The Immigrant’s Daughter

by Howard Fast

“You run a newspaper; well, it’s almost like being a cop, without the intimacy with misery and horror. You look at it from a distance; nice things don’t make news.”

  “Does this make news?”

  “Oh, come on, Barbara, don’t needle me. This is run of the mill — well, maybe a bit more. People are jaded. They’ve had Hiroshima and Vietnam. Do you think anyone really gives a damn about a pint-size banana dictatorship in Central America?”

  “When I suggested that you drive to Santa Monica and that we walk on Ocean Avenue and breathe some clean air and get the nausea out of our systems, you agreed. I know you a long time, Carson. You felt something.”

  “I felt something. Sure. Damn it, Barbara, you’re ready to weep over every motherless child on earth, every injustice. Every bit of horror. I’m not. I can’t afford to.”

  “You can afford a good correspondent down there.”

  “I’ll bring it up. We’ll talk about it.”

  “I think I want to go back to the hotel,” Barbara said.

  “Now you’re angry at me. If you want the truth, Barbara, that’s where our marriage went straight to hell. I did what I had to do by my lights, and you couldn’t stand that. It had to be by your lights or nothing at all.”

  “That’s the way you saw it?”

  “You’re damn right!”

  “Oh beautiful. Now we’re having a fight — why? Why?” she demanded. “What have I said to make you so angry?”

  “It’s what you haven’t said.”

  “Oh, yes. Of course. No, I’m just too tired and too old for that kind of kid stuff. Take me home.”

  It was almost midnight when they reached the Beverly Wil-shire Hotel. Carson gave his car to the attendant and went into the hotel with Barbara, who told him that he didn’t have to do that.

  “I can’t leave you this way. If we say goodbye like this, what are the chances that we’ll ever see each other again?”

  “Thin.”

  “Have a drink with me.”

  Barbara faced him, studying him thoughtfully. She had loved him so much. She loved men; she even felt at times that she understood them; and she had always been able to make a sort of compact with them. They valued her, apart from love or desire — two very different things, value and love. Perhaps she never thought of it in precisely those terms, yet she understood it.

  “Sure,” she said.

  They went into the bar, and Barbara had a Scotch and soda. She drank very little and could count on one hand the times in her life when she had been drunk, but it was a social convention of great importance. It gave them both an opportunity to sit down and loosen the tightness that had enveloped them. Carson had a double bourbon on ice. They drank and looked at each other. Carson saw opposite him a tall woman, a good face, gray hair, lean in her figure and lifting her glass with a hand that did not shake. He remembered the same woman in bed in his arms, and he wondered how much he desired to have her in his arms and in bed again. Or was even the thought inappropriate? In any case, was it desire or need or what? And suppose he pushed it to that end? Would he be impotent? That could be the conclusion, likely as not, but even more important was the direction of his thoughts. Why should their bodies join? He had been scrapping with her over nothing at all, and now he was loosening. Why not just sit here and enjoy what was certainly a very remarkable woman? Why couldn’t he break the cords?

  “Shall we have another?” he asked Barbara.

  “Yours was a double bourbon?”

  “We’re not married. If I get drunk, you can leave me here weeping into my cups.”

  She drained the rest of the Scotch and soda. “Simply stated, I don’t like to sit in judgment on anyone.”

  “That will be the day,” Carson said.

  “Anyway, Devrons don’t get drunk. One needs blood to get drunk. The blood was drained out of the Devrons and replaced with liquid money.”

  Carson ordered another double bourbon, and Barbara had another Scotch, this time on the rocks.

  “That’s a very colorful image. No such thing as liquid money,” Carson assured her.

  “I heard that your father gave a cool million to the Reagan campaign.”

  “He runs his shop. I run mine. I don’t tell him what to do with his ill-gotten wealth, and he doesn’t tell me what to put in my newspaper.”

  “Hurrah.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means hurrah.”

  The drinks came, and Carson lifted his glass. “To all poor bastards like Carson Devron who live on the thin edge of desolation.”

