The UnAmericans: Stories

by Antopol, Molly

  And Alexi, at a loss, in a moment of desperation, feeling, for the first time, that the possibility of losing Katherine was so horribly real, had tried to reason that acting was his career, his livelihood, it was how he supported his family. That if she really thought about it, he’d simply been playing another part—and that was when Katherine had stood up, buttoned her coat and said, “You’re an idiot,” and left him sitting in the hotel bar.

  Katherine Baker, one of the most politically mainstream people he’d ever met, one of the only people he’d ever known who had actually voted for Willkie. Katherine, from Burwell, Nebraska, who, when they first met, both in their early twenties and new to L.A., had told him he was the third Jew she’d ever talked to, and Alexi had found something sexy, even thrilling, in that admission, moving her hands jokingly through his hair to prove he didn’t have horns. Back then Alexi had been agentless, managerless, spending his days combing Backstage for casting calls—and even then, even when convinced of his own impending failure, he’d never doubted that things would pan out for Katherine. Right away she’d gotten a job as a receptionist at a furniture design studio, and though her dream wasn’t to answer phones but to be a designer herself, Alexi was certain the moment the company decided to hire a woman, Katherine would be the obvious choice. He used to love driving around with her, watching her point out things he’d passed a million times and never considered, how every lamppost, park bench, stop sign was someone’s aesthetic decision. He used to love, once they were married and living together in that bungalow off La Brea, walking out to their backyard and finding Katherine in a sleeveless shirt with a kerchief on her head, pulling apart some dilapidated chair she’d bought at a yard sale and stripping and reupholstering it herself, seeing potential for beauty in everything.

  She was the one person he’d ever confided the whole Alexi-Alex-Alexi transformation to, and though she claimed she was impressed with him for coming up with it, Alexi knew, deep down, that she found the whole thing sort of silly. She found the whole industry silly: always asking how he could be so enthralled by people like Stella and Jack, who spent their weekends lounging by the pool, drinking expensive wine and discussing immigrants’ rights while one of their Mexican workers cleaned leaves from the filter. Katherine was, at her core, so inherently practical and stable and—Alexi found this stunning—happy, that he sometimes feared she didn’t really get him. His anxieties, while initially cute to her in an ethnic, anthropological sort of way, as if his tendency to expect the worst could actually be traced back to some pogrom, soon seemed to exhaust her. Her own parents, immigrants themselves, had suffered just as much, maybe more, than Alexi’s, coming from Norway to an equally harsh climate, the grocery they ran only recently recovering from the Depression, her father’s liver disease exacerbated by all those years he couldn’t afford a doctor.

  That’s horrible, Alexi had said when she told him, when they were first together and swapping secrets late at night, more intimate, he had found, than the sex itself. Yeah, well, everybody’s fine now, she’d replied, as if there were nothing left to say. And he’d watched the reel of those difficult times flicker across her face for just a second longer before moving on to the next scene of her life story, where as girls she and her sister Ellen would fantasize about moving to California the first moment they could, and then—this was where Katherine’s voice went high and clear as a ballad—actually doing it.

  Katherine was so skilled at blocking out the things she didn’t want to look at, and, only a few years into their marriage, she began telling Alexi that his worries seemed self-indulgent and overblown, as though he had the power to turn them off like a switch. Which was one of the reasons he found Julia Wexler so easy to be around. Another Jewish transplant from the outer boroughs, another person who vacillated between the highs and lows of fame and failure at an athletic, almost Olympic speed. Another person whose ambition was fueled by the same paranoia that whatever success she’d achieved could be rescinded at any moment—though in all truth, Alexi knew Julia, one of the only head female writers in the industry, had more to be worried about than he. Even Stella, whom he and Julia both respected, knew she was able to do more interesting work by leaving her name off the credits, giving her husband all the glory. And while Julia was smarter than anyone on the film—no one would argue that—she felt she needed to wear these tailored man-suits to fit in at studio meetings; to crack more jokes than any of the guys; sometimes, Alexi felt, taking the shtick a bit too far by lighting a cigar around the writers’ table. But even though, because they worked together, she had no idea about the Alex-Alexi thing, he knew, in his heart, that Julia would have understood that as well. The moment he saw her he felt like he was going home, that all his acts and defenses could be dropped, shrugged off as easily in the doorway of her bedroom as his jacket and shirt and slacks.

  Julia was adamant their affair remain casual, not disrupting—let alone destroying—either of their marriages, and she asked about Katherine constantly. They’d never met, but Julia seemed genuinely interested in her. Not out of jealousy—more like Julia was so concerned about her potential threat to Alexi’s relationship that she wanted to protect his wife in some way. She was forever inquiring about Katherine’s background, her job, always taking her side when hearing about some minor tiff, even when Alexi didn’t think he was asking her to choose sides, and he could never tell if it was his wife in particular or some sort of intrinsic loyalty to other women (even if she was, in fact, the other woman).

