Instead, I took on the challenge presented and to my astonishment my very first article was published in a local woman’s magazine.
A victory for women—ladies, you can kiss good-bye to that hourglass shape of the nineties and say hello to the longer- lined, over-laced corsets that support the spine and abdomen. No more losing your minds! Now women can have both health and curvaceous, decorative fashion at the same time.
Shortly after my first article appeared, I witnessed the power of the wardrobe. The daughter of our neighbors was between plain and outright ugly, but one day she went out wearing the most lavish ball gown, and it converted her into a princess, sparing her from life as a spinster. It had been worth her mother’s investment and made my writing about fashion meaningful. Maybe there was more to fashion than I thought.
I went on to write many more articles, including ones about the feminists who were influencing women’s dress behind the scenes. Women were starting to wear suits, shirts, hard collars, and ties—typically worn only by men—and these same women were working their way into professions historically belonging to men.
Of course, I wrote articles on the bicycling craze because it was this contraption that turned sport clothing into fashion. No more wearing full wool costumes covering the body in extreme heat just to preserve modesty.
I wrote fast and furiously for the next several years, turning the 1903 opening of the New York Stock Exchange’s first building at 10 Broad Street into a fashion story, and the opening of the Manhattan Bridge that same year into a style story, and the 1904 start of the construction on the Grand Central Station into a trend story. And when a woman was arrested for smoking a cigarette while riding in an open automobile in New York City, I was there, jotting down notes concerning everything that woman was wearing, from head to toe. And when the New York subway opened in 1905, I rode along with the 350,000 people on the 9.1-mile tracks, all the while taking notes about what people were wearing.
When I received news that my grandmother Dahlia was on her deathbed with pneumonia, I immediately made arrangements to return to Kentucky. I couldn’t imagine the world without her. She was like a horseshoe crab, living on this earth for what seemed like centuries, way before dinosaurs even. She had always been in my life.
But when I saw her lying there in the bed with her eyes open but not seeing anything, I knew it was her time, and I feared I had arrived too late. But then she started to talk, and the things she told me made me wish I had missed my train and arrived a day late so I wouldn’t have to hear it.
“That boy, rather, that man from the island showed up here in search of you.”
“What man?”
“Jaden, his name was. He showed up at our door six months after you left for New York with Leo.”
“No!”
“Yes. I told him you fell in love and got married and moved off to the East Coast. I didn’t say where exactly. I figured if a man is nervy enough to come hunting you down all the way from Florida, he’d find a way to tear you apart from your marriage.”
“No,” I said. “No.” It was all I could say. But I knew my heart, wherever it was, was kicked by her words, and it probably left a trail, a track like no other on the floor of the sea.
“He probably would have been a nice one to marry,” she continued.
“Remember when I once told you to marry a man that loves you more than you love him? Any man who’s going to hunt you down in Kentucky surely loves you more. Are you all right? You look pale. Ava … Ava?”
I think I felt more like death that day than Dahlia did, and when she passed later that evening I begged the Lord to take me, too. But instead I returned to New York where I poured every ounce of my mind into my work in an effort to bury the pain I felt for Jaden. Hearing news that he had come searching for me was too much to bear. I couldn’t release my love for him, and it flourished deep within me, in that most precious of worlds, like the intricately woven interior of a seashell, the inside kingdom that every woman has, near her beating heart or its former site. I regretted marrying a man for money and instead wished I had chosen another route of escape. If I wanted to make changes in my life, why hadn’t I done whatever was necessary to pursue a writing career on my own? I didn’t see it as an option back then.
I had casually mentioned to Leo weeks later that there had been a childhood sweetheart, but I stopped there, never telling him that my heart still beat off the coast of Sanibel. Then, one summer day, I walked into his office suggesting that the two of us take a mini-trip to Florida where he had never been. He said nothing but flipped open his maroon account book and studied it religiously. He then closed his eyes and muttered calculations under his breath, then opened his eyes, turned the page of his maroon book, looked up at the calendar, and counted days.
I watched him perform his calculated ritual, aware that I had married a devout man, a worshipper of money. It was he who taught me the power of the green gods. “In God we trust,” was his favorite prayer, but occasionally he prayed deeper, and to the same God I prayed to. Leo closed the calendar and looked at me. “A trip to Florida is not going to happen right now,” he said. “Besides, it’s summer. I have no interest in Florida in the summer.”
I stared at him but said nothing.
“What’s with that pout?”
“Sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” he said.
“Why can’t we go to Florida?”
“Florida has too many mosquitoes in the summer. If you want to go somewhere else, we will. How about Paris? San Francisco? How about a place you’ve never been before, one we can discover together and call our own?”
I threw my arms around him and kissed him on the lips. There were no bugles blowing when I kissed him, but this time I heard a peaceful anthem. I’d never been to Paris before. I’d never left this country.
