Chapter 9 Emily
EMILY
Needing more time to think about Doris’s approval of the Mercer scoop, Emily decided to walk home from work again instead of taking the streetcar.
The gears of her mind were turning in a way she’d never experienced.
A fuse had been lit in her gut, and she didn’t know what to do other than let the flame burn to its natural combustion.
Because she knew her parents well, she’d decided she would try speaking to her father first, to see whether he’d agree to help her get declared “incorrigible” without Bess’s influence or immediate rejection of Emily’s proposal.
If he said yes, then they could talk to her mother, which Emily knew would be a deeply unpleasant conversation.
When dinner was finished, Bess declined Emily’s offer to help with the dishes, which brought a wave of relief as Emily seized her chance and stepped out onto the back porch to sit with her dad.
He always nursed a cigarillo and glass of Scotch out there in the evening; rain or shine or the frigid depths of January.
Emily took the rocking chair across from him and let out a sigh just as he exhaled a plume of smoke. They both chuckled.
“You were quiet at dinner. Something’s got your tail,” William said. “What’s it look like?”
Emily scuffed her foot absent-mindedly on the patio. “You know me well, Dad.”
“I do, my girl.”
She considered how to open the conversation. They had never before discussed what Emily might call the real content of Chatelaine. She would need to begin there, in order to explain the rest.
“Do you ever read Chatelaine?” she asked him.
A smile twitched around his lips as he drew again on the cigarillo. “Mhm.”
“So you’ve seen—”
“Mhm.”
Emily snorted out a laugh as her dad’s dimply smile widened.
“Why do you think I tried so hard to get you a job there instead of one of the papers?” he asked.
“Doris Anderson knows what she’s about. She knows why the magazine appeals, including the weightier topics that impact women’s day-to-day lives as much as their need for decorating tips.
No disrespect meant to your recent piece,” he said, mouth twitching again.
“But I don’t think you will always have to write articles about recipes and the like. The ladies’ stuff.”
Emily’s shoulders relaxed. This might go all right after all.
“Doris also doesn’t suffer fools,” William added, “and doesn’t shy away from challenging authority. A lot like you. Hence the politically charged articles she slips in between the cosmetic ads.”
“And no one upstairs has caught on?”
Her father shook his head. “I hate to say it, but Maclean-Hunter doesn’t give a hoot about Chatelaine as long as it keeps them in the black.”
Emily nodded. “That’s what Doris says, too.
” She took a deep breath, thinking for a moment about the “ladies’ stuff,” about Doris’s evident frustration when Ted the delivery driver innocently reported that Maclean’s had sent him downstairs to Chatelaine simply because the content of the note referenced women, and was therefore relegated to some tacit second tier of journalism.
“Well,” she began, “what you were just saying, about me probably not having to write the fluff forever?” She withdrew the prisoner’s letter from the pocket of her skirt, passed it to her father. “This found its way to me at the office.”
He scanned the crumpled paper, which had become softer now from so many hands on it.
Emily herself had read it at least a dozen times.
She watched him, as she often did when he worked, to see the analysis in his blue eyes.
Curls of smoke wafted upward from the cigarillo in the brown-glass ashtray beside him, disappearing like a spectre into the warm spring air.
“Well,” he said, finishing. “That’s quite something, Em.” He looked up at her, eyes twinkling. “So I assume you’re showing me this for a reason.”
She told him everything then, from what she’d learned at the Legislative Library to her exchange with June Jones, and the conversations they’d had in Doris’s office. She braced herself for the proposal, then plowed on.
“Having a woman incarcerated there appears to be more a matter of opinion than any real reflection of her wrongdoing. So, we’d like to see if it’s really as simple as it seems.”
“Well,” he began, head tilting from side to side as he mulled it over, “if there’s credence to it, it is a great story.
And I’m sure Doris is right, if the abuse is as bad as the allegations, and it’s government-run, that’s headline news, and in a women’s mag to boot.
Even the men upstairs would be impressed by that. So what’s the plan?”
Emily’s insides jolted with excitement. “The only thing we can think of is to get in there somehow. Get a writer inside to witness it for herself. And, well…we’re talking about that writer being me.”
He paused, tapped the cigarillo on the ashtray. “Undercover, you mean? Inside the Mercer prison?”
“Yes.”
A long pause. “And Doris is asking you to do this? Why?”
“Because the other writers can’t take the time away from their families,” Emily told him. “But I want to do it, and I’m the only one who can.”
He pulled on his little cigar once again, brow furrowed in concern. The sound of dishes clattering and Bess humming drifted out the screen door behind them. The scent of lilacs wafted from the back of the yard.
“Mm. So how would you go about it?”
“Well, I would need your help,” Emily said, “to have me deemed ‘incorrigible.’ A parent can bring their daughter before the judge. You could make up some story about how you and Mom are at the end of your wits with me, and need them to sort me out.”
She smiled at her little joke, tried to get him to soften, but this time he didn’t return the grin.
“Jeez, Em,” he said. He crossed one leg over the other. “You want me to help you get sent to prison?”
The heat rose in her neck. She had to convince him, or there was no hope for it. “I want you to help me scoop a story about a prison that could solidify my career, Dad. And hopefully make a difference while I’m at it.”
He exhaled smoke again, meeting her eyes now, but said nothing.
Emily sat forward. “Dad, having your name got me into Chatelaine, but I want more than what an editorial assistant gets to do. I want to be a real reporter like you were. Like you are. You know that’s what I’ve wanted since I was a child.”
