There Your Heart Lies
Page 1
ALSO BY MARY GORDON
FICTION
The Liar’s Wife
The Love of My Youth
The Stories of Mary Gordon
Pearl
Final Payments
The Company of Women
Men and Angels
Temporary Shelter
The Other Side
The Rest of Life
Spending
NONFICTION
Reading Jesus
Circling My Mother
Good Boys and Dead Girls
The Shadow Man
Seeing Through Places
Joan of Arc
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Mary Gordon
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.
Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: Gordon, Mary, [date] author
Title: There your heart lies / Mary Gordon.
Description: First Edition. New York : Pantheon Books, [2017]
Identifiers: LCCN 2016038634 (print). LCCN 2016044808 (ebook). ISBN 9780307907943 (hardcover). ISBN 9780307907950 (ebook).
Subjects: BISAC: FICTION / Literary. FICTION / Contemporary Women. FICTION / War & Military.
Classification: LCC PS3557.O669 T48 2017 (print) | LCC PS3557.O669 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at lccn.loc.gov/2016038634
Ebook ISBN 9780307907950
www.pantheonbooks.com
Cover design by Janet Hansen
v4.1
ep
Contents
Cover
Also by Mary Gordon
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Preface
The SS Normandie, 1937 / Greenwich Village, 1936
Avondale, Rhode Island, 2009
Spain, 1937–38
Avondale, Rhode Island, 2009
Spain, 1946
Avondale, Rhode Island, 2009
Spain, 1946
Avondale, Rhode Island, 2009
Spain, 2009 / Avondale, Rhode Island, 2009
Acknowledgments
A Note About the Author
For Kitty and Steve Klaidman
Therefore where your treasure is, there also your heart lies.
—MATTHEW 6:21
PREFACE
In July of 1936, the Fascist army, led by General Francisco Franco, launched a coup against the democratically elected Republic of Spain. The great powers of the West—the United States, England, France, Germany, and Italy, signed a neutrality agreement, promising not to arm either side. Germany and Italy violated the agreement, providing arms and other aid to Franco’s armies; the United States, England, and France remained neutral. The Soviet Union, which had also signed the agreement, provided arms to the Republicans—their only source of military aid. Thousands of foreign volunteers fought on both sides. The International Brigades and the corps of medical volunteers were organized by the Communist Party to join in the Republican struggle, although not all who participated were communists. The Americans who fought on the Republican side were known as the Lincoln Brigade. The left was split into two camps: the anarchists, who believed that social change must be accomplished at the same time as the war was being fought; and the communists, who believed that the war must be won before social change could be effected. Along with fighting soldiers, Stalin sent a cadre of secret police, who made sure that the Spanish cause was in league with his own.
Unable to resist the superior arms provided by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in the support of the Fascist army, the Republican forces surrendered in 1939. Franco became dictator of Spain and remained in power until his death in 1975.
THE SS NORMANDIE, 1937
GREENWICH VILLAGE, 1936
HE OFFERS HER a coat.
She takes it, making a cradle of her arms.
Shy, small, scurrying, he backs away.
She sees him take his place beside the man with the megaphone.
All of them are standing on the pier, some of them, like her, waiting to board the SS Normandie, pride of the French line, which will carry them to France. But they will not stay in France; it is Spain they’re bound for. Medical volunteers, to serve the army of the Republic, to defeat the fascists, Franco’s rebels, nearly a year after the coup against the democratically elected government.
—
The man with the megaphone is getting ready now to speak. Ben Gold, president of the Fur and Leather Workers Union.
She can’t concentrate on his words; she is looking at the beautiful ship. The Normandie, the newest, the fastest, the most glamorous of the great ocean liners. She’s glad it’s the Normandie and not one she took with her parents. But it seems wrong: to be traveling on a ship famed for its luxury when they are not on holiday, they are going to Spain to work beside the men who are fighting for its freedom.
This is what the man with the megaphone is saying, but she can’t keep her eyes off the three huge black-and-red-striped funnels, the three layers of what seems like a gigantic cake: dark blue on the bottom, the lacy center, rows of slender columns, glistening like packed sugar in the uninflected sun. The open top deck, gleaming silver, everything capped by a stiff equilateral triangle whose only purpose seems to be the support of red, white, and blue pennants that snap extravagantly in the warm spring wind. She’s afraid there’s something wrong with her—perhaps she doesn’t deserve to be here—because only scraps of what the union president is saying get hold of her attention.
“Fellow workers…you will be victorious over the fascists…Our cause is just…a war not only of the proletariat against the capitalist…a war of the poor against the rich, the lovers of freedom against those who would enslave us…The people will prevail…the people of Spain and the freedom-loving Americans…men and women of courage.”
—
He holds up a coat, which the small man beside him provided at a secret signal that Marian had not been able to make out.
