Chapter 46
New York City was just as alive as when Sam had left it two and a half years ago, that brisk March day when she last stepped foot in the Ladies Home Journal offices. Her clogs tapped up the familiar stairwell—still no elevator for her—to the sixth floor, then through the glass doors that led into the lobby where she had endured her first formal arrest.
Sam idled up to the receptionist’s desk. “Sam Stanton here for Calvin Dreyfuss.”
The same Twiggy-haired receptionist ignored Sam as she leafed through a Cosmopolitan magazine, where every article seemed to be about keeping a man or staying thin. Some things never changed.
Disinterested in helping Sam, or any other visitor, Twiggy kept flipping pages until Sam slapped a hand on the article about how to look like the New Girl of the Golden West, whatever that was.
“Uh huh. I heard you the first time.” Twiggy gestured to a row of plastic-coated fabric chairs while she rolled her eyes and picked up the phone. She glanced at her appointment book, then did a double-take of Sam. “Yes, sir, Sam Stanton is here for you.”
A moment after she hung up the light bulb went off.
“Excuse me, but are you the Samantha Says columnist?” The receptionist held up an old issue of Women’s House Magazine, then flipped to the page where Sam’s face smiled from a black-and-white photo at the bottom of the column. She held it up against Sam’s real-life scowl, comparing the two with a scrutinous gaze. “It is you! It’s a pleasure meeting you!”
“We’ve actually met before. Remember the sit-in?” Sam reminded her. “And I worked in this office for years before that.”
“Oh, right. All I recall from that day is you getting hauled off to jail. And before that… well, you weren’t famous or memorable back then.”
That tended to be the nature of memories, clinging to all the dirt and grime and filth and things we wanted most to dust under the rug and forget. But sometimes those very things we wanted cleaned from our past were the very things that made us who we are. Relatable. Redeemable. Relevant.
“Mr. Dreyfuss is ready to see you now.”
Sam walked through the doors that separated the waiting area from the bullpen and found Calvin Dreyfuss’s office exactly how she remembered it. Still as red-faced and shiny and rotund as ever, Mr. Dreyfuss grumbled upon seeing her in standard Callous Calvin fashion.
“Are we all set?” Sam asked.
“Everything is ready for you, Sam.”
Ah, and there it was. He had finally gotten her name right!
“I’m very excited about this opportunity,” Sam admitted.
“And I know you’ll make the most of it. Despite how much of a pain in my butt you were, I applaud you for being a woman of conviction. Darn respectable, too. You earned this, Sam. Make me proud.”
Except Sam wasn’t there to make Mr. Dreyfuss proud. Or to organize another sit-in. And she wasn’t there for a job, either. She was there to claim the keys to her new kingdom.
Mr. Dreyfuss handed her the signed contracts in Thomas Cooks’ stead, since he was doing a year in prison for fraud. Twelve months didn’t seem like a sufficient sentence for the countless lives he destroyed, but at least he went willingly. And the payouts to all the families who suffered would at least help float them through the unstable economy… and a good fifty or so years longer.
Sam glanced down at the signed, sealed, and delivered contracts. Samantha Stanton was the proud new owner of Women’s House Magazine, an all-woman staffed magazine that the media was calling a “literary trend-setter.”
The first issue would prove to be a record-setter in magazine sales. Guadalupe’s first article was a hit, offering exclusive coverage of all the legal ramifications of the FDA’s investigation into Big Pharma, along with the settlement details she had negotiated for the countless women who had taken DES. And no one could forget about all the patients who suffered adverse side effects from Nosartin, which was effectively pulled off the market.
The other sweet surprise was Bernadette’s interest in writing a column about the Black woman’s experience, which garnered national interest as she shared anecdotes and maternal encouragements to her readers.
With a final handshake, Sam left Mr. Dreyfuss’ office and headed back downstairs, out into the busy sidewalk on 54th street, where Raul Smothers argued with a meter maid, who had slid a pink parking ticket under the windshield wiper of Sam’s father’s newly paid-off 1965 Chevrolet Impala SS, once again parked in the middle of the street.
“You can’t park here!” the meter maid yelled.
“The car was idling, not parked!” Raul argued back.
The irony wasn’t lost on Sam that everything had come full circle—the parking ticket given in this very same spot two years prior was the moment everything was set in motion. Now it signified the end of that very long, very arduous journey.
She giddily walked toward them to interrupt the dispute over the nuances of road rules, when two men stopped her halfway across the sidewalk.
“Samantha Stanton?” one of them asked.
“Yes?”
First she noticed the Portapak with the no-name news station hanging from his shoulder. Then she recognized the thin mustache of the cameraman who had hassled her in this very same spot—and whom she had retaliated with a well-deserved slap to the face—all those years ago.
The reporter stepped forward, his hand outstretched holding a microphone. “I wanted to ask if you’d be willing to let me interview you.”
Sam glanced at the cameraman. “I thought no one was interested in my ‘silly little ra-ra-rally,’ as you called it.”
