A Fierce Radiance

by Lauren Belfer

  Claire suspected that “Duncan Daily” wasn’t his real name. “Thank you, Duncan. It’s a very kind invitation, but you know I never stay out that late.”

  “Live a little, my dear. Before the bombs start falling, etc.” Duncan had won a Pulitzer Prize for a newspaper series in his hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, about corruption in Mississippi River shipping. Duncan Daily, man of contradictions. “I’m heading over because I received a hot tip that a prominent man is out on the town with a woman not his wife.”

  “Same old story,” said Edie, not unkindly. She took a drag on her cigarette. “Can’t you come up with anything new?”

  “New, old, the human saga never changes. Besides, a visit to El Morocco paid for by Mr. Billings? How could I turn that down? I tell you, I’ve got the best expense account in the building. Apart from the old man upstairs, that is. Claire, slip a miniature camera into your bodice and I’ll make certain you capture the photo of the year. Please—I’ll be so much more incognito with you on my arm.”

  Gus from copyediting, who was tieless, jacketless, and needed a shave, arrived with a page proof for Tom’s review. “Excuse me,” Gus said to Duncan with faux gruffness. Gus had been with the company since the beginning, growing old with his job, distracted from other possibilities by his appreciation for the drinks cart. “Some of us are working.” Gus had a lit cigar in his hand, and with his slightly wobbly stance, the cigar tip came perilously close to setting the page proof on fire. “I’m trying to make sure the captions match the photos. As usual.”

  That comment was aimed at Claire, another in a stream of warnings from copy editors to photographers to take proper notes. Editorial staff considered the photographers to be too wild, unwashed, uncontrollable, and independent to work at Life. Alas, Life was a picture magazine, so the editorial staff was forced to put up with them. Claire wasn’t too wild, unwashed, uncontrollable, or independent, but she enjoyed when the reputation spilled onto her, both out of loyalty to her photographer buddies and because the image made a nice counterpoint to what she considered her entirely bourgeois existence.

  “So, Gus, what have you got for me,” Tom said.

  “Young actresses at work and play.”

  “One of my favorite topics,” Tom said. “Let’s go to my office and take a private look. What are you drinking?”

  “Bourbon.”

  Tom poured a bourbon for Gus, grabbed another beer for himself, and they headed down the hall. “Claire,” he called over his shoulder, “don’t forget the film.”

  “I’m on my way,” she said.

  “Please, Claire, make my dreams come true,” Duncan implored.

  “Truth be told, Duncan, I’d love to, but I have a previous engagement. I just stopped by to turn in the film and drop off the lights.” The cameras were hers, of course, and she’d take those with her.

  “You’re previously engaged?” Duncan asked with an edge of innuendo. “That sounds like fun.”

  “I’m sure it will be,” Claire said.

  Warning bells went off in the telex room down the hall. Edie exhaled the cigarette smoke she’d been holding in. “Better see what that’s about before you go,” she said to Duncan.

  Claire followed them, curious. El Morocco temporarily forgotten, Duncan took out his reading glasses and focused on the report being typed out by the clattering telex machine. “More bad news from Burma,” he said, scanning it.

  The Burma Road was the only land access the Allies had to the part of China still resisting the Japanese. Claire was no expert, but she knew that Burma was the crucial link between India and China. Already the Japanese were launching attacks against the British navy in the Indian Ocean, and against Ceylon. The Japanese had conquered Rangoon, the capital of Burma, weeks before. If Burma should fall, then India and nonoccupied China….

  But that was someone else’s news to cover. Claire had to keep some worries at bay, to protect herself. She dragged the equipment bags to Mack’s office and stowed them under his desk. “Here’s the exposed film,” she said, putting it on the corner of the table where Tom and Gus stood, reviewing notes and copy.

  “Thanks, Claire,” Tom said, not looking up at her.

  She slipped away without disturbing anyone’s work by saying good-bye.

  At Edward Rutherford’s Fifth Avenue apartment, Jamie and Nick settled themselves on either side of the parlor’s big fireplace with its baroque mantelpiece. While Rutherford arranged logs and lit the fire, the two younger men exchanged looks that said, Some place, eh?

