Shining Through

by Susan Isaacs

  “Sure!” I said, like I couldn’t wait to dash to the percolator. Actually, I needed a few seconds to get over the surprise of Edward’s visit and the shock of my husband’s calling me “dear.” They moved off to the living room. I hung up Edward’s coat, put away his hat and went into the kitchen.

  Being two classy men, they spoke in what they’d call hushed tones, but I could hear almost all of it, except when I rattled the pot and banged a closet door to show how absorbed I was in being a hostess.

  “Forgive me for the intrusion, John.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Obviously this is something best not discussed in the office.” Maybe it was going to be about Nan; my hand must have shaken, because a scoop of coffee was suddenly all over the sink. “And I’d rather not use the phone.”

  There was a slight pause, probably John nodding.

  “I’ll be as direct as I can,” Edward continued. “Lend-Lease is going to pass.” In a press conference a few days before, FDR had put forth a plan that England could get all their war matériel from us now and pay for it later—in effect, a giveaway. I put the coffeepot on the stove and lit the gas. “And Donovan’s done a complete turnabout. He’s all for it now.”

  The Donovan Edward was talking about was William Donovan, a Wall Street lawyer from O’Brian, Hamlin, Donovan & Goodyear, who’d gone on to become head of the COI, the Office of Coordinator of Information, which was a typically overcomplicated, lawyery way of saying U.S. espionage headquarters. Unlike Edward, who clearly preferred private meetings and secret missions, Donovan was a much more public man, a diplomat—or politician. He was known for being outgoing, congenial and very, very clever.

  “Have you spoken with him recently?”

  “I spent most of the last week with him in London.” There was the silence of John nodding again; I could almost see him, awestruck but managing to look merely respectful. I took out a fruitcake I’d baked, sliced it, and fanned out the pieces on one of Nan’s white serving plates. “He’s finally come around to seeing how vital Britain’s survival is.”

  “If they’re defeated,” John agreed, “we’re next on their list.”

  “Very likely,” Edward replied. I opened a cabinet, took out a tray and arranged the cake, cups, and saucers, plates, milk and sugar, spoons and forks. “Don’t forget, if Germany defeats England, they would have both the French and the English fleets at their command.” I folded three napkins. (Unfortunately, all our napkins had you-know-who’s monogram. I’d once said to John, All I want is to buy plain napkins. I don’t want my initials or anything. And John had said, It’s foolish to throw out money. And you’re the one who keeps calling attention to them. I never even notice them.) “With a navy like that, Germany would strangle us in the Atlantic,” Edward was saying, “and with Japan making nasty noises in the Pacific…”

  What’s the point of all this cordial, manly chitchat? I wondered. Why had Edward Leland dropped by? So far, the only semisecret thing he’d said was that he’d seen Donovan in London the week before. That information was slightly interesting, but I don’t think it would make a Nazi spy jump up and down and clap his hands.

  I took the coffee off the stove and poured it into the white china pot. Once I brought everything in, I’d have to leave and go into the bedroom, and I probably wouldn’t be able to hear much from in there. Nuts, I thought, as I walked into the living room.

  “England is the key, you see,” Edward was saying. “In more ways than one. British intelligence has several first-rate sources within the German foreign office and the Abwehr.” The Abwehr was the espionage and counterespionage service of the German General Staff. “The Vatican has a couple of sources too. And Donovan has one. But—” John cleared his throat as I came in. Edward fell silent. I put down the platter on the coffee table. I couldn’t believe that Edward Leland, who could hear a fly climb up a wall in the Bronx, hadn’t heard me walk into the room. And hadn’t seen me. My bathrobe was not exactly the most subdued yellow ever invented.

  Both men made a tremendous fuss over the fruitcake. I didn’t know what to do next: Did I leave everything on the tray or was I supposed to do one of those sophisticated Mrs. Berringer-is-pouring routines? Neither of them leaned forward from his chair, so I quickly set everything out on the coffee table. Then I asked Edward: “How do you take your coffee?” I tried not to sound like Miriam Hopkins.

  “Cream and one sugar, please,” he said.

