by Susan Isaacs
The worst thing about being a secretary is the little chairs. They’re very low, so when your boss comes over to your desk, that first instant you turn to him—guess what you’re staring at. Not that you could see anything, because in the entire history of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York there has never been one single pair of revealing trousers.
John came out of his office again. He was so near, reaching across me to put down a bill of lading. “You’ll see this gets to Mr. Withey first thing in the morning,” he said.
“First thing,” I said from my chair.
He was so close his arm brushed against my shoulder, and that second my guard must have been down, because all of a sudden, wham! Desire that started deep, low down, then exploded, destroying my sense. My face got feverish. I was dizzy. I tried to get control, to slow my breathing so it didn’t give me away; I concentrated on a piece of carbon paper. I held it up to the light, pretending to check if it was still any good. That let me turn away from him, because it wasn’t just the heat of my own face I was feeling. He was close enough that I could tell some of that heat was coming from him.
But it wasn’t me who was heating John up. I felt it anyway, the rising temperature of a man in desperate need of a woman, a man dying to rush out of the office, leave the day behind him. He shifted from one foot to the other, ready—more than ready—to break out into the night.
“Is there anything else, Mr. Berringer?”
“Excuse me?” He was distracted. It wasn’t fatigue.
“Anything else tonight?”
“No. I’ll be going now.”
Where to? Back to his apartment? To eat dinner alone? To get into bed, to lie on sheets he hadn’t changed since she’d left a month before, to breathe deep, trying to pick up the dying scent of her perfume?
Or to go with someone else? A lady, another Nan, who would ease him, massage his neck with cool, smart fingers? Or to some tramp, as hot and ready as he was?
“See you in the morning, Mr. Berringer. Have a good—”
But he was halfway down the hall. He didn’t even take his briefcase.
Whoever made the modern furniture in John’s office was a great craftsman. In the darkened room, lit only by the hall light, his black desk had such a gorgeous, deep glow it looked alive. I sat in his chair and swiveled back and forth. No one was left in the whole law firm, not even the cleaning lady. In the silence, I pushed aside all the other women I’d imagined John with and thought about him alone in his apartment. I pictured him throwing aside his jacket, loosening his tie, unbuttoning his shirt, feeling the soft night air on his chest. Standing there, in a foyer or living room as dark as his office. Alone, in the quiet, aching to be touched. Just like me.
I stroked the desk’s silky wood, ran my fingers over the smooth corners. Beautifully made.
Strong too. There was no way you could get the locked lower-right-hand drawer open without a key. Not that I would have done anything funny with a hairpin, but with most drawers, you don’t need burglary tools: one good fingernail and a sharp yank would do the trick.
I sat up straighter; I would never jimmy open a drawer. Then I felt under the blotter and the base of the desk lamp. Nuts. Nothing. Not in the unlocked drawers, either. But in the end I found it, inside a flap of his leather calendar: his desk key.
Talk about good craftsmanship: The key opened the lock without even the tiniest click, and the drawer slid out as if I’d whistled and it couldn’t wait to come to me. I felt around. Just one thick manila envelope.
I got up and locked his door. If you know you’re doing something you should be ashamed of, you should either stop or do it thoroughly; there’s no such thing as a semi-sin.
Then I came back and switched on John’s desk lamp. The envelope was one of Blair, VanderGraff and Wadley’s. It had nothing written on it. I eased open the metal clasp, spilled everything out onto the desk, memorized the mess, then arranged it all into a perfect pile. I may have been a sneak, but no one could say I wasn’t a great secretary.
Then I looked through it. It was all hers. John had collected enough mementos to open a Nan Leland Berringer museum. Except it would have been a pretty pathetic museum: love tokens of a wife in love with someone else.
I started with the two letters. The first must have been written right when they began:
Dear John,
On Sunday, I told you I am congenitally incapable of being coy. Therefore, I will not try to subvert you with feminine wiles, nor will I have some mutual acquaintance drop my name before you at frequent intervals. I will merely say I want very much to see you when I get back to New York, right after my exams.
