Shining Through

by Susan Isaacs

  So I moved on. “Did you use to come here with Nan?”

  “What?”

  “Nan,” I repeated. “Here.”

  “Oh. Sometimes. We had five or six places we liked to go.”

  “Did she ever cook?”

  “Not usually. Well, she cooked selected things. She could make cheese toast and roast a duck and prepare a good salad dressing. Oh, and make a salad.”

  “But you didn’t have duck and salad every night. Or cheese toast.”

  “No. But we liked to get out.”

  “Don’t get mad at me if I ask one question.” John’s shoulders hunched up, as if he already was. “Relax. It’s not such an awful question.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Did you have fun with her?”

  “I…valued her beyond anything I can express.” He looked at me; his eyes began to take on the Nan Leland Berringer shine. “I loved her.”

  “Why?”

  “Why did I love her? For her intellect—”

  “Come on. You don’t love someone for their intellect.”

  “You do if they have one.”

  I put down my fork. “What’s that supposed to be? A knife in my heart?” It was.

  “I’m sorry. Really I am. It was a cruel, unnecessary remark.”

  “So what else did you love about her?”

  “Her beauty. Her elegance. Her taste. Her verbal facility. Her aesthetic sense. Do you know what ‘aesthetic’ means?”

  “Does it mean having a rich society mother who was Teddy Roosevelt’s cousin?”

  He actually laughed. Then he asked, “How did you know about her mother?”

  I wasn’t going to tell him from spying in his drawer, rifling through his secret papers and finding his wedding announcement. “Office gossip.” I took a piece of bread and buttered it. “So her mother had a real tree. And her father? How was Big Ed’s tree?”

  “He came from Vermont. His father owned a farm, but he died when Edward was young. They were very poor.”

  “But that’s good, starting out in poverty, on a farm. It’s pretty close to a manger. And look what he became! Edward the Noble: War hero. Adviser to Presidents. Legal genius.”

  “Edward’s not a legal genius, if you want to know.” John buttered a piece of bread. I would have given him mine. “Believe it or not, I’m the better lawyer.”

  “Then what makes him what he is? What makes all these smart men—you, everyone—think he’s better? The best?”

  “They recognize his special brilliance. Ed is a genius with people. And a genius at sizing things up, at manipulating any situation to his advantage.”

  “And?” I asked.

  “And…” He hesitated, then tried again. “I don’t know. He’s just…never at a loss. And unlike…the rest of us, he always seems to do what’s right.”

  Ha! I had it. I finally understood why John was so fascinated by Nan and Edward. What the Lelands had—and what John, what most people, didn’t have—was fearlessness.

  Fearlessness. Not that I thought Nan didn’t ever get scared. Even if she wasn’t frightened by thunderstorms or the idea of hell or vampire movies, she had to have let out a screech the first time she saw the cockroaches that were living in the cabinet under her ex-kitchen sink. But that was minor stuff; in the major leagues, the social world, Nan was so sure of her brains, her looks and her place that she didn’t fear anyone. And being unafraid gave her the freedom to do whatever she wanted. She never worried that people wouldn’t want to sit next to her at lunch. She knew her own worth, how high it was, so she was free—to chase after John, drop out of college, buy ugly modern art, walk out on her marriage, take on a new husband twice her age. I remembered her stride down the office corridor to her father’s office; it had been so absolutely lacking in indecision. I’d never seen a woman like that, ever.

  But my pal Ed’s fearlessness was different from his daughter’s—and far beyond hers. It had nothing at all to do with being confident that no matter what you did, any dinner party invitation you desired was, ipso facto, yours. What Edward Leland possessed was true courage.

  Obviously physical courage: Crawling through a forest you know is mined, moving toward German fire because you calculate you have maybe a thirty percent chance of knocking out their cannon and saving your men…well, that’s courage. It’s a willingness to take risks and to accept consequences. And Edward Leland wasn’t just some foolhardy kid. He’d been thirty years old—a volunteer, not a draftee—when he’d assessed the risk, taken it and had his face blown up.

