Hattie Ever After (10 page)

I reached the Cortez and tugged open the lobby door. But would anyone read such a series? Anyone besides me? “Quit grasping at straws,” I scolded myself, not realizing I’d said the words aloud.

“Did you say something, Miss Hattie?” Raymond asked, stashing his bottle under the desk.

I shook my head. “Just mumbling. Any mail?”

“One skinny letter,” he said. He held it out to me. It was skinny, all right, but that one letter was worth dozens. It was from Charlie! I read it three times right away, and then again while heating soup on the hot plate.

The letter was short, to be sure, and there was a bit of a cranky tone to it, but I deserved that. It was such a relief to hear from him. I took it as an invitation to write back, to write a real letter, though I’d hold off on telling him about my new job. He might not understand.

That was an odd thought. Ever since we’d met, I could count on Charlie to understand me, even when I didn’t myself. I cherished my new friends, but something in me longed for old friends, for friends who knew how I’d gotten the scar on my left knee (shinnying down the Hawley elm tree) or that I had a sweet tooth for lemon drops or that, until Mr.
Whiskers had pussyfooted into my life, I had been afraid of the dark.

Truth be told, it wasn’t old friends I missed. It was one old friend.

And whose fault is that, Miss Hattie Brooks? I asked myself.

Setting aside that painful thought, I stitched a bit on Pearl’s quilt before crawling under my own for some much-needed sleep.

Surprises and Cigars

I shook the cold cream jar for the comfort of it. Not much of a jingle yet, but every little bit would get me closer to a trip north and a place at Perilee’s old oak kitchen table, sipping coffee and eating strudel. I’d jostle Lottie on my lap, read stories to Fern, and maybe even go fishing with Chase. The anticipation of such sweet moments would help keep my pocketbook clasped tight against any nonessentials.

It wasn’t all to the bad that I didn’t have enough saved up. A trip to Seattle would put me in Charlie’s territory. He would not understand my staying in San Francisco to scrub toilets.

Speaking of which, it was time to head to work. It’d only taken a week to get into the rhythm of starting my “day” when most folks were headed to bed and ending it about the time the roosters began to crow back on the homestead. No matter the job, working for a morning newspaper required odd hours. Most reporters, like Ned, showed up at noon, though with Miss D’Lacorte, it was more like one o’clock. They’d work through till nine or ten on a regular basis and sometimes later, their hours dictated by the news itself. The only folks with set start and end times were the night editors and copy readers—they worked six p.m. to two a.m.—and
the custodial staff, like Spot, Bernice, and me. The night editor at the
Chronicle
was a man people called Boss Keats; no one seemed to know his real first name. With a nickname like that, you’d think he’d be crustier than a day-old loaf, but he was as gentlemanly as they come. Always asked after my health, if our paths crossed. And took a sincere interest in the answer.

Before I locked the door to my room, I double-checked to make sure the journal Miss Clare had given me was in my pocketbook. I’d decided that it was to be the receptacle for my San Francisco writings and notations. And thanks to Spot and her sisters, I’d filled quite a few pages. I’d even managed to squeeze ten words out of Bernice: “Anybody can scrub a floor. But I can make it shine.” My idea had jelled. I would write a series called
Female 49ers: San Francisco Women Who Find Gold in Their Work
. Not that anyone wanted it, mind you, but believing is the first rung up any dream’s ladder. I figured if I enjoyed the stories I was gathering, others would, too.

Bernice and Spot were good sorts but the sorts others seemed to ignore. In fact, in our blue smocks, we were all virtually invisible, except to Boss Keats. Even Miss Tight Corset had given me a blank stare when I’d smiled at her early one morning. I doubted that it had ever occurred to people like her or Ned or even Miss D’Lacorte that the women wearing the navy blue smocks had lives—and hopes!—of their own. That was why I kept plugging away on my stories. Plus, I was pigheaded enough to think that the newspapers could print another point of view about women in the work world. Since
the war had ended, most men thought working gals should hang up their hats and tools and head back to the kitchen.

My showing an interest in Spot’s sisters had softened Bernice’s sharp ways; even so, I was not prepared for her suggestion that night.

“You take the newsroom floor,” she said as she buttoned on her smock.

“But I thought new girls start down.” I repeated her edict from my first night on the job.

“Things can change,” she said. And that was that. Spot winked at me and crossed her fingers for luck. I’d spilled my dream to them the second day we’d worked together. Perhaps they thought that my mere presence on that very floor would transform me into a reporter. I had to chuckle at that, but their belief in me put wings on my feet, and on my heart.

“Oh, no.” I froze in my tracks. “What about Ned?”

They knew about him as well, and that he was not yet aware that I was already employed at the
Chronicle
. I’d made Maude promise not to tell.

“I’ll go up first,” offered Spot. “If the coast is clear, I’ll give you a signal.” She hooted three times. “Like this.”

I grinned. “The perfect warning for us night owls.”

We rode the elevator together but I exited one floor ahead of her. The plan was that I’d listen in the stairwell for her all clear.

I felt like Nellie Bly on secret assignment when I heard the trio of hoots. I thanked Spot as we passed on the stairs.

