Unfortunately, writing my memoir proved more difficult than I thought.
If I learned anything from the experience during those five months of coffee-driven mornings and martini-infused nights (sometimes it went the other way, guzzling martinis to fend off a hangover and slugging back Folgers to keep myself awake long into the nights) spent slaving away over my typewriter, it was this: I was not a writer.
My chair and my typewriter were my thumbscrews, my iron maiden, my rack.
My penance.
Retelling the stories of my past was invisible self-flagellation as I was forced to relive Yasha’s death—both its real and imagined forms—and the terror that I might be liquidated by the NKVD, the betrayal of my former contacts. In an attempt to heal myself, I forced myself to live out each horrible detail.
I wrote of meeting Lee Fuhr and taking my first tentative steps into the Party.
Of encountering my contacts and promising to protect them.
Of the room swirling around me when Yasha died in my arms.
Of listening to my former sources slither around the questions posed to them by the HUAC.
I told my truths, even admitted in black and white that Yasha and I had been lovers, something I’d never dared say out loud while on the stand.
Page by page the stories added up. Until, eventually, I had an entire manuscript.
And I wanted every American to read it, to appreciate my sacrifices and patriotism, especially when McCall’s magazine picked it up for serialization shortly before its release.
Unfortunately, the book I’d thought would be the key to my salvation became another weapon to use against me.
“Miss Bentley,” said one veteran reporter at the press conference McCall’s arranged, “you speak of the Great Depression in your book. Yet, a lot of us went through the Depression, too, and we didn’t turn Communist.”
Another hand shot up. “Do you think this exposé of yours will help America just as much as your spying hurt it?”
How dare you little press rats question me? I wanted to yell in their faces. When have you ever faced down the NKVD or put your life on the line for your country? Or dreamed of a better world only to have it crash and burn all around you?
Instead, I managed the disguise of a smile. “That’s for the government to decide, I suppose.”
I hoped critics—and readers—would be kinder than the media, but that was further proof of my delusions. Sales were sluggish when the book finally released. And I’d met more warmhearted NKVD agents than some reviewers who pilloried the book.
Joseph Alsop claimed that “a deep strain of phoniness” ran through my story, and Commonweal wasn’t sure whether to find my book “tragic, ludicrous, terrifying, or pathetic,” written by an “obviously unstable author, at once so vulgar, so girlish, and so portentous.”
The New Yorker was even crueler, claiming I wrote in a fashion that suggested I’d had almost as grievous a tussle with freshman English at Vassar as I had later with my New England conscience.
Why again did I decide to write a book?
Still, I’d written Out of Bondage to free me from my constant financial strains. In that regard, at least, the book delivered, for I was finally able to buy myself a house.
A real house.
Not a room in someone else’s house. Not a hotel suite. Not an apartment. No more hiding like a rat in hidey-holes all over New York City.
It was an honest-to-God house. In Connecticut. With a garden.
I went home. I bought myself a new African violet, named it Coriolanus in a self-indulgent nod toward both simpler days that were long gone and Shakespeare’s tragic hero whose attempts to build a better world ultimately led to his own downfall. It felt so good to have something that was living and growing, some harmless thing that I could never hurt. And yes, sometimes I even talked to him.
Better than talking to myself, I supposed.
I intended to stay there and live a quiet life away from the glare of the klieg lights of the press and Senate. (Well, after I posed for reporters on move-in day, that is. With the bossy and demanding ginger cat who somehow came with the house.)
I wish I could say that’s where my story ends, that I lived happily ever after and all that. Except I already warned you . . . this was never going to be that sort of story.
Not for a sinner like me.
18
JANUARY 1952
I put out at an advertisement for a caretaker, wound up with a man in my bed that night.
I wasn’t too picky anymore, found myself willing to take someone a little past his expiration date. I was nearly forty-five and figured that at that age you have to seize your happiness—and especially your chances at romance—with both hands. His name was John Wright. Which is funny now, because John Wright couldn’t have possibly been any more wrong.
I kept the lights off, mortified at what time and all those martinis had done to my waist, which while never all that trim had always at least been identifiable.
Of course, John didn’t seem to care. It’s taken me this long to realize no man really does.
I once heard someone say it’s impossible to understand the cul-de-sacs of the human heart. It seems pretty straightforward to me—it was nice having someone next to me in the dark that night. So nice, in fact, that I found my spine pressed up against John’s side when I woke the next morning. Sometime during the night my unconscious body had sought out the warmth of human touch I’d gone without for so long.
(I missed Yasha then, Catherine. So much it was physically painful.)
“I’ll just work on the hedges this afternoon,” John said when I tried to slip out of bed unnoticed. Of course, I’d given him the job as caretaker. I wondered how long he’d been awake, was grateful I’d slipped back into my cotton nightgown before we’d fallen asleep.