  Once the fire was going, Rutherford said, “So, drinks? I’ve got everything and anything. Brandy? Whiskey?”

  Jamie ordered brandy, and Nick followed his lead. When Jamie leaned back in his pseudomedieval chair, Nick did as well. Nick felt tossed out of his depth here, and he studied his friend (he hoped surreptitiously) to learn how to behave.

  After serving the drinks, Rutherford sat down opposite the younger men. He noticed Nick’s watchful concentration, and he recognized it. It was what he himself had experienced when he was making his way. Who was this man? he wondered. He found himself much more interested in Nick Catalano than in James Stanton, whatever Stanton’s understanding with Claire. Stanton was secure and centered in himself, Rutherford sensed. He’d admired the apartment, indeed he’d never seen anyplace like it, but it didn’t set him off his stride; he knew he could deal with it. But Catalano…

  “So, gentlemen, how did you two make your ways to the hallowed halls of the Rockefeller Institute?”

  Naturally, Stanton answered first…all straightforward and exactly what Rutherford would have expected, right down to the loving grandparents ready to take over when the parents died. When Stanton finished, Rutherford asked, “What about you, Catalano?”

  “Oh, just the usual, especially compared to this guy here,” Catalano said, indicating his friend. Falsely blasé, Rutherford could spot it a mile away. The same cultivated sense of the blasé that he himself assumed when called upon to describe his supposed youth in Allentown, his family in trade. “Born upstate. Syracuse. Big family. Never an orphan. Went to Cornell and Harvard and then straight to the Institute. That’s it, all there is to tell.”

  Not by a long shot, Rutherford knew. Of the two young men, Rutherford pegged Catalano as the greater idealist: it was harder to accept the lower salary offered by the Rockefeller Institute when your father was a factory worker, than when your father was a banker. Mentally he reviewed the industries of Syracuse: dishes, automobiles, soda ash, typewriters, if his memory served him (and he had a good memory for matters like that). But he suspected he wouldn’t be getting any more details from Nick Catalano this evening.

  “Nick’s got a Ph.D. in chemistry as well as a medical degree,” Stanton said, with a pleasing generosity toward his friend’s accomplishments. “His background’s better than mine for the work we’re doing now.”

  “Speaking of which,” Rutherford said, “my daughter mentioned all those milk bottles, bedpans, and jam jars. You fellas are at the forefront. That’s my kind of business. At the forefront. In every industry. Every endeavor. New things, whatever they are. Yes, I have a lot of fun.”

  This was as far as he would go. He was planting a seed, that was all. A seed that signaled, sure, you’re idealists now, you’re working for the government and for the Rockefeller Institute now, but someday you might not be, and when that someday comes, I want you to remember me.

  When Claire stepped off the elevator at her father’s, the multilayered skirt of her evening gown rustled in the silence of the neo-Gothic front hall. She paused to get her bearings. As if from a great distance, she heard voices in the parlor. It was well after midnight, but she wasn’t tired. Instead she felt overattuned to the middle-of-the-night quiet and to the strange shadows thrown by the statuary. A kind of density filled the air, especially striking after the raucous high spirits at the office.

  She walked down the hall and stood on the balcony overlooking the parlor. A massive
fire, glowing and crackling, was burning in the fireplace where she’d hidden as a child. The three men sat in medieval-looking wooden chairs arrayed near the fireplace to catch the warmth. From the shape of their glasses, Claire knew what they were drinking. Rutherford had whiskey on the rocks. Jamie and Nick, brandy. Their naval dress uniforms reflected the shifting colors of the fire.

  Claire wore a cashmere sweater over her otherwise bare shoulders, and she felt a chill. In mid-April, the nights were still cool. She wanted to be by the fire. Yet she held back, watching them. Jamie and Nick seemed to sit luxuriantly, as if they were enjoying a rare and slightly illicit treat. No doubt they weren’t often invited to sip brandy in the double-height living room of a duplex apartment filled with Old Master paintings and facing Central Park. Although her father generally indulged in a Cuban cigar after dinner, they weren’t smoking. He’d probably offered, and when the doctors refused, he held back in deference to them, gentleman that he was.

