Secret Anniversaries

by Scott Spencer

  “Look, I haven’t nagged Elias into breaking with his goose-stepping friends—and, Christ, most of them are not really as bad as you might think, more like duck steppers, if anything—because I’m worried that America’s going to suddenly mount a holy crusade against Hitler and Elias is going to get caught on the wrong side. It’s a lot more complicated than that.” Suddenly, a flush of color raced over Betty’s face, a fox over a field of snow, and she lowered her eyes, cleared her throat. “I just don’t want any trouble between you and me. And I can’t believe Elias would deliberately get involved with German military intelligence. It’s an oxymoron, isn’t it?”

  Soon Robert, Stowe’s driver, was at the door to collect Betty. He was a tall man, with large, soft ears placed unevenly on the sides of his long, sorrowful face; he smelled of coffee and roses.

  “Congressman Stowe says to tell you we are late, Miss Sinclair,” he said, taking her leather valise.

  “Come down to the car,” Betty said to Caitlin, taking her hand.

  Robert looked at them. His funereal eyes seemed to be saying, Hurry.

  Caitlin put on her new brown overcoat and followed Betty down the stairs. A black Cadillac was parked in front of the building. Stowe rolled the back window down when he saw Betty.

  “Let’s get going,” he said. It was a humid day; the deep . grooves on either side of Stowe’s mouth glistened.

  Caitlin noticed that John Coleman was sitting in the back seat, too.

  “Caitlin’s never been in an airplane, Elias,” Betty said, leaning in through the window. “What do you say she just takes the ride and has a peek?”

  Stowe looked balefully at Betty. He did not look as if he had had a restful night. He was, after all, on his way home to try to salvage what threatened to be a very bad situation. He didn’t say anything more. He rolled the window up; a reflection of an oak tree rose into place.

  “Maybe you’d better sit in front,” Betty said.

  “I don’t think I—”

  “No, no, please, you have to.” Betty’s eyes flashed with urgency and she clutched at Caitlin’s hand in a heartfelt way that made Caitlin think of Natasha in War and Peace.

  Caitlin sat in the front seat next to Robert, while Betty was in the back, with Stowe and Coleman. They drove through the gray, foggy streets. Above, a distant dawn moon floated through a rushing river of clouds. They passed row after row of steep porch stoops, each one, it seemed, crowned by a newspaper and two bottles of milk. Robert was humming “Begin the Beguine” and tapping his ring against the ivory steering wheel in a tricky rhythm. In back, Coleman was speaking to Stowe in an urgent whisper, which now and then seemed to rise in anger.

  “I’ve made my decision, John,” Stowe said sharply, and for a few moments Coleman was silent and Caitlin listened to Robert humming, his ring finger tapping, and the sibilance of rubber on concrete.

  “You’re supposed to advise, Mr. Coleman, not instruct,” said Betty.

  “I think I’ve done a lot more for the congressman than give advice, Betty,” said Coleman. From his tone, Caitlin was certain that Coleman’s thin-lipped, crowded mouth was pulled back in an unnerving arrogant gargoyle’s grin.

  “I’ve made my mind up,” said Stowe. “The game’s over and the chips can fall where they may. I’m not going to lose my seat over some foreign-policy matter, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I can’t tell you how disappointed I am to hear you speak like this,” said Coleman, after a long pause.

  “Oh, John,” said Betty. “Spare us the dramatics.”

  There were no more arguments. They drove along the Potomac. Morning light broke through the clouds in long silvery spears that plunged into the river. A nun was walking a large Airedale along the river. Caitlin had never seen a nun with a dog before. The black and white of the nun’s habit and the rust color of the dog’s curling coat all looked particularly vivid in the chalky overcast light of the day.

  They arrived at Gravelly Point Airport, which FDR and the Works Progress Administration had been building for the past three years. There were eight runways, with levees of sand and gravel running alongside them. The terminal building was four stories high, made of stone, and with a hopeful, modern design, like a flying wing, or an immense petrified boomerang.

