It was difficult to argue against any of that. Still, I doubted whether most Americans would agree.
“What repercussions should I expect if I joined the Party?” I found myself fiddling with a discarded pencil that was missing its eraser, made myself stop. “And don’t sugarcoat it.”
“If you join, it’s not exactly something we suggest you broadcast to the world, at least not yet. So, I’d assume no repercussions, unless you do something stupid.”
I never do anything, Lee, that’s the point. And I had no friends, until I met you.
“And if I don’t join?”
Lee shrugged. “I could still see you at meetings, but this afternoon I’m signing the papers on a little walk-up apartment on West 124th Street. It’s just off Amsterdam Avenue, which is a bit of a hike.”
Meaning it would be back to just me and Vlad and Coriolanus again. Lee, seeming to realize the downturn of my thoughts, reached out and squeezed my hand. “There’s a whole world of opportunities open to Party members, you know. Just think of it, Elizabeth—this is your chance to have your hand on the throttle of history.”
I unfolded my arms. I cared less for history than for my future, but I did agree with Lee’s vision of equality for all Americans. “Fine. Where do I sign?”
Lee’s eyes widened. “That’s it? Just like that? I was expecting a full interrogation, not just a handful of questions.”
“It’s not as if my joining changes anything. I want to go to League meetings with you and maybe help Patch on the newspaper. If I have to sign a Party membership to convince you of that, then so be it—I’ll sign with this pencil right here and right now. If that’s what you want.”
Lee wanted to recruit me, and I wanted to protect our friendship. It was as simple as that.
Lee studied me, then gave a satisfied nod. “I’ll bring you the paperwork tomorrow. And a proper pen as well.” She rose and enveloped me in a tobacco-scented hug that made me feel like all the soul-searching and philosophical grappling had been worth it. “Now can we get to work?”
“Sure,” I said, then winked in a way I hoped looked natural. “Comrade.”
* * *
NOVEMBER 23, 1963
1:46 P.M.
“And you became a Communist?” Cat asked, giving a snap of her perfectly manicured fingers. “Just like that?”
Elizabeth planted a fresh Lucky Strike between her lips, lit it with the old one stained red from her lipstick—followed by the click click click of her golden cigarette lighter. “It wasn’t just like that, Catherine. I put a great amount of thought and consideration into my decision.” A deep drag on the cigarette, followed by a cirrus of acrid smoke. “Well, at least as much as I could at that tender age.”
Cat crossed her arms, still leaning against the doorframe she’d refused to abandon. She didn’t trust herself to get any closer to Elizabeth, certainly not with the gun she still held. “Unfortunately, I’m having a difficult time reconciling the shy, floundering woman you’ve described as your youthful self with this.” She gestured with one sweep of her hand to the scowling, chain-smoking matron in front of her. “Also, my memory of cowering in an underground bunker during the Cuban Missile Crisis last year is still fresh. It’s hard to believe that you would have taken up the red torch of Communism just because you wanted a few friends in your life.”
Elizabeth exhaled in one big gust, set down the cigarette in its yellow glass ashtray, and stood, pruning a dead leaf from a potted violet on the kitchen sill that reminded Cat of Coriolanus. “If it were today, knowing what I know now about Stalin and Khrushchev and Castro, would I have done things differently, run away screaming from Lee?” Elizabeth leaned forward, hands splayed on the table before angrily stubbing out the cigarette. “I don’t know. I still assumed that signing on Stalin’s dotted line meant that I could merely playact at being a Communist. Go to meetings and sing their songs, but keep my head above their waterline.”
Elizabeth opened up a deep drawer that sat slightly crooked on its track. Cat worried that she might pull a weapon, so kept her father’s pistol aimed on the spy, but after a moment of digging Elizabeth retrieved with a triumphant smile her buried treasure from its depths: a bottle of Gordon’s gin.
“I need a drink,” she announced before retrieving two yellow plastic tumblers from an otherwise nearly empty cabinet. “Do you want one?”
