A Thin Bright Line

by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

  Lucybelle stood watching the fire in the wastepaper basket die down to embers, wondering what had just happened. She picked up a file folder and tried to wave away the smoke.

  Bader stepped into the foyer. “What the hell?”

  “I dropped a cigarette in the wastepaper basket,” she told him. “It was stupid.”

  “I’ll say it was.” He paused and then smiled. “You’re lucky Beverly isn’t here. She runs a tight ship. You’d be walking the gangplank.”

  Lucybelle nodded, feeling the full measure of dread in what she’d set in motion. A gangplank would be a relief. More likely the ladies would find a way to dangle her, indefinitely, over the high seas, with no hope of rescue.

  “Where are they, anyway?” Bader asked.

  Lucybelle didn’t answer and he stomped back to his office.

  Two hours later, she heard the women return and take their places at their desks as if nothing had happened. Lucybelle saw Beverly bring Ruthie a glass of water, and another time saw the secretary holding a damp washcloth on her own forehead. The voices coming from the foyer were softer than usual.

  Neither woman spoke to her that entire week. If Lucybelle asked them to type something, or inquired after the whereabouts of one of the scientists, they acted as if she were invisible and inaudible. She did her own typing and searching. Bader repeated her explanation about tossing the cigarette in the wastepaper bin, and the scientists teased her mercilessly about trying to burn down the lab. The smell of smoke didn’t leave the foyer for days.

  Friday, May 3, 1957

  On Friday night Lucybelle skipped drinks with the scientists and instead walked to the Evanston address. She knocked on the door and Ruthie answered.

  “I want to apologize. And make sure you’re okay.”

  Beverly appeared behind Ruthie. Indignation flared across her face and she tried to shut the door. To Lucybelle’s surprise, Ruthie put her foot in the way, blocking the move.

  Lucybelle took quick advantage of the opening. “That was such an insensitive thing for me to do. I’m sorry.”

  “Come in,” Ruthie said.

  “No,” Beverly said, and yet, unaccountably, she stepped aside.

  Dorothy stood in their living room, in front of the couch, looking downright pleased by the unfolding spectacle. She must have recently arrived because the tray of egg rolls on the coffee table looked untouched. The bright red dipping sauce emitted a sweet, tangy aroma.

  Lucybelle moved quickly into the room before they had a chance to change their minds and evict her. The coziness of the apartment surprised her; she’d unconsciously pictured them living at desks in their own home. Tan-and-orange plaid wool covered the chunky couch. A large rug, brown with golden flecks, warmed the floor. A walnut coffee table, with rounded corners, stood on copper legs. The leather armchair with a matching ottoman had to be Beverly’s, and the huge collection of porcelain figurines, displayed in the breakfront, must be Ruthie’s.

  “I’m truly sorry for the mess I made on Monday.”

  “Well,” Beverly and Ruthie said simultaneously.

  “Someone sent me that book and I was so exasperated by . . . by it. I thought you might know who sent it.”

  “How could we possibly know anything at all about that book?” Beverly asked.

  “You told Bader that you started the fire with a cigarette,” Dorothy said.

  “I guess you could say that I did start the fire, at least indirectly.”

  “Though not with your cigarette.” Dorothy gleamed and nodded, urging the story forward.

  “I have asthma,” Ruthie said.

  “Triggered by unnecessary emotional strain,” Beverly added.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “One could go through life apologizing if one wasn’t careful,” Ruthie said, and Lucybelle didn’t know if the remark was meant to be forgiving or a warning.

  “That does seem to be my pattern of late,” Lucybelle said, unwittingly picking up Ruthie’s formal diction.

  “You’ve apologized,” Beverly said. “It’s best if you leave now.”

  “Have a seat,” Ruthie said, and Beverly didn’t oppose her.

  Dorothy plopped down on the plaid couch and fingered the fabric weave, her eyes shining, as if she’d lucked into witnessing a murder.

  “I do take some responsibility,” Ruthie said. “I should have had my inhaler with me.”

