The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba - Chanel Cleeton Page 0,122
shape of the baby she’d lost years ago . . .
Forty-Five
When Rafael and I return to New York, I find that the city is much different from how I left it. There are celebrations in early August when some of the naval ships return from Cuba, but overall the war has left its mark on all of us.
I hop on my bicycle and ride to the Journal offices.
Johnny stands on his usual corner, selling the afternoon edition.
“How was Cuba?” he calls out to me.
“It was something,” I reply, not sure how to explain all that has transpired since we last saw each other.
“How’s the newspaper business?” I ask him.
“Can’t complain, although sales have slowed down some since the war stopped. Do you think they’ll go back to charging their normal prices now that the war’s over?”
The newspapers raised the prices they were charging the newsboys to sell newspapers when the war started, lowering the newsboys’ profit margins, but considering the volume they were selling due to the war interest, they hardly minded.
“I hope so,” I answer. “They should.”
Our conversation breaks off as someone comes up to buy a paper from Johnny and I head upstairs. I walk through the newsroom that has become as familiar to me as my home at Aunt Emma’s and knock on the door to Hearst’s office.
He shows me in, and I have a memory of that first day when I came here looking for a job.
So much has changed since.
“What can I do for you, Grace?” Hearst asks me.
“I have a story for you. My last story.” I take a deep breath. “As grateful as I am for the opportunity, I don’t know if I can stay on. I’m not sure this is what I was cut out for—making the news. I think we’ve crossed too many lines somewhere along the way.”
He’s silent for a moment, and I almost think he’s going to try to convince me to stay, but he merely nods. “We’ll be sorry to lose you, but not everyone sees the world the same way. There are many papers that would be lucky to have you.”
For as much as Hearst professed me to be a valuable member of his staff, I can already tell that in his eyes I’m gone. I’m not so arrogant as to believe I am irreplaceable—in this business, no one is.
I slide the article across his desk.
* * *
—
The rumor on Park Row is that Pulitzer is struggling. Circulation is down now that the war is over, but cutting the price of his newspaper isn’t profitable, and if he slashes staff salaries, then there’s no doubt they’ll defect to Hearst’s side. For a man who has built his empire on the strength of the newspaper business, it must be immensely frustrating to have his war with Hearst deal him such a devastating blow.
No one is more surprised than I am when Pulitzer sends me a note, asking for me to meet with him.
I go to Pulitzer’s mansion a few days after my conversation with Hearst, and am shown into his reception room by the same butler as before.
“You once came to me and asked me for a job. Said you wanted to be the next Nellie Bly,” Pulitzer says in greeting after I’ve been announced and shown into his study. “You weren’t ready then. You are now.”
I glance down at his desk, at the folded copy of the Journal lying there, and the article I wrote about Recogidas, my name on the byline.
“Come work for me at the World. Your talents are wasted where they are.”
It’s all I’ve ever wanted since I set my sights on being a journalist. And still, when I think back to the years I spent working at the Journal, my half-hearted attempts at pilfering information to give to Pulitzer, it’s clear where my heart lies.
For as much as I wanted to work for the World, I’ve learned the fantasy and reality aren’t the same. As a girl, I read the World and envisioned Pulitzer as a champion for the people who didn’t feel like they fit in this new society we’ve created. But now I realize that at the end of the day, he’s a businessman, driven by the same needs for profit and power as the rest of them.
“I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t? You’re going to stay with Hearst?”
I am proud of many of the stories I’ve covered for the Journal, of the journalist I’ve become. I’m proud, and at the same time,