Keeping Secrets (26 page)

“He isn't here,” said Nathan.

“Do you know where I can reach him?”

“No. He hasn't been in since early this morning. I could try and find him if you—”

“No, no. It's all right.”

A quarter past three. I pulled the shades down.

At five o'clock Nathan came in and found me sitting rigidly on the sofa in the gathering darkness. “Where is Emory?” I asked, hoarsely.

“I still haven't seen him … anything wrong?”

“Of course not, why should there be?”

He gazed at me doubtfully, then squared his shoulders and walked past. How silly I'm behaving, I thought then, and rose to prepare dinner. Emory must have been right. The note was the product of a mean, sick mind … but not Mark's. Yet, where was Emory?

Finally at six-thirty he arrived. He saw my worried expression and took me in his arms. “You didn't go down?” I asked.

“Yes, I did,” he confessed. “No one showed up.”

“Oh, Emory,” I said, breaking at last into tears.

“It's all right,” he said kissing me. “Only a few more days and we'll be out of here. I told you it was a prank.”

“Yes … yes,” I said, and held him tighter.

Last night I finally gave Emory his answer. “You are my life. I will come to you,” I told him.

And in time, I will.

PART TWO

Camille Devera

CAMILLE

JUNE 4, 1918

1

When I came back to San Antonio in 1914, all I wanted was a place to call home and a normal life. The most I dared hope for was a good job, a taste of big-city excitement, and a room overlooking the river. The least I expected was a fair job, a Sunday matinee now and then, and quarters at the YWCA until I could afford something better.

Instead I wound up with more jobs than a farmer's wife and little more pay, enough excitement to last me forever, though not exactly the kind I had in mind, and a strong doubt that anything, anywhere, will ever be normal again.

Right away I landed a job at the Telephone Company as an operator-trainee on the Crockett exchange board, and found that living at the Y wasn't going to be so bad. They'd built a new one on Avenue C since I lived here before. My roommate, Cecelia Freeman, was the quiet bookworm type, and the food in the lunchroom was cheap. For the first few months I stuck plugs into a switchboard and put up with a supervisor breathing down my neck, all the while telling myself if I could hold on to that job for six months I could look for something better, without the risk of being labeled a floater.

The job at the phone company was horribly monotonous once I caught on. I got tired of people yelling into the transmitter—oh, the times I wanted to point out that as loud as they talked, they didn't need a telephone—and tired of trying to put calls through to lines that were continuously busy, acting as the mediator between the party trying to make the call and the one tying up the phone. There were many nights when I repeated over and over in my sleep, “Line busy, line busy, would you care to try later?” Cecelia pointed that out one morning. She was soft-spoken and very intellectual, and always seemed to be in our room with a book hiding her head, or in the library. I think that, having come from a sheltered background in Houston, she was a little shocked at my ways altogether—especially my nervous energy. I spent as many hours working out in the gymnasium or swimming in the pool as she spent reading, and at night, all keyed up with no place to go, I'd scrub the floor and dust and rearrange furniture while she relaxed with a magazine or a book of poetry.

On Sundays, my only day off, I rode the trolley to San Pedro Springs or took walks in Brackenridge Park, or just meandered around downtown looking in shop windows, imagining what I would buy when I had enough money saved up. I began the day with services at Travis Park Methodist, because I promised Mother I would, but more often than not I'd be anticipating the classified ads all through the sermon. By the time the church bells were silent I'd be sitting on a bench in the plaza, turning the pages of the newspaper.

Finally one Sunday a job appeared that looked like the answer to all my dreams. They needed a filing clerk at the International Bank of the Southwest who was willing to train and work up to stenographer. The pay started off at two dollars more a month than I made as an operator, and I knew, as my heart beat in double time, that I was going after that job and nothing was going to get in my way. I'd had stenography at business school in Philadelphia, and stayed consistently at the head of my class. I could use a typewriter with equal skill. The following morning I lied to my supervisor that I was ill, and went for an interview, a blossom of self-confidince.