“And so, to show you our support, the workers of our union, as a token of our esteem, present each of you brave ladies with the fruits of our labor. A fur coat for each of you, compliments of the Fur and Leather Workers Union. Wear them to victory—the victory of the people, the workers, the makers of a great new world.”
She understands now why she was given the coat.
—
Marian strokes the rich, hot fur. Not mink, not sable, nothing like her mother’s coat, which she had loved to put her face against, hiding in her mother’s closet, breathing in the scent—part of the warmth, the darkness—of her mother’s perfume: Ombre Rose. Rose Shadow. Rose Shade. What is this fur? Fox, perhaps, or muskrat. It is May and warm, but she puts the coat on. It would seem ungrateful not to wear it. She is glad to have it, although she’s afraid that it will make her sweat. This fur does not smell of perfume; it’s not possible, as it was with her mother’s coat, to forget that this was once the covering of an animal, keeping it warm, keeping it alive.
Everyone claps and cheers for the man with the megaphone. Some of the women are crying. One says, “I never thought I’d have a fur coat, I never even dreamed of it.”
Marian takes her husband’s arm. “Ready?” he says
. “You okay?”
“Never better,” she says.
•
Because it’s the most wonderful feeling in the world: to know that you’re doing exactly the right thing.
That you’re exactly where you’re meant to be, which is also where you want to be, that you are nineteen, healthy, on the way to Spain to save the world. Married, free of your parents, and, if the marriage is a sham, isn’t that part of the fun of it, a secret they can giggle over in their bed instead of making love? And, after all, they love each other; they’re each other’s favorite person in the world.
What a surprise, what a shock for her family. That Marian Therese Taylor, of the Newport and Park Avenue Taylors, is here on this ship with people she calls comrades. Now Marian Rabinowitz, wife of Russell, one of what her family nastily refers to as “the chosen people,” her husband, Russell, former lover of her brother, dead by his own hand.
But she won’t think of that now, she must not think of Johnny now. It’s why she’s here, with people who believe that there are more important things in the world than private life, that the large sorrows of the world are more important than the private sorrows, that the great murderous injustices are more important than the intimate and individually killing slights.
Never has she felt more alive, never has she felt more at home in the world. Words like exultation, exaltation are real now…and she wonders, does she mean exaltation or exultation or both, does it matter which vowel is in the middle of the word if the feelings are so similar, as if your body had given up its heaviness and it would be quite possible for you to spread your arms and take to the air simply, as in her favorite dream, to fly?
She no longer agonizes about being a daughter of privilege; she is a worker among workers; she has skills that are valued. She is fluent in Spanish. Working with her Spanish teacher at Vassar, an Andalusian (her brother a doctor in Connecticut), Marian has compiled a Spanish-English dictionary of medical terms and made ten carbon copies. She is a fearless driver; she knows how to fix cars. Would she have been allowed to join the volunteers because of these skills? She knows that the most important reason she was approved is that she is Russell’s wife and he is a doctor specializing in infectious diseases. She tells him she doesn’t want to just tag along. He says the same thing to her that he says when she expresses her unease that they are traveling on a luxury liner. “You just have to stop questioning everything. The guys in charge know what they’re doing, that’s why they’re in charge.” He doesn’t say who the guys are, but they both know who he means, the men at the head of “the party” who have organized the volunteers. The party, the only one deserving the definite article. The Communist Party: the only hope for the future of the workers of the world.
They make their way to the gangplank where the third-class passengers are meant to board. The man in charge, who has checked the others’ tickets and told them where they should proceed, looks at their tickets and says, “There’s been a change in your accommodations.”
Marian is frightened. She knows how powerful her father is, how far his tentacles reach. Does he know somehow that her marriage can be declared invalid, on the most unassailable of grounds? How has he found out? Who did he bribe, what favor did he call in, to stop her?
“We’re overfull in third class,” says the sailor in his perfect French uniform, cocking his head, twisting his mouth into a sly insider’s half smile, the company’s resident Maurice Chevalier. “And so we have put you into what we call our ‘interchangeable quarters.’ What that means is they’re first class on some trips, but if we don’t have sufficient first-class bookings, they become tourist or even third class on others. As you see.”
Marian looks at Russell, certain that within the next few seconds—she hopes not too insultingly—he will refuse. It is from him that she learned the horrors of class distinctions, of riches hoarded by the rich, kept from the ones who have to produce their wealth.
And so she can’t believe what she hears him say. “Well, I guess this is our lucky day.”
They make their way over to the first-class gangplank. She is trembling…and she doesn’t know if it’s from disbelief or anger. “Russell, how can you do this? It makes a mockery of everything we stand for.”
“Look, toots, the last trip your parents took across the ocean was on the Île de France. The last trip my parents took was on a filthy ship in steerage. I’m doing it for them, to thumb my nose at everything and everyone who kept them down.”
