Portion of the Sea (16 page)

“I’ve got a headache, I’m fatigued, and I’ve got pain in my extremities,”
I said to both my father and the doctor.

“Lydia,” Doctor Conroy said. “Those are textbook symptoms for polio. But I don’t think that it’s polio. Let me check your pulse and listen to your heart.”

“Hmmm, I’m perplexed,” he said to my father moments later. “Everything looks fine. Why don’t we let her rest, and you and I can talk more,” he continued, signaling for my father to follow him out the door.

I hopped out of bed and listened as they walked down the hall and into Lloyd’s study. When they closed the door, I quickly tiptoed outside the door and stopped. It was my health they were talking about, so I had a right to hear.

“I’m concerned about her,” Lloyd said. “I told you on the phone what her school said to me, that unhappy girls are a potential threat to national security. They’re as bad as sissy boys, according to the principal. I’m just trying to figure out why she’s so unhappy. I’ve given her everything.”

“How was your trip to Florida?”

“We had to leave early and that upset her. That may be why she’s acting out.”

“You think she’s doing all of this as a means of getting your attention?”

“I don’t know, but she’s got it. I took the entire afternoon off work for her.”

“One afternoon isn’t enough,” said the doctor, clearing his voice. “Lloyd, I’ve known you for years. I was at your wedding. I saw how you loved her, but has it occurred to you that maybe you did get remarried—that you’re married to your work? I don’t want to be too direct. My God, it’s impressive how far you’ve gone at that bank, but you’re also raising a daughter by yourself.”

“Not by myself,” he replied. “I’ve got so many nannies I don’t know them all by name. I thought that was a good thing, but the school is telling me different. They’re suggesting that Lydia is too pampered, that she has to start doing domestic stuff on her own. They’re afraid she might not understand her female role in life.”

“They may have a point,” said Dr. Conroy. “What if you were to take Lydia away from the pampered life for awhile, take time off, a leave of absence
so the two of you can get away from it all?”

“Maybe, but it’ll have to wait. This is probably the most detrimental time in my career. With my partner in the hospital, I’ve got to stick around. A man can’t up and leave when there’s about to be a changing of the guards. I’ll consider taking time off once things settle.”

“If you don’t,” said Dr. Conroy, “it’s going to be you in the hospital next.”

“I won’t let that happen. I’ll give myself a break before I reach that point. I’ll take another vacation, a longer one.”

When I could hear them no more, I climbed back into my bed and let the underground river of tears break through. I didn’t know how I’d ever survive returning to school tomorrow. There were only a couple of weeks left, and I’d be done with tenth grade, but next year would come eleventh, and the year after that, twelfth. Everyone would be talking about me as if I were a headline in today’s news:

GIRL TURNS REBEL IN A SINGLE DAY

I felt as if my life had once again reached its end, even more so than the day I was forced into piracy, leaving the island with Marlena’s historical treasure. But then I remembered what Ava had said and my tears stopped abruptly. I reached deep down into my innermost being, past the surface debris, and into the dark private depths, and there I pulled out a branch of an idea.

The newspaper.

DESPITE ODDS GIRL PURSUES DREAM OF BECOMING A JOURNALIST

I was starting young. I still had a couple of weeks, plus two years left of high school. And I would do whatever was necessary. I would subscribe today and become entrenched in current affairs. And the issues at school and in my own little world involving me would become miniscule in comparison to those I was reading about in the real world.

AVA WITHERTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE
UNLADYLIKE CLUB, RESIGNS AFTER KISSING A BOY
.
NEW AMBITIOUS PRESIDENT STEPS UP TO FILL HER SHOES
.

It was a personal story, and it affected me deeply. There were so many details left unsaid. I could only assume that Ava allegedly kissed the boy, later married him, and then went on to Monday being laundry day. I didn’t want to smear her name any further, for I liked Ava, and I had dirty laundry of my own. I was still a thief—a troubled one. Parts of the treasure I had stolen were missing. I examined its pages once more and discovered jaggedness near its spine, as if pages had been torn out. Foul play, maybe.

But
Who? What? When? Where?
And
why?

XIII

SANIBEL ISLAND

1955
THREE YEARS LATER

Lydia

LIKE GUSTS OF WIND
, those five questions blew through my mind for the next two years. And they had been the driving force that pushed me to the
Windy City Press
that very summer, where I landed a job as errand girl. When school started again in the fall, I switched to after-school hours, and I remained working there until graduation.

At first, Lloyd didn’t like my working at all. He tried getting me to quit, but I gave him a silent treatment so strong it felt as if an Iron Curtain had descended between us, and he eased up a bit. I reassured him I was doing mostly secretarial-like things, as well as making coffee. But really, I was twig-by-twig building my nest, where one day I would sit comfortably as a successful journalist, and just as an osprey never hides its nest, I would no longer have to hide my success.

I mastered the percolator with only a few burns on my arms, and coffee fast became my specialty. I allowed no journalist’s coffee to reach
below the half-full point. And I learned who liked it black, with cream, with cream and sugar, or just sugar. I never had to interrupt their interviews or discussions to ask who wanted more. I could see who did.

It was in these moments of pouring that I learned I had a natural sense of determining the newsworthiness of things. “McDonalds,” I heard one journalist say to another as I was pouring his coffee one afternoon. “They want me to look into it as a possible story.”

