Unmentionables

by Laurie Loewenstein

  At dawn, Helen had a neatly written draft. She located the newspaper’s address on the masthead of the edition, as yet unread, that she’d picked up two nights before.

  The Women’s Weekly Gazette occupied a ground-floor space in a respectable brick commercial building. The latest edition was taped to the glass. Helen examined the lead story. Under the headline Women Workers Lauded ran a lengthy article in very small type, illustrated with a smudged drawing of two women, one saying, Ha ha, in a speech bubble. Through narrowed eyes, she read the piece, larded with typos and poorly written. She scanned the remaining pages, her lips puckered as if she’d just smelled something rank.

  The lights were on inside. One worker, whose skirt was smeared with grease, was indiscriminately jamming a crowbar in the sheetfed press. The other was bent over a type case, laboriously plucking out one letter at a time, then balancing each on a composing stick. When Helen shut the door, both women flinched. The typesetter dropped the stick. Lead bits skittered across the floor.

  “We’re closed,” said the woman at the press. “If you want to take out an ad, you’ll have to come back tomorrow.” The woman turned back to press. The typesetter dropped to her hands and knees, and began picking up letters.

  Helen set her mouth firmly. “I have an article I’d like to submit.”

  The press woman sighed loudly, strode toward the counter. “We’re not accepting unsolicited pieces at this time.”

  Helen’s glance took in the broken press, the scattered type. These women don’t have the vaguest idea of how to run a newspaper. She pinched back her unkind thought. “My article is about women in the workplace. It would expand your readership beyond league members who are just focused on the vote. There are a lot of working women out there who are waging other battles.”

  The presswoman crossed her arms, refusing to be won over. “I don’t know who you are—”

  Helen broke in with her name, adding, “And I’m a member of the league.”

  The woman continued, “As I said, I don’t know who you are but Mrs. McCormick, our patron, is quite satisfied with the editorial content. She should know, since her husband owns the Chicago Tribune. If you have a comment, I suggest you bring it up at the next general meeting.”

  Helen snatched up her handwritten pages and jammed them into her handbag. As she shut the door she saw the typesetter tearfully attempting to rebalance the bits of type on the composing stick.

  * * *

  At the Tribune’s central counter in the tiled lobby, she asked for Mrs. McCormick.

  “She just left,” said the switchboard operator. “In fact, you passed her.” The operator gestured toward a robust middle-aged woman with a towering Gibson Girl hairstyle climbing into the backseat of a highly polished motorcar.

  “Thanks,” Helen said, hurrying toward the door.

  A chauffeur was closing the passenger door when she reached the sidewalk.

  “Could you wait just a moment? I’d like to talk with Mrs. McCormick.”

  The chauffeur was an elderly man with stooped shoulders and heavy bags under his eyes. “You’ll have to move along, miss. She is on her way to an appointment.”

  “But this is important!” Helen glimpsed Mrs. McCormick nonchalantly surveying their exchange from behind the glass. Helen held up a finger and mouthed, One minute.

  The publisher’s wife rolled down the window. In the fruity tone of a patrician she asked, “Yes?”

  Helen stepped up quickly. “I’d just like a moment of your time. It’s about the league’s weekly. It is only in its infancy, I understand that, but it could be so much better.”

  “And you are . . . ?”

  “I’m Helen Garland.” She extended her hand.

  Mrs. McCormick shook it. The bones of her well-tended hands were large and strong.

  Helen continued: “My stepfather owns a paper down in Emporia. I grew up in the newsroom. I know how to set type, how to run a press. And I was editor of my high school newspaper.”

  Mrs. McCormick unlatched the door and waved Helen inside. “I have a moment.”

  Helen ignored the butterflies in her stomach and slid across the mohair seat. She pulled the Women’s Weekly Gazette from her purse. “First of all, the content. These articles are fluff and deadly boring.” She paused.

  “Go on,” Mrs. McCormick said.

