The First Emma

by Di Maio, Camille

  SNOW HAD FALLEN on Baltimore, early for this time of year. The streets below the windows on the fourteenth floor of the office building were desolate, blanketed with the white dusting that usually appeared weeks later.

  By the time Mabel could leave work, it might reach to her ankles and she hadn’t brought the shoes to accommodate it.

  She stepped away from her typewriter and looked down onto the park. The frost from the panes chilled her, but not as much as the letter sitting in her breast pocket.

  She pulled a cigarette from its pack and put it to her lips. It shook as she trembled. In anger. In hurt. In disgust.

  There were no matches to be found in her desk, though she was certain that she’d left them there. Mr. Oliver must have riffled through her drawers again. Her boss had a bad habit of snatching things from the secretaries’ desks. His company, so his property. Not that he’d ever said so, but his actions certainly demonstrated that belief.

  Mabel folded her arms and pulled the cigarette to and from her mouth, pretending, at least, that its rich tobacco scent was filling her lungs with the warmth that had faded since she’d read the letter.

  Her red lipstick formed a dark ring around its edge. It reminded her of Artie. They’d met at the New Year’s Eve party of a mutual friend. She was not at all that kind of girl but there had been something about the way he’d swaggered over to her on the dance floor, put his arms around her belted waist and kissed her right at midnight.

  Her very first kiss.

  She’d been overwhelmed by it, but not unpleasantly so. Quite the opposite. When he pulled away, she’d noticed the red stain left on his mouth. Embarrassed, she raised her thumb to wipe it away, but he held her hand back.

  “Not like that,” he said. “Let’s rub it all off the old-fashioned way.”

  He’d kissed her again, harder, and she’d lost all sense of where they were or when they were or the fact that she didn’t even know his name.

  She learned, once he’d succeeded in removing all the color she’d so carefully applied, that he was called Artie Walker. He was shipping off to basic training in a few weeks and wanted a girl who would send perfumed letters to him when he left for the war.

  Mabel looked at her unlit cigarette again and snuffed it into the ashtray out of habit. The end of it cracked, not having been softened first by the flame of a match. Just as well. It made everything smell and she couldn’t afford them anyway. She returned to her desk and placed her fingers on the typewriter. The stack of correspondence to be written and mailed out was piling up and she shouldn’t let one letter, the one that had changed the course of her life, deter her from the job at hand.

  She knew she was lucky to have this position at all. Her diligence in typing school had paid off, earning a recommendation by her teacher to the owner of a moderately-sized textile company. Several of her friends were toiling in munitions factories. And each day posed a danger that an errant explosive would detonate and kill them all.

  She turned a fresh piece of paper in the typewriter and began crafting a letter from Mr. Oliver’s directions.

  November 13, 1942

  Clipper City Fabrics

  212 E. Fayette Street

  Baltimore, MD

  Dear Sire,

  Not Dear Sire, it should read Dear Sir. Though she had no doubt that most of the business owners she’d met would welcome the error. Kings of their own little kingdoms. Mr. Oliver and his ilk.

  She pulled the paper from the roller and crumpled it. A crisp new white one went into its place, because mistakes were not acceptable. Bosses like Mr. Oliver expected a pristine correspondence, by whatever means it had to happen, even as he demanded impossible typing speeds.

  It was a common plight among women. High heels, childrearing, letter-writing. All must be done to perfection, pain and ugliness hidden from view. Pearls on the neck, hair in a wispless bun. Don’t disgruntle the men who’d had such a trying day at the office by suggesting the women suffered, too.

  She sighed. Would it always be this way?

  Mabel’s fingers hovered over the keys, but her heart wasn’t in penning a missive about a faulty cotton shipment. It seemed so irrelevant when there were bigger issues in the world. Just once she’d like to write up something that mattered in a bigger way. But it was no use; newspapers weren’t looking for female reporters and she had no experience other than typing up Mr. Oliver’s complaints.

