Always (12 page)

After stating her purpose, Emily crossed the mahogany barrier and followed a clerk through a rear doorway to a sizable job printing department. Here, she met with the sights, sounds, and smells she recognized and loved. Men in smudged aprons and rolled-up shirtsleeves. The creaks and groans and scrapes of wood working on metal. She counted five job presses, four of which were actively engaged.

Once ushered up a staircase to the second floor, she stepped into an open office area cluttered with flat-top desks and chairs, many of which were still empty, since the reporters and copyboys didn’t begin their workday until nine-thirty.

As soon as the clerk announced her presence to Mr. Davenport, it became apparent to Emily that Ross had already laid the groundwork for her. Malcolm appeared not at all surprised by her visit. In fact, he welcomed her boisterously, offering—for the benefit of those few ears perked and present—his most sincere condolences on the recent passing of her father. Then he closed the door to his office and offered her a seat.

Malcolm was a big man, tall and square-shouldered, with a build more suited to the back-breaking labor of a miner or a farmer than that of an office-bound newspaper editor. As he stood behind his desk, Emily folded her hands in her lap and tried not to appear intimidated by his sheer size and bulk.

When she stated her purpose, she was dispirited to note that he didn’t deign to sit. All the better to look down upon her with those penetrating steel gray eyes that so perfectly matched the flocculent set of side whiskers he’d cultivated for as long as she could remember.

“I don’t normally hold with hiring women,” he pronounced. “Their very presence tends to disrupt the smooth functioning of the staff.”

Emily sat still as a lamppost, listening politely as Mr. Davenport discoursed upon the virtues of womanhood and the vices of man’s workaday world. It was a mix that apparently gave him night sweats to even contemplate, yet after all was said and done, he condescended to grace her with a patriarchal smile. “However, due to my great respect for your lately departed father and your extensive background in newspapering, I’m inclined to make an exception in your case, Miss Winters. You may start tomorrow.”

By the time Emily left Malcolm’s office, the city room was filling with bearded, cigar-chomping reporters. Emily did her best to ignore the only clean shaven one in the bunch, but it was fairly impossible, since his desk was so close to the managing editor’s office.

“Good morning, Miss Winters.”

“Good morning, Mr. Gallagher,” she said, brushing by him with a glance and curt nod.

“See you tomorrow, Miss Winters.”

Oh, but how Emily grated her teeth as she tramped down the narrow staircase that led to the ground floor. Humble pie had never been one of her favorite dishes.

*

Malcolm Davenport had spoken the truth when he’d told Emily that he was disinclined to hire women.

After reporting to work at eight-thirty the following morning and being given a brief tour, she began to suspect that she was the only representative of the fair sex in the entire building.

Her immediate supervisor, Freddy Brubaker, was not much older than she. Although he hadn’t attended the same grammar school as Emily, she remembered seeing him about town. He had been a chubby, ordinary-looking boy with a mop of nut brown hair and a clubfoot that later limited him to serving in the Invalid Corps during the war. By now, he had grown from chubby to stocky and was attempting with little success to grow Davenport-like side whiskers.

Although Freddy, a mild-tempered sort, tried his best to be polite, Emily could tell by the pained, squinched-up expression on his face that he was less than enthusiastic about having a woman assist him at his new job as head of advertising.

When Emily finally sat down to work in the office across the hall from the city room, she resolved not to let such prejudice deter her. If there was one thing she knew, it was the newspaper business, and so she resolved to prove to every condescending male in the place that their unspoken biases were wrong. It was a resolution easier made than accomplished.

She’d written copy for ads before, but she’d never spent eight to ten hours a day immersed in the stuff. She sold dry goods and fancy goods, balmoral shoes and hoopskirts, waterproof shirtfronts, suspenders, and boots. She sold various and sundry items to ingest, inhale, imbibe, and apply, from Turkish smoking tobacco to Arctic Cream Soda to Dr. Starr’s Chemical Hair Invigorator.

By the end of the week, her head was in a spin and her vision was bleary from setting fine type. But she had accomplished her purpose, at least as far as Freddy was concerned. The pained, squinched-up look on his face was gone. Not only could his female assistant write advertising copy, she could set it as quickly and accurately as any of the men in the composing department.

