Betty’s face clouded over.“If you say so,” she said icily, taking in Emily’s plain navy linen skirt.Bare face and low heels.“But you’re burning precious time here in this working-girl prison.You do know that, don’t you?”
Emily looked away from her, glancing at the clock again.She’d missed out on her damn tea now.“I have to go,” she said.“I have a meeting with Doris in three minutes to discuss my continued path to spinsterhood.Excuse me.”
She left the Closet and stomped down the hall to the kitchenette.There was no time to boil the kettle, but she snatched a glass and gulped down some cold tap water to help settle her nerves.She needed to forget about Betty, Eleanor, her mother, and Jem and focus on this monumental thing she was about to discuss with Doris: the scoop that could make her career as a journalist, which, despite what others might suggest, was the thing she wanted most in the world right now.
Emily approached Doris’s office and rapped smartly on the doorframe to announce herself.The editor looked up from her work, dark eyes piercing Emily from behind black horn-rimmed reading glasses.
“Emily, come in,” she said, standing.Emily sat down in the same spot on the couch where she had last Friday with the staff writers, notes resting on her thighs.She tapped them rapidly with her index finger as Doris took a seat opposite in the green armchair.
“You seem flustered, Emily,” she said.“Are you having second thoughts about this?I wouldn’t blame you in the least.”
“No, no it’s not that.It’s uh…” She didn’t want to speak ill of her coworker to their boss, but was having trouble holding it in.“It’s Betty, actually.She got engaged over the weekend and we got into an odd argument about it.”
“Ah.So she’ll be leaving, then.That one was only a matter of time.I’m not surprised.”
Emily shrugged the tension from her neck.She hesitated, but then remembered her father’s suggestion that she speak to Doris about her situation with Jem.
“Can I ask how you do it all?”she burst out in desperation.“Marriage?Children?Work?”
“Oh, well, that’s a question and a half,” Doris said, scratching a spot on her forehead.“I think part of it is just raw determination.Stubbornness, or whatever title you want to slap on it.I always wanted children, but I wanted a career, too.A real one.And by the time I met my husband and we got down to having a family, I was so entrenched here that I simply couldn’t stomach giving it all up.I had my first child at thirty-seven, and…well…” She shrugged, paused.“I’m pregnant again now, in fact.”
“Really?” Emily gaped, then caught herself.“I’m sorry, that’s just—”
“I know, I am positivelyancient, as everyone from my family to the delivery nurses delighted in telling me last time.I can’t wait to hear what they have to say about a forty-year-old giving birth.The way they act, I might as well be a grandmother.But this career took time to establish, and I didn’t even marry David until I was thirty-six, so…” She smiled thinly.
Emily took a breath, encouraged but daunted, too.“My father told me the man I’m going with is about to propose,” she confided.
Doris watched her.“And?”
“And I’m terrified,” Emily said, her voice cracking on a humourless laugh.
“Why is that?”
Emily angrily fought back the tears that pricked her eyes.She wasn’t a crier.“Because I’m not ready.Because there’s still a lot I want to do, specifically here, with my career.And I can’t see how marriage and babies fit into that.”
Doris nodded knowingly.“Well, it doesn’t necessarily have to be one or the other, but it sure isn’t easy.I never quite feel like I’m exactly where I should be.At work, I worry I should have stayed with my son longer before finding a nanny.At home, I have work on my mind—and on my bedside table—because it never really ends.To some extent, you have to just accept that everything is going to be chaos, and do the best you can.But you’ve got to have the right man beside you, willing to let you do it.”She paused.“So, if I may: Do you think your beau is that kind of man?Or no?”
Emily’s throat was tight.Jem wasnotthat kind of man.He was amusing and friendly but firm in his traditional beliefs.He would not be willing to let her keep working.
“I shall let you mull that one over,” Doris said, spotting Emily’s dismay and sparing her from having to answer.“But we aren’t here to only discuss Betty and babies.The Mercer: What are your thoughts after the weekend?”
Emily shoved rumination of Jem aside.“I gave it a lot of thought, Doris.Honestly I did.And I spent this morning sorting out the process for being deemed ‘incorrigible.’It seems my father could bring me down to the courthouse and tell them he wants me brought before the judge for whatever fabricated reason.Unruliness, maybe.Staying out after curfew, refusing authority or some such.If the judge will see us, I’ll just act surly and ‘unmanageable,’ like it says in the Act.And then I supposewe’ll find out whether June Jones is right, and if it is actually that easy to get locked up at the Mercer.”
Doris sighed deeply.“And you are prepared for that, if it comes to it?The allegations in that inmate’s note make it quite clear what sort of horrid conditions you could be facing.”
“I know,” Emily said.“But as I said on Friday, if it’s that bad, it should be obvious fairly quickly, right?I won’t need long to talk to some inmates, witness—or experience”—she shifted a little in her seat—“the treatment from prison staff.”She thought of her father, of the year and a half he spent on the front lines and in the mountains of Italy, the hunger and physical discomfort, recording the horrendous things humans were capable of doing to one another in the name of righteousness.He saw it through.And so could she.“The trouble is, according to the Act, it looks like the minimum sentence is three months.”
Doris removed her glasses and massaged the bridge of her nose.
“I know.I know,” Emily said quickly.“I was hoping maybe my dad could just request my release or something, but it doesn’t seem as simple as that.But I’ve thought of almost nothing else all weekend, and I think I can handle it, Doris.”She swallowed the little bead of doubt that pinched her throat.
Doris put her glasses back on and watched Emily for a long, drawn-out moment.“I don’t doubt you, Emily.But I do think we should call the Mercer first.Let’s see what we can learn from the outside.”
“All right.When?”Emily asked.
“Now.”Doris stood, and Emily followed her to the desk, watching as she hauled the phone book out of a drawer and slammed it down.“It’s got to have a phone number,” she said.The thin paper of the book crackled as she turned page after page.“There.There it is.”She landed her index finger with a soft thud.Emily’s insides clenched with excitement and apprehension.
“Are you going to call, or should I?”she asked.
