Mr. Jones

by Margaret Sweatman

  “Mr. Smith is CIA.”

  Aoi didn’t respond. She lit a cigarette, blew out the smoke, and looked at him. He was beginning to see just how far Gembey and External’s Security branch would go in their cooperation with US security interests. He’d been sent here to meet Mr. Smith.

  “It’s dangerous, isn’t it?” he asked. “Money laundering for the CIA.”

  She shook her head. “No, no,” she said mildly. “It’s how the government works.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lennie was peering up at him as if she’d never seen him before in her life. He was aware of Clark Haywood of Trade and Commerce studying this airport reunion. Haywood had been nervously friendly for the last five days, making a lot of small talk. Now he shook Emmett’s hand with great friendliness, “Nice work, Emmett. Glad to have you on board,” tipping his hat to Suzanne and stumbling over Lennie in his haste to get away. If Emmett knew more than Haywood did about the money for the Kobe Steel Works deal, Haywood wanted to keep it that way.

  Emmett stood in his wrinkled coat with his briefcase at his feet. Dr. Kimura had driven Suzanne and Lenore here to collect him. Suzanne, Lenore, and Kimura now stood to receive what had been sent off at the other end by Aoi, James, and Mr. Smith. Emmett had been awake for most of the past seventy-two hours. He imagined these people as six clay figures he’d take to his tomb. Suzanne laughed nervously. “Emmett? Hello?”

  He explained that he hadn’t been able to sleep, that he was half-crazed by the din of flying in the North Star. He bent to kiss Lenore and had the disconcerting experience of coming inches from her impersonal grey eyes.

  “Where is my brother?” she asked.

  “With his mother, in Japan.”

  “Will he come?”

  “Maybe.”

  “When?”

  “Sometime, someday.”

  Lennie slid her hand into his. It was like being given a white dove. Her cool, impossibly soft skin. She wanted to know, “Did he ask about me?”

  “Yes.”

  “He wants to come, doesn’t he.”

  “Yes.”

  “So,” Lennie persisted, “why didn’t he?”

  “He has to go to school.”

  “He can go to school here.”

  They were walking. Lennie tried to swing his hand and he told her to stop it. Then he apologized. “I’m tired, Lennie.”

  Lenore was wearing a wide skirt with a crinoline that fell below her knees and she looked gawky and frumpish. She self-consciously collected the fabric and swung it like a country dancer. He felt the lingering presence of his son. As if he’d had a love affair while he was away. Suzanne at his side dropped back to walk with Kimura, and Lenore skipped awkwardly ahead so Emmett was walking alone.

  In Kobe, Mr. Smith had arrived at Aoi’s apartment and insisted on driving him to the train station. Emmett had his suitcase with him when he went to see James once more before leaving the country. During this visit, again Aoi had left him alone with James for a few minutes.

  The boy delighted him with his refinement, his perfect face lifted trustingly. They talked about baseball. James knew all about the New York Yankees. He’d run out of the room and returned with his baseball glove and softball. Emmett was looking at his watch, calculating how he could squeeze in some time to play catch with his son, when Mr. Smith walked in.

  He didn’t knock, but he didn’t enter like one who was coming home either. There was no evidence that he lived here. Aoi rushed in from the kitchen at the sound of his voice. Her nervousness, the entry without knocking, all made Emmett realize that Aoi had no real ownership of this place, and he pulled the boy to himself.

  “Well, friendly Canadian, all packed?”

  “Hello, Jim.”

  Jim clicked his heels, “Came to give you a lift to the station.”

  “That’s all right. No need.”

  “Nonsense.” Jim picked up Emmett’s suitcase. He gave one of his winking smiles at James and asked him, “Want to come?”

  James said that he would like to. He spoke formally to Jim, Mr. Smith, but Emmett couldn’t detect any fear.

  “Right! Tell your mother, she looks fine, or we’ll be waiting an hour while she changes her clothes.”

  Aoi didn’t banter but calmly took her handbag and put on lipstick, saying to James, “We will ask Mr. Smith to drop us at the market on the way back.”

  Jim drove to the station, and all three of them accompanied Emmett inside. Jim steered him ahead of Aoi and James. “Consider my proposal?” he asked.