When Freddy handed her the bank draft that represented her first week’s pay, Emily felt a sense of satisfaction she hadn’t experienced in a long time. Even if this wasn’t the newspaper work that she loved, it was at least newspaper work.

Perhaps that was why she felt such a bothersome twinge of guilt as, at five o’clock on Friday, she pretended to be busy with last-minute details as Freddy put on his frock coat and called out that he would see her bright and early Monday morning.

Emily bid him a pleasant good evening as he hobbled out, then continued to shuffle some papers on her small desk as the rest of the second floor business office emptied. All but Mr. Oberholtzer.

The elderly office manager was notorious for working until all hours of the evening, but Freddy had told her that he made it a point to be home for supper every Friday. In fact, he hadn’t missed a Friday night supper with his wife in twenty years.

Emily was counting on him not to break with tradition tonight.

When he finally pulled the Venetian blinds in his private office and emerged wearing his top hat and carrying his cane, it was almost five-thirty.

“Still at work, Miss Winters?” He spoke with a thick German accent and peered down his hook nose at her through bifocals. There was something in those sharp, slate blue eyes that caused a shiver to trickle down Emily’s spine. He was the type of fellow who would be suspicious of his own shadow, never mind the daughter of a man who was once a fierce competitor.

“Yes, Mr. Oberholtzer. I want to get a head start on Monday morning.”

“Commendable, Miss Winters, but you should not so unduly exhaust yourself. Your family expects you home,
ja
?”

She glanced at a square-faced wall clock and pretended surprise. “Oh, goodness. I hadn’t realized how late it was. I’ll be sure to finish up soon.”

Oberholtzer glanced from the clock to her then back at the clock. He was torn. No doubt Mrs. Oberholtzer had pork and sauerkraut waiting, “
Ja
. Soon, then.” He turned to leave. “Be sure to lock the door behind you.”

“I certainly will, Mr. Oberholtzer. Good evening.” When she was sure he was gone, Emily scurried to the door to see if anyone else still loitered in the hallway. It was empty.

In the city room across the hall, she knew that most of the reporters, including Ross, would still be at work. In the press room, the men would be busy until nine or ten tonight, printing tomorrow’s first edition, but not one of them had reason to wander outside their own work area after hours. This was the chance she’d been waiting for all week.

She hurried back to her desk, donned her bonnet, snatched her handbag, and turned the lock on her way out the door. Once downstairs, she passed through the deserted job printing department. Unlike the busy pressroom upstairs, the jobbers went off shift with the office employees at five. When she reached the front business office, the blinds were pulled and the place was empty.

She made a beeline for one of the desks, the one where she knew the latest print orders would be waiting to be processed on Monday morning. Squinting in the shuttered light, she located the orders and began thumbing through them. There were many familiar names, some of them old customers of her father’s. That was what she was looking for, someone who had been loyal to Nathaniel in the past.

She finally spotted an order for billheads. It was from Henry Wilkerson, who owned the hardware store on West King. A former customer of her father’s, and, much like the crusty, opinionated Jacob Groff, a fellow who had never cared for Malcolm Davenport’s business practices or politics. Judging by the estimate of charges, Emily surmised that Malcolm was offering a discount off his usual prices, no doubt in an effort to attract her father’s customers away from the only other competition remaining in town, Denton’s Printing. Shrewd, Emily thought. But not shrewd enough. Not if she had anything to say about it.

“What are you doing?”

Emily almost shot through the ceiling. Shoving the print orders back into place, she spun around to see Ross standing in the doorway to the job press room. He was dressed for the street, his frock coat buttoned, his tie knotted, his top hat in one hand, obviously leaving work early. He’d come up quiet as a cat. Jiminy pats! How long had he been standing there?

Emily tried to swallow past the lump in her throat. She’d done her best all week to avoid him and had been fairly successful. Now she couldn’t decide if she should feel more guilty for her transgressions or angry with him for choosing this moment to sneak up on her.

“A... a handkerchief,” she blurted. It was the first lie that popped into her head.

