Woman Enters Left

by Jessica Brockmole

  She couldn’t meet his eyes. “I can’t.”

  “Please.”

  She smelled onions. “Dinner is burning.” She ducked from under his arms.

  It was—the potatoes and onions were in a charred heap on the bottom of the pan—but really she just needed to retreat. She needed to lean over the sink and catch her breath, run cold water over her hands, look at something other than Arnie’s eyes.

  He’d lied to her. All of those weeks when he’d been shut up in his office, “writing” that script. All of those weeks he’d been sneaking phone calls to Sidney Weller, freshly blacklisted, Hollywood poison. All of those weeks he spent pretending that they were still out of the HUAC’s reach.

  Arnie had followed her into the kitchen. “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” he said. “Lou, you have to believe me.”

  She moved the pan off the stove.

  “If you won’t talk about this now, when will you?”

  “I could ask you the same question.” She attacked the burned potatoes with the edge of a spatula. “You clearly haven’t done much talking.” The potatoes stubbornly held on. “When were you going to tell me about Sid? When were you going to tell me that you were risking your career, and mine, to help a friend?”

  “Lou, don’t be like that.”

  She spun. “Like what? Angry that my husband kept me in the dark? Scared that he did such a risky, stupid thing?”

  He gently took the spatula from her hand. “Lou.” She hadn’t even realized she’d still been holding it. “The less you knew, the safer you were.”

  He moved the pan into the sink, turned on the tap, and left. By the time he returned with two large whiskeys, her hands had stopped shaking.

  She accepted the drink, grateful to have something to hold on to. Her brief anger had abated, and she was suddenly exhausted. “Can we sit down?” she asked.

  “I’ll turn off the stove.”

  She sank onto the living room sofa and listened to him rattle around the kitchen, washing the pan, putting the steak back into the refrigerator, taking out the trash. She found his mahogany pipe hiding under the pile of mail. While she waited, she filled it with Old Holborn. A few minutes later he came out into the living room with two peanut butter sandwiches stacked on top of his glass. He hadn’t thought to bring plates.

  He set to eating his sandwich right away, but she held hers balanced on her knee. She still wore her apron. There were too many questions, many without discernible answers, so she asked, softly, “Why, Arn?” It’s what she wanted to know most of all.

  He didn’t answer right away. He finished his sandwich and stared into the swirl of whiskey in his glass. He wasn’t laughing anymore. Mostly he looked tired. “Sid’s having doors slammed in his face left and right. He can’t get a job writing a radio commercial, much less a screenplay. When he rang me up and asked if I’d front, he said he didn’t think I would, not in a thousand years. No one else would give him the time of day, a helping hand, a red cent. What could I say?” He took a swallow of his whiskey and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “He’d give me the boots from his feet if mine were bare. That’s what friends do.” He patted his front pockets for his pipe.

  She passed it over to him. “I love Sid—you know I do—but he shouldn’t have asked you. He had to have known what would happen.”

  “So did I. Lou, don’t think I haven’t been expecting this.” He set his glass down on the coffee table and picked up a matchbook from the ashtray. “Half the people I know are hiding out in Mexico. The other half are working as janitors or short-order cooks. And the other half are doing whatever it takes to keep doing what they love to do, even if it means they’re doing it from behind a front.”

  “That’s too many halves,” she murmured, and the whiskey had done enough of its job so that they both almost smiled.

  He lit his pipe. “I said yes, because I knew it would hit me at some point. I’d be named eventually. And if I can’t lift someone up on my way down, well then, what’s the point in letting myself fall?” He tossed the spent match into the ashtray. “If it’s dangerous to help a friend, what kind of world is this?”

  “I don’t know. An awful one. A suspicious one.” She leaned back against the rust-colored throw pillow. “I read in the paper today that Communists have ‘infiltrated’ nursery schools. Arn, I’m scared.”

  “I wouldn’t be.” He lifted her feet onto his lap. “Dr. Seuss is still working on that new edition of The Communist Manifesto. I hear there’s an aardvark.”

  She kicked him. “You dope, I’m serious.”