  The sounds of their voices filtered up to her, echoing off the stonework. She caught a few phrases here and there. Roosevelt, armaments, supply lines…they were discussing politics, business, the war. Jamie and Nick leaned forward in their chairs, seeming to enjoy a debate. Rutherford regarded them with a slight smile, taking it all in, as if he couldn’t believe his luck in chancing upon these two interesting fellows and helping out his daughter to boot.

  Jamie’s face was bright in the firelight. She yearned to be beside him. She wanted to caress the line of his jaw, to kiss, ever so gently, his eyelids.

  Finally they sensed her watching.

  “Claire, there you are, at last,” Jamie said. He rose to welcome her as she joined them. He put his hands on her shoulders, taking away the cold.

  Leaving at 1:30 AM, they managed to find a cab on East Seventy-ninth Street. When they reached the Institute to drop off Nick, the guard opened the gate and the taxi drove up the hill to the hospital.

  “Is that Tia’s light on?” Claire said, looking up at the hospital.

  Jamie bent forward to see. “Yes, it is.”

  “No surprise there,” Nick said.

  “Maybe she just leaves it on to make people think she’s working all night,” Claire said.

  “I don’t think so,” Jamie said cheerfully.

  “Not likely,” Nick agreed. He got out, and they exchanged good nights. Nick watched the taxi drive slowly down the hill. Forsythia was blooming in the Institute gardens, the color ghostly in the shadows. He felt light-headed from the brandy. An unexpected jealousy filled him. How close those two seemed. They had an equality, a mutual support that he’d never experienced with the young women, sweet as they were, whom he typically dated. And that apartment of Rutherford’s. Where had the money come from for that?

  Years ago, he’d made the choice to give up money as an end in itself and do the kind of work that interested him most. He didn’t want a high-paying private medical practice (even though his parents would probably have been most proud of that). He had a passion for medical research. When he was studying at Harvard, the common view was that only second-rate scientists went to pharmaceutical companies, so he wouldn’t do that. The Rockefeller Institute was the most prestigious medical research center in the United States. Coming as he did from Syracuse, with parents who did factory labor, the prestige meant a lot to him, he couldn’t deny it. At the Institute, he thought he’d found his true home. The only problem was the comparatively low salaries. Many of his colleagues had family money to back them up. What if he wanted to marry someday and have children? His wife and children certainly couldn’t live in the hospital’s residence rooms.

  That look on Jamie’s face when he first spotted Claire entering the room. Nick wished he had that kind of love in his own life. He didn’t even know where to start, to find it. Except…he went inside and greeted the hospital guard, who doubled as the elevator operator at night. Nick hesitated for a moment and then gave the floor number of Tia’s lab, rather than his residence rooms. Reaching the floor, he said good night to the guard. He walked down the silent hallway to her lab. He’d been to see her several times after he got his new job, with the convenient excuse—which was the truth, after all—that he needed to learn about penicillin.

  Tonight seemed different. Seeing the intimacy between Jamie and Claire made some part of him open into yearning. He’d stopped thinking of Tia as Jamie’s baby sister a long time ago, but before tonight, she’d seemed too serious for him in every way. Of course he had to be careful with Tia. Anything with her was serious. He shouldn’t visit her if he didn’t intend to be serious. He evaluated himself: he did intend to be serious.

  He stood at the doorway to her lab. Often she had visitors. Impromptu parties in the middle of the night. He listened for voices. If anyone else was there, he’d leave, go to his rooms and get some sleep. All was quiet. He knocked on the door.

  He heard her voice, beckoning him on. At once he had an almost overwhelming feeling that this was exactly where he belonged.

  In the taxi going downtown, Claire asked the driver to head over to Fifth Avenue. She loved Fifth Avenue late at night, when the usually bustling street was eerily deserted. They drove past the park, the Plaza Hotel, Bergdorf’s and Tiffany’s.

  “I don’t recall you ever mentioning that your father is a multimillionaire,” Jamie said.

  “Well, he is,” Claire said impatiently. She didn’t want to spend what could be a romantic drive downtown discussing her father.

