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The woman next to Melony put it this way: "Some of us are pickers, some are stickers," she said.
"I'm not either, or I'm both," Melony said.
"Well, I think you'll have an easier time of it, dearie, if you make up your mind," the woman said. Her name was Doris. She had three children; one side of her face was still pretty, but the other was marred by a mole with whiskers in it. In the twelve or fourteen seconds that Doris had between sprockets, she smoked.
On the other side of Melony was an elderly man in a wheelchair. His problem was that he could not pick up the ball bearings that he dropped, and some of them got caught in his lap blanket or in the wheelchair apparatus, which caused him to rattle when he wheeled himself off for his coffee break or for lunch. His name was Walter.
Three or four times a day, Walter would shout, "Fucking ball bearings!"
Some days, when someone was sick, the assembly line was reassembled and Melony was not pinned between Walter and Doris. Sometimes she got to be next to Troy, who was blind. He felt the ball bearings for perfection and daintily poked them into the thick and unseen grease. He was a little older than Melony, but he had always worked in the shipyards; he'd been blinded in a welding accident, and the shipyards owed him a job for life.
"At least I've got security," he would say, three or four times a day.
Some days Melony was put next to a girl about her age, a feisty little chick called Lorna.
"There's worse jobs," Lorna said one day.
"Name one," said Melony.
"Blowing bulldogs," Lorna said.
"I don't know about that," Melony said. "I'll bet every bulldog is different."
"Then how come every man is the same?" Lorna asked. Melony decided that she liked Lorna.
Lorna had been married when she was seventeen--"to an older man," she'd said--but it hadn't worked out. He was a garage mechanic, "about twenty-one," Lorna said. "He just married me 'cause I was the first person he slept with," Lorna told Melony.
Melony told Lorna that she'd been separated from her boyfriend by "a rich girl who came between us"; Lorna agreed that this was "the worst."
"But I figure one of two things has happened," Melony said. "Either he still hasn't fucked her, because she hasn't let him, and so he's figured out what he's missing. Or else she's let him fuck her--in which case, he's figured out what he's missing."
"Ha! That's right," Lorna said. She appeared to like Melony.
"I got some friends," she told Melony. "We eat pizza, go to movies, you know." Melony nodded; she had done none of those things. Lorna was as thin as Melony was thick, she showed as much bone as Melony showed flesh; Lorna was pale and blond, whereas Melony was dark and darker; Lorna looked frail and she coughed a lot, whereas Melony looked almost as strong as she was and her lungs were a set of engines. Yet the women felt they belonged together.
When they requested that they be put next to each other on the assembly line, their request was denied. Friendships, especially talkative ones, were considered counterproductive on the line. Thus Melony was allowed to work alongside Lorna only when the line was reassembled on a sick day. Melony was made to endure the crackpot homilies of Doris and the lost ball bearings of Wheelchair Walter, as everyone called him. But the enforced separation from Lorna on the work line only made Melony feel stronger in her attachment; the attachment was mutual. That Saturday they put in for overtime together, and they worked side by side through the afternoon.
At about the time that Candy and Homer Wells were crossing the bridge over the Kennebec and driving into downtown Bath, Lorna dropped a ball bearing down the cleavage of Melony's work shirt. It was their way of getting each other's attention.
"There's a Fred Astaire movie in town," Lorna said, snapping her chewing gum. "You wanna see it?"
Although her voice lacked the studied heartiness of Dr. Larch's, Mrs. Grogan did her best to inspire a welcome response to her announcement to the girls' division. "Let us be happy for Mary Agnes Cork," she said; there was general sniveling, but Mrs. Grogan pressed on. "Mary Agnes Cork has found a family. Good night, Mary Agnes!"
There were stifled moans, the sound of someone gagging in her pillow, and a few of the usual, wracking sobs.
"Let us be happy for Mary Agnes Cork!" Mrs. Grogan pleaded.
"Fuck you," someone said in the darkness.
"It hurts me to hear you say that," Mrs. Grogan said. "How that hurts us all. Good night, Mary Agnes!" Mrs. Grogan called.
"Good night, Mary Agnes," one of the smaller ones said.
"Be careful, Mary Agnes!" someone blubbered.
Goodness, yes! thought Mrs. Grogan, the tears running down her cheeks. Yes, be careful.
Larch had assured Mrs. Grogan that the adoptive family was especially good for an older girl like Mary Agnes. They were a young couple who bought and sold and restored antiques; they were too active in their business to look after a small child, but they had lots of energy to share with an older child on the weekends and in the evenings. The young wife had been very close to a kid sister; she was "devoted to girl talk," she told Dr. Larch. (Apparently, the kid sister had married a foreigner and was now living abroad.)
