Chloe

by Lyn Cote

  With his customary nod, he walked past the middle-aged receptionist at the entry to his company’s well-appointed office.

  “Mr. McCaslin,” the receptionist called to him over the heads of other arriving brokers and staff. “Mr. Ward wants to see you immediately.”

  Ignoring the ripple of interest this announcement caused, Roarke nodded. He changed directions, heading toward the plush corner office. Ward’s pretty young secretary, a stylish college graduate, rose and opened the door behind her, announcing him.

  Ward, a graying but well-preserved senior partner, stood up and offered Roarke his hand. They shook perfunctorily and Roarke backed into the chair in front of Ward’s very neat and highly polished cherry wood desk.

  “McCaslin, I wanted to make it clear to you how impressed we are with your ability to bring in new clients and carry such a heavy work load.”

  Roarke murmured an appreciative comment. But his nerves tightened. He didn’t want anyone’s praise. His work numbed his mind and gave him a reason to get up every morning. That was enough for him.

  “Today, you have an office of your own.” With a stagy smile, Ward indicated a brass key on the desktop. “You’ll have your own stenographer also. You can choose whomever you wish from our steno pool.”

  Roarke made himself smile and tried to look gratified. He wondered what Ward would say if he told him the truth—that all Roarke cared about was doing a job that kept his mind busy. An office of his own and a secretary held almost no interest for him. On the contrary, he vaguely resented them. “Thank you, sir.” He said the expected words. “I’ll try to live up to your confidence in me.”

  “We were happy to hire you after you returned from the warfront, happy to show our support for a veteran,” Ward continued. “But you have proved a wise addition to this brokerage firm. We hope you’ll stay with us.”

  “I have no plans to go anywhere at this time.” I don’t have the energy and I could care less where I work.

  “Good. Good.” Ward rubbed his hands together. “Then you might as well go see your new office and drop down to the steno pool and take your pick of the stenographers.”

  Roarke stood, shook hands again, and received the key. It was so cool and small for something that brought such an increase in prestige. He paused by Ward’s secretary and asked directions to his office. Ignoring the mild interest from a few of the other young brokers, he walked down the length of the blue-carpeted hallway and then unlocked the oak door near the other end. There was a small entry area next to his office with a small, gray metal desk, which had a typewriter and phone on it.

  He walked through a door at the far left and entered his office proper. It was comprised of a small, freshly cleaned window, an oak desk and file cabinet, phone, ticker-tape machine, and a leather office chair and a matching chair for clients on the other side of the desk. The floor was carpeted in gray and the walls had been painted white. A few landscape paintings adorned the office. He settled in his leather chair and tried to feel something beyond what he usually felt upon coming to work. He didn’t and gave it up.

  He walked back down the hall to the plump, widowed receptionist. “Mrs. Grimes, I’m supposed to choose a stenographer from the pool for myself.”

  “Yes, sir, that’s what I’ve been told.” She eyed him as if trying to read his purpose for mentioning this.

  “I don’t know anything about choosing a stenographer.” And I don’t want to know. “Do you know the pool well enough to recommend someone to me?”

  The woman pursed her lips. “What were you looking for in a secretary?”

  “Someone who is good at her job,” he answered without hesitation. Also someone who won’t flirt with me or want to heal me with the purity of her love. He’d learned to read the evidences of that crusading emotion in women’s expressions—a moistening around the eyes or a simpering manner. And he avoided every woman who tried it on him. But for Mrs. Grimes, he translated this into something polite, saying, “She must have a serious demeanor.”

  “I can think of a few girls who fit those requirements,” Mrs. Grimes said, still eyeing him.

  “Good,” he said, already turning away. “Send them up this morning and I’ll interview them quickly and make my choice. I don’t have much time to waste on this. I have customers to meet with before I go to the Exchange.”

  “I’ll get the ball rolling right away, Mr. McCaslin.” She reached for her phone. “I’ll send them to you one at a time.”

  He thanked her and went back to his office. He found that someone had already moved boxes of his records and papers to the new office for him. He went through restoring order to his client files and setting up his desk to suit him.