  I lifted the top of the sugar bowl, but John put his hand over mine and said, “It’s all right, dear. I’ll take care of it. I know you have more presents to wrap.”

  I stood straight, but before I could go, Edward said, “John, really. Her security clearance is better than yours.” He looked up at me. “You haven’t developed Nazi sympathies since you filled out those forms, have you, Linda?” I shook my head. “Then please sit down and join us.” I waited for him to add, If it’s all right with your husband. He didn’t.

  I sat across from them, on the beige couch, and went ahead and fixed his coffee, and without being asked, John’s. I served the fruitcake and tried not to stare at the men. The contrast was so powerful I had to force myself to turn away; I looked over at the naked Christmas tree.

  Obviously, Edward was older than John, seventeen or eighteen years. But the age difference was just for starters: fair, dark; graceful, hulking; handsome, not; John’s blue eyes glowed; Edward’s black eyes glowered. I turned back to them. Edward held the cup and saucer in big, clumsy farmer hands; his fingers were too heavy to hold the cup handle properly, but—I couldn’t help this thought—they’d be perfect for choking somebody on a dark night. John laid aside his cake; the hand that did it was elegant, long-fingered, pale and tantalizing.

  Edward started talking again. “I was telling John that Colonel Donovan of the COI”—he waited until I nodded that I knew what that was—“has long had a source, a spy if you will, high in the German government. This source has provided us with some interesting information about the internal politics of the Reich, some of it quite valuable. And over the last year, both I and another associate of Bill’s have spent a good deal of time renewing old business friendships and cementing relationships with individuals in high circles in Germany.” He smiled. “My sources, fortunately, are fluent in English.” He leaned back. “Last week, Bill asked me if I’d be willing to spend some time in Washington—a great deal of time, actually—organizing a unit within the COI to be called the Office of Commercial Analysis.” John began to nod, until Edward added, “A meaningless name, obviously.”

  “Then what kind of office is it?” I asked. “If I’m not out of line.”

  “It will be my job, and the job of my men, to corroborate what our sources are telling us, not only in Germany but throughout Europe. Much of it will be the simple checking of facts.”

  “Not so simple, I’d guess,” John said.

  “Not so simple is right,” Edward answered. He took a bite of fruitcake and smiled first at me, but then much more winningly at John. In fact, his attitude toward John’s observation was so flattering I figured he had to be up to something. “How do we learn the unknowable?” Edward asked. Then he answered himself: “By gathering facts—from radio transmissions we can manage to decipher, from recent refugees, especially those from Germany, from resistance organizations within the occupied countries. Then we must put all the pieces of this terribly intricate puzzle into a picture that makes sense. It has to make sense. Not merely for the information itself, although that is important; you and I, John, have long agreed that our entrance into this war is inescapable, and we must know all we can. But there’s a further need for our brilliant puzzle-solvers.”

  This was too interesting. I couldn’t not open my mouth. Anyway, Edward had invited me to join them. “You want to make sure if what your high German sources are saying is the truth,” I said, “or if they’re”—I knew my Nazi spy movies—“double agents.”

  “Yes,” Edward murmured. “Prec
isely.” Both of them looked surprised at my conclusion. John, of course, always looked astonished whenever I figured out anything more complicated than his checking account balance. But I was disappointed; somehow I’d expected better from Edward. “And it goes without saying, John—and that’s why I asked Linda to join us—that I’d be very happy and relieved if you’d consider moving to Washington for a time…to be my foremost puzzle-solver.”

  The girl who took care of my mother had one of those Slavic names no one wants to bother to pronounce, Mrshklva or something, so she told everyone to call her Cookie. At about sixty, she wasn’t a girl, and she wasn’t such a cookie, either. She was short, with long, skinny arms and legs and a pudgy little body, and when she moved around fast—she was never slow—she looked like a monkey in a nurse’s uniform.

