The Harlot’s Pen Read Online Free
course a detriment in most situations, was well-shown in the new style. Luckily for me, Sam was almost six feet high, and even in my outrageously high heeled shoes I didn’t tower over him.
The music was new Jazz, the kind that sent one’s blood zinging through the veins. I danced all the new dances, and when Sam didn’t want to dance with me, I danced with all the other fabulous men who were at the party. Leticia did not run with the same crowd—her Albert was a staid, starched fellow, but she liked him fine—but Jacqueline and Francis Pemberton were there, and Jacqueline and I spent half our time sizing up the clothing of the ladies, and the other half dancing with all the gents.
The New Year was always a time for reflection on what had gone before and what we could hope to come. Between dances, seated at a little table littered with empty champagne glasses, Jacqueline and I dissected the outfits of everyone present, remarking on who had embraced the new, shorter fashions and who adhered to the old high-necked, ruffle-sleeved look of the previous decade. Though the war years had simplified fashion, if anyone had dared leave her house dressed as Jacqueline and I were on New Year’s Eve—with far more leg than just an ankle showing, and no waistline at all—she would have been arrested for indecency.
The highlight, from a social climbing point of view, was meeting Senator Hiram Johnson, the former governor. He was a founder of the Progressive Party and had run for president. He was brilliantly handsome, and we had a spirited talk about politics. He agreed that we were on the cusp, now, of a time when a woman could be accomplished in arenas previously reserved for men: painting, music, writing… “You would of course never attract the same money as men, but think of the achievements.”
I predicted a luminous future for that fine man.
It was a great night. What made it even greater was when we got home, Sam was too drunk and tired to bother me much, and the New Year rang itself in peacefully for once.
On New Year’s day, Mr. Dohrmann’s driver took us out in the automobile, and we went down to Redwood to wish my mother a Happy New Year. She had moved us, widow and fatherless girl, out of San Francisco a few months after my father had died. I had little sympathy for her then, furious at being hidden away in a backwater, and I had escaped to Berkeley and college as soon as I was able. In retrospect, when I had been abandoned at the altar, waiting for a man and a period that did not come, I saw merit in hiding my face. But she had remained in Redwood, bitter and alone. I had moved on.
Poor woman, she could barely get in and out of her rocker anymore and was pretty hard of hearing. But age seemed to have softened her, since she received me and Sam somewhat graciously, given the harshness of prior years.
“A woman with a past should be scrupulous in her behavior if she wants to reenter society,” she had said when I first introduced Sam. I had tried to forgive the rudeness, knowing that elders couldn’t move as swiftly with the times. If a man and a girl wanted to live together, I had explained, marriage was no longer necessary. Sam had said he didn’t believe in marriage, that it was a bourgeois construct, although he didn’t seem to mind the luxury we now lived in. Sam and the Progressive movement had embraced me, given me a home where I belonged. I was lucky he would have me.
Three days into the new year, I opened the newspaper to shocking news. The Department of Justice had raided meetings and work places all across the nation, including in California, and had arrested three thousand people, all accused of “plotting together to rise up and destroy the fabric of the United States government by violent means,” as a certain Mr. Palmer, the head of the Justice Department, was quoted as saying in the San Francisco Examiner . Anyone who was at a meeting, or near a meeting, was arrested. This was the same
The music was new Jazz, the kind that sent one’s blood zinging through the veins. I danced all the new dances, and when Sam didn’t want to dance with me, I danced with all the other fabulous men who were at the party. Leticia did not run with the same crowd—her Albert was a staid, starched fellow, but she liked him fine—but Jacqueline and Francis Pemberton were there, and Jacqueline and I spent half our time sizing up the clothing of the ladies, and the other half dancing with all the gents.
The New Year was always a time for reflection on what had gone before and what we could hope to come. Between dances, seated at a little table littered with empty champagne glasses, Jacqueline and I dissected the outfits of everyone present, remarking on who had embraced the new, shorter fashions and who adhered to the old high-necked, ruffle-sleeved look of the previous decade. Though the war years had simplified fashion, if anyone had dared leave her house dressed as Jacqueline and I were on New Year’s Eve—with far more leg than just an ankle showing, and no waistline at all—she would have been arrested for indecency.
The highlight, from a social climbing point of view, was meeting Senator Hiram Johnson, the former governor. He was a founder of the Progressive Party and had run for president. He was brilliantly handsome, and we had a spirited talk about politics. He agreed that we were on the cusp, now, of a time when a woman could be accomplished in arenas previously reserved for men: painting, music, writing… “You would of course never attract the same money as men, but think of the achievements.”
I predicted a luminous future for that fine man.
It was a great night. What made it even greater was when we got home, Sam was too drunk and tired to bother me much, and the New Year rang itself in peacefully for once.
On New Year’s day, Mr. Dohrmann’s driver took us out in the automobile, and we went down to Redwood to wish my mother a Happy New Year. She had moved us, widow and fatherless girl, out of San Francisco a few months after my father had died. I had little sympathy for her then, furious at being hidden away in a backwater, and I had escaped to Berkeley and college as soon as I was able. In retrospect, when I had been abandoned at the altar, waiting for a man and a period that did not come, I saw merit in hiding my face. But she had remained in Redwood, bitter and alone. I had moved on.
Poor woman, she could barely get in and out of her rocker anymore and was pretty hard of hearing. But age seemed to have softened her, since she received me and Sam somewhat graciously, given the harshness of prior years.
“A woman with a past should be scrupulous in her behavior if she wants to reenter society,” she had said when I first introduced Sam. I had tried to forgive the rudeness, knowing that elders couldn’t move as swiftly with the times. If a man and a girl wanted to live together, I had explained, marriage was no longer necessary. Sam had said he didn’t believe in marriage, that it was a bourgeois construct, although he didn’t seem to mind the luxury we now lived in. Sam and the Progressive movement had embraced me, given me a home where I belonged. I was lucky he would have me.
Three days into the new year, I opened the newspaper to shocking news. The Department of Justice had raided meetings and work places all across the nation, including in California, and had arrested three thousand people, all accused of “plotting together to rise up and destroy the fabric of the United States government by violent means,” as a certain Mr. Palmer, the head of the Justice Department, was quoted as saying in the San Francisco Examiner . Anyone who was at a meeting, or near a meeting, was arrested. This was the same
Readers choose
Erica Lorraine Scheidt
Rachel Caine
Peter Leslie
Emily Evans
Cathryn Fox
Jodi Picoult
Barbara Cameron
Claudia H Long