by Susan Isaacs
Anita Beane twisted her engagement ring round and round and said, “I’d buy a house for me and Herbie.”
“I hate to say it, Anita,” Gladys said, “but you can’t buy a house for six hundred dollars.” She was tired of hearing about Herbie, who worked as an assistant in a beauty parlor in Washington Heights and had another year to go before he could be called Mr. Herbert. “You’ll have to move in with his parents. But you’ll save up.”
Then Gladys opened her thermos of coffee with the pads of her fingers. It was the ladylike way, but there’d also been an article—“How to Avoid Nail Tragedy”—in the Mirror the day before. She took her time pouring, and that was a signal for all the others: free-play time. Ten or twelve soprano voices started squeaking at once.
But over all of them I heard Gladys, talking in a voice just meant for me: “I don’t know, Linda. Sometimes when a man does too much for his wife, she gets to not appreciating him. Sometimes…” Gladys deliberately drowned her voice in her coffee. Then she turned—fast—to Winnie Curtis, at the farthest seat down the table, and called out: “Doesn’t Mr. Nugent look like Ronald Colman with pockmarks?”
Edward Leland’s face looked wrong. But he was so close to being normal-looking, you were dying to get up close and examine precisely how off his face was. But of course, you didn’t get anywhere near Edward Leland. He was the most senior of the senior partners.
He was a genuine war hero too. In 1917, he’d taken his rifle, crawled on his belly through a forest in France, and mowed down a platoon of German soldiers. He’d saved his men. He might have gone on, gotten more Germans, or gotten killed, but he crawled over a mine. His face and his shoulder had been blown up.
There were so many rumors in the office about how many operations he’d had to get put back together, it was impossible to ever know the truth. The only thing we did know was that half his face was flatter than the other half, as though one or two pieces were still missing. Someone swore he had lots of little scars, but I couldn’t see any. What I could see—what nobody could miss—was that the left half of his face was paralyzed. It didn’t move; it didn’t show expression. He was very scary.
As the cold afternoon light slanted through the big window behind his desk, Mr. Leland’s heavy black brows, like twin awnings, cast shadows; you couldn’t see what was in his eyes, although I had no doubt it was strictly cold, hard business. I was on loan because he had a letter to send to Germany. I’d been on loan before, but never to Edward Leland.
Despite his position, he was not where he was because of his age; he was actually younger than most of the senior partners, in his early fifties. But whatever he had that the rest of them lacked—intelligence, cunning, courage, personality: who knew?—had made him extraordinarily powerful. The strings he pulled were tied not only to the law firm but to government. Anytime a New Dealer decided to talk to a Republican, guess whose phone rang? And did he ever bring in business!
I stood across the room from him, my back flat against the door. His secretary, Katherine from Vassar, had told me to go in, but not how far. His desk seemed half a city block away.
“Come in,” he called. I began. The trek along his rug seemed forever. Each time I looked at Mr. Leland, he appeared just as far away; the rug was an eternal Persian stretch of dark red and blue. And the worst of it was not making my way across that vast space but knowing he was watching me. He made me a nervous wreck.
At last I made it to his desk and stood before him. My left ankle wobbled, and I had a hideous picture of my leg giving way, and me crashing to the floor and trying to lift myself up by holding on to the edge of his desk, but instead pulling down his blotter and inkstand. “I’ve forgotten your name,” he said, interrupting my nightmare.
“Linda Voss.” I was amazed I still had a voice.
I made myself look straight at him. There were only two things right about his looks: his chin—tough, squared off—and his nose, an ordinary nose, although inappropriately upturned for such a man, daring to suggest that he’d once been a cute little boy.
“Linda Voss. That’s right.” He paused. I snuck a fast peek around. Actually, his office wasn’t as big as I’d thought—nowhere near what you’d expect from such a big shot. To be equal to Edward Leland’s clout, though, the room would have had to be the size of Radio City Music Hall. But it was medium-sized, with the kind of seedy leather furniture you see in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes—lots of cracked old leather chairs with fat feet, and scratched tables. That was the point, of course, the rattiness of it. If he’d gotten nice new slipcovers, everybody would have thought he was an upstart.
