5 - Parents Sink, and Little Children Have Big Worries

Summary

POOR SUFFERING ELSA; she's barely able to keep going. The cursed need to be young is wearing her down. Nobody wants to acknowledge this, but it's true. Ironically, everybody seems to be aging even faster. She tries to stay young with the various drugs and concoctions of the day, everything that's advertised in the newspaper. In other words, if it shows up in a circular, she’ll try it. She takes hormones, does exercises, even sits under a sunlamp. For days she seems to be refreshed. Indeed, she has succeeded in looking terrific, even though she's working more than twelve hours a day. But if she can't steal time for exercise and sun lamps she is tired to death.

And now she has to deal with this again. She once thought that she had a job for life. Because of this career position and the satisfaction it provides — even though she has to work hard — she has refused several offers of marriage. And now? Certainly she can make it a while longer. There's more to life than work. But a factory that had existed for more than a century with thousands of workers is being liquidated.

The liquidation brings with it an inhuman amount of work. Her bosses won't pay her any more to do it, but expect it as a kind of last gift from her. Obviously she isn't the spiritus rector of the negotiations, but she is responsible for grasping the ideas of twenty or more parties, recording them, taking dictation on all of the outstanding correspondence — sometimes even writing it herself! — making telephone calls, keeping the books, taking delivery of reports, and always being ready to stop everything should one of the company's directors call for her. And these days they call a lot.

In addition to everything else, they’re trying to sell the factory complex, which is huge. This means negotiations with city departments, even with churches. Somebody thinks it would be a good idea, eventually, to build a hospital complex on the factory site. This is a quick deal breaker for the city authorities, who are already closing their existing hospitals despite the need for them, in order to save money.