Beyond All Dreams (5 page)

“Miss O'Brien?” Mr. Spofford asked in response to Luke's request. “Certainly she can help you with the offshore fishing boundaries.” The old librarian fumbled around on his desk, littered with mounds of paper that threatened to topple over, until he found a small card. “Fill out this form and I'll have Miss O'Brien begin work immediately. Whatever you need.”

“I'm afraid my request won't fit on a five-inch card,” he said
smoothly. He needed a lot more research than fishing boundaries. Preparing to wage a war against the Speaker of the House would require an entire notebook. “I have a rather lengthy list of research needs. I would like to commandeer the majority of Miss O'Brien's time for the better part of the next few weeks.”

That set Mr. Spofford back on his heels. “All the librarians are very busy with the move to the new building. Their time is scarce.”

Luke glanced out the window, where the extravagant new Library of Congress could be seen through a break in the trees, its copper dome gleaming in the sunlight. Congress had appropriated a fortune to build a gaudy palace unlike anything the world had ever seen. Luke had voted against the additional funding. No library needed imported marble or engraved bronze doors. His arguments had fallen on deaf ears. The library was fully funded, and the public's excitement to see the new building was mounting by the day. That didn't mean Luke couldn't try to curtail their operating expenses in future years.

“Such a shame if the business of the people is neglected while we turn the new building into a gaudy showpiece rather than a legitimate research facility. Remind me again how much we've spent on that palace so far? Because the vote for the library's operating budget is coming up and I'd like to know.”

“Heavens, I did not mean to imply we could not handle your research. No, no . . . my, no. Close the door and tell me what you need. I am certain we can be accommodating.”

Luke closed the door. As he'd told Miss O'Brien, he had always been good at getting exactly what he wanted.

Anna was pulling maps to document water rights in the Dakotas when the bell over the door announced a visitor. She
smiled when she recognized Mr. Spofford. Was there ever a more kindly man than Ainsworth Spofford? Despite his decades struggling to fund, engineer, and build their new library, at heart he was a scholar, and Anna sensed he would like nothing better than to curl up with a stack of good books. He almost never mentioned the female librarians' probationary status, and she suspected it had long since slipped from his concerns. Anna, though, couldn't afford to forget it—not after Lieutenant Rowland's threat yesterday.

“Miss O'Brien,” the elderly director said as he tottered into the room, “I gather a member of Congress asked for assistance this morning and you refused to provide it.”

She gasped. “I asked him to fill out a request card,” she sputtered. “He refused to use the pen!”

“I understand,” Mr. Spofford said, holding up a hand. “He refused to fill out the card for me as well. I spent a great deal of time with Mr. Callahan and have a complete list of his requests. They are extensive. I am assigning you entirely to Mr. Callahan until these requests have been met to his satisfaction.” He set a stack of pages down on a map case. There must have been at least ten pages of handwritten notes!

“All my time? But there is so much to do with the move.”

Mr. Spofford stepped forward and spoke in a firm voice. “Just do it. These questions are outside of map research, but you are a good generalist and I want you to look up whatever he needs. We can't afford to alienate Mr. Callahan. He's down on his luck right now, but I've been in this town long enough to know how quickly fortunes can change, and we don't need an enemy like him. I've screened his requests, and they are all legitimate. No more arguing, is that understood, Miss O'Brien?”

Anna swallowed hard. She wasn't used to being reprimanded at work, especially by Mr. Spofford.

“I'll get right on it, sir.”

“And whatever you did to annoy the navy, stop that as well.”

She sucked in a quick breath. Had Lieutenant Rowland already started the wheels moving to revoke her employment? “I didn't mean to cause any trouble,” she stammered.

“Well, you did.” The steel in Mr. Spofford's voice took her aback. “They were in here yesterday, complaining you've overstepped your bounds. I don't like being threatened by rude navy officers, so I'm not going to reconsider the probationary status of women, but I also won't overlook my librarians' poking into the navy's business. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir,” she whispered. Her fingers trembled as she picked up the pages of research requests.

She was still upset later that evening while she waited for the streetcar to take her home. Boarding the electric streetcars was always a struggle when thousands of people left work at the same time each day. She'd already failed to squeeze aboard the first two streetcars, but another was heading this way, trundling along on the electric conduits sunk into the pavement.

Surely Washington was the prettiest city in the entire nation, for while other cities were building trolleys with ugly overhead wires to power their streetcars, Washington had taken the extra time and expense to submerge their conduits in the roads, which made the horseless trolleys seem to move along the streets like magic. Already dozens of people surged forward in anticipation of the streetcar's arrival.

“Stick close to me,” Gertrude Pomeroy said to Anna. “I'll see that you get aboard.”

Anna smiled gratefully and lined up behind the older woman. Gertrude was a music librarian, and they lived at the same boardinghouse. More important, she was built like a plow horse and could help Anna get aboard the crowded streetcars. With her
hand braced on Gertrude's mighty shoulder, Anna was swept along in her wake as they moved onto the streetcar. They even managed to snatch the last two seats.

“Now,” Gertrude said as soon as they were seated, “tell me what's got you so upset, and don't bother denying it because I've known you too long not to recognize the anxiety radiating off you.”

“I may have done something really foolish,” Anna admitted, shame flooding her. After all, it wasn't only her job she'd put in jeopardy by locking horns with the navy. Gertrude looked at her curiously, but Anna was hesitant to share the details about Lieutenant Rowland's threat to the women's employment. They lived in a boardinghouse full of women, all of whom worked at various government agencies, and if word of the threat leaked out, it could fly through the entire city of Washington by the end of the week. The less said to Gertrude or anyone else about it, the better. Besides, at least half of her frustration was with that obnoxious congressman from Maine.