  “The paper should be educating its readers. Giving them facts and figures about the vote, and so much more. Women have gained positions once held only by men, but we’re paid less. As a matter of fact, I’ve written an article about women in the labor force and was hoping the Gazette might print it.”

  “We definitely should,” Mrs. McCormick said. She took the paper from Helen’s hands and leafed through it. “I’ve had some board members also complain to me about the number of typos.”

  Helen nodded. “The typesetting needs work and so does the layout. If you hire me, I’ll give you a paper our organization can be proud of.”

  Mrs. McCormick was silent for a moment. After a time she folded the issue and laid it aside. “You’re absolutely right that the paper needs improvement. I’ll give you a chance as editor with those other two working under you.”

  Helen had not even realized that she was holding her breath. Now she exhaled loudly, resisting the urge to hug the woman. “Thank you for your confidence. I won’t let you down.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  NEW PLATFORM

  It has been two months since your last letter. Nothing since. I scan the papers every day for news of the Picardy region and the aftermath of the Spring Push and find only lists of casualties and accounts of roads clogged with soldiers and refugees. A lilac made a home in the alley behind the print shop. As I lay awake late into the night, the scent rescues me from gloomy thoughts.

  HEAVY SUMMER RAINS HAD TURNED many of the roads in northern France into fast-flowing creeks. Marian was within two miles of the American military hospital in Compiègne when the Red Cross truck she was driving sputtered and died in a submerged crossroads. Swearing, she tucked up the hem of her skirt and slid out. Water immediately engulfed her legs up to the knee, saturating her boots and heavy stockings. She slogged to the radiator, steadying herself along the truck’s body as her feet skidded on the mud below. The dark brown current swirled around her arm as she searched blindly for the crank. After a minute of fishing, her fingers gripped the familiar lever. She yanked. Nothing. She widened her stance. The flooded engine block refused to spark. She got in three more tries before her fingers were too cold to grip. She climbed behind the wheel, boots swamped, to wait for a ride. But no other vehicles emerged from the curtains of rain. After two hours she began the trudge toward town.

  For the past three months, since the dismemberment of the unit and Nezzie’s death, Marian had been hauling hospital supplies and visitors back and forth along the fifty miles between Paris and Compiègne. The city had once been a resort town, its graceful Pont Neuf arching over the River Oise attracting tourists. But that was before the bridge was dynamited by the Allies, to stop the German advance on Paris. While not as prone to breakdowns as old Lulu, the Red Cross truck brought its own set of headaches—primarily flabby belts that tended to fly off at a moment’s notice. Most days, she was on the road for twelve, fifteen, sometimes eighteen hours, depending on the number of malfunctions. That was fine with Marian. When her mind and body weren’t occupied with itineraries, inventories, and roadside repairs, she tended to dwell on Nezzie’s death, sinking into melancholia as inescapable as Picardy’s sucking, sticky mud. That had happened more than once and then she was no good for anything. Twice, four Red Cross nurses had resorted to lifting Marian from her bed and shoving her behind the wheel of the truck. She was learning to keep busy, so lately, when she wasn’t driving, she forced herself to the typewriter in the nurses’ lounge, tapping out her diary.

  It was late afternoon when, soaked to the bone, Marian finally mounted the marble steps of the city’s former library. Now it
served as a hospital as well as a dormitory for nurses and Red Cross volunteers. The hem of her uniform, filmed with mud, flapped against her calves and her boots squished noisily as she crossed the reading room’s parquet floor.

  At the reception desk, a nurse in a starched pinafore took down the details of the truck’s location and inventory. “You’ve got a visitor,” she said.

  Marian hadn’t had a guest for weeks. Not since Links, who was stationed at a canteen fifteen miles away, had hitched a ride in a louse-infested ambulance heading back toward the front. Links’s blue eyes were somber, and there was a hardness around the mouth that Marian hadn’t remember from before.