  “Show her!” Dorothy said. “It’s small enough to fit in her purse. It’s really something. She used to have to use this big glass bulb contraption. I swear, modern medicine!”

  “No one wants to see Ruthie’s inhaler.”

  “I do,” Lucybelle said, making every effort.

  Ruthie opened a side table drawer and withdrew a small device shaped like an L. “It was invented to dispense perfume. Then some man whose daughter had asthma thought to make it into something that could administer the right amount of medicine to the lungs.”

  “It’s changed her life,” Dorothy said.

  “It would change my life, if I kept it with me. I’ve only had it a few months. I’m just not used to there being such an easy solution.”

  “Hardly easy,” Beverly said.

  In the long silence that followed, Lucybelle who still stood in the middle of the room knew she was supposed to graciously say her good-byes and leave. Instead she said, “Nice prints.” She’d have expected painted bouquets of violets rather than the Van Gogh and Picasso.

  “We get them from the library,” Ruthie said. “We change them every few weeks.”

  “The library here in Evanston?”

  “Chicago Public. Dorothy used to work there. She told us about the art collection.”

  Lucybelle could feel Beverly ticking away at her back, her hand probably still on the doorknob. She searched for a way to keep the polite conversation going. “That must have been a great job.”

  Dorothy rolled her eyes. “It was. But I got involved with someone who also worked at the library, and when we broke up, well, it just seemed like a good idea to leave.”

  “You left to find a job closer to your mother,” Beverly corrected.

  “That’s the official story. It’s a lot easier to get help up here, and now I’m a quick walk away if I need to rush home. But Bev, the timing was good, you can’t deny that.” She looked at Lucybelle and said, “I have a bad habit of getting involved with people at work.”

  “I don’t believe Miss Bledsoe came to hear your life story,” Beverly said.

  “It’s a pattern I have to break. I mean, you can’t change jobs every time a relationship ends.”

  “Dorothy!”

  “Relax, Bev. Why doesn’t everyone just sit down.” Ruthie hadn’t giggled once here in her own home. She settled into the leather chair, and Lucybelle sat on the other side of the plaid couch from Dorothy. Beverly carried a hardback chair from the kitchen, clunking it down loudly and shifting her behind back and forth on the wooden seat, making it clear that the apartment could only accommodate three comfortably.

  “You said you read my file.”

  Lucybelle almost smiled. It didn’t take Beverly long to take back the offense.

  “I did. So I guess we’re all in the same boat.”

  “Which boat is that?” Beverly spoke with slow heat.

  “Can we have drinks?” Dorothy asked.

  Ruthie pushed herself out of the big leather chair. “Gin okay?” It was as if she wore a personality costume to work. Here at home she was much more relaxed, even genial.

  “Perfect,” Lucybelle said. “Thank you.”

  All three of the other women retreated to the kitchen to make the drinks, and Lucybelle let them have their little conference. When they returned, Dorothy carried the tray, the ice cubes tinkling pleasantly, as if this were any cocktail party. A bowl of pretzels and a bottle of tonic water sat on the tray next to the glasses of gin.

  When everyone was seated again with drinks in their hands, Beverly said, “I have a job and I
intend to keep it.” She ran a hand through her hair, loosening the short auburn waves. She’d washed off the dark-red lipstick, foundation, and eyebrow penciling. Freed from the makeup, with her hair a bit mussed, she was a striking woman.

  “Good plan,” Lucybelle said, wishing desperately for a cigarette.

  “Just tell her,” Dorothy said. “The whole story.”

  “Yes.” Ruthie spoke with her eyes closed, as if she were a soothsayer reading the situation. “One feels that it’s okay.”

  Beverly huffed.

  “Ladies, it is okay,” Dorothy said. “She’s friends with Djuna Barnes!”

  “I didn’t say friends. I only met her once.”

  “And you charmed her,” Beverly added drily, as if Lucybelle charming anyone was hard to believe.

  “I did a bit, yes. They say so.”

  “They?”

  “Friends who were at the party.”

  “Lucky you,” Dorothy said. “Living in the Village.”

