Rules of the Road by Joan Bauer Page B

and if they do it badly, you learn what not to do. The worst salesperson we ever saw sold washers and dryers. He’d sweat and slap the machines and yell that he was giving people a price so low his manager was going to hang him. One customer stormed off grumbling, “I’ll get the rope.” The best salesperson sold Singer sewing machines. She liked people, liked her product, and didn’t need to push anyone into buying anything they didn’t want. Dad said she knew the secret. When we got home I’d practice selling to Dad whatever we saw that day, and except when I was pitching swamp land in Florida, he always bought. Afterwards he’d celebrate what a good little salesperson I was by having a few drinks, but before the booze got hold of him, he was a real father.
    Mrs. Gladstone’s snoring was sounding like an approaching Amtrak train rumbling into Union Station. She was tossing, kicking off her sheets.
    “No!” she shouted in her sleep, then bolted up with a cry.
    I turned on the light. She was shaking.
    “Mrs. Gladstone, you were dreaming.”
    She nodded and covered her face with her hands.
    “Do you want to talk about it? My mom says talking about bad dreams can make them better.”
    She shook her old head.
    “I know about nightmares,” I assured her.
    She looked straight at me. “Yes, I suppose you do.”
    I sat down on the side of her bed. “I used to have one where I was taking a shower and instead of water coming out, it was bourbon, which is my dad’s favorite drink, and I kept trying toturn off the flow, but the bourbon was washing over me and getting in my hair and eyes and mouth. I kept trying to spit it out, but I couldn’t and it tasted awful and I was so afraid I was going to get drunk. It wasn’t going down the drain, either, just filling up the tub, rising higher in the room until it was over my shoulders and I was sure I was going to drown in it. I woke up screaming.”
    Mrs. Gladstone nodded a little. “And did I wake up . . .screaming?”
    “Kind of. Well, actually, yes.”
    She looked down, rubbed her sad eyes, and looked for her glasses. I took them off the nightstand, handed them to her. She put them on fast to cover the tears that were starting.
    “My son,” she began, clenching her mouth to keep control, “has been buying up Gladstone stock to gain control of the business because he was afraid I would not go quietly.”
    I didn’t know much about stocks. My grandma had given Faith and me both three shares of stock in her boyfriend Earl’s fire alarm company so we could learn the lessons of big business. In thirteen months we watched the stock go from $15 a share to nada and Earl go from CEO to the unemployment line, so the stock market didn’t hold much magic for me.
    “I’m sorry, Mrs. Gladstone—I don’t understand.”
    She grabbed a pad and pencil by the bedside table. “You understand what a share of stock is?”
    “It’s like buying a tiny fraction of a company.”
    “That’s right. A share of stock is like a deed to a small piece of a company. Now in the case of Gladstone’s Shoes, there arefour million public shares available, out of a possible twelve million. Those who own the most shares, own the most of the company. The problem arises when an individual or group of investors decide they want more say in a company.”
    “So they start buying more stock to get control.”
    “Precisely.”
    “And they can do that?”
    “They can.”
    “You mean anyone could take over any company they wanted if they had enough money?” I shuddered.
    “Theoretically. The system has many checks and balances built in to safeguard certain practices, but companies are taken over regularly.”
    “But what if the owners don’t want to give them up?”
    “Well, that’s the rub. It doesn’t much matter.”
    “But that’s not fair! That’s like stealing!”
    “Yes, it is. Elden and Ken Woldman, the president of the Shoe Warehouse, are buying up Gladstone stock to gain