They were almost home. Lucy finally dried her tears and pulled herself together. “Will you promise me something, Mother?”
“What’s that, dear?”
“Promise me you won’t tell John what happened today. Or how useless I was.”
Bebe hugged her tightly. “Your secret is safe with me, Lucy.”
Much to my surprise, Tommy O’Reilly returned to my cell with the necessary paper work to spring me from jail. I had been rescued. I stood outside on the front steps of the police station a few minutes later and inhaled deeply. Fresh air and freedom had never smelled so good.
Tommy took my elbow and guided me forward. “Now that I’ve sprung you from jail, where would you like me to take you?”
“I know the secret password to a little speakeasy down the block.”
“Very funny, Harriet. How about if I take you home?”
“Well, I suppose I should go home and prepare my Sunday school lesson for tomorrow. . . .”
“Seriously? You mean you weren’t making that up about teaching Sunday school?”
“I knew you didn’t believe a word I said.”
“That’s not what I meant, Harriet.”
“No? What exactly did you mean?” I stopped walking and stood with my arms crossed, feeling belligerent for some reason. Tommy halted, as well.
“I meant that you’re so smart and modern. . . . Sunday school seems so . . . old-fashioned. Aren’t Sunday school teachers usually elderly women with snowy hair and whalebone corsets and high-button shoes?”
I had to laugh, in spite of myself. “You’re describing the teachers I had when I was a girl. Look, I may be modern in some ways, but I’m old-fashioned in others. If you’re really going to keep me on a leash all weekend, then you’ll have to come to Sunday school with me tomorrow.”
“Fine. So, should I take you home now? So you can prepare your lesson?”
I remembered that I would have to face my father if I went home, and I shook my head. “No. I don’t want to go home. Take me to that café over there and buy me a cup of coffee.”
I thought he would argue with me, but he didn’t. We walked across the street, and since Tommy was wearing his police uniform he was greeted with smiles and nods of respect as we entered the café. We took a seat in a booth. Tommy’s coffee was free. Our waitress batted her eyes at him and offered him a piece of blueberry pie to go with it. “It’s free, too, Officer O’Reilly. Just for you.” I don’t know why, but I had the urge to kick her in the shins.
He gave her his finest smile. “No thanks, Sue. Just coffee tonight.”
Once we had our coffee in front of us, Tommy picked up where he had left off. “Listen, Harriet, I’m sure your family must be very worried about you. It’s been nearly twenty-four hours since I arrested you. Why don’t you at least call them and let them know you’re all right?”
“Has anyone telephoned the police station looking for me?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Well, there you are.” He continued to stare at me, waiting, and I knew I owed him an explanation. “Look, I can’t call my grandmother. She joined the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and took the pledge not to drink alcohol before I was even born. After all the hard work she has done to get Prohibition passed . . . well, she’ll murder me. And then you’ll have to arrest her, too.”
“I understand that. But what about your parents?”
“My mother isn’t worried about me because she isn’t even home.”
“Where is she?” He poured about a tablespoonful of sugar into his coffee and stirred it patiently.
“Don’t you ever read the newspaper, Tommy? The U.S. House of Representatives passed a suffrage bill in January of 1918, and—”
“I was over in France in 1918. I think I missed that piece of news.”
“You fought in the war?” I asked in awe. He nodded. “Was it as bad as everyone said it was, with mustard gas and trenches and everything?” He nodded again. Who knew that Tommy O’Reilly’s life could be so interesting? I wanted to pursue this topic of conversation further, but Tommy was a relentless interrogator.
“Let’s get back to your mother.”
“I haven’t seen much of her since the bill passed and the momentum started building toward a suffrage amendment. And by the way, did you hear about the women who protested outside the White House all during the war? Wasn’t it ironic that President Wilson had you fighting for freedom and democracy halfway around the world while denying those same democratic freedoms to half of the population of America—its women? Did you hear how the suffragettes were eventually thrown into jail and force-fed with tubes shoved down their throats when they went on a hunger strike?”
