The Cure for Dreaming(62)
I closed the door on that chore and climbed upstairs to pen a short note at my desk.
November 5, 1900
Dear Madam,
Please accept my deepest thanks for delivering my letter to the editor this past Friday. I was delighted to see the article’s publication in Saturday’s edition of the newspaper. The reception to the piece far exceeded my expectations, and I am now strongly considering a career in journalism because of the pure joy I experienced in sharing my words with the people of this city. May ALL women one day gain a voice.
Sincerely,
A Responsible Woman
THE TEAM OF FEMALE TYPISTS IN DARK DRESS SUITS AND ties clicked away at their tidy rows of desks in the Oregonian’s headquarters, and the same spirit of adventure I had felt on Friday coaxed me farther inside the building.
I noted one striking difference from the week before: a freckled young man with black hair sat at the front desk instead of the statuesque receptionist.
“May I help you?” he asked while unscrewing the cap of a fountain pen.
“I’m looking for the woman who worked at this desk last week.”
“She no longer works here.” The fellow set to scribbling a note on a sheet of company letterhead.
“She’s not here?”
“No, she’s been dismissed.”
“May I ask why?”
“Yes”—he grinned and peeked up at me—“you may ask, but I will not answer.”
“Does it have anything to do with that letter that was printed on Saturday’s front page?”
The young man stopped writing. “Oh, Lord. You’re not bringing another note of thanks, are you?”
“There are notes of thanks?”
“And violent hate mail threatening to set fire to both that letter writer’s house and our building. But mostly ghastly letters of thanks.” He reached down beside his desk and hoisted up a canvas sack spilling over with envelopes. “Ladies stuffed them through the mail slot all weekend long. One of our workers slipped on the piles when he first opened the office this morning. Nearly broke his neck. And then an hour ago, another batch”—the young man gestured with his head toward a bag slumped against a wall like a rummy in an alleyway—“arrived from the postman. Our editor, Mr. Scott, is fuming.”
My fingers itched to grab all those beautiful stuffed envelopes and rip them open, one by one. “Would you like me to burn the letters for you?” I asked.
The fellow lifted his eyebrows. “Burn them?”
“I’ll gladly take them and toss them into an incinerator. I’m opposed to the vote myself.”
“You are?” He plopped the rustling sack back on the ground. “I don’t come across many middle-class young ladies who oppose the vote.”
“Are the bags heavy?” I asked.
“I don’t think I entirely believe you’re an anti-suffragist.”
I covered my mouth and gagged against my palm.
The man gave a start. “What was that?”
“My reaction to that terrible word that starts with an s.”
He lifted his chin and seemed to squint down his nose at me, even though he was sitting and I was standing. “Who are you?” he asked.
“Who are you?” I asked, just to be as impertinent as he was.
He stiffened at my question, and the typists behind him disappeared into ink-colored smudges. The clicks and dings of their typewriters drifted miles away. The man was suddenly dressed in a white lace tea gown, as relaxed and comfortable as can be—as if he thought himself to be more woman than man.
“Oh.” I lowered my face, and the typewriters clacked back to life.
“What is it?” he asked, suited again in brown tweed and a necktie.
“I just . . .” I laid my letter for the fired receptionist upon his desk. “Will you please give this note to the woman who used to work here? It’s very important.”
“Are you a responsible woman?”
I sank back on my heels. “I—I—I like to think of myself that way.”
“You know what I mean.” He tapped the base of his pen against the desk. “‘A Responsible Woman.’”
“Oh . . .” I pushed my envelope his way. “So, you can see straight through me. Well, that . . . that simply makes us equal, Mr. . . . ?”
“Briggs.”
“Mr. Briggs. Believe it or not, I can see through you, too.”
“I seriously doubt that.”
I leaned my palms against the desk and dropped my voice to a whisper. “Deep inside, you’re not so different from me. Are you?”
He gazed at me with a face unnaturally rigid—the paranoid stare of a person whose inner workings were thrust on display against his will. His reaction made me feel cruel, so I stood and turned to leave.
“Here,” he said from behind me.
I shifted back around.
He lifted one of the mail bags. “Go burn them, Responsible Woman.”
“I will. Thank you.” I took the dense bag and dragged it across the smooth tiles, hearing the future jostling about in all those packed-together papers inside.
THE FIRST THING I DID WHEN I GOT HOME WAS TO GO TO my bedroom. I had hardly sat down before I began tearing open the envelopes.