Page 6 of A Mind of Her Own

The summer sped by quickly, and Alex loved her job at the paper. Most of the tasks she performed were minor, but now and then someone gave her a bigger project and she really enjoyed it. She was friendly with everyone, and they liked her, even though she was the boss’s granddaughter. No one seemed to hold it against her. They weren’t jealous of her, and her tragic history before she arrived made them all feel compassionate toward her. She was the youngest employee at the paper, so there was no one her age to hang out with, but she didn’t mind and loved her grandfather’s company. He took her fishing, and they went swimming at a nearby lake and on little adventures. At night, they discussed world issues covered by the paper, and she wasn’t afraid to argue with him if she didn’t agree with his point of view. He admired that. Her mother had been that way too. He loved that Alex had a mind of her own and wasn’t afraid to go toe to toe with him, politely. She was never rude or raised her voice to him, but she made her point, and stuck to it.

Paul invited her to write an editorial on women’s right to vote, which was still being hotly debated. He thought the piece she wrote was excellent, and he published it. He wasn’t afraid of opinions that differed from his own and thought it was what made life interesting.

The biggest story in newspapers around the world that summer was the Spanish flu racing around the world. By August, millions of people in every country had caught it and died from it, in a mere six months. There were no medications to treat it, nothing effective to prevent it. Face coverings were recommended in public by then, large gatherings were discouraged, touching, hugging, or kissing were nearly forbidden.

On Labor Day every year, Paul gave a big party with a buffet and barbecue in his garden, but he canceled it this year, afraid to make people sick, since the Spanish flu was so highly contagious. The symptoms were the same as any other flu, but stronger, and many people died of it.

One of the things Alex liked about being in Beardstown was that the war news didn’t seem quite so ever-present. She saw the reports that came into the newspaper, and they printed them, but it seemed a little more remote reading about it in Illinois than living it in Paris with the fighting so near at hand. There were battles in the Marne again that summer, and in the Somme, where her father had been killed. Paris was under bombardment in August, which would have made life there unlivable.

In July, they’d had the tragic news that the czar and his family, still under house arrest, had been executed.

The war seemed to be going on forever, as was the pandemic. There was a severe outbreak of the Spanish flu in Boston over the summer, and Alex had received a notice from the University of Chicago that face coverings would be required in class. There seemed to be no stopping either the Germans or the Spanish flu.

—

On Labor Day weekend, Paul drove Alex to Chicago, and helped set her up in the dorm. She was sharing a room with a very nice Japanese American girl. She had been born in the States but both her parents were born in Japan, and they lived in San Francisco. Her father was an accountant. Her name was Yoko and she and Alex hit it off immediately. Yoko was very artistic. She was a biology student, with a minor in fine arts, and she wanted to go to medical school after she got her undergraduate degree. She did Japanese calligraphy in her spare time.

Paul was sad to leave Alex in Chicago, he was going to miss her, but it was nice to see her so happy. He gave her a big hug when he left. It reminded him of when his daughter started college.

—

The school was in the Hyde Park section of Chicago, in a safe neighborhood, and both girls made friends quickly. Alex wrote to her grandfather about the people she met, her classes and teachers, and he loved hearing about it.

As the Spanish flu gained strength like a hurricane, the war news improved, and at last the tides turned. As a result of intense fighting and the Hundred Days Offensive in France, Germany surrendered on November eleventh, 1918, and withdrew from Luxembourg and Belgium. The fighting ended in Africa, and in all the countries in Europe. It was over at last, and Americans were jubilant that their boys could come home. It had been a bitter war that had cost approximately twenty million lives.

Ten days after the war ended, Alex went home to her grandfather in Beardstown for Thanksgiving. He usually went to friends who invited him for Thanksgiving dinner, but they canceled due to the pandemic, and Paul was happy to stay home with Alex. They had much to be grateful for, and they had a quiet dinner together.

The entire nation was celebrating the end of the war. It had taken both parents from her, and Paul’s daughter from him, but those who still had sons and husbands and loved ones abroad were jubilant. Plans were made to deploy the boys home for Christmas. It had been a four-year carnage for all the countries of Europe, and although the Americans had only come into it nineteen months before the end of the war, their losses had been heavy too. Paul and Alex talked that night about how senseless war was, and she hoped it would never happen again.