He held up his hand to stop me. “So is that where your mother is? In jail?”
“Are you kidding? She wouldn’t be caught dead in jail. She prefers to work behind the scenes, throwing parties for political candidates—she’s great at throwing parties. Anyway, last year the suffrage bill passed in the Senate, too, but then it had to be ratified by two-thirds of the states. She has been hard at work, and now all we need is one more vote. My mother is in Tennessee right now, probably on her knees, praying for their legislature to ratify the amendment. If they vote to pass it, we’ll win. Women will finally have the right to vote.”
“That’s a fascinating story, Harriet. So tell me, is your father in Tennessee, too?”
His question caught me by surprise. “Huh? . . . No. No, he’s here in town. But I don’t want to involve him.”
“You’re his daughter. I’m sure if you had called him last night, he would have come down and bailed you out of jail, wouldn’t he?”
“Not unless I cried a gallon of tears. That’s what Alice and my mother used to do whenever Grandma Bebe got arrested, but I’m not the type to weep and beg. Why do you think women want the right to vote, Tommy? It’s so we can stand on our own two feet and be taken seriously. We’re tired of depending on a man to run to our rescue and bail us out whenever we’re in trouble.”
Tommy bit his lip, staring at his coffee and frowning fiercely in what I guessed was a desperate struggle not to laugh. “What’s so funny?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
I suddenly figured out the joke, and it was on me. My indignation vanished. “Oh. You’re a man. And you just bailed me out of jail, didn’t you?”
“It seemed like the gentlemanly thing to do.” His smile broke free, and I almost smiled in return. “But I didn’t think of it as rescuing you,” he quickly assured me. “If I’ve learned anything about you over the years, Harriet Sherwood, it’s that you can take care of yourself. I’m sure you would have managed just fine if you had to spend another night or two locked up. Even the trustee was a little frightened by you. But I know there has to be more to your story than what I can see on the surface.”
“And so you’re going to follow me around like this until you crack the case? Our city is going to need a pretty big police force if they have to assign one cop for every person out on bail.”
He looked down at his coffee. He was still stirring it relentlessly, causing a tiny typhoon in the cup. “I have a confession to make, Harriet. I don’t have to follow you all around. I trust you not to flee. I’m following you because I want to.”
“Because you want to—what? Torment me? That’s what you always did best, you know. All through school, you were always pulling my pigtails or taunting me or bullying me.”
“You know why I did all those things?” he asked. He looked up at me with a shy grin on his face. “Because I liked you.”
“You’re joking. If you liked me, then tormenting me was a pretty stupid way to show it.”
“I know. But I was a kid,” he said with a shrug. “What did I know about women? I liked you because you weren’t like all the other girls. You had guts. You were just a little bit of a thing—you still are. Yet you stood up to me like someone three times your size. I admired you for that. I still do. I just wish that you hadn’t . . . you know . . .”
“Broken the law?”
“That’s what we need to talk about. Tell me what’s going on. Convince me that you’re innocent.”
“I’m not innocent. You caught me red-handed. . . . But there are innocent people involved. And as I told you last night, they’re the ones I’m trying to help. The really bad criminals are the ones who belong in jail. But if the people I’m protecting are arrested, then innocent children are going to go hungry.”
“Then help me catch the real criminals.”
“If I do that, if we catch the bigger crooks, will you let me and the others go free?”
“I’ll do my best, Harriet.”
“How do I know I can trust you to keep your word?”
He looked hurt. “People can change, you know. I’m not the same bully I was when we were in school. Besides, I think you can trust me more than some federal agent you’ve never met before, can’t you?”
“I guess so . . . I’m in a whole pile of trouble, aren’t I?”
“I’m afraid so.”
He had become so solemn that I began wringing my hands like the heroine in a melodrama. “Oh no! Please save me, Tommy! I’ll go insane if I have to remain behind bars! The meat was so rubbery that I bent the knife, and the tapioca pudding came out of the bowl in one huge, gummy lump and—”
“I wish you would be serious.”