“Please sit down,” he said. No big deal, right? But just go into some lawyers’ offices to take a letter and they keep you standing for half an hour. Even if you fainted on the floor, they’d just keep dictating, as if they came out of the Gestapo, not Yale Law School. Mr. Leland not only said, “Please sit down,” he said, “Please sit down, Miss Voss.”
Look, I knew he knew I wasn’t one of the executive secretaries, but he treated me as if I was. For someone like that, I’d take dictation till my fingers fell off. Because even though he was scary, you knew he was decent.
Okay, the real truth? The decency, but mainly because Edward Leland was John Berringer’s father-in-law. And Gladys, who’d filled in a few months before when Kat from Vas was out with whooping cough, had told me about a picture of John and Nan—their wedding portrait—Mr. Leland kept on his desk. As I flipped open the pages of my pad, I noticed an oval silver frame angled so that if I leaned forward a little, I could get a glimpse. So I leaned forward.
Nuts. In the frame was a picture of an old-fashioned-looking young woman. She was pretty, with hair that reached her shoulders and curled in little commas over the lace of her dress. Her neck was long, what they call swan-like, and she wore a locket. The picture must have been taken years and years ago…and then I realized. It was Mr. Leland’s late wife. Very late. She’d died from some terrible liver disease when Nan was two, nineteen years before.
But where were John and Nan? I was dying to see the wedding gown. I’d imagined it as something airy and beautiful, like chiffon or tulle—the stuff gowns in fairy tales are made of. But then I thought, no, nothing airy for Nan. She’d wear satin, with a tight bodice and bell skirt, and everyone in church would whisper, Ooh, look how tiny her waist is!
“Dear Herr, uh, Doktor Uhl,” Mr. Leland began. “Herr Doktor? You’ll do all that for me, Miss Voss? Keep the ‘herrs’ and the ‘doktors’ straight?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “It’s easy. Lawyers are always ‘Herr Doktor.’”
He leaned toward me. It looked casual enough, but when Edward Leland was leaning in your direction, it didn’t feel casual. You were too nervous to begin with because he was so important, and then you were extra nervous because you didn’t want him to catch you staring at how still half his face was, and, even worse, you were afraid he’d know you were trying not to let on how you couldn’t stop looking at him—
“Were you born in the United States?” he asked.
I started to take it down in shorthand until I realized he was asking me a question. “Yes,” I said, a little too loud.
I knew why he was asking that; people at work, hearing that I was a bilingual secretary, often spent months waiting for me to slip and say, Guten Morgen…oops, good morning, or—if they were real anti-German—to goof and, instead of a friendly wave, give a fast Heil Hitler! At least Mr. Leland had the sense to realize that the English you learn in German schools is not spoken with a Brooklyn-Queens accent.
“Were your parents born here too?”
“Yes. My father’s parents came from Germany. Berlin. My grandmother lived with us.”
“And it was she who taught you German?”
Gladys would have swooned with pleasure over the way he said “And it was she.” She’d say, See, Linda, class will out. Mr. Leland wasn’t even tempted to say, “And it was her”; you could tell.
&n
bsp; “Yes, she and my father and I”—I made sure I said I—“all spoke it at home, and I took it in high school too. That’s where I learned to write it, and learned the grammar. Well, whatever grammar I know.”
“But you practiced it with her?”
“It wasn’t really practice, Mr. Leland. She never learned English. She never had to. See, we lived in Ridgewood—that’s in Queens—and there are loads of Germans…”
God, was I ever running off at the mouth! I was mortified. But Mr. Leland smiled, a nice half smile. At least I didn’t feel like a prize imbecile, even though I knew that he knew I was feeling funny about talking so much. I managed a small smile back. I mean, you just don’t sit there and give a powerhouse like Edward Leland a big, fat grin.
“My clients have just completed reviewing the most recent versions of the proposed contracts for your clients’ acquisitions of the specified industrial components,” Mr. Leland began suddenly, “and it would appear that with the exception of two points, all matters have been settled.”
