Checking up on me? you asked, a smile in your voice. It’s true I usually avoided coming to the suite, always trying to keep my distance in public so no one would chance to suspect us. When we were both inside you locked the door and then your arms were on my shoulders and your body against mine and you were kissing me so warmly and gently – your lips soft and moist where they had been sharp and cold the night before – that I nearly burst into tears. How could I leave this? How could I be so rash to think I would ever find your equal, or that finding an equal would compensate for the loss of someone I had learned to trust absolutely and who seemed to trust me as well? I inhaled the scent of your body, your breath, the Italian cologne I had brought back from Florence for your twentyfifth birthday, the scent of ambergris and laundry starch and hair oil, all those odors visible in your eyes, which had gone turquoise in the grid of light slicing through the blinds. Your head twitched to be sure the slats were closed tightly enough that no one would have been able to distinguish our forms, but then your focus was back on me, your tongue moving against mine, the fine brush of chin abrading my jaw.
How long do you have? I asked and you said not long enough. You had to go to wardrobe and makeup.
But stay, Desmond, and if I’m not back in half an hour I’ll see you on set.
Just as quickly as you’d appeared on the stairs you unlocked the door, tossed me the keys, and left. The nonchalance of that action told me you had not begun to suspect my plans, that Helen had kept my secret.
Alone in your suite, I felt I was trespassing on your subconscious, although I had helped you decorate the room, choosing to put in bookshelves and hang nautical prints to make it look like a London club. I’ve never been to London, you told me, and I said it didn’t matter, it was about the image such furnishings convey: the smart young man who might have come from nothing but still has a sense of culture. The contents of the shelves and prints of schooners had somehow acquired a patina from being in your presence, so it seemed as if the ships could have been ones you captained in an earlier life, or the books contained all the stories through which you had come to understand who you were.
I noticed you had bought a new bottle of bourbon, the second already that month, and I wondered if you were drinking too much. Because you trusted me to stay there alone, to leave me the key to your suite, I had no reason to snoop and yet I was tempted to see what I might find. Letters from fans were piled on the desk, people from all over the country writing to ask for your autograph or tell you how much they had adored you in your last picture, many of them assuming an intimacy that made me jealous despite myself. Once I asked if you enjoyed reading fan mail and you said, Of course, it’s flattering, and I asked whether flattery was satisfying and you said No, but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it once in a while, like a joint or a drink. Maybe you wish I flattered you more, I said, and you blushed. I don’t need flattery from you, Desmond, I’m just grateful you stick around. What does that mean? Nothing, you said, forget it. I’ve always wondered why you should have thought I might be doing you a favor by falling in love with you.
When the half hour was up and you had not returned I locked your suite and headed downstairs. In the courtyard between the men’s and women’s buildings I ran into Mary. She was holding a letter, swatting it against her gloved hand.
Angry creditors? I asked, smirking.
Letter from a friend, she scowled, but you wouldn’t know from the tone of the thing that we haven’t seen each other in more than a decade. I usually respond to every single letter I receive, but not this one, and then she dropped it in the trashcan by the curb, her eyes narrowing as if she had momentarily lost control of her face.
As soon as I was certain no one was watching I plucked the letter from the trash and read it. Perhaps this will strike you as strange, even indefensible, but because of what John had told me that morning my usual sense of wariness about Mary had turned into more active suspicion. I thought the letter might give me some hint of her plans, or what was driving her.
There was a sadness to the stationery, its edges uniformly yellowed. Although excellent quality, it carried the smell of mothballs and looked as though it had been purchased twenty years earlier. The handwriting started off with precision but by the middle of the first page loosened up and became more difficult to decipher, although these qualities were incidental to the hints of a life behind the words. Perhaps it should not have surprised me that Mary had such connections, but surprise me it did. Even if it did not function for me as an excuse for the actions John’s anonymous caller warned him Mary was about to take – in other words turning over the names of friends and colleagues she believed to be Communists to federal agents or whoever she might have arranged to meet the next day – it did offer a certain context for her actions, suggesting a network of relations remote from the image Mary presented to the world, and one whose potential exposure to public scrutiny might have struck her as no less perilous than the threat of being called to testify before Congress herself.