  Robert left them out at the traffic circle and they entered a two-story waiting room, where the ticket and information counter was, as well as the telegraph office. Through the glass wall, Caitlin saw a Pennsylvania-Central Airlines plane coming in for a landing. The front wheels hit the tarmac, bounced, and hit again, and then the rear wheels made contact. Unconsciously, Caitlin held on to Betty’s hand.

  Inside the terminal, there was a smell as if someone had recently thrown up on the tan linoleum floor. Robert carried the suitcases; he walked in front of Coleman and Stowe, who were beginning their conversation again, and Betty and Caitlin walked at the rear.

  “You can come onto the plane with us,” Betty said.

  “Do you really think so? I’ve always wanted to see the inside of one.”

  “I wish you were coming with us. I’d like you to show me where you were born, where you lived, tell me the rest of your secrets.”

  “You’re the rest of my secrets,” said Caitlin.

  They were walking past the ticket area, down a corridor, and out toward an open door, through which the warm, wet wind was blowing.

  “I hate to be away from you,” Betty said, in a whisper, pressing her lips into Caitlin’s hair. Her voice was full of breath. “I’m so afraid you’ll decide this was all a huge mistake and fall in love with someone else.”

  They walked across the field toward the American Airlines DC-3. The tarmac’s surface was cracked; brown, heat-scorched grass grew in clumps through the fissures. The propellers were spinning, and beneath the thick overcast sky they looked to be the color of milkweed. The dimpled steel stairway that led to the entrance was bright silver.

  Robert handed the suitcases to an airline employee, who wore green overalls and a leather jacket, and he, in turn, passed them on to a young man on a metal ladder, who was carrying them into the belly of the plane. The man on the ladder looked down and Caitlin would remember two things for the rest of her life: the man on the ladder had eyes the color of bright blue egg tempera paint and dark eyebrows that slanted straight up toward the point in his widow’s peak, and, second, that he looked at Coleman.

  Coleman shook hands with Stowe and then Stowe called to Betty over the noise of the engines. She went to his side and asked him something. Stowe shook his head No and then Betty said something else and Stowe shook his head again, more emphatically this time.

  “Elias doesn’t think it’s a good idea for you to come on,” Betty said to Caitlin. She needed to shout over the sound of the engines. “We’ll be taking off soon.”

  “OK,” said Caitlin. Once rebuffed, she withdrew, as is the rule with people who feel they’ve worked themselves into positions they do not deserve, where they do not belong.

  Betty and Caitlin stood in silence for a few moments. They were trying somehow to calculate what demonstration of affection would be permissible in this context. There was no one, they were quite certain, who suspected they were lovers, but if they were to embrace now it would have been too risky.

  In a way, it made them feel more fatally and desperately bound to just stand there, with the wind whipping at their hair and the pitch of the DC-3 going up the scale as the propellers turned faster and faster. Stowe was halfway up the stairs. A stewardess stood at the opened hatch, holding on to her cap while her skirt blew around her knees.

  “See you in a few days then,” Betty said.

  “I’m glad Elias is doing the right thing,” Caitlin said. She looked up. Stowe had turned to call for Betty before going into the plane. His small, etched face looked peevish, rather helpless: he knew his voice wasn’t carrying.

  Impulsively, Betty put her arms around Caitlin, brought her close in an embrace and whispered into he
r ear. “See what you’ve done to me? I’m actually doing a good thing and I can barely recognize myself.”

  Betty turned to leave. She grasped the rail to the staircase.

  “Betty?” Caitlin called out.

  Betty turned, said Yes with her eyes.

  “What’s an oxymoron?”

  Betty laughed. She liked it when Caitlin asked questions of her.

  “A contradiction in terms, sweetie,” Betty called, as she backed up the stairs. “Like jumbo shrimp, or nice guy.”

  Caitlin stood on the runway and watched Betty go up the stairs and disappear into the plane. She thought Betty would turn around again, make a final wave, but that was the last she saw of her. That was that.

  “Robert will drive us back,” she heard Coleman say. She turned around and he was standing directly behind her. His face was very white, with dark hollows beneath his eyes. Though it was windy, his hair remained in place, as if it had been painted on.