Yes, I realize this is awkward for you, that you did not intend an afternoon’s conversation, a mild flirtation, to be taken so seriously. Your womanly ideal is not an eighteen-year-old college freshman. And yet…And yet, I know you were drawn to me as I was to you.
You see, John, I told you I could not be coy.
You said I must be getting the rush from the Amherst boys. I don’t know if it is a rush. I do know I have no interest in boys. I want a man, a man of brilliance and sensitivity. A man like you.
I cannot begin to tell you how much our conversation in the gazebo meant to me, to have someone who not only cares deeply for the things I care about, but who can express himself with such insight and profundity. I want very much to talk again. I feel we have a great deal to say to each other.
I told you I was not coy. What I did not tell you was that I am relentless. If you don’t call me, I will call you.
My best,
She signed it “N.” I thought: That’s how they get rich, saving money on ink. And then I thought: I can’t believe an eighteen-year-old girl would have the guts to write that kind of letter. And even more, I can’t believe she had John Berringer alone in a gazebo and walked out in a tizzy over his profundity. Profundity? But there it was, in black and white.
The second letter was signed “N” too:
Darling,
I can’t tell you how sorry I am. It was my fault. I should never have gone to the hotel with you and let things get that far. I know you’re not some adolescent, that you are used to having anything you want from a woman and that your needs are a man’s needs.
I put the letter down on the desk. This was the worst thing I’d ever done. It was like being the lowest—a Peeping Tom.
But, John, when it happens, it has to be right. It has to be done (please, oh, please, don’t think I’m being pretentious) in a state of grace. I love you. I adore you. And if you insist, I will do anything you want to prove I am indeed yours. But I beg you, don’t insist until, well, until it is truly the time.
Forever,
I held the envelope up to the light. The postmark was February 19, eleven days before they got married.
I put it down and thought of what I’d done with George Armbruster. If I hadn’t come so cheap, if I’d played my cards right and said, Uh-uh, nothing doing without a state of grace, Georgie—who knows? He could have introduced me to his bachelor brother the next day, saying, This here is a fine, upright girl. I could have had a house, two kids, a dinette set.
The life before me was more interesting than my own. I went back to the pile on the desk. Ticket stubs. A book by Goethe, Divan of East and West, which I’d heard was pretty hot stuff. It was from her, in it she’d written, “To mein Liebe, From N.” To my love. She may have been a genius, but N could have used a couple of German lessons; if she was going to use “love” like that, it should have been Für meine einzige Liebe or maybe mein Geliebter. John would know that, but what could he say? My darling, “mein Liebe” is stinko German. Your usage definitely isn’t anything to write home about. But he couldn’t say anything to Nan anymore. So he kept the book, the letters—all of it—because it was the closest he could get to her. In the late afternoons, when he said, No calls, Miss Voss, he was probably sitting there fingering the ticket stubs or rereading the Goethe.
; There was a concert program from Carnegie Hall. The orchestra must have been rotten, because all over the page that told about Bach’s B Minor Mass there were scribbles. “Putrid!” “The tempo!” and “Will it ever end?” in Nan’s handwriting. “I love you” in his. There were a couple of clippings from the society page: their engagement and wedding announcements. I got a few new pieces of information: a list of bridesmaids with expensive names—“The Misses Floria Wyatt, Honore Delafield, Dorothea and Alice Brinton, Eleanor Randel and Victoria Courtney.” I thought: I bet me and Honore Delafield could be great buddies. Hi, Honore. Linda, sweetie! Hi! I found out Nan’s real name was Anne and that the late Mrs. Edward Leland’s maiden name was Caroline Bell and that she was President Theodore Roosevelt’s cousin. I learned that John was the son of the late Mr. and Mrs. Charles Berringer of Port Washington, New York.
