Page 8 of A Mind of Her Own

Alex got a month to relax in Beardstown at the end of her freshman year at the University of Chicago. She planned to take the walks on her grandfather’s property that she had taken with him the year before. The weather was warm and balmy, and she wanted to visit the offices of the Courier and see the people she knew and had worked with the previous summer. Word had leaked out that she owned the paper now, which was remarkable for a girl of nineteen, but she had no involvement on a daily working basis, and Josiah Webster was still running the Courier with the same iron hand. If anything, he was tougher now that Paul Peterson was no longer alive. Paul had had a warmer, more humane, collegial style than Josiah, and was always open to new ideas. Josiah was more traditional than Paul had been and was more determined than ever to keep the Courier appealing, successful, and profitable, and he was less of a risk-taker than Paul. Alex missed her grandfather’s editorial columns, as did all of their readers. He had his own personal style. She still wanted to work on her editorial columns once a month, as her grandfather had hoped, but hadn’t found her distinctive voice yet. She wanted to have a unique signature style like her grandfather one day.

When she got home to Beardstown from Chicago at the end of May, the ongoing page-one top story was still the Spanish flu. The number of deaths had dropped slightly for no reason anyone could determine. The winter before, as the troops returned from abroad, they brought the virus with them from Europe, and innocently infected Americans they came in contact with in every walk of life as they rejoined their families and friends, returned to their businesses and jobs, and infected the workplace and every aspect of American life. Other countries were experiencing the same thing. It was beginning to abate now, seven months later. After Paul Peterson died of the Spanish flu, the paper printed a black border around the front page for a month, in honor of him.

The second day of Alex’s month-long stay there in June was a landmark day for American women. After being defeated twice in the last year, the Nineteenth Amendment passed the Senate, giving women the right to vote, on June fourth, 1919. It had been hard-earned and hard-won, and bravely fought for, for nearly ten years, by passionate women who had been willing to risk life and limb and had sacrificed their lives in some cases to give American women the right to vote.

Alex was delighted and the Courier ran a banner headline the next day, as did most newspapers in the nation.

Other than that historical event, it was a quiet month, with the ongoing devastating statistics of the Spanish flu. Some people compared it to the Black Plague of the fifteenth century. It was continuing to ravage its way around the globe, affecting all socioeconomic levels, all races, and all ages, with the elderly hardest hit, like Alex’s grandfather and grandmother. People had gotten more careful in the past year. Schools and some offices were closed, theaters were closed, masks were mandatory, and cemeteries were overwhelmed. It was hard to believe, as Alex looked out at the peaceful countryside surrounding her grandfather’s home. Farms were affected too. She knew she’d have to be even more careful in New York.

—

Alex took the Broadway Limited from Union Station in Chicago on Friday the twenty-seventh of June, having spent a day shopping at Marshall Field’s in Chicago before she left, to make sure she had the appropriate clothes to wear in the office, with gloves and hats. She didn’t want to draw attention to herself with anything too fashionable, but she had to look ladylike and proper. She enjoyed the observation car on the train and arrived in New York at Penn Station the morning of Saturday, June 28th, and checked into the Martha Washington Hotel again, with a bigger room this time since she would be there for two months.

The first of July was a Tuesday, and Alex arrived at the newspaper precisely on time in a gray linen suit with midcalf hemline, a matching hat, and white gloves. She was wearing a thin white silk blouse under her jacket. She looked beautiful and older than her nineteen years in the elegant suit, which she’d bought in Chicago. It wasn’t showy, and it fit her slim figure perfectly.

She reported to the woman she’d been assigned to in personnel, Monica Gonzales. She was older, with dark hair pulled back in a tight bun, and she was wearing a black summer suit. It was a warm day.