  “Tell,” Ruthie said again, looking at Beverly, her pixie features nearly fierce in the command. Funny, Lucybelle thought, how power dynamics in couples sometimes reversed themselves in public and private spheres. Here was Ruthie calling the shots from the leather chair with the ottoman.

  “I’m gay too,” Lucybelle said. “Just to be clear.”

  Dorothy clapped.

  “That hardly calls for applause,” Beverly said.

  “What fun,” Dorothy said. “Four out of four. That’s really something!”

  Beverly rolled her eyes. “Not exactly shocking.”

  “Actually, it is too shocking. All four women working at SIPRE?” Dorothy glanced quickly around the room, meeting eyes with each of the other women, as if trying to understand the significance.

  Lucybelle couldn’t help but think of Bader’s words that day in Morningside Park. You’re smart as a whip. You have the exact skills we need. She’d been wooed by his flattery. Had his praise just been a decoy? Had his real intent lay in the sentences that followed? There really would be no sacrifice on your part. Just stay out of the bars. Don’t get arrested.

  Four out of four, Lucybelle realized, were ideal subjects for blackmail. Or at the very least, they were all easily controlled.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Beverly said. “We”—her voice hitched at the admission imbedded in that one word—“have always made up most of the female workforce. The other ladies are busy at home with kids.”

  “Just tell her the story, Bev,” Ruthie said.

  Everyone took sips. The gin tasted acrid. Lucybelle preferred British brands. A cigarette would go a long way toward mitigating the unpleasant taste, but that was clearly out of the question.

  “Go on,” Ruthie said, scooting deeper into her chair. Dorothy crossed her legs and threw an arm over the back of the couch, her hand grazing Lucybelle’s shoulder.

  “Very well,” Beverly said. She looked at Lucybelle for a long moment, decided something, and then loosened. “It was a Friday and I wore my light-blue suit and dark-blue heels.”

  “Which you don’t have anymore.”

  “She wants nothing associated with this event,” Dorothy explained to Lucybelle.

  “It was a very hot day and they took me into a room with no windows. I didn’t want to take off my suit jacket because of the dampness under the arms of my white blouse. I felt that vulnerable. The two civil service investigators sat me down across from them. A big oak table separated us. They had stacks of file folders on the table.”

  “Piles and piles of evidence,” Dorothy said.

  “It was not evidence!” Ruthie said.

  “Would you two like to tell the story?”

  “It’s your story.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Beverly raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips, but without the makeup the familiar expression was almost appealing.

  “I don’t see how a bit of elaboration on the side can hurt.” Dorothy batted Lucybelle’s shoulder gently. With her gap-toothed grin and protruding eyes, she looked as if she were about to burst.

  “Just go on,” Ruthie said.

  “It was not evidence. That’s the point. It was, for all I know, photographs of their own families and letters from their grandmothers. But they did stack thick file folders on the table. One started out by saying, ‘You’re an attractive girl, Miss Turnbull. Why would you wear such a manly suit?’ It wasn’t a manly suit, anymore than any other woman’s suit. It was a suit, yes, but not a manly one. Then the other said, ‘Your voluntary appearance here today has been requested in order to afford you an opportunity to answer questions concerning information that has been received by the US Civil Service Commission.’ He laid his hands on the stacks of files, again implying that they were chock full of incriminating information. Of course I knew immediately where this was going. I was not there ‘voluntarily,’ I might add. It was not an option for me to stand up and walk out of that room.”

  “Legally, she should have been able to have a lawyer present,” Dorothy said.

  “A lawyer wouldn’t have changed anything,” Ruthie defended.

  Lucybelle realized they’d told this story many, many times, if only to one another.

  “They started out with benign questions about my name and date of birth, things like that. Finally they got around to asking the question. They wanted me to comment.” Beverly’s demeanor softened. She held her folded hands in her lap and her mouth quivered as if she might cry. Perched on the edge of that hard upright chair, she looked defenseless, like a bird on an exposed tree limb.

  “How’d they phrase the question?” Lucybelle asked.