“That sounds good,” I said. “And tonight?”
John’s face was as interesting as a blank wall, and I’d soon discover that there wasn’t an original thought in that head of his, but just then I wondered what he was thinking as he viewed me in the unforgiving morning light. No lipstick or rouge, my hair pressed down on the side where I’d slept. Did I actually hold my breath, waiting for his response?
“I’ll be right here.” He pressed a kiss onto my shoulder blade, just above my nightgown’s modest neckline. “If you want me, that is.”
“Right here would be nice.”
And suddenly, I had a new routine. One that included a man fixing my leaky faucets and the back door that wouldn’t quite shut right, then taking care of me at night. Except I knew not to make the mistake I had that first night and made a point to send him home before each morning. I kept John at arm’s length for my own protection and his, since I didn’t care to find him bleeding out on my kitchen floor as a fresh calling card from the NKVD.
So what if John and I sometimes went to Joe’s Bar and drank too much, or that the bartender often had to cut us off? Or that we sometimes stumbled home after Joe’s closed at midnight before tripping our way upstairs and into my bed?
I wasn’t happy per se—those days were over—but I was satisfied for the first time in a long time. So much so, in fact, that I scarcely cared when I was subpoenaed for Remington’s perjury trial. I only wished they could replay the newsreels from the first trial: I’d take the stand, repeat the same tired—and true—story about Remington’s contributions to the Party. Remington would give his wide-eyed story about having no idea that I’d been a Communist, that he’d only felt sorry for me and humored me by giving me money for Communist newspapers. The jury would never recognize the Pinocchio sitting before them.
Remington would go free, and I’d become America’s punching bag. Again.
“Same story, different day,” I said when John dropped me off at the New Haven train station the morning of the trial. It was a
guilt-laden punch to the gut to let him behind the LaSalle’s wheel—Yasha’s car—but I’d braced myself against that particular pain before the blow could fully land.
“Doesn’t the trial start at noon?” John asked when I closed the passenger door. He held a pack of cigarettes in his hand—I’d forbidden him to smoke in Yasha’s car. Ever. “I still don’t understand why you had to catch the first train, Lizzy. I could’ve gotten two more hours of sleep if you’d gone in later.”
“I have some other business in DC.” I ignored the way he shortened my name. “Nothing to worry about. You’ll pick me up tonight?”
John frowned, chewed on the toothpick pursed between his lips. He was always chewing toothpicks. “I told you I would. Swing by Joe’s afterward?”
“Not tonight.”
John frowned, but I ignored him—my mind was already on the certain something else I needed to attend to in DC.
Suffice to say, it’s true what they say about death and taxes. None of us will escape either of them, at least not alive.
* * *
* * *
Before Remington’s trial, I stopped by the FBI headquarters in Washington, DC.
They had something I wanted, something I needed.
Yes, a phone call would have been easier, but I suspected Remington’s lawyers had tapped my phone and been tailing me the past few days. I could never prove it, but I was better off safe than sorry.
The more immediate problem was that, while the serialization of Out of Bondage had afforded me the means to purchase my house, John had been extremely helpful in burning through my entire advance. There had been plenty of shared booze in addition to an impromptu weekend getaway to the Bahamas. My mortgage was due (all right, several months overdue), and the revenue and royalties from my book meant I had to pay taxes for the first time in a long while. The situation had gotten so desperate that I’d taken to hiding my mail in a kitchen drawer in order to make the entire humiliating problem disappear.
The truth was, I was flat broke, and I needed an infusion of cash. Now.
“I hope you all know how highly I regard the FBI,” I said to its assistant director, Alan Belmont, after I’d been shown into his corner office. It always helped to butter a man up before you asked that he give you something; I could only assume an entire bureaucracy filled with men operated the same way. “It’s the only government agency that can’t be bought these days.”
Yes, I laid it on thick, but it seemed to be working—I’d interrupted Belmont’s morning, but he became friendly and deferential. “Thank you for the compliment, Miss Bentley,” he said. “What brings you to our office?”
“Two things, actually. First, I was wondering if the Bureau had made any progress into the investigation of the woman who reputedly jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. The one who left a note addressed to me?”
Belmont scratched his chin. “I’m familiar with the case. Unfortunately, nothing new has turned up.”
That was disappointing while also reassuring. It had been nearly four years since that mysterious note had been left for me, but I still liked to check on occasion to see if the FBI had heard anything new. No news was good news—Mary was likely sunning herself on a beach in Barbados, living incognito under a different name. God, I wished I could join her.
Belmont cleared his throat. “And the second reason you’re visiting today?”
“I’m afraid it’s a little embarrassing.” I fiddled with my purse, glanced at him through my lashes. “You see, I’m very interested in what the FBI is planning to do with the two thousand dollars I handed over to the Bureau back in 1945.”