“You’ve been assigned to our society pages,” she told Alex with a businesslike demeanor. It felt like a dream to Alex just being there. The building was huge, with newspaper delivery trucks parked outside that would travel the city all night with the last edition. Her assignment sounded like fun. The woman gave her a slip of paper with the floor and office number on it and the name of her supervisor, the head of Society, Sylvia Bates. Monica sent Alex on her way within minutes, and she put on her mask and went back to the elevators. The Society offices were on the eleventh floor, and five minutes later, she reached them. There was a front room bustling with activity, with six young women crowded together at desks, typing furiously on large typewriters. There were three offices behind them, with windows, for the editors who worked on those pages. One was in charge of weddings, the second one parties, and the third was for “encounters”—celebrities and socialites seen at various events. And there was a long wall with an enormous bulletin board with photographs pinned to it. Everyone looked busy, and all the women at desks were wearing masks because of the flu. Alex was wearing hers when she arrived. The women in the front room glanced at Alex with interest. The one nearest her took her mask off and smiled. She looked stressed, and it was only nine-twenty in the morning.

“Can I help you?” She thought Alex was dropping off news of an engagement or impending wedding.

“I’m the summer intern,” Alex said, trying not to sound as terrified as she was. She had no experience at all with a “society column,” and had never seen one. The Courier didn’t have one, and Beardstown didn’t need one.

“I’m Melanie Pratt,” the young woman said in a friendly tone. She pointed to an empty desk behind them with a typewriter on it. “Grab a desk, take off your hat, and wait for someone to ask you for something. You can ask me if you need directions. What’s your name?”

“Alexandra Bouvier. Alex.”

“I thought you were a bride.” Melanie laughed at her mistake and put her mask back on, as Alex made her way to the back desk, put her purse underneath, her jacket on the back of the chair, and her hat on the desk. She was ready for action.

Ten minutes later, a tall, elegant woman with a blond chignon, around fifty, exploded out of her office and addressed the front room. “The Patterson/Argyle wedding was just canceled. Pull all the pictures we’ve got. And we need to change the layout, pronto. We were saving space for the reception. We’ve got to kill it.” Everyone began scurrying, and Melanie whispered to Alex that the tall blonde was Sylvia Bates, the chief editor of the department. “Try to stay out of her way,” Melanie whispered, and five minutes later, the woman emerged from her office again and pointed at Alex. “You! Go downstairs and get me the layout I sent down yesterday. We have to figure out what to run instead. I hate to use it, but I think the Larocca/Genovese wedding might work. The Laroccas are spending a million on it. It will be vulgar but spectacular.” Alex nodded, feeling dazed, and as soon as Sylvia went back to her office, Alex rushed to Melanie’s desk, and spoke in a whisper.

“Where do I go, and who do I see?” Melanie scribbled instructions on a piece of paper and handed it to Alex.

“It’s in the basement—ask for Joey, and tell him to give you all the photographs for the wedding they just canceled. And don’t panic. You’ll be fine. You’ll get used to it here.” Alex nodded, speechless with fear, clung to the piece of paper, and hurried out of the room. She found the basement filing room easily, and Joey turned out to be a big bear of a man who gave her an armload of photographs of the bride to return to Miss Bates. She thanked Joey, rushed back to the elevator, and completed her mission.

For the next three hours she handed out typing paper and carbons, carried photographs from one office to another, delivered mail, poured coffee, sharpened and distributed pencils, tried to stay out of everyone’s way and keep their requests and instructions straight, and answered the phone in between. She was an errand girl for the department, and the tasks she accomplished were a blur when she tried to remember them, and she didn’t know anyone’s name yet except Sylvia Bates, and Melanie, who was a godsend, and translated all the mission directions for Alex. By noon, her head was pounding and her hands were shaking she was so nervous. Melanie stopped at her desk for a minute.

“You can go to lunch now,” she told her, and Alex had no idea where to go. “Straight down the street left of here, there’s a good deli, or there’s the cafeteria downstairs in the basement. The food stinks, but it’s faster. There’s always a line at the deli, so it’s slow, but the sandwiches are great. Be back in forty-five minutes.” It was exactly twelve-thirty. “Bates goes to lunch at one, and she’ll be out for two hours,” she whispered, and Alex nodded, hurried to her desk, grabbed her jacket and ran to the elevator. She had decided that the basement was safer. She didn’t want to come back late, even if the boss was out, in case someone squealed on her. No one had spoken to her so far except Melanie, and Sylvia Bates, who didn’t know or care who she was. She had feet to run and hands to carry things, which was all Sylvia Bates wanted from her. Whether or not she had a brain was immaterial, for now, but might matter later.

