Best Foot Forward (16 page)

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.

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!”

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
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.”

“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.

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.