  She set the cotton letter aside and unfolded the one from Artie.

  She’d been so excited to hear from him. His correspondences had been all too few, surprising for one who’d professed his love for her in such a bold and public manner. But maybe that was the nature of fighting in a war: it took all your attention and she reasoned that he was doing a noble thing by being overseas.

  Yet plenty of her friends had received tomes and tomes from their own sweethearts. Wouldn’t an army cook have time to drop her a line once in awhile?

  She intended to read it one more time, still in disbelief that it was even real.

  Then she’d look for her matches on Mr. Oliver’s desk and burn it.

  Dearest Mabel,

  I can’t tell you where I am, or they’ll redact it, but it is England, as you know. Ugly time, but welcoming people. They’re so relieved to have the U.S. troops here. Thank you for the socks you knitted. They are too small for me, though, so I’ve passed them on to a buddy of mine.

  You have been a real sport, and being with you got me through the tough times leading up to training. I meant it when I said that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you and that we would marry when I return. In the little church in Towson where my grandparents exchanged their own vows.

  But war changes a man, and the thought of fighting makes him ponder all sorts of things he might not have otherwise. Though I’ve only been here for five months, it might as well be five years. Every day could be my last, and it is cause to reevaluate what is truly important.

  And what is important to me is that I have fallen in love. An English girl named Ellie Tate. Her family owns a pub in the nearest town. I’d go to drown out the sounds of the battlefield whenever I could and as it happens, I also lost myself in her attentions. I’ve asked her to marry me and she’s said yes. I want her to have my grandmother’s wedding ring. The one I gave to you. You deserve something much bigger anyway and from someone who can love you more.

  I regret that it is not me after all and I hope it doesn’t cause you too many tears. You’re swell and I think we could have made a good life together. But I’ve found something else—someone else—instead.

  If you can put some extra postage on the package, it might get here a bit faster. I’ll send you some money for it when I can.

  Fondly,

  Artie

  Naming her felt, somehow, like an additional injury. Provoking an image of the girl who would wear the ring that Mabel would undoubtedly send. Because as much as she would prefer to sell it and pay off some long overdue accounts, she would not let her anger toward Artie rob her of the principles that were dearest to her. He’d already taken too much.

  Not everything, though. Thankfully. Mabel wasn’t so unwise as to let his entreaties about how long he’d be away sway her firm belief that certain intimacies belonged to the proper time: after the vows were spoken.

  Maybe Miss Tate had no such hesitations.

  Her friends had warned her. Ginger most of all. They’d disliked Artie from the first moment at the dance. They’d cautioned her it was much too forward of him to have kissed her like he did, deaf to her protestations that it was romantic.

  It had been a common disagreement as their courtship continued, Ginger always insisting that he didn’t treat her as he ought. But her friend had admitted her wrong judgment of Artie when he gave Mabel his grandmother’s wedding ring.

  And now this.

  It wasn’t enough to rip it into shreds.

  Mabel set the stack of letters aside and carried Artie’s into Mr. Olive
r’s office.

  Surely, the matches would be there.

  .

  CHAPTER TWO

  MR. OLIVER’S DESK was an impossible mess.

  He demanded that his employees keep immaculate work areas. He wanted to see pens in cups, typewriters perfectly parallel to the edges, telephone cords untangled.

  “We have an image to maintain,” he’d say, insisting that the orderliness of the main room would be seen by current clients and prospective ones. He never invited them back to his office, though. He always met anyone important in a conference room. Void of clutter. Void of life.

  Not that his office was a bastion of vibrancy. He kept his curtains nearly shut, letting in only a strand of sunlight from each of them, casting stripes that cut across the room. The lamps were dim, the couch made of dark brown leather. No wonder he wore thick glasses. Mabel was only nineteen years old, probably fifty years his junior, and even she had to strain her eyes to see anything.

