Making It Work

by Kathleen Glassburn

  Jim mostly listened. However, he did bring up the Rolly kids. “They’re cute little guys. A lot of fun.”

  “Well behaved.”

  “How about having one of our own … when I get shore duty and we move to a bigger place?”

  “You know I want to go to school. And what about all the other things we want to do?”

  “You want to do.”

  “Aren’t there things you want to do after this whole thing is over?”

  “Not really. I just thought having a kid would be cool.” Jim pressed his head into Sheila’s neck.

  She began to stroke his bristly hair, lying down like this next to him, feeling bigger than him, motherly toward him, she pushed his baby comments to the back of her mind.

  Before dozing off again, he mumbled, “You’d make a great mom.”

  An hour later they got up and showered together. Rubbing her stomach, he said, “The loving made your hives go away.”

  For late breakfast they went out to find donuts and coffee. Then they headed for the Pike, planning to stay for the fireworks. They ate hot dogs, got sticky fingers from cotton candy, and Jim did win her a pink teddy bear.

  “We have someplace to put it.” Sheila gave him a big hug.

  “I like your regular self.”

  “I’m so relieved that we found the apartment and we get to be together until tomorrow morning.”

  A line for the Ferris wheel was extra long. Everyone wanted to be on it when the fireworks started. Sheila and Jim waited for half an hour, nibbling on caramel corn.

  “I don’t mind the wait,” Sheila said. “It’s great being here—doing something we used to do.”

  About midnight, she fell asleep in Jim’s arms, putting to the back of her mind that in a few hours he’d be off again and that Tuesday her job search would begin. Instead, her dreams were full of red and green and blue and best of all, giant bursts of gold in the sky.

  At 7:30 a.m., she hugged Jim good-bye. This time, he went to the ship with Ted Rolly instead of a taxi driver. Ted quietly waited in the alley behind the wheel of his battered white Ford sedan. After they pulled away, Sheila had no need to hurry. She puttered around the apartment, took a long walk, and picked up some real food, to make a real dinner that night—hamburger and buns and canned beans—at the little market.

  The next day, Tuesday, July 6, 1965, she would go to the California State Employment Office.

  CHAPTER 4

  Job Search

  SHEILA STARTED WORKING AROUND THE TIME PRESIDENT KENNEDY DECIDED TO PUT A man on the moon. Her first job was as an elevator operator at Pfeiffer’s Department Store in downtown Minneapolis. Carl Doty’s company did electrical work at this store. When she wanted an after-school job, her father said, “Don’t worry. I’ll find you something. I have lots of connections.” His face lit up with one of those occasional hundred-watt smiles. The elevator operator job is what materialized—Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings.

  Far from perfect, the job did provide money to buy shirtwaist dresses with tiny self-fabric belts and Capezio ballet flats with matching purses—all items that Pfeiffer’s carried. Thus, Sheila’s paychecks never amounted to much.

  Through the open work in the elevator’s metal filigreed compartment she squinted at cables and other moving mechanisms. Sheila had a fear of heights, and there were few passengers to distract her. Imagination often conjured a plummet from the fifth floor to the bargain basement.

  Besides which, she had another concern.

  Mr. Miller, the night manager whom her father contacted about getting his daughter a job, became too friendly. Soon after she started work, he entered the elevator on the second floor where his office was located. “Ladies room toilet backed up again,” he said, in greeting.

  I care? Sheila couldn’t stand his rat-like features. “Too bad.”

  “I get sick of these women stuffing their pads down the bowl. Haven’t they got any sense?”

  Sheila cringed. What am I supposed to say? These kinds of words were bad enough. But then, he started to make remarks about how shapely she looked in a sweater or how nice her legs were for a short girl. After a few nights at work, he touched her, rubbing her shoulders, saying, “You must get tense operating this contraption for so many hours.”

  Jerking away, she said, “I’m just fine.”

  On this Friday, he entered the elevator at his usual second floor and moved close enough so that his hip pressed against her hip. “Take me to the basement,” he ordered. “I need some tools.”