Her parents were heavy on her mind that night when she went to bed. She wished they had lived to see the war end. She was homesick and missed them, thinking about it, and Paul could see it on her face the next day. There were times when she was haunted by the heavy losses they had sustained, and probably always would be.

She had a letter from Phillip Baxter that day, the young man she had met on the crossing from France in April. He was back at Yale for his senior year. She’d had a postcard from him that summer, while he was on vacation in Maine at his grandparents’ summer home. He said in his letter that he couldn’t wait to graduate and get to work, and wondered where she was and if she had enrolled in college. He had no plans to come to the Midwest, but he hoped to see her in New York sometime. He was a sweet memory, but their paths didn’t seem destined to cross anytime soon. She smiled as she read his letter, remembering when he had kissed her in the moonlight, sitting next to each other on the deck, and when they watched as the ship entered the New York Harbor and glided past the Statue of Liberty. It was so beautiful it had made her cry, and now the war was over. He had escaped it thanks to his father’s diplomatic connections. It seemed unpatriotic to her, but maybe they were right in the end. He was still alive, and so many others weren’t, like Julien, and millions of other men and women.

It seemed particularly cruel that now that the fighting was over, the pandemic was claiming millions more. It made her wonder when all the killing and dying would end. The peace they needed in their lives had been a long time coming.

—

She spent a peaceful weekend with her grandfather. They went for a long walk in the orchards. He seemed stronger and more vital than ever. He was excited that she would be working for him at the Courier again next summer, and he was thinking of having her write her own editorial column eventually, maybe once a month, about women’s issues, and the problems that concerned young people that they felt no one was addressing. She could be the voice to speak for them.

Alex loved the idea, and could think of a number of important topics she wanted to write about. She was still deeply dedicated to the battle to obtain the vote for women. She believed in equality for all people, which Paul thought was a utopian ideal that wasn’t realistic, but she was young and it was normal that she should be idealistic and have a vision of a perfect world to strive for, even if achieving it was just a dream.

“It will happen one day,” he said to her quietly, as they walked back to the house on a crisp, cold day after Thanksgiving. “Not in my lifetime, but maybe in yours or your grandchildren’s. The world is an imperfect, profoundly unequal place, and evening out those inequities is a life’s work, and a noble cause worth pursuing.”

“It’s what you do with the Courier, ” she said, still deeply impressed by his ideals, and how eloquently he expressed them.

“No, what I do is different. I wake people up. I shine a spotlight on things and say, ‘Hey, look up over here. Do you see this? Take a good look. What are you going to do about it?’ I sound an alarm. And then it’s up to them to solve it. I don’t have the solutions. Most people don’t want to hear those alarms. It scares them and it’s too much work to fix the problem. But a few hear those alarm bells, and they care and try to do something about it. That’s the best I can do, wake up the good ones and hope they fight to change it.” Alex thought it was an interesting way to view what he did. She loved that he was a humble person.

“I think I want to be one of those people who change things,” she said softly, thinking about it.

“Your mother was one of them too. The people who change things, who really make a difference in the world. So was your father. They were perfect for each other.”

“I thought so too, but I was just a kid. We had so much fun together when I was little. They had fun, and made things fun for me.” Her childhood had been warm and happy, thanks to her parents.

“That’s important. People forget to have fun. They get bogged down in lives they don’t care about and don’t enjoy, and they get used to being miserable.” He turned to look at Alex then with a serious look. “Don’t ever get used to being unhappy, Alex. There’s nothing noble about it. They don’t give prizes for how unhappy you are. If you’re unhappy, change it. Life is too short to waste it. We never know how long we have. We have to make every moment count, with good people and good ideas, by doing the right thing, and being brave enough to follow your heart and what you believe. Your parents did. They helped to set up that field hospital, and they loved helping people and saving lives. If you could ask them now, I’ll bet they would say they have no regrets. They saved countless men and boys who would have died otherwise. I’m sure the only thing they’d regret is not being with you, but for the rest, it was what they felt they had to do.”

“Sometimes I get mad at them for doing it, and leaving me. They didn’t have to,” she said thoughtfully. “Mama could have stayed home with me and worked at the hospital in Paris, not at the front where she got sick because conditions were so bad it killed her.”

