Someone to watch over me

constant staple of a small town, even if the catastrophes we had here hadn’t been reported in papers across the world. Or at least this country. I’ll bet some of the locals are still chewing it over and criticizing us for being such greedy gerties.“
    “We made a mistake right up front, didn’t we?“ Lily said. This revelation had been forcing itself on her ever since the greengrocer spoke to her. How could she have been so dim? “We’ve been pretending since we came here that we really own the house and Uncle Horatio’s assets, haven’t we? We should have thought it out.“
    “We didn’t know that,“ Robert reminded her. “We were both feeling sorry for ourselves for proving conclusively how absolutely useless we were without Dad’s fortune. We were embarrassed at suddenly being poor. And we were frightened and humiliated by our failures already, like almost everyone is now.“
    “But why’s it taken us so long to figure it out?“ Lily asked.
    “Because we had no idea this whole country was ever going to be in such terrible trouble, I suppose. Americans—even us when we were rich kids—believe, however theoretically, in work. Work hard and prosper and all that. We mistakenly thought we were personally above that once, but no longer. But when Americans—men in particular—can’t get work at all, or see their life’s assets disappear, they think it’s somehow their fault.“
    “But it isn’t. Not often.“
    “But they fear it is. Fear’s at the heart of everything that’s happening to this country. Men who see their children getting thinner and thinner, eating wild greens instead of meat, feel guilty. And feeling guilty makes them angry. And when a person is always angry at himself, he’s angry with everyone. And especially the government that’s letting it happen. In fact, President Hoover still denies that anything’s wrong. He’s a rich man himself and probably genuinely thinks everything would be hunky-dory if everyone just pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and acted happy with their lot. He only got into office because he was in charge of feeding the Europeans at America’s expense after the Great War and did a good job. But he seems to think Americans should do it without any government help.”
    Agatha suddenly discovered they were back and tore toward the bench, barking hysterically.
    “It shouldn’t be that way,“ Lily said, petting the dog and shushing her.
    “But it is. Remember how angry you always were when we lived in the fifth-floor cold-water tenement, both of us working the soles of our shoes off for peanuts and falling further and further behind?“
    “I don’t remember being angry,“ Lily responded. “I was just always tired to the bone. But I must have been wasting a lot of energy being furious at what had happened to us. I blamed Dad, I’m sorry to say. As if he’d lost his money and his life to spite us. How stupid of me. Agatha, don’t go from barking to whining,“ Lily said, lifting the dog up to sit between them.
    “Dad wasn’t thinking of us at all.“ There was a flash of real and rare anger in his voice. “Dad was thinking only of himself. Knowing then what we soon learned about ourselves, that he had no skills other than in living the good life—without having to make any effort. He just realized it before we did.“
    “But we didn’t throw ourselves out a window and end it all,“ Lily argued.
    “You can’t tell me there weren’t times before we came here that you didn’t consider it,“ Robert said.
    Lily smiled sadly. “I did, but I was too vain to imagine myself sprawled on a sidewalk, with my skirt up around my waist and my knickers showing. I imagined people gawking at me and saying, ‘She should have mended them before she jumped.’ “
    Robert nearly fell off the bench laughing at this. “Only a woman would think that way,“ he said. “Women are so much more practical than men. And frankly stronger in their minds. Look at Mrs. Gasset. The one whose husband did a bolt. She just keeps on going, taking care of her kids, being pleasant to the customers, working nights at the movie house. He, like most men, couldn’t handle being out of work and ran off.”
    Lily said, “How can a woman with little children run off ?“ She had grown up with girls who were taught that they were to be ornamental, not strong-minded. But she herself had learned that being sweet and compliant and well dressed didn’t count for