  Cookie hoisted my mother out of the taxi onto a Fifth Avenue sidewalk. It was a bright day, cold but without a hint of wind. “She’s not too bad, Missus,” she explained to me, as if my mother wasn’t there, right beside her, but home in Queens. “Except she’s hiding gin somewheres.” My mother immediately became absorbed in getting a new slant to her hat. It was an old brown felt she’d had for years, with a wide brim and a crown that looked like a huge, upside-down soup pot. But when she moved it forward I realized she’d gone out (or had sent Cookie out) and bought a holiday pin: a sprig of artificial holly, with slightly limp fabric leaves and berries of red beads. She was so absorbed in her hat she didn’t notice the seventy-foot Rockefeller Center Christmas tree straight in front of her nose. “I could smell the gin fumes when she came out of the bathroom this morning,” Cookie went on, “fresh on her breath, and I searched high and low, even down the toilet, but it wasn’t there.”

  “Cookie smells like toilet water,” my mother announced loudly. “Real toilet water. Stinky!” In the cold air, her breath came out in a weak white puff. People on the street, walking toward the tree, pretended they had heard nothing more than distant carols.

  “Shut up your mouth. It’s Christmas,” Cookie said, but it was obvious she thought my mother was funny, and she might have cackled and gotten into a whole toilet tête-à-tête if I—the person who paid her—wasn’t there.

  “You shut up your mouth, stinkpot Bohunk.” My mother laughed, a very feeble laugh, because she didn’t have the strength to do more. Her arm was draped around Cookie’s shoulder; she could no longer stand by herself for any length of time. About a month after I’d gotten married, when I made one of my twice-a-week visits to Ridgewood, I’d been so frightened by how she looked—closer to a skeleton than to a woman—that I called Dr. Guber. He’d come to the house, checked my mother over and pulled me into the hallway, closing her door. He said, She’s got cirrhosis of the liver. She’s not just falling down because she’s weak. In his gruff Brooklyn voice, he’d gone on: Linda, not good. She’s got nervous system damage, jaundice, edema. She’s a mess, kid. You gotta be able to see it yourself.

  I could. And although I knew the answer, I finally asked him, Can you do anything? He’d answered, Not anything that would help. Is she going to die from it? I’d had to ask, and he’d said, “Yeah, kid. Six months, a year. What a waste. Such a beauty she was.”

  Cookie had been standing beside me the whole time, listening to the doctor. She shook her head and said, Most of them get mean sooner or later, but she’s such a cute drunk.

  “Where’s Johnny?” my mother called out, her volume higher than ever.

  “He’s over at the restaurant, checking if we can still have our reservation. You know you’re over an hour late, Mom.” She gave me an innocent, Oh really? look and fluttered her eyelashes. I wondered if she’d be fluttering if she’d seen the look on John’s face after sixty minutes of watching every taxi going up and down Fifth Avenue. I took her arm and, with Cookie on her other side, half led, half carried her toward the tree. She gawked at it, like all the tourists, but paid much more attention to the women’s fur coats.

  “Beautiful!” she said of a passing sheared raccoon. “I’m dying to meet Johnny,” she went on. “He better be as gorgeous as you say or I’ll tell him, ‘Hey, my Linda’s got taste up her—’”

  “Cookie,” I interrupted, “why don’t you take a walk around the tree. I’ll stay here with my mother.”

  The minute Cookie stepped away, my mother grabbed my collar. “A blue wool coat? You marry a filthy-rich guy and he gives you cloth?”

  “Mom,” I said, as softly and as gently as I could, “please be on your best behavior today. You know what I mean.”

  She patted my hand. “I know, honey. Gee, you look stunning. You look terrific in blue. And you’re wearing mascara, finally?” I nodded. “So how’re things?”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “How’s the baby coming along?”

  “Mom, I had a miscarriage. Over two months ago. I told you.”

  “Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry. I swear to God, I forgot. You know, who wants to remember something like that?” She pushed back the sleeves of her coat—a too-vivid brown, purple and cream-color plaid I knew would make John’s jaw go rigid—but the sleeves were too long and drooped over her hands again. I tried to make a cuff, but she pulled away. “Cuffs are for old ladies,” she said. “I had one, you know. A mis. You weren’t even a year old when it happened. But the doctor did the mis on purpose. We asked him to. You know what I mean?”

  “Dr. Guber?”

