Chapter 4
Maggie stayed at home with Harriet for three seemingly pleasant yet endless days before, fed up with gossip and housework, she determined to venture out.
Each day, Brendan had tramped up and down the streets of Chicago looking for work, sadly to no avail. Employers did not seem to want to hire strange men from New York with no references or connections to manage their establishments.
“I’ll find something,” Brendan assured Maggie on their third evening at the boarding house, his face set in weary yet determined lines. “It’s just a matter of time.”
Danny had had better luck, finding employment at the construction site of the Columbian Exposition in nearby Jackson Park.
“It’s a madhouse over there,” he told everyone over supper, his face alight with enthusiasm.
“They’re using electric lights to keep men working straight through the night.
After the storms this spring, they’re far behind where they should be.
They haven’t even put the roof on the Manufacturers and Liberal Arts Building, and the whole site is meant to be dedicated in October! ”
He lounged back in his chair, clearly enjoying being the Exposition’s expert, in the same way he’d liked to sound knowledgeable about Manhattan, back in New York.
At least now, Maggie thought, there was no nefarious gang involved in her brother’s doings, although the construction work sounded dangerous enough.
According to Danny, three men had lost their lives on the building site already.
The fourth morning after their arrival in Chicago, Maggie dressed as smartly as she could, taking time with her hair and pinching her cheeks for color. As she studied her reflection in the mirror, Brendan regarded her from where he sat on the chair in the corner, putting on his boots.
“Going somewhere special today?” he asked, his tone mild, but Maggie tensed anyway.
Over the last three days, they’d developed a painfully careful system of taking turns washing and dressing, so they were hardly ever in their room together.
Brendan was usually out looking for work before Maggie had woken up, and they’d spent the evenings apart, Brendan downstairs and Maggie up in the bedroom.
This morning, he was moving more slowly—while she was more determined.
She turned to face him, pasting a bright smile on her face. “Yes, I thought I’d go downtown and look for a position in one of the big department stores.”
In addition to Marshall Field and Company, she’d learned from Harriet that there were several other grand department stores in the downtown area of Chicago known as the Loop—Schlesinger & Mayer, Carson, Pirie, Scott & Company, the Mandel Brothers, or, if it came to it, The Fair, which offered discount goods in a large building on the corner of State and Adams Streets.
“You’re going to be a shopgirl?” Brendan asked, the ghost of a smile on his face, although he looked so tired, Maggie felt an ache of guilty sympathy for him. She hoped he could find work soon… and so could she. “You always have liked those grand stores.”
“I have,” she confirmed with a small smile in return.
She was reminded of when they’d first walked together in New York, and all her dreams had tumbled out, while Brendan had patiently listened, not laughing or scorning her ambitions even once.
Those happy days felt like a long time ago now, Maggie reflected unhappily.
Since coming to Chicago, her relationship with Brendan felt strained and often tense.
She missed the camaraderie of their old friendship, the easy warmth of it that had felt like a blanket she could wrap herself up in.
She wondered if they’d ever get it back.
Perhaps too much had been said and done for that to happen, she acknowledged on a silent sigh, but surely things would be better once they both had work and could move into separate lodgings.
Perhaps, once she had a job, she could pay Brendan back for all he’d bought for her and Danny.
It would go some way to alleviating the terrible sense of dependency she had on him, when she’d come to this country so determined to be beholden to no one.
“Mrs. O’Malley will miss your company,” Brendan remarked wryly as he bent to lace up his boot. “But I’m sure she’ll manage.”
“I should hope so.” As much as Maggie liked the older woman, she could do without another tiresome day of housework and gossip.
It was time to start forging her future.
“Where are you looking for work today?” she asked, and Brendan shrugged, the twitch of his shoulders seeming defensive, even defeatist.
“Wherever I can.”
“You could work on the construction site with Danny?” she suggested tentatively, and Brendan sighed.
“So I could,” he agreed wearily, “but I’m twenty-eight years old and I’ve managed my own business since I was twenty-two. I don’t particularly want to be a day laborer, breaking my back hauling bricks.”
