Our Woman in Moscow

by Beatriz Williams

  “That’s it. You could stay at my flat. I can’t take any vacation myself, or they’d know something was up. But I’d come home early every night. I’d take the most lavish care of you. We’d have a week or more.”

  “Like paradise. But not until the stitches are out. And the cast.”

  “How long is that?”

  “Four more weeks for the cast. Is that all right? The first week of May.”

  Sasha bent his head to kiss her hand. He’d brushed his hair wet, and the warm light from the courtyard turned his hair a sleek, dark gold. Iris thought how soft his hair felt as it fell on her stomach and breasts and thighs.

  “All right,” he said. “The first week of May.”

  Ruth

  June 1952

  New York City

  I first discovered Barbara Kingsley in the same way Columbus discovered America—while I was busy looking for something else. There was this party in Greenwich Village, some artist pal, low-down dive kind of crowd, and I was hoping to glimpse a certain on-again, off-again beau of mine and climb on again.

  At the time, Barbara was doing some artist work—you know what I mean, sitting there nude on a stool to inspire a bunch of men and their drawing pencils—and she lounged on a sofa between a pair of girls, bearing a glass of gin and a bored expression. The bells went off in my head. I forgot all about Mr. On Again and bustled right up to her.

  “Excuse me. Ruth Macallister.” I stuck out my hand. She not so much shook it as curled her fingers briefly around mine. “If you haven’t already signed with a major New York modeling agency, I’d like you to consider mine.”

  “You don’t even know my name, Miss Macallister.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Barbara Kingsley,” she said.

  “Well, Barbara Kingsley, I think you’re about the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met, and I’d like to set you up with a photographer for some headshots. Our expense, of course.”

  The bored expression hardened into appraisal. She later told me that she was trying to figure out if I was making a genuine professional advance or a personal one, if you know what I mean, and being of a sapphic bent herself, she was hoping for the latter. (She didn’t put much faith in white folks who wanted to sign her up as a model, which was perfectly fair, I guess.)

  Anyway, I convinced her eventually that my offer was bona fide, no strings attached, and we proceeded with the usual formalities. But that look of appraisal was a warning, I thought. It was like that yellow colonial flag with the snake, Don’t Tread on Me. Miss Kingsley might allow me to manage her career—and champagne and oysters with a few celestial bodies at the Palmetto Club certainly fell under the standard definition of a professional outing, if a sensational one—but take one step across that line and Barbara called the shots.

  Which all goes to explain how I wind up losing my bet, after all. We remain at the Palmetto for less than two hours, just long enough to drink a case of champagne and eat five dozen oysters, before we part company with our glittering entourage and head uptown to Barbara’s neck of the woods. Her cousin owns a club, she says, a joint where they play real live jazz, none of this watered-down midtown nonsense, and she’ll vouch for me. I say all right.

  I thought she was kidding about vouching for me, but sure enough, the doorman stops us on the way in and respectfully asks Miss Barbara what the devil she thinks she’s doing.

  “Aw, she’s all right, Linus,” Barbara says, and Linus sighs and waves us through. Barbara finds us a table right near the front. The orchestra’s on a break, it seems, so we get to talking while they bring us some drinks and peanuts.

  Barbara watches me light a cigarette and cracks a wee smile. “Well, that was certainly fine work, Miss Ruth. I’ll bet they can see your halo shining all the way over in Brooklyn.”

  “Can’t they, though. I call it two birds with one stone—flashbulbs popping for Miss Barbara Kingsley, the newest modeling sensation, and the Palmetto Club gets a lesson in human decency.”

  “And you get to feel like everybody’s fairy godmother, handing out favors to black folk.”

  “What’s wrong with that? So long as I use my fairy powers for good.”

  “Just don’t let it get to your head, is all. God gives us all kind of ways to make others feel small.”

  “Say.” I set down my drink. “That didn’t bother you, back there. Did it?”

  “Of course it bothered me. Like the man said, I don’t want to be a member of any club that won’t have me. I did it for the publicity, is all. And now I like it better right here among my own kind, where I know folks can appreciate me.”