  But Alexi always obliged and answered her questions, sometimes talking about Katherine for so long that he could almost see her in Julia’s house with them. His pretty, wavy-haired wife, complimenting Julia on her spacious Neutra, on her yard, on the wooden deck that stretched out to a garden filled with juniper and jacaranda trees. He could see the three of them sitting around Julia’s bright red patio table, Katherine shielding her eyes from the sun, fielding Julia’s queries about Benny, about the design world, Julia doling out advice on how to nudge her boss into giving her more challenging projects, Katherine shooting Alexi a look that this woman was pushy. Then Katherine would flip the conversation back to Julia—she seemed to believe sharing anything about her accomplishments was inherently shameful and immodest—and as soon as talk of the movie came up, Julia and Alexi would immediately launch into some mistake they’d made at work and lean in together, trying to untangle whatever knot they’d created. And Katherine would sit back, stare up at the trees and tell them both in the calm, no-nonsense voice she’d perfected even before motherhood, to stop their useless analyzing: no one else on the film was possibly obsessing over whatever slight they feared they’d made, and why couldn’t they just enjoy the lovely afternoon?

  What Alexi never got to tell Julia, before she’d named names and severed all contact with him, was that she shouldn’t have felt so guilty, that a twisted and terrible part of him wondered if the affair had actually made him a better husband. Somehow spending all that time with Julia, talking about Katherine, only reinforced his love for his wife. Plus getting to obsess over everything work-related with Julia meant he didn’t need to burden Katherine with any of it, letting him throw all his energy into his family. And Katherine was spared his boring industry stories when he knew, strutting around the set in his military boots with a war-torn, gutted-out backdrop behind him, that Julia was waiting on the sidelines, ready to go out for drinks and pick apart everything that had happened on the movie that day, looking, if not for her pantsuit and heavy script under an arm, like one of her own characters, a dark-haired Soviet beauty pining for Lev back in the village.

  He’d always felt so rejuvenated, coasting down Culver from the studio, back home to his wife and son. It was as if he were finally fulfilled. Katherine satisfied him maybe ninety percent but Julia was perfect for that niggling ten. Very little made him happier than pulling into his driveway and seeing, through the window, his family moving around inside, a diorama of his life he could so effort
lessly step back into. Katherine’s boss had finally agreed to let her take a stab at designing—sometimes at dinner they’d clink glasses to their good fortune—and Alexi used to feel so blessed walking in and finding her on the living room floor, going over sketches, surrounded by fabric swatches and charcoal pencils. He loved listening to her talk about flax and bark cloth, comparing Prouvé to Ponti, words as foreign and beautiful to Alexi as Italian or Portuguese.

  Katherine never got a chance to finish the project. When Alexi was called in to testify, her boss, a man they’d had for dinner half a dozen times, whose son used to play with Benny, said he just didn’t want to “get caught up in all that business” and fired her as quickly as he’d hired her. Now she was working at a dress shop she’d once frequented in Century City and waiting on, Alexi was certain, the same women she used to shop and lunch with. Women Alexi doubted were calling anymore, let alone inviting her to parties and outings with their children, no one wanting to get their hands dirty, no one believing for a second that the wife of Alexi Liebman hadn’t been involved in anti-American activities as well.

  “SO THINGS haven’t been easy,” Alexi said now, turning to his son. Benny was sprawled on the narrow motel bed, clutching his root beer with both hands. “Is she—talking to you about this?”

  “She said she saw those FBI guys everywhere. So Aunt Ellen told her to see a psychiatrist.”

  “Benny.” Alexi set down his drink. “Have you been eavesdropping on your mother?”

  He shook his head. “She tells me. But she doesn’t see Dr. Bittman anymore.”

  “He fixed her?”

  “No,” Benny said. “Stella, from the movie? She came over a couple months ago. She said she felt bad doing this—and she really seemed to—but that Mom had to stop going to Dr. Bittman. That what she told him could put a lot of people in trouble. Stella gave her the name of a good one in the Party.”

  Alexi looked around the room, at the frayed carpet and the yellow bedspreads and his son beside him, his tongue licorice-black. So Katherine was being watched from both sides. “And she went to this new psychiatrist?”

  “She was pretty upset after Stella’s visit. So she isn’t seeing anyone.” Benny shrugged, but the gesture looked false and exaggerated. This was not the way, Alexi thought, that a nine-year-old was supposed to talk. “During the day she’s okay,” Benny continued, “but at night sometimes she thinks they’re at the window, and it’s just a branch. Or she makes me check inside closets and behind doors. But lately she sleeps with me, and that makes it better.”

  “And those FBI men—were they following her?”

  “Mostly they’d just park across the street and watch us. Once I went out to the side yard and saw them going through our trash, and another time they threw their sandwich crusts on our lawn, but other than that they were alright,” Benny said, as if the whole thing were perfectly normal, as if he were simply describing nuisancy neighbors, and Alexi felt his throat constrict. He stood up. He scooped all the wrappers off the bed and tossed them in the garbage. “Let’s get you to sleep.”

  Benny pulled out a little leather toiletry kit—Alexi could see everything in there, so neatly packed, even a bag of tissues, and a tiny spool of floss Katherine must have measured out just for this trip. His son was a good brusher, working even his back teeth and gums, and Alexi found that he was keeping his own toothbrush in his mouth much longer than he would have were he alone.