Alex grinned as she went downstairs in the freight elevator, with newspapers stacked high in it. It was exciting being there, and if she hadn’t been so nervous, she would have enjoyed it, but it was fun anyway. The furor of activity in the enormous building and number of employees made the Courier look like an amateur operation in comparison. But she knew that this was the kind of experience she needed, a big city operation, to teach her the skills she’d require one day to apply to the Courier .

She reached the basement quickly and found the cafeteria. She had a chicken sandwich and a yogurt, and iced tea, ate quickly, and then wandered out into the hall in the basement. She saw a huge room of men across the hall, each with a desk, some with phones, some with hats on. The room was noisy—there were the sounds of phones ringing, men calling to each other, and laughter. It was the antithesis of the office of women she was working in upstairs, which was neat, small, and quiet.

A young man hurried out of the big room as she walked by and crashed into her, almost knocking her over, and he grabbed her arms to steady her with an apologetic look. He looked to be in his late twenties or thirty, and he looked her over with an appreciative glance and held onto her arms for a minute, which made her blush. She had dropped her jacket, and he picked it up from the floor and handed it to her.

“Whoa…we have a princess in our midst. I’m sorry I tried to knock you down. I’m Sam, who are you, and where did you come from? What took you so long to get here?” She laughed at his brash approach. He was good-looking. He had his jacket off and his shirt sleeves rolled up, and had taken off his tie in the heat.

“I’m Alex. From upstairs. The society pages.”

“I should have known.” He grinned at her. “I hope you’re not a bride.” She shook her head and laughed at him. “We’re Crime,” he said happily, gesturing to the room full of men behind him. They were all reporters and photographers and there was a cloud of smoke hanging above them, like the bowels of hell, but they all seemed to be having a good time and were talking a lot and laughing. “Do you play cards, Princess?” he asked her, and she nodded. “If you get bored with the brides, come down here, you can play cards with us. We’re here twenty-four hours a day. People commit murder at all hours.” A second man approached them then. He looked older, in his forties, was balding, had a cigar in his hand, and looked at Sam with disgust, with an apologetic glance at Alex, who was enjoying the exchange.

“Are you at it again? Leave the poor girl alone.” He turned to Alex then. “I’m sorry, he’s incorrigible. We normally keep him chained up, but he gets loose occasionally.”

“She’s from Society,” Sam informed his coworker, who said his name was Tommy. He had the same rough-around-the-edges style as Sam, but they were both fun to talk to, and couldn’t keep their eyes off her.

“You can tell. They hide us in the basement,” Tommy said. “We’re not couth enough to be upstairs, and there are too many of us. Murder is our number-one big seller. I’m sure there are more homicides in New York than weddings. Other than that, the world specializes in sports, sex, and scandal.”

“Murder is more fun. Crime is a big feature for us. The guys in Finance are all half dead, and they’re all weird in Travel. Arts and Leisure are really weird. And the book reviewers are too serious. I never know what they’re talking about. Stick with us,” Sam said. “Drop by anytime.”

Alex glanced at her watch then, and panicked. “I have to go.”

“See ya ’round, Princess,” Sam said with a wave, as she rushed toward the elevator, and the two reporters from Crime walked into the cafeteria for another pot of coffee. “She’s a knockout,” Sam commented admiringly as they waited for the coffee.

“And you’ll be our next crime scene if you start hitting on the girls from Society. They’re all debutantes and some rich guy’s daughter. They work here for free as summer interns. The women we know can’t afford to do that. You mess with the girls from Society, and their fathers will kill you. Trust me. And by next year, they will all be married, and not to guys like us.”

“She’s gorgeous,” Sam said with a grin, and Tommy pointed an imaginary gun at him.

“Bang, you’re dead. Stay away from the debutantes!” he said as they collected their coffeepot and went back to the smoke-filled room of reporters.

—

Alex was back in the Society office by then, and Melanie asked her where she ate.

“The cafeteria. I didn’t want to be late getting back.”

“I forgot to warn you about the Crime boys. They’re right across the hall, and they’re all nuts, and go after anything in a skirt.” Alex smiled at the description.

“I met two of them.”

