Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Phoebe
I spend the weekend practicing my presentation, running the numbers exhaustively, and breaking up all that brain work with episodes of Shark Tank to watch other people present. It might help more with what not to do, but it still helps.
When I walk out of my apartment Monday morning, I get a gut feeling to check my mailbox. Sure enough, I find another letter for Smitten Kitten. I stare at it in bewilderment. How did I know it would be here? Maybe it was wishful thinking.
I text Jay on my way out to my car.
Phoebe
A new letter this morning. On my way to work.
Jay
Excited Buddy the Elf gif
He’s waiting on the back porch when I park, a mug in each hand .
“Can we dive right in?” he asks, standing and moving aside so I can unlock the door.
“Only because you brought the right bribe.” I accept the mug he extends, and we head down the hall. “I’m almost going to be sad when the upstairs is renovated. I like my fancy library office.”
“You’re the boss. You can keep it here if you want.”
“Cannot. We must educate the public, and the public deserves this library.”
He salutes. “That’s right. Museum job and all.”
I set my bag on the desk, pull out the letter, and slit the end of the envelope. “Ready?”
Jay has taken his usual chair. Now he sets down his mug and rests his elbows on the desk, chin propped on his hands, and bats his lashes. “Yes, please, teacher.”
My stomach and brain give a shiver, and I sternly tell them, in my inside-my-head voice, You do not find that sexy.
They know I’m lying.
I pivot to the letter to save myself. I check the signature and the date. “Yours always, Dear Heart. December 8.”
“After Thanksgiving.” He pulls his phone from his pocket and starts tapping. “Escalating to ‘yours always.’ Go ahead. I’m listening.”
Dear Smitten Kitten,
I miss you like Joe DiMaggio misses Marilyn. It’s been less than two weeks since you left, but it feels like forever. And I feel like a dope for noticing, much less caring, but it’s the truth, and I’m glad to tell it .
Everything I said to you over Thanksgiving is true too. I know you’re not quite ready to believe me, especially not after Betty and Marie horned in on our table at the club the night before you left, but you have to know I didn’t invite them. I have no idea why Betty thought she could act so possessive of me. I hope I made it clear to her—but more importantly, to you—that she shouldn’t hang a single hope on me, because I’m hopelessly gone on you.
There. I’ve said it, and you can torture me with it if you want. But I’m handing you my heart right here in this letter, Kitten. I have never felt like this about anyone, and I’ll go holler it in Harvard Yard if you want me to. Maybe I’ll even do it if you don’t, so that someone laughing at my foolishness will spread the gossip until it gets back to you, and you’ll know how very serious I am.
I want a future with you, Kitten. I want to graduate and become a captain of industry so I can buy you any house you desire, take you on any holiday you want, send our children to any schools you choose, and give you a household staff that will manage everything, so all you need to do is buy things that catch your eye and keep me on my toes with your clever conversation. That will be the entirety of your domestic duties if you wish it.
This isn’t an official proposal, Kitten. I know you’re enjoying the classroom. But won’t you be a little bit glad to turn in your gradebook for good and never have to deal with a misbehaving student again? When the sum total of your worries will all fall inside the home I’ll build for you? When your whole job is the children we’re raising and not twenty strangers who may not choose to mind you?
I want to give you that. A life of ease. A beautiful home and kids. I’m just asking you to tuck the possibility away in the back of your mind or a tender corner of your heart, and let it grow. Let it grow so that when you come home for Christmas, I can spend thirteen days convincing you of how deep my feelings are and the last day celebrating when you say yes to the question I’ll be thinking of nonstop until then.
Yours always,
Dear Hear t
I set down the letter.
“Harvard Yard, so we got his school right,” Jay says, scrolling through his phone. “And these dates on the letters—you’re frowning again.”
I glance up to find him studying me. “Yeah. Sorry. Trying to work through some presentism.”
“The part about how he dreams of a future for her where she’ll buy stuff and entertain him?” he guesses.
“Yeah.” Historians need to examine the past objectively. One of the hardest biases to overcome is presentism, the tendency to judge other eras by modern values, like what it takes for a woman to be fulfilled now versus what she might have valued then. It’s human nature, but it’s poor scholarship.
“I can’t blame you,” Jay says. “I can do a good rant on this. Want me to?”
A smile teases the corner of my lips. “Please do.”
He stands and paces. “Who does this guy think he is, telling her to pop out kids and plan vacations? Easy for him to say it’s not that big a deal when he gets to pursue any professional avenue he wants while she’s expected to stay home. And the nerve of this guy to say he loves her because he finds her conversation interesting. Why is it all about him?” He stabs the air to emphasize key points.
It’s an appropriate amount of outrage, and his serious words with the playful delivery release some of the letter’s ick. I give Jay a solemn nod. “Nice job. However, in Dear Heart’s defense, if Smitten Kitten was super hot, he was probably in a rush to lock it down.”