  The outer door opened and a woman cleared her throat. “Mr. McCaslin?”

  He glanced up and saw the look he hated most. “Thank you, but you won’t do.”

  The young woman opened and closed her mouth once, twice, and then turned and exited.

  Roarke went on with his arranging things. Within minutes, another young lady stood before him, clutching a steno pad to her chest. He looked at her face. He read the way she sized him up and the look of determination in her eyes and her firm chin. “Your name, please?”

  “I’m Talbot, sir. Miss Edna Talbot. I take dictation at 118 words a minute and I type at eighty-three words a minute. Those are averages, you understand.”

  He assessed her. She was dressed neatly and with propriety. Her dark skirt fell far below her knees and she didn’t look at him as if her love alone could save him. Edna Talbot looked . . . ambitious. Or driven to obtain his approval. She didn’t want to redeem him. Clearly, she wanted him to elevate her from the steno pool.

  That motivation he could understand and appreciate. “I’ll give you a try. Make yourself comfortable out in your office and then come back and I’ll run you through my list of clients and my immediate plans and strategies to make them a lot of money.”

  “Yes, sir.” Talbot nearly saluted him.

  This brought a rare grin to his face. He chuckled silently. Ambition was better than salvation as far as he was concerned. Especially since he belonged among the ranks of the damned.

  An enormous wave of warm relief had deluged Chloe when she entered her father’s apartment in D.C. on Monday morning, two days after seeing Roarke. Guilt followed the relief, but the relief won. No one here would reject her. No one here knew she was a failure as a mother. And her father needed her.

  He’d left her a note on the dining room table. She read it and sat down immediately with the cook at one end of the expanse of polished mahogany table to draw up a menu for an open house for the wives of Democratic congressmen. After she’d thoroughly discussed finger sandwiches, petit fours, and buying a new and larger coffee urn, the phone rang.

  Chloe stepped out to the hallway and answered it herself. They didn’t have a butler in the apartment, just a cook and a maid. “Hello, this is the Kimball residence. Chloe Black speaking.”

  “Mrs. Black, this is Mrs. Meyer Hughes. Mrs. Henderson recommended I call you and invite you to join our group.”

  “What group is that, Mrs. Hughes?” Chloe tried to think if she’d met this lady, but couldn’t bring a face to match the name.

  “We are a group of civic-minded women who perform various charitable tasks in this city. We were wondering if you’d be interested in helping with a fund drive for the orphanage here. We hear that you are a war widow and the orphanage has been inundated by orphans of soldiers whose mothers have died or who can’t support them. I’m afraid the flu epidemic of ’18 alone took a terrible toll in the lives of many children, robbing them of their remaining parent.”

  Tears rushed to Chloe’s eyes. The war had robbed her of her life, the independent life she’d tried to claim. At least she was an adult and hadn’t ended up in an orphanage. But should she tell the woman that she wasn’t good with children? She fidgeted with the telephone cord. No, of course not. After all, she wouldn’t be asked to car
e for children, just raise funds for them, and the woman would tell her how to do that. “Yes, I’d be honored to help in any way I can.”

  “Wonderful. Do you have plans for Thursday afternoon?”

  “No, nothing at this time. I’ve just returned from a jaunt to New York City.”

  “Then I’ll pick you up on my way to the orphanage. Let’s say around one that afternoon?”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  On Thursday morning, Roarke stepped out of the elevator, nodded to the receptionist, and walked into his new office.

  Dressed in an unobtrusive navy suit, Miss Talbot was already there at her desk, answering her phone. “Mr. Roarke has just stepped in, Mrs. Creighton. He’ll pick up momentarily.”

  Roarke liked the way Talbot had come early every day and the way she talked to clients as if he already had a corner office and she were presiding over her own roomy office instead of the postage-stamp area she occupied at present.

  With a nod, he strode to his desk, shed his trench coat on the coat rack, and picked up the phone. Suddenly, as if a delayed reaction, he felt a spurt of satisfaction. He squelched it. This job wasn’t about being successful; it was about having something to do every day. It was about having enough money to live completely free of the entanglements of family and friends. It was about survival, just as it had been on the front.