  “You think I’m stuck on myself, don’t you?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t know anything about you, Miss Macallister, except you’re the kind of woman who likes to have her own way.”

  “Most men like to have their own way, and nobody faults them for it.”

  Barbara laughs and says that’s true, sure enough, if by most men you meant all men, which is why she stays away from them generally. Speak of the devil. The orchestra then starts filing back to their instruments. Each man—they’re all men, of course—holds a drink in one hand, full enough to make you guess it isn’t his first. I jingle my ice and consider them as they tune and riff.

  Barbara leans over. “Something on your mind? Besides that.”

  What I mean to say is Nothing. What comes out is My sister.

  “I didn’t know you had a sister,” she says.

  “I think she’s in trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble? Man trouble? Baby trouble?”

  “Both, I guess, but those are just the root cause of her main trouble. I don’t know for sure, though. I haven’t seen her in twelve years.”

  “Twelve years!” Barbara chokes on her gin. “What kind of idiot child you be, Miss Macallister?”

  “Now, that’s not fair. Maybe my sister’s the idiot.”

  Barbara shakes her head. “Don’t matter. Blood is the only thing that counts in this world, boss lady. Don’t you know that? I don’t care what you done or what she done, you both need your heads knocked together. Ain’t nobody in the world understands you like your sister. Ain’t nobody ever will.”

  At that point, the orchestra swings into action, thank God, swallowing up all the other noise in the room. I don’t want to continue that conversation and wish most fervently that I hadn’t started it to begin with.

  The trouble is, you can drown out a conversation like that and even stop it entirely, but you can’t forget it. The words keep beating inside your head to the illicit syncopation of the music outside, until you’re half convinced you might go crazy with them.

  A spring chicken I am no longer, and by two o’clock in the morning my jaw splits wide open with yawning. Barbara tells me to hand over the five bucks, and I actually ask her What five bucks?, because I’ve lost count of the lime rickeys I’ve drunk to drown out the syncopation of Barbara’s wise advice.

  Our bet, she says, and Oh right, I answer.

  I pay her the five bucks and pay the bill, too. Prepare to rise, and that’s when Barbara puts her hand on my elbow.

  “I’m guessing he’s yours?” she says, nodding to a man sitting alone at a table in the corner.

  I follow her gaze and squint. Big, wide-shouldered man, face too shadowed to properly see. But two things are perfectly clear, even to my addled eyes. Number one, he’s a white man, as fair-haired and pink-skinned as they come. And number two, he’s watching me.

  “Hell’s bells,” I mutter.

  Barbara offers to find me a ride home, call me a trustworthy taxi or something, but I figure I’m not going to start being a coward at this particular moment. I march right up to him and ask if he’s ready to leave now.

  “Certainly,” Sumner Fox says politely.

  He pays his bill—I have the feeling he left a large tip—and takes my elbow like a gentleman. I don’t look back, just sail between the last few tables and out into the lob
by and then the open air of West 125th Street. Fox signals to a taxi waiting by the curb, a half block away. I waste an entire moment thinking I’ve been very stupid indeed.

  But there’s nothing underhanded about the way he helps me into the taxi and gives the driver my address before he settles on the other side of the back seat, acres of cloth between us. As I settle against the seat and watch the buildings skim by, I experience this feeling of levitation, as if we’re actually flying instead of driving, but the sober part of my brain—if one can be said to still exist—knows this is only an illusion. I anchor myself to the pocketbook in my lap, which happens to contain Iris’s missives, both of them, postcard and letter. I don’t know why I carry them around with me like that. Maybe it’s a talisman—maybe my subconscious is trying to figure out what I should do with them and considers it’s best to keep the objects on hand in case of need.

