Secret Anniversaries
Page 16
“I feel so alone,” said Joe.
“It’s this job, it’s what you’re doing.”
“I’ve disappeared,” he said, in a whisper.
Then, a little stiffly, as if the breath it took to utter an intimate word held within it an element that made him heavy, awkward, Joe got up from his chair and took the coffeepot off the stove. He poured a cup for Caitlin and handed it to her.
“Are you in love with somebody?” he asked.
She was silent. It seemed impossible not to tell him the truth. She felt his eyes, his loneliness, and the life he was living pulling it out of her.
“I’m with someone I work with, in the office.” She held her expression steady but felt her eyes go indistinct. Joe handed the coffee cup to her but she put it immediately onto the table, afraid that she would rattle cup and saucer with her trembling hand.
“You don’t have to tell me who,” Joe said. “Not if you don’t want to.”
“I haven’t told anyone. It’s hard for me even to tell myself.”
“There’s nothing to be done about it, is there? The heart’s a dog, can’t be trained.” He slowly filled his coffee cup and then placed the pot onto the stove, turned off the gas.
“It’s Betty Sinclair, Joe. I never thought this would ever happen to me.”
“I know, Caitlin. I think I’ve known it for a long time.”
“Does it make you feel strange around me, knowing?”
“It makes me feel just fine. It makes me feel I can say anything to you, that you could really know me, too. Does that sound too selfish?”
“No. Not at all.” She looked at him closely, waited for him to tell her something hidden in himself, to match her nakedness with a nakedness of his own.
He walked over to the Hotpoint refrigerator. The motor on top of it rasped; the small kitchen was filled with the hot, lurid light of the sinking sun. Joe opened the refrigerator door and reached in for a quart bottle of milk.
“You want milk with your coffee, don’t you?” he asked. He passed the bottle back to her without turning around. He was reaching into the back of the icebox and when he turned around again he held a brown paper bag, folded three or four times on top.
“I want you to take this home with you, Caitlin. Read it and then get rid of it.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. A diary, I guess. I’m not as good at just saying what’s in my heart as you are. So I wrote it down.”
“Your diary?”
“I know, like a high school girl.”
“That’s not what I mean.” She moved away from him.
“Take it, please. I want you to have it. I can’t keep it here anyhow. If anyone ever found it, everything I’m doing would be discredited.” He opened the bag and took the journal out of it. It was bound in black cloth, with black leather at the corners. “Maybe when all this is over you can give it back to me.” He stepped toward her, clasped her wrist, and placed the book in her hand.
“I won’t read it,” said Caitlin. “I won’t even open it.”
“But I want you to,” said Joe. “I’m in a balloon and I’m drifting away. Your having this and knowing me, it’s like ballast, it gives me the weight, makes me think one day I can come back to earth.
“I can’t even live with my own secrets, Joe.” “Well, now you’ve got mine to keep them company.” He smiled and then leaned toward her, with a hesitant, formal bow from the waist, and kissed her ceremoniously on her tender, burning cheek.
EIGHT
SEPTEMBER 1, 1941
A rumor lurking just out of view could terrorize Washington just as reports of an escaped madman could immolate inner peace in Leyden, and for the past week in Washington the rumor taking shape was that a reporter had gotten hold of proof that dozens of senators and House members had been using their offices to mail out German propaganda.
There were politicians who knew full well that if this story was to become prominent news then they would be implicated. And there were others who wondered if perhaps, through the influence of a staff member or through their own practical desire to be useful, they had used their congressional franking privileges to send out something that would turn out to be, upon closer inspection, Nazi in nature. Of course, on a certain level, it would be a survivable crisis in the lives of most of the politicians. The propaganda in question was not terribly overt, contained no cries for a master race. Primarily, it was about keeping America out of the war, the dangers of Communism and atheism (now and again called “anti-Christian thought”), as well as the joys of the outdoors, the immorality of vivisection, and the historic roots of German-American kinship. Yet there was the sticking point of misappropriated funds, and it was this issue, the issue of using American money to send out non-American material, that seemed potentially most troublesome.