  “I won’t drink to that,” Barbara said.

  “Why not?”

  “Self-pity. I don’t like you when you get into self-pity. Here’s mine: L’chaim!”

  “What’s that? No, don’t tell me. That’s a Jewish toast and it means to life.”

  “Score ten.”

  “Probably got it from Boyd.”

  “Nope. My first husband, Bernie.”

  He finished his drink and signaled the waiter.

  “Oh, come on, Carson, hold on,” Barbara said. “You’ll be drunk as a lord. I want to talk to you, and I don’t want you sodden drunk.”

  “How drunk?”

  “Just a tiny bit. Like me. What’s gotten into you? You never used to drink.”

  “Make it a single,” he told the waiter magnanimously. “I’m not drunk,” he said to Barbara. “I love you. In fact, I adore you. We took on a kid and he did a sidebar for something on FDR, and he wrote that FDR adored his little dog. Love, I told him. You can love a dog, but you only adore a woman.”

  “Interesting point,” Barbara admitted. “Last year you ran an editorial admitting that the right-to-life movement had valid aspects.”

  “They ran that while I was in Europe. It wasn’t the end of the world. My wife is on the steering committee of the Southern California right-to-life organization. She does her thing. I do mine.”

  “You Devrons are a remarkable family, each unto his own. You know something, Carson, if men became pregnant and bore the children, there wouldn’t be any right-to-life movement, would there?”

  “My mother used to say, When steers sprout wings, it’ll beef things up.”

  “I don’t think that’s so clever.”

  “Look,” Carson said, “I tell you how much I love you, and I sit here thinking about going to bed with you — and you put me down. I’m the publisher of the Los Angeles Morning World, and it’s the damn best newspaper in the United States, except maybe the Washington Post and the New York Times, except that Washington isn’t a city but a company asshole, so we’ll settle on the New York Times, and I’m not so sure that they’re so much better than we are, and nobody puts me down except you. Why do you do it?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe because I love you.”

  “Hell, you don’t put down someone you love!”

  “If you love him and you don’t want to, because it’s all so stinking impossible. Oh, Jesus, Carson, I don’t know whether I love you. We toss that word around until it has no more shape or meaning, but I love to be with you, and I like you just the way you are right now, and no one who calls Washington, D.C., a company asshole can be all bad, and I think I’m a little drunk. You didn’t tell him to make that a double Scotch on the rocks?”

  “Never! Word of honor.”

  “Then I’m looped on two shots of Scotch — Dan Lavette’s daughter. The family tree is withering fast. Do you remember that brilliant, crazy nephew of mine, Freddie Lavette?”

  “Tom’s son, the one who married that gorgeous part-Chinese kid?”

  “Well, he divorced her. I don’t know why I thought of that, except something about the family tree. No — one moment while I get my head on straight. I want to talk seriously to you, and then if you want to come up to my room and make love, I’m yours.”

  “Great. Go ahead. Seriously.”

  “Seriously. Try to feel a little less drunk and listen to me.”

  “Right.”<
br />
  “Good,” Barbara said. “Now tell me, what was your real reaction to that meeting tonight? Did you believe them? Do they deserve your further investigation?”

  “Barbara darling, I’m in no condition to go philosophic. They told us one side of the story. There’s another side.”

  “I’ve heard the other side.”

  “Sure, and I’ve heard other witnesses on their side. Yes, I suppose I believe them. It’s not a new story, south of us. A gang of the rich and powerful hire some Mussolini-type hoodlum, and he sets up his dictatorship and neutralizes the opposition, mostly with a bullet in the head, and then the poor bastards who make up the population are robbed blind, and in the process there’s a lot of dollars and some hanky-panky by the CIA, and what are we going to do about it? It’s a tradition, a way of life. Chile, Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia, Bolivia — you want El Salvador to be an exception? Come on, Barbara.”

  “No one has any big expectations, Carson. You light one little candle —”

  Carson blinked at her and then closed his eyes. “It gets hazy. That’s why you don’t drive a car in my condition. Did we split a bottle of wine at dinner?”