Kay
She stared at the boy sitting at the dining table in the living room. There was simply too much furniture what with the buffet and the blue-and-white-striped couch and the two armchairs in green upholstery and the matching coffee table and end table, both decorated with inlaid floral patterns. The furniture had been made to look expensive but she knew it was cheap, not like the solid pieces in her parents’ house. The boy was eating a piece of dry toast and drinking a glass of milk. He was wearing his khaki slacks but she could see the bottoms of his blue pajamas sticking out from under the cuffs.
Roll down your pants, she said.
The boy looked at her and went on chewing and he had this preoccupied squint and sneer that she had started seeing in the last few years. It was the same expression she knew as her own, also her mother’s. The boy did not move but a vein pulsed in his neck and his knuckles were white. As if he thought she would not notice. The spit of his father.
Roll down your pants or people will think we’re Communists, she whispered, only she could tell from the way the boy flinched that when the sound came out of her mouth it had arrived with the force of a scream. The boy dropped his toast on the plate and leaned to roll down the cuffs so his pajama bottoms were no longer visible and then he finished the toast in two bites but she could see he was shaking, like as though frightened, or angry. Possibly both. There had been a fight the night before.
You’re holding a grudge, she said, don’t you dare hold a grudge, it’s unchristian. He stood up from the table and took the plate into the bathroom and she could hear running water in the bathroom sink and him washing the plate. He came back through the living room carrying the plate, which was dripping, water drops hanging in the air and then plip-plop-plip as they landed.
You’re dripping all over the floor! she said, shouting the first two words and then, realizing she was shouting, dropping her voice to a whisper because their landlords, the Smiths, who lived in the bungalow next door and kept both their cars in the garage under the apartment, would think they were Communists if she went on shouting like that. Her hand flew to her mouth and she rested her chin on the heel of the palm, then cupped her hand so the tips of her fingers were tucked between her lips. She had seen her mother do this and as a girl had started doing it herself. Some of her brothers and sisters did it, Ruth did it, and now the boy did as well, she had seen him, when he was fretting. Fretting was a family word. As was dithering. And frugal. She would say, don’t fret like that, you remind me of someone, and slap his hand away from his face.
Who? he would say, giving her that crazed look and crumpling his chin into a bright red pincushion.
Never you mind, she would say, and slap his cheek for good measure.
When she shouted that he was dripping all over the floor he did not even slow down, just kept heading into the kitchen, and she could hear the dishcloth rippling off the handle on the oven and the squeak as the worn white cotton swept across the ceramic p
late and then the door of the cupboard crying open, the plate rattling hard on the stack of other plates, the door closing, and the dishcloth being put back in its place with the swish of cloth on enamel.
You forgot to clear your glass, she called in a stage whisper, because of shouting and people thinking them Communists and not wanting to risk that someone might hear.
The boy stood in the doorway to the living room and glared. Insolence. The face of his father. That awful under-bite, just like his father. Upper lip cupped and beaklike. She could see what he would be as an old man, the near-toothless worrying of a piece of bread beneath that cupped upper lip, the fretting fingers tucked between his lips, tapping his teeth. Oral fixation. She had heard about oral fixations. The boy swiped the glass from the table and walked to the bathroom. Kay could hear him washing the glass in the sink and she thought about the waste of water because of two washing-up sessions and then he came back through, dripping again, and she nearly said something but he gave her this look that drained the life out of her, as if a twelve-year-old were capable of murder. He had nearly killed his dog seven years ago, when they were living in the Motor Lodge, and there was the business again of the dishcloth, and a higher-pitched whine of cotton on glass and the cupboard doors, slamming this time, no doubt about it, and the murmur of cotton falling against the enamel. People will think we’re Communists slamming doors like that, she stage-whispered. From where she was sitting on the couch she could see a circle of milk on the table, which would leave a ring, and it was only a cheap table. It looked expensive when it was new, mahogany veneer, walnut maybe, but the legs were not even solid pieces of wood, they were machine-made of separate parts that kept falling off in the heat and had to be re-glued. It had all come with the apartment, cheap furnishings for a cheap place, never in her life did she think she would live above a garage, and now the whole town probably thought they were Communists and her husband an adulterer and embezzler and all of it such a sudden and perilous fall. She caught a whiff of her underarm. Onions. She hadn’t eaten onions in months but the smell persisted.