Cat made a pointed glance at the clock, its ticking the only sound save for a couple of children playing outside on the sidewalk. “I don’t think so. It’s not even two o’clock in the afternoon. You have less than fifteen minutes left, you know.”
Elizabeth didn’t miss a beat, only poured an overly generous shot of gin into one tumbler and knocked it back. Followed by an Alka-Seltzer tablet dusted off from her skirt pocket and unceremoniously dunked into water in the second tumbler, which quickly followed the gin. “Getting old is hell,” Elizabeth announced by way of explanation. “Take my word for it—it’s a big decision, choosing to end someone’s life. Not to mention what you’ll do with yourself afterward. Shall we add some time to the clock? I have plenty more to tell.”
Cat frowned as Elizabeth used her foot to nudge a kitchen chair toward her. “At least sit down,” Elizabeth said. “You’re making me nervous.”
What the hell? What do I have to lose?
Cat gave the timer another turn—another hour added to Elizabeth’s life—and leaned back in her chair. “You’re going to have to work harder to convince me not to kill you. A lot harder.”
To which Elizabeth only offered a Mona Lisa smile. “Oh, Catherine. For all you know, you’ll want nothing more than to kill me at the end of all this.”
3
SPRING 1935
“Elizabeth, I have good news.” Patch offered me a jelly donut, which I declined. I didn’t like to eat in front of people if I could help it, certainly nothing as messy as a jelly donut and certainly not in front of someone like Patch. The more time I spent with him at Fight’s offices, the more I enjoyed his ready smile and easy camaraderie, even his lame puns. And his Lucky Strike cigarettes, which he was keen to share and I was keen to smoke to avoid seeming entirely provincial. “I’ve got my Party paperwork ready. I meant what I said—we can submit at the same time, be comrades in arms together. Strength in numbers and all that.”
I tapped a red pen against the article I was editing that praised the success of Stalin’s Five-Year Plan to industrialize Russia. “Didn’t Lee tell you? I’ve joined up—signed the paperwork this morning, actually.”
(Catherine, given how we comrades were supposed to keep our membership secret from the rest of society, it still seems odd that there was actual membership paperwork. However, I suppose there’s psychological weight to signing one’s name on a dotted line, something that made one feel truly committed. Especially when signing beneath a red hammer and sickle emblem that reads United Communist Party of America: All Power to the Workers!)
“Really?” Patch slapped the newspaper he was holding against his desk, then crushed me into a hug so fast that I didn’t have time to properly react. By the time I knew what was happening, he’d already placed his hands on my shoulders and admired me as if I were a fine canvas painted by Leonardo or Raphael. Did I just imagine that? “That’s fantastic!”
I stepped back, tugged the hem of my fitted blouse. Wished it wasn’t so snug across the chest. “So, you’ll join up then?”
“Oh, yeah . . . Sure. Now that you have.” He rapped his ink-stained knuckles against the desk. “I’ll do it at tonight’s meeting, as a matter of fact.”
I frowned. “I won’t be at the meeting; I have a class on shorthand tonight—my boss told me mine isn’t good enough. Maybe we can celebrate afterward?”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Patch shocked the bejesus out of me by pressing a quick kiss to the side of my hair, just above my ear. “Congratula
tions, Elizabeth.”
First a hug . . . Except a hug could have meant anything, could have been shared between siblings. But a hug and a kiss?
My notebook was very clear on the matter: Patch had been flirting with me. Which meant he was interested in me. Plain everyday logic backed up my notes, but I had absolutely no idea what to do with this land mine of information. I’d had one ill-fated rendezvous with a man during my fellowship in Italy—for the record, I do not recommend that college students succumb to the flattery of their faculty advisers—but aside from that and the harassment I received every day at work, I had no experience with the opposite sex. Certainly not with those who wanted more than a onetime tumble with a wide-eyed, gullible student who didn’t realize that an invitation to discuss Fascism behind closed doors was also a demand to hike up one’s skirt.
Right or wrong, for the rest of the day I thought of nothing save the pleasant press of Patch’s lips against my hair, missed answering not one but two questions my teacher posed to me that evening. “Miss Bentley,” the overworked and underpaid woman finally said, “I suggest you pull your head out of the stars and focus on the message before you.”
