Love Comes Calling

by Siri Mitchell

  “Was it the secretarial position?” She asked the question with a smile.

  “I don’t believe so, no.” I’d decided Janie didn’t want to be a secretary, hadn’t I? “Maybe . . . could you tell me what positions you have available and then I could decide?”

  The woman blinked as her smile disappeared. “I . . . suppose so. We have positions in the mailroom, and—”

  “I’m quite sure it wasn’t the mailroom.”

  “ . . . and in the typing pool and—”

  “Yes! That was the one.”

  “ . . . and on a private telephone exchange as a switchboard operator.”

  “Oh. Yes! That one too, only . . .” If this company asked the telephone company for a reference, they wouldn’t be able to give a good one. “Maybe . . . no. No. Just the position as a typist.”

  By this point she seemed to be regarding me with a suspicious tilt to her head. “Would you like to fill in an application?” She asked the question as if she were hoping I would say no.

  “Yes, please.”

  She handed me one with a frown.

  I sat down on a rickety old chair in the corner to fill it out. As I was smoothing it out over my pocketbook, another girl came in. She asked for an application for the typing position as well.

  The woman who had frowned at me smiled at her and offered her an application.

  I raised my pencil. “Excuse me. I was here first.”

  The woman hardly deigned to look at me. “We’re taking applications all week long.”

  I smiled the smile my mother always used when she was determined to get her way. “I’m sure Janie’s going to get it, though.” I looked at the girl who’d just come in. “So there’s no need for you to apply.”

  “Please.” The woman was waving the application toward the girl. “Take it.”

  The girl snatched it out of her hand, took one last look at me, and left.

  It wouldn’t do for the position to be filled before Janie returned. Now then. I addressed myself to the application. Name.

  Well, that was easy.

  E-l-l-i-s-E-t-o-n.

  Oh dear. I ought to have put down Janie’s name. I snuck a peek at the frowning woman. She’d gone back to whatever it was she’d been doing. I hated to have to ask her for an eraser, but I didn’t have one on my pencil.

  “Excuse me. Do you have an eraser I can borrow?”

  Her frown appeared once more and then immediately deepened, but she placed one at the corner of her desk.

  “I’ve put the wrong name down on this one.”

  “The wrong name . . . ?”

  “Yes. You see, I’m filling it out for a friend.”

  “I don’t think that’s allowed.”

  “But Janie is completely different than I am. She’s a very nice girl. And quiet. Very neat and tidy and she always says please and thank you.” That was the mark of a well-raised child in my mother’s opinion. “She would be perfect for your job.”

  “I suppose . . . if she’s not you. Does she have experience as a typist?”

  “Well . . . I don’t know, really. I don’t think she has. But she might. You’ll have to ask her on the first day.”

  “I’m afraid without the requisite experience, she won’t have a first day. Didn’t you read the advertisement?”

  Yes, in fact, I had. But I’d decided experience didn’t really matter. If they could just meet Janie, they’d like her. Everyone did. I took the eraser and made the correction.

  This time, I filled it out properly . . . although I didn’t know what address to give, so I put in my own. And I didn’t know when Janie had been born and I had no idea what prior jobs she’d held—and I really didn’t think I ought to put down the switchboard job—so I just left all of that blank. Then I put my gloves back on, slipped my pocketbook over my wrist, and turned in the application.

  “But—” The woman turned the page over and then flipped it back. “It’s not filled out!”

  “Janie can fill in the rest once she returns.”

  “But I don’t know anything about her!”

  I pointed to the application form. “Janie Winslow. That’s her. Right there.”

  I was secretly hoping it would turn out I’d done Janie a favor. Maybe she hadn’t liked her job, and if she hadn’t, now she’d have the time to look for a new one. So . . . maybe she wouldn’t hate me after all. Maybe she’d end up thanking me. But filling out applications was much more difficult than I had imagined. The first woman seemed to be right; you weren’t allowed to apply for a job on a friend’s behalf. After that became apparent, I simply went round collecting applications for Janie to fill out herself later in the evening. Experience seemed quite important to everyone, and I didn’t really know if Janie had any in very much of anything. At one of the schools that had advertised for teachers, I asked if it was absolutely necessary to have a teaching certificate.

  “I’m afraid we can’t hire anyone who doesn’t have one.”

  “But I just know my friend would make a wonderful teacher.”

  “That’s what the certificate is meant to do. It ensures that anyone who gets one is, in fact, a wonderful teacher. I’m sure you understand we can’t hire just anyone.”

  “Janie Winslow isn’t just anyone. She’s about as kind and loyal and . . . and good as anyone you’d ever want to meet!”

  “I’m sure she is. But that still doesn’t mean we can hire her.”

  I had no idea it could be so discouraging to look for a job. And I wasn’t even looking for one for myself!

  Yet.

  A wave of absolute horror washed over me. I wasn’t looking for a job for myself now, but very soon I would be. Would it . . . would it be like this? Was everyone going to keep harping on experience and certificates and all those sorts of things? Would I be able to find anyone who’d be willing to take me at my word when I said I was a terrific actress?

