A named Red. My name! On a list! That’s just not possible. How . . . who? Her stomach lurched. There were any number of ways a person got blacklisted, she knew that well enough. They might have supported the freedom fighters in the Spanish Civil War, they might have signed a petition supporting European refugees, they might have expressed any sort of left-leaning opinion. Even people who touted the virtues of the New Deal were suspect. But most people on the blacklist got there because someone gave up their name. The idea that someone who knew her—a colleague, maybe even a friend—had spoken her name, out loud, to someone who added it to a list made the bile rise in her throat. It doesn’t make sense, though! I’m no Communist, everyone knows that. Heck, old Dolores Goldstein actually was one, registered and everything . . .
The train of thought shuddered to a stop. The other big reason people got on the blacklist was because they were in a union. All of the Hollywood Ten screenwriters weren’t just suspected Communists. They had also been active in the Screen Writers Guild, which the studio heads loathed more than a poor box office return. Phoebe wasn’t a member—she was still too lowly even for Writers Guild membership—but during the war, at the airfield, she’d helped organize a union to fight for equal pay. It had infuriated the bosses, and memories could be long. Maybe someone somewhere did read the show’s credits. Though anyone could lose any job if they were fingered as a subversive.
Of course, it doesn’t have to be the bosses. It could be Dolores Goldstein. It could be any one of them.
Phoebe gripped the edge of the little table. She knew it made her look weak, but she’d look worse if she fainted, or asked to sit down, or threw up. None of that could happen. She wouldn’t—couldn’t—lose control right now.
Hank’s touch on her arm jolted her back into the moment. It was a kind touch, solicitous. She felt herself exhale. Hank would still fight for her.
“Sure, of course, we can’t have the wrong sort of people on staff,” Hank said. She knew he was just trying to mollify the producer, beginning with a hedge. A smart move that did nothing to abate her chills. “I’ve worked with Phoebe a long time, she’s always been a good kid. Maybe there’s something we can do to sort this out?” But he wasn’t saying this was madness. He wasn’t saying it was wrong.
Mr. Kelvin turned jovial again and waved a piece of paper at Hank.
“I thought you might say that. I was sent this to offer her to sign.” (Phoebe noted automatically the man was talking about her, not to her.)
He laid the paper on the table and Phoebe read the heading. A loyalty oath.
“More and more are signing them these days,” Mr. Kelvin said conversationally. He might have been talking about a new style of hat. “High school kids, if they want to graduate. Workers. Probably it’ll be everyone, soon.”
Phoebe glanced at Hank again. She didn’t know if she was looking for his approval or for him to say if he’d signed such an oath. His face was carefully blank.
She gripped the pen. She could not lose her livelihood, she could not be blacklisted from the industry. She could not have her name destroyed. If there was only herself to consider, that might be one thing, but there was Mona.
Mona. She read ten newspapers a day, and a story just a few weeks ago about loyalty oaths had sent her into a lather. “That’s something Stalin would make people sign, isn’t it, and then throw them in the gulag anyway because their handwriting wasn’t nice enough.” Which was easy for Mona to say, because she wasn’t out in the world, and the hospital staff liked her and could shrug off “subversive talk” as the ramblings of someone ill and unlikely to live much longer, things they’d said about Mona for the last fifteen years.
She’ll understand. She won’t want to risk being booted to a state institution. Anyway, I am a loyal American, so what difference does it make?
Phoebe didn’t bother to read the paper. She gripped the pen tightly, forcing her hand to stay still. Then she looked into Mr. Kelvin’s eyes.
“And this will clear my name?” she asked. “I’ll have my job?”
Mr. Kelvin threw back his head and laughed again. Phoebe felt like she was the hero in a bad horror movie, confronting an evil villain.
“Don’t you read the papers, sweetheart? I’d have thought anyone who knew they were in danger of being blacklisted would know this score. We can’t have you back till the boys at HUAC or the FBI or wherever say you’re clean. Worst case, you go for one of those Congressional hearings, but you’d be a good girl, right, play smarter than those Ten boys and keep yourself out of prison.”