“They’re all the same. They’re the randiest guys in the building. They act like they haven’t seen a woman in years. Some of them are fun. They report on the worst crime scenes in the city. I think it makes them a little nuts.” Alex had experienced it firsthand, and didn’t mind. Melanie showed her where everything was then, since they had a little time before the three editors came back from lunch.

When they did, the big news that afternoon was a major film star who had been caught at a hotel for a weekend tryst with a famous socialite, who happened to be married, and his wife was filing for divorce. It was the hot story of the hour. And the canceled Patterson/Argyle wedding instantly became old news, sank beneath the waters of the society column, and vanished. The heartbroken bride was no longer of interest. Alex heard later that the groom had dumped the bride to go back to his ex-girlfriend, whose father was offering him a million dollars to marry her, and he needed the money. There were no secrets in the offices of the society column, and all the juiciest social news in the city was grist for their mill.

All the women in the Society office left at five. The girls at the front of the office were single, and of the three editors, two were divorced, and one had never married—Sylvia, Melanie said, was the mistress of a very wealthy married man, and she kept him by knowing all of his secrets.

Alex’s head was spinning as she walked back to her hotel. She had been running all day. None of it was serious journalism, but it was fascinating. The society column was the spice that women loved in the newspaper. Sports and finance kept the men happy, and Alex wondered if anyone really cared about the news. It was very different from her grandfather’s thorough, deep, and at times philosophical reports of world news. His was a high-quality brand of journalism, whereas this was fare for everyone, whatever their tastes or interests. She smiled, remembering her exchange with the two Crime reporters. But doubtless theirs was grim work, and they needed a little levity to balance it.

She fell asleep at nine o’clock that night. And the next day was more of the same. She ate at the cafeteria again, and ran into Sam. He invited her into the room to meet some of his coworkers, and before she could stop him, he had guided her into the room full of male reporters. They looked at her like hungry lions having a piece of meat waved at them, and she escaped as soon as she could. When she got back to her office, Melanie made a face.

“Whew! I know where you’ve been. You reek of cheap cigars. Did the Crime guys hassle you again?”

“They kidnapped me for a few minutes, and I ran.”

“I can smell it. Someone needs to take a hose to them. It’s weird, either the guys down there are jokesters, or they’re depressed and don’t talk at all. They see some really ugly stuff, the worst side of the human race. And the Mafia families don’t help. They do some incredibly bad things, and the guys in Crime see all of it.”

“They’re supposedly worse in Chicago,” Alex said knowledgably, but she knew her grandfather had refused to cover Mafia news. He said they were the worst element of the business, and he hated organized crime.

She tried the deli for lunch on Thursday with Melanie, and she was right, the food was better, although the service was slow. But she didn’t see the Crime reporters as a result. The Society staff got notified of three more engagements that day, and they had four big weddings to cover that weekend. They used outside photographers to cover them, who were of a much higher caliber than the ones who worked on staff, and were kept busy with homicides.

Friday was the Fourth of July holiday, so they had a three-day weekend. Alex finished the week on Thursday with a flourish, having completed every task she’d been assigned. She was efficient, hardworking, and fast, and all three editors had noticed her. Even Sylvia Bates was impressed and thanked her, which Melanie said was high praise.

Melanie and Alex wished each other a good weekend. They had their weekends free. The editors attended the weddings they covered to make sure everything went smoothly, that the coverage remained respectful and in good taste, and that no one from the paper offended anyone at the wedding. And Sylvia knew who all the players were. She had been running the society column for the World for twenty-five years and no one did it better.

By the end of the week, Alex admired her. Sylvia Bates was a consummate professional, and the wedding coverage was exquisite, better than Vogue .

In her hotel room that night, Alex wished that she could tell her grandfather about it. She thought he’d be amused.

—

Alex spent the Fourth of July weekend visiting museums she hadn’t seen the year before on her one day in New York, and she walked along the East River and took a carriage ride around the city on her own and loved it.

She was excited all over again on Monday when she got to work, at the same time Sylvia Bates arrived at the office.

“How were the weddings?” Alex asked her politely, in awe of the elegant woman who was her boss. She was the essence of chic and good taste. What she wore didn’t cost a fortune, but she knew just how to put it together for maximum effect. She was impeccable in a crisp white linen dress, without a hair out of place.