  “Yes. And no thank you.”

  “Going to stay on the farm, are you?” Jim said.

  “I’ve got a family to support.”

  “Pays well. Better’n what you’re getting now. By a long shot.”

  “I’m doing all right.”

  Jim shook his head in good-natured disappointment. “You don’t understand.” He stopped, and Emmett had to stop too. Jim told Aoi, “Go away for a while, will you?” The boy hesitated. Jim winked at him. “Get your mother to buy you an ice cream. Go on. There’s still time to say goodbye.” Aoi gave Emmett a solemn look and ushered the boy away. Jim said, “You send Aoi what? A couple hundred bucks a month? Back home, you have a wife who’s been — compromised. That’s tough, puts you in a vulnerable position.”

  Emmett expressed nothing; nothing in his body revealed that he’d heard the slur against his wife.

  Jim, as if setting up a joke, resumed, “Hey, Emmett, what’s the difference between a prophet and a scribe?” Emmett didn’t answer. Jim said, “The prophet isn’t just in the game. The prophet is the game. The prophet doesn’t describe things. He sees things before they happen. Maybe — maybe the prophet makes things happen. Now, the scribe, he just copies, he just duplicates what the prophet sees. That stuff you said last night? Your take on Hanoi and the Russians? I don’t know how you come to know that, but —”

  Emmett interrupted him, “I.F. Stone’s Weekly.”

  “What?”

  “The newspaper. I.F. Stone’s Weekly. I subscribe.”

  “Oh. The commie rag.” Jim laughed. “Scribe.”

  “I don’t pretend otherwise.”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass what you pretend to be, you timid little shit,” Jim said lightly. “Chugi. Virtue of the husband drone. But you work for us, understand? You think your two hundred a month sends your son to private school? You think a bastard son of a gaijin will last long without a hell of a lot of money backing him? I’m his father. The American government is his father.”

  Emmett winced at Jim’s hyperbole and asked, “What do you want?”

  “Why do you think we let you into the Caribbean when you were barely dry from an investigation into your loyalty? You scuttled around Cuba like a dumbass tourist. Now, it’s time for you to do some real work. Your government is going to do trade with Cuba. You’re going to keep us informed. Make copies for us. Duplicate.”

  “Who am I keeping informed?” But he knew, it was the CIA. External had set him up in Japan to meet Jim Smith, and now Jim was requiring him to turn around and spy on Canada, to report to the Americans on Canada’s trade with Cuba. He almost felt satisfaction that Gembey, too, was being played. The CIA had requested that Gembey first send him to Cuba so soon after the investigation in ’53, to test him in the field. Their suspicion that he was a spy had led them now to require him to actually become one. The farcical reiterations in his life.

  “Photographs, pictures, you know, airports, railways, that kind of thing. Union lists, who’s in jail, who’s not. What kind of cigars does Castro smoke, who he’s fucking.”

  “I said I have to know who I’m talking to.”

  “Me. You’re talking to me. And if you fuck up” — he nodded toward Aoi and James with his ice cream cone — “she goes to jail for doing business with the Yakuza, and the little prince becomes a pauper.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Very tough on young James. Tough on your whol
e family.”

  Emmett found it hard to speak. But he said, “Leave my family alone.”

  “You work for us now,” said Jim Smith. He took Emmett’s elbow and guided him to the booth, collected his ticket, and handed it to him.

  “Be a hero. Or you and your family can become another casualty in the war against communism. Along with Aoi there, and young James.”

  Emmett saw Clark Haywood seated, waiting for the train. Haywood saw him too and pretended to be reading the train schedule, keeping his nose clean.

  They were rejoined by Aoi, with James, who suddenly slipped his sticky hand into Emmett’s and held it until Emmett had to board. He kissed James’s cheek, his fine thin face, and said goodbye, James looking at him trustingly, saying, “I will come?”

  “You will come.”

  Aoi said goodbye to him, calmly meeting his eyes; he guessed that she knew that Jim Smith was bullying him, and he had the impression that she considered this a normal condition.

  On the train, Emmett was seated across from Clark Haywood. Haywood glanced out the window to where Aoi and James stood watching. “Family connection,” Emmett said.