  Jamie laughed. “You’re annoyed at him because he’s a millionaire, or at me because I asked?”

  Jamie always laughed at the beginning of potential arguments, diffusing her anger. “Both,” she said, although she was laughing now, too.

  He put his arm around her, pulling her close. “Don’t worry, I won’t hold it against you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I liked him quite a bit.”

  “He’s charming, I know.” She shrugged.

  “Don’t want to talk about him anymore?”

  “That’s right.”

  “No need to talk.” He kissed her on the lips, bringing her closer, and Claire pressed herself against him, meeting his kiss. Then Claire remembered the driver in the front seat, with his rearview mirror, and she pulled away. She rested her head on Jamie’s shoulder.

  Rockefeller Center…the Public Library…the department stores Arnold Constable, Lord & Taylor, B. Altman’s. Madison Square with its blossoming canopy of trees. The arch of Washington Square in the distance…her city, her home, lent a clarity and a purity by the middle-of-the-night peace. The scents of spring flowed through the car window, a hyacinth wind upon her face, relaxing her after the work and tensions of the evening. Jamie rested his lips against her forehead.

  The driver turned right on West Ninth Street. Claire squeezed Jamie’s hand, and he returned the pressure. Ninth to Christopher, the driver taking the turns gently on the narrow streets, and finally to Grove.

  When they pulled up to the curb, the house was dark. The school play was tomorrow, and Charlie had campaigned for permission to spend the night at Ben’s house so they could practice their lines. Charlie had six lines, Ben had four, and they were determined to get them right. With Charlie out, Claire had given Maritza the night off and hired Tom to take Lucas out at ten.

  “No one’s home.” She paused, not knowing how many words she needed to say. How explicit she had to be. “Would you like to stay?”

  He hadn’t been expecting this. He’d assumed Charlie would be home. Now, at last, she was ready. Everything fell into place. He felt emotion choking him. He would have prepared himself better, paced himself through the evening, if he’d known this was how it would turn out. Even on a practical level, he would have planned better: he had an 8:00 AM meeting with Dr. Rivers, and it was past 2:00 now. Luckily he was accustomed to nights with little sleep, and he didn’t care anyway if he was tired in the morning. He felt a sudden vulnerability. He pushed a wayward lock of her hair back
into place.

  “Of course I’d like to stay.” This he said in a self-righteous tone that made her laugh. He laughed also, and the moment of awkwardness was gone. They got out of the cab, he paid the driver, they were alone.

  When Claire opened the front door, switching on the hall light, a heavy-lidded Lucas ambled over to greet them. He sniffed their feet, pressed his head against Jamie’s leg, then returned to his bed by the parlor fireplace, collapsing into sleep. Claire walked down the hall to the stairs, Jamie following her.

  Now she faced a choice. Immediately upstairs to the bedroom, or downstairs to the kitchen first, to offer him a drink. She looked both ways, as if she were about to cross the street. She held the banister. She felt the downward pull of doubt. Of anxiety. She felt as if she’d never been with a man before, despite a husband and sex partners whose names and faces she couldn’t, at this moment, even remember.

  Coming up behind her, he wrapped his arms around her waist and pressed her against his chest. Her cashmere sweater was soft against his hands, her hair soft against his cheek. He smelled the perfume in her hair.

  He was waiting for her to decide, she understood that. This is a time for firm resolve—the words of a wartime leader whose name she couldn’t place came into her mind, Churchill probably. She smiled at this new application for the phrase, and her smile surprised him, coming, as it seemed, out of nowhere. She turned out of his embrace, took his hand, and led him up the stairs.

  Upstairs…the peeling William Morris wallpaper, the well-worn Persian carpets, the bookcases overflowing, and the photographs covering the walls. The house had a lived-in clutter that made him feel comfortable. This could be his home, too. He only needed to bring a suitcase, and he would be home.

  Once across the threshold of the bedroom, she turned to him. He slipped off her sweater. She unbuttoned his jacket.

  Reaching for the zipper of her dress, fumbling with it, he said, “I’ve never taken off an evening gown.”