“She couldn’t have stayed in Paris,” Paul said gently. “That wasn’t who she was. She had to be there, with your father, at his side, helping to save all those boys. I always knew that about her—even as a child, she had to be at the center of things, doing all she could, giving everything, and once she met your father, she had to do it with him. It was who she was to her very core. It comforts me knowing that. She was where she wanted to be, doing what she loved to do. Maybe that will comfort you one day too.” She nodded, thinking about it. Now that the war was over, they had time to think, and understand things better. She suspected that her grandfather was right. He knew his daughter well. She had to make a difference in the world, and she had, and Tristan with her.

“I hope I do something important one day, to make a difference,” she said wistfully. She wanted to be like her parents, and her grandfather.

“You will,” he said confidently, and smiled at her. “You can do anything you want, and be anything you want.”

She laughed. “You told me that when I was six, when we visited you here. I still remember it. I told Mama and she said you told her that too.”

“I’m glad you remember it,” he said as they walked into the house to sit by the fire and get warm. “Don’t ever forget it.”

“I won’t. I promise,” she said, taking off her coat and hanging it on the hook at the back door of his comfortable house that was her home now too. “I love you, Grampa,” she said softly.

“I love you too. You’re the best gift your parents ever gave me. I’m sorry they had to die for you to wind up here.”

“Yeah, me too, but I’m glad I came. Thank you for bringing me here from Paris. I feel like I was meant to be here, learning from you, and working at the Courier .”

“You’re going to be a fantastic writer one day,” he said proudly.

“I hope so,” she said, sounding unsure. They went to sit by the fire in his den, and a little while later, they went up to bed. He had said some important things that night, about her parents, about her, and about life. She hoped she would remember it all. She wrote down as much as she could recall in her journal that night. It had been a perfect Thanksgiving for them both, full of gratitude and hope.

When Alex went back to Chicago after Thanksgiving, she had two big term papers that she was working on for her final grades, and exams to prepare for. She loved her classes at the university, and most of her professors. She was almost always the only woman in her classes—in some subjects there were two or three, but they were definitely a minority, and at first it had taken real courage to speak up when she was asked a question. Some of the young men looked frankly annoyed to have to listen to a female point of view. But all of them reacted to her beauty. Some were intimidated by it, while others pursued it.

Two boys had invited her to study with them, which was a bold move, and an obvious attempt to get closer to her. She was still shy, and felt uncomfortable being alone with a man without a chaperone. Many of the men were prejudiced about “overeducated women.” She realized early on that it would take a strong, confident man not to be intimidated by a woman who attended university. She thought it a stupid prejudice, but there was nothing she could do about it. So she wrote an editorial on the subject in the Courier that brought in floods of mail. They were swamped. Their readers loved it. And her grandfather was immensely proud of her. Two female professors, who were her role models, congratulated Alex for her insight and the courage to speak up. It was the beginning of her editorial column.

—

There was a telephone in her dormitory, in the House Supervisor’s office. It was for official use, but one of the younger supervisors let her use it occasionally, and Alexandra did to call her grandfather at the office. He had had telephones installed at the newspaper a few months before, and Alexandra loved to call him. She called him the week after Thanksgiving to thank him, and noticed while they were speaking that he had a raspy cough.

“Are you sick?” she asked him, worried. Even a cough could be a death knell at the moment, and despite his high energy and youthful looks, he was at a vulnerable age for the Spanish flu.

“No, it’s nothing, I’m fine, it’s just a cold. It’s been freezing here since you left.” She thought it had been ever since winter set in. She was shocked by the brutally low temperatures in Chicago and the surrounding area. It was never as cold in France, and it was bitter cold in the dorms in the morning. They kept wood stoves burning in their classrooms all day.

Paul sounded in good spirits during their conversation and didn’t seem sick, in spite of his cold, and she put it out of her mind as she worked on her papers and did research in the library. She was startled when Josiah Webster, the managing editor of the paper, left her a message later that week. She called him back immediately, when she got the message at her dorm that evening. Use of the phone was unusual except for important calls. She called Josiah Webster back, and he hadn’t left the office yet. Like her grandfather, she knew he often stayed late, and was incredibly dedicated. The two men had been friends since their boyhood.