When Leo and I returned from Paris, I put my mind to work overtime, and I was fast becoming known for my articles on fashion, all the while wearing the latest and the greatest, while my husband was working on advertising campaigns that promoted the fads that I was wearing. We were acquiring more wealth for ourselves, while creating a reputation and social existence beyond my wildest dreams, and working morning, noon, and night. Nothing was going to stop us, not even that first speed law passed in New York State, mandating a maximum speed of ten miles per hour in populated districts.
Lydia
I put Ava’s pages away and glanced up at the stone water tower that looked so out of place in the midst of a steel and glass city that was now sparkling in hues of orange and gold from the descending September sun.
I was glad to learn that Ava was surviving. Her spirit was indomitable, and I was glad to hear of her rising forth from a potentially disastrous choice she had made.
A chill in the air sent geese running up and down my arms, leaving behind their bumpy tracks on my skin; so, I got up and walked to the nearest store that sold bicycles. There, a red one caught my eye, and I purchased it on the spot. It was a poorly thought-out purchase and meant I’d be pedaling instead of eating lunch for the next several months. Unless, of course I’d give in one of these days and let Ethan pay for me. But I preferred paying for myself. My old self-perception, of the best-dressed little girl that got everything handed to her, had long since faded away. I now had to work hard for everything, including the clothes on my back and they were nothing like the fashions Ava was wearing.
“I’d prefer you to take a bus to work,” Ethan said one morning as I put my backpack on and mounted my bicycle. “It’s dangerous for you to be riding in rush-hour traffic. A woman shouldn’t risk her life like that and …”
I whipped my hand through the air and slapped him across the face. I wasn’t just swatting at Ethan, but at all the men throughout history who held women back from biking and voting and working in the careers of their choice and from doing all they wanted to do in life. Still, none of that justified my slapping poor Ethan. He was just one man who did
n’t want me getting hurt on my bike.
“I am sorry,” I said, touching the red area of his cheek. “I can’t believe I did that. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“It didn’t hurt,” he claimed. “But don’t ever do it again.”
“Of course not,” I said, ashamed I did it once and disgusted he thought I’d ever do it again.
“Why’d you slap me?”
“You were trying to tell me I shouldn’t ride my bike to work when I think it’s a perfectly fine thing for a woman to do.”
“Your choice,” he said. “I’m sorry I worry about you and care for you and love you like I do.”
“You do?” I gasped. “You love me?”
“Yes. I have from the moment you bumped into me and knocked all my papers to the floor. I never told you this, but I could hardly get you off my mind after the Republican convention, and the worst part was, I had a major deadline to meet, and I’ve never in all my professional years come close to missing a deadline like I did that night.”
“But yours was the next day’s cover story.”
“I know. See what you almost did? Can you imagine the front page of the Windy City Press blank?” He smiled. “You turn me reckless, Lydia Isleworth, and I kind of like it.”
His words that day flattered me, but I continued riding to and from work each day, and as I pedaled my way through the city, I appreciated for the first time the simpler strides that women of history had made, things that in present times are taken for granted. Who would want to live in a world where bicycling was only for men? If I could say a huge “thank you” to Ava for going against the stares and ridicule and for riding that bicycle anyway, I would, for I enjoyed my own riding time immensely.
But my appreciation for Ava didn’t pardon her from being a criminal in my eyes. And as I rode along Lakeshore Boulevard one Sunday afternoon, my stomach growling from not being able to afford any lunch, I resented her. She had married for money. We were nothing alike, I decided. We were both writers now, but I had done it on my own. I didn’t have a wealthy husband to get me what I wanted. And I wasn’t the type to need such a man. Neither was she. She was the girl who once vowed to never marry a man. And when she fell in love with Jaden, I forgave her and fell in love myself, but now, to have married for money, it was an act that defied gravity and all that was natural for a woman like her.
I was doing everything myself. I didn’t want any man paying or paving my way, and I forgave my father for leaving me nothing. I was stronger for doing it all on my own. Ethan and I were dating, but I never asked him for any help in advancing me at the paper and he never offered. And suddenly, as I was pedaling down Delaware, the revelation that Ethan never offered me any help turned me suspicious. Maybe he was one of them—one of those men who didn’t want his woman rising in her career. Maybe he wanted me staying put where I was in the obituaries. And come to think of it, even marriage would be better. He did say he loved me, and when a man says those three words, it usually means he wants to marry a woman, and typically that means she must quit work and stay home. I had questions for Ethan. I had to figure out what he was thinking.
Then, again, I didn’t want him knowing what I was thinking, which was nothing close to marriage. Marrying him when my heart was still dancing with someone else would be a crime, and that would put me in prison with Ava.
I knew it was illogical, sad, crazy maybe, to be harboring desires for someone I hadn’t seen in so long, but I couldn’t help it. As I pedaled alongside Lake Michigan, I tried figuring how I might slowly end things with Ethan. I did care for him. But I loved someone else. I can’t help that, can I? Besides, it was getting dangerous for me to view marriage as a place I prefer over the obituary department. And then I knew what I had to do so I reached deep down into my jar of wisdom and pulled out some words my father once spoke.