  He caught her feet. “So am I. Well, halfway.”

  “We’re in a time when nursery teachers are suspect. What chance does a bright, opinionated screenwriter stand? One who maybe almost sort of went to a rally or two in his day.”

  He put a finger to his lips. “Shh.”

  “You took a leap fronting for Sid and now they’ve caught you out.” She drank, wishing she had an ice cube. “You’ve been named. You’ll be subpoenaed.”

  “Yeah, but what are they going to ask me? There’s no proof. Sid and I were careful.”

  “So say teenage girls in backseats everywhere.”

  “Everyone knows it doesn’t happen the first time.”

  “You plan on doing this again?”

  “Well, when the right guy asks…”

  “Think of your reputation.”

  The banter died. Because that was exactly what was at stake.

  She finished her drink but did not refill it. “Why are we cracking jokes?”

  “You heard Gene Kelly. All the world loves a clown.”

  “This is serious stuff.”

  “The world is full of serious stuff,” he said. “War. Smog. Republicans. We can’t write them out of the script, but we can write around them. Laugh at them. Make the dialogue sizzle with disdain.”

  The telegram sat on the coffee table. Arnie had set his glass right on the center of it.

  “So, Lou,” he asked, “what should I do?”

  As though she had all the answers. As though she had any of them. “Let me freshen up our drinks.”

  It was a stalling tactic. She even went all the way to the kitchen for ice. She wanted time to think.

  Arnie was stubborn. He was Tom Joad. He’d stick to his principles, consequences be damned. She didn’t ask what he’d do because she knew. He wouldn’t go to see Robert Kenny. He’d dodge the subpoena or stand before the committee and plead the Fifth before he’d offer up a single name. He’d never give in.

  So he’d asked her. He already knew how he’d answer.

  She took her time arranging the ice cubes just so and mixing up two whiskey and waters. Arnie was leaning back on the sofa with his glasses off and his eyes closed. The mail was spread out on the coffee table. Mostly bills. A letter from Dad. The Los Angeles Times folded over a story about CARE for Korea packages delivered to troops in Pusan. On the telegram from Charlie, his glass had left a damp ring around the words “HEAD OUT OF TOWN.”

  She knew how to keep him safe from rumors, from HUAC, from everything here. He had old editors and old favors he could call up. He wouldn’t say no to her.

  When she sat back down, he opened his eyes.

  “You need to do something wildly patriotic,” she said. “Something that not even the Committee on Un-American Activities can argue with.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like doing your part in the fight against communism.” She handed him the glass. “Like going to Korea.”

  —

  Louise tries calling Arnie every time she stops. And there are a lot of stops. Gas stations. Diners. The five-and-ten at the edge of Pennsylvania, where she desperately buys a pair of earmuffs. Outside of the Midwest, the road is frustratingly hilly and she’s cold. By the afternoon she’s drunk more cups of coffee than she ever does on set. But still, with all of those stops, with all of those calls to Los Angeles, Arnie doesn’t answer.

  All
of this time in the car, all of this time doing nothing but watching the snow through the windshield and thinking, she misses him. She wants to hear his voice. She wants to say that she’s sorry.

  It’s an apology months unspoken. It’s guilt that’s been building since the telegram that he’d been injured far away in Korea. It’s eating away at her.

  That unsaid apology, that unacknowledged guilt, it’s why she counts to ten. Why she takes a breath and smiles before opening the front door. Why she doesn’t nag and why she just keeps buying the tins of saltines. Arnie’s in a wheelchair and he’s miserable and she knows it’s her fault.

  Back when he’d gotten that telegram from Charlie, back when they’d stretched on the sofa with whiskeys and nervous jokes, she was terrified. So terrified of the dangers at home that she disregarded the very real dangers in Korea. “Stay safe,” she’d said. “Go to war.”

  Remembering it now, she flushes. And then is instantly furious at her flushes, at her cradled guilt, at her laziness. She’s had months to apologize. She’s had months to ask Arnie’s forgiveness. She hits the steering wheel. The horn sounds. Though it was an accident, something about the blare fits her mood, and she pushes it again and again. A passing motorist slows and stares out of his window, but her frustration has abated. She waves at him to say that everything is all right. Maybe it is.