The job had been filled on Friday—too late to cancel the Sunday ad—but something even better awaited me. A full-fledged secretary was leaving. As I was about to be ushered out by a clerk, crestfallen over life's injustices, I overheard the assistant personnel manager talking over the phone about it. I nearly knocked down the puzzled clerk, trying to get back in there and plead my case. Mr. Terrell hardly had a chance to take the receiver from his ear before I was introducing myself.

He looked disapprovingly over his bifocals. “You're much too young, and I'm sure Mr. Tetzel will want another gentleman to assist him. He owns the bank, you know.”

“Oh, he does …” I said, wilting momentarily. Then I remembered my mother's mettle in the face of impossible odds in the suffrage movement, and drew up my shoulders. “All I want is a chance. I know I can do it. Just look at the qualifications on my application,” I told him.

He called for the paper, then rubbed his chin as he eyed it with increasing interest. Finally he said, “Mr. Tetzel has been looking quite a while, and he is getting impatient—understandably, of course. All right, young lady, close the door. I'll need to ask you some questions.…”

When I finished that interview—more like an interrogation—I learned I had still another to face, with the department manager. In between I sat on a hard bench just inside the department entry, surely positioned to challenge the ebbing confidence of any job applicant. My skills, which had seemed so important and impressive when I walked in, began to seem less and less so as others, already employed, briskly paced about, talking to one another in precise, businesslike tones. I could hear the clacking of typewriters manned by people with surely double the speed I'd shown on my typing test. Often I was passed by men and women who shot me a condescending glance, as though I were a smelly pair of stockings. I raised my chin, smoothed out my gloves, and gazed ahead with a mask of self-assuredness.

By the time I faced the personnel manager, Mr. Hicks, I told myself the worst was over. Then he began: “I see two typographical errors here on your test.”

“I was a little nervous.”

“Here in the bank, this kind of error is not tolerated. Everything must be letter perfect. Anything less will endanger your employment.” He looked across at me sternly, before continuing, “In fact, banking is a very precise business in every way. A teller out of balance is a teller out of a job. Often our tellers work through the night to get their numbers reconciled.”

I started to point out I wasn't applying for a teller's position, but then he said, “You will find policies regarding work procedures are the same throughout the bank. Should you be employed as Mr. Tetzel's secretary, you must expect your supervisor to be the most exacting.… After all, the whole reputation of the bank rests on his shoulders.”

After fifteen minutes with Mr. Hicks, I was certain he was endeavoring to frighten me away. Unable to do so, he asked me to wait outside while he set up an interview with Mr. Tetzel himself. It was twelve o'clock, and since I'd skipped breakfast as usual, I was famished. Some busy clerk pulled out a tuna-salad sandwich across the room while she worked away at her desk. I sniffed hungrily, and thought, wouldn't it be just my luck to be stuck here till after the lunch period is over. Mr. Tetzel probably goes out for those marathon business lunches.…

Just then a kind-looking woman approached with my application in her hand and said, “Mr. Tetzel will see you now. Hurry up, he has a meeting at twelve forty-five.”

He certainly looked like a distinguished, well-established banker as he offered me a chair across from his huge mahogany desk. After giving my application a cursory glance, he said, “I see you have lived here before.”

“I was born here, and went to high school at Old Main. In between I lived all over—”

“Yes, I see your father was an army sergeant. He was posted here long enough for you to complete your education?”

“Actually, he died at the end of my first year. Mother let me finish before we moved to Philadelphia, where I went to business school.”

“Um-hum, and how were your marks in school?”

“All right, except I almost flunked cooking. I overcooked the pot roast for the final exam.”

He laughed. “No, I mean in business school—we can and will order a transcript, of course.”