That was the Moscow gold Al had given me in recognition of my services to the Party, which I’d then used to prove my story to the FBI. It had been just a pretty prop back then, and I’d never had any intention of laying claim to the money. Except now that cash was the easiest way I could think of bringing my bank account back into the black.
I waited for Belmont to laugh me out of his office, but he took a harsher stance.
“I’m aware of the cash, Miss Bentley.” He frowned—so much for friendly and deferential. “Unfortunately, our agency deemed it to be espionage money, which means that it should be handed over to the Treasury Department.”
I tilted my head. “Should be? Or has it already been handed over?”
Belmont rubbed the back of his neck, which was peppered with hairs and in need of a shave. “To my knowledge, the money you speak of is still in a safe-deposit box in Manhattan. The New York office recommended that it not be returned due to the manner in which you obtained it.”
A fact that I was well aware of. It was a decision that made sense and that I had agreed with back when I was still living off my savings from USS&S. Except now I was drowning in bills and had no hope of any real income for the foreseeable future.
“Well, I regret to inform you that my current indebtedness to the IRS will interfere with my usefulness as a witness.” I stood, brushed invisible lint from my sensible wool skirt. “Including that of Remington’s trial today.”
(Was I threatening the FBI, you ask, Catherine? You’re damn right I was.)
“Miss Bentley, please wait.” The worry in Belmont’s tone nearly made me smile. “I’m sure the Bureau doesn’t want you fretting over something as mundane as financial woes. I’ll speak to Hoover about this immediately and do my utmost to expedite the process of getting those funds returned to you. If you’ll just wait outside my office? I know they’re expecting you at the courthouse in a few hours.”
I let my smile crease the corners of my eyes. “Of course. Your help is much appreciated, Mr. Belmont. I’m eager to hear what Director Hoover says—I’m afraid my mind won’t be at ease until I hear that this fine agency will do right by one of their most helpful witnesses.”
And wouldn’t you know it? Within the hour, Hoover himself authorized the return of my Moscow gold.
* * *
* * *
Sordid money woes now assuaged, there was nothing new to tell in my testimony against Remington that afternoon, but the federal government had impaneled another grand jury and indicted our star boy on five new counts of perjury, including his denial of passing secret information to yours truly.
I didn’t expect a different verdict this time, not with Remington’s duck-like ability to let all charges and accusations roll off him like water.
Still, I did my duty as an American citizen and smoothed the hem of my several-years-out-of-fashion black suit jacket as I took the stand. Then I repeated my previous testimony, conducting myself in a credible fashion. Unlike before, today Remington seemed a little frayed around the edges. He and his wife, Ann—she of the babies and doilies—had divorced recently, so I wondered if it was the strain of a broken relationship or that of carrying around his lies for so long that weighed upon him. (I understood both, given that the same expression and worry lines greeted me each morning in the bathroom mirror.)
Finally, it was Remington’s turn on the stand.
“I admit I was a philosophical but not a card-carrying Communist.” My former problem child lacked the cocksure air he’d once emanated. I wondered how often he rued the day he’d decided not to plead the Fifth. “I realize now that I was very indiscreet in having any contact at all with Miss Bentley. But I maintain that I didn’t know she was a Communist and that I certainly never passed her any sensitive information.”
And if you believe that, then I’m the tooth fairy.
The surprise came when the prosecution called Ann Moos Remington to the stand.
Remington’s now ex-wife.
I leaned forward. I knew Ann—Bing, as Remington had called her—from that first meeting with Remington. I wondered how she’d fared during their separation; the papers had reported adultery on Remington’s side as the official cause of the divorce and that there were two children involved.
Now Ann had been called upon to testify against her former husband, something that had never happened in any of Remington’s prior trials.
Called by the prosecution, I’d mostly expected a bitter harangue from the woman Remington had wronged. Instead, it became readily apparent that she wasn’t here to vilify him.
No, she was here to support him.
Smart, I thought as I ticked through the list of possibilities of why Ann was dancing nimbly around the questions posed to her. Never incriminating, always sticking to the story that Remington had been a naive idealist. A housewife with no skills and two children to raise. Without Bill, she loses her only source of income. If he’s convicted, her monthly alimony and child support checks dry up. Not to mention her children’s father gets branded as a traitor.
But this was a grand jury case, meaning Ann was without legal counsel. On her own and, honestly, not faring well. It didn’t help that the prosecution kept the poor woman on the stand all morning and into the afternoon, without food or water.
“May we have a recess? I’m afraid I’m getting fuzzy,” she said as the sun sank toward the winter horizon. “I haven’t eaten in so long that I doubt I’m coherent anymore.”
A Most Clever Girl Page 32