In the Great Green Room

by Amy Gary

  Leonard worked as rapidly as Margaret and returned only three days later with sketches and sample paintings. Her story was of a little dog, Muffin, who gets cinders in his eyes and has to walk around a city blindfolded, guessing what noises are making the sounds around him. This interactive tale presented the perfect way to feature Leonard’s brilliant illustrations and bring noises to life. Margaret was ecstatic. Not only had Leonard fused sound and image in his art, but he had brought the city to life on the page through angular buildings that seemed to overwhelm the little dog. His cars, too, appeared to be in motion. This was exactly what she had hoped for, but she wanted the experts to weigh in.

  With art in hand and Smoke in tow, she and Leonard walked over to Bank Street. In minutes, they stood before a kindergarten class with Margaret reading the story and Leonard holding up his art as the young critics reviewed their work. Leonard’s wheels looked too much like eggs, the children said, so he made them rounder. The car horn Margaret had described as “Honk Honk” was deemed too dated and promptly replaced by an “Awruuuuugaaa.” The story kept everybody’s attention, including the dog’s.

  It wasn’t hard to convince Bill Scott to offer Leonard a contract with their standard flat fee for the art. Margaret knew that his work was as vital to the book’s success as any word she had written, so she lobbied Bill to pay Leonard royalties. In her role as editor at Scott and at Bank Street, she often negotiated payments to the artists, and she found herself arguing for higher and higher amounts to keep illustrators she knew were talented. There was no room for negotiation on this book—the margins were too thin. Margaret knew there was only one way to assure that the illustrators of her books could make a living wage with their craft: she had to split her royalties with them. She offered this alternative to Bill, with one caveat—he had to publish the book in four-color.

  * * *

  As spring took hold on the streets of Greenwich Village and the flower cart vendors returned, Margaret was pulled to return to Maine and Sunshine Cottage. She invited her friends and colleagues to visit, and many did. Some came to work in the midst of Maine’s beauty and others just to frolic. During the day, everyone did whatever they wished—writing, drawing, sailing, fishing, or island hopping. They napped in hammocks, walked through the forest, and went berry picking. Evenings almost always included a divine meal, interesting conversation, parlor games, or sing-alongs. Margaret paid a local lobsterman to keep her lobster traps full, and a seaplane stopped at her dock weekly to drop off fresh supplies of food and wine.

  Over the past year, Margaret and Bill had seen one another frequently. He called almost daily, and they talked about their work, their lives, and their plans for the summer. She accepted that he was unfaithful to her. She once promised Bill that she would never cling to him like other women. She knew that her independence was part of what made her attractive to him. Other women might breeze in and out, but he loved her. She was the one he called late at night and early in the morning.

  Bill had gone to Boston at the end of June, and on his return, he told Margaret that he was now married. His new wife, Lucy, was expecting their baby at the end of the year. He said it casually because he fully expected that Margaret would want to continue their relationship. He assured her that he still loved her and wasn’t taking this marriage very seriously. Margaret was justifiably angry and hurt. She knew he was a lothario but had every reason to expect that she would become the next Mrs. Gaston. When Bill shared the news of his marriage, Margaret refused to see him again.

  All summer, she had done her best to be cheerful for her guests. But they knew she was brokenhearted. It made her feel better to be with her friends, especially Leonard. He was her closest confidant, and he offered her a calm, reliable presence.

  Now summer was at an end, and only Leonard and Margaret remained. Leonard painted, using Margaret as his model. The day before, Leonard had painted Margaret sitting in her white rocking chair, looking down while holding a green apple. Today, the fog enveloped the world around them, and he felt inspired to paint her as a heavenly saint. She scoffed but agreed to pose. He placed her on the couch with a drape over her bare legs. She teased him that this painting would ensure her immortality. She wanted to be one of those women who posed for famous artists. He assured her that he had a long way to go before getting famous, so she might want to achieve immortality some other way.

  Almost as soon as Margaret got situated and Leonard took out his brushes, they heard a boat pull up to the dock. All they could see out the window was the fog’s heavy white mist. Leonard put down his brushes and told Margaret to keep her position; he would go see who was there. She waited for a moment before getting up to look at the painting. He had turned her blond curls a dark brown, but it was her. Those were her own eyes staring back at her.

