But, after our one and only meeting, Walter Winchell never mentioned me in his column again.
Still, he really had been most useful on the professional front. I now had so much work on hand that I was pleased when the phone eventually went quiet again. It allowed me to get on with a large backlog of assignments. As always, I especially liked writing over the weekends—as it was a time when all my assorted editors weren’t working, and when the vast majority of my friends were with their families. Sunday, in fact, was the one day I was assured of never getting a single call—which also made it the perfect day to work straight through without distraction.
Until the phone rang one Sunday morning in May at the early hour of nine. I reached for it.
“Sara?”
My pulse spiked. The phone shook in my hand. I had been wondering if this call would ever come. Now it had.
“Are you still there?” the voice asked.
A long pause. I wanted to hang up. I didn’t.
“I’m here, Jack.”
TWENTY-FIVE
SO,” HE SAID.
“So,” I said.
“It’s been a while.”
“Yes, it has.”
“How are you?”
“Fine. You?”
“Fine.”
He didn’t sound fine. His voice was constricted, diminished. He was as nervous as I was. I heard street noises in the background.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“The corner of Seventy-seventh and Broadway.”
Just like old times, I thought. Sneaking out of the house to phone me.
“Are you busy right now?” he asked.
“Kind of. I’ve got a deadline . . .”
“Oh. Too bad.”
“Sorry. It’s just . . . well, work.”
“I understand,” he said.
“How did you know I was back in town?”
“Walter Winchell.”
“My biggest admirer.”
He laughed—but the laugh quickly transformed into a cough. It took him a moment to bring it under control.
“Are you okay?” I asked
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ve got a little bronchial infection . . .”
“You shouldn’t be standing on a cold street corner . . .”
“Well, it was my turn to take the baby out.”
That took a minute to sink in.
“You have a baby?” I asked.
“Yes. A daughter. Kate.”
“How old?”
“Seventeen months.”
“Congratulations,” I said.
“Thanks,” he said.
Another pause.
“Well . . . ,” he said. “I just wanted to say hello.”
“Hello.”
“Sara . . . Meet me. Please.”
“Jack, I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“It’s been four years.”
“I know, but . . .”
“Four years. That’s a long time. I’m asking for nothing. I just want to see you. Half an hour of your time. No more.”
The phone started shaking again in my hand. I finally said, “Gitlitz’s in ten minutes.”
I hung up. I stood by the phone, unable to move. A baby. A daughter. Kate. No . . .
I wanted to flee. To pack a bag, and run to Penn Station, and catch the next train to . . .
Where?
Where could I run to this time? And even when I got there, he’d still be with me. As always.
I resisted the temptation of a steadying slug of Scotch. I forced myself into the bathroom. I stared at myself in the mirror. He’ll think I look older . . . because I am older. I brushed my teeth. I quickly applied lipstick. I brushed my hair. I put down the brush. I gripped the sink, trying to steady myself. The urge to flee hit me again. I forced myself out of the bathroom. I put on my coat. I left the apartment. It had started to snow outside. I turned my collar up against the cold. I lowered my head. I marched the two blocks east to Gitlitz’s.
When I entered the deli, the first thing I saw was a large blue baby carriage parked by a booth. I approached the booth. Jack was sitting there, both hands wrapped around a cup of coffee, staring down into its black surface. He didn’t notice my initial arrival. This was fortunate—as it gave me a moment to absorb the shock of his appearance. He had lost a frightening amount of weight. His cheeks were hollow, his skin pasty. His hair had thinned. His eyes radiated fatigue. He did not look well. He had aged twenty years since I’d last seen him.
He glanced up. His eyes met mine. He attempted a smile, but he couldn’t bring it off. I tried to smile back—but I could see that he registered my alarm at his condition. Instantly, he slid out of the booth and got to his feet. Standing up, the severity of his weight loss was even more disturbing. He reached for me with both hands, then thought better of it, and proffered his right one. I took it. It felt thin, emaciated. His eyes were locked on me. I found it difficult to meet his gaze.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.”