I was so taken up with these new Berringers, wondering who they were and when they’d died, that I didn’t notice the picture until my elbow rested on something slick. It was a small, glossy snapshot of Nan and John. They were lying together on a hammock, their arms and legs so tangled up they looked like one person. She wore shorts and a pullover. He wore cotton slacks. No shirt. Nan’s head rested on his shoulder and her hand, with its wedding ring, seemed to have been caught by the camera as it caressed his bare chest. They weren’t talking profundity in that hammock. What they had was what I would have died for.
God, was John beautiful! Nothing I’d imagined being under his suit was as good as what was in that little picture. His body was so perfect it almost didn’t seem real. It looked as sleek and as hard as the modern furniture Nan loved. No wonder she hadn’t been able to keep her hand to herself.
I took a deep breath. I put everything back into the envelope. Well, I thought, and let out a high half laugh, that was a good night’s work.
Then I turned off the lamp, sat in the black room and started to cry.
5
The sun sparkled, and the surface of the dark water of Sheepshead Bay glittered as if someone had tossed in a handful of diamonds. Gladys Slade, wearing a middy blouse that would have looked great on a kid in third-grade assembly, stood with her hand shielding her eyes. But she did it so dramatically she could have been Admiral of the Fleet, saluting all the ships at sea. “Mr. Leland used to have a summer house right on the water. In Connecticut.” She spoke a little too loud, as if to be heard over the crash of the waves, except there weren’t any waves—only the relaxed slapping of water against the wooden piles of the pier. “He sold it when Nan went off to boarding school, right before the Crash. I hear he made a pret-ty penny.” Gladys could take any subject—water, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, pickled watermelon rinds—and tie it up to the law firm.
I sighed. My best friend. But to tell the truth, Gladys was one of the unspoken minuses of being an old maid. Forget about your face shriveling into a prune, about not having children, about having to support yourself; the real bad news was that you got stuck with other old maids for friends. I know that sounds hard-hearted, but frankly, 99.99999 percent of them were walking around ringless not because of a receding chin or a polka-dot complexion but because of some tragic flaw in the personality department—no humor, or too much, or they were whiny or pathetically eager to please. All my friends from high school, bright, lively girls, had gotten grabbed up, and right from the start they were too busy keeping their husbands captivated to have any spare nights for girls like me: the Unfortunate Unmarried. And so, sure, maybe I did spend most of my time longing for John, but part of that yearning was pure: a prayer for someone to talk to who had something to say.
Gladys continued to squint out at the bay. A slight breeze ruffled her bangs, and she clapped them tight against her forehead as if her head had been hit by a hurricane. “So anyway, he had this house on the water,” she went on. “And then his wife dies. Well! Linda, there were days at a time when he didn’t show up at work. He didn’t even call in or anything. You know what he did? He’d leave little Nan with her nanny—isn’t that funny? Nan, nanny—and drive up to Connecticut and take out his sailboat and just sail for four or five days, all alone. Not that anyone ever said anything.” She looked away from the bay, right at me. “They wouldn’t have dared. I mean, even way back then, Mr. Leland had that way about him, and being a war hero and all that, he could pretty much do what he wanted. But you know what the most fascinating thing is? He chose classiness. It was what he automatically wanted, even in grief. I mean, sailing is very stylish.”
“Why does going out in a sailboat make him classy? Is puking on a starboard or whatever it’s called an upper-class mourning practice?”
“You just talk like that to get attention,” Gladys said. “‘Puking.’ And sex things.”
“Never in the same sentence.”
“I’m serious, Linda. And if you don’t mind, while I’m on the subject of your talking: You kept forcing everybody at lunch Friday to listen while you went on about the war, like you were a man or a college professor and it was really interesting. You’ve got to stop it. I mean, name me one single person in the law firm—not counting lawyers—who wants to hear about troop movements. I’ll bet you anything the lawyers don’t even care.”
I looked across the dazzling sunlit water. “Listen to me, Gladys. Don’t you understand that it’s not just Europe—or Asia? It’s the whole world. It’s you.”
“Stop it.”
“I’m telling you, France will be next.”
“Here it comes: Miss Linda Voss with her ever-popular ‘The Big, Bad Nazis’ song and dance.”