“What?”

“I... I was looking for my handkerchief.” She lifted her handbag as if in proof. “There was, um, something in my eye, but it seems to be gone now.” She squinted in what she hoped was a convincing manner.

Ross’s discerning gaze narrowed, and she knew with conscience-stricken certainty that he sensed her fabrication. Reaching into his pocket, he produced a crisp white handkerchief and approached her. “Here.”

Emily inched backward, away from the desk and toward the door. “Oh, no, thank you. As I said, it seems to be gone now.”

“Uh-huh.” His gaze flicked to the desk she’d been rifling through, then back to her. “Are you sure?”

“Quite.” Emily retreated a few more steps toward the door. Unfortunately, she didn’t know the layout of this office as well as she knew her father’s. The heel of her shoe smacked into a brass cuspidor, shattering the stillness and making her wince.

“Emily...”

“I’m fine, Mr. Gallagher, just fine.” Sidestepping the cuspidor, she pushed through the bat-wing doors to the waiting area. “I’ve got to be going.”

In a blind rush, she went for the door.

“Oh!”

Before she could stop, Emily barreled out into the street and straight into a bustling mass of yellow-checked gauze and crinoline. Bouncing blond ringlets and an overpowering whiff of
eau du lilac
confirmed that this could be nothing less than the climactic scene in a very bad dream.

“Johanna!” Emily gasped.

“Emily! Why, mercy!”

They blinked at each other in feminine horror then rapidly disengaged, stepping back to straighten their respective bonnets—Emily’s a practical, black-banded straw bonnet, Johanna’s a white horsehair concoction trimmed with what seemed like yards of mauve ribbons and violets.

“Mercy, I was just—”

“Sorry,” Emily muttered. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

“That’s quite all right, Emily, dear. I’m simply surprised, that’s all.”

The flamboyant, scooped neckline of Johanna’s gown and the flash of diamond pendant earrings signaled that she was dressed for a night on the town. Emily glanced over Johanna’s shoulder to see the Davenports’ double brougham waiting by the curb. At least now she knew why Ross was leaving work earlier than usual. No doubt an elegant restaurant dinner followed by a box seat for the new concert opening at Fulton Hall.

Ross’s voice came from behind. “Everybody all right out here?”

“Everybody’s fine,” Emily muttered. “I’ve got to go.”

She didn’t spare a glance for either of them as she brushed by and hastened up the sidewalk. She didn’t want to see the glint of triumph in Johanna’s eyes when she took Ross’s arm. She didn’t want to see the admiration in Ross’s gaze when he looked at Johanna.

“Good evening, Emily, dear!” Johanna’s parting words nipped at Emily’s escaping heels, carrying with them an edge of gloating she recognized all too well from their spite-filled childhood.

Or perhaps, Emily reminded herself miserably, it was just her own childish resentment that transformed Johanna’s innocent words into antagonistic preening.

When she reached the corner of King and Queen Streets, she stopped to catch her breath. She told herself she didn’t care. She told herself not to look back. She had more important things to think about, but...

She turned around in time to see Ross handing Johanna into her family’s fine carriage. As he did so, Malcolm emerged from the newspaper office, and he too climbed into the carriage. Ross followed suit. The brougham moved off down the street.

Emily felt unable to move as she watched the carriage disappear around a corner. If it had been anyone but Johanna, perhaps she could have brought herself to accept it.

She remembered the year after that first summer with Ross. Before school had started, she was excited and looking forward to moving to the upper grade classroom to be with him, but that first week had dashed all her expectations.

When she’d looked around the class, she discovered that very few of the other girls wore their hair plaited anymore. They had traded their knee-length dresses and frilled pantalets for crinoline petticoats and long skirts.

And it wasn’t only the style of clothing that had changed. Most of the girls, even those Emily’s age, were beginning to narrow in the waists, widen in the hips, and develop breasts. It seemed that everyone was on the fast track to womanhood except Emily. Even her friend Melissa Carpenter had betrayed her, leaving school the summer before flat as an unleavened biscuit only to return, much to Emily’s chagrin,
buxom.