The Point of Vanishing - Maryka Biaggio (large ebook reader TXT) 📗

likely, not while men with families are lining up for the lowliest jobs.”

“I could tell them I have a family to support, too.”

Her mother’s sigh filled the cabin. “Oh, Barbara, sometimes you’re too naive for words.”

“You can finish the book. Wasn’t that your plan all along?”

“That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do. With minimal help from you.” Barbara could picture her mother tugging the corner of her mouth into put-upon disgruntlement.

“I’m doing the best I can.” She hated her mother haranguing her like this. She’d told her time and again she couldn’t do the writing; she could only review and offer suggestions.

“One of the passengers told me today she has an inexpensive apartment for rent in Washington, D.C. Maybe I can find an attorney there to put some pressure on your father.”

“Fine,” said Barbara, pulling the pillow over her head.

Still, with her mother’s cot only three feet away, her words came through loud and clear. “We’ll hole up there until we finish the book. And you will help with it.”

✭

Their apartment was in a broken-down neighborhood near Georgetown University. Her mother sent her to the University Library to research details for the book, which wasn’t such an awful way to pass the time. Barbara far preferred the library’s cool interior and gilded sanctum to their shabby, sweltering apartment.

She’d return home late afternoons and find her mother sweating over the typewriter. Barbara would plunk down with a glass of water, and her mother would report on the day’s writing. Sometimes her mother sounded hopeful, even cheery: “I think the best chance for having the story published is to tell it as you would have. After all, that’s what the editor at Harper expects.” But other times, she despaired: “Here I was three-quarters through, thinking I’d figured out how to inject a nice rhythm and wonder into the telling. Then I circled back to the beginning this morning. Now I can’t stomach how wretched it is. I’ll have to revise from word one.”

Barbara did what she could to help, and she stole a few hours each day to launch her novel. But without Ethan’s bolstering letters, she felt lonely and unmoored. She tracked down three books at the library about the Alaska territory and read the sections on its northern reaches. Learning about the harshness of the Chukchi Sea and the harrowing adversities faced by its early explorers only added to her worries.

She yearned to reach out to Ethan. But imagining her letters piling up like orphans while he navigated hostile waters sent shivers through her. He’d not receive them until his return, and some superstition warned her off sending them. In her darkest moments, she feared he’d forget about her, with the time and distance between them widening. She’d wait until she heard from him—and hope for his safe passage and steady love.

Meantime, she contented herself with letters to Alice, who’d become a great friend. Alice, too, needed a friend just now. A month before Barbara and her mother left Pasadena, life at the Russells’ home took a sad turn. Alice’s husband, Bert, found a job, but across the country in Maryland. He’d left straight away and didn’t know if or how he could afford to move the family. Alice was terribly sad, and the girls begged to go along. Barbara cringed at the unfolding events, for she knew what could come of a father leaving his family for work. But she avoided sowing any of her gloomy seeds of apprehension. Everybody was glum enough without that.

Finally, after months of laboring over the manuscript all day, every day, her mother declared it finished. “We’re going to New York,” she said. “The lawyers here are useless. And it’s depressing watching Hoover beg industry people to help the unemployed.”

Her mother arranged, by telephone, to rent an apartment in Manhattan on West 122nd, and they packed their belongings.

Barbara watched the columns of tracks recede as their train trundled off.

Her mother said, “The first thing I’ll do is make an appointment with Herbert Ashworth. God, I hope Harper accepts the book.”

“I’d like to look for work, Mother. That’s how I can help.”

“Well, I suppose we should both look. Who knows what our chances are? And I can’t bring Sabra to live with us until we have some income.”

“I wonder what she looks like now. I can hardly imagine.”

“That’s the least of my concerns about Sabra,” her mother said, staring out the window.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

BARBARA AT SIXTEEN

New York City, September 1930

September 24, 1930

Dear Alice,

Helen is in New Haven at the moment, packing up Sabra and checking on the house renters. The reason I didn’t go with her is I have a job. I read novels for Fox Company and write up synopses. I don’t know what they do with them. I’m a cog of no account in their churning wheel. Helen says they’re taking advantage of me, paying me half time when I’m working full time, but that I shouldn’t complain because we need every cent.

The doom and gloom are still upon me. The typewriter once brought me pleasure and relief, but now I’m chained to it for tawdry reasons. Nights I toss and turn from the drudgery of working for rent and bread. Eventually, I manage a few hours of sleep. When morning comes, I talk myself into being strong, like those salty sailors who take each day as one more stretch of sea.

Helen is in a tizzy of late. Harper rejected Magic Portholes, apparently because they wanted something from me, not her. Helen doesn’t come right out and say it, but I know she blames me for not fulfilling the contract. My penance is this tedious job. She’s determined to get the book published and toils over the revision all day long. After work, she wants me to edit her writing when I’m exhausted and hardly able to think. It’s a constant tug of war with us.

We’ll be poverty-stricken if Helen doesn’t sell the manuscript soon. And it’s all because of