  For the ride back to town, Caitlin sat in the back seat with Coleman. He rested his hands in his lap. He did not look at her; he stared through his own reflection as they sped along Mount Vernon Highway.

  “Do you know how many men there are on earth?” he asked Caitlin, without turning. His voice was dry, barely inflected, as if he were talking in his sleep. “A few hundred,” he said, before she could answer. “That’s all, a few hundred. The rest mark time, take out the trash.”

  “And are you among the few hundred, John?”

  “I am making every effort,” he said. He turned toward her, smiled. “I am engaged in the painful, mysterious act of becoming.”

  They heard a deep, resonant boom from the sky, a thud with a slight echo, a single roar from a sheet-metal lion. Caitlin glanced up and saw a dull orange flash somewhere in the sky. Its origin was obscure, as was its importance.

  The reverberation of the explosion shook the car windows in their frames. They seemed loose for a moment, they heaved in and out like diaphragms.

  “What was that?” asked Caitlin.

  “Do you remember that time in the Four Feathers restaurant when we ate lunch with Anastase Vonsiatsky?” asked Coleman. “You showed a great deal of spirit then, Caitlin. I meant to tell you that, and now, as is so often the case, I’m telling you at the same time we are saying goodbye for the last time.”

  “Are you going somewhere?”

  “Yes. I’ve resigned.” He laughed softly, shook his head.

  “Where are you going now?” she asked.

  They were downtown already, heading toward the Capitol. A light rain was starting to fall. It fell on the early-morning pedestrians, on the windshield, on the darkening trees, and on the bits of flaming wreckage that spread out over a Virginia horse farm after the bomb had exploded in the belly of the American DC-3. Betty, Stowe, eighteen other passengers, and a crew of four were already dead, but Caitlin would not know this for another hour. She would be sitting at her desk, going through Stowe’s correspondence, separating it into categories—letters to be answered, letters to be filed, letters to be forwarded—when Mrs. Donnely, the typist, would come in to tell her the news and the two women would just stand there, facing each other, absorbing the news in silence, until Caitlin felt her body go cold and the room began to recede as if all reality were just a piece of scenery that was being pulled back and back and back by a clumsy workman.

  But that was still before her, that lurid moment in the future was still curled within the spool of unexposed time. For now, all there was was the rain and John Coleman in the car next to her, explaining himself.

  “I don’t know where I’ll go,” he was saying. “Someplace where my point of view is a little more appreciated.” His nostrils flared as he took a deep breath. He leaned forward and rapped his knuckles against the glass partition.

  “Robert, stop here. I’m getting out.”

  Robert pulled up next to the curb and Coleman made a final, formal nod at Caitlin. With his hand on the door, he said, “Take good care of yourself, Caitlin. And try to be discreet. It was always very obvious to me what was going on between you and Miss Sinclair.”

  He opened the door and got out quickly.

  The rain started to fall with more force. It was a hard, lashing rain. Robert pulled the car into traffic again and Caitlin had an idle thought: that noise could not have been thunder. There was no such thing as a storm with but one peal of thunder. It must have been something else.

  She had sixty more minutes in her life to not be in mourning.

  SEPTEMBER 1, 1943

  “You don’t want to be late for your own party,” Caitlin said to Joe.

  It was publication day for Joe’s book and Caitlin had come in from Leyden, where she was back working at the George Washington Inn. She no longer lived on the Flemings’ estate but shared a little house in town with a local girl named Jeanette, whose husband was in the Army—his presence was everywhere in the airless ex-tavern of a stone house, in the flag that hung above the low doorway, the pictures on the wormy pine mantelpiece, in the sounds of Jeanette’s sobs as she worried herself to sleep each night.

  “It’s not a party for me,” Joe said. “It’s for my book.” They were walking on Fourth Avenue and he was holding on to her arm in a way that seemed to lack not only romance but romance’s faintest possibility.