“Is something wrong?” she asked him when he answered the phone on his desk.

“Probably not,” he said to reassure her, “but your grandfather didn’t come to the office today or yesterday. He says it’s just a cold, but he never stays home. He comes to work in all weather and states of health. I was concerned and thought you should know. It’s just as well he didn’t come out. It’s been snowing all day. He’s got a nasty cough,” Webster said ominously, and with the Spanish flu rampant, he wasn’t wrong to be concerned.

“Do you think I should come home?” she asked him, instantly worried.

He hesitated before he answered. “I suppose not, not yet anyway. But I just wanted to advise you. I told him to call a doctor, but he never does. He thinks doctors are for old ladies, not for men.” They both smiled at that. It was true. She would have liked to call him herself, but he hadn’t had a telephone installed at home, only the office.

“Thank you, Mr. Webster. I’ll talk to him at the office tomorrow, if he comes in.”

“I told him not to, but he never listens to me either.” But when she called Josiah the next day, her grandfather hadn’t come in. She had worried about him all night, and her concern increased when she found him absent again, and she made a decision that night. She called Josiah Webster the next morning and asked him to send a car for her.

“It will take all day to get to you,” he warned her. “We’ve had a lot of snow.”

“It’s all right, I’d rather come home to see that my grandfather eats and takes care of his cold.” He agreed to send a car and one of the Courier employees. She wrote notes to the three professors she had classes with at the end of the week. She said she had to go home due to illness in the family. These days it was a valid excuse anywhere in the world, and had an ominous ring to it.

The driver the managing editor sent for her arrived at her dorm at seven-thirty that night. She sent him to a nearby pub to get a bowl of soup before they took off. The snowstorm hadn’t hit Chicago yet, and he was back half an hour later, after a bowl of soup, a cup of coffee, and a shot of brandy to prepare him for the trip back, and she was ready to leave when he returned to the dorm to pick her up. She had worn her heaviest coat, a thick wool skirt, wool leggings and boots, a fur hat to keep her head warm, and wool gloves. She had brought only one small bag and her briefcase with the papers she was working on, and they set off to Beardstown. He had put gas in the car, enough to get them home.

Snow was falling when they were halfway there, but in small delicate flakes that didn’t stick, and the wind had died down. They hit icy patches on the road occasionally, and the car skidded, but the driver was an expert at controlling vehicles in bad weather conditions, and had been driving a tractor and heavy farm equipment since he was twelve. Alex’s grandfather had given her driving lessons the previous summer and she was a reasonably good novice driver, but she wouldn’t have been equal to the task in heavy weather with ice on the road.

They arrived at Paul’s home at three in the morning, tired and cold and blinded by watching the snow and keeping their eyes on the road. She thanked the driver, and carried her bags into the house. She left her coat in the front hall, and she could hear her grandfather coughing as she walked upstairs and stood outside his room, listening to him. She wondered if he was awake, and knocked softly on the door, in case he was. His voice called out immediately.

“Who is that?” She cautiously opened the door a few inches, and could see him in the distance, in his big bed, with the carved headboard. He recognized her immediately, and she couldn’t see much from the doorway, but he sounded ill. “What are you doing here?” he asked in a sharp voice. “Don’t come in,” he said, stopping her, “I don’t want you to catch my cold.” Or anything worse, if that was the case. He wasn’t sure. “Did you get kicked out of school?” he teased her, and coughed fiercely for a few minutes after he spoke.

“No, I have two papers due for school. I thought it would be more peaceful to write them here,” she said quietly. His cough made her wince.

“You’re a terrible liar,” he responded when he stopped coughing. “Who called you? Webster? He’s such an old woman. I’m fine.”

“You don’t sound it, Grampa,” she said gently from a safe distance, glad that she had come.

“I’ll be fine in a day or two. I get bronchitis every winter, it won’t kill me. Now go to bed, so you don’t catch a cold yourself. I’ll see you in the morning.” He sounded gruff, but he was weak and ill. And secretly, he was happy to see her.