The pen fell out of her hand. She gazed back down at the oath. She should sign it. A drowning person grabs what they’re handed. But it was saying they had a right to force her to do this, to effectively admit she was guilty of something she wasn’t. She didn’t give a fig about politics, she’d always said so. But this was different. This was her name.
“Phoebe.” Hank’s voice was low, both a question and an urging, though it was impossible that he was suggesting she go through with this. She looked at him, seeing her own trapped expression reflected in his eyes. Whosever side he was on, she couldn’t guess, and he couldn’t say.
She turned back to Mr. Kelvin. “I think I’d better get some advice first.”
He smiled broadly. “Well, well. I must say, I thought if we’d ever get a Red, it’d be a man. Please leave the building. I’m assuming I don’t need to have you escorted out.” That was meant to be kind. A favor, a final shred of dignity he was allowing her. She knew she was supposed to be grateful.
“I can walk just fine on my own, thanks,” she said, but with nothing like her usual swagger. It was hard to talk after being sucker punched in the gut.
“I’ll see you out,” Hank said. Probably this was also meant to be kind.
“I’m fine, thank you,” she said stiffly. She had to move fast, before she lost control and started to cry. She turned and saw that the actors and crew had all edged as close as they dared to the proceedings, attracted by a drama in real life.
She locked eyes with a pale, openmouthed Geraldine. Phoebe knew it would be dangerous to acknowledge their friendship, dangerous and unfair. But she wanted to assure Geraldine what no one else there, except hopefully Hank, knew. That she didn’t deserve what was happening to her.
Phoebe stepped forward, and the little group took several giant steps back.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Phoebe boomed. “I don’t have the plague.”
“But you are a dirty Red,” Geraldine said. “The sooner you’re gone, the better.”
Phoebe knew now that she was wrong. What she’d thought was a sucker punch was nothing compared to this. She bit her lip and turned away from all those eyes, then walked as quickly as she could without looking as if she was running. She didn’t feel herself breathe again until she was out on Sixth Avenue.
She stormed down four blocks, but could still hear it. Dirty Red. What an extraordinary way to slap a person across the face without raising a hand. Geraldine would remember this feeling of power forever, would use it in her acting till her last job. Phoebe understood. It was known they were friends. Geraldine had a lot to lose. She had to make a stand, make her own position clear. Now she would be admired instead of suspected. Whereas Phoebe would just be dirty.
It was apt. She had never felt so dirty, like all her skin needed to be scraped off before she could feel human again. “Red” was accurate too. The color of humiliation. The scarlet letter.
She ought to get on a bus. Sit down, stop moving. Get home. The sooner she got home, the sooner she could put her head on Anne’s shoulder and cry.
But she couldn’t stop walking. She couldn’t stop the same thoughts from turning over and over in her mind. Her name had been dipped in compost. She might not get to work as a writer anymore. It was the only thing she’d ever wanted, ever since she was nine and her teacher, the harassed a
nd irritable Miss Wittkins, a woman who never seemed to know any of her students’ names, shook Phoebe’s essay “I Watched Them Paint a WPA Mural” in her face and snapped, “You’re brighter than the others. You better keep making an effort.” Phoebe had. Now she wondered if praising Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration had been the first tick on a list.
When she reached Bryant Park, she wandered down one of its paths toward the big, beautiful library, which might have books that could help her, tell her how to fight back. She was nearly at the door when logic reminded her that top blacklistees like Dalton Trumbo and Ring Lardner Jr. had retained excellent lawyers, and that didn’t prevent them from being brought before Congress, asked about their politics, and tossed into prison when they refused to answer. Even the American Civil Liberties Union chose not to defend accused Reds.
But maybe there’s something. Maybe I can be like a gal in some story—the nobody who finds the key no one expected and blows it all wide open.
She was at the card catalog, making a list of likely books, when she remembered that the FBI scrutinized people’s library records. And what arcane point of law did she expect to find, anyway? The First Amendment was right there for anyone to see, and it had thus far saved no one.