“Two of them were exquisite and perfectly done, on their Long Island estates.” She had covered two in one day. “The Larocca was alarmingly garish, and you have to wonder how many bodies are buried under their front lawn and in their flower beds.” The Laroccas were one of the biggest crime families in New York, but had achieved near respectability by marrying debutantes with money-hungry fathers. It had put them on the society pages nonetheless, which in a cynical way amused Sylvia, so on occasion she indulged them. “Everything about it was wrong, but so much so that it actually became right, if you know what I mean. They spent a hundred thousand dollars on the dress. But the food was fabulous, and they flew the band in from somewhere. Every crooked politician in the state was there, so no one wore masks.” There were fines now for not wearing them in public, and a ban on large gatherings, but compared to mass murder, it was a minor offense. “Is that an accent I detect?” she asked Alex with a piercing look. She noticed every detail, and was a keen observer.

“I’m French,” Alex confessed. “But my mother was American.”

“How long have you been here?” Sylvia asked more gently. She could be kind when she wanted to be, and she sensed a story there.

“A little over a year.”

“In New York?”

“In a little farm town two hundred miles outside Chicago. But I attend the University of Chicago. My mother went there too.”

“It’s a good school.” Sylvia smiled at Alex then. She had no children of her own, and had never wanted any. She had poured herself into her career heart and soul. “Good girl. You’re smart to get an education. It’s the only way to make something of yourself.” She had gone to Barnard. “Is this just a summer lark for you, or are you serious about it?”

“Very serious,” Alex responded. And Sylvia could see it was true.

“Good. Then make sure you learn something here, and make it count.”

“I intend to. I’m very grateful to be here,” she said, and Sylvia nodded, marched into her office, and closed the door.

It was a busy Monday morning in the Society department. The boys from Crime didn’t accost Alex when she went to the cafeteria, got her lunch, and sat down alone at a table. She had gotten a list of the weddings they were covering for the next month, and was reading it carefully when a man walked up to her table and startled her.

“Mind if I sit down here? There are no free seats anywhere else.” She glanced around and saw it was true, and nodded.

“Sure. Of course.” She took her purse off the other chair, put it on the floor next to her, and went on reading, while he went to get his food. She paid no attention to him when he came back with a tray full of his lunch. She looked up at him. He was stern-looking and serious, with dark eyes and very dark hair. He was wearing a suit and tie, and he stared at her for a minute, and spoke before she could start reading again. He was handsome and looked to be in his mid- to late thirties. He didn’t seem friendly and was very intense. She could almost feel the electricity flowing from him as he sat down across from her.

“You’re the girl from Society all my colleagues are talking about, aren’t you?” He said it like an accusation and she was sorry she’d agreed to let him sit with her. He looked respectable, but not friendly.

“I hope not. What are they saying?”

“What you’d expect. That you’re beautiful, what they say about the deb of the hour every year.”

“I’m not a deb,” she said coolly, on the verge of deciding she didn’t like him, and he was a jerk. “I’m a summer intern,” she said with dignity.

“Same thing. You’re not getting paid, so it’s safe to assume your father is supporting you, unless you’re married. But if you were, you wouldn’t be working here.”

She didn’t like his assumptions about her. “You’re correct, I’m not married. But my father is not supporting me. I’m supporting myself,” on her inheritance from her grandfather, so he wasn’t entirely wrong. He appeared to have a chip on his shoulder the size of a mountain.

“Sorry,” he said, softening a little, and she hated to admit he was movie-star handsome, but his scowl didn’t improve his looks. “We working stiffs are jealous of people with rich fathers.”

“I don’t have a rich father,” she said simply, or any father, she didn’t say. “You’re in Crime?” It was her turn to guess, and he nodded, amused.

“How can you tell, by my charming personality, or my ill humor? Looking at dead bodies every day doesn’t improve my mood or my faith in human nature.”

“Then why don’t you report on something else?” she said sensibly, sipping her lemonade, while he tried to ignore how beautiful she was. She had a perfect face and a kind expression. “Like finance, or sports,” she suggested.

“Sports bore me, and I’m terrible at math. Actually, finance bores me too. And I’m good at what I do. Do you like working on all those weddings? At least the affairs they ferret out are amusing.”

“You’re not married?”

He shook his head. “Are you?”