Joe already had proof that Stowe had sent out documents prepared by German propaganda officers to his constituents in Windsor County. Under headlines such as “GERMAN CHRISTIANS PRAY FOR PEACE” and “PATRIOTISM, OUTDOOR LIVING, AND THE NEW GERMANY” and “WHO PAYS FOR AMERICA’S WAR DEBTS?” Windsor County Republicans had been reading material written by George Viereck, of Scotch Plains, New Jersey, who was known variously as George F. Corners, James Burr Hamilton, Donald Furtherman Wicketts, and Dr. Claudius Murchison, and whom Joe could prove was a Nazi intelligence officer.
What Joe could not prove was whether or not Stowe knew that the literature he was franking was German propaganda in pedigree as well as markings. He had asked Caitlin to supply some evidence—an overheard conversation, a shred of correspondence—but Caitlin, without exactly refusing, failed to do it. It was not that she couldn’t see her way through what was at issue: she wanted Joe to have his proof, she wanted to stop and even hurt the congressmen who were sending out the German material, all of them. And it wasn’t that she couldn’t betray Stowe. The favor of the job he had given her hadn’t been a favor to her but to those who would humiliate her. And Stowe had never treated her with anything more than idle curiosity—she was just a girl at a desk. No, what prevented Caitlin from supplying Joe with the extra dollop of proof was her loyalty to Betty.
It was hard to fully understand loyalty just then. It was hard to counterbalance the weight of the one you loved resting trustingly in your arms and the other, unseen weight—palpable at times, merely notional at others—of the world beyond. To Caitlin, the very word “loyalty” held within it nobility, reverence, and a sort of stinging, throat-constricting pride. You were loyal. You protected the ones you loved, just as Caitlin had protected her parents from the condescending assumptions of others, at least in the grim, gladiatorial arena of her own heart. She had been loyal. She believed her mother was more beautiful than Mary Fleming and that her father was far more clever than Fulton. Her parents had raised and protected her and she had owed them her allegiance. The flag that drooped in the corner of her classroom deserved it, too, and she pronounced every syllable of the pledge each morning with her hand on her breast.
Yet Caitlin could not fail to ask herself how much of the loyalty she felt toward Betty consisted of the pleasure Betty gave her, in which case the loyalty would have been to her own blinking and bewildered self, now as it pecked itself out of the shell of its long incubation, now as it basked in the sweet, steady light of another’s regard. If Betty had given her less, then Caitlin’s loyalty would have seemed purer, more on the level with her loyalty to her parents, who gave her almost nothing of what she had really desired—no status, no formal education, no style to speak of—or her loyalty to her country, which was really only a persistent, persuasive abstraction. Yet these loyalties were more august, and certainly unimpeachable, precisely because they carried within them no pleasures or rewards: they were abject, like all true passions. You did not, after all, take Communion out of keenness for the taste of the Eucharist.
Her loyalty to Betty was finally inextricable from passion, from the moments they shared, the fetal curl of the
recess Betty’s body left in the bed when she slipped away each morning, the smell of perfume and tooth powder when she returned ten minutes later, with coffee and the newspaper.
Betty adored her. Indeed, there were times when Betty’s ardor seemed a kind of madness, times when she would fall to her knees in front of Caitlin and wrap her arms around Caitlin’s waist, times when she repeated, You are so beautiful, over and over until it was an incantation and her hands trembled as they hovered over Caitlin’s face, times when she would force Caitlin through a recitation of every remotely sexual moment of her life, over and over, like a coach forcing a lazy miler around and around the black, crunching cinder track. Indeed, in declaring her love for Caitlin, Betty had awakened in her own character a quality of obsessiveness that she had not realized was hers before. She arranged lunches together, devised office work that would keep them together, and once they were back at their apartment, it was impossible for Caitlin to read, write letters, bathe, or even pee without Betty at her side or at least nearby.