“It is time to accelerate my career,” I said. “Yes, that’s what I need to focus on right now—my career!”
XXXIV
CHICAGO
1963
THREE YEARS LATER
Lydia
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA RECOVERED AFTER Hurricane Donna, winds averaging nearly one hundred and thirty-five miles per hour, passed directly over Fort Myers Beach and Fort Myers, and life went on.
The next three years were fascinating ones for me, a female journalist writing her way out of obituaries and into the land of the living. When I accepted the position covering womens’ issues, I feared I’d become meshed in recipes or rounded shoes versus pointed shoes, like Ava, but that was not the case.
My first assignment was covering a controversial historical milestone for women taking control of their own fertility. It came in 1960, and the headline for my story was as follows:
U.S. FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION APPROVES FIRST ORAL CONTRACEPTIVES FOR MARKETING IN THE UNITED STATES
My story, which ran on the front page, described how women had been taking substances by mouth to prevent pregnancy as far back as four thousand years!
And three years later, in 1963, I was still the journalist following the topic when another monumental moment arrived. The headline for that story read:
MAJOR PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY INTRODUCES ITS FIRST BIRTH CONTROL PILL
I liked writing about the smaller issues, but kept getting assigned to larger ones.
EQUAL PAY ACT MAKES IT ILLEGAL FOR COMPAINES TO PAY DIFFERENT RATES TO WOMEN AND MEN WHO DO THE SAME WORK
That story got me a pay raise and motivated me to work longer and harder than I ever had before. I was driven, and each story I was assigned to cover made me feel like I was pedaling my way over mountains, sweating profusely as I went but getting stronger and more informed and better at mastering my craft. My mind had never trained so hard for anything before.
And when the government took its first steps toward addressing the issue of inequality of the sexes, I was the one to cover it. When President Kennedy formed a Commission on the Status of Women chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, who was in her seventies, I was the one to interview her.
And when Kennedy issued a presidential order demanding that the civil service make hiring decisions “solely on the basis of ability” and “without regard to sex,” I threw my arms up and shouted a personal “hooray” for everyone in the office to hear, and then I wrote and submitted my story.
Maybe it was the jumping jacks I did and the cheering, or not having used a single vacation day in three years, but after turning it in, I felt exhausted and weak, as if I had just tumbled down the side of a mountain and was dying from having overexerted myself on the way up.
I sat crouched over my desk one August morning, hardly able to lift the coffee mug to my mouth. I now drank five strong cups a day, and anything less gave me a pounding headache. Today was the day I upped my dose to six cups, and as the mug touched my lips, I felt my heart double step within me. My heart was something I hadn’t felt in a long time.
I laid my head down on my desk and tried to rest a minute, but from that angle I spotted the seashell I had brought to work back on my first day in obits. It was lying buried under a year’s worth of papers, with only its tip sticking out. I reached for it and pulled out the rolled-up obituary I had written for Abigail and stuffed inside. Then I put the shell to my ear.
There were all sorts of noises in the office, phones ringing and meetings going on, but I listened deeply as if trying to hear my own soul, and then I heard the sea and in it the words of Abigail, tidbits of wisdom bobbing up and down in the water like buoys for me to grab onto. I remembered her saying a woman is made up of a heart, soul, and mind. I no longer felt my heart, and I was trying to get in tune with my soul. It was my mind working overtime that was drowning out the other elements, but I didn’t know what to do about it. And now, due to overexertion, I feared my mind might be shutting down.
“Lydia,” said my friend Jane. She covers women and politics. “Hearing anything good in there?”
I jumped in my seat, dropping the shell onto t
he floor. “I need to get away, Jane. I desperately need a vacation.”
“Maybe if you hadn’t given all your vacation days away as holiday presents last year, you could take one for yourself.”
It was true. I had been like jolly old Saint Nicholas, handing over my vacation days one by one, and now I felt regret for having put intensity and showmanship into where I was now. “I do have a couple of days left. I could take a long weekend. That should be enough.”
“Where will you go?” she asked.
“Florida.”
“Sun and beach?”
“Yeah,” I lied. In truth, I had to release my heart at last from Josh’s ludicrous grip. It wasn’t fair. It was weird and eerie and psycho and basically abnormal and not at all grounded in reality that some guy from long ago still had a hold on it today, and worse, he probably didn’t even know or want to be holding onto it. I was an intelligent woman and aware of all of these things, which is why I cringed at the thought of my pathetic heart, with its valves and muscles stubbornly holding onto Josh for dear life, refusing in an annoying way to let go of him.
I stooped over and picked the seashell up off the floor and tossed it back onto my cluttered desk, fully aware that I was as obsessed over Josh as I once had been over finding a Junonia shell. It was time to surrender. I shuffled into my boss’s office and told him my plans and that if I didn’t do this now, I’d soon be taking all sorts of sick days, mental ones. He gave me a solid nod, and I was free to go.
XXXV
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