would settle her pay myself. I had told Ruth the first weeks were training. Each statement had left out the part that would have allowed its listener to refuse.
“How many months?” she asked. Feld named the period he expected, then added that slower production would lengthen it. I could hear his fear now. He had made an arrangement with a father and discovered a grown woman standing where the promised labor should have been. “It isn't a claim on you,” I said. Ruth looked at me steadily. “Then why did neither of you say that?” I had no useful answer. At last I told her I had pledged her work to keep my place. Saying it plainly did not improve it, but she no longer had to pry the truth out.
She opened the tool case and began sorting. Feld stepped closer, protesting that he had already carried the advance on his books. I put myself beside the bench, not between Ruth and the door. “It's my debt,” I said. “Speak to me about it.” He asked where my wages were coming from if the shop shut. I could not tell him. Ruth wrapped her shears in a piece of plain cloth. Then she handed me a wooden box of smaller tools. “Carry that downstairs.” I lifted it at once. She checked beneath the bench for a measuring tape while Feld stood holding his unanswered question.
On the landing she stopped me. I thought she was about to ask for help with her case, but she wanted the box opened. She counted the contents herself: needles, chalk, awl, the little brush she used to clear scraps. I waited without telling her she had forgotten nothing. Outside, a wagon blocked the curb, and I started toward the clear space beyond it. “This way,” she said. She had arranged a room with a woman she knew from work. I had not known she was looking. We carried the tools two blocks, with me following half a pace behind.
At the lodging house she took the box from my arms. It was too much with the case, and I reached to steady it. She set both on the step before my hand arrived. “I'll bring them up separately.” I offered money, knowing there was little in my pocket and less reason for her to trust its terms. “Not today,” she said. I asked when I could see her. She looked at the open doorway, then back at me. “Don't follow me, Papa.” I stood while she carried the first load inside. When she returned for the second, I had crossed the street.