CHAPTER NINETEEN
New York City, 1914
Laura cut through the Catalog Room both heart-happy and heart-sick. Amelia wanted her to go to London, but it could never happen. In fact, Laura had vowed, only half joking, to do everything in her power to get Amelia to stay in New York. This coming summer was all she had to convince Amelia not to go away, not to leave her behind. At least once a day, while riding the el or sweeping the apartment floor, Laura would disappear into a dreamworld where she could act on her wildest impulses, where she and Amelia would create a life together, Harry and Pearl in tow. Jack would be upset at first but would easily find a new wife—one who was eager to fill that role in a way that Laura simply wasn’t—and they’d all remain friends.
But that was only a dream.
Laura’s mother had always encouraged her to follow her passion. With Jack, that had yielded wonders, including the children. Well, this was a new passion, one that she hadn’t expected but wanted to explore further. Why not? Men did so all the time, with other women, with their work. Last night, Jack had explained over dinner that he needed to spend every extra moment working on the manuscript edits if he was to meet the deadline. That was his passion, his mistress. And Amelia was hers.
Then again, how would Laura feel if Jack had an actual mistress? Another question she preferred not to delve into. He was a good man, and he would be devastated if he knew she’d found physical love elsewhere. She had to take time and figure this out, for the sake of her children, her family.
Amelia had suggested Laura speak at Saturday’s Heterodoxy Club meeting, on the issue of suffrage, as a way to impress the members with her writing skills. Laura was excited to see what she could come up with. It was also a way to keep her mind from whirling away with thoughts of Amelia, and how destroyed she’d be if their love fell apart.
She filled out several call slips, waited for the books to be retrieved from the stacks, and took a seat at one of the long tables, eager to lose herself in her research. Three hours later, her eyes burning with fatigue, she headed to the Periodical Room on the first floor. The New York Times had recently published an interview with one of the leaders of the New York suffrage movement, Mrs. Alva Belmont, and Laura wanted to refer to it in her talk.
Jack had admonished her when she’d first stepped inside the Periodical Room and joked that it resembled the lair of a gout-ridden monopolist, with its dark French walnut walls and opulent doorway. On closer inspection, she’d discovered subtle surprises scattered throughout, like the pair of dolphins carved into the table pedestal and the ceiling panels that featured roosters and eagles. Since then, she never ceased to be amazed at the way the building’s architects, John Merven Carrère and Thomas Hastings, had injected a refreshing air of whimsy into their stately edifice. You just had to know where to look.
She took the remaining vacant chair, where the New York World, Joseph Pulitzer’s newspaper, lay open on the tabletop. The same man who’d founded the journalism school. The reminder of her failure made her wince.
As she went to fold it up and move it out of her way, a headline caught her eye.
THE SECRET CLUB OF THE MODERN WOMAN, REVEALED.
No, it couldn’t be.
Laura recognized the first paragraph as her own words, then the next, and the next. The entire article took up three columns, far less than her master’s thesis but longer than any others on the page. Her work had been edited down to include all the more salacious comments of the women, and anything that put their words and statements into context had been cut. The end result suggested the Heterodoxy Club was a den of insatiable vixens, determined to overturn the patriarchal world order by force.
At the very bottom ran the byline: An exclusive to The New York World written by Mr. George Wakeman, professor at the Columbia University School of Journalism.
The vile man had published her story as his own. If the members of the club saw this, they’d know she was behind it, or, at the very least, had supplied the information. She’d be cut off, reviled. She sank down in one of the chairs, not trusting her legs, her hands curled into fists. Amelia would hate her after this, think that she’d been using her the entire time, all in the hopes of getting a scoop.
“It wasn’t meant for publication.”
Her voice sounded far off, like it wasn’t her own, and was quickly answered with the librarian’s loud shush.
She gathered her things and fled.
* * *
Laura arrived late to the Saturday meeting of the Heterodoxy Club, exactly what she didn’t want to do, but Harry had complained of a tummy ache, so she’d given him a couple of digestive tablets before she’d left and tucked him back in bed. Jack would be working in his study in the apartment all day, and promised to keep an eye on the boy.
Her hope had been to get there early and pull Amelia and the other members she knew well aside and explain what had happened. Instead, she walked in just as the meeting was commencing, everyone in their seats and Marie Jenney Howe, the club’s founder, up front.
To her dismay, Marie held a copy of the New York World in her hand.
Laura had admired Marie for her calm demeanor during the meetings she’d attended—no matter how heated the discussions became—but now she turned to Laura with scorn. “The perpetrator has arrived.”
Laura spotted Amelia in the front row but couldn’t meet her gaze, her shame was so complete. Legs shaking, she walked to the front of the room, leaving a good five feet between her and Marie.
“I’m so sorry, it was a misunderstanding,” Laura began, but a woman in the back interrupted her.
“Get out. Or are you going to run back to your typewriter and write about this now?”
Marie held out one hand. “Enough. Mrs. Lyons, the rules were made clear to you from the beginning, that any discussion within this room is off the record. We did that so that our members could feel free to talk and explore radical ideas without having it skewed by the press. According to the members quoted, the information in this article can only have been provided by you, regardless of whose name is on it. You have misrepresented everything we stand for, everything we’ve said. What do you have to say about this?”
Laura took a deep breath. “My deepest apologies, to you and to the rest of the membership. I wrote a story about the club for a class at Columbia, it’s true, but it was never to be published, I swear. Without my knowledge, my advisor edited it dramatically and then submitted to the New York World under his own byline. I had no idea that this would happen. I respect everything that you’re doing and fighting for and would have never allowed it, had I known.”
Laura stood there, waiting for her judgment like a criminal on trial. The exposure seared her every nerve, like she was on fire.
“The damage you’ve inflicted on our reputations and our efforts is immeasurable,” said Marie, finally. “You are expelled from the club. You must leave at once.”