“You look wonderful.”
I didn’t supply the normal refrain—“You do too”—because it was impossible to do so. Instead, I looked down into the baby carriage. Kate was asleep—a pretty, chubby baby in a snowsuit, covered by a thick plaid blanket. I reached into the carriage. I stroked one of her hands. Instinctively, it opened. Her tiny finger closed around my pinky. I stood there, trying to hold everything in check.
“She’s beautiful,” I said.
He stood by my side and looked down with me.
“Yes,” he said, “she is that.”
“Dorothy and you must be very pleased.”
He nodded, then motioned for me to take a seat. I gently disengaged my pinky from her hand. I slid into the booth. He sat down opposite me. He ordered more coffee. His hands curved around his cup again. We said nothing for a while. He finally spoke, his eyes focused on the table.
“This is . . . I was always wondering . . . I . . . I’m glad to see you, Sara.”
I didn’t know what to say. So I stayed quiet.
“I don’t blame you for hating me,” he said.
“I don’t hate you.”
“You did.”
“Maybe. For a while. But . . . hate is a hard thing to sustain. Grief isn’t. Grief is something that can stay with you for a very long time.”
“I know,” he said. “There have been periods over the last four years when I thought: will it ever get bearable?”
“Did it?”
“No. Never. I missed you every hour of every day.”
“I see.”
“And your grief for Eric. Did it ever . . . ?”
“Dissipate? No. But I learned to live with it. Just as I learned to live with my grief for you.”
He looked up at me again.
“You grieved for me?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said. “Endlessly.”
He stared at me with wounded bemusement.
“But . . . you refused to talk to me.”
“Yes. I did.”
“And you never read my letters?”
“That’s right, they were never opened.”
“Then how can you say . . .”
“That I missed you all the time? Because I did. Because I loved you. More than anyone.”
He put his head in his hands. “Then why the hell didn’t you let me make contact, Sara?”
“Because . . . I couldn’t. The grief was too big. I loved you so damn much that, when you betrayed Eric and me . . . when Eric died . . . I couldn’t face you. What had happened was just too terrible. What made it even more terrible was . . . the fact that I understood why you had to do what you did. How you’d been put in an appalling situation; a situation in which it would have been easy to panic, to make a very wrong call. But that still . . . still . . . didn’t lessen the repercussions of your choice. Because it took away the two people I valued most.”
The coffee arrived. He continued looking down at
the table. He said, “Do you know how often I’ve replayed that scene in my head?”
“What scene?” I asked.
“The scene where the two Feds were interviewing me in a conference room at Steele and Sherwood. The company’s lawyer was with me. The interview had gone on all morning. I kept ducking and diving the question of the Communists I knew. For three hours, I stuck to my guns—and just named the people who had already named me. Finally, the Feds got frustrated—and asked to see the company lawyer in private. They must have been gone around twenty minutes. He came back alone. And said, ‘Jack: if you don’t give them another name, you’re going to be called in front of the Committee as a hostile witness. And your career at Steele and Sherwood will be finished.’
“All I had to do was say no. That’s all that was required. All right, I might have lost my job, but . . . I would have found a way of putting bread on the table. But they had me in a corner. And those Feds—they were so good at sniffing out your weaknesses. Jesus, did they play on mine. They knew all about us, of course—and they kept dropping hints about how, if I didn’t cooperate, not only would I be fired from Steele and Sherwood, but word would probably get around about my complicated domestic arrangements. Not only would I be branded a pinko sympathizer, but Mr. Flexible Morality. I remember exactly what one of the Feds told me: ‘Pal, if you were running two households in Paris, no one would give a shit. But in America, we operate according to a slightly harsher moral code: get found out, get fucked over. You’ll be lucky to end up shining shoes somewhere.’