She laughed in answer. “No. I’m only nineteen.”

“Lots of women are married by nineteen. Some girls consider it the only career open to them.”

“Sometimes they’re right. I want to work for a newspaper one day. And not just on weddings.”

“It’s the only job they’ll give you here. There are no women in the other departments. Except art, maybe, but they’re all weird. Maybe the women in your department think the weddings will be contagious,” he said, and she laughed again. He had an edge to him but he had a sense of humor.

“If they are contagious, I’ll quit immediately,” she said with a wry smile.

“You don’t want to get married?” He was surprised, if it was true.

“No, I don’t. Not for a long time if I do, or maybe ever.”

“Why not?” He was intrigued by her. He hadn’t sat down with her in order to meet her—his reason had been real—but now he was enjoying her. She was smart and funny and a good sparring partner. His colleagues hadn’t said that about her. Just that she was beautiful, which was also true. But there was more to her.

“It’s too complicated to explain,” she said vaguely. She had decided after the losses of the last few years that she didn’t want to lose any more people, or love anyone enough to care. She had lost her entire family, which seemed like more than enough. She had no family left now, and wanted to keep it that way. Love was a game that seemed too risky, and the stakes were too high, but she didn’t say it to him. He could sense there was a story there, and not a happy one. “What about you?” she asked him. “Do you want to get married?”

“Never. Are you planning to propose? If you are, I strongly advise against it,” he said, and she laughed. She had a wonderful free laugh like a child and he loved the sound. It made him smile. He was better looking when he did. “Well, now that we’ve established that neither of us wants to get married, I think it would be safe to have lunch again. I’d like that. Would you?” he asked her directly, and she nodded. “I’m too old for you anyway, so you’re safe. I’m thirty-six, seventeen years older than you. I could be your father.”

“No, you couldn’t,” she said firmly.

“Why not?”

“You’re much too grumpy and ill-natured to have children,” she said innocently, and he laughed out loud.

“Touché. You are absolutely right.” She glanced at her watch then.

“I have to get back to work. It was nice to meet you,” she said with a smile.

“I enjoyed it too. I’m Oliver Foster. Ollie, to the people who can tolerate me. Of whom there are very few.”

“Alexandra Bouvier. Alex.” They shook hands across the table.

“You’re French?” He could hear it now, but only slightly. She nodded. “Your English is excellent.”

“My mother was American. I came here a year ago.” He sensed that there was a story there too, and didn’t want to ask and upset her. He liked her, in spite of appearances to the contrary. He liked her a lot. She seemed gutsy to him, and hadn’t been intimidated by him. Most people were, which he preferred. He liked keeping people at bay.

“Where shall we have lunch next time?” he asked her.

“Here is fine,” she said. She wasn’t looking for a fancy lunch.

“You have very modest tastes,” he said as they stood up. “Wednesday? One o’clock? I’m off tomorrow. I work on weekends. People love to murder each other on Saturdays.” She was curious what he had done in the war, but didn’t want to ask. He seemed to accept killing as commonplace, and to be hardened to it.

They walked out of the cafeteria together, at the exact moment that Tommy walked out of the room across the hall where they worked, and he was surprised to see them together.

“I see you two know each other, or did you just meet?” he commented, and neither of them answered. It was a fishing expedition and none of his business.

“See you,” Alex said casually to Oliver. “Have a nice day off.” She hurried to the elevator to go back upstairs. She was ten minutes late.

“Robbing the cradle, I see,” Tommy teased Oliver.

“I’m thinking of adopting her,” Oliver said easily, and walked past him with no further comment. Alex was smiling under the mask she had put back on in the crowded elevator. There was something very odd about Oliver Foster, in her opinion. Dark, unhappy, but incredibly smart, and she loved the way he laughed. All his cares seemed to slip away when he did. Getting a smile or a laugh out of him felt like a victory. And he was funny. She liked that about him too. She was looking forward to their lunch. As he sat down at his desk, thinking about her, so was he. For once, Sam and Tommy were right about her being a knockout. It was a first. She was ladylike and gutsy, and smart and interesting, and just shy enough to seem innocent and sweet. He was looking forward to lunch on Wednesday with Miss Alexandra Bouvier, not a debutante.