  He listened with half an ear to Mrs. Creighton’s “feeling” that a certain oil company’s stock would explode soon and her query whether he should buy some for her.

  Miss Talbot appeared in the partition, holding her steno pad like a shield. Today there was a new look in her eye that Roarke couldn’t decipher. He could identify cloying sympathy and revulsion with practiced ease. But this was a more complex expression. With deliberation, he decided it was another form of ambition—Miss Talbot was sizing him up as a possible husband. Well, no harm in that. She’d learn soon enough he wasn’t interested in marriage to anyone.

  On Thursday afternoon, Chloe walked into the Washington Orphanage, which occupied a large, two-story house in a sad neighborhood. Though the entrance and foyer of the building were spotless, the orphanage smelled of urine and strong disinfectant. Miss Jones, a middle-aged spinster wearing an outmoded black dress, greeted them with a tense smile. “So happy you ladies made time for a visit today. Some of the children are waiting to greet you in our dining room.” She led them toward the rear of the building.

  Chloe heard a child crying somewhere above them. Her nerves tightened at this cue.

  “Our infants and toddlers are on the second floor,” Miss Jones explained, nodding toward the staircase.

  Chloe felt the same panic she experienced when dealing with her daughter. But they weren’t going to the second floor. Miss Jones had said so.

  “I’d like you to give Mrs. Black a quick once-over tour today if you would,” Mrs. Hughes said. “She’s new to our work and needs a quick education on your orphan’s home.”

  “Of course.” The orphan director changed directions. And Chloe found herself being led up to the second floor. She wanted to decline, but she couldn’t; in this social situation, she had to follow the ladies. She’d just have to keep her distance from the children. They’d already been orphaned. They didn’t need her upsetting them.

  At the top of the stairs, the other two ladies preceded her into a communal nursery. Little ones lay in cribs and bassinets in the crowded room. Toddlers staggered around the unadorned wooden floor, grabbing hold of crib legs as they tried to walk. Two older matrons dressed in drab gray uniforms rocked babies while keeping an eye on the unsteady toddlers. The little ones of both sexes all wore the same clothing—shapeless, unironed and stained cotton dresses.

  Chloe hung back near the entrance. The dingy room excited her sympathy but she was terrified of the children’s reaction toward her.

  “Come in, Mrs. Black,” Mrs. Hughes encouraged.

  Chloe took a few hesitant steps into the room. Three toddlers headed toward her in their jerky, uneven gaits. She took a step backward. But one, a little boy with black hair, ran faster and caught her around the knees. He squealed with triumph. Chloe couldn’t describe what she felt. He came straight to me.

  Within seconds, the other two, both little girls, had joined him, clinging to her skirt. Chloe felt them swaying, their balance uncertain. One of the matrons hurried forward. “I’m so sorry. Are they wrinkling your dress?”

  Chloe looked down at the three happy little faces beaming up at her and shook her head. As if in a dream, she stroked the silken, baby-fine hair of each one in turn. “No, they’re all right.” More than all right. “What is this little boy’s name?”

  “Jamie. Our little Jamie.”

  The toddler looked up and squealed with obvious pleasure at hearing his name.

  “Hi, Jamie,” Chloe murmured.

  The child tightened his hold on her. Didn’t he know she wasn’t good with children? Or maybe only my daughter hates me. Unable to contain herself, she burst into embarrassing tears.

  Within moments, Mrs. Jones had settled Chloe with Jamie on her lap into one of the commodious wooden rockers. Chloe had babbled some incoherent explanation the orphanage director seemingly ignored. She and Mrs. Hughes had then left to follow the planned program. But Chloe had stayed behind, rocking Jamie, letting him cuddle close to her, fingering his black hair and whispering soft words to him. Finally, the little one had fallen asleep in her arms and Chloe had reluctantly relinquished him to one of the matrons.