“And why would some hamburger stand in California be newsworthy to Chicagoans?” asked the journalist next to him.

“Ordinary people are lining up for fifteen-cent burgers, five-cent coffee, and twenty-cent milkshakes, and they’re being served within fifteen seconds.”

“And that deserves a headline?”

“Not to me, it doesn’t. It’s a fluff story.”

“I disagree,” I said, unable to keep my mouth shut any longer. “We’re talking more than burgers, here. These guys are doing what Henry Ford had done for cars. To me, that’s news.”

Then that journalist took a sip of his coffee—for he was on a fifteen-second sipping pattern—and he looked at me and said, “Lydia, the biggest challenge to my job is deciphering what’s newsworthy and what’s not.”

“Mass production of hamburgers sounds like news to me,” I said.

“You may have a good point,” he said. “Thanks for the coffee.”

I poured so many cups of coffee over the course of two years that the paper got thicker and deadlines were hardly missed and journalists were talking and thinking faster than ever. I also started drinking it, and ideas flooded my mind. I even wondered whether I should desert my pursuit of journalism and open a drive-through coffee shop instead. If people were lining up to buy hamburgers, then maybe they’d line up for coffee. But it was only a coffee high that gave me that thought, and when it died down, I knew I had a better shot at becoming a journalist then opening a place where people actually drive by a window to buy coffee.

Besides, I liked working at the paper. All kinds of exciting and newsworthy things were happening in the world: the school desegregation ruling,
Brown v. Board of Education
; cigarettes cause cancer; the first nuclear-powered
submarine launches in Connecticut; the first mass vaccination of children against polio begins in Pittsburgh; the first successful kidney transplant; a Memphis, Tennessee, radio station is the first to air an Elvis Presley record; Boeing unveils its jet aircraft, the “707”; and the Red Scare has families building bomb shelters.

The more I became absorbed with what was happening out there, in the world outside my front doors, the more I wanted to go out and cover that world myself. And I still believed wholeheartedly that anything was possible. Marlena’s words had landed on me like seeds on fertile soil, but it was up to me to nurture them from dreams into accomplishments.

I also looked up to other women who were paving the way and I enjoyed reading articles by Virginia Marmaduke. She was one of the first women to cover hard news in the “windy city,” and to break away from the fashion, entertainment and society pages.

And I knew of a female working as a journalist over at the
Chicago Defender
, the African-American newspaper. Payne, her name was. She began her career while working as a hostess at an Army Special Services club in Japan. She let a visiting reporter from the
Chicago Defender
read her journal, and in it were detailed accounts of her own experiences and those of African-American soldiers. The reporter then took the journal back to Chicago, and soon her observations were being used by that paper. I thought, “If she could do that, then I can do what I plan to do.”

But then my father suffered a minor heart attack several months before my high school graduation, and I had to quit my job at the paper. I told myself it was only temporary, until he got well again. He didn’t need any stress coming from me. He had enough from the bank. While he was in the hospital recovering, they worked a plan out with him. As he had explained it to me, he was now like a consultant, a financial consultant. He could do his work from anywhere, and Doctor Conroy strongly suggested he take time off.

After several months of seeing Lloyd do nothing but lie around watching
The Millionaire, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Jack Benny Show
, and his favorite, the
The $64,000 Question
, I reminded him of his promise from two years ago, to take a break and spend time with me.

“Sit down,” Lloyd insisted as the ferry pulled away from the dock at Punta Rassa. I had been pacing back and forth, like a prisoner ready to be set free, and I was nervous about returning the treasure to Marlena. But I had kept it all this time safely buried deep within my pajama drawer, and I only hoped she would see that I had taken very good care of it. I sat down beside my father and pulled out the day’s newspaper. It was already late morning, and back home I usually had the entire thing skimmed by sunrise.

“Lydia,” he said. “You’re seventeen. You shouldn’t be reading all those nerve-wracking stories. They’re not good for you.”

“Pop, the Reds don’t scare me,” I said. “I like staying in orbit.”

“In what?”

“Informed,” I said. “I have to stay informed with current events if I am to become a journalist.”

He rolled his eyes. “Whatever, darling,” he said as he bent down and reached into the bag he had been toting around since the airport. “I did buy you a gift. I think it might come in handy now that it’s just going to be you and me for a few months. Why don’t you put that paper down and peek inside?”

I set the paper on the floor of the boat and set my foot over it so it wouldn’t blow away in the spring breeze. I couldn’t stand the thought of missing a day of news. I took the bag from my father and reached inside and pulled out a heavy book …
A Betty Crocker Cookbook
, I said. “Thank you, Father.” I could feel the smile on my face turning into a frown.

I didn’t want to disappoint him, not now. Although the cardiologist assured us there had been no damage to his heart and all looked fine, I didn’t want to add any additional pressure. I hid my disappointment so it wouldn’t burden him any. It pained me that he wasn’t proud of anything I had been working for over at the newspaper. To him, the criterion of success for a daughter was still whether or not she got and kept a man of good reputation and background. There were many occasions in which he would bring home a young executive from the bank for dinner and I knew he was trying to fix me up. But once I started talking about my job at the paper, the two would raise their eyebrows and often their glasses and
quickly lose interest in what I had to say.