  Maybe he was some kind of owl. Or rat. Nocturnal.

  She closed the door behind her and opened one set of curtains enough so that she could see.

  The view was unremarkable and she had to hand it to him that there wasn’t much to look at beyond the panes. The scenery was as stale as the air in the room. But the light was welcome. She picked up piles of papers and books scattered on the desk, as well as long strips of accounting receipts that could be wrapped around a Christmas tree if the Scrooge so chose.

  She’d made her way through nearly all of it when she finally found the book of matches that he’d taken. She knew it was hers—it was red with a gold-embossed logo from her favorite bookstore on East Lombard—If the Book Fits. It was doubtful that her employer had ever visited a place as charming as that.

  Mabel pulled Artie’s letter from her pocket again and held it between her fingers as she slid the wooden stick against the striker. The flame burst to life before dwindling. It filled the space with the distinct smell of smoke that reminded her of the fireplace of her childhood, back when they had a little bungalow and before Pops took to drinking.

  But that was so many years ago, its memory faded into mere scent. She could no longer recall the exact color of the bricks or the particular grains on the wood of the mantle. Only a photograph of her atop it along with those of her parents and brothers.

  She heard a noise outside the door, a familiar shuffling that could only be her boss. She blew the match out and stuffed the letter back into her pocket. As Mr. Oliver turned the handle, she clutched the curtains and closed them to the exact width they’d been before.

  “Girl!” he said as he entered the room. He’d never bothered to learn her name since she was as interchangeable to him as the last and the next. But he always called her Miss Sullivan when a client was around, though it was not anything like her own. Hers was Hartley.

  “Mr. Oliver,” she answered. He reminded her a bit of the pictures she’d seen of Winston Churchill. Balding, white hair, overweight, gruff.

  “What are you doing there and why do I smell smoke?”

  “I was looking for the Casey file, and I saw a cockroach scurry past the desk. So I lit a match in the hopes of shooing it away.”

  She set her jaw tight, hoping that such a ridiculous lie would hold up. It was not in her nature to tell a tale, but something about him always made her feel uncomfortable and she didn’t feel like explaining further. He wouldn’t want to hear about her personal life, nor did she care to share it.

  “There are no cockroaches in this building other than the boys in the mailroom who never get my packages to me on time.”

  His eyes held hers and she knew she’d be stuck there until she told the truth.

  “I—I was going to burn a letter.”

  “One of mine? Why would you do that?”

  Mr. Oliver walked toward her and set his briefcase on his chair. His nose was beet red. From the cold? Or from drinking? Pops’ was often a similar shade, with angry little capillaries winding around like a road map.

  “No, it’s not one of your letters. It’s something of mine. I was in here looking for my matches.”

  He raised a fist and coughed into it. Phlegmy.

  “Must be some letter if you want to get rid of it so thoroughly.”

  And then all she’d held in for days bubbled up. Here of all places. In front of crusty old Mr. Oliver. Mabel pursed her lips trying to hold back the tears that would not relent. But to her embarrassment, they took their own counsel and before she could run out of the room, they poured out. Her shoulders shook and she buried her face in her hands. She bent forward. Surely her cosmetics were running down her face, adding to her humiliation at giving in to such vulnerability here in his office.

  “Dear, oh, dear,” he said. His voice sounded softer than she would have expected. “What could be so bad as to bring on those kinds of tears?”

  “My fiancé.”

  He sighed, slumping his shoulders. “Oh no, did you get the telegram? Has he been taken by this dreadful war?”

  Not even the stodgiest old man could be unmoved by the tragedy overseas and he was no exception.

  She shook her head, still not looking at him. “No. He has met another girl over in England and wants me to send my ring back.”

  He grunted.

  “Is that all?”

  “Is that all?” she repeated after him, appalled that he could consider it such a trifling thing. “He’s broken my heart.” Even as she said the words, they indeed sounded trivial. A failed romance was the least casualty among many. But that didn’t mean her pain wasn’t real or that her stakes weren’t higher.