  At the next town, she stops for another cup of coffee and a slice of shoofly pie. She places her millionth call to Los Angeles, but nobody answers. She finishes her pie and places another call, this time to Western Union. “I’d like to send a telegram to Mr. Arnold Bates, Beverly Hills, California. ‘Strength is when we’re together. I’m sorry we were ever apart. Lou.’ ”

  “Is that a Santagram?” asks the clerk on the phone.

  “What?”

  “Any holiday greetings?”

  “ ‘Merry Christmas, Arn,’ ” she says. “ ‘I love you.’ ”

  Chapter Twenty

  Excerpt from “Incidence of Osteogenic Sarcomas in Radium Dial Painters” in The Journal of Practical Cancer Research (1931)

  Case 10: Left work as dial painter in good health. No anemia. No necrosis of jaw. Married and had a child. Five years later pain and swelling in ankle. Later pain throughout leg and in the area of the tarsal scaphoid. Anemia. Two spontaneous fractures, one of the femur and one of the tibia. No tests for radio-activity during life. Necropsy.

  E.W., a white female, twenty-eight years of age, worked as a dial painter from 1917 to 1919. She married, quitting her work as a dial painter, and had a child the next year.

  After the birth of her child in 1920, she was found to be anemic. It was attributed to the recent pregnancy and she was given liver extract.

  In 1924, she began having pain in her right ankle and began to limp. Roentgenograms were normal. Over the next two years pain was reported throughout her right leg and intermittently in her left hip. In December 1925, she suffered a spontaneous fracture in her femur, just above her right knee, stepping from a porch step. The patient required twelve weeks in a plaster cast for firm callus formation. Early in 1926 the pain in her ankle and foot intensified and she exhibited swelling above the tarsal scaphoid.

  She suffered from fainting spells and weight loss and the earlier diagnosis of anemia was reaffirmed by her family physician, Dr. A. G. Glass. She was prescribed Parson’s Vigor Tonic, a radium water patent medicine, as a treatment for the anemia.

  She suffered another spontaneous fracture of the tibia in May 1926, which was not treated. The fracture was malpositioned and, when seen by Dr. Barro Robinson, required open reduction. The operation revealed a tumor on her tibia, near the site of the fracture. Large masses of tumor tissue were removed and examined, proving to be a rapidly growing osteogenic sarcoma.

  No roentgenogram apparatus was available, but a manual examination by Dr. Robinson indicated a mass on the left side of the patient’s pelvis, extending into the abdomen. He reported that she was emaciated and had a mild fever.

  Over the next week dyspnea developed and pain worsened. The patient struggled for breath. Regular doses of morphine were administered and an operation to remove the mass on the pelvis was discussed. Death occurred on June 7, 1926, nearly seven years after the patient quit working at the dial factory.

  NECROPSY, performed by Dr. Barro Robinson, circuit doctor in Clark County, Nevada: Necropsy confirmed a large mass on the ilium, about 15 cm. in diameter. Another small sarcoma was found on the lower end of the right femur. The femur, the tibia, and the tarsal scaphoid on the right side all showed evidence of radiation osteitis.

  HISTOLOGIC EXAMINATION: Sections from the tumor on the hip showed a very cellular, rapidly growing osteogenic sarcoma. Sections of the right femur showed a regenerating marrow of the megaloblastic type, with many primitive cells.

  ESTIMATION OF RADIOACTIVITY: This has not been completed in this case. Qualitatively, the bones are radioactive.

  COMMENT: Though equipment capable of measuring radioactive output was not available, Dr. Barro Robinson previously treated miners working with radium ore on the Colorado Plateau. His histological knowledge of radiation osteitis added to the patient’s employment history and the presence of osteogenic sarcomas all suggest that this was an earlier case of radium-induced malignancy.

  Belzer & Belzer Associates

  Newark, N.J.

  November 15, 1926

  Carl L. Wild

  18 Daniel Street

  Newark, N.J.

