Portion of the Sea (47 page)

I looked around the room I had lived in for weeks on end, and then I glanced down the long hallway with the sun shining through the window and beaming down against the hardwood floor. I didn’t know how the sun or the moon did it, how they made everything from a mud puddle to a wooden floor to a sea look more beautiful. I wondered whether it looked like that every morning. Maybe it was God who made things glisten when we really needed them to or helped us take notice of beauty that is always there whether we see it or not. Today, I would walk down that glistening hallway.

I got dressed, not caring about fashion. Solids or small figured prints, beading, a hem that fluctuated between a few inches above the ankle and the instep, medium to heavy fabrics like serge and gabardine—none of that mattered to me now or, come to think of it, ever.

“Can you find me a white carnation?” I asked my assistant when she came in the room, surprised to see me up and dressed.

She pointed toward the flowers the boys had given me.

“Those are for me,” I said. “It was nice of the boys. But I also want to honor my mama today, and the custom is that if your mother is alive, wear a colored carnation. If she has passed away, then wear a white one.”

“Ah, si, si,” said Nora, nodding her head, and then leaving my room.

I stood there waiting for her to return, and when she did, she was carrying a white carnation and helped me pin it to my blouse.

“Thank you,” I said and headed out my door and down the long glistening hallway with the morning sun coming through. I didn’t go far, just to Leo’s office to figure out what it was that I was going to do as provider of this family. My options were slim. I certainly wasn’t going to pose semi-nude in any soap advertisements. Writing a novel would take too long, a year, two maybe three being that it was my first, and even then, there was no guarantee that it would get acquired by a publisher, or sell. There was just one thing to do: write more articles—write more articles than I had ever written before!

I drank three strong cups of Nora’s espresso and then skimmed through the stack of unread papers and publications that had been delivered to our house and piled up since Leo’s death. I took notes as I perused, then looked up addresses in Leo’s files, those of people we had socialized with and those he had talked about from work and even those I didn’t know but who attended his funeral.

And despite it being Sunday and a new nationally declared holiday, I wrote letters to them all. I told them I needed work and suggested all kinds of ideas I thought would make interesting stories such as: How have mothers traditionally been honored and the efforts leading up to today being declared a national holiday? And what about fathers? There were more stories I thought of. With war in Europe looming, what were women doing to prepare should their men have to leave? Then I mentioned that Teddy Roosevelt, it was rumored, was heading to Captiva Island, Florida to trophy fish. I could go there, bump into him and interview him, the former president on his views concerning the likeliness of America entering the war. And my God, while there, I could look up Jaden. But I doubt they would like the former president story, and come to think of it, Jaden probably wouldn’t like me anymore. I was the mother of three boys and pregnant with a daughter.

And in just two hours of writing letters, I felt confident I would have at least five different articles to write and five different deadlines, all from different publications. I had created for myself a lot of work to do, work that would have to wait until Monday, for the boys were due back any time. Today I would spend with them. Monday I would start my interviews. Tuesday, write the stories. Wednesday, I’d edit those stories, and as soon as I heard back from the publications, I would submit them. Friday, I would determine whom I had to let go first. It wouldn’t be Nora. I would hold on to her until my last penny, for she had been by my side during the delivery of each of my sons, and I was fond of her, despite her speaking mostly Spanish and my not understanding seventy-five percent of what she said.

But all of that could wait, I decided as I walked back down the hall, out the front door, and around back to our shed. That is where we kept my bicycle.
I walked it out into the light and stood there holding onto the handlebars for a moment. It had been awhile since I last rode.

“It should be easy,” I told myself. “Once you learn, you never forget how. And if you fall, you just get back up again.”

I took off in the direction of where the boys were playing golf. I wanted to surprise them.

XLI

LYDIA

JACK WAS NAPPING CONTENTEDLY
on the blanket beside me when I finished reading and closed the journal. The sun was too high now to beam through the window, so I scooped him up and placed him in his crib. He was an easy baby, still napping three times a day, but I couldn’t imagine three of him. I didn’t know how Ava would manage with three sons and a daughter on the way and no husband to help and support her. Then again, she was a strong woman and she was on her way. I found it inspiring the way she got out of bed like that and forced herself into that office, then outside where she would ride her bicycle to the course where her boys were golfing.

