Lady in the Lake

“I know that,” she said. “I’m not naive.”

But she was hurt. She had thought her anger over the callousness of the men at the Star was a kind of tribute to her lover. So what if they could never go out in public—it wasn’t because of race. It had more to do with her marital status. And maybe his, although she remained unclear what that status was.

“There was a time when the death of a Negro woman didn’t make the local papers,” Ferdie said. “I don’t blame your bosses for not caring until Cleo Sherwood was found. A girl like her—she got around. The Afro only made a big deal of it because the mother was so upset—and because Cleo worked at Shell Gordon’s place. He’s waist-high in a lot of stuff.”

“Did you know her?”

Again, that laugh. “We don’t all know each other, Maddie. It’s a big town.”

She was drifting off to sleep before she realized he had not answered her question. And by then it seemed too—wifelike to follow up. What was it to her whom Ferdie knew or had known?

Yet Maddie couldn’t let the subject drop. So much about the discovery of Cleo Sherwood seemed to parallel the death of Tessie Fine, but in a through-the-looking-glass way. No search parties, no attention. No official cause of death, not yet. No swift arrest, no outrage.

The one thing the two deaths had in common was Maddie.

A coincidence, but when one is the coincidence, it’s hard not to find the fact momentous. There would be justice for Tessie, even if Corwin never revealed the identity of his accomplice. But what would there be for Cleo? How had she gotten there? Why had she gone there? Was she alive when she arrived at the fountain?

“Where did you say that Cleo Sherwood worked?” That seemed a fair question, a safe question.

“The Flamingo Club,” Ferdie said. “Maddie, don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t get involved in this.”

“How would I get involved?” Even she could hear the false notes in her voice.

“Let’s see, how would Madeline Schwartz insert herself into a murder case? Well, she might join a search party. She might give an interview to a newspaperman—”

“I didn’t.”

“—she might write a letter to some pervert who’s going to end up on death row, then finagle her way into writing about that for the newspaper. There’s something about you and that newspaper, Maddie. Moth to a flame, if you ask me.”

“I work there now. It’s my job. I’m trying to get ahead. How does that make me any different from you?”

Ferdie did not speak for a while after that and in the silence, Maddie’s question took on more layers and meanings than she had intended. They were in bed. They were always in bed. Sometimes, they got up and drank beer and ate meals, but they never seemed to get dressed all the way. Once or twice, they had tried sitting on the sofa to watch a television show, but it had felt unnatural, upright and side by side, their clothes on. Ferdie lugged her television into the bedroom and propped it on the bureau, where they sometimes watched the Moonlight Movie on channel 11. This bedroom was their entire world.

Ferdie said: “I think you—” then stopped. Maddie was thrilled and terrified. Few things were as provocative as a lover telling you who you were.

“Go on.”

“I don’t have the words, exactly. I think you felt, I don’t know, kind of hidden from the world. Or stuck between two worlds. You’re not Mrs. Schwartz no more. But you’re not not her, either. You liked it, when your name was in the newspaper. You want it to be there again. Not in a story, on top of a story.”

“A byline.” It was exactly what she wanted. When she had given Bob Bauer the story about Corwin, her story, they had printed her name at the top of the article, in italicized type: Based on a correspondence with Madeline Schwartz, part of the search party that discovered Tessie Fine’s body. But she knew now that this did not count as a byline. It was not, in some ways, even her name. But then, what woman actually had her own name? Maddie’s “maiden” name was her mother’s married one.

Had she chosen Ferdie because marriage was literally forbidden to them, against the law in Maryland? Could she even claim she had chosen him? They were living in a bubble, in this room, hiding out—from what, she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t afraid of Milton. In fact she liked to fantasize about Milton’s discovering that she had a lover, especially this one. Ferdie didn’t have to run around chasing tennis balls lobbed by Wally Weiss to stay firm.

But Seth could never know. A teenage boy could not cope with his mother’s romances, nor should he be expected to. What would happen when she was divorced at last, when she reentered the real world, whatever the real world was at this point? Would she marry again? Did she want to marry again? Maybe, probably. But for now, she wanted only this, whatever it was. This, and the newsroom. There were other women there, women who wrote about the port, the world, Washington.

Edna. Her cheeks flamed at how easily the woman had dismissed her.

In bed with Ferdie that night, she didn’t tell him any of these things. Not the encounter with Edna, which she found shameful. Or that she planned to cultivate men for her ambitions, though he would be jealous, flatteringly so, she was sure. If Ferdie were her endgame, she would have desired this jealousy, required it. Like with Milton.

Only Ferdie was not, could not, be her endgame. Even if it were legal—but it wasn’t legal, not in Maryland. That wasn’t her fault and it wasn’t something she could change, even if she wanted to.

They made love again. Sometime around three a.m., she became aware of his creeping away. He stroked her hair, kissed her one more time.

She thought: Maybe I should change back to my old style. Shorter, more bouffant. Edna wore her hair that way. Most of the women at the newspaper did, come to think of it.

No, no, Maddie reminded herself. She was going to cultivate the men.



The Battle-Axe



The Battle-Axe

I stab out my cigarette in the standing metal ashtray provided in the ladies’ room. Most of the butts are mine. The other women on staff long ago conceded that this women’s bathroom, one of only two on the floor, is my private lair. It is small and mean and utilitarian. Like me, some would say. But never to my face.

I go to my desk and start working the phones for a story I plan to file later this evening. The bosses hate how I schedule my day, but I’m too good at what I do for them to make me change. Still, they complain. It’s an afternoon paper, Edna. What if there are developments overnight or in the morning? What if we have to chase something in the morning papers? As if anyone in town has ever scooped me. I come in when I please, make notes on how today’s copy was butchered, scream at Cal, then start writing tomorrow’s copy. I file about eight or nine, so Cal has to move my stories. I like working with Cal. He’s a little scared of me, as he should be. But, still, he tinkers.

Today, he has all but tinkered his way into a correction box and you better believe it will say Due to an editing error, something they are loath to admit, but I make ’em say it. I will talk to Cal about this later and scare him sufficiently so he won’t try it again for several months. He’s like a dog, a dumb one, who has to be trained over and over again. Frankly, I should be allowed to hit him with a rolled-up newspaper when he misbehaves. There are plenty at hand and I think my lessons would stick better.

My desk looks like a fortress, one of those children’s castles made with large, lightweight blocks, only the blocks are my files, stored in cardboard boxes. I wasn’t trying to wall myself off from the newsroom, not at first. I simply wanted my files nearby and I ran out of space in the drawers. I know where everything is, can find anything I need in less than ten minutes, much faster than anyone in the library pulling clips. But no one else would be able to locate a specific file in my little warren. Perhaps that is by design.

I have a highly specialized beat, one I practically invented at the Star. They call me the “labor” reporter, which means I track the city’s various unions. Inevitably, I am often the secondary on big stories coming out of the port or Beth Steel. Cops and firefighters and teachers. Labor touches everything in Baltimore. The only union about which I have never filed a story is the Newspaper Guild, which might end up striking by year’s end. If it does, I will not join my colleagues on the picket lines. I will claim that would make me appear biased. I wouldn’t cross a picket line—that would be foolhardy, make for hard feelings once the strike is resolved, and strikes are always resolved—but I won’t march in one, either.