You have no idea, Miss Brown, I thought to myself. If only I could decipher a very different message.
I was a fuse waiting to blow by the time I hurried to Lee’s new apartment. In one twenty-four-hour period, I’d joined the CPUSA, cemented my friendship with Lee, and now found myself—me, who had been called a sad sack at Vassar—contemplating asking Patch whether he’d like to have dinner with me this week.
I doubted whether I’d ever had such a productive day.
“Welcome to the Party, comrade,” Lee said to me over our celebratory dinner of frankfurters—my favorite, slathered with ketchup and relish—and ice-cold lemonades from the umbrellaed Sabrett’s cart on the corner. I was accustomed to eating alone—or with Vlad now, who was currently seated at my feet awaiting tidbits—but today I was happy to share a triumphal hot dog with my best friend. We’d spread out the newsprint from an old edition of the Daily Worker as a tablecloth on Lee’s scuffed kitchen table while her daughter, Laurel, alternated between playing jacks on the floor and petting Vlad. It was a perfect moment made even more flawless when Patch arrived, cheeks red from the chill outside. With a magician’s flourish he pulled a bottle of apple cider from the paper bag under his arm. “For our newest comrade! I’d have brought champagne, but you mentioned that you didn’t drink.”
I set down the hot dog I’d been devouring, quickly scrubbing a fist over my lips to remove any embarrassing ketchup. I was touched that he’d thought of me, but that fragile joy quickly deflated.
“I can’t stay,” he said. “I just wanted to swing by to congratulate our new bona fide leftist. You’re the real deal now, Elizabeth.” Patch popped the cork to my cider. He was about to say more when little Laurel, already dressed in her pink flannel nightgown, tugged on his jacket.
“Can I have some too, Patch?”
He swung her into his arm, bounced her a couple of times until she let out a golden peal of giggles that started Vlad barking. “Of course. Anything for my best girl.” He tipped cider into the Mason jars Lee pulled out of her cabinet, nudged one toward me and another toward Laurel. “Just be careful, Elizabeth. You know Communists aren’t on stable footing in America, at least not yet. People think we’re all bomb-toting terrorists.”
There it was again: that feeling that Party membership was forbidden.
Which was of course why I’d joined under a false name. No one signed up for the CPUSA with their real name, the better to always hide one’s tracks and instead assume the name of a favorite hero or a literary character that held general appeal. So today I’d assumed the first of many new names.
Elizabeth Sherman.
It was borrowed from my ancestor Roger Sherman, who had scrawled his name on the bottom of the Declaration of Independence. (At least that was the story my father had told me; I certainly wasn’t going to set about disproving that now.) I’d joined the Party for selfish reasons, but before her illness, my mother had been a teacher, had instilled in me the idea that everyone needed to contribute something good to humanity before their time here on earth was over. I loved America, and this Depression had shown me there were so many obstacles yet to overcome. Those obstacles had felt insurmountable when I was on my own. But now . . .
Since meeting Lee, I’d nearly succeeded in convincing myself that perhaps, just by nature of becoming more politically active and joining the Party, I might find some opportunity to make a difference. To make my life mean something and build a better world.
Not on Sherman’s level, mind you, but in some small, patriotic way.
(Surely, Catherine, you must know that Roger Sherman and those same signers of the Declaration had been accused of committing treason by the British government. Sometimes patriots really are deeply misunderstood individuals.)
“And are we?” My light smile and lifted eyebrows feigned levity as I faced Patch. “Bomb-toting terrorists?”
Lee laughed. “Of course not.”
“The Communists in America are entirely benign. We’re all idealists, you know.” Patch checked his wristwatch, gave a lukewarm curse. “I hate to drink and run, but I’m late for a meeting.”
“Are you joining up then?” I asked. The effervescence of the cider made me feel light, happy. Or maybe that was the brilliance of the company I now kept. “Tonight?”