Nan Berringer hadn’t gotten her looks from her father. I realized, as I tried not to peek over at the picture again, that Nan resembled her mother: good-looking in a clean way. Even though they were Society, the Leland ladies didn’t look like the sleek, snooty Merle Oberon type. But still, you could tell they were for real, with far more than passably pretty faces. And then there was their background; it added an extra glow, like candlelight. If I’d been born rich, I wondered, would I have been in the same league as the Leland ladies?
“We have considered at great length your requirements for assurances of the delivery date…” Mr. Leland’s voice was so deep that there were moments when it made you shake inside; it was almost a growl.
“My client obviously cannot assume the risk of commitment for dates of delivery at Port of Bremerhaven.”
Boy, I thought, comparing myself to Nan Leland Berringer! Still, it was interesting to think about what a couple of million could do for a girl.
“Inasmuch as both of the above points have been previously discussed at some length and you had indicated that your clients would probaby have to agree…”
Unlike ninety-nine point nine percent of all lawyers, Edward Leland did not lean back and close his eyes while he dictated. Instead, he looked straight at you. Not at you, but it wasn’t off into space, either. So you couldn’t stare at him. And you couldn’t give the Life Saver you were hiding a fast suck during pauses; I had a puddle of lime Life Saver juice under my tongue.
But in one pause, he seemed to be looking away, thinking about something else, so I took the opportunity to really check over his desk. Maybe John and Nan’s wedding picture was just a teeny one, and I’d missed it. But it wasn’t there. I felt so sad, as if I’d just had a loss.
“Miss Voss.”
“Oh, sorry, Mr. Leland.”
“…We are assuming that all terms have been met and appropriate contracts including purchase orders will be forwarded within several days for execution by Volkswerke A. G.,” he went on. “On behalf of both my clients and myself, I would like to thank you for your courtesy and efficiency in helping to bring this negotiation…”
My pencil was going fifty miles an hour; I could have gotten the Billy Rose Stenography Prize for 1940. Because I knew Mr. Leland had definitely been onto exactly what it was I’d been looking for on his desk—and hadn’t found. You don’t get to be Edward Leland, talking to presidents of Chase Bank and Ford Motor and the United States, for nothing. So I wrote like mad, which nudged him into dictating faster.
But Edward Leland wasn’t in business to miss a trick. I think he knew what my sudden speed was about. And not only did he know what I’d been looking for, but he probably even knew why I’d been looking.
My hands got so wet my pencil almost slipped, but I kept on writing. Yes, he knew. But he wasn’t going to make a federal case of it. Why should he? He saved his federal cases for when he had dinner with his dear old chums, the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.
But just for a second, Mr. Leland looked me straight in the eye. A kindly look on that messed-up face. A little sad for me. And then he just kept talking.
As we left the office that day, I waved a copy of the World-Telegram in front of Gladys’s face. “Look at this. You think Hitler’s playing games? He’s just given Goring total control of the whole German war industry.”
Gladys said, “Quiet! I have real news. You’re going to die when you hear it. And not a fast heart attack. A slow, painful, hysterical death.”
“Oh, sure,” I said, positive it was going to be some gossip about Mr. Hastings in Litigation.
Gladys clutched her coat around her. A little dramatic. Although it was January, with that cold dampness that makes your toes ache, there wasn’t even a snowflake swirling under the streetlight, much less the blizzard she seemed about to brave. But that was the wonderful thing about Gladys’s theatricality. How many old maids are there who can watch life from behind a typewriter and find passion, thrills and chills in a law office? Me, you say? No. I didn’t just want to watch. I wanted to have. Gladys didn’t. She savored it all, but from a distance. “When you hear this, you’re going to say, ‘Take me to the hospital. I’m having a stroke from shock.’”
“Gladys, tell me!”
“When you were in Mr. Leland’s office today…” She smiled for a moment. I knew what she was doing: remembering when she had started at Blair, VanderGraff, when Mr. Leland had gone from being a loving husband to being a young widower with a small child. That had been great drama. “Right after his wife died,” she said, “Mr. Leland turned gray. His hair, I mean.” She paused. “What do you think he looked like when he was young? Before it happened with the land mine.”