  Everyone had to start somewhere.

  But if even Janie—who was smart, nice, and good—had trouble finding a job, who was going to hire me?

  28

  Janie came by the house later that afternoon just like she’d said she would. I embraced her and then hurried her up the back stairs to my bedroom and closed the door so we could talk.

  “Did you find your father?”

  She shook her head. “He’d left for the fishing grounds already and won’t be back until later in the summer.”

  “Then . . . you had to bury your mother by yourself?”

  She nodded.

  “All alone?” That was tragic! I moved to embrace her again, but she was straight-armed and stiff-bodied.

  “It was fine. It’s done. Thank you for filling in for me.”

  “You’re welcome. But . . . there’s something you should know, and I feel as if I should tell you, right now, before you say anything else.”

  She was standing there, blinking. “What is it?”

  “I . . . lost your job.”

  “You what?”

  “I lost your job.”

  “My—but—how?”

  “It wasn’t on purpose, but it’s all my fault. All of it.”

  Janie dropped onto my bed as if her bones had suddenly disintegrated. “I spent the last of my money on the train ticket.”

  “Well—here!” I went to my pocketbook and took her pay out of it. Which left me . . . nothing. But I’d lost her job, and she needed it far more than I did. “Here.” I placed it in her lap. “We got paid.”

  She offered it right back. “And I told you I would let you keep it.”

  “But I lost your job. You need the money more than I do.” Hollywood would just have to wait. I didn’t know how I’d tell my parents about failing the economics class, and I’d have to somehow find the courage to tell Griff I couldn’t accept his pin, but I couldn’t take Janie’s money. “It’s yours. Take it. And let’s get to work finding you another job. I went around the city this morning and got bunches of applications for you.” I t
ook them from my desk and set them beside her. “For typist positions. And librarians. I tried to pick up some for teaching positions, but you have to have a teaching certificate first, so I didn’t think that would work. . . .”

  “But there’s nothing else I can do but answer telephones! It’s the only thing I’ve ever done.”

  “Well, to tell you the truth, that’s what I thought. And I was going to apply for a position for a private switchboard, but then I thought they might contact the telephone company, and if the telephone company had to say they’d fired you, then I thought maybe you oughtn’t apply for another switchboard job.”

  “So . . . you lost me my job and now I can’t apply for another one?!”

  I sat down beside her. “There must be something. Some job you can do. I mean, you’re so, so. . . . good and everything. All the time!” It had never ceased to amaze me.

  “That’s not a skill, Ellis. It’s a personality trait.”

  “Then we’ll just have to figure out what job needs someone who’s good.” I thought for a few moments, and then I had a brilliant inspiration. “Sunday school teacher! You’d be an excellent Sunday school teacher.”

  “You don’t get paid for that.”

  “I really wish you could be a regular teacher. I think you’d be really good at it.”

  “I would love to go to college for a certificate. I’ve always wanted to go to college, but I don’t have the money.” She got up from the bed and walked toward the door. “You’re no help at all. You lost my job, and now I have nothing. Literally.”

  “I feel really bad, Janie.” I did. Extremely bad. “I didn’t mean to lose your job. I really wish there was something . . .”

  “You just don’t understand, do you? Life isn’t all . . . songs and dances. Or—even a movie! Some of us have to work for a living. And not by responding to invitations to dances and lectures or by packing up to go to the shore every summer. The only thing that matters to you is you! And the rest of us exist only at your pleasure and only when you want us to. So thank you for your time and thank you for your momentary interest in my dull and sorry life, but I have to go join the rest of the girls out on the street looking for work now.”

  “But—”

  “You have no idea how having money, even just a little, changes everything. I was working in order to save enough to go to school. But it turned out I couldn’t really save anything at all because I had to do things like eat. And buy clothes to wear. And now, since Mother . . .” Janie lifted her chin even as it began to quiver. “Now I have to pay for an apartment too, because I can’t stay with Doris forever. And even if I did save up enough money, I’d still have to eat and have clothes to wear and pay for an apartment, and I’d have to pay for college as well . . . and figure out how to do it all without a job. Because I wouldn’t be able to go to class and work at the same time.”

  “I hadn’t realized before I met the girls—”

  “You’ve never realized anything. You’ve never had to!” She gripped her pocketbook tightly with both hands and held it to her chest. “I might as well just get married, because I’ll never be able to do anything else now.”

  “I wish I could—”

  “You’ve done enough for me already, Ellis. Please, please don’t think you owe me anything else.”

  “I only want to help you.”

  “No, you don’t. You only ever do favors in order to help yourself.”

  I thought long and hard after Janie left. About everything. She’d been right. I was a mean and selfish soul. If I’d had anything to sell, I would have done it and given the money to her, but that still wouldn’t have made things right. If I wanted to make amends to Janie, I needed to replace what I’d taken from her. I needed to find a way to give her back her life.