At midnight, I caught up with my colleagues in the break room.

“Well,” Spot asked, pouring me a cup of coffee. “Anything to report?”

I took it from her. “Only that someone must have had a sauerkraut sandwich for lunch yesterday.” I pinched my nose. “The whole newsroom reeked.”

“Bunch of slobs,” Bernice observed with a nod.

That was Spot’s cue to fill us in on Tinny’s new beau, who was as slovenly as Tinny was neat. My mind drifted a bit, as this was a topic Spot had visited before. The newsroom folks might be a bunch of slobs, but what I wouldn’t give to be one of them!

We polished off the molasses cookies Bernice had brought in to share and got back to work, with Bernice and Spot heading up and me down. They loved cleaning in the composing room, with all those great huge machines. I was delighted to work where I could more easily make my way to the morgue.

When my two a.m. lunch break rolled around, I quickly ate my bologna sandwich, then skipped down another flight and pulled open that heavy door to history. First impressions might lead one to think that a newspaper morgue was as quiet as … well, as a morgue. Not that I knew about
that
firsthand. But I did not think of “my” morgue as quiet. Even in the wee hours, a symphony of sounds reverberated throughout this place. First heard was the
thwup
as one weighty volume was slid from its shelf, followed by the satisfying
thump
as it was placed on the library table. Then the
whisk-whisk
refrain of pages being turned enhanced the concerto. One last set of sounds rounded out the music of a city’s memories: each time
I delved into those huge leather books, each time I traced my finger over the yellowed columns of newsprint, each time I studied a worn and faded photograph, papery whispers spoke to me of things that had happened long ago, and in so many places it would take an entire atlas to contain them all. These stories of real people were as irresistible to me as the Italian nougats one of Maude’s suitors had brought her.

Flipping through old newsprint was a bit like attending church services. Aunt Ivy would be horrified if she ever heard me compare the two—one focused on man and one on God—but I had come to believe that there was something sacred in telling stories and telling them true. I smoothed the page on the table in front of me. One day, I would create stories like those printed here. I knew it.

But when I looked at the many volumes yet on the shelves, my task seemed akin to finding a needle in a stack of hay. All those pages! It was deflating to consider perusing each sheet of each issue from 1915 on, in order to find one tiny key, however rusty, to my uncle’s past. If I had been back in Arlington, it would have been a snap. In a small town, everyone ends up in the paper at some time or another, and not just in the birth announcements or obituaries. A ladies’ luncheon would earn many column inches. New hymnals at the Baptist church would rate a headline in bold. And a farmer’s just-delivered tractor would make front-page news.

In a city as big as San Francisco, a person could evidently drift through, silent and stealthy, and evaporate without a trace, like the familiar fog under the strength of the sun.

With a sigh, I flopped open the volume for 1915 to July 1,
to pick up where I’d left off. I read through my lunch hour, barely scratching the surface, then pushed back in my chair, rubbing my eyes from the strain. It was no use! I’d never find anything. Never come up with that story that would truly hook Mr. Monson’s attention and hook me a newspaper job. I was about to turn the page when something jumped out at me. Under an article about a woman who’d been passing counterfeit traveler’s checks was a column titled “In the Hotels.” I’d noticed this particular column before. But here was a name I recognized: Chester Hubert Wright.

A thrill zinged through me as I scanned the line. Uncle Chester! Registered at the Hotel Sutter. Did this notice mean he’d recently arrived? Or had he been in town awhile? I began flipping backward through earlier issues. His name had appeared the week before. And the week before that. I kept flipping. The earliest date he was listed was Wednesday, May 12. That fit with Ruby’s memory that they’d met in the spring. I pulled out my notebook and wrote down the hotel’s name, making a mental note to look up the address later. I closed the big book, giving the front cover a pat. Well-begun was half done!

The nights at work soon fell into a similar routine—I’d start in the newsroom and migrate to the morgue, trying to peel my uncle’s story from those yellowed pages. Aside from learning that he’d roomed at the Sutter, I hadn’t made much progress. But I was getting quite the education about this town around the time of the Panama Pacific International Exposition. San Francisco had been determined to show it had completely recovered from the earthquake, and the
exposition was just the ticket for proving that. The marvel drew visitors by the thousands, including the famous, like Helen Keller, flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker, and Charlie Chaplin. Henry Ford’s onsite assembly plant turned out one automobile every ten minutes for three hours each afternoon. Imagine that! But the spectacle also attracted the infamous, including one enterprising duo selling imitations of the No-vagems that glittered from the exposition’s Tower of Jewels. The Tower’s jewels
were
sold, but not until after the fair closed in December. This pair of confidence artists jumped the gun by several months. “We’ll catch them,” then Sheriff Thomas A. Finn promised in a headline. But further research uncovered no evidence of that promise fulfilled. It seemed the fair “exposed” the worst of humankind as well as the best. No matter—the more I read, the more I wished I could have seen such sights for myself. It was incredible to think that nothing from the fair had been built to last; the only token of its existence now was the Palace of Fine Arts on the Presidio grounds.

During our coffee break, I asked Bernice and Spot if they’d visited the exposition.