  “Glad to.” Sheila elbowed him aside, skipped the first floor and took him directly where he wanted to go, hopeful that this particular repair job would use up the whole evening.

  He didn’t touch her hair, but did say, “I like redheads. You remind me of the star in that new movie, Shirley … can’t recall her name.”

  Sheila didn’t bother to tell him that she didn’t look a bit like Shirley MacLaine, who had blue eyes and was a whole lot taller.

  While getting ready to go to the California State Employment Office, she recalled those dark winter bus rides back and forth from the outskirts of Minneapolis, where she lived with her family. The elevator operating shift started at 4:00 p.m. and went until the store closed at 9:00 p.m. Sheila began the job in late-January—the coldest and quietest time of the year.

  Even though she was working and felt tired most of the time, she continued to date Jim every Friday after her shift ended as well as Saturday and Sunday nights. Previously, she’d seen him every night, to do her homework together in the kitchen after dinner dishes were done. Homework was the ruse. Mostly, they sat at the paper-littered table, making out, while her parents and Tommy watched TV in the living room. On weekends, if there wasn’t a party at some friend’s house, or a school dance, they went to a movie and out for pizza, then parked an hour or so, before her midnight curfew.

  A favorite movie that winter was Irma la Douce. They went to it in Jim’s old black Mercury, slipping and sliding through snow and ice, not a bit concerned if the car would start again afterward. Fortunately, it did. Because of a cold, Sheila coughed for two hours in the dark theatre, and slurped down Cokes, trying to soothe the irritation. For sure, her hacking annoyed the few other brave moviegoers.

  Jim, probably embarrassed, turned to her several times, and said, “Should I take you home?”

  Sheila shook her head and held her breath, trying to suppress the outbursts. But before long she sputtered into another bout. Still, she didn’t want to miss any of Shirley MacLaine’s charming performance, the Paris scenes, and mostly time out with Jim.

  Sometimes, he visited her and they rode together in the empty elevator.

  Late hours and bus rides and an intrusive manager were bad enough, but the worst thing was the boredom. Sheila was required to constantly go up and down, stopping at every floor (there were five of them and a basement) calling out “Third Floor/Women’s Wear,” or whatever description fit, for pretend passengers. After identifying the location and the merchandise carried, she would sing out like a trapped canary from her six-foot by six-foot cage, either “Going up” or “Going down.” She held the crank with her right hand, guided the elevator to each floor, leveled the base until she had a perfectly flat walkway for these pretend people, then grabbed a metal arm and pulled it toward the crank to open the door.

  One night, exhausted, she dozed off while clutching the crank, going between Fourth Floor/Housewares and Fifth Floor/Furniture. All of a sudden, a jolt shook her awake. Stuck somewhere in the department store’s uppermost recesses, she opened the door and peeked out. The elevator’s floor was at least three feet above fifth. A gaping, black hole loomed, with cables and mechanisms completely exposed. She grew dizzy, envisioning a plunge to the sub-basement. Sheila slammed the door shut.

  She punched the red emergency button many times, waited several secon
ds, and punched it some more.

  Fifteen anxious minutes later, Mr. Miller arrived. “Open the door so I can see your problem,” he ordered. After she complied, he said, with a nasty chuckle, “Well, missy, you’ve got yourself in quite a fix, heh?”

  “What do I do?” Sheila tried to keep the tremble out of her voice.

  “You’ll have to jump down here, into my arms, in order to escape.”

  “What if I fall down the shaft?”

  “Shove off toward me. I’ll catch you.”

  Like a window sliding up, she realized, There’s nothing else to do. Sheila forced her fear of heights to the back of her mind, scrunched at the rear of the elevator, put both hands on the wall, ducked her head, and rocketed out of her cage. She knocked Mr. Miller flat on his back, and for a minute lay atop him, close enough for her cheek to brush against his stubbly chin, close enough to smell old cigarette smoke and sweat on his scratchy wool suit.

  “Oh, my sciatica,” he moaned.

