Tonight, though, the room was the repository for only her own wretched musings.
She cried not for herself but for how upset Jack had been to not be able to grant her that one wish: to go to Columbia Journalism School. They simply couldn’t afford it. He had such a pleasant face—open and quick to smile—that to see him distraught made her twice as disappointed in herself for bringing him pain.
When she’d first brought up the idea with Jack earlier that year, he’d approached it with his usual meticulousness. Together, they’d made a list of advantages and disadvantages, and decided that it would be feasible only if she received a full scholarship. Which she had not. As a matter of fact, she hadn’t even been accepted, only wait-listed. Until today.
She hadn’t considered the idea of going back to school until several months ago, when the assistant director of the library, Dr. Anderson, had heard her joke about her life raising children within the library’s walls and suggested she write a piece on the subject for the employees’ monthly newsletter. She’d dashed off a silly article about the difficulty of keeping Pearl and Harry quiet during the day, especially in the summer, when they weren’t in school, and how she’d come up with the idea of a ten-minute “stomp” every evening, after the patrons had drained into the streets and the administrative offices had emptied. At her signal, the three of them would leap about the hallways, dancing and singing, Harry running laps and Pearl practicing her yodel, bringing the night watchman sprinting to the second floor to find out what on earth was going on. He’d stood there, panting, hands on his knees, and Laura had worried he might collapse from the fright. After that first time, though, he’d gotten used to the idea, sometimes even joining in, offering up a yowl that echoed down the stairwells and probably frightened the rats rooting around in the basement.
Once Dr. Anderson took over as director, he’d insisted Laura write a monthly column called “Life Between the Stacks,” which she dutifully tapped out on Jack’s typewriter while he was at work. Soon after, she’d seen an announcement in the newspaper about a school of journalism being started at Columbia University, open to both men and women. Upon inquiring, she discovered that students who already held a bachelor’s degree could take just one year of courses. One year. Eighty-five dollars a term. A grand sum, considering Jack’s salary. But still, just two terms. It would be over before they knew it, and then she could get a job at a newspaper and bring in her own salary. After her discussion with Jack, she’d asked Dr. Anderson for a recommendation and been delighted when he’d agreed to provide one.
Laura had learned that she’d been placed on the waiting list a few weeks after she’d mailed in her application. Then, today, she’d learned the good news. A place had opened up and was hers, if she wanted it. But Jack didn’t seem to see it the same way.
“I wish we could afford it so you could go, but maybe this is for the best,” he’d said back in the apartment. “Even if we could, what about the children?”
She’d been expecting the question. “They’re old enough to take care of themselves. If there’s ever a problem, you’re right here in the building.”
“Why not keep doing what you’re doing, Laura?” asked Jack. “Dr. Anderson said just the other day that you’ve got a lovely way with a phrase in the newsletters.”
“Because it doesn’t pay. I want to help so you don’t feel the full burden of our life on you.”
“We always land on our feet. What burden are you talking about?”
She couldn’t mention the beggar; he wouldn’t understand. That she feared if something happened to Jack, she’d also end up on the steps, ragged and dirty, begging for money. She’d seen her parents’ lavish lifestyle curtailed after several financial struggles, although they refused to speak of them, as if by ignoring the problem, it would disappear. Which it had, in a way. Every few months, Laura noticed another empty space in their Madison Avenue town house where an antique bureau had been sold off, or a too-bright square in the wallpaper where a severe portrait had once hung.
The latest issue of McCall’s had included an editorial about the restlessness growing among modern women, of the need to have some power over their lives. She experienced that restlessness in her bones every day. To live in a building that spilled over with books and knowledge, with its shelves of maps and newspapers from around the world, yet to feel so utterly stifled, was torture.
“I want a passion, like you have for your manuscript.” Maybe he’d understand it if she put it that way.
“Look, Laura, I’ll be done with the manuscript by next year. If we wait until then, we can use the advance for your tuition. It’s the least I could do, after everything you’ve done for me.”
She slumped into his lap and put her head on his shoulder. “We can’t do that, silly,” she whispered. “The advance is for you to quit this work and write full-time. But you see, if I’ve graduated by then and have a position, you’d be able to quit no matter what.”
She could see she’d said the wrong thing by the way he blinked twice. That was how well they knew each other, after eleven years as man and wife. They’d met when she’d been in New York City in between terms at Vassar, at a party where she’d worried she’d talked too loudly and brashly about the meaning of a Poe poem. She was still getting used to being the youngest in the room and no longer the smartest. Laura had whizzed through high school in three years and been accepted to college at sixteen, urged on by her mother to take hold of every opportunity. But Laura’s time spent back in the city, among greater minds than her own, had brought her quickly down to earth. Embarrassed after her Poe soliloquy at the party, she’d retreated to the kitchen to help wash up. Jack had joined her, drying the champagne coupes, both of them stifling a laugh after the hostess breezed by and warned them to be careful to not break the stems.
“Do be careful,” Jack had said with an affected accent after she left. “They’re quite delicate, you know.” He held one up to the light to check for spots, his enormous hand like a bear’s paw. At which point the glass had fumbled away from him, landing in the sink in a pile of icelike shards.
They’d stared at each other in shock before doubling over with laughter. Later that evening he’d called her beautiful, and he didn’t seem to mind that her thick, dark eyebrows made her look sanctimonious (or so said her father) or that her hair was an unruly mess (her father again).
She caught Jack glancing at his typewriter. He was eager to get back to work, to use up every possible minute before he fell into bed at midnight, exhausted.
“We can ask my parents, maybe.” She knew it wasn’t really an option but wanted to encourage him to consider it from all angles.
He stiffened. Mentioning her parents had been another mistake. He’d spent the past decade trying to prove himself as a good husband and father. “No. We don’t go to them.”
“Right. Sorry.”
Jack opened the letter and read it. “It’s eighty-five dollars a term, plus twenty dollars for books.” He placed it back down on the desk and lightly wrapped his arms around her. “It’s out of our reach. Besides, you’ll be older than the other students. By ages.”
She swatted at him, although the words stung more than she let on. “I’m only twenty-nine. Don’t look a day over twenty, they tell me.”
“Twenty-one at the most.”
“It’s only for a year. Quicker than any other type of degree. What if we scrimp?”
But she knew their finances as well as he did. How strange to be barely managing month to month while living in such architectural splendor. The kids were growing so fast, they needed new clothes every other day, it seemed. Pearl had come down with a terrible influenza in January, and the doctors’ bills had almost done them in. She was fine now, thank goodness, but they were still catching up. The timing couldn’t be worse.