Phoebe plopped into a wooden chair, pulled out her handkerchief, and wiped the sweat from her neck. Wonderful, now I’m going to stain my good blouse. A flicker at the end of the card catalog caught her eye. A man’s hat. He was watching her.
Bile rose to her mouth, and she pressed her handkerchief to her lips. She jumped up and ran for the stairs, even though she knew it made her look more suspicious. She couldn’t stop running now, not until she was underground, on a subway, heading back to the sanctuary of Perry Street. She glanced around the lightly populated subway car. Mostly women. Were any of them watching her? Women were no less dangerous than men and could be far more so—Hedda Hopper might as well be a ranking member of HUAC, having fingered at least half the Hollywood denizens who ended up blacklisted.
Mrs. Pocatelli was nosing about her garden. The tenants often wondered what had become of Mr. Pocatelli. Phoebe had been disappointed to learn she wasn’t the first to assume he was feeding the beets, carrots, and cabbages.
“You!” Mrs. Pocatelli shouted. Phoebe shrank from the bony finger pointing at her. “You promised me sfogliatelle from Veniero’s!”
The buttering up of a lifetime ago. “I’ll get them later, Mrs. Pocatelli,” Phoebe assured her. The landlady looked skeptical—Phoebe could feel her scowl all the way up the stairs and even as she turned down the corridor toward her door.
She heard Thelonious Monk’s “Straight, No Chaser,” in Anne’s apartment and pounded on the door.
“Holy cannoli, what the hell happened to you?” Anne said on seeing Phoebe’s face.
Phoebe opened her mouth and a giant sob came out. She dropped her bag and sank to the floor, howling.
“Come on, let’s get to your place,” Anne said. Her furniture was covered with tarps while she worked on a complicated painting. She grabbed a bottle of bourbon, heaved Phoebe from the floor, and soon settled them on Phoebe’s love seat. Anne poured bourbon to the brim of two amber cut glass Victorian tumblers—a lucky secondhand shop find—and Phoebe downed hers in one gulp.
“I’ve been blacklisted,” she said. It was like speaking a foreign language, the word weird and twisty on her lips.
Anne whistled low and topped up Phoebe’s glass. She flipped through albums, put on Call Me Madam at top volume, and sat close to Phoebe.
“If there’s a listening device in here, it doesn’t stand a chance of hearing us over Ethel Merman,” she insisted.
A listening device! Phoebe wrapped her arms around herself and glanced around the cozy apartment she loved so much. Pale green walls, pink and yellow curtains, the art deco love seat Anne had helped her re-cover. Her desk and typewriter. Had someone been listening to her when she thought she was safe in her home?
“Stay calm,” Anne instructed, reading her face. “They want you to break.”
Phoebe finished another tumbler of bourbon and strode to her Roseville cookie jar, the last thing her mother ever bought. It was filled with change, mostly nickels and dimes. No more than ten dollars altogether.
“I’ve got this and about seventy-eight bucks in the bank,” she told Anne. “What do I do? You know the score. No one’s supposed to hire a blacklisted writer, Constitution or no Constitution. I’m no big shot like Dalton Trumbo. I can’t afford to disappear, become nobody.”
The phrase caught in her throat, and she added gin to the last of the bourbon.
“You can get some crummy job to tide you over,” Anne advised. “Then you’ll sell a script under a fake name, people do that.”
“Not easily, they don’t. And even crummy jobs can check names. No one wants to hire an accused Red. How am I supposed to cover me and Mona?”
For the first time, Anne looked doubtful. “I don’t know,” she whispered. She frowned in contemplation. “Why you, though? Unless . . . the airfield?” she ventured.
“It’s the only time I remember being radical. They might get you on it too.”
Anne nodded. No doubt nearly everyone on Perry Street was the sort of person who might end up on a list before long, if they weren’t already.