“I don’t know. Forget Mr. Leland. Tell me: What’s the big secret?”
“How was Mr. Leland today?” Gladys insisted.
“The usual. He wanted to gossip about Carole Lombard and Clark Gable and—”
“Come on. Didn’t he seem at all funny?”
“Yeah, Gladys. He told me three jokes. Very dirty. About filthy things you never even heard of.”
“Linda, listen!” Gladys slowed down, but the crowd wanted to get home. It forced us faster along the street, toward the subway. “Mr. Berringer is Mr. Leland’s son-in-law, right? Well, you may think you know all there is to know, but hold your horses!”
It was what they say happens in an awful accident: Time slows down. Not slow motion, but in the terrible moment just before awfulness, you’re more alive than you’ve ever been before. Everything matters. I felt my scalp tighten. I could smell the soggy wool of Gladys’s tweed. Coal soot made my eyes water. The wind whooshed down the street, and a flyaway page of the Post slapped against a lamppost.
“I’m holding my horses,” I said, cool, a regular cucumber. Like, what could there possibly be about Mr. Berringer that would surprise me for more than a tenth of a second? Like, come on, Gladys, let’s get this over with so we can get on to something big.
“How long have they been married?” Gladys demanded.
“Mr. Berringer and Nan Leland?”
“Oh, don’t be cute. Tell me. Two, three years?” I nodded. “Well, that was enough for the young Mrs. B!” Gladys proclaimed.
You’d think I’d have dropped dead right there on Rector Street. But all I said was, “Oh, Gladys!”
Gladys was stunned—and peeved—at my disinterest. “Linda, this is a fact.”
“Har-har-har,” I answered. Look, I wanted to say, if there was anything going on with John Berringer, wouldn’t I be the first to pick it up? But I didn’t trust my voice enough.
“I have proof,” Gladys said.
“What? A mysterious stranger’s fingerprints on Nan Berringer’s you-know-whats?”
“Would you please get your mind out of the gutter and think. What would be final proof?” Gladys was having fun. This was nothing more to her than office drama—but the most supreme, the richest, the
juiciest.
“I give up.”
“Why are you giving up so easily?”
The crowd swept us on, a great force that stopped at nothing, down the gritty stairs to the subway, past the overhead “To Brooklyn and Queens” sign, past a giant Nestlé’s Cocoa ad. I felt out of control. Halfway down, my foot skidded on the cellophane from a pack of cigarettes, and if I hadn’t grabbed the banister I would have gone crashing down. My body was finally comprehending what my mind had learned.
“Linda, are you okay?” Gladys asked.
“Fine.” I swallowed, although all that made me do was realize how sick I felt. “So,” I managed, “is this what you were talking about at lunch? About a wife not appreciating?”
“Linda, don’t you realize…?”
“No. I really don’t. Listen, it’s some ridiculous rumor. I’d know if there was anything with anything.”
“For your information, it just so happens I was slumming today.” That means she was hanging around Marian Mulligan’s desk. “Who does Marian work for?”
“Mr. Wilson.”
“Mr. Wilson who does matrimonials.” Oh, God, I thought, oh, God! I managed to shrug. “Guess who Mr. Wilson was writing to?”
“A sob sister. ‘Dear Penelope Potts, I am a creepy attorney with so much hair hanging out of my nose people think it’s a mustache and—’”
“Linda, listen! Nan Berringer is going to Reno! Mr. Wilson was writing to a Nevada divorce lawyer, giving him all the details of who gets what.” Somehow I had gotten down the flight of stairs and was on the platform, waiting for the train. “Do you believe me now?” I nodded. “Are you shocked? Linda, are you shocked?”
She would have been heartbroken if I wasn’t, and, of course, I was. So I gave her something for her trouble. “Yeah, Gladys, I’m shocked.”
“Good. I mean, you should be.” The subway roared through the tunnel into the station and screeched to a stop. As the doors opened and we pushed our way on, she said, “You should see the list of what she’s getting. Stocks. Bonds. And much more. One hundred and fifty-seven pieces of sterling-silver flatware. With all their friends and family who shop at Tiffany, you’d think they’d have more, but…”