“I understand that,” Maggie replied, her voice soft. It was why, back in New York, she’d been so reluctant to go into domestic service. It had felt like going backwards, fetching and carrying, bowing and scraping, all for someone else, and yet it had been necessary, at least for a time.
“I know you do,” Brendan replied quietly. “I’ve always admired your ambition, Maggie.” He lifted his head to hold her gaze, his hazel eyes dark with sorrow in a way that made Maggie ache inside.
She wished so many things had turned out differently—for her, for Danny, for Brendan, and maybe even for her and Brendan.
For a few moments, she let the hazy imaginings of a truly married life dance in her mind before she resolutely pushed them away.
She knew she could not say anything of those longings and regrets now, wouldn’t dare.
“If not the Exposition, then where do you think you might go today?” she asked, choosing to change the subject swiftly.
He glanced down, his shoulders slumping. “I don’t know. I feel as if I’ve walked the whole width of Chicago looking for a reasonable job. I’m a man of experience, but I don’t know anyone here…” He shook his head and managed a wry smile. “Maybe I will end up hauling bricks.”
“Don’t give up, Brendan,” Maggie exclaimed impulsively, stretching out a hand toward him. She knew how devastating it could be to give up on your dreams, and how much she was trying to cling to her own. She didn’t want that kind of defeat for Brendan—or for herself.
To her surprise, he caught her hand in his, his fingers curling around her own as he brought it toward his cheek before he checked himself and held still, their hands still clasped.
“I won’t,” he promised softly, and with a shiver of awareness, Maggie suspected he wasn’t talking about looking for employment.
He held her hand for a moment more before releasing it slowly, his fingers uncurling so her own hand fell limply to her side. Neither of them said a word as they held each other’s gazes, the moment spinning on, stretching into something else, seeming impossible to break.
Finally, with something like a shudder, Maggie looked away. “I should go,” she whispered, and she turned away blindly, nearly stumbling in her haste to get to the door—and away from the man who had such an unsettling and overwhelming effect on her, even now, when she was resolved for him not to.
A short while later, Maggie parted with a precious nickel for the cable car ride to the Loop.
She had not wanted to spend the silver dollars Brendan had given her for housekeeping money, and it had only been with reluctance that she’d used some of it for a new pair of bootlaces for Danny after his had broken, and a bar of soap for their daily washing.
The nickel, however, she gave gladly because, with every block the streetcar took her away from Englewood, the smell of the stockyards and the stifling heat of Harriet’s kitchen, she felt her spirits lighten.
Marshall Field and Company, known by locals simply as Field’s, was considered Chicago’s finest commercial palace and took up a whole block on State Street and Washington Avenue, six stories topped by an elegant mansard roof.
Even at just after eight o’clock in the morning, carriages were lined up in front of the innovative revolving doors, fronted by two doormen in green and gold frock coats, as well as a genial gentleman who greeted every elegant woman who swept into the store by name.
At the sight of it all, Maggie felt something in her swell and nearly burst—a longing as well as a hope, a reminder that a world such as this existed, and she could be a part of it.
Her dress might have been plain, her straw boater unremarkable, but she still held her head high as, nodding her own hello to the gracious greeter, she walked through the front doors of the huge store, into its soaring lobby filled with wood and glass-topped counters and tall, elegant pillars.
She paused to take in the scene—the clerks behind the counters, dressed in neat, dark dresses or suits, the tables in front of the store displayed with all manner of goods, the huge chandelier with its bright electric lights suspended above them, and a grand double staircase in the rear, curving up to the second floor.
There were also two banks of elevators, one on either side of the huge atrium, that soared upwards to even more floors filled with everything one could possibly want to buy.
Maggie walked slowly along the main hall, examining the display cases and tables with an intensity that she hoped hid her own uncertainty.
As determined as she was, she still had not formulated a plan.
Like Brendan, she had no reference, no connection.
A history of working in domestic service would not necessarily recommend her, and she could not provide any proof of that employment, anyway.
She would have to get by on her wits, and right now they felt alarmingly scattered.