The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba(97)
The newspapers raised the prices they were charging the newsboys to sell newspapers when the war started, lowering the newsboys’ profit margins, but considering the volume they were selling due to the war interest, they hardly minded.
“I hope so,” I answer. “They should.”
Our conversation breaks off as someone comes up to buy a paper from Johnny and I head upstairs. I walk through the newsroom that has become as familiar to me as my home at Aunt Emma’s and knock on the door to Hearst’s office.
He shows me in, and I have a memory of that first day when I came here looking for a job.
So much has changed since.
“What can I do for you, Grace?” Hearst asks me.
“I have a story for you. My last story.” I take a deep breath. “As grateful as I am for the opportunity, I don’t know if I can stay on. I’m not sure this is what I was cut out for—making the news. I think we’ve crossed too many lines somewhere along the way.”
He’s silent for a moment, and I almost think he’s going to try to convince me to stay, but he merely nods. “We’ll be sorry to lose you, but not everyone sees the world the same way. There are many papers that would be lucky to have you.”
For as much as Hearst professed me to be a valuable member of his staff, I can already tell that in his eyes I’m gone. I’m not so arrogant as to believe I am irreplaceable—in this business, no one is.
I slide the article across his desk.
* * *
—
The rumor on Park Row is that Pulitzer is struggling. Circulation is down now that the war is over, but cutting the price of his newspaper isn’t profitable, and if he slashes staff salaries, then there’s no doubt they’ll defect to Hearst’s side. For a man who has built his empire on the strength of the newspaper business, it must be immensely frustrating to have his war with Hearst deal him such a devastating blow.
No one is more surprised than I am when Pulitzer sends me a note, asking for me to meet with him.
I go to Pulitzer’s mansion a few days after my conversation with Hearst, and am shown into his reception room by the same butler as before.
“You once came to me and asked me for a job. Said you wanted to be the next Nellie Bly,” Pulitzer says in greeting after I’ve been announced and shown into his study. “You weren’t ready then. You are now.”
I glance down at his desk, at the folded copy of the Journal lying there, and the article I wrote about Recogidas, my name on the byline.
“Come work for me at the World. Your talents are wasted where they are.”
It’s all I’ve ever wanted since I set my sights on being a journalist. And still, when I think back to the years I spent working at the Journal, my half-hearted attempts at pilfering information to give to Pulitzer, it’s clear where my heart lies.
For as much as I wanted to work for the World, I’ve learned the fantasy and reality aren’t the same. As a girl, I read the World and envisioned Pulitzer as a champion for the people who didn’t feel like they fit in this new society we’ve created. But now I realize that at the end of the day, he’s a businessman, driven by the same needs for profit and power as the rest of them.
“I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t? You’re going to stay with Hearst?”
I am proud of many of the stories I’ve covered for the Journal, of the journalist I’ve become. I’m proud, and at the same time, I am not unaware of the mistakes that have been made or of my need to do better.
“I think my stunt reporting days are behind me.”
Forty-Six
Evangelina
I’m going home.
I can scarcely believe it.
We are in New York for a visit; Carlos has business to conduct with some of the contacts he has made in the United States before we set sail for Havana where we’ll move into the house where Carlos and I spent those fateful days in hiding together.
My life has changed so much in such a short time.
On one of our last days in the city, I walk to the restaurant where I once had my grand reception—Delmonico’s—to see an old friend.
She’s already seated at one of the tables when I join her.
After we greet each other and I sit down, she slides a newspaper across the table at me.
The New York Journal.
“It didn’t make the front page, but they printed it today,” she says. “I went to Recogidas. I spoke with the women. I wrote an article about their stories.”
I meet her gaze, and I know that for the first time, maybe, she truly understands what it was like in that place. What it did to me. How it can make you desperate to survive anything.
“I read it earlier,” I confess. “It’s wonderful, Grace. Truly. I’ve been reading the Journal for months now. This is one of the finest pieces I’ve ever read. You shone a light on that awful place, on their stories. You didn’t speak for them; they spoke for themselves.”
I cried when I read it, her words taking me back to the time I spent in prison. I try not to think too much of those days anymore. I’d much rather look to the future, to the family Carlos and I are going to build together, the life we’ll have.
I’m ready to put Berriz and everything that has happened behind me.