He rubs his chin. “True. The rules change depending on hotness. I withdraw my objections.”
“Good rant, though.”
He inclines his head in gracious acceptance of the praise before he breaks character with a grin. “Thanks. ”
“No, thank you .” I mean it. His joking has given me enough time to pinpoint why a letter reflecting exactly the sentiments I would have expected during this era is hitting me harder than it should. “Now, tell me how you really feel about this one.”
He gives a single-shoulder shrug. “I’m glad we’ve moved past that kind of thinking.”
My eyes trace some of Dear Heart’s words. Domestic duties . Turn in your gradebook . I feel my frown returning, but I can’t help it. “I’m trying to hold space for the social values sixty years ago and give Dear Heart grace for being a young man in love. But it’s hard when I’m not sure we’ve all left those double standards behind.” Isn’t that how I ended up taking this job in the first place? Being the victim of a double standard?
“Do you run into this a lot? Is it this blatant?”
“Not blatant, no. I’m all for stepping out of the workforce to focus on kids full-time if that’s what women choose . My sister-in-law did, and she’s super happy, but it wasn’t expected. And I don’t think anyone thinks twice about moms who work full-time.” I stop to consider the root of the ick. “Sometimes different standards for men and women professionally still show up in other ways.”
My pay was fair at the Sutton. Or at least comparable to what other curators earned. None of us is ever paid what we’re worth, but there wasn’t a pay disparity between men and women. It’s more about the unspoken, unmeasurable double standards, like how our professionalism is judged.
“You’re speaking from experience.” His tone is an invitation to tell him more.
Should I give Jay the whole story of why I ended up leaving the Sutton? The idea exhausts me, plus Catherine Crawford hasn’t reached out to express a concern to me, or, as far as I know, to anyone else about my position here. Definitely not to Jay, or I would have heard about it, I think. I’m banking on that as a sign she’s willing to let me start with a clean slate.
Either way, I don’t want to color Jay’s perception with my worries. If Catherine is considering this a fresh start, I’ll know based on our interaction tomorrow night. If she isn’t, I can use Jay as an objective observer to tell me if I’m being oversensitive or if he senses she has a problem with me.
He’s waiting for me to tell him more, but I just smile. “We all run into other people’s biases, right?”
He shrugs. “Wouldn’t know anything about that. I definitely haven’t run into it lately, like someone holding my East Coast prep school education and sailboat against me.”
“That’s not bias. That’s the impartial light of experience.”
“Phoebe, you’re frowning again.”
“East Coast Ivy boys do that to me.”
“You hate them? Us? You hate me ?” He grabs his chest like that got him right in the heart.
“Ever eat so much of your favorite treat that it kind of makes you feel sick, and you don’t want that treat anymore? Like even thinking about it makes you feel queasy?”
His eyes light up. “You love East Coast Ivy boys. You have a type .”
“Had,” I correct. “I overdosed.”
He braces his hands on the desk and smiles down at me. “I would like to point out that I am that type.”
“For what, Jameson?” I ask with exaggerated confusion. “Friendship? Of course. Every type is my friend type. My number one not-dating type is men I work with.” I say it as a reminder to stay in his lane, but his eyes dance even more.
“Got it,” he says. “You dated an East Coast Ivy type you worked with, and now you think you have an allergy to them. ”
“To you . And only a romantic one.”
He stands. “On that note, I’m going to go take my very non-flirting self to work at my job that defies your stereotype of East Coast Ivy boys. If I happen to look up some Dear Heart clues—like how ‘captain of industry’ makes me think Harvard business school—oh well. Sleuthing happens.”
When he disappears, I stare at the space he left behind. That’s how it feels. Like a nearly tangible imprint of where he just was.
How can a shameless flirt with intentions as deep as a Saharan rain puddle create a strong enough impression that I still feel him when he’s gone?
I shake it off, and for the rest of the day, I work on my presentation. I have to cover everything from what staff I need to hire, when, and for how much, to my vision for permanent collections and exhibits.
It’s the last part I’m most passionate about, of course. Curation is the museum specialty with the most range, but designing exhibits—choosing a focus and the most relevant artifacts to educate the public about it—is the beating heart of the job.
In his bequest, Foster spelled out the mission statement of the museum, and at this point, I have it pretty much memorized. For the locals, he wants them to learn or rediscover parts of the city’s past they may have forgotten. For everyone else, he wants them to know how a small town on the Worcester Plateau became an integral part of Massachusetts’s proud history of progress and innovation.
In his notes breaking down each piece of the mission statement, he put it this way: “Serendipity Springs will become a stronger draw than Salem as visitors discover we are the seat of the true magic in the Commonwealth through our people, industry, and long history of civic engagement. Salem can become an interesting side trip. ”
I chuckled when I read that the first time, imagining Foster and the near constant twinkle in his eye as he plotted ways to outdo Salem—but making magic, for him, is no joke.
So much rides on this meeting tomorrow, and I’ve never been more serious about anything.