It was a wonder, really, that Betty’s relations with Stowe did not deteriorate. But Stowe continued to rely on her. She had a massively retentive memory, not only for names and for the principal facts, but for all of the smaller moments that precede and succeed significant events. She could remember not only what was said but what was expected to have been said and yet was not.
Stowe relied on Betty’s judgment, too. He had gone through two marriages, heedlessly, and his view of women was that they were creatures you chased after, captured, installed in your house, and hid your drinking from. He had never had a conversation with a woman that did not either involve seduction or concealment, yet with Betty, Stowe could discuss politics, strategy, philosophy.
He could take her anywhere. She waved away the cigar smoke and said what was on her mind. And if he said something impolitic, she had a way of correcting him that seemed more clarification than contradiction. She did it with humor, with great tact, yet with a frankness that told others that Stowe was secure and that, somehow, the young lady at his side basically adored him. Once, at a meeting between Stowe and three representatives of the paper industry, Stowe had thrown back a couple of whiskeys too many and his conversation became garrulous, absurd. Betty literally put Stowe’s hat on his head, hoisted him up by the arm, and walked him out of the Commander’s Club, and as far as Stowe could tell the overall effect had been rather charming.
Today, Betty was going to Windsor County with Stowe, and as Caitlin and Betty got out of bed together the atmosphere between them was strained. Betty became gloomy at the smallest separation, whereas Caitlin, perhaps in some subtle way less in love than Betty but more overwhelmed by the love she felt, needed their infrequent separations to maintain any sense of self. What made this particular separation different from the other day trips and junkets Stowe and Betty took was that this one was in response to something Caitlin had said.
Caitlin had told Betty two nights before that Joe might soon be releasing the names of politicians who were using public money to mail German propaganda. She hadn’t told Betty that Joe had asked her to help him prove his case against Stowe. Betty would only have wanted to know how Joe could have even imagined that Caitlin would do such a thing. But Caitlin made it clear that Joe knew enough about the whole business of the illegal franking to make quite a mess.
“Can you stop him?” Betty had asked. And when Caitlin shook her head No, Betty said, “It’s what I hate about this war hysteria. People get so narrow-minded. Something is written by a German and then suddenly we can’t touch it. I mean, what does that say about us?”
“It’s wrong, Betty,” Caitlin had said, her voice calm but a vein throbbing at her temple. “Hitler is evil.”
“Because he looks strange on the newsreels? Anyhow, what is evil?”
“Killing.”
“Well, isn’t that what Elias is saying? Let’s stop the killing and keep out of the war.”
They had left it at that. There were too many other things to talk about, too many other things to feel. They were still in that part of their love affair in which biographies are presented—childhood, parents, first loves, and ambitions. Yet Betty did not forget what Caitlin had told her, and in fact she had heeded it as a warning and now, this morning, as they stood next to each other in the kitchen, Betty measuring out the coffee, Caitlin slicing the oranges, Betty said to her, “Elias will be cutting some cords, ending certain relationships, but he owes it to friends back in your beloved Windsor County to talk first with them. He’s going to be very discreet, naming no names. Just wants to cut his losses, and who can blame him for that?”
“Did you tell him about Joe?”
“About Joe? No. But he’s heard the rumors anyhow.”
Betty struck a wooden match and lit the front burner of the stove.
“Is he changing his mind?” asked Caitlin.
“Stowe? About the war? I don’t know. He’s a politician. He doesn’t want to get caught on the wrong side of things. And Roosevelt just seems to get more and more popular.”
“I voted for the President, you know that, don’t you?” Caitlin felt herself wanting to lower her eyes but she kept her gaze level with Betty’s.
“Sweetie Pie,” said Betty, “I’m only happy you didn’t vote for Earl Browder. Really, anything to the right of the Communists I’m considering a personal triumph.”
