surprise, Mack.” After four years on staff, it was her first cover.
“Doesn’t it make you happy? I only called because I figured it would make you happy. If it doesn’t make you happy, I can hang up.”
“Yes, it makes me happy. Of course it does.” She raised her voice in anger and impatience, because the news made her happier than she could let him know or suspect. A cover story represented not simply professional recognition but also job security, a little leeway in the grinding competition to hold on to her staff position. She had to conceal the tears that smarted in her eyes. She was a woman in a man’s profession, and she’d learned to keep any emotions her peers might consider feminine, like joy or sorrow, strictly to herself. Her renowned colleague Margaret Bourke-White had a reputation for using strategic weeping fits to get what she wanted from both her bosses and her subjects, but that wasn’t Claire’s way.
The day after Reese’s death, she’d gone directly into a story about the army officers’ wives living with their children on Governor’s Island in New York harbor. This was the nature of her job: overpowering emotion, and then straight into the next story with no break to recover. Claire was supposed to keep herself distant and objective, but she couldn’t. She suspected that her work would lose its impact if she tried.
A short ferry ride from lower Manhattan, Governor’s Island was a military base that had become a town unto itself, with acres of barracks, public schools, grocery stores, and an enclave of old mansions. The husbands of most of the women in Claire’s story were posted with the Army Signal Corps on Wake Island, under relentless attack by the Japanese. Each day, with increasingly stiff, silent despair, the wives waited for news from the Pacific.
“Billings especially liked the shot of the wives and kids walking home after school and staring at the new recruits waiting in line to get processed at the fort.” John Billings was the managing editor. “That old innocence-versus-experience perspective. Always brings tears to my eyes.”
“That’s what keeps you fresh, Mack. All that crying.” She was crying, too, even as she teased and bantered.
“I don’t deny it. My personal favorite was the mom sitting in her dark living room clutching her three little kids and listening to the radio news like some kind of goddamned Madonna. How’d you get her face to glow like that?”
“Professional secret.” She’d bounced the light off three umbrellas, including one behind the woman’s head to create a halo effect, but she wasn’t going to tell Mack. He might share the idea with her rivals.
“However you did it, that one got a full page.”
That shot was her favorite, too. The kids leaning against their mother’s skirt, reaching up to touch her shoulders…the composition reminded her of paintings of the Holy Family by Raphael. The woman, Rosemary Connor, was from Canton, Ohio. She’d never been to New York when she found her family transferred to Governor’s Island and a small house with a magnificent view of Manhattan. Before her children were born, she’d taught first grade. She and her husband were high school sweethearts. Most likely he was now dead, or soon would be, on the far side of the world. Of course none of this information was in the picture itself, but knowing it helped Claire to create an image that evoked something of the woman’s character. “Which shot did Luce pick for the cover?”
“The pretty young mom standing at the railing by the harbor, holding her kid’s hand and staring at the Statue of Liberty in the distance. Sunlight sparkling on the sea, ocean breeze whipping her hair, her back straight and stalwart against the enemy, Lady Liberty leading the way. America the Brave.”
“That’s a great shot, I have to admit.” She’d taken about forty exposures to get one that worked. The glare off the water was awful that
“Doesn’t it make you happy? I only called because I figured it would make you happy. If it doesn’t make you happy, I can hang up.”
“Yes, it makes me happy. Of course it does.” She raised her voice in anger and impatience, because the news made her happier than she could let him know or suspect. A cover story represented not simply professional recognition but also job security, a little leeway in the grinding competition to hold on to her staff position. She had to conceal the tears that smarted in her eyes. She was a woman in a man’s profession, and she’d learned to keep any emotions her peers might consider feminine, like joy or sorrow, strictly to herself. Her renowned colleague Margaret Bourke-White had a reputation for using strategic weeping fits to get what she wanted from both her bosses and her subjects, but that wasn’t Claire’s way.
The day after Reese’s death, she’d gone directly into a story about the army officers’ wives living with their children on Governor’s Island in New York harbor. This was the nature of her job: overpowering emotion, and then straight into the next story with no break to recover. Claire was supposed to keep herself distant and objective, but she couldn’t. She suspected that her work would lose its impact if she tried.
A short ferry ride from lower Manhattan, Governor’s Island was a military base that had become a town unto itself, with acres of barracks, public schools, grocery stores, and an enclave of old mansions. The husbands of most of the women in Claire’s story were posted with the Army Signal Corps on Wake Island, under relentless attack by the Japanese. Each day, with increasingly stiff, silent despair, the wives waited for news from the Pacific.
“Billings especially liked the shot of the wives and kids walking home after school and staring at the new recruits waiting in line to get processed at the fort.” John Billings was the managing editor. “That old innocence-versus-experience perspective. Always brings tears to my eyes.”
“That’s what keeps you fresh, Mack. All that crying.” She was crying, too, even as she teased and bantered.
“I don’t deny it. My personal favorite was the mom sitting in her dark living room clutching her three little kids and listening to the radio news like some kind of goddamned Madonna. How’d you get her face to glow like that?”
“Professional secret.” She’d bounced the light off three umbrellas, including one behind the woman’s head to create a halo effect, but she wasn’t going to tell Mack. He might share the idea with her rivals.
“However you did it, that one got a full page.”
That shot was her favorite, too. The kids leaning against their mother’s skirt, reaching up to touch her shoulders…the composition reminded her of paintings of the Holy Family by Raphael. The woman, Rosemary Connor, was from Canton, Ohio. She’d never been to New York when she found her family transferred to Governor’s Island and a small house with a magnificent view of Manhattan. Before her children were born, she’d taught first grade. She and her husband were high school sweethearts. Most likely he was now dead, or soon would be, on the far side of the world. Of course none of this information was in the picture itself, but knowing it helped Claire to create an image that evoked something of the woman’s character. “Which shot did Luce pick for the cover?”
“The pretty young mom standing at the railing by the harbor, holding her kid’s hand and staring at the Statue of Liberty in the distance. Sunlight sparkling on the sea, ocean breeze whipping her hair, her back straight and stalwart against the enemy, Lady Liberty leading the way. America the Brave.”
“That’s a great shot, I have to admit.” She’d taken about forty exposures to get one that worked. The glare off the water was awful that
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