  Upon hearing she had a visitor on this day, the curtain rose on a fantasy that it was Nezzie. That somehow Links had got the information all wrong. That it had not been Nezzie who died in the crash but some other girl. Marian rushed through the maze of rooms that had once been the administrative offices of librarians, sublibrarians, and sub-sublibrarians. The Red Cross workers were housed in the basement, in what used to be the children’s department. She descended the stairs as fast as she could. The ankle had never healed right since it had been reinjured during the evacuation, and she now had a slight limp that appeared to be permanent.

  As Marian eagerly turned the corner from the stairs, she was not greeted with Nezzie’s shining face. Rather, it was the director, with a dour expression embossed on her mouth. She was seated on one of the room’s tiny, brightly painted chairs, her knees pressed uncomfortably against her chest.

  “What happened to you?”

  Marian couldn’t answer at first, she was so crushed. Finally she managed, “Let me change. I’ll be right back.”

  In the dormitory, Marian dejectedly peeled off the wet skirt, combinations, and stockings. She washed off the worst of the mud in the lavatory’s low sink and pulled on clothes, not much cleaner but at least dry. She splashed water on her face, willing herself not to cry in front of the director.

  When Marian returned, the woman was studying a framed watercolor of Jeanne d’Arc, sword raised and leading soldiers to victory.

  “Here to check up on me?” Marian asked. She’d assumed that reports of her bouts with paralyzing melancholy had filtered through the ranks.

  “No. But how are things going for you?”

  “Doing my best.”

  “I’m here for another reason. A new assignment.”

  From upstairs came the clang of a school bell. It signaled that an ambulance of wounded had pulled up in the library’s circular gravel drive. There was a clatter of heels from above: nurses and aides scurrying to unload the soldiers whose eyes were pain-glazed, whose bodies stank of sweat, shit, and the sweetish smell of rot.

  Both women remained silent for a moment.

  The director continued: “I have it on good authority, from an officer under Commander in Chief Philippe Pétain himself, that the war will be over by fall. Our boys are already pushing back hard. When that happens, our unit will resume work in Picardy. The task of rebuilding will be tremendous. I don’t need to tell you that. We’ll need thousands and thousands of dollars. Securing the goodwill of the American people, and their donations, will be vital.” From her pocket, the director pulled a wrinkled Chautauqua program. “I have here—oh my, you’ve changed these last six months!”

  She held out the leaflet which featured a full-length photograph of Marian, standing in profile, caftan draped across her statuesque frame. It was true. Marian had lost at least sixty pounds. Last week, when she’d thought to glance in a mirror, she was surprised by the gaunt face, the dull hair.

  The director added, more kindly, “We all have.” She fingered the ropy cords at her neck. “I have recommended to the Fielding College Board that you join the Chautauqua Circuit this summer to spread the word about the unit’s work and collect contributions.”

  “Leave France? But I’m needed—”

  The director held up a hand. “A driver is needed. I can find other drivers. You’re uniquely qualified for this. It will mean returning to the States within the month. Fielding will make all the arrangements.”

  Marian froze. Leave France? Leave those fragile threads that connected her to the villages, the château, to Links, The Gish? And to Nezzie? Most importantly to Nezzie. She couldn’t. It would be unbearable.

  The director bent to remove her clipboard from a chair and sat down. Seeing the sheaf of neatly printed lists, Marian was reminded of all the precious goods with which the unit had stocked its households during the winter and spring. Iron bedsteads, library books, classroom slates, galoshes, cooking pots, sewing kits, bolsters, beet seeds. All those necessities that were now likely confiscated or smashed to pieces or ground into the mud by the soldiers of one side or the other. Everything that would need to be reprovisioned. And all that would take money.

  Marian slowly nodded her assent. “But I’ll rejoin the unit after the war?”

  “Of course.” The director stood. “I’ll write the college trustees today. It’ll take a couple of weeks for me to arrange your passage back.”