The phone rang. Phoebe recoiled. “It’s being tapped. I know it. It’s been ringing with no one there. That friend of Floyd and Leo’s said that was a giveaway.”
“Geez, the FBI must be feeling flush—they’re pouring more money into you than the network is,” Anne said. She snatched up the phone.
“It’s Hank,” she told Phoebe, wrinkling her nose and holding the receiver out between two fingers, like it was a rotting carcass.
Phoebe was tempted to ask, “Hank who?” but took the phone.
“Well, hi there, Hank, what’s new?” she asked brightly.
“Phoebe, honey, let’s have lunch Saturday, all right? You pick a place, drop me a line.”
The phrasing was too perfect, designed so that anyone listening wouldn’t know the meeting spot. Phoebe shivered. Hank had done this before. She hung up and looked at Anne.
“Maybe I should suggest Hell’s waiting room,” she said.
“Isn’t that a bar on the Bowery?”
Phoebe managed a hollow laugh. She lit a cigarette.
“What the hell am I going to do?”
Anne opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, and then just wrapped her hand around Phoebe’s and held it tight.
* * *
• • •
The next day, Phoebe posted a note to Hank telling him to meet her at Desiree’s, the nicest restaurant in Greenwich Village. Might as well get a decent meal out of him.
Then she went to visit Mona. The Brookside Sanitarium was nowhere near a brook, but it was a fine facility and had given the Adler family a very good rate in exchange for the honor of subjecting Mona to countless tests. The doctors had never seen someone with virtually no natural immunity, and certainly no one who lived to adulthood. Phoebe had long given up real hope of a miracle cure, but the doctors’ desire to understand Mona’s body meant Brookside took good care of her, and that was enough. Phoebe hurried through the ritual of scrubbing her hands and face with surgical soap and putting on a white coat before she passed through to the patients’ quarters.
“Baby sister!” Mona squealed when Phoebe walked into the dayroom. She wheeled herself across the room at breakneck speed, careening around a cribbage game and coming to a neat stop before Phoebe.
“Glad I caught you before you went ice skating,” Phoebe said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mona scolded. “Tuesday is horseback riding. Don’t you remember anything?”
Phoebe hugged her, glad to feel no more bones than usual. Underneath the scent of hospital disinfectant and carbolic soap, she
smelled the Shalimar she had sneaked to Mona on her birthday. Rules or no rules, if Mona wanted, as she put it, “a proper, grown-up perfume,” she was damn well going to have it.
Phoebe wheeled her sister into a quiet corner and sat down next to her.
“How come you don’t have a rug over your legs? You’re going to get cold,” Phoebe scolded, knowing she sounded fussy.
“Don’t be fussy,” Mona scolded right back. “I’m fine. You’re the one who’s not. Don’t contradict me,” she said as Phoebe started to protest. “I know your face, you can’t hide anything.”
That was going to be a problem.
Phoebe hesitated, realizing she wasn’t sure what was safe to say. Anyone could be listening, waiting for her to say something they decided mattered.
“I think I’m in a little trouble,” she whispered.
Mona lit up. “Are you pregnant?” She answered her own question. “No, you couldn’t be, that would involve actually going on a date. With a man and everything.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to date,” Phoebe said reflexively. Good lord, we’re not going to have this conversation, are we?
“Well, I do, and I need to live vicariously, so live it up a bit, will you?” Mona stopped smiling. “You don’t have to be so careful all the time, you know. You don’t have to always worry about hurting your career.”
“That happened anyway.” Phoebe leaned closer and whispered the whole story, taking strength from the red rage that spread over Mona’s face. For the first time in years, she looked almost healthy.
“This is how they treat people who helped win the war? What a joke.”
“I’m not the only one,” Phoebe conceded, thinking that a lot of the blacklisted men had been in combat.
“No, but you’re the only one who’s my sister.”
They fell quiet for several minutes. Then they looked at each other and burst out laughing.
“When the hell were the Adler girls ever quiet together?” Mona cried. “Daddy would think we’d died or something.”
Red Letter Days Page 4