  Dear Mr. Wild,

  Per your query, the statute of limitations has passed between the time your late wife stopped work at the dial factory and the time of her diagnoses, however there is some precedent that we can use here. In the recent cases of Marguerite Carlough, Sarah Maillefer, and Hazel Kuser (you may have read about their cases against U.S. Radium in the newspapers), an argument was made that tolling the statute should begin not at the time of unemployment but at the time when the symptoms appear or when the diagnosis is made.

  You say that Dr. Martland has reviewed her case, which will help our argument, given his reputation as an expert in these cases. Do you have copies of Mrs. Wild’s employment records and her medical records for visits relating to the radium poisoning? Was there an autopsy?

  Sincerely,

  Harold Belzer, Jr., Esq.

  Another Suit Against Radium Corp.

  Newark Attorney Seeks Settlement from Company for Family of Deceased Dial Painter

  * * *

  Death from Radio-active Paint

  Widower Says Wife Was Misdiagnosed for Years

  Belzer & Belzer, Newark attorneys, announced yesterday that they intended to bring a $15,000 suit against the United States Radium Corporation for the death of Mrs. Ethel D. Wild, who died after working in their Orange, N.J., factory, painting watch dials with luminous paint. The lawyers allege that Mrs. Wild’s death was caused by radium poisoning due to radio-active substances in the luminous paint. The dial painters were taught to wet the paintbrushes to a point with their lips, thus ingesting daily amounts of radium and mesothorium. The attorneys claim that women were not told of the risks, but were told that the luminous paint would give them a healthy glow.

  Mr. Carl L. Wild of Newark, N.J., the widower of Ethel Wild, is the latest to bring a suit against the corporation. He claims that his wife was seen by several doctors over the past few years, receiving diagnoses of anemia and rheumatism, before a Clark County, Nevada, physician, Dr. Barro Robinson, identified several lesions and masses in the patient and diagnosed radium poisoning. The diagnosis came too late for Mrs. Wild.

  This follows on the heels of recent suits brought by the families of three former dial painters, Miss Marguerite Carlough, Mrs. Sarah Maillefer, and Mrs. Hazel Kuser. Dr. Harrison S. Martland, Essex County physician and chief pathologist of the Newark City Hospital, is carrying out clinical examinations of affected dial workers.

  The three previous cases were recently settled out of court.

  Ja
nuary 12, 1927

  Carl Wild

  18 Daniel Street

  Newark, N.J.

  Dear Carl,

  I read about the court case, even all the way out here. It’s ridiculous that there should even be an argument. Lately I’ve been reading everything I can get my hands on about radium. I pinched a pair of glasses from the prop department and read journals in the medical school library. They all say (and have been saying) that radium is awful stuff and that a steady diet of it wreaks havoc on our bodies. I could single-handedly line up experts from here to New Jersey with the evidence.

  I wish I’d read all of this years ago. I wish I knew before I knocked on Ethel’s door with that ad for the watch factory and a cheerful “What do you say, Eth?” The years of suffering I could have saved her from. The years I could have saved you and AL from. Carl, among all this, despite everything that happened, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.

  Sincerely,

  Florrie

  Excerpt from “Wild vs. United States Radium Corporation”

  The plaintiff, husband of the decedent, as general administrator and as administrator ad prosequendum, commenced an action at law for damages caused by injuries to the decedent and her subsequent death on June 7, 1926.

  Ethel D. Wild, the plaintiff’s intestate, was employed by the defendant, the United States Radium Corporation, from September 9, 1917, to March 14, 1919, to paint watch dials with a luminous paint, containing insoluble sulphates of radium and mesothorium. The mixture was 1 part radioactive sulphate to each 40,000 of paint. The decedent worked 5 days per week, painting, on average, 250 dials per day, and pointed the brush with her lips after painting each of the fourteen numerals (1-12, with 6 not painted). Licking an average of 1 mg. of paint per numeral, at 250 per day, 5 days per week, the decedent ingested approximately 34,000 micrograms of radium over the 18 months of her employment. As little as 2 mcg. of radium fixed in the bones has been shown to be fatal.