  She almost blurted out, Sorry … sorry … sorry, but caught herself. Why should I? She silently rolled off him, as the imaginary window slammed down.

  He jerkily stood and hobbled off, saying, “Fixing the elevator will have to wait until tomorrow morning when the engineer comes in.”

  She never knew if Mr. Miller was permanently injured. The next day, Sheila called and told the personnel office that she had to resign, due to pneumonia.

  The evening after that, her father asked, “Why didn’t you go to work?”

  She said, “I’ll never get over this cold if I keep going in there three nights a week. Besides, that guy—Mr. Miller—made me feel uncomfortable.”

  “In what way?”

  “He was always saying weird things about toilets, and making these remarks about how I look—personal stuff—even touching me.”

  If it had been a stranger, her father would have blown up, told her she had to quit. He’d stepped in like this before. With eyebrows pinched over smoldering dark eyes, he’d confronted a workman who came to the house, and kept talking to her, acting too interested. But Mr. Miller had to do with business. Carl shrugged off what she said with, “Nonsense. You’re being silly.” Followed by, “You’re going to be broke.”

  The next time she went looking for a job, she didn’t want to ask her father … but he did have so many connections.

  Sheila studied her reflection in the employment office’s glass door. Her face glowed in the eighty-degree weather. Dimpled prettiness back in Minnesota might not pass muster in California. She ran a hand across her freshly washed hair. Has it started to frizz? She’d pressed her sleeveless aqua polyester dress—her only work dress. Does the hem look uneven? It was 9:00 a.m. She wanted to be the first applicant of the day, as well as the week.

  Sheila pushed open the door.

  An hour later, after a written and typing test, she met Mr. Bosanka, the man on whom her hopes were pinned. Middle-aged, he had a shiny pate with a graying fringe, a deep furrow between tired brown eyes, and several extra pounds stuffed into a worn tan gabardine suit. As she sat in the chair next to his desk, leafing through a government pamphlet, Sheila felt him studying her.

  “Unfortunately Douglas Aircraft isn’t hiring,” he said.

  She tucked the pamphlet in her black patent purse.

  “They should resume in a couple of months. Meanwhile, I’ll send you out on some other interviews. Your qualifications are good. Ordinarily, it wouldn’t take long to find you a spot, but I don’t have a lot of openings right now … with vacations and all.”

  “I really need a job. If I don’t find something soon, I’ll have to go back to Minneapolis. Jim and I haven’t been married that long. He’s in the navy. On a ship.”

  Mr. Bosanka’s eyes moved to a photograph of a woman and a trio of girls. One of them, cute with a flipped-up hairdo, reminded Sheila of Patty back in Minneapolis.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll find a place for you.” His tone had softened. He picked some cards from a file box, made a few calls, and several minutes later handed her a yellow appointment slip.

  “Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I can’t wait to go to work.” Do I sound too needy?

  Jim got back to their apartment late that afternoon. He carried a cardboard pizza box. “Ship’s going out on more maneuvers tomorrow. Be gone three days.”

  Hating that he must leave again so soon, Sheila threw her arms around him, squishing the carton against his chest.

  “Whoa girl!” He backed off. “Watch out for the whites.”

  After he changed to jeans and a faded T-shirt with “Minnesota Twins” stretched across his chest, they sat cross-legged on the Murphy bed and shared the pizza.

  “How’d your appointment go?” Even with tomato sauce dripping down his square chin, Jim looked as handsome as ever.

  Sheila held herself back from covering his messy face in kisses. Instead she told him, “Mr. Bosanka was a nice man, kind of fatherly, in a good way, but there aren’t a lot of jobs at the moment.” She began to feel shaky inside and put her slice of pizza back in the box.

  “It won’t take long. Remember how fast you got on at the bank?”

  She winced, being reminded of First Federal. If California didn’t “pan out,” her old boss, a school buddy of her father’s, had promised she could come back and work for him again.

  “Mr. Bosanka sounded pretty sure of finding something for me …” If the money will just hold out.