“That’s when I gave them Eric’s name. As soon as it was out of my mouth, I knew I had killed everything. It was just a matter of time before you found out. And when Dorothy found out, she told me I was beneath contempt.”
“But didn’t she understand that you did it for her and Charlie?”
“Oh, she got that all right. But she still saw it as another of my betrayals. She kicked me out for a while after that. Told me that she’d give me the divorce I’d always wanted . . . that I’d now be free to be with you . . .”
It took me a moment or two to speak.
“I didn’t know,” I said.
“If only you’d read my letters . . . if only you’d let me contact you . . . I kept thinking: this is the shittiest irony imaginable. And it’s my own fault . . .”
He broke off, reached into his overcoat pocket, and fumbled around until he found a cigarette. He screwed it into a corner of his mouth. He picked up a book of matches off the table. He lit his cigarette with shaking hands. The light of the match cast his face in a gaunt glow. He looked so shrunken, so denuded, so defeated by everything. I saw myself throwing out his box of letters. Letters which he must have spent hours writing. As I spent hours writing him throughout the winter of ’46 . . . when I simply couldn’t believe the wonderfully delirious love I felt for him. For four years, his letters sat gathering dust in Joel’s office. Four years. I let them sit there. And then, on the day I returned to New York, I simply tossed them away—as a final act of reprisal. Why didn’t I read them when he first sent them? Why did I have this need to punish him? A punishment which would now haunt me. Because I would always wonder: had I read those letters in the months after Eric’s death, might I have understood? Might I have found a way of forgiving him? Might we have discovered a way back to each other?
“What happened after Dorothy threw you out?”
“I spent around six months on a fold-out couch in Meg’s apartment.”
Meg. Her letter to me in the winter of ’53:
What can I say, Sara? Except this. I know how deeply you once loved him. I don’t ask for a miraculous reconciliation. All I ask is that, somehow, you find a way to forgive him—and to communicate your forgiveness to him. I think it would mean an enormous amount to him. He is now a deeply unhappy man. He needs your help to find his way back to himself.
But, oh no, I couldn’t be seen to weaken from my position. I had self-righteousness on my side. He had to be permanently condemned. He’d made his bed (as I so caustically wrote back to Meg). Now he could lie in it. Alone.
“Eventually, Meg engaged in some delicate diplomacy with Dorothy,” Jack said. “At heart, my wife has always been a complete pragmatist. And the reason she took me back was an utterly pragmatic one: living alone with a small child was difficult. ‘As far as I’m concerned,’ she told me, ‘you’re a second pair of hands, nothing more. Except, of course, to Charlie. He needs a father. It might as well be you.’”
“And you still went back after she said that?” I asked.
“Yes. I went back. To a loveless marriage. But I’d made a vow, a commitment. I tell you, Catholic guilt is something to behold. But the real reason I went back was Charlie. I couldn’t stand to be apart from Charlie.”
“I’m sure he needs you very much.”
“And I him. Without Charlie, I don’t think I would have made it through the last couple of years.”
He suddenly shook his head, with annoyance.
“Sorry, sorry—that sounds melodramatic.”
“Are you all right?”
“Never better,” he said, taking a nervous drag on his cigarette.
“You look a little . . . wan.”
“No. I look like shit.”
“You’re not well, are you?”
His fingers closed around the coffee cup again. He continued to avoid looking at me.
“I wasn’t well. A bad bout of hepatitis. Word of advice: never eat cherrystones at City Island.”
“It was just hepatitis?” I asked, trying not to sound overtly skeptical.
Another fast drag of his cigarette.
“Do I look that bad?”
“Well . . .”
“Don’t answer that. But yeah—hepatitis can really kick the crap out of you.”
“You’ve been off work?”
“For six months.”
“Good God . . .”
“Steele and Sherwood have been pretty understanding. Full pay for the first three months, half pay since then. It’s meant things have been a little tight, especially with the beautiful Kate now in our lives. But we’ve managed.”
