Beyond All Dreams by Elizabeth Camden Read Free Book Online Page A

employing women in clerical positions throughout the city, and almost all of the women were either spinsters or widows. If a woman married, she was swiftly nudged out of her position to make room for a needier woman.
    Mary-Margaret burst into the dining room, her hands outstretched and her eyes closed as she pretended to fumble toward the long oak table in the center of the room.
    â€œSomebody bring me a bowl of stew. I’ve gone blind from feeding the punch cards into those horrid machines.” It was a typical complaint. Mary-Margaret worked alongside hundreds of women employed at the Census Bureau, whining incessantly about the monotony of her job. Girls moved aside on the bench to make space for Mary-Margaret, but no one rushed to get her dinner.
    Anna approached the sideboard, relieved to see there was still plenty of stew in the iron kettle. She had been living there for six years, ever since graduating from the Mount Vernon College for Women right here in Washington. The quarters were tight, the food merely adequate, and there was no privacy, but she’d happily live in a cardboard box if it meant keeping her position at the Library of Congress.
    â€œCan I get you another serving?” Anna asked Mrs. Horton as she approached the dining table. The elderly widow was always exhausted at the end of her day, performing clerical duties for the Agriculture Department. Anna was happy to fetch food for Mrs. Horton. Mary-Margaret, not so much.
    Mrs. Horton scooted aside on the bench to make room for Anna. “I’m fine, dear.”
    â€œIf you hate working at the Census Bureau, why don’t you quit and move back home?” Gertrude barked at Mary-Margaret.
    â€œBecause if I move back home, I’d have to share a room with my two little sisters. No thanks! I’d swallow a dose of strychnine first.”
    Anna said nothing while she ate her stew. She’d been sharing a room with Mrs. Horton for six years, and it wasn’t so bad. Most of the women who lived here paid extra to have a private room, but Anna had responsibilities. The upkeep of Aunt Ruth was a bottomless well that drained Anna’s paltry bank account each month. Sharing a room with Mrs. Horton meant that Anna could afford to keep Aunt Ruth in comfort, and it soothed the guilt that weighed on Anna’s conscience every day of her life.
    As usual, the volume of twenty chattering women in the dining room was deafening. Anna rarely joined in. It wasn’t that she was shy; she simply didn’t have much in common with these women.
    Mary-Margaret had just bought a jar of cream labeled Bust Food at the pharmacy and was eagerly passing it around the table to the delighted women. Gertrude’s large hand snatched the jar to read the label aloud.
    â€œâ€˜Designed by a French chemist to provide the right food for starved skin and wasted tissues of the bust,’” Gertrude stated in her loud, blunt voice. “‘Unrivaled for developing the flesh of the bosom.’”
    â€œI’m trying it tonight!” Mary-Margaret said.
    Gertrude handed it over. “Use a lot. Your bust looks like it’s been malnourished for a decade.”
    â€œI’m trying it too,” another girl added. “If I get a husband, I can quit addressing envelopes for the rest of my life.”
    Anna locked eyes with Gertrude across the table. They both loved their jobs, but not all the women here did. Another wave of guilt surged through Anna. The crowning achievement of Gertrude Pomeroy’s life was being appointed the head music librarian at the Library of Congress. Gertrude’s parents warned her that girls who looked like a russet potato shouldn’t aspire to marriage and encouraged her love of music as a means of earning a living. It was cruel to convince a child she wasn’t worthy of romantic love simply because she was homely, but at least Gertrude had a genuine love for her work. If the navy had its way,