Daring by Gail Sheehy Read Free Book Online

you?”
    â€œTwenty-three.”
    â€œAnd married,” he said suspiciously, studying my application. “How long?”
    â€œJust a year. I want to make a career.”
    â€œNot a family?”
    â€œWell, yes, eventually.”
    This was a classic example of the either-or boxes into which most females were slotted at the time: either holy mother or frigid career girl.
    â€œSo, since you’ve waited so long, you’ll probably want to get pregnant pretty soon.”
    â€œI didn’t expect this to be a maternity exam.”
    â€œI’m sorry, Mrs. Sheehy.”
    â€œGail.”
    â€œBut I don’t want another girl reporter who’s going to learn the ropes here and go get pregnant on me.”
    As I gathered up my writing samples, Mr. Jewell threw me a lifeline. “I’m going to ask our editor in chief to see you.” His name was straight out of Front Page —Red Vag—a bantam rooster of a man with a cockscomb of red Irish hair. He liked that I was Irish, too.
    â€œMr. Vag, I’m married to a medical student. They make about a dollar ninety-eight an hour. I want to work. I need to work.”
    â€œWhat do you like to write?”
    â€œWhat’s going on under people’s noses that they don’t see—between men and women, white people and black people, stuff like that.”
    â€œI’ll make you a deal,” he said. “You give George three fashion stories a week to make him happy. You give me a Sunday feature on ‘stuff like that.’”
    â€œReally, Mr. Vag?”
    â€œI can’t promise they’ll let me publish it, but let’s you and I kick up some dust around here.”
    There was plenty to kick up in a town that could afford to drowse under the benevolent paternalism of Kodak. On lunch hour I would devour The Fire Next Time , James Baldwin’s confession and sermon on racism. “You must put yourself in the skin of a black man . . .” he wrote. Try as I might, I could not begin to imagine myself into the daily blows of degradation that I had read about. My husband and I often crossed into Rochester’s “colored” section to go to a jazz club, and there we felt the tremors of discontent. I wrote stories about the proud, brave, hurting people I met there. Mr. Vag didn’t publish them.
    My tropism had always leaned toward New York City. Now I knew why. The turbulence of those times made me feel it was my calling to be a journalist.

CHAPTER 4
Deceptions
    â€œ HI, COOKIE! ” His voice over the phone sounded boyish.
    â€œDaddy?”
    â€œHow’s my girl?”
    First thought: I wasn’t his girl anymore. I was a working newspaperwoman with two years behind me at the Democrat & Chronicle , thrilled to be sent to New York to write about Fashion Week. “It’s been so long,” I said.
    â€œSorry, Cookie, you’ve been on my mind.”
    â€œReally? Not really.”
    â€œAlbert told me you’re in New York. I’m coming into town to take you to lunch. How’s that? The Oyster Bar. You always liked that.”
    It was his charming con man voice. He was an adman, after all.
    â€œCan’t, Daddy. I’m working. I’m down here for the paper with a five o’ clock deadline to file my story.”
    â€œA real reporter now.”
    â€œThey call me the fashion editor.”
    â€œHow about that! A lunch break will do you good. Meet you at Grand Central.”
    â€œWait! I have no time for lunch.”
    â€œThen I’ll come straight to your hotel. I have something important to tell you.”
    The way he said it made my stomach clench. When he appeared at my hotel-room door, holding a street peddler’s bouquet of mums wrapped in butcher paper, I was struck by how young and insouciant he looked: like a frat boy in his camel’s hair coat and casually flipped scarf, not a fleck of gray in his thick hair, a cunning half