  Haywood, searching for something pleasant, said, “Beautiful woman.” Then hurriedly put The Japan Times between them.

  Now, in Canada, in the Ottawa airport, Lenore turned around and was striding backward, taking big backward steps. “I’m glad you came home, Dad,” she said. “Even if you didn’t bring me my brother.”

  He caught up to her and they walked together to claim his suitcase, his hand on her neck, stroking her silky hair.

  Emmett was too tired to protest when Kimura put his luggage in the trunk of his car and announced that they would go directly to the gallery so Emmett could see his wife’s new work. “You missed the opening,” Kimura said, “when your wife was beautiful and alone. You’d better make up for it or you will lose her.”

  “That’s nonsense,” said Suzanne, flattered. “Are you too tired, Emmett?” She sounded hopeful. “You want to see it?” she asked. He could only say yes.

  Entering the gallery, Emmett was confused at first by the photographs of flowers, sunsets, and puppies adorning the walls. But Suzanne led the way to another room, and he saw what could only be hers. Lenore leaned against the wall near the entrance and slowly slumped till she was sitting on the floor, her legs stretched straight and covered by the unwieldy skirt, mistrustfully regarding her mother’s “art.”

  The faces masked by a hat, the distance and restraint of the poses, the depersonalized actions of the subject, the bizarre makeup and the artifice of her treatment in developing the film, none of this did anything to disguise the fact that they were all photographs of John Norfield.

  Emmett took his time in the silent room, making the rounds, Suzanne watching him, waiting, and when he came around full circle and stood before her, she was trembling. “Do you like them?” she asked. He could hear Lenore rustle her crinoline. He nodded yes. Suzanne seized on him, “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Yes, they’re good.”

  She looked into one eye, then the other, as if she couldn’t reconcile each view of him. “I want you to like them.”

  “Well. I do.” He felt the pounding from the airplane against his skull. Suzanne’s eyes filled with tears. “Come on,” he said and put his arm around her, “home.”

  PART FIVE

  Chapter One

  1961

  Lennie smelled perfume and looked up at her mother floating down the stairs, her feet in satin pumps placed sideways, bending her knees like she was waltzing. As her mother grew closer, the scent of her perfume got richer and so did the swishing sound of her evening gown. Suzanne said, “Watch out, darling,” and Lennie had to move aside while her mother swept past. Lennie’s hand darted out to feel the silk chiffon. “Don’t touch!” Suzanne said.

  “My hands are clean.” Lennie held up her clean palms, ten clean fingers, then turned her hands to look at them. “Clean as starfish.”

  Suzanne laughed. Emmett was helping her with her cream linen shawl, throwing it around her shoulders. She wore pearl-buttoned kid leather gloves that came up to her elbows.

  Lennie repeated, “Clean as starfish.”

  Suzanne bent down to kiss the side of her mouth, then wiped away the lipstick she’d left there. “Be good.”

  The babysitter, Marcie, a dork, was watching from the living room. “You look like Jackie Kennedy, Mrs. Jones,” she said.

  “Oh, I hope not,” Suzanne said. “She’ll think I’m just a copycat.”

  Lenore sat on the stairs while her father escorted her mother out of the house. She was glad to have a beautiful mother, but she wondered if all mothers were so fake. She heard the Alfa Romeo back out of the driveway and went to kneel on the couch to watch them leave. The car was blue as a raincloud and the top was down and her mother’s head was wrapped up in the linen shawl, looking back at Lennie in the picture window.

  Suzanne waved a gloved hand to her. “Do you think she’s all right?” she asked Emmett. She felt a thrill at going out into the lightening dusk of May, nestled in the leather seats as she once had done when her father drove this car. She loved the Alfa and was glad Emmett loved it too, kept it repaired; he’d even rebuilt the engine a couple of years ago and had it repainted the same gunmetal blue.

  “Which?” Emmett asked. He was distracted, shifting gears. They didn’t have far to go but they were late.