“Mr. Spofford reprimanded me because a congressman complained about my service,” she hedged.

Gertrude pursed her lips and nodded. Everyone who worked for Congress knew what it was like to kowtow for the royal princes, each of whom was secretly convinced he was destined to be the next president and expected to be treated accordingly.

“Those men can be a challenge,” Gertrude said. “Just hold your breath, brace yourself, and do it. I once held a two-hundred-pound hog during a delousing. It's not pleasant, but it has to be done.”

They arrived home just before the kitchen closed for the evening. Dinner was included in her rent at O'Grady's Boardinghouse, and Anna couldn't afford to miss meals for which she'd already paid.

She almost bumped into Mary-Margaret as they hurried inside. “Best hurry before Mrs. O'Grady closes the kitchen,” Mary-Margaret said with a fleeting smile. “I hear it's beef stew tonight.”

The scent of beef with simmered vegetables filled the narrow, dimly lit hallway to the dining room. All the rooms upstairs were leased by women who worked for government agencies. The government had a tradition of employing women in clerical positions throughout the city, and almost all of the women were either spinsters or widows. If a woman married, she was swiftly nudged out of her position to make room for a needier woman.

Mary-Margaret burst into the dining room, her hands outstretched and her eyes closed as she pretended to fumble toward the long oak table in the center of the room.

“Somebody bring me a bowl of stew. I've gone blind from feeding the punch cards into those horrid machines.” It was a typical complaint. Mary-Margaret worked alongside hundreds of women employed at the Census Bureau, whining incessantly about the monotony of her job. Girls moved aside on the bench to make space for Mary-Margaret, but no one rushed to get her dinner.

Anna approached the sideboard, relieved to see there was still plenty of stew in the iron kettle. She had been living there for six years, ever since graduating from the Mount Vernon College for Women right here in Washington. The quarters were tight, the food merely adequate, and there was no privacy, but she'd happily live in a cardboard box if it meant keeping her position at the Library of Congress.

“Can I get you another serving?” Anna asked Mrs. Horton as she approached the dining table. The elderly widow was always exhausted at the end of her day, performing clerical duties for the Agriculture Department. Anna was happy to fetch food for Mrs. Horton. Mary-Margaret, not so much.

Mrs. Horton scooted aside on the bench to make room for Anna. “I'm fine, dear.”

“If you hate working at the Census Bureau, why don't you quit and move back home?” Gertrude barked at Mary-Margaret.

“Because if I move back home, I'd have to share a room with my two little sisters. No thanks! I'd swallow a dose of strychnine first.”

Anna said nothing while she ate her stew. She'd been sharing a room with Mrs. Horton for six years, and it wasn't so bad. Most of the women who lived here paid extra to have a private room, but Anna had responsibilities. The upkeep of Aunt Ruth was a bottomless well that drained Anna's paltry bank account each month. Sharing a room with Mrs. Horton meant that Anna could afford to keep Aunt Ruth in comfort, and it soothed the guilt that weighed on Anna's conscience every day of her life.

As usual, the volume of twenty chattering women in the dining room was deafening. Anna rarely joined in. It wasn't that she was shy; she simply didn't have much in common with these women.

Mary-Margaret had just bought a jar of cream labeled
Bust Food
at the pharmacy and was eagerly passing it around the table to the delighted women. Gertrude's large hand snatched the jar to read the label aloud.

“‘Designed by a French chemist to provide the right food for starved skin and wasted tissues of the bust,'” Gertrude stated in her loud, blunt voice. “‘Unrivaled for developing the flesh of the bosom.'”

“I'm trying it tonight!” Mary-Margaret said.

Gertrude handed it over. “Use a lot. Your bust looks like it's been malnourished for a decade.”

“I'm trying it too,” another girl added. “If I get a husband, I can quit addressing envelopes for the rest of my life.”

Anna locked eyes with Gertrude across the table. They both loved their jobs, but not all the women here did. Another wave of guilt surged through Anna. The crowning achievement of Gertrude Pomeroy's life was being appointed the head music librarian at the Library of Congress. Gertrude's parents warned her that girls who looked like a russet potato shouldn't aspire to marriage and encouraged her love of music as a means of earning a living. It was cruel to convince a child she wasn't worthy of romantic love simply because she was homely, but at least Gertrude had a genuine love for her work. If the navy had its way, female librarians like Gertrude would be shoved out of their jobs, all because Anna dared to ask the navy to correct that old report.

Later that evening, Mrs. Horton sighed as she peeled the sheets back from her bed. “That woman is fooling herself if she thinks ‘bust food' is going to land her a husband.”

“Mary-Margaret?”

Mrs. Horton nodded. “A bit of human decency goes a lot further,” she said as she sank onto the mattress.

It was too early to sleep, so Anna propped herself up against the headboard, wiggling to find a comfortable spot on the lumpy mattress. Their room was humble, with a single window and a dressing table between two narrow beds.

Lieutenant Rowland's sneering words kept prodding at the back of her mind.
“The problem with the
Culpeper
was that
it was stuffed with scientists and bookworms instead of real
sailors.”

Her father had been a cartographer, but he'd been a good sailor as well. The box of letters beneath Anna's bed proved the strength of her father's commitment to the navy. Even better than her father's letters were his sketches. He'd been a fine artist and had sketched charcoal pictures of Anna playing at
whatever exotic ports of call the
Culpeper
visited. He drew fanciful pictures of Anna swinging from a coconut tree, swimming in the surf with a dolphin, or climbing on the rigging of the
Culpeper
. The sketches gave her a glimpse into her father's daring life as he was traveling the world.