“Gladys, don’t you get what people are letting Hitler do to them? They’re giving up because they’re terrified—of a bully. What do they think he’s going to do next? Send them roses? No, he’s going to hit them again, harder and harder.”
Unlike Gladys, the part of the world that read beyond the society news and the comics was actually surprised. That was what was so hard for me to believe: that all the military geniuses and hotshot politicians couldn’t have figured out what was going to happen.
In Brooklyn it was a beautiful spring Sunday. People were smiling as if they didn’t have a care in the world. But the Germans were on the march again. Holland was gone, Belgium was going.
“You always expect the worst from them,” Gladys said.
“They always do the worst.”
“But you’re German, Linda.”
“I am not.”
“I don’t mean you go around drinking beer from those funny glasses. It’s just that…you are very interested in whatever they do.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Not the way you are. I mean, grabbing everybody’s newspaper, reading battle reports.” She looked at me accusingly. “Anita was talking about her bridesmaids’ gifts, and you started going on about the Maginot Line.”
The Sunday crowds filled the sidewalks. Teenage boys spilled onto the piers. They’d taken off their shirts, ignoring the slight spring chill, and rolled them into pillows and stretched out on the wood boards. Their chests, white from winter, rose and fell with each relaxed breath. But before long, a dark, leather-skinned boat captain yelled, “Hey, get outta here!” And the kids got up, put on their shirts and shuffled off, mumbling, “In your hat and over your ears, bud.” But they were a good-natured bunch.
“Gladys, listen to me. If those boys lived in the countries their families came from, they’d be carrying rifles.” Then I added: “Or they’d be dead.”
Gladys started to stroll again. I gave up and went along. Everyone in the city wanted to be outside on a day like this. They all seemed to have grabbed a trolley and come to Sheepshead Bay to stare at the water and inhale the sharp salt air. For a nickel, it was like traveling to another country. Gladys and I weaved in and out of the crowd. Finally, we found an empty bench. I sat and put my head way back and let the sun warm my cheeks.
Gladys and I spent every Sunday together; I wasn’t sure whether to feel grateful or
doomed. It had started a couple of months after my Grandma Olga died. Suddenly, I had a long day with no company; Saturday was Binge Night for my mother, so Sundays she could barely manage to stagger to the bathroom, much less walk around the block. I’d said to Gladys one Friday in the office, Maybe if you’re free Sunday, if you want to go to a movie or something…I was nervous she’d think I was overstepping the bounds of what was a nice office friendship, but she said, Well, I have nothing special this Sunday, as if every other Sunday for the next two years was booked up.
So we went to a movie and then out for a club sandwich, and while I was trying to decide whether to wait three or six months before asking again, Gladys said, Do you want to go for a ride on the Staten Island ferry next Sunday?
After all those years with the whole world married, I had someone to do things with. A friend. We went all over the city, mainly to movies, but sometimes to the zoo, the botanical gardens, a couple of times even to a museum.
She was my best friend, my only one, but all we ever had on those Sundays was more lunch conversation—although with hideously elaborate detail. Did you know Mr. Nugent was Phi Beta Kappa? You never saw his key? Or: Helen Rogers says Margaret on the switchboard says the widow Mr. Leland is keeping company with is a Mrs. Carter. Or Mrs. Carver. Last year he was seeing Mrs. Lambert Jones. The divorcée, but it wasn’t her fault. Did I tell you about her? See, her husband fell in love with her son’s cello teacher. Anyway, Mrs. Jones—the first one; she’s not supposed to be musical and the husband loved music—she has practically a mansion on Fifth Avenue and…
Gladys was ecstatic to have all Sunday—an entire day uninterrupted by work—to talk about the office. Blair, VanderGraff and Wadley: that was the extent of her life. And I never asked for anything deeper from her, because I’d poked around and discovered her passion for the law firm was her sole passion. She liked the movies only to the degree that Gary Cooper in Sergeant York reminded her of Mr. Leland.