  Suzanne looked back again and saw the lonely half-shell of Lennie’s face in the window. They rounded the bend and there was only the night ahead. Dinner at the home of the American ambassador. The Kennedys were in town. How marvellous it was to hold sway like this, a woman and a man, good people. She glanced at Emmett, handsome in black tie, any match for Jack Kennedy. Emmett turned on the headlamps. They hurtled forward, rounding the curves of Sussex and following the river, lights from the little houses on the Gatineau shore rippling snakily.

  “Who will be there?” she asked.

  Without taking his eyes from the road, Emmett leaned sideways to hear her better, his voice smooth against the rumbling engine. “Who will be there? State Department, a fellow named Armstrong, a good man, actually. Merchant, the ambassador, he’s all right too. Mike Pearson is invited. It’s going to drive poor Dief mad with envy.”

  “Poor Dief,” she said, excitement and pleasure rising in her throat. She loved to see Diefenbaker humiliated. Pearson was always gallant toward her. “Poor, poor Dief,” she repeated tenderly, loving them all.

  At the reception before dinner, she got stuck with Olive Diefenbaker, who didn’t bother to make small talk but glared banefully at the guests and gave Suzanne such a bold look of disapproval when she accepted a daiquiri just like the president’s, Suzanne put it down and then lost it to a zealous waiter. Olive muttered to her, “I’m sorry, my dear, but I’ve forgotten your name.” Suzanne told her, using her maiden name too, “Suzanne McCallum Jones.” Olive pursed her Baptist lips and forgot her name again. It made Suzanne wish that Ethel Masters were here. Ethel was cut from the same cambric cloth as Olive, but for some reason she had decided to like Suzanne and treated her with a mother’s forbearance; or, at least she always remembered to ask about Lenore. But Ethel was with Bill at the hospital; Bill had had a heart attack.

  The ladies were excused after the raspberry tart, and Olive quite suddenly disappeared. Word went round the salon where the women were politely ensconced that Prime Minister Diefenbaker and his wife had left early. Jackie Kennedy, speaking French with a beautiful young woman married to somebody Suzanne didn’t know, stopped and turned and, into the quiet room, said, “Quel dommage.” It was the first time that Suzanne had clearly heard Jackie’s voice. A kittenish, breathy voice, it shocked Suzanne a little, so utterly sexy, so pink, so creamed.

  When the ambassador’s man reopened the doors to the salon and announced that the gentlemen had finished their cigars, Suzanne swept ahead of the others in search of Emmett. Entering the dining room in
a flurry, she then had to drift and study the paintings when she realized that Emmett wasn’t here. A waiter came so close as to brush her arm, inquiring, “Would madame like something more?” The answer was most obviously no. Suzanne said, “I would like a cup of coffee,” and sent him off. She saw a coattail she knew instinctively was Emmett’s and pursued it, just as it disappeared around a corner.

  It was Emmett, Emmett as he was when he wanted something more than he wanted her. She hurried to follow, and when he stopped before the doorway to another room, she stopped too and could see a wall of books, a masculine leather-bound library in the rosy, darting light from a fireplace.

  Emmett didn’t go into the library but stood his distance. She saw he was like a hunting dog, perked, listening, and she stayed, fascinated to see her husband, where his glasses wrapped about his ears, and his long, muscular back that she knew with her bare hands, in a tuxedo, poised to absorb whatever went on in that room.

  They stood like that for several minutes. But why doesn’t he go in? If it’s a private conversation, why is he eavesdropping on them? She didn’t like for Emmett to behave strangely as he was now, almost skulking, and she felt suddenly queasy. Then Emmett turned to retreat. When he saw Suzanne standing there, he approached her without greeting and took her arm to lead her quickly back to the company who were gradually dispersing, bidding the ambassador and his wife goodnight. Jackie was there, momentarily alone, and Suzanne saw her youthfulness, her brief show of disappointment, seeing Emmett and Suzanne emerge around the corner, then her smile returning and coming toward them and gliding past because the president was behind them now in the company of a man whom Suzanne knew to be the minister of defence, both of them smiling too.

  They left then, and on the street, Suzanne waited while Emmett pulled up the convertible top on the car, for it had grown cool. When they were driving, in the leathery warmth lit by the low dash and streetlights showing new small leaves on the trees and hedges, she asked him, “What were they talking about?”