  But my guess was that as soon as Edward came to and understood what had happened to him, he’d taken charge. He’d said, Get me the best doctor, one of those plastic surgeons, the guy who takes the neatest stitches, and let him do what he can with this mess.

  So while the results weren’t exactly ravishing, while he looked as if half his face was the distorted reflection in a fun-house mirror, he’d been courageous enough to say, Okay, I’ve got to spend the rest of my life not looking like Douglas Fairbanks. And he’d gone out and wooed a society beauty—and won her.

  His courage lasted beyond the Great War. Here he was, in his early fifties, in 1940, going on mysterious missions that had to be dangerous. He was still willing to take risks, accept consequences. I wondered whether it was harder now, because his life was so soft and safe and successful: he had so much to lose. And I wondered whether it was harder because he knew how vulnerable he was. He knew it every morning, when he shaved his lifeless half face.

  But it wasn’t just Edward Leland’s physical courage that made John so in awe of him. It was his ordinary, day-to-day courage. I’d seen enough of Edward Leland to understand he couldn’t be cowed by anyone: not clients, Presidents, Nazis, or even elegant blondes with tight chignons.

  He really interested me, and I’d tried to figure him out. I was dying to ask him, How could you not be scared? And I decided that knowing you’re tougher and shrewder than most other guys is a definite plus. And the other plus was Edward’s comprehension (a comprehension John lacked) that Edward Leland wasn’t God. He could get hurt, and he knew it. So he’d look his opponent—a German soldier, a Ford Motor Company lawyer—right in the eye and say, Go ahead, you son of a bitch. I understand what you can do to me and I’m willing to take it—but you’d better be good and ready to take what I’m going to dish out to you.

  I bet almost all of them backed off, because Edward Leland could dish out plenty.

  Trick or treat. It was Wednesday, the night before Halloween. The stew was simmering, the table was set, and a little before seven I plopped down on the bed and turned on the radio. No treat. War as usual: the Italians and the Greeks at each other’s throats in Albania, U-boats and British ships sinking each other in the Atlantic, the blitz continuing over England, Hitler trying to dazzle General Franco in the south of France, while farther north, the Vichy government passed laws prohibiting Jews from public service and from anything much beyond menial jobs in industry, radio, newspapers and magazines.

  The Vichy regime smelled like a rose compared to the German scum. In Germany, Jews were outlawed from going to public parks or to restaurants; they couldn’t use public telephones, stay in railway or bus station waiting rooms or buy newspapers. Oh, and they couldn’t go to “Aryan” hair-dressers. All these prohibitions were a little something extra, in case you missed being stomped to death by the Gestapo in the street, or deported to God knows where. I shook my head, remembering my Grandma Olga, how she’d despised America and pined for her beloved Berlin.

  The news went off and an announcer was going on about razors. His voice was thick, rich, as if the inside of his throat was coated with melted marshmallows: “Schick Injectors will make you like better the face that you like best.”

  I reached over and turned off the radio, and all of a sudden I remembered the two cousins in Berlin Olga used to write to: Liesl and someone else. Oh, God, what had happened to them? I didn’t have a single doubt that not be
ing able to go to a beauty parlor wasn’t the worst thing in the lives of those two old ladies. My cousins.

  I stared at the closed venetian blind. If the Germans came over here, and won, what could happen to me? When the Reich Citizenship Law had come out, in November 1935, an amendment of “the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor,” I’d read it over and over in the Trib. A person with three Jewish grandparents was a Jew. I’d be what’s called a Mischling—a mongrel—because two of my grandparents were Jews. From what I read then, there was a chance I wouldn’t be considered a Jew because my father didn’t belong to a temple, didn’t do anything Jewish. I remembered wondering whether Grossvater Otto Voss had ever snuck off and hung out with rabbis. But now most of them were saying, Make it simple. Anyone with Jewish blood is a Jew. If I were in Germany, I’d be God-knows-where. All my Aryan Johnstonness wasn’t worth a pfennig.