She had not seen Hank properly for two weeks – at least not during the day – and could not answer the boy when he asked where his father was. When he demanded to know last night, she slapped his cheek and told him to lean over the chair and he did and she pulled down his pajamas and whipped him with one of his father’s belts until she raised welts and then said he was to go to bed, but not unless he had done a B.M. Have you? she asked him and he said that he had not and she said, well then, and he said, no not again, we’re not doing that, and she said, then you sit until it comes, and she had closed him in the bathroom and put a chair against the door and it had taken an hour and a half, was nearly midnight, but she finally heard the sounds and she knew it had happened and let him out again and given him the broom handle on his calves for good measure, as her mother had done to her. If he would not do it the easy way, he would have to wait and let nature and so on. Now he was standing there, this stick of a boy who ran to the window looking for his father every evening, was disappointed, ate alone with his mother, watched TV with her afterward even though neither could pay attention to the shows, always wondering where Hank might be, Hank with a hundred different jobs and a hundred different names, a hundred different women and for all she knew a hundred different sons in a hundred different towns. Traveling salesman. Farmer. Rancher. Whatever he called himself now.
At night, she could hear the boy sitting up on the couch where he slept, turning on the light, checking the clock. She had taken to telling him that his father was unwell, that he had to go to hospitals, although this was a lie. She had no idea where Hank might be and during the day she spent hours gazing out the cloudy window hoping her husband might appear in his red pickup truck, hoping he would come home and rant about the evils of labor unions because at least that would mean he was present.
The boy was out the door without saying goodbye and she ran after him, chasing him down the stairs and hitting his back with her fist on every step, so that by the time he reached the bottom he lost his balance and fell, splayed in the dirt.
Don’t let me see you until dinnertime, she said, and the boy got up and sneered and squinted, and then he ran as the municipal truck came down the street, spraying DDT. The boy ran faster, following the truck until he disappeared into the fog. Kay heard the back door of the house open and she looked around and there was her landlady, Mrs. Smith, and she said Good morning, Mrs. Smith, and the woman said Good morning to you, but said it in that snide way, as if Kay had caused an affront by greeting her, and then she was sure Mrs. Smith thought they were Communists and it was just a matter of time before the eviction. Kay ducked her head and walked back up the stairs to the apartment above the garage and carefully shut the door behind her. The room was warm and she could see dust hanging in the air in the sun that came through the dirty windows and on the floor the place where the plate had dripped as the boy was carrying it from the bathroom to the kitchen. It would dry as a spot and then there’d be hell from Hank because of mess and damage and losing the deposit and not managing the boy as she should and that was her responsibility. And then she would get the belt as well as the boy.
There was nothing in the icebox save milk and that almost sour and two eggs and those rotten most like. In the cupboard a tin of peas and another of cling peaches. The bread was gone. No meat. Not enough for a growing boy. She looked at herself in the bathroom mirror and could see her own death’s head beneath the skin. Always thin, the only one in her family, and still her little brother had teased, you better not eat too much, else you’ll get fat like brother George. Back when there was always enough, too much. Sister Flora’s lime Jell-O salads with gherkins and canned pineapple at Christmas. Fried okra. Beef every night. Fresh rolls. She wished she had never met Hank. She wished she had stayed in Oklahoma and gone on being a teacher even though useless, always late, flapping out of the house and running headlong to get to school before the first bell, wished she had gone on coaching the girls’ basketball squad because at least she had been good at that, wished she had finished the stories about her family she had started writing but gave up when Hank said it was not the business of a wife to make up stories because how could a husband trust a woman who lied so convincingly?