  “Nah! He was chicken. A guy on Queens Boulevard. Twenty bucks he charged, but Herm said, ‘It’s well worth it.’ Listen, I was just seventeen, and I already had you.” Her eyes filled with tears. I thought she was thinking about her lost baby. But then she said, “I loved your father.” She swallowed, sniffled and then hollered: “Merry Christmas, Herm!” A Negro family who’d been standing near us gave each other this-one’s-a-lunatic looks and edged away. My mother reached out and put her cold hand in mine. “You think he hears me?”

  “I’m sure he does.”

  “He wasn’t all that crazy about Christmas, to tell you the truth. Him being a Jew.”

  “Mom,” I said, “don’t mention anything about that to John.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just never got a chance to tell him. Not that it would matter.”

  “You ashamed of your father?”

  “No!”

  “Jews are smart!”

  “Shhh!”

  “Where do you think you got your brains from? Me? Johnny wouldn’t care. Anyway, you look more like me, even though Herm didn’t look like one, or I’ll tell you, I wouldn’t have married him. Not with those dark beards and greasy hair like they got.”

  “Well, just don’t say anything, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “And—”

  She cut me off. “You gonna give me a list?”

  “Please don’t talk about him being a rich lawyer.”

  She glanced at my coat again. “Maybe he has a nice Christmas surprise when you get back home.” Actually, John had already given me my gift: a gold pin shaped like a butterfly, with two tiny rubies for eyes and emerald chips down its body. It was a little too large and a little too fancy: in other words, what he thought I’d appreciate.

  Just then, John arrived. He was wearing his good navy suit with a red tie. His gray topcoat was open. His darker gray cashmere scarf was tossed around his neck with the perfect degree of casualness.

  “Merry Christmas, Mrs. Voss,” he said. I could see he was shocked at how sick she looked, to say nothing of his reaction to her coat.

  “Merry Christmas!” My mother was genuinely impressed. John started to button his coat, as if to cover himself. “Hey, relax.” He took a small step back. “So you’re my son-in-law. Well, my girl’s very lucky.” She turned to me. “He’s some guy, Lin! You shouldn’t let him go out for a walk by himself.”

  Cookie, realizing mother-daughter time had ended, rushed over. “Merry Christmas, sir!” she greeted John. Her voice was breathlessly girlish.

  He seemed s
tunned to see this sudden servant who looked as if, any minute, like a chimpanzee, she might leap up and swing from branch to branch of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. “Merry Christmas,” he mumbled. Then he looked at my mother, then at me. His eyes closed for an instant. When he opened them, he said, “I took care of the maître d’. Why don’t we walk over to the restaurant?”

  After everything I’d told him about my mother, John’s idea of a perfect Christmas probably would have been giving her a year at a sanitarium as a present. But he knew I wouldn’t go for that, so when I started talking about what to do Christmas Day, he immediately suggested we bring her to the apartment, give her her presents (fast), have a (quick) dinner and say good night. If he could have managed to have her slipped in the back door and brought up in the freight elevator, he would have. Not that I could blame him; unfortunately, I’d told him the truth about her, including her tendency to fall on her face, call out to strange men and to get my father’s attention, shout to the heavens. I could see her making a megaphone of her hands and booming “Herm, lover!” in front of our building, in front of the neighbors.

  But I’d told him no dice, I wanted to treat my mother to Manhattan, take her to see the tree and then out for a dinner fancier than she’d ever had. I said, John, it’s probably her last Christmas. He picked a large, well-known restaurant that catered to blue-haired ladies whose idea of Christmas dinner was three martinis and a stuffed tomato: a respectable, even stuffy place, but no one he knew—no graceful people—would ever go near it.

  “Isn’t he something?” my mother asked Cookie. “Better than a lifeguard. High-class.”

  I took my mother’s arm to help her walk. John moved reluctantly to the other side.

  “Don’t worry,” my mother said to me, as she grabbed onto his arm. “I won’t say nothing to embarrass you, sweetpea.” She looked up at John. “You gonna buy me a cocktail, Johnny?”

  “Hey—” Cookie called, from behind the three of us.

  My mother didn’t bother to look around. “Big fat deal. It’s Christmas.”