  Dorothy batted Lucybelle’s shoulder again. “Aren’t you a live one.”

  Ruthie wheezed, as if focusing too sharply on the devastating topic would bring on an asthma attack.

  Lucybelle refrained from saying that words mattered, but she wanted to know, exactly, how they chose to frame the threat.

  “Shall I go on?” Beverly looked at each of their faces. Dorothy bugged her eyes and Ruthie pulled a pretend zipper across her mouth. “Good. So I said, ‘No comment.’ They seemed to accept that, and I started to feel almost light. I thought I was going to get out of this, though why I thought that tactic would work is anyone’s guess. They launched into asking about certain bars, whether I’d ever been, and continued pretending to have photos. Let me tell you right now, Miss Bledsoe, Ruthie and I do not frequent bars, nor have we ever. The women there . . .” She huffed her disapproval. “Nevertheless, on one or two occasions, we’d been coaxed by someone to attend what had been billed as a private event in certain establishments. I never saw the actual images on the photographs, but one of the men kept sliding shiny pictures out from one of the folders and flashing them quickly. The more I’ve thought about it, I’m quite sure they wouldn’t have featured me. How could they have? I didn’t patronize those places, and no one took pictures at the private parties we attended. But at the time . . . he scared me.”

  Beverly stopped talking and took a big gulp of her iced gin and tonic. A sheen of fear heightened the color in the pocks in her skin, and yet, underlying the fear, a raw and angry determination projected itself as beauty. Yes, beauty. She was like a mountain, daunting and a bit cold, but lovely nonetheless. Lucybelle felt her own loneliness slough away, all in one go.

  Nobody made encouraging noises for Beverly to go on. They waited for the alpenglow to fade, for her to regain control on her own, and then she continued. “It was when they began asking about my friends . . . Do I know so-and-so? Had I had dinner with Miss R—? I see now that I answered incorrectly. Of course I should have denied any association with these women, but they were my friends, and in the heat of the moment, my response was to claim them, both for myself, as if I could bring them into the room with me for comfort, but also because I didn’t want to deny them. It felt as if, were I to say, no, I don’t know her, I’d be pushing her off a cliff. Of course, as it turned out—and I should have known th
is—the opposite was true.”

  “How could you have known, how could anyone have known, how to answer those men? They were monsters,” Ruthie said.

  “Stop blaming yourself,” Dorothy said.

  “Finally one of them—truly, I couldn’t tell you what they looked like now; they were identical with their crew cuts and blunt fingers—asked me if I knew that all of these girls were known to be. Certified, he said.”

  “Certified,” Lucybelle repeated. Like crazy.

  “They meant homosexual,” Dorothy clarified. The word took flight, circled over their heads, both free and menacing.

  “Well, obviously,” Beverly said, glad for an opportunity to be irked. “After that, they became obscene, describing acts and asking about my experience.” Tears came into her eyes, and to counter them, she shifted forward in her chair toward Lucybelle and said, “So if you’re a spook, go write your report.”

  “Who turned you out?”

  “That’s the hardest part of the story,” Ruthie said.

  “A former friend.”

  “A former beau,” Dorothy said. “Who to this day has a well-paid, high-level job in the State Department.”

  “Besides firing Bev, they told her parents and her brother.”

  “If I ran into her on the street,” Beverly said, “I might spit on her. I really might.”

  “Spit?” Dorothy called out. “I’d shoot her dead.”

  “You don’t have a gun.”

  “If I did.”

  “Two other friends were also fired.”

  “Jane hung herself.”

  Beverly gave Ruthie a look that said every detail needn’t be shared, but for Jane’s sake, Lucybelle was glad to know. She felt a pang of love for the unknown girl. It was nearly erotic, a desire to touch her most private anguish, to ease it. Lucybelle craved the truth. Yes, Beverly did need to share every detail.

  “They even called Ruthie’s boss at the bank. Mr. McGregor was wonderful, though. He said to not worry, he’d stand behind Ruthie’s fine work record.”

  “But Beverly would never get work again in Washington. Anyway, gossip about us would reach every corner of the city.”