Acts of Desperation

Spy Story #6: Dreams of "the good life"

The world of 1932 was drastically different than the one the Roaring ‘20s promised. My grandmother, Marjorie, weathered a rollercoaster of expectation and disappointment as she moved from the great anticipation of 1928 — her senior year of high school — to her graduation from Vassar in 1932.

I let myself slip into Marjorie’s skin, imagining her life as my own. I hold no record of this period of her life, but I imagine her writing in her diary, confessing to herself the truth of her circumstances. 

My poor mother had so many dreams for me, and they are all for nought. I have nothing to offer her but disappointment. After eight years away, what have I made of myself? Nothing. Her judgment looms as I contemplate my next move. I was raised with so much expectation, I’m unsure how to be anything but a disappointment. 

I have spent so much time imagining all the things I could be, all the possible futures I could live, but now it seems that none of them are possible. The disappointment isn’t only hers, but mine too. I think of how tirelessly my mother worked to feed and care for me, who raised me so carefully, and sent me off into the wealthy world of the elite, praying I would make something of myself. How will I weather her disappointment that it’s all for nothing?

When I first started at Vassar, I had so many dreams of what I might become. Perhaps I’d be a stenographer in an important office, or a bookkeeper in a factory. I loved fashion and thought perhaps I’d find a job as a design assistant or a tailoring assistant for a dressmaker. At one point, I thought I might continue my studies and become a professor like Ms. Textor. But how to afford that? And as for jobs, now there is nothing. Half the factories in the city are closed. Millions of people are out of work. I cannot face going back to mother’s boarding house to… what? Clean the laundry?

Still, I have never been one to take no for an answer — where there is a will there is always a way. I must find a way to land myself somewhere better than that.

Suddenly, desperation feels more like determination and I know this may not be perfect, but there is a path. Gordon is handsome and charismatic, and at least gives the public impression he’s well-employed, even if I know the truth. A good match is worth a lot for a young lady like me, and I’ve found one. 

But I refuse to be just another look-pretty, cook-pretty housewife. I am excited to help Gordon in his craft, to become an expert photographer skilled at capturing and transmitting covert information. And at the same time, I get to take a stand for something I believe in, to defy the exploitations of capitalism that have gotten us into this mess to begin with. It’s impossible to know yet if the Soviet experiment will work, but at least those people have an alternative! 

It might be smoke and mirrors, but at least I will have managed to save myself from drudgery and the grave disappointment of having spent eight years educating myself, for nothing. 

Most of this confession from Marjorie could just as easily have been my own. I remember the desperation I felt to make something of myself as I faced the hard economic realities of 2008, when all the doors I hoped would open to me proved to be closed. I took a job on a dude ranch in Colorado, simultaneously fulfilling my “Hey, Dude” inspired life dream (90s kids, IYKYK) and also devising a way to graduate school with a paying job that also provided food and lodging. I wish I had a paystub to say for sure how much I was paid for that work but it could not have been more than $350 a week. But it was enough to afford a new pair of cowboy boots, a couple of snap-up ranch shirts, and a pint of Blue Moon at the Wild Horse Tavern, where you could dance the Cupid Shuffle or a country three-step, depending on your style. 

I was seduced by the ranch’s maintenance manager, one of only three full-time employees who lived on the ranch year-round. He drove a pickup, which he occasionally let me borrow, chewed tobacco, and had a border collie named Cowgirl, who is still one of the best trained dogs I ever knew. He wasn’t my type but he fit the setting. He took me dancing at the Wild Horse and camping on horseback and for just a fleeting moment, I considered giving up on the idea that I owed it to anyone to “make something of myself” in an Ivy League kind of way. 

I let my imagination reach into the future — summers at the ranch, winters at the nearby ski lodge, weekends at the rodeo or the Wild Horse — and for just a moment, I was happy in the possibility that I had finally arrived. But I couldn’t stay. 

There were student loans to pay and my parents’ expectations to meet. If I did move home, I’d have to pay rent. They hadn’t spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on my education for me to become a freeloader. But a ranch-hand ski-bunny probably wouldn’t be much better. Besides, I wasn’t a good enough horse handler or skier to be a wrangler or ski instructor, so I would inevitably wind up waiting tables or staffing an information desk, and what kind of future was that? 

I was at the ranch when Lehman fell. Someone mentioned casually the stock market crashing, unsure why. I couldn’t have known then exactly what that meant for my future and human society at large — did anyone? — but it was definitely bad news. 

I didn’t know how my expectations of the future would change over the next year, how a fancy job that had felt so pre-ordained in my early years of college would come to feel so out of reach. And yet, I refused to stop expecting more of myself, to push myself into unknown territory simply for the sake of making something of my life. 

I was certain the point of living was achievement, to reach some pinnacle of accomplishment that would be worthy of legacy and accolades, and that this performance would earn me some kind of sustained recognition that would carry me off to financial security for the rest of my days. 

What a fairytale.