As I walked over to my own bicycle propped against the wall behind the bathroom door, I thought about my own situation—a single working mother—and wondered how I might make it all work. I wondered whether I was still as bold and courageous as I once was—the girl who applied to college against my father’s resistance and who stood up in class and disagreed not just with the teacher, but with an entire decade of people who believed a proper woman has no other options but to marry and keep a clean house. I was the girl who insisted on riding the bus not the limousine
and that hopped off the bus because she saw flowers and wanted beauty in her life. I was the girl working at the paper after school making the best coffee she could make because she knew that the tiny steps would get her where she wanted to go. I was a girl with hopes and dreams.

I picked up a towel laying on the bathroom floor and started wiping the spokes of my bike. I was still that girl. Once a girl rides toward dreams and goals, she never forgets how. She may fall down from time to time, but all she must do is get back up. And when she does, she might find she’s stronger than she once was.

If I could push a baby into the world, I could do most anything, for what female sport is more strenuous and incredible than that? Raising the baby maybe, but it was too soon to think about that. I had to push, push myself harder at work and ride with more strength than ever in the direction of my goals.

XLII

CHICAGO

1968
FOUR YEARS LATER

Lydia

The next four years were turbulent ones for our world, and I wondered often whether writing about a new freedom in hemlines and bolder-colored dresses would have been the more pleasant career choice. But I worked my way out of issues pertaining to women and into news of interest to men, women, and our nation as a whole.

When President Johnson ordered air raids against North Vietnam in early 1965, I started paying closer attention to the war that had been under way for some time already. And I went to Washington in April to cover a large anti-war rally. It was my first major news story, and I was assigned to interviewing university students from all over the country as to why they were protesting the war.

Jack stayed home with Rosie, his nanny. She was a young woman, in her mid-twenties, and plain without makeup or style in her hair, and she refused to wear any hemlines above her knee. Jack didn’t need a fashion-savvy
girl watching after him. He needed, or so I thought, someone like Rosie. She loved babies and children and desperately longed for a boyfriend so she might marry and move to the suburbs, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her that maybe men might notice her more if she let her hair down and put lipstick on those tiny lips of hers. I also felt like giving her a friendly nudge into the sixties, for she was still wearing button-down sweaters daily.

But she was good with Jack, and she was reliable. She knew my work schedule and never showed up late and stayed until whenever I came home, whether that was around Jack’s evening bath or later. She made me believe that Jack and I were her only life. Occasionally, when I came home extra late, she’d sleep on the cot, but usually she insisted on returning home. She lived with her parents in an apartment three blocks away. I still lived in the tiny shoebox, but I swore as soon as the world and my job slowed, I’d start scouting around for a bigger and better place.

During the day, she’d walk Jack over to her parents’ house in his stroller, or to the parks or around the city so they wouldn’t have to be confined to the four walls of the tiny apartment. I saw it as good for Jack. Boys are meant to be outdoors, weather permitting. They’re like puppy dogs. They need to be walked daily, and a few times a day is better than just once and it doesn’t matter that they were out the day before. They’ve got to get out every single day!

It hurt me to think that I wasn’t the one walking him every day, pointing out the pigeons and the clouds in the sky, but I had to provide for us. At times I envied Rosie for spending time with him.

By Christmas of that same year American troop strength was at nearly 200,000 and growing, combat losses totaled 636 Americans killed, and, here at home, draft quotas had been doubled. I had written a few stories pertaining to the draft and struggled personally with the news of casualties. Maybe if I weren’t a mother, it would be simpler to write such stories, for all I could think of when I heard about the men being drafted was that they were just grownup baby boys. Shame on me, for I know a journalist is supposed to remain objective, but does that mean nonaffected?

Every night I came home from work and picked Jack up in my arms,
whether he was awake or not. I cradled him and rocked him, unable to imagine my own son ever being drafted off to war. I wanted time to go by slowly. I didn’t want Jack growing up in time for any war.