Patch winked—difficult to tell whether it was directed at me or Lee, who seemed to be scowling now—before dropping a kiss on both of our heads. And then Laurel’s. “Something like that. You girls stay out of trouble, all right?”
I frowned as the door shut behind him, turned to see Lee studying me. “Patch has been so supportive about all this,” I said, then nearly blurted out, I think I like him. A lot.
“Patch is a wonderful man.” Lee took Laurel’s empty cider jar, wrapped her daughter snugly in a brown afghan from the sofa, and carried her to their bedroom. Laurel gave Vlad and me a little wave over her mother’s shoulder that set Vlad’s tail to thumping. It wasn’t a full minute before Lee came back, removed a vodka bottle from the cabinet above her Frigidaire, and tippled a little into her half-empty bottle of lemonade. She toed off her shoes and curled up on her couch with the vodka-lemonade clasped between both hands as if it were a mug of coffee. “He helped me a lot when I joined too.”
My memory wasn’t photographic—not precisely—but it was close. Once I heard or saw something, it was nearly impossible to unsee it. Or in this case, unhear it.
“But I thought you joined five years ago.”
“Uh-huh. The same day as Patch.” Lee pursed her lips. “He fed you that line about turning in your paperwork together, didn’t he? I told him to stop doing that—his intentions are good, albeit misguided.”
I tried to wave it away, the feeling that I’d been tricked. Still, it lingered.
(Let the record show, Catherine, that I’m not the only liar in this story. Not by a long shot.)
Lee gave a little smile. “The first time Patch kissed me was right after we’d signed our applications.”
I reared back so fast I nearly spilled the remnants of my cider.
“I didn’t realize . . .” I stumbled over my words, stood, and shuffled the crumpled hot dog wrappers and jars around the table, my back to Lee so she couldn’t see my expression. My heart dropped to the pit of my stomach; I’d found Patch’s boundless enthusiasm attractive, had even fantasized what it would be like to go on a date with him. “You and Patch, that is . . .” Suddenly, I gasped and whirled around. “Is he Laurel’s father? He is, isn’t he? But you’re not married! Why aren’t you married?”
And why didn’t you tell me you and Patch were together?
To which Lee only laughed. “No, Patch and I aren’t married, and no, he’s not Laurel’s father. I w
as only ever with Henry—my husband—before the mill accident that killed him. Patch and I have a very common . . . shall we say . . . arrangement within the Party.”
My chin dropped, and I could feel the V that burrowed deep between my eyebrows. “What does that mean?”
“No petty bourgeois marriages for us. No relationship weighted down by legalities and tax codes.” She must have read my confusion. “Drinking, profanity, and so-called loose morals are encouraged as ways to break down the old capitalist behaviors and etiquette. Patch and I are together when we want to be and not when we don’t. He has lots of women he’s friends with, if you know what I mean.”
I struggled to take that in, feeling so very unsophisticated and provincial at the same time. Especially when Lee came around and bumped my hip with hers. “Don’t look so shocked. The Party encourages us to live. You’re just as young and unattached as we are—you should have some fun.”
I’d tried to be free-spirited and fancy-free that one time with my faculty adviser in Italy, who I’d later discovered was married. I didn’t care to repeat the experience.
“I’m not sure ‘loose morals’ are for me. And there’s no one I’m interested in,” I lied.
No one except Patch. Except I couldn’t countenance going after my friend’s lover, or even sometimes-lover, not even if Lee claimed that their arrangement was a common one. And I certainly wasn’t interested in being another man’s girl du jour. I thought of the way Patch had kissed both Lee and me tonight, and felt suddenly dirty.
Lee tapped her lemonade bottle against my jar of cider, then switched them so I held her vodka concoction. “You really are a stodgy New England daughter.” I was prepared to be offended, but her lilting voice was full of sunshine. “Drink up.”
“No alcohol,” I said. “You know that.”
“You mean, no goddamned alcohol, don’t you?” She blew out a puff of air, a sign of exasperation. “No loose morals, no drinking, and no profanity? You’ve got to give me something, Elizabeth—I’m trying to be a positive influence.”
A Most Clever Girl Page 4