“I’m sorry.” And I was. “I’m sorry I became involved in this mess in the first place. If I could do it all over again, I would do everything differently.”
“Why did you do it?”
“I’m still not exactly sure. . . .”
But after thinking about it for the past twenty-four hours, I was beginning to figure it out. The waitress brought us more coffee, and Tommy sat back and listened patiently while I told him.
In April of 1917, two months before I graduated from high school, America went to war. I thought I had drawn a nice, neat map for my life, but the war turned out to be one of those unexpected changes Grandma Bebe had warned me about. I had every intention of steering a course straight toward college in the fall, but the rudder slipped from my grasp and I drifted, instead, into a job at my father’s department store.
My change of course started where so many other events in my life have started—at the breakfast table. It was a beautiful morning in May and my father had just read an article in the newspaper about the new Selective Service Act that required all men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-one to register for the draft. His newspaper rustled like a forest fire as he refolded it angrily and voiced his frustration.
“I don’t know how I’m expected to run a business without employees. According to this article, nearly all of my department managers, buyers, and bookkeepers are about to be drafted. I’ve had several good men enlist already, and it’s impossible to find anyone to replace them.”
“I could do it,” I said. “I could work for you.” The prospect of a long, boring summer loomed ahead of me now that both my mother and grandmother were occupied with their causes. Neither one of them would allow me to come with them and get involved—licking stamps didn’t count, in my opinion. “Why don’t you hire me to work in your store, Father?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” He waved me away without even considering the idea.
“I’m serious!” I banged my fist on the table to get his attention, rattling his coffee cup. He looked up, startled. “I’m graduating from school in two weeks and I have nothing else to do. I’m very smart, according to all my teachers. Twice as smart as any boy. Why won’t you hire me?”
“Because these aren’t jobs for women.”
“Why not? What difference does my gender make? Your male employees just sit behind desks all day anyway, don’t they?”
“The only women I hire are all salesclerks. My department managers, buyers, and bookkeepers are men.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s the way it’s done.”
“Well, you might have to change the way it’s done now that we’re at war. Grandma Bebe had to take over for her brothers when they went to war, and she ended up doing all their farm chores— plowing and baling hay and everything. And then she helped run her husband’s factory when he was . . . unwell.”
“Your grandmother’s example is hardly one that I want my daughters to follow,” he said, shaking his head. “Women have no business running a factory or a department store. And besides, aren’t you supposed to be going to college soon?”
“Not until the fall. I have all summer free. And if you give me a job, it might help me decide what I want to study in college. Won’t you at least think about it?”
“Women work fine as salesclerks, but I don’t need any more clerks at the moment. I need managers—men.”
I huffed in frustration. “The United States government is hiring women in Washington to fill men’s positions because of the shortage. I just read about it in the paper the other day. If the government thinks women are capable of doing men’s work, why not hire them for your store? All I’m asking for is a tiny little department to manage.”
“My department managers are all men. You’re a woman.” My father was repeating himself. Either he had run out of arguments or he wasn’t listening to me.
“Your managers
were
all men,” I told him. “You just said yourself that they were all leaving to enlist or were about to be drafted—and that there aren’t any men to replace them. I would say you’re out of options.” When Father didn’t reply, I added, “I could dress up in a man’s suit and tie, if you think it would help.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Look, you need employees, right? What’s so hard about a manager’s job that a woman couldn’t do it?”
“It’s a question of respect. The salesclerks are mostly young women your age. Managers need to be mature. They need to be men.”
“But I’m the store owner’s daughter. That should win me some respect. And believe me, I can be very bossy—the boys at school tell me I’m bossy all the time. ”
The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of working in the department store, but my father looked as though he wasn’t even going to consider it. I was wondering how I could convince him when, much to my surprise, my mother rose to my defense—and she did so without resorting to tears.
“Why don’t you let her try it, John? What could it hurt? If you need help as badly as you say you do, it seems you should give Harriet a chance. She is very quick to learn things, you know.”