  Margaret was still looking at the painting when she heard Leonard chatting with Bill Gaston. She hurriedly returned to the couch and repositioned herself, pulling the drape on her leg a little higher. Leonard entered the room, but Bill stayed in the entryway. He knew how angry Margaret was with him, and he kept a respectful distance. He asked her to come for dinner to meet his wife, Lucy.

  Margaret already knew a great deal about Lucy. Margaret had paid an investigator to dig into Lucy’s life and was eager to meet this Texas Slitch, but she feigned disinterest. She sighed in agreement to come over later that day. Bill looked at the painting from where he stood, then skulked out.

  The only sound for a long while in the house was that of brushstrokes. Then Margaret realized Leonard was humming. She wondered if he always did that while he painted. She wondered what he was humming. It sounded familiar, like a symphony, but it took time for her to place. It was the song “Bill” from the musical Show Boat. The woman sings it through tears, remembering her own husband who abandoned her. Like Margaret, she knows he was no good for her, but can’t stop loving him.

  * * *

  At the dinner, Margaret quickly sized up his new wife as a liar. She knew from the investigator’s report that Lucy Gaston’s background was not the one she had told Bill. Back in the city, Margaret’s resolve to keep Bill at bay melted. It wasn’t long before Roberta caught him sneaking out of Margaret’s apartment early one morning and berated her sister for carrying on with a married man. Margaret also was disappointed in herself. She entered psychoanalysis in the hopes that it would help her to understand why she was drawn to someone like Bill, who was so clearly wrong for her. On her doctor’s instruction, she documented her dreams, and each week they discussed their subconscious meanings. Psychoanalysis was emotionally draining for Margaret, but she believed it would heal her.

  Many of her dreams centered on her problems with her mother. Her father and sister also figured prominently in those sessions. It didn’t take therapy for Margaret to see that she missed the close bonds of the family she’d once had. Her mother and father were separated. Bruce lived on his boat or at his club. Maude lived in Manhattan and worked at B. Altman’s department store—a friend of Margaret’s who was the manager had hired Maude as a favor to Margaret.

  Even though Maude lived close by, Margaret seldom visited her. The times she did were bleak. Maude’s health was poor and her attitude downtrodden. Margaret tried to be upbeat, bringing her mother books and flowers, but in a short time, she always became anxious and couldn’t wait to leave. Margaret always left her visits with Maude feeling guilty.

  Things were not much better with her father. Christmas holidays and summer vacations that had once stretched out for weeks had been reduced to dinners punctuated with casual conversation. Margaret underplayed how much she earned to him, hoping to keep the allowance he handed her each month. Still, she craved his approval and wanted him to be proud of her many career accomplishments, so she always gave him copies of the books she wrote. He seemed not to notice.

  Margaret had spent the Christmas of 1939 in Aiken, South Carolina, with Dot, the young girl she had tutored years before in Connecticut. They had rem
ained close over the previous four years, and their relationship had grown from tutor-student to an actual friendship. Dot attended a boarding school in South Carolina and was alone for the holidays. Margaret knew all too well that feeling of loneliness around the holidays and of being trapped at a boarding school. She took the train south, with the hope that the warm weather would help her get rid of a lingering cough.

  She soon felt well enough to ride horses with Dot and to chase rabbits with a beagling group based there. Dot was as adventurous as Margaret and, like her, unafraid to take a shortcut through briars when they ran with the dogs. Dot had matured into a beautiful young woman. She and Margaret looked so similar that people often asked if they were sisters.

  When Dot returned to New York on spring break, she and Margaret reminisced about their Christmas holiday together. It had been a wonderful time—one of Margaret’s happiest holidays in ages. She told Dot that she yearned for Christmases long past when she would sing carols around the piano with her family and then curl up in bed with a cup of eggnog. Dot had an idea: Why not celebrate Christmas whenever you wished? Why not celebrate it now, in the middle of spring? It was a splendid idea. Margaret called friends to join her for a Christmas party that evening. The only stipulation was that each of them had to bring a wacky gift to exchange.

