Who Is Vera Kelly?

by Rosalie Knecht

  “Yes, I have.”

  “The better a person is, the easier they are to lie to. Have you noticed that?” I pulled the sash up an inch higher.

  Gerry said, “It’s a war, Vera.”

  “That’s the thing, Gerry. It’s not. It’s a game.”

  For a minute or two neither of us said anything. I could hear gospel music coming through the ceiling.

  “Where are you going?” Gerry said at last, looking over his shoulder at the stacked boxes around the sofa.

  “None of your concern,” I said. “And I’ll be very happy there.”

  JANUARY 1967

  122 MIDWOOD STREET, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

  It was my own, a townhouse on Midwood Street that I bought with cash. It took all the money from the job. I had to fix the roof, and the radiators leaked, but it had tall windows and a back garden with a flagstone path among rosebushes, and dark cherry floors that felt, somehow, always warm to the touch.

  I sent my mother a letter with my new address. It had been such a long time; I was a new person now. It was possible that we were both new people. She wrote me back and invited me for the weekend. I considered it for days, then wrote her again and suggested Easter instead. I might face Chevy Chase better in the springtime.

  I found a job at a television station, where I worked on the five o’clock news broadcast. I typed up scripts and answered the telephones at first. After a while I was writing scripts, and then editing.

  Once, reviewing film from a demonstration in Mexico, I thought I saw Victoria, a blonde girl with a gleeful smile in the midst of a roiling mass of people, police swarming in from the side. I wound the film back several times, and each time it looked less like her. Later, I heard she had a bit part in a movie that made the festival rounds, but I never saw it.

  I worked all the time. I grew clematis on a trellis in my backyard. I romanced a poet who taught English at Brooklyn College, and she cooked for me and left notes in my bed and kitchen cabinets and sticking out from behind the picture frames in my front hallway. There were cartoons of me: tall and severe, with an undermining riot of curly hair. And of her: she drew herself short and round, with sticks for legs, making a little joke of herself. She was beautiful, actually. I could never be sure if she knew it.

  In the spring I found a nest in the old dovecote on my roof. There were two mottled brown eggs in it that I couldn’t identify, much too big for pigeons. I never saw the mother, but in my attic room, while I waited for the eggs to hatch above me, I sometimes heard the brief beating of strong wings.

  BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS

  How would you describe Vera Kelly? Do any of these qualities make Vera a better (or worse) spy?

  What did you think of the jumps between Vera’s past and present? How does Vera’s adolescence inform her present predicaments?

  How does Vera’s estrangement from her mother influence her?

  In noir novels and films, sexuality tends to follow certain tropes. Do you think that’s the case in Who Is Vera Kelly? Is there a femme fatale in this book?

  Vera’s options for financial survival are restricted by both her gender and her sexuality. How might her story have played out differently ten years earlier? Ten years later?

  What did you make of Vera’s relationship with James? Were you ever suspicious of his reasons to be in Argentina?

  What does Vera see in Victoria? What does Victoria see in Vera?

  How does Vera’s perspective on the Cold War change over the course of the book?

  Lots of girls grow up reading Harriet the Spy and Nancy Drew novels. Why do you think there are so few adult spy novels starring female spies?

  What do you think is next for Vera Kelly?

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

  I owe thanks first of all to Soumeya Bendimerad Roberts, for seeing what this book needed, and to Masie Cochran, for knowing how it should be shaped. To Nanci McCloskey and Sabrina Wise, for their energy and good humor, and to Jakob Vala, for conjuring Vera’s face. As always, I depend on my first readers for their insight and rigor: Bonnie Altucher, Tom Cook, Jenna Evans, and Helen Terndrup.

  Permanent thanks to my family, who took me seriously when it would perhaps have been wiser not to, and to Mark, who is playing for keeps and yet never keeps score.

  “Who Is Vera Kelly? is the twisty, literary, woman-driven spy novel you’ve always wanted to read. Vera Kelly hopscotches from Brooklyn to Buenos Aires, fueled by gin and cigarettes, on the run from her past and equipped with a case of listening devices. But this is no ordinary adventure novel: Rosalie Knecht is a sensitive and gifted writer with a lyrical voice that imbues this dazzling novel with unexpected emotional depth.”

  —AMY STEWART, New York Times bestselling author of Girl Waits with Gun

  “Rosalie Knecht has created a truly fresh and original take on the spy novel, full of suspense and surprise and beautifully observed details of its Cold War setting. Best of all is Vera herself, a memorable heroine who seems destined to become an icon of the genre. This is a remarkable and wonderful book!”

  —DAN CHAON, New York Times bestselling author of Ill Will

  “Sardonic, intelligent, and thrillingly original, Rosalie Knecht has not only revitalized the female spy novel with her feisty, indeterminable heroine, she’s also joyfully queered it. I loved this book and I loved Vera. Read this book right now!”

  —COURTNEY MAUM, author of I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You

  PHOTO © MICHAEL P. GERACI

  ROSALIE KNECHT is a social worker in New York City and was born and raised in Pennsylvania. She is the translator of César Aira’s The Seamstress and the Wind and has been a Center for Fiction Emerging Writer Fellow and a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Argentina. Her debut novel, Relief Map, was published by Tin House Books in 2016.

  Copyright © 2018 Rosalie Knecht

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact Tin House Books, 2617 NW Thurman St., Portland, OR 97210.

  Published by Tin House Books, Portland, Oregon, and Brooklyn, New York

  Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

  Names: Knecht, Rosalie, author.

  Title: Who is Vera Kelly? / by Rosalie Knecht.

  Description: First U.S. edition. | Portland, Oregon : Tin House Books, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018002612| ISBN 9781947793019 (paperback) | ISBN 9781947793026 (ebook)

  Subjects: | GSAFD: Adventure fiction. | Spy stories.

  Classification: LCC PS3611.N43 W48 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018002612

  First US Edition 2018

  Interior design by Jakob Vala

  www.tinhouse.com