  Then Benny spit, looked up and said, “I wanted to visit you this year.”

  “I know you did,” Alexi said, slowly. “And I really wanted to see you. This thing with your mother and me—it’s complicated.”

  “I know,” Benny said. He walked back into the room, where he stripped down to his underpants and climbed into bed.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Alexi said, wanting very much not to talk about it.

  “That’s okay. It’s kind of nice having a break from her, you know?”

  Benny looked somewhere past him, at the wooden nightstands, the brass lamp, finally settling on the desert landscape on the wall, cacti and brown hills and a moon too pocked and orange to be taken seriously. He seemed exhausted. “From it. From the whole thing. That’s what I meant.” He pulled the covers to his neck and closed his eyes. “You know any good stories?”

  “Sure.” Alexi was touched by the question. “About what?”

  “About jail?”

  Alexi stood in the doorway of the bathroom, watching his son. He was so tiny in that twin bed. He thought about Katherine, somewhere in the city, peering out her sister’s window to make sure she hadn’t been followed. He had not only ruined much of her life, he thought; he had passed on the horrible flu of panic to the one person he’d believed was immune. “There isn’t much to say,” he said, finally. “You don’t do a lot in there.”

  “But what’s it like?” Benny said.

  “It’s not a good place.”

  “But—”

  “It’s a place you never want to end up, understand?” That was the way his own father used to talk to him, shutting down a conversation before it had a chance to happen, like watching a storefront’s metal grate slide down right in front of him, one of those shop owners who randomly closed up whenever they felt like it, even when customers were waiting outside. Alexi could have been five, ten, fifteen—it didn’t matter, it was always the same. Always the feeling that every question he asked his father, even something as innocuous as whether he should set the table, was an intrusion and a burden. That Alexi’s presence alone exhausted the man, made him breathe deep as though he were trying hard not to snap. Which of course made Alexi ham it up more, anything for his attention. He had such a clear image of coming home from school and attempting to regale his father with some anecdote about his teacher. Desperately attempting to fatten it into a full-fledged story, impersonating classmates the man might have found more interesting than his son (was that when the performing had started, Alexi wondered, back in that small, bright kitchen in Queens?) while his father closed his eyes and grimaced, as if doing everything in his power to stop his patience from reaching its end, and Alexi wondered now why he couldn’t do things differently. Not just to stand in the doorway ruminating about it, but to actually walk across the room and sit beside his son.

  So he did it. He perched on the edge of the bed, the green motel sign reflecting off Benny’s toothpick arms. But the boy was asleep (to be nine again, Alexi thought, dreaming before your head hit the pillow), his breath low and even, his knees tucked to his chest and his arms around them, as if, even with the bed all to himself, he was still carving out the space where his mother usually crawled in beside him.

  ALEXI HAD never believed that saying about everything improving with a new day. Usually the moment he awoke, before even opening his eyes, he was well aware of all that was wrong in his life. But the following morning was optimistically sunny, and even breakfast at a nearby diner wasn’t half bad, a fruit cup, eggs, free refills on the coffee and toast with three different kinds of jelly. A breeze hit him as they walked back to the car, that perfect California weather Alexi hadn’t realized he’d missed until right then, when he was so comfortable he forgot about the temperature completely.

  “So listen,” he said to Benny, pulling out of the lot. “No filling station junk today. I say we hit up a few vineyards, have a picnic lunch somewhere special.” In the daylight, even the thoroughfare was quite pretty. Vineyards combed out on either side of him, and beyond, cows ambled across bright yellow fields. They both, at the same time, rolled down their windows, and all that balmy air filled the car.

  Alexi found a jazz station and for about an hour they drove around. They stopped at a cheese shop for the best picnic food he could find: a hunk of Camembert, a Bûchette de Banon and a baguette. Down another road he pulled over at a farm stand and bought a carton of raspberries. He didn’t bother to wash them and he and Benny ate as they drove, licking their lips and wiping their hands on their pant
s and giggling. Alexi was feeling giddy. He was feeling like a kid again, being with his kid, and as they coasted through the hills, he felt something opening inside him, a tranquillity he hadn’t known was there. This was what it felt like to drive around with your son on a warm day, he thought. He put an arm around Benny’s shoulder and his son immediately leaned into him, all his weight against Alexi’s chest.

  Up ahead was a Mediterranean-style winery, white stucco with iron gates and bougainvillea trailing the walls and the terra-cotta steps. The gardens on either side of the long, sloping driveway were so impeccably groomed that Alexi felt a little guilty sullying the lot with the Plymouth. Gazebos dotted the property, and in the center of the grounds was a pond where Alexi could see, darting beneath the water, Japanese koi that he suspected cost more than Katherine’s monthly rent in Palms.

  Inside the tasting room, wooden barrels were scattered about with cheese and cracker samples; Alexi was proud when he saw his son take only one, using the little square napkin to collect the crumbs, without him having to say so. He would tell Katherine, he decided, that he noticed the good manners she was instilling in their son. It might be a good excuse to call her.