  I switched on the lamp on the night table and wondered about John. I remembered all those warmhearted sermonettes on Sunday morning radio church shows about Christians shielding Jews from the Nazis. You got the picture of thousands of teeny-nosed people throwing their fair-skinned bodies over the big-nosed and saying, No! Never as long as I live! John would probably say, I didn’t know she was Jewish. Oh, by the way, she’s in the bedroom.

  And then I got a terrible pain in my stomach. It was so sudden and violent that I could hardly make it out of bed. In the bathroom, I found myself staggering and tried to hold myself up by bracing my elbows on the sink. But I couldn’t take the pain. I slid down onto the cold floor. And then I saw it, on the tiny octagonal tiles and out on the carpet in the bedroom: drops of blood.

  Another pain, like the most excruciating period cramp, came over me, as if some horrible fist inside my stomach was squeezing my…

  I knew then what was happening, of course. The cramp subsided. I clutched a towel underneath me, so I would bleed all over Nan’s monogrammed terry cloth, not on the floor, and made it to the phone. Another cramp. That was the worst of it. Just when you might recover, the next pain grabbed you so hard it knocked the breath out of you again. No. That wasn’t the worst of it. I picked up the phone and dialed John’s office. The worst of it was I was going to lose the baby.

  “Why do I feel this way?” I asked John. He sat on the edge of the hospital bed, tie dangling, unknotted, vest unbuttoned.

  “They gave you something.” His suit was like a black hole in the spotless white room. “For the pain. It makes you drowsy.”

  The pillows were plump and smelled like fresh air. I turned my head away from him and closed my eyes. “It hurt so much.”

  “It was the womb. It contracted. The way it does during labor.”

  “It was labor,” I said softly. He took my hand between his. “It’s over, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” My whole body felt so heavy I couldn’t roll my head back toward him; I was so drained I couldn’t even manage that half-cough, half-whimper of heartache that starts up a good cry. “The doctor said it was what they call inevitable. There was nothing they could do.”

  “It was about four months old. Do they know if it was a girl or a boy?”

  “Try to get some sleep,” he said.

  I must have, because when I woke up, John was in a chair at the foot of the bed. Outside, the sun was rising. The sky over the East River was pink and gold. “Where am I?”

  “Lying-In Hospital.”

  “That’s where babies are born,” I said, and began to cry. My tears were quiet, not at all elaborate, but I drew up the starched sheet and used it as a handkerchief. “Why did it happen?”

  John came over and sat on the edge of the bed. He tugged the sheet out of my hand and gave me his handkerchief. “They don’t know. Probably because when things aren’t right with the, um, the fetus, the body senses it and gets rid of it. It’s better that way.”

  “Oh, it’s terrific.”

  He smoothed the hair off my forehead. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, and kissed the top of my head.

  This tenderness was so awkward that for a minute neither of us could find anything to say. Finally I found something. “Did you want it?”

  It took him a moment, but he said, “I don’t know…. It would have complicated our lives.”

  “Babies aren’t so complicated.”

  “We would have had to move.” He’d picked up a lock of my hair, and he twirled it around his finger again and again. “And you might have felt tied down.” He paused. “Did you really want it?”

  “I must have. I feel so empty now. Maybe it’s just—I don’t know—a physical thing.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  I looked past him, around the huge, square room. Mine was the only bed in that stretch of blinding hospital whiteness. I eased myself up and looked out the window. Across the river, Queens was flat and colorless, even in the bright dawn. A barge drifted along so slowly you could hardly see it make any progress, like the hands on a clock.

  “What are we going to do?” I asked him.

  To his credit, he didn’t say, About what? He said, very composed, “Nothing.”

  “You married me so there wouldn’t be a little Berringer bastard running up and down Wall Street calling, ‘Daddy! Daddy!’”

  “Don’t talk that way.” His voice was so comforting, as if he was singing a lullaby.

  “You’re being calm on purpose. You’re afraid I’ll lose control.”

  “I want you to get some rest.”

  “And then what?”