“Are things now better between you and Dorothy?”
“Kate’s made a difference. It’s given us something to talk about. Other than Charlie, that is.”
“There must have been some sort of thaw between the two of you before then,” I said, nodding toward the baby carriage.
“Not really. Just a night when we both had four Scotches too many, and Dorothy momentarily forgot that, at heart, she didn’t like me.”
“I hope Kate makes you both very . . .”
He cut me off. His tone was suddenly harsh.
“Yeah, thanks for the Hallmark cards sentiment.”
“I mean that, Jack. I don’t wish you any ill.”
“You sure?”
“I never did.”
“But you didn’t forgive me either.”
“You’re right. For a long time, I found it very hard to forgive what you’d done.”
“And now?”
“The past is the past.”
“I can’t undo what happened.”
“I know.”
He reached over to where my right hand was resting on the table. He covered it with his own. As soon as he touched me, I felt something akin to a small electrical charge course up my arm . . . the same charge I’d felt on that first night in 1945. After a moment, I moved my left hand on top of his.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
“It’s okay,” I said.
“No,” he said quietly, “it will never be okay.”
I suddenly heard myself say, “I forgive you.”
Silence. We said nothing for a very long time. Then Kate began to stir—some quiet burbling sounds quickly escalating into a full-scale lament. Jack stood up and hunted around the baby carriage until he found the pacifier she had spit out. As soon as it was back between her lips, she ejected it again and continued
crying.
“She’s in the market for a bottle, I’m afraid,” Jack said. “I’d better get home.”
“Okay,” I said.
He sat down quickly again opposite me.
“Can I see you again?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I understand . . .”
“There’s no one else.”
“That’s not what I was implying.”
“It’s just . . . well . . . I guess I don’t know what I think right now.”
“No rush,” he said. “Anyway, I have to go out of town for a week or so. It’s a business thing. Up in Boston. Some account Steele and Sherwood wants me to handle when I go back to work next month.”
“Are you well enough to travel?”
“I look worse than I am.”
Kate’s crying now escalated.
“You’d better go,” I said.
He squeezed my hand one last time.
“I’ll call you from Boston,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. “Call me.”
He stood up. He rearranged the blanket around Kate. He turned toward me again. I stood up. Suddenly he pulled me toward him—and kissed me. I met his kiss. And held it. It only lasted a moment. When he ended it, he whispered:
“Goodbye.”
Then he put both hands on the baby carriage and pushed it forward.
I sat down in the booth. I crossed my arms on the table. I laid my head atop them. I sat that way for a very long time.
For the next week, the shock lingered. I did my work. I saw movies. I saw friends. I kept replaying that kiss in my head. I didn’t know what to make of it. I didn’t know anything anymore.
He said he would call. He didn’t call. But he did write. A short card, with a Boston postmark. It was scribbled in a shaky hand.
I’m still here. It should be over soon.
I love you.
Jack
I read that card over and over, trying to decipher its underlying meaning. Eventually I decided there was no underlying meaning. He was still in Boston. Whatever he was doing would end shortly. He loved me.
And I still loved him.
But I expected nothing. Because—as I had learned—if you expect nothing, then anything is a surprise.
Another week went by. No calls. No cards. I remained calm. On Monday morning, April 15, I was running out the door, en route to a press screening of some film. I was late, the traffic on Broadway was grim, so I decided to skip the bus and grab the subway downtown. I walked briskly to the 79th Street station, buying a New York Times from the newsie who was always out in front. I climbed aboard the downtown train. I did my usual quick scan of the paper. When I reached the obituary page, I noticed that the lead death of the day was a Hartford insurance executive who once worked with my father. I quickly read his obituary, and was about to move on to the opposite page when my gaze stumbled on a short listing amid the page-wide columns of Deaths:
The Douglas Kennedy Collection #1 Page 57