From the desk in the corner of the living room she drew the letter she had been writing.
Dear Rosa (am I still allowed to call you that?),
I had your address from my mother who had it from your brother so I hope you will not mind that I write to you. No, do not worry, I am not asking for money. If I needed money I would ask mother or Vernon, who in fact now holds the purse strings tighter than anyone else in the family ever did, but I suppose you know that from your brother. Do you know also that Vernon converted to Roman Catholicism when he came back from Italy after the war? I cannot imagine. We have always been Lutherans. I hope your brother is well and that Vernon gives him fair terms. My brother drives such a bargain I expect it cannot be easy, but I am in no position of influence so expect there is little I might do to improve the situation.
I wished to congratulate you on your success and to be back in touch since we used once to be such pals. I think you and I were best friends as girls. Do you remember it that way? I do not know if your brother has kept you up to date with my family news. I am living now in the San Joaquin Valley with my husband, Hank, and our son, after some years in Kansas on our own. (Again, do not worry, I am not proposing to bother you in Los Angeles, nor would I turn up to a ‘premiere’ and cause embarrassment. I imagine the last person you would want standing by that red carpet is your old country chum!)
Hank was a farmer at first, though I do not think you would have known his family, Missourians in any case, so never part of the social set back home – Irish, too, but Protestants like us. Our boy, now twelve, is almost more trouble than he is worth. I see that you have a daughter, just younger than my boy, and from the magazines she looks a pretty child
. How lucky you have been. Not that luck comes into it. You were always so talented – the most talented of anyone in town, I always said.
That was where Kay left off in the middle of the previous night, satisfied the boy had gone to sleep on the couch, making sounds so troubling she almost woke him, because of sin and the body and what he must have been dreaming, but instead had gone to bed herself, hoping not to hear any more of it. She had woken in the night with Hank taking what he judged his to take, and she was about to scream until he put a hand over her mouth and then he was finished and gone again as if she had dreamed it, but leaving in the bedclothes scents of beer and whiskey and cigarettes, the perfumes of other women, all that stale reek of a man in decline. He would be dead in a decade, she thought, his stomach exploded from wickedness. She took up her pen with the dirty light on the page and continued.
As I say, I am not writing to ask for money or help for myself. My motives are selfless. I am writing because I am concerned about what is happening in this country and I see from my humble place in the world how it affects you. I hope you will not think I presume too much in saying this, but we once were the closest of friends. So much you once confessed to me – I remember, still, all that you used to confide. Do not think that is a threat on my part. No, please do not think that. I remind you of those confidences to demonstrate how much I care for you and how much you once trusted me. I am writing to you now
With what difficulty the words came, how slowly and grudgingly, catching on the tip of the pen rather than flowing as they had in the night.
because I have
begun to read things about your husband and the people close to him. I mean not you or your daughter but the men and women who are his closest business associates, people with whom he collaborates, the causes to which he has given contributions, the many risky things that he has said. These are not American attitudes. I would say they are foreign but I do not possess knowledge of what foreign attitudes might entail, except that normal folk might see them as giving comfort to our enemies. No, do not be offended. Remember I say this as your oldest friend. What I mean is, because of your stature, and to secure the safety of your daughter, and also of my son (if you should care to think of him as well), and so many other boys and girls, then I believe you have a duty to speak. Do not think I say this lightly. I know what difficulty there is in a marriage. I understand how a wife wants to be loyal even when her husband is a rogue. But there is more at stake now. The nation is under threat. Our world is in crisis. If people like you do not speak, what hope those of us who live closer to the ground, who must mix with agitators because we have no choice but to walk among them? I ask for the sake of the little people, Rosa, that you raise your voice and say all that you know to be true, as I trust that you do.
Night for Day Page 5