  “You’ll come home.”

  “Oh, come on, John.”

  “What do you think I’m going to do, Linda? Toss you aside?”

  “Look, I don’t mean to sound bitter. But you did what you did because there was a gun to your head. You had no choice. But the gun is gone now. You don’t have to drag me around for the rest of your life. Come on. No one will think any less of you. They’ll only think less of you if you stay. ‘He’s with her out of choice. How unspeakably odd!’”

  “You don’t give me credit for having any character at all, do you?”

  “I think you’re an ethical lawyer. And you were decent to marry me.”

  “And that’s it?”

  I started to cry again. “I love you,” I said, and put my arms around him.

  He held me tight against him and murmured, “I know.”

  14

  December was a miserable month, bitter cold. And almost the whole world had fallen under Fascist control. Only England stood—alone. America was busy wrapping Christmas presents.

  John reached up and pulled down a carton of Nan Leland Berringer’s Christmas tree ornaments from the top shelf of his closet. “Wait until you see how exquisite these are!”

  He knelt down, wiped the top of the carton off on the sleeve of the flannel shirt he was wearing, and then took out the decorations one by one and held them up so they caught the light. Well, I had to admit it; they were gorgeous. All glass. Big, small, clear, frosted, etched with angels, embellished with hair-thin silver designs. “I don’t want them,” I said.

  “Linda, I appreciate how you feel, but you’re being—”

  “It’s half my tree. If you want to put your ex-wife’s stuff up on your half, that’s fine with me.”

  “Don’t you think you’re being a little unreasonable?” He was being tolerant.

  No, I didn’t think so. The apartment wasn’t big enough for three people, but I couldn’t get rid of Nan. I slept on her pillowcases, ate from her soup bowls, looked at her paintings. Now I was supposed to ooh and aah over her glass balls. What I really felt like doing was to take a running jump, land smack in the middle of the carton and hear a loud, glorious, soul-satisfying crunch.

  “What do you think I’m going to do? Go out and buy orange plaid reindeer?”

  “Not at all. It’s just that these ornaments happen to be very beautiful. It would be a shame not to use them.”

  “Maybe what I would buy would be beautiful too
.”

  “I’m sure they would.” I wanted to say, Oh, come off it! “But these were very expensive. Wouldn’t it be foolish to go out and buy others?”

  “I could learn to live with it.”

  He smiled and lifted the carton. “Come on. Let’s get the tree up.”

  Sure, I could have another big confrontation: You still love her. You can’t let her go. You won’t give me money for new towels because you want pieces of her in the house. And so forth. But how many times can you accuse your husband of desiring another woman when—if pushed—he’ll willingly plead guilty? Did I really want to hear: “Yes, I love Nan and I love her glass dingle-dangles that make crystal music”?

  Next year, I said to myself, next August, I’m going to Tiffany’s or Bergdorf Goodman or whatever is the ultimate glass-ball store and pick out—

  The bell rang. “Damn,” John said, and then added, “You get it.”

  I was wearing a yellow fleece bathrobe, and I hadn’t combed my hair. “You get it.”

  “I have a carton,” he said.

  “Put it down.”

  “Damn it, Linda, just get the door.”

  The bell rang again. John carried Nan’s carton into the living room. I stomped, barefoot, into the entrance hall and yanked open the door. And standing there, right before me, homburg in one hand, the other poised to ring the bell, was Edward Leland.

  “Merry Christmas, Linda.”

  “Merry Christmas,” I managed to say back. I stuck my hands in my pockets, so I wouldn’t start patting down my messed-up hair.

  “John!” Edward’s deep voice was full of holiday warmth. I turned. John had come up behind me; the look on his face was astonished and overjoyed, as if Santa Claus had truly come down his chimney. “Sorry to drop in on you unannounced, but your doorman seems to have been enjoying his eggnog. Nodded off, so I slipped by.”

  “Please, come in,” John said. I bet his jaw was hanging open. “We were just putting up the tree.” He turned to me. “How about making us some coffee, dear?”