She closed the door softly and went to her own room, which was bitter cold, since no one knew she was coming and they hadn’t lit the fire. She lit it herself, with the kindling and logs neatly stacked next to the fireplace, and got ready for bed. She lay thinking about her grandfather, wondering if she should call the doctor herself in the morning. Her grandfather would have a fit, but she thought he needed one, to make sure he didn’t have pneumonia. She fell asleep, dreaming of Mamie. She didn’t want anything like that to happen to Paul.

Her grandfather’s lawyer arrived the next morning while Alex was having breakfast and pondering whether to call the doctor or not.

She didn’t interrupt while the lawyer was there. It was so like her grandfather to go on conducting business from bed, while he was sick. He hated giving in to illness. And when she saw him after the lawyer left two hours later, it was an easy decision for her. He was sheet white, with two bright scarlet spots on his cheeks from the fever. But he sounded strong and in control, despite the deep cough.

She sent the housekeeper to the office to call the doctor and he came before lunch, and reassured Alex that Paul didn’t have pneumonia.

“Is it bronchitis?”

The doctor looked grim and shook his head. “He has all the symptoms of Spanish flu, including the loss of his sense of smell. But he’s a strong man and in good health. He should come through it.” Alex was praying he would. He was younger than Marie-Thérèse had been, and in much better health than anyone in France after years of starvation and war. “Call me if anything changes,” the doctor said before he left.

Alex only saw her grandfather from the doorway, wearing a face mask so as not to catch it again, if that was possible, which no one knew for sure. She was encouraged to see him looking better, although he was perspiring from the fever and his hair was damp.

He ate very little for lunch when she checked, and he slept all afternoon. When she stood in the doorway again at dinnertime, the red cheeks were gone, and he looked uniformly pale and sounded much weaker than he had only hours before. She’d been hoping that sleep would cure him but it didn’t, and his cough was the same.

Alex stayed up all night, and listened at his door at regular intervals, but nothing seemed different. The cough was ugly, but no worse. The room got quieter as the sun came up, and she went to her room to get some sleep herself for a few hours. Paul was with his lawyer again when she woke. She wore her mask and walked into the room where he was at his desk signing papers, and she scolded him. His attorney was wearing a mask too, as was Paul, not to spread germs. She knew the papers must be important if his lawyer was there again, and willing to risk Spanish flu. They had been friends for years, and the attorney looked distressed when he left.

Paul looked exhausted when he got back to bed after his lawyer left, and Alex wanted to sit quietly next to him, but he wouldn’t let her. He told her to go and work on her two papers, or study something so her grades wouldn’t slip. They never had before, even in France, with much worse things happening, although her grandfather having the Spanish flu was pretty bad. She was frightened.

He refused dinner that night, and when she checked on him at midnight, he was rambling and imagined he was talking to his wife about their daughter Victoria staying in Europe to work longer in Paris. He was arguing with his wife on her behalf, as he had then.

Alex retreated to a chair in the far corner of the room where he couldn’t see her, and he was too delirious to notice, but she wanted to watch him through the night. He fell asleep finally, coughing in his sleep, and she sent for the doctor the next morning before he woke up. The doctor confirmed her fears immediately when he listened to Paul’s chest, while he was still asleep. He had pneumonia. All the doctor could suggest was aspirin. He said that the poisons some people had tried, arsenic and strychnine, would do him no good, and might kill him. And the nearest hospital was too far away to risk the journey in freezing weather. They had no magic remedies for the flu either. All they could do was wait.

Paul didn’t wake until that afternoon, and only briefly. Alex had a vise on her heart as she watched him. She had seen this scene nine months before with her grandmother.

That evening, he woke up and seemed coherent at last. He recognized Alex immediately, thanked her for taking care of him, and his voice sounded stronger. He sat up in bed and drank a mug of broth. He lamented all the news he was missing and he said he’d write his editorial in the morning. He was engaged in life again and she thought he was better. She continued her vigil that night, oblivious to the risk to herself. She didn’t want to leave him alone. And at midnight she heard the same rattle in his chest she had heard with Marie-Thérèse, and the labored breathing that followed. He was asleep, and didn’t wake up, as she sat closer to him to watch him. And an hour later there was no sound at all. He lay perfectly still and looked peaceful, as Alex stared at him with rivers of tears running down her cheeks. Her last relative on earth, her beloved grandfather, was dead.