  The nice thing about two o’clock in the morning is you’re not subject to the aggravation of New York traffic. We skim down Fifth Avenue, pausing only when some light turns red before us. I don’t speak, and neither does Fox. Like me, he’s looking out the window, contemplating the blur of facades. Only they aren’t a blur to him, I’ll bet. Sumner Fox likely drank nothing stronger than ginger ale, certainly not while on duty. He probably sees each building as an individual edifice—notices all the fine architectural details—will remember them tomorrow.

  “So why’d you quit football?” I hear myself ask.

  “There was a war on.”

  “Are those your real teeth?”

  He laughs—actually laughs, for the first time—and turns to me. “Fellow named Greenwald knocked the two front ones out of me at the Dartmouth game.”

  “Was he sorry?”

  “He was sorry afterward. Offered to pay for the dental work.”

  “I’ll bet you scored your goal anyway.”

  “Touchdown,” he says.

  The taxi slows and turns left on Fifty-Ninth Street to make its way east. Across Fox’s face, the city lights roll and flash. He stares right back, cold sober, which is about the most terrifying thing you can imagine. I don’t flinch, however. Maybe I’m too drunk to focus, maybe I’m too drunk to care. The air is fresh for June, as clean as you can possibly hope for at the beginning of a Manhattan summer, and the windows are cranked down to allow this miraculous breeze inside.

  “Let’s stop here and walk,” I say. “I could use the air.”

  Fox leans forward to the driver and says something. The taxi pulls to the curb at the corner of Lexington Avenue. My palms are damp around my pocketbook. Fox pays the driver and jumps out to swing around the bumper and open my door. For once, I don’t beat the gentleman to it—not that I don’t appreciate niceties, you understand. I’m just too impatient under ordinary circumstances, too eager to get on with wherever it is we’re going. Tonight there’s no rush, and I need the help. I need a steady arm to draw me from the taxi and set me on my feet on the good solid New York sidewalk.

  We don’t say an awful lot. Sumner Fox doesn’t seem to talk much, as a rule. Nor does he touch me, except when I stumble, stepping off the curb at First Avenue. We turn down Sutton Place to the sound of the traffic whisking along the East River Drive, the horns and distant shouts and nighttime music.

  “How do you like the city?” I ask.

  “It’s all right. It’s like they say, it never sleeps.”

  “You strike me as a country boy, that’s why I asked.”

  “I guess I like the country most. But I can appreciate what the city has to offer.”

  “I remember VE Day. That was something, Mr. Fox. Every stranger you met was your new best friend. Never kissed so many men in my life. I remember thinking when I went to bed the next day, there was no place I’d rather be on a day like that, celebrating a thing like that.” I pause. “Of course, you were out in the Pacific, weren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  I don’t often curse myself, but I curse myself then. A Japanese prison camp, that’s what Uncle Charlie said, though not even Ruth Macallister dares ask him for certain. I find myself wondering, out of the blue, where Iris was on VE Day. She must have been in Europe itself, some embassy or another. I suppose they celebrated, all right. She and Sasha.

  A handkerchief appears before me. “Here,” says Fox, and it’s only then that I realize I’m crying.

  “I’m so sorry. I’m afraid I’ve had a little too much to drink.”

  “I figured.”

  We walk on to my apartment building, another block down on the corner of East Fifty-Sixth Street. The doorman doesn’t look at all surprised to see me. He trades a glance with Fox that looks like a question, and Fox makes the absolute briefest negative shake of his head.

  I proffer the handkerchief. “Thanks for the loan.”

  “Keep it.”

  “I couldn’t possibly.”

  He takes back the handkerchief, and in that instant I regret insisting. It seems so pointlessly rude.

  “Why were you tailing me?” I ask.

  “It’s my job.”

  “To make sure I’m not in secret communication with my sister, maybe?”

  “Something like that. But also to demonstrate, if I can, that you don’t need to be afraid of me. I’m on your side. I’m on hers. She’s not in any trouble with us, not if I can help it.”

  He says this sincerely, and I don’t for a moment imagine he could be lying. I’m not saying my instincts about people are never wrong, but they’re only wrong if some prejudice on my part interferes with their natural operation. My instinct about Sumner Fox is that he’s a straight shooter. If I were going to trust any FBI man, I would trust him.