  If I’d ever needed to buckle down and apply myself to a problem, now was the time. I was hoping somewhere inside my stupid head was a solution, but I was terribly afraid there was not. Nobody had ever counted on me for anything before. Not really. And not for anything important. Janie herself wasn’t even counting on me now.

  But I was. And I knew this time, I would have to come through.

  What could a smart, good girl like Janie do?

  That was the question.

  She could . . . marry a minister. That would be perfect! Only . . . she’d have to know one in order to do that. And why should she have to get married just because I’d lost her job? Wouldn’t that be heaping punishment upon punishment? Marriage was out of the question.

  Maybe she could . . . still be a typist! In a secretarial pool! But . . . she’d said she didn’t know how to do anything other than answer telephone calls. Surely if she had taken secretarial courses, then . . . oh. She’d said she’d wanted to go to school, but she’d never had the money to do it.

  In order to do something else, anything else, it seemed like she needed money.

  That check my father had been going to give her really would have helped. But that still wouldn’t have been enough to pay for a place to live and for food. Or clothes. And goodness knew how expensive those could get!

  There ought to be a scholarship or something she could qualify for. Irene had gotten one. If Janie could get a scholarship and my father’s check . . . maybe that would be enough. Would she be able to go to school then? Going to school was just another step on the path that had been laid down long ago for me, but for a girl like Janie, I supposed it could change just about everything.

  Mother had come back to the city on the afternoon train in order to find out what problems I had caused at the benefit on Friday. I asked her and Father if I could speak to them after supper. They sat on the sofa in the parlor, exchanging a worried look as I stood in front of them, trying to figure out what to say.

  “I know I haven’t exactly made you proud of me this summer.”

  Their worried looks changed to frowns.

  Perhaps I hadn’t chosen the best of beginnings.

  “What is it you’re trying to say, Ellis?” My mother looked as if she was on the verge of leaving the room.

  I’d have to tell them the whole truth if I wanted them to help at all. “The job I had these past few weeks was Janie’s, and—”

  “Janie’s? Janie Winslow’s?” Mother was sitting up a bit straighter now.

  “Janie Winslow’s. After her mother died, she needed to go back up to Maine and have her buried, only the telephone company wouldn’t let her.”

  “Did she ask? I can’t imagine the company would—” Father was sitting up straighter too.

  “Of course she did! And they said no. So she came to me and asked would I pretend to be her and work her job so she could go. So that’s what I did. Until Thursday, when I got fired and lost her job.”

  “Oh, Ellis!”

  “It’s just that I had to leave my shift early to go to the pageant and—well, you know the rest.”

  “So . . . that check I was going to give her . . . ?”

  “She might have gotten it—Janie came back this morning—except she doesn’t work for the telephone company anymore. But the point is that I still want to help Janie, only I want to do it in a way that lasts. I want to send her to college.”

  “College?” Now my father was completely mystified.

  “Janie and all the others like her down at Central. There are a lot of smart girls there, and they’d love to go to college, and they’re trying to save money, but they don’t have enough because they can’t save enough. And then even if they do get enough, they have to keep working so they can—can still eat and have somewhere to live. So if people like us don’t help them, they’ll never get a chance to . . . well . . . do anything at all!”

  “People like us?” Mother was looking at me suspiciously.

  “Well . . . me. People like me.”

  “And how do you propose to do this?” At least Father looked a little, tiny bit interested in what I was saying.

  “I was thinking that you still have the check you
were going to give to Janie before I lost her job. And if you give it to her, that would help. Quite a bit.”

  “It might.”

  “But what I was hoping is that you would establish a scholarship. Or a foundation. Or maybe . . . a scholarship foundation.”

  “You’re asking me to give quite a bit in order to bring this scholarship into being, but what about you?”

  “What—what about me?”

  “What are you going to give?”

  “I don’t have much of anything to offer.”

  Father shook his head as if in disappointment. Clearly I’d chosen the wrong answer.

  “I don’t have any money.” I’d given it back to Janie. “At least . . . not until I’m given my allowance.” But that usually disappeared, since I spent it on movies and magazines. “Perhaps instead of giving it to me . . .”

  Mother was looking at me, one brow raised.

  “Perhaps . . . I could give it to the scholarship fund. Maybe I could get the other girls to chip in too. Instead of going to the movies or buying ice cream sodas, we could skip them and give the money to the fund instead. And—and maybe we could even canvass for the fund. At the football games! Or we could—”

  “And what are you going to call this fund?” Mother was trying hard not to smile. I could tell by the way she was biting her cheek.

  There was only one rule among Boston’s first families about the naming of things resulting from a donation. That they not, in any way, be connected with the donor. “How about . . . the . . . Irene Winslow Scholarship? For girls looking to change their role in life.”

  29

  The next morning I slept in longer than I had for ages and finally stumbled down to breakfast at ten o’clock. Afterward, as I sat in the parlor working a crossword puzzle, I heard the doorbell ring. I ignored it. Someone would get it. And besides, I needed to think of a seven-letter word for “faces.”

  Aspects?

  I filled it in, but it didn’t match up with the word that ran across it. Oysters and clambakes! I erased it.