“I don’t like it, Russell,” she says, wondering if this will be their first disagreement as husband and wife.
“It’s the privilege of the privileged to refuse privilege,” he says, and once again, abashed by her heritage, she walks behind him to the bank of golden elevators, more glorious than the Waldorf’s.
—
Despite herself, she is enchanted.
She knows that she’s aboard a ship, but the word “ship” seems too real, too ordinary for what she sees around her; sometimes she feels like she’s part of a movie, where the madcap heiress flees an arranged marriage or the plucky working girl dances up just this kind of staircase, spinning away in a final swirl promising a life of endless days of bliss, free from the anxieties of 1930s Depression life, glamorously rebellious, secure but unconventional.
Everything the brochures promised has come to life. The three-deck dining room that boasts it is “longer than the hall of mirrors in Versailles.” Unlike the Île de France, which her parents favored, everything on the Normandie is modern: the Lalique chandeliers, the series of geometrical patterning on the floor and walls, the angular, not quite comfortable chairs, the murals painted on glass of lolling asymmetric goddesses whose limbs, not really human, might be the parts of some complex hyper-efficient new machine. The fabulous food: lobster, roast lamb, a pastry cart that could mark the wedding celebration of a prince, a display of cheeses that she craves as she does not crave the sweets—she samples them, Boucheron to Stilton, accompanied by old port. The exquisite wines, the pervasive scent of French perfume and French cigarettes: she decides that since she is there, she will enjoy it all, because soon, soon, there will be no comfort, no elegance, only the horrible sights and smells of war.
She is particularly fond of their room. Two generous-sized beds with a longhaired white rug between them. At first she worried: did they know that she and Russell didn’t really sleep together, had never shared a bed? Then she tells herself she’s being ridiculous, and she’s grateful for the crisp, sweet-smelling linens, the soft pillows, the shower with water that shoots out from its four walls, the extra washbasin enclosed in a door so if one person is in the bathroom the other can use the sink.
For the first day and a half, Russell is in high spirits: he never seems to be without food or a drink in his hand; he takes his book—a novel by Vincent Sheean—into the conservatory, full of wild and cultivated flowers, fountains, live birds.
“Imagine hearing songbirds on a ship,” he says, twirling her around, putting behind her ear what she is afraid is some rare specimen he should never have taken from the conservatory.
But by dinner of the second day, he does nothing but complain. The people look like pigs. He is going to be sick from the endless rich food. Their music disgusts him: watered-down Broadway show tunes, played by third-raters who’d be happier with Victor Herbert.
“The difference between all this”—he makes a sweeping gesture, as if he would throw the whole of first class overboard—“all this and third class, it’s unbelievable,” he says.
“I didn’t know you’d gone down there.”
“Of course I did. Do you think I forgot why we’re here?”
“Do you think I did?” she says. “You were the one who wanted to stay here. Either stay here and enjoy it, Russell, or do something about it.”
“I’m going upstairs to talk to the men putting the chairs away.”
—
She decides without him: she will request that they be mo
ved back to third class. She understands that she can do this and Russell can’t because she has the experience of assuming that people who are known as “employees” are paid to do what the people who pay them want done. She even knows who to speak to: the purser. In the pockets of her cotton slacks, she puts fifty dollars, part of the money she got selling the diamond watch she was given for her eighteenth birthday. She wears Johnny’s watch now. She puts the fifty dollars on the purser’s desk and tells him that she and her husband prefer to be in third class, and she’s sure there is some couple who would be happy to trade places with them. She knows that someone unused to servants would feel that she had to explain their actions. She knows that she doesn’t have to, that if her request is made with just the right hint of insolence, the right tone of command, no explanation will be required.
Russell walks into their room, rips off his tie, and throws it unlovingly on the chair.
“We’re moving,” she says. “We’re moving to third class tonight.”
“What did you do, you little stinker?”
“Don’t ask, just say I’m the best little wife you could have imagined.”
“You’re the best little wife I could have imagined. Which is, by the way, not saying much, my darling.”
They embrace and dance around the room. Like newlyweds. Which, in fact, they are.
—
Now, in third class with their comrades, he’s happy. Once again, they are best friends. He praises the music: not like that crap from those guys dressing up in monkey suits, he says; Ernie, the guy with the banjo, he’s the real thing. He and another man with a guitar sing songs about the heroes of their fight: “A las Barricadas,” the 5th Regiment, the 15th Brigade. “If You Want to Write to Me, You Know Where I Am.” And almost any hour of the day or night some group can be counted on to break into “The Internationale.” The songs have urgency: life and death, eternal love, devotion to a cause, devotion to a country, with each note something at stake, something that cannot be questioned. In first class they are dancing to “It’s De-Lovely,” “Too Marvelous for Words,” “The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down.”