The coffee percolated. They set the table in the sunny middle room, in their robes, looking rather chaste. If anyone were to suddenly come in, they would have looked like roommates. They ate the oranges and buttered toast and drank coffee.
Betty asked Caitlin with her eyes if she wanted some more coffee and Caitlin shook her head No.
“You sure?” Betty asked.
“Well, you can maybe just warm my cup a little.”
“I have to ask you everything twice,” said Betty. She licked some butter off her fingers and then poured coffee into Caitlin’s cup, pushed the creamer across the table. It crossed a bright bar of sunlight that hovered in the air between them.
Caitlin looked at her great friend with some sternness. She wanted it well understood that she was past the time when she needed or would even accept instruction. Her thoughts, her ways of doing things were her own, not part of a soft, unformed mass she needed others to somehow shape. She was not, nor would she ever be, one of those fortunate yet often deluded individuals who can proudly declare: I know who I am. Yet there were emotions, if not insights, she called her own, beads of feeling she could touch in the blindness of her inner self—anger, pride, loyalty, hope, envy, shame, all of them now strung together on a new ribbon of belief: that she in some small way would make the world a better place.
“Don’t give me that look,” said Betty. “Thanks to you, I’ve talked Elias into risking his political future and I’m a nervous wreck over it.”
“Thanks to me? I thought this was a practical decision.”
“That’s how I’ve put it to Elias, but let’s face it … ” Betty shrugged. She looked momentarily lost, as if she had forgotten what she wanted to say. But in fact she was overtaken by a sudden reluctance to sound maudlin. There were between them trust, passion, and ardent friendship, but there were certain matters that Betty hadn’t ever spoken of except in a joking, offhand way, matters of politics, and the war. In fact, everything that had to do with the work in the office and with Stowe was kept within ironic quotation marks, a ripple of humor in the voice formed a border, a kind of cartoony outline, that put it all into a faintly comic relief. “Let’s face it,” Betty said. “You’ve managed to change my mind about a few things.”
She smiled at Caitlin and it looked for a moment as if her tooth, her left front tooth, was cracked, from top to bottom.
Wordlessly, Caitlin reached across the breakfast table and touched the cracked tooth with her fingertip. It wasn’t a fissure after all; it was a pubic hair.
Caitlin looked at it, curled now on the tip of her finger.
It surprised Caitlin that this did not make her shy. She and Betty lived in a kind of inviolate privacy, protected not only from the curiosity of others but from the judgments of former, more tentative selves. If anyone else had touched her pubic hair, or if, say, her body had made a strange liquid noise in another’s presence, she would have felt it like an arrow in the back, but now she felt only love, acceptance: with Betty, desire was not only recognized but it was welcomed, satisfied.
“I don’t think it’s too late, do you?” Caitlin said.
“Too late to go back to bed?” Betty asked, looking at the nailed-shut cuckoo clock.
“With the Lend-Lease Bill passed,” Caitlin said, “I’m sure that we’ll be helping England defend itself, and maybe even supplying the Free French.”
“Oh yes, I’m sure,” said Betty, checking her fingernails for chips in their dark red polish. “And we’ll be sending Haile Selassie fried chicken and a dozen white virgins, too, while we’re at it.”
“And the Selective Service Act passed, too,” said Caitlin, holding her ground. “We’ll be fighting soon.”
“I think we already are,” Betty said, gesturing to Caitlin and then to herself.
“Come on, I mean it. Anyhow, I think Mr. Stowe is doing the right thing, I really do.”
“Look, sweetie, this country has no interest in getting involved in a European war. Mr. Gallup’s polls still put about seventy percent of the people against our getting involved. Even the Communists are out there singing ‘The Yanks Aren’t Coming.’ When people cast their votes for Rosey, they weren’t voting to invade Germany. They were simply voting for the President of the United States. It was a sense of duty, like going home for Sunday dinner because your father asked you to. And they were also voting for all the welfare programs and afraid the Republicans would cause another Depression. They were voting for Social Security and unemployment insurance.