  But I’m not going to trust an FBI man. I know what I know, after all.

  “I appreciate the lift home, Mr. Fox. I do hope I didn’t ruin your evening.”

  “Not at all. Take some aspirin and get some rest. And try not to worry so much about your sister.”

  “Who said I was worried?”

  “You did.” He tips his hat and steps back. “We’ll find her, never fear. Good night, Miss Macallister. You’ve still got my card, if you hear anything?”

  I pat my pocketbook. “Right here.”

  My apartment is not the kind of shabby shoebox you ordinarily associate with single Manhattan career girls. If you must know, it used to belong to my parents. I grew up in this apartment and, since neither my brother nor my sister ever had any use for it, haven’t set foot within its walls in years, I had it redecorated ten years ago according to my own taste. The room we once called a dining room has been converted into a library. Harry’s room I kept as it was, because Harry’s the kind of brother who might turn up at any moment after a decade’s absence and expect his dinner kept warm and his scotch with ice. The room I once shared with Iris became a spare bedroom for theoretical guests, and my parents’ bedroom now belongs to me.

  But I can’t sleep yet. How can I sleep with my nerves in such a fizzle? I run a bath and sink gratefully into the warm water with a cigarette and a glass of Alka-Seltzer. I instruct myself not to think about Iris, but when my eyes close, there she is. All this time I’ve banished her without effort, and now that I need her gone—absolutely must be clear of Iris for my own peace of mind—she won’t leave me alone.

  I have twenty-two years crammed full of memories of Iris, but she keeps appearing to me from her hospital bed in Rome, after the accident. She was a mess. Bruises everywhere, one eye socket so black and puffy you couldn’t make out the eyeball within, to say nothing of the broken ankle and various bandages stuck upon her body, so that she resembled a half-finished mummy. She was asleep when I came in, but her eyes opened the instant I came to the bed. She smiled bravely because she didn’t want me to worry. “I’m sorry,” she sort of croaked.

  Sorry!

  I don’t cry much, and I certainly wasn’t in the messy habit in those years. What a waste of time—what a crummy way to spend an afternoon. But I came within a kitten’s
whisker of breaking down in that moment. Iris was sorry! She was sorry to have occasioned all this trouble. She took the blame on her delicate shoulders.

  You understand, therefore, that Iris and I are not estranged because she failed me in some unforgivable way. Iris would never fail anybody. There is not one disloyal bone in her body, not one atom of her that would not sacrifice itself for your sake. People might call that weakness, but I’ve always envied her for it, if I’m honest with myself and with you. She will never stagger under the weight of guilt, as I do—she will know regret, which is the lot of all mankind, but not because she’s done anything to hurt you.

  By the time I rise from the bath, dripping and wrinkled, it’s practically dawn. Saturday, thank goodness, so I don’t need to trouble myself about work. I brush my teeth and spread the cold cream over my face and find a clean pair of pajamas in the chest of drawers. The air in the bedroom is warm and stuffy and humid from the bath. I open a window and pull back the covers, and as I begin the ascent into bed my toe discovers something flat.

  I glance at the floor. Just under the edge of the bedframe lies the snapshot Iris enclosed in her letter.

  I take my time examining them, these nephews and niece I’ve never met. Iris’s kids. Their features are blurred, as if the photographer moved his hand at the exact instant of the shutter’s opening. Still, you can gather in the grosser details. Their hair glimmers in various states of blondness, like their father, and their neat, old-fashioned clothes are exactly the kind of uniform I imagine Iris would dress them in.

  My finger touches the small, glossy rectangle and traces the outline of a face, a tiny ear, a smear of hair so blond it might be white. A hand that clutches the fingers of the little boy who stands next to her, whose face seems to have been caught in the act of turning toward her to say something. A smocked dress that comes just to her knees, and the plump little knees themselves, and the white socks with the ruffle and the black Mary Jane shoes, like the ones I used to wear when I was small.