  “A whole bottle. We did.”

  “You should have told me. What little candle?”

  “Carson, you have a paper. You send a correspondent down there to look at what’s happening in Salvador and write about it. That’s one little candle.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, my dear. I am not kidding. The truth is very damn powerful indeed.”

  “Barbara, take me up to bed, please. I’m not even hearing right.”

  “Five bourbons. You poor overgrown child.”

  “The wine did it. The bourbon on top of the wine.”

  Barbara signed the check, and then she helped Carson to his feet, thankful that he had a good stomach. She steered him to the elevator and then up to her room. There was a message waiting from her son, Sam. Having finally tracked her down to the Bernhards’, he’d found out from them where she had gone, and had called in her absence to inform her that he was leaving for New York in an hour or so and that he would return in a few days. She allowed Carson to sprawl across the bed while she read the message.

  “Who’s it from?” he wanted to know.

  “My son, Sam.”

  “Fine boy, fine boy. Good night, Barbara.”

  “So much for passion at twilight.” Barbara sighed, beginning to undress him, and finally, after much tugging and heaving — Carson being neither a small nor a skinny man — got down to his underwear. She pulled his legs up onto the bed, straightened his body as close to the edge of the double bed as it was safe to park him, and then stared at him thoughtfully. Physically, at least, age had dealt kindly with this golden boy of Southern California. His once strong and shapely body still held its shape. Certainly he was no more than ten pounds heavier than he had been on their wedding day, and while his hair had turned white, it was almost all still there, covering his finely shaped head. Looking at him, not entirely sober herself, Barbara let her fancy roam, imagining herself married again to this handsome man who had always been more her child than her husband, a good, decent, intelligent man whose instincts put him on the side of the angels at least seventy-five percent of the time. He would have been her protector, even as he was still the protector of the beautiful, empty-headed woman he had married.

  Why, then, had she kicked over the apple cart? True, there were reasons enough at the time, and she could even spell out the reasons today: his inability to connect with the boy who was her son, his decision to back Nixon, his indifference to her pained dislike of Los Angeles as a place to live and raise a child, his inability to take proper measure of her feminism. She could recall all of this, but now, standing by the bedside, watching him snore gently in alcoholic slumber, it all seemed so unimportant. Time had taken the strong colors of the moment and washed them into a translucent film of memories, just as time echoed her own intolerance of Carson, her impatience, her annoyance.

  I am going to cry, she told herself. I cry at the most idiotic moments.

  In the bathroom, the incipient tears disappeared. In his attempt to urinate, Carson had missed the bowl for the most part. Half provoked, half amused, Barbara mopped it up with a bath towel, did her own thing, got into her nightgown, switched off the lamps, and crawled into bed next to Carson. His body was warm. It was good to feel the touch and warmth of a man’s body. She kissed his shoulder, and then pressed up against him and fell asleep.

  She was an early riser. As the years passed, she found it was almost impossible to sleep past six or six-thirty. Carson was still asleep, and she let him go on sleeping. She dressed, went down to the hotel coffee shop, had juice and a cup of coffee, thinking that Carson might want a real breakfast later, and since it was still only a few minutes past seven, she decided to take a walk. It was a wonderful, cool, beautiful morning, the smog not yet apparent, the air still sweet with the touch of night-blooming jasmine, and, since it was Beverly Hills, the streets were utterly deserted. Barbara felt guilty at her sense of so much beauty and her feeling of so much real pleasure in a place she habitually detested. But she was not resident here, and she was able to whisper, remembering, “Though every prospect pleases, and only man is vile.” She felt she was old enough to be less provoked at a place so totally dedicated to acquiring wealth and then spending it conspicuously. She walked along Rodeo Drive, remembering a time, long, long ago, when she bought a dress in one of these very shops at a price that would hardly buy a few handkerchiefs on Rodeo Drive today, and then she realized that she was turning into one of those old bores who kept recalling pre-inflation prices. Carson would have reminded her that, as the only daughter of Jean and Dan Lavette and the only granddaughter of the Seldons, she had at one time been richer than almost any of the ladies who would wander in and out of the Rodeo Drive shops as the day wore on.