  Marrying Artie would have given her a future when everything else had been taken away.

  Loss had its own language, usually an unspoken one. And Mabel was fluent in it.

  “There, there,” he said. “You’re right.”

  Mr. Oliver stepped forward and pulled Mabel into himself. Her arms fell to her side, unsure of what to do. What an odd position to find herself in. He suddenly seemed more tender than she’d ever known him to be and she thought that this might be what it was like to have a grandfather. The kind who would nurture her wounded feelings, reassure her that everything would be all right.

  But she could not bring herself to embrace him back. This was still Mr. Oliver. The mailroom boy called him Olive-breath, and though it was not a fitting description, he hadn’t earned any flattering ones to take its place. It was impossible to see him as anything but the curmudgeon everyone knew him to be.

  She felt his wrinkled cheek next to hers. Her eyes looked around the room, still bewildered by the circumstance.

  Then he pulled away a bit, turned his face and kissed her. On the lips. Only once, but he lingered there, and she was too stunned to move. Maybe he took that as some kind of silent agreement because he pressed a little harder. He didn’t hurt her, didn’t force her, but he stood there, his fat lips pressed against her quivering ones. It was like watching something at the cinema: as if it wasn’t happening to her and she was merely an observer.

  But when he put his arms back around her, it reminded her of how Artie had done the very same thing. She didn’t know what she’d done to invite either situation, but all she could think to do now was to run.

  Run like she should have when all her friends warned her about Artie.

  Easier this time because everything, just everything about Mr. Oliver doing this was wrong.

  She pulled away and hastened to the door, pausing to grab her purse and coat from her desk. Mercifully, she had no personal items to decorate her small space.

  Hers did not have the photographs of family or the vases of silk flowers to beautify the otherwise dreary space.

  Only her matchbook. Her silly little matchbook.

  She ran to the elevator and looked back. Mr. Oliver had not followed her, but the crack where she hadn’t closed the door all the way taunted her. Like he could step out any minute and call her back in.

  Not that s
he would go. But she didn’t want to see him and his old Winston Churchill face. Not now, not ever.

  The elevator was too slow. She couldn’t stand there and wait for it to rescue her like some mechanical knight.

  She would rescue herself.

  She raced down the hall and pushed open the door to the stairwell. It was fourteen stories down, but they seemed like nothing as she hurried to the bottom, two by two until she reached the lobby. People walked by as if nothing had just happened. As if the last shred of fabric in her already frayed world had not just unraveled. They’d had normal mornings where they’d poured their coffee and eaten their eggs and read stories in the newspaper about bad things happening to other people.

  Mabel stepped outside and glanced at the streetcar sign. If she took the bus named Route 20, it would end seven blocks away from her tiny apartment, north of here. But many stopped here at this downtown location and she would take whichever came first. She saw a cloud of exhaust surround one as it approached. It was a Route 11. She had no idea where it went; it could go to Timbuktu for all she cared. She didn’t want to stand on this sidewalk with these people who carried on with their days not knowing that hers had turned black. Again.

  And she didn’t want Mr. Oliver to come looking for her.

  Mabel boarded the 11-line streetcar and found an empty bench in the third row. She rested her head against the window, barely noticing the dirt encrusted around its edges. As it pulled away toward the next street, she released a breath that she must have been holding all this time.

  Safe.

  She reached into her pocket for her cigarettes but felt only pieces of lint and the wrapper of a butterscotch candy. The desk. She’d left them on top. No matter, though. She was done with all that. The next girl could have them. The next Miss Sullivan.

  She envied whoever that girl would be; it was a good job. Leaving would mean that Mabel might have to work in a munitions factory like her friends because she would never receive a recommendation letter after running out like this. It had all been too good to last. Maybe she wasn’t meant for anything more and had dreamed of bigger things in vain.