  His face was sunken; his eyes were pale, evasive. He was no longer coloring his hair, but the life seemed to have gone out of it. His walk was rapid but tentative, an animal scurrying over ice. Caitlin hadn’t seen him in six months but their reunion was oblique, his responses unpredictable. He had seemed glad to see her at first, had offered her coffee, fussed over her, told her how beautiful she looked, even asked her what kind of perfume she was wearing. But it was as if those first responses had been learned, rehearsed. Once he had gone through them his conversation was sporadic, his mood phlegmatic, his mannerisms jerky and strange. Caitlin assumed his awkwardness was connected to the party his publisher was throwing in his honor. And it was months after that before she realized this was only a small part of it and that Joe had suffered what is commonly called a nervous collapse. The price inevitably extracted by a long time in an assumed identity was being paid day by day now. And a new terror now replaced the fear of discovery—with his book’s publication, he could now fear reprisal.

  They stopped at a used-book store. Joe did not want to go inside but browsed instead through the dusty bins of used books outside. Caitlin just could not see why someone would want to buy a book, or anything else, that had been owned once by somebody else—unless, of course, they were so terribly poor they had no choice. As for herself, she would rather have had something cheap and poorly made, new, than something stately and old.

  Joe found a British edition of In Our Time and paid an old man who looked as if he had been carved out of ivory. Then Joe touched Caitlin on the elbow, using just his fingertip, as if to make as little fleshly contact as possible. He gestured furtively with his eyes. “That’s Dwight Macdonald over there, looking at the old maps,” he whispered. “He used to work at Fortune, too.”

  “Oh,” said Caitlin, making her voice encouraging. It was the first time all day Joe had spoken of anything remotely in the past. His nervousness had kept him chained to the moment like a dog to a fence.

  “Then he became a Trotskyist and then he fell out with Trotsky himself and now he’s an anarcho-pacifist. He publishes his own magazine called Politics.”

  “Maybe he’ll be at your publisher’s house then,” said Caitlin. It was the task to which she had assigned herself: get Joe to the party.

  “Look at the way he’s looking at you,” Joe said, turning his back on Macdonald and placing Caitlin so she could see. She saw a barrel-chested man with wavy brown hair, wearing a white shirt, high-waisted tan trousers, and summery shoes with perforations around the toe. He was frowning at an old illustrated map of Europe.

  “He’s looking at a map,” said Caitlin. “That’s all.”

&nbs
p; “Oh, you never think people are looking at you, or even notice you,” said Joe. For a moment, Caitlin smiled, as if all Joe were accusing her of was an excess of modesty, but then she realized there was real annoyance in his voice.

  They crossed the street. The light that fell through the trees was bright, dusty. Shop windows, emptier this year, glared in the sunlight. The streets were quieter this year with gasoline rationed and suddenly expensive. And most of the passersby were either women or very young or old: so many of the young men were gone.

  They came to a white building with thick glass-brick windows. The sign above the doorway read SPORTSMAN’S CLUB— PRIVATE. In the days when he was Fred Hollander, Joe had marched in this building, had saluted the swastika, and shot old Winchesters at tin cups upon which someone had crudely painted yellow Stars of David. The Sportsman’s Club was an adjunct of the Iron Guard, whose leader was a cracked-voiced, gesticulating fellow named Herman Schmidt, who always seemed to have carnations of spittle blooming in the corners of his mouth. Schmidt was himself living out a certain genealogical fantasy, Joe was to learn: his real name was James Banahan. What Joe remembered most vividly about Banahan was his penchant for holding a bayonet over his copy of a well-perforated Bible and then ramming it through with a blood-curdling scream.

  Now the Sportsman’s Club had a VACANCY sign on the door, and a padlock and chain went through the two handles. The deserted door stoop was a haven for stray cats, for whom some kind soul had left scraps in a little red bowl.

  “It’s closed now,” Caitlin said. She felt she knew exactly what it had looked like inside, just from reading Joe’s book— the wobbly wooden folding chairs, the portraits of Hitler, Jesus, the landscapes of the Danube, Niagara Falls, the stench of tobacco, the vaulted brick ceiling, the steel shutters, the little table filled with refreshments such as lemonade, apple slices, and pale green sucking candy.