  Leonard arrived carrying a large stuffed pheasant, which had brought him lots of stares from his fellow passengers on the city bus. Weather vanes and lobster pots were bargained for, and the whole party was so much fun that the group decided to form a club dedicated to these types of impromptu celebrations. Any member, at any time, could declare it to be Christmas, and they would assemble. They called it the Birdbrain Club, a nod to H. L. Mencken’s Smart Set, and considered it their own silly Algonquin Round Table. Membership was based on who Margaret, Dot, or Leonard wanted to be included. Proposed inductees, they decided, were required to exhibit a high degree of forgetfulness, an intense curiosity, or, at the very least, a short attention span. This flock of friends became Margaret’s closest allies. They were the people she relied on to cheer her up, and they knew all her secrets. They became her new family.

  * * *

  Margaret’s cadre of friends and colleagues came and went that summer at her rented cabin in Maine. Posey Thacher, her friend and fellow writer at Bank Street and W. R. Scott, had married the illustrator Clement Hurd the previous year. The trio carved out time to write, encourage, argue, and create together. Margaret threw out ideas constantly, and her enthusiasm was contagious. Working with Margaret could be exhausting and infuriating but extremely satisfying and never dull. Clem often found himself serving as mediator between his wife and Margaret. Nevertheless, their time together was always productive.

  Esphyr “Phyra” Slobodkina, an illustrator Margaret had first hired when she started working for Scott, also visited Maine that summer. Three years earlier, Phyra had walked into Margaret’s office at the insistence of her boyfriend, who needed money. He had heard that the pretty blonde at Scott was paying artists advances on books, which meant fast money. Phyra didn’t want to disappoint her boyfriend, so she brought Margaret a manuscript illustrated in her collage-style art.

  Phyra’s style was abstract, somewhat reminiscent of Pablo Picasso’s style. Margaret had seen his enormous mural Guernica, which depicted the Nazis’ Luftwaffe attack on a Basque village, when she visited the Paris Exposition with Roberta and Basil.

  As a young girl, Margaret had toured the art museums of Florence, Italy, and she asked the guide why the faces on some of the paintings looked so odd and others so realistic. She was told that artists’ perceptions—and mankind’s—were always evolving. When she saw Picasso’s mural, she finally understood what that Italian museum guide had meant. Picasso’s style changed people’s perception of art. Margaret hoped that Phyra’s art could do the same for children’s books.

  Margaret didn’t buy the manuscript Phyra had so carefully crafted, but she did hire the artist to illustrate one of the first books on the Scott list, The Little Fireman. By the time Phyra visited Margaret in Maine, her career was well established. Critics raved about her unique style. But she was struggling to complete one of Margaret’s texts for Doubleday; she came to Maine to get help from her favorite editor.

  That summer, the nation was deeply divided on whether to join in the European war. Anti-Semitic broadcasts and articles claimed the Jews were forcing America into the war for their own selfish interests.

  When Margaret learned that Phyra was Jewish, she confessed that she had to fight her prejudice after listening to those broadcasts. Her confession upset Phyra, who thought of Margaret as one of her closest friends. Margaret’s fumbling defense, that she simply didn’t know any Jews because there hadn’t been any at her schools or in her social circles, only cut Phyra more deeply. The next day, the artist took an early leave from Maine.

  Margaret was distraught. She sincerely believed she was democratic and fair-minded, but her conscience bothered her. The sad dismay on Phyra’s face even haunted Margaret at night. She dreamed she was on trial for her prejudicial rant, trying to defend her words. In the dream, a wounded Phyra sat in the courtroom, accusing Margaret of never really having been her friend after all. Margaret knew that she would have to make amends, and she hoped Phyra would listen to her sincere apology.