  A couple of weeks and three unsuccessful job attempts later—one company wanted accounting background, another decided to hire from within, and the last chose to eliminate their job—Mr. Bosanka sent her to an uptown law firm that needed a girl to assist their office manager.

  As soon as she entered the heavy double doors, Sheila felt tiny and out of place. A meticulous desk made of polished, light-colored wood dominated the airy reception room. Behind it sat a woman, long-waisted and straight-backed, with platinum-blond hair cut in a short, waved style. Tastefully applied makeup accentuated her raised eyebrows.

  Completing her scan of Sheila, she sniffed and said, “You must be,” turning to the note in front of her, “Sheila Gallagher … from State.”

  Sheila gave a quick nod, wishing she had taken extra time with the hem on her dress when sewing it.

  “Or are you delivering something?”

  “No. I’m Sheila Gallagher. I’m applying for your job.”

  “Louise Hewett.” The woman slipped a narrow hand with bright red fingernails across Sheila’s palm, fast, as if she didn’t want to contaminate herself. “I’m Mr. Briggs’s and Mr. Newell’s office manager.” She pointed at two names in shiny brass letters, with some kind of royal-looking insignia mounted over them, on a wooden accent wall behind her desk. “I certainly hope this works out. We’ve been trying for months to hire someone. Here’s an application, and you can type a letter. Follow me.”

  She stood and stroked her purple silk scarf before leading Sheila past a pair of offices with glass windows in their doors. Bold black names centered on the windows showed which man occupied each room. Sheila peeked in one—Mr. Newell. A fellow in his late-twenties or so, with crinkly, near-black hair, never raised his eyes from the papers stacked on his heavy-looking wooden desk.

  At the end of the hall, wide wall of glass overlooked a courtyard garden full of exotic plants like Sheila imagined would grow in a jungle. She had no idea what any of them were called. Louise Hewett turned left into a small space with no window either in the door or to the outside. It contained a gray metal desk and a swivel chair, an IBM Selectric Typewriter with a piece of white paper rolled into it, and an unusual black box. There were no pictures on the file-cabinet-lined walls that closed in around the desk and chair.

  “You can sit here. This will be your office if we hire you.” Louise Hewett handed her the application. “Fill this o
ut.”

  Sheila took it, hoping the office manager, with her brusque, intimidating manner, didn’t notice her own scraggly fingernails.

  Louise Hewett opened a drawer and took out a headset. “There’s a letter on the Dictaphone, ready to go.” Apparently sensing Sheila’s dismay, she went on, “You do know how to operate a Dictaphone?”

  “Oh, sure, yes, I do.”

  “I’ll be back in thirty minutes.” She swooshed around, leaving a cloud of expensive-smelling perfume. The smooth gray fabric of her swirling skirt brushed against Sheila’s bare arm.

  Starting to list pertinent information on the form, Sheila shivered. The air conditioner operated at full blast. With the door shut, this room felt like a meat locker. Thankfully, the application was brief, so she placed it aside and with trepidation, turned to the Dictaphone.

  She figured out how to hook the head apparatus up, squished down her unruly hair with the band, and turned the switch on. All she got was dead silence. How do I hear the recording? Despite the icy temperature, tiny drops of perspiration formed on her upper lip, as if she were in the midst of a humid Minneapolis day. What time is it? Fifteen minutes left?

  Sheila rubbed damp palms on her lap, producing two lines of gray down her dress’s front. Oh great! She had picked up dust fiddling around with the nasty little machine.

  Taking a deep breath, she tried to collect her thoughts. There had to be an easy solution for how to operate this thing. Another cord, hooked on the box’s back, ran down the wall behind the desk. Feeling as though she was fishing at the lake in Minnesota where she and Jim had camped, Sheila yanked on the cord until a pedal came unlodged.

  This pedal, similar to the one on her sewing machine back home, was divided in half. Tentatively, she pressed the right side with the toe of her black patent sandal. Louise Hewett’s withering voice said, “Letter to Mrs. Raymond Robertson, 555 Ocean Terrace, Long Beach. Dear Mrs. Robert …”