He seemed satisfied with my answers. He had a stiff-necked look about him, but smiled readily enough, and when he did his face looked kind and fatherly. He told me he had been here since he was a youngster, migrating with his family from Germany. “There was simply no means of fighting the class distinctions there, of getting ahead. So my father decided we'd come over here where a man was given a fair chance,” he said. Then he reminisced about living in this area when he was my age, and spoke of swimming in the river down by what was then the Guenther Mill at the foot of King William Street. “It is very deep there—we used to say the river had no bottom—and a little closer to the arsenal is a whirlpool. But then, we were young and inclined to be daring.…

“Did you ever eat chili at the stands on Alamo Plaza?” he asked, but before I could answer, he added, “That chili was so hot it would start your ears smoking. We'd follow it with a Menger beer—”

Suddenly he seemed to realize he was talking to a young lady. He cleared his throat and took on a businesslike demeanor again.

“What we want here, Miss Devera, is someone who can work up to fill the position of my secretary within a few months time. Claude DuChauncey is leaving sometime after the first of the year. You're a bit young—just shy of twenty-one—and inexperienced—”

“Oh, but I could do it, I just know I could. I'll stay late, come in early, learn everything I can. Just give me a chance to prove myself.”

He considered for a moment, studying me, then said, “You might be called upon to do just that.” He looked at his watch. “I must go now. Suppose I think about it and call you tomorrow?”

“I get back to my room at the Y at six. I'll be waiting.” I stood up and offered my hand. “Thank you very much for considering me, Mr. Tetzel.” He nodded and I left. I was less buoyant than I hoped, although I consoled myself I was expecting too much, looking for a firm commitment on such an obviously important job on the same day I applied. They probably had lots of people wanting that position. In fact, they obviously had so many qualified people within their ranks, it seemed odd so much time had been spent filling the job. I speculated on that point all afternoon.

I had figured on taking the whole day off if I got the job, risking the chance of being seen by someone from the Telephone Company, and being reported for lying. But since I was still for all purposes without a new job, I went back to work and told them I was feeling better, and feigned a cough now and then to make it more convincing. Then at three o'clock my supervisor remarked that I looked a little pale, and suggested I go back home until tomorrow. I felt like a rat.

Considering all the lying and cheating I soon became involved in, however, the incident would later seem minuscule by comparison.…

The following night Claude DuChauncey called to say Mr. Tetzel wished me to begin after suitable notice to the Telephone Company, so on Monday, September 14, I walked in through the main banking lobby, climbed the impressive marble stairs up to the third-floor office of the president, and glanced with condescendence at all the curious faces along the way.

My first task was in learning the files, just as I had expected. Yet I was surprised to find that dealing with Mr. Tetzel's correspondence—both business and personal—would deny me the chance of learning about the pulse of the bank. Claude, who was preparing to move to California and go into business for himself, seemed more anxious to get me trained in Mr. Tetzel's administrative work than teach me the rudiments of banking. After my first day I had an uneasy feeling I would have been better off with the filing-clerk job, so that I could learn from the ground up. As it was, I would probably soon look foolish to clients who expected me to know something about the business, and other employees would be bound to chatter about my lack of knowledge behind my back.

I meant to say something about this during my second day with the bank, but Mr. Tetzel called me in for dictation and I forgot everything else. He replied to ten business letters and four personal notes, including one about water rights on a property he owned up in Fredericksburg. I was not prepared for this sudden plunge into the pot, and my hands were cold and shaky throughout the whole session. Mr. Tetzel was very concise about what he wanted to say in each case, and spoke loudly enough that he was easy to follow. Each time he paused, I wondered if he could hear my knees quivering. Yet I endeavored to hide my misgivings, and, in the end, satisfied him of my capabilities.

Though I didn't realize it at the time, I later reasoned he'd planned to give me a stiff tryout, and if I failed there would still be plenty of time to find someone else and have her … or him … trained by the time Claude left. I know he certainly had no ideas about involving me in his secret affairs, and even at this point I can't help but respect that.