  * * *

  At the end of the summer, Margaret and Leonard walked to the small café at the center of Vinalhaven. On most summer nights, a small crowd gathered at the town’s single restaurant, but the busy season was over and the café was empty. Margaret didn’t even see the owner, who usually stood behind the long counter, bellowing greetings when customers walked in the door. Instead, Margaret and Leonard were greeted only with complete silence, and for a moment Margaret wondered if the café was already closed for the season. The sound of a door slamming at the back of the kitchen let her know someone was still there.

  The owner’s wife came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, and told them to sit anywhere they wanted. She looked much younger than her husband, Margaret thought, as they chose a table. The woman explained that she rarely worked there, but her husband had gone fishing with some friends. End of summer, he always left and she closed up, she explained. She asked where they had come from, and Margaret told her they had walked over from Long Cove. The woman nodded and said there wasn’t much left in the kitchen, but if they liked steak and tomatoes, she could make them a fine dinner.

  Margaret and Leonard gratefully accepted. It had taken them over an hour to get to town, and they were ravenous. Margaret had hiked across the island before, but it had been in daylight, and she had stopped along the way to pick berries. She was surprised by how much farther the walk seemed on a moonless night.

  A young couple strode in the door, and the woman came out from the kitchen. The smell and sound of steaks cooking were unmistakable, but the woman told the couple she was closed. They looked quizzically at her, the kitchen, and Margaret, but thanked the woman and left.

  The woman brought out Margaret’s and Leonard’s steaks and pulled up a chair to sit down with them. Knowing they had come from Long Cove, she asked if they knew Bill Gaston. Margaret kept her composure and told her she did, indeed, know him. The woman said she had been good friends with Bill’s former wife, Rosamond Pinchot. They used to swim together, back and forth up the slough for hours, talking about children and Maine and most anything. She was the kindest person, the woman said. What a tragedy, and now those poor Gaston boys were losing another mother.

  She saw Margaret’s surprised face and reported that Bill’s new wife had filed for divorce. Margaret and Leonard exchanged knowing looks but asked where she had heard this tidbit. She read it in one of the tabloids, she said, but she couldn’t remember which one. She had cut the article out to add to a scrapbook she kept about Rosamond. She could go find it, if they wanted. Margaret said not to bother but that it would be nice to see the scrapbook; she had heard such nice things ab
out Rosamond. The woman assured Margaret that Rosamond had been a wonderful woman, that she treated everyone the same—always a kind word for everyone. And such a good swimmer, she could swim for miles.

  While the woman went upstairs, Leonard shared his surprise that Bill and Lucy Gaston’s split had already made the news. In July, Lucy had caught Bill and Margaret in bed together at Sunshine Cottage. Lucy had promptly packed her bags. Bill refused to let her take their six-month-old son with her, so she left the island alone.

  Now it made sense to Margaret why one of Bill’s old lovers, Blanche Oelrichs, had come to visit. Blanche first found fame when she married John Barrymore and her book of erotic poems inspired by the affair became a bestseller. Blanche’s wealthy family had been embarrassed by her affair and poetry, so Blanche had permanently adopted her nom de plume, Michael Strange.

  Margaret had rowed over to Bill’s house a couple of weeks ago, and she had been surprised to find Michael sunning with Bill and chatting like casual old friends. Margaret detected the sexual undertones Michael laced into their conversation but wasn’t as jealous of Michael as she was intrigued. Michael was about twenty years older than Margaret but didn’t look it. Her voice was as melodious as a perfectly tuned violin, and her dark looks were exotically haunting. She had once been named the most beautiful woman in Paris. That was decades ago, but she was still beguiling.

  Michael was now making news for her political views. She was listed on the exclusive Social Register but also was a registered communist. She was a vocal member of the America First Committee and part of their weekly radio show out of New York. As pressure for America to enter the war raging in Europe grew, the AFC fought for isolationism. They believed that American democracy could only be preserved by staying out of the war and that even sending aid would weaken America’s ability to defend itself from attack. They contended that the British, the Roosevelt administration, and “Jewish-owned media” were brainwashing American citizens through propaganda. Bill also supported the AFC’s stance and joined the organization, as did hundreds of senators, business tycoons, and celebrities. The pilot Charles Lindbergh often spoke on behalf of the AFC at political rallies and on the group’s weekly radio show.