He did let out a breathy chuckle then, holding her gaze.
“I know. I’ve still got those stacks of family newsletters you used to produce, remember?
They’re in my desk drawer. Reports on the neighbours’ comings and goings, reviews of your mother’s new recipes.
The argumentative column you wrote for three months straight when you were campaigning for a cat. ”
Emily watched the emotion of the memory wash over his features, and it made her strangely sad then, to think of that ten-year-old girl clacking away at her dad’s typewriter and filling notebook after notebook with diary entries, short stories, even poetry, all of which were still stashed under her bed along with the children’s books.
That girl had wanted to emulate her father, her dreams bigger and more out of reach than she could even comprehend.
Emily didn’t know now if the Nancy Drew stories she’d read were, at the end of the day, a liberating escape or a fallacy that tricked her young mind into believing that girls could ever be seen as just as clever and brave and capable as boys.
Because she knew now, as a grown woman, that the stories she’d read of women leading adventurous lives were a fantasy, not a mirror.
There were only a handful who had managed to forge such paths for themselves.
If Nancy’s story had continued all the way to adulthood, what would have happened?
Would it have ended in her capitulating to marriage and babies and burying forever her sense of curiosity, her thirst for adventure and justice?
That would have been the end of Nancy’s life as she knew it, and Emily couldn’t let it be hers.
Knowing Jem was going to propose soon, the Mercer opportunity now felt imperative, as though it was both the long-term ticket to the life she wanted, and an escape hatch from the current situation with Jem.
“Dad,” she continued. “If I can secure a scoop like this at Chatelaine, I’ll probably get promoted, or I could take that clout elsewhere—the Star, or Globe.
But I’m a woman. They won’t even look at me if I don’t have some serious stories to my name, even if it is Radcliffe. You know that. This is my chance.”
Her dad nodded slowly. “I’m sorry, Em. I’m sorry it’s different for you.
Life would be much easier for so many girls if they’d just been born boys.
I’m not sure why it matters so much, eh.
” He paused. “But, if I’m honest, it does.
Somehow it does. If you were my son I’d be telling you to do it, that your girl would wait for you, that this is a great opportunity.
But I’m having trouble. I’m sorry. This seems so dangerous. This note…” He handed it back to her.
Emily’s heart sank. “So…is that a no?”
He shook his head. “No. It’s not a no. But I do have questions. What about Jem, for a start? You’d be gone for, what…three months, you said?”
Emily swallowed. “I know. That would be the end of us. But the truth is, I don’t see that as a bad thing, Dad.
” She’d considered this, too. “Instead of outright refusing him, with this plan, we can both save face a little by hanging the reason for our split on this investigation, on the time I would need to take away from my loved ones.”
Her father shook his head.
“Jem will move on,” she said. She knew she would miss him as a friend, but that was all. “There are plenty of girls like Ellie who want that traditional sort of life. But you and I both know I don’t want what Ellie has. I want a career. This career.”
Her father watched her, still looking skeptical, and now also a little sad.
“And maybe someday I’ll find a man who…” She faltered.
She loathed the word allow. “A man who will accept who I am and that I need to work, to use my mind like this, to not be tied down. Maybe.” She shrugged.
“But if I don’t, I need an income anyway.
I can’t live with you and Mom for the rest of my life.
You just said yourself, if I were a man, you wouldn’t hesitate on this.
After all your support, would you really stand in my way on what could be my big break?
Please help me, Dad.” Emily hated the feeling in her belly, that bitter guilt, as though she were trying to wrestle something from her father’s grip.
But in a way, she was. He held the key to the door to the life she longed for.
The one that felt as though it fit properly over all her rough edges.
He was quiet for a long while. The sounds from the kitchen had ceased, and dusk was falling across the yard now.
He cleared his throat. “As a journalist, I respect the hell out of the idea, Em. But as your father, I’m struggling.
It feels unnatural to have my own daughter committed to a prison.
But when I really think about it, the truth is I’d be that proud of you, if you broke this story and helped shine light onto that sort of injustice. ”
“Really?”
“ ’Course I would! You’ve been champing at the bit for a worthwhile story since you were yea high,” he said, gesturing a foot off the ground.
“And if it works,” he added, “it actually really could be the break for your career. You’re not wrong about that.
” He sighed a little regretfully. “But you’re sure this is what you want?
The job, splitting with Jem? The risk? Because there wouldn’t be much option to turn back once the thing’s been decided. ”
Emily swallowed the swelling sensation in her throat, as though she’d bitten off too much. Perhaps she had. But perhaps she wanted to. “Yes. I’m sure.”
“And you don’t think a judge will know who we are?” he asked.
Emily thought for a moment. Her father’s name was big in the publishing and news industries in the city, but how far his notoriety reached beyond that was questionable. She told him as much. “And no judge will know who I am,” she said. “I’m just a woman.”
He stubbed out his forgotten cigarillo. “All right, then. I’ll help you get in there, if I can.”
A surge of emotion gripped Emily and she leaned across, wrapping her father in a hug. His arm came around her as her smooth cheek rubbed against his stubbled one.
“Aw, thanks, sweetheart. You’re my favourite incorrigible daughter.”
Emily breathed a chuckle and wiped a tear from her eye as they pulled apart.
“But now,” her father said heavily, “I’m afraid we still have to convince your mother.”