  Now Chloe walked down the stairs to the main floor. Mrs. Jones was waiting for her at the bottom. “Thank you, Mrs. Black. That was a lovely thing you did. I know you’re a busy lady, but we can always make use of someone who likes to rock and mother our little waifs.”

  Chloe didn’t know what to say.

  “Would you like to visit us? We always need volunteers.”

  Before she could stop herself she replied. “Yes.” Yes! Her failure with her own child would always sting. But the satisfaction she’d felt holding Jamie had poured over her heart like warm oil over irritated skin, soothing and easing her loss.

  “Late afternoons are best,” Miss Jones continued. “Our staff welcome breaks then.”

  “I’ll come back.” Chloe blinked away tears. Why couldn’t holding Bette be easy, like holding Jamie?

  “How about Monday?” Mrs. Jones invited.

  “Yes.” Chloe looked around. “Where’s Mrs. Hughes?”

  “She had to leave with regret, but I believe . . .” Mrs. Jones motioned toward the entrance.

  Drake Lovelady stood outside in the late afternoon sun.

  Shaking her head in surprise, Chloe walked out to greet him. “Drake, how did you know?”

  He swept off his hat. “Your estimable maid told me where you were and I just happened to be going this way and thought you might be glad to see me.”

  She took a deep breath. “I am.”

  He answered with a slow grin. “May I squire you home, then?”

  “Please.”

  He walked her to his shiny black Cadillac and drove her away. As he inquired about her day, she wondered if Drake Lovelady liked children, and then wondered why she should care. Unbidden, a song from Minnie’s musical played in her mind, “Love Will Find a Way.” But after all was said and done, it was just a song.

  Wasn’t it?

  Part Two

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Washington, D.C., March 1929

  At the Washington Auditorium, the well-known orchestra played on and on. Chloe moved in time with a youngish tuxedo-clad senator from California. Nearby Drake danced with a well-padded matron, the wife of a Supreme Court judge. Chloe wore her signature color in evening wear—ebony. Her French gown was cut slim and beaded with black jet. For the occasion, Drake had given her long, art deco platinum-and-diamond earrings that dangled from her ears. Her father had scolded her for accepting such an expensive gift from a bachelor. But she’d only laughed at him. Drake had money to bur
n and she liked the earrings.

  Chloe’s head felt fuzzy, although not with alcohol; nothing could be drier than the charity ball in honor of Herbert Hoover’s inauguration. Rather, her thoughts were focused on earlier that day. She’d spent the afternoon at the orphanage as she’d done twice a week for the past few years. If she could have chosen, she’d have preferred spending this evening rocking the toddlers and soothing them before they went to bed. She shut her mind to memories of small hands clasping hers and the feel of a child in her arms who wanted to be there. Ten-year-old Jamie was too old to be rocked now. But when at the orphanage, she always spent after-school time with him.

  The waltz ended and the next dance—the Charleston—began. Drake claimed her and she accepted without demur. Overhead, the glittering chandeliers almost hypnotized her as she unconsciously went through the motions of the dance. Jamie’s face kept coming to mind, the way he always looked crestfallen when she had to leave. He’d never asked, but his expression always asked, “Please take me home.” What was she going to do about Jamie?

  Finally, the dance ended and she took Drake’s arm, feeling suddenly desperate without knowing why or how to stop it. “I need air.”

  “I need more than that,” Drake murmured into her ear, his breath fanning the hair over it. “Let’s get out of here.” She nodded. “Meet you a block away.” Drake didn’t wait for her answer, but was already heading toward the exit, shaking hands and smiling his way out of the room. At social functions, she and Drake rarely arrived or left together. She wondered if their ploy fooled anyone. She hoped so; she didn’t want any gossip about their having an affair. Because they weren’t having one. What are we having? Chloe shook away her thoughts. Thinking didn’t help. It only made a person sad. Better to keep busy and amused. Drake could be very amusing.

  She claimed her fur wrap and sauntered into the chilly night. Strolling down the crowded street, she glimpsed Drake’s sleek Lincoln at the corner and approached it. He hopped out, swept her inside, and they were off.