  After the director left, Marian paced around the little chairs and tables, her agitated mind jumping from one thing to another. There was the Packard to get out of storage. It would need a complete tune-up before she dared take it on the back roads. At the thought of driving those dusty miles her mind leaped to Emporia . . . and to Deuce. Would the town be on her itinerary? The Prairieland Agency tended to shift its performers around each season. Should she request it? Did she want to? In the end, she decided to leave it to fate. Some things were out of her control and she understood that now.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  GOING DOWN THE LINE

  MARIAN SHIPPED OUT FOR THE STATES in late June. In France, the German troops were in full retreat. Spirits were high among her fellow travelers, overriding the continued risk of attack by U-boats. Most of the passengers were wounded doughboys, riddled with shrapnel or taken down by mustard gas. Besides Marian, there were only three civilians on board. A Belgian couple of advanced age had miraculously appeared on the dock the morning of departure with tickets and passports but no luggage. They spent the entire crossing huddled together, speaking only to one another and sharing cigarettes; inhaling, then passing to the other. The third was an American businessman with the stern face of a New England preacher and an overstuffed valise he never let out of his sight, tucking it between his legs at the dinner table.

  After an uneventful crossing, the ship anchored at the White Star Pier. There had been a bomb scare the night before and the dock was crawling with police. Two German sympathizers had been discovered planting an explosive against the wall of a Newark munitions plant across the Hudson River. Victory seemed imminent, but no one as yet felt fully safe.

  The moment she stepped off the gangplank, Marian was cast among dense knots of soldiers in khaki and brass buttons, some flowing in her direction but most heading toward the boats. Once inside the terminal, the crush grew worse as shouts and yells bounced off the tiled surfaces. She made her way quickly to the row of telephones on the far wall, only to be stopped short by the long lines in front of each booth. She took her place at the end, toeing her traveling satchel along as she advanced. Twenty minutes later, she closed the folding doors and asked to be connected with Chicago. Jim Zellner, her old contact at the Chautauqua Prairieland Agency, was no longer there, but a Mrs. Stanley could speak with her “in a tick.”

  Marian was obliged to deposit two more nickels in the phone before Mrs. Stanley’s voice, accompanied by static that sounded as if a violin bow was being raked across the receiver, entered her ear. Once pleasantries were exchanged, Mrs. Stanley quickly got down to business.

  “We’re swapping you into a slot currently held by a chalk talker. He’s not too happy about it but someone from Fielding College must have clout because you’re in. You’re scheduled for a town called Wapakoneta in western Ohio next week. That’s your opener.”

  “Starting in a wee
k doesn’t give me much time to get my auto ready,” Marian said. “I only just landed. In fact, I’m still at the terminal. The car’s been on blocks for almost a year.”

  Mrs. Stanley’s voice was clipped. “I understand this is a push, but the chalk talker was so angry to lose his place he walked out. We’re filling in as best we can right now, but you must be in Ohio next week. From there, you cross over into Indiana, and . . .” A pause ensued. Marian imagined Mrs. Stanley running a finger across a map. “And hit, oh, I’d say twelve bergs before crossing into Illinois. That brings you to early August. The remainder of your itinerary is pretty much a straight shot across Illinois.”

  Marian tried to jot down the dates and places in her notebook, balanced on a shallow wooden shelf mounted in the corner. Someone had carved Nuts to You on it.

  “And you finish on September 4 in Hamilton, right on the Mississippi. Did you get all that?”

  A youth in uniform, his round face suggesting he was not more than sixteen, tapped on the glass beside Marian’s shoulder. She held up her index finger, indicating she needed another minute. She turned back to the receiver but hesitated. In her ear, Mrs. Stanley was repeating her question.

  “Yes, I got it.” She traced her pen along the N in Nuts. “And those towns in Illinois. Is Emporia one?”

  “Um. Let me look.” After a moment, Mrs. Stanley said, “Yes, toward the end of the month.”

  Fizzy water flooded Marian’s veins. “Could you give me the exact date?”

  “I’ll be mailing the entire schedule to you later this week.”

  Marian clutched the pen with rigid fingers. “Yes, I understand. But I’d like to know now.”