  Barbara was never very good at putting together the contradictions of her existence, nor was she ever untroubled by what she did, no matter how carefully she brooded and tried to justify herself.

  It was almost eight o’clock. She went back to her hotel room, noting, as she put her key into the door, that the DO NOT DISTURB sign was properly undisturbed. Carson emerged from the bathroom as she came in, drying his face and apologizing for using her razor.

  “How do you feel?” she asked him.

  “Pretty good, all things considered.” He regarded her curiously. “What happened last night?”

  “Nothing much. We had a few drinks at the bar—”

  “How many?”

  “You had two double bourbons and then a single. They pour ample measure down there. Earlier, we split a bottle of wine at the restaurant. If you recall, you didn’t eat much at dinner, and you never were a good drinker, Carson.”

  “Totally blotto?”

  “Not totally. You walked up here. You didn’t throw up. I undressed you and put you to bed.”

  “Oh.” Then he added, “Where did you sleep?”

  “In bed with you.”

  “Oh. Where’s my tie. Did you see my tie?”

  “In the closet. On one of the hooks.”

  He started for the closet, and then he stopped and turned to her, for all the world, as Barbara saw it, like an actor doing a silly, contrived double-take in a movie. “You say we slept together — right there?” pointing to the bed.

  “Yes.”

  “Did — I mean — did we —?”

  “Make love? No. I snuggled up to you for a bit, and that was nice, but you were too much out of it for anything to happen.”

  “Wouldn’t you know it,” he said bitterly.

  Barbara put her arms around him and kissed him. “It’s all right. We’ll see each other again. Meanwhile, put your tie on and we’ll have a good breakfast.”

  “Where were you?” he wondered.

  “Just walking. I had to clear my head. Beverly Hills at seven A.M. Empty. Full of good air and sunshi
ne, like a Hopper paint-ing.”

  “Barbara darling,” Carson said. “I can’t go downstairs and have breakfast with you, not after spending the night in your room and in your bed.”

  “Why not? No one knows you were here.”

  “It’s only eight-thirty. Everyone around here knows who I am. Good heavens!”

  “Dear Carson, they’ll see you eating with an elderly gray-haired lady who doesn’t wear lipstick, and if you think that in this town anyone will imagine hanky-panky, you are out of your head. If an old buzzard like you fiddles around with anything over forty, he’s thrown out of the club. You’re seen here with me — obviously it’s business. A writer in from out of town. Anyone comes by, I’m Barbara Smith.”

  “You really feel that way?”

  “Carson, look at me.”

  “Barbara, I have an office and a newspaper and a home where there are servants, and if my wife calls—”

  “Call home and explain. Call your office and explain. Carson, you own the damn newspaper. You can come in at six o’clock tonight, and no one will dare to say one word about it.”

  He made the calls, and they went down not to the coffee shop — for, as Carson put it, anyone who saw him eating in a coffee shop would be instantly suspicious — but to the restaurant, and there the maître d’ welcomed him expansively, telling him how delighted he was to see Mr. Devron again. In return, Carson said pointedly, “Mrs. Smith, here, and I would like a corner table where we can discuss what we have to discuss.”

  “I love to go to a restaurant with you,” Barbara said, once they were seated.

  “Why?” Carson asked suspiciously.

  “Because you are the only man I know who can quietly give the impression that he owns the place and the head waiter is there by your leave.”

  “That’s nonsense.”

  “You and my father. Only he always took me to an old Italian joint on Jones Street, where he could fill his belly with spaghetti and smoke one of his impossible cigars.”

  “You miss him.”

  “Every day of my life. Him and Marcel and Bernie and Boyd — all the stupid, beautiful men who only know how to die — and if you ever die on me, Carson Devron, I’ll never forgive you, so help me. I’ll stand at your grave and cuss you out instead of bringing flowers —”