I thought about it. I was both sad and not sad. It never seemed to be a choice and so it was hard to regret.
Wasn’t she worried about diseases? I asked, thinking of myself as well.
“He only goes with clean girls, and only when he’s in L.A.,” Rosalie said. “I asked him to make sure of that. Have you ever been with Ainslie?”
“A few times,” I said. I hadn’t spoken with anyone so frankly possibly ever. And it was so pleasant that I forgot about my life outside of Rosalie’s house until the maid came in and said it was time for dinner.
I hadn’t prepared anything for Ainslie and me, and the shops would be closed by the time I got home. Rosalie invited me to dine with them, and I called the apartment to tell Ainslie he should make himself an egg sandwich, but there was no answer. Let him worry, I thought. I worried often enough about him. Let the tables be turned for once.
We sat down at the table, minus Clarence, who was in Los Angeles. I broke the news to the children, who were no longer children. As I suspected, they were not exactly upset, though their faces did fall in disappointment.
“Can I come visit on vacation?” Sylvie asked.
“It’s way too far,” Barbara chided her. She was halfway through college at this point, going steady with a young man from the synagogue. Dan would be applying to Stanford in the fall.
Barbara said, “You’d hate it there. There’s no ice cream because there’s no refrigeration.”
“Then it’s not a vacation,” Sylvie said. “Not without ice cream.” She had inherited Clarence’s sweet tooth and was getting a bit plump.
“You’ll have to write us postcards,” Dan said. “And we’ll write you back and I’ll tell you that I got into Stanford because my dad built a library or something.”
“Or you could just do the work and get in on merit,” Rosalie told him.
“I’ll write,” I said.
Barbara said, “Please be careful, Aunt Fanny.”
“Of course,” I said.
I lowered my head for the blessings over the wine and bread. I was back home in my parents’ apartment, with its wet laundry and the sounds of children at once soothing and saddening. Yet I knew I was only borrowing this feeling, and that soon enough I was going back to the life I’d made, on an island far away.
*
I saw Joseph only one other time in my life, at a garden party in Berkeley in 1949. He looked the same. So he had not moved to Israel. I had imagined seeing him a thousand times, and now that it was happening I felt only fondness. I nodded and smiled; he did as well. Then I turned away to excuse myself from a conversation to go and speak to him, but he had disappeared. He is surely gone now, as is most everyone else I knew and loved. Yes, I loved him. I was able to deny it back then, but I see now that I was just protecting myself. I thought then that he was not in love with me, but now I wonder if he was making it easier for me to make a choice. There is a nobility in that. But maybe I’m just telling myself that to get over the wound that still festers.
After our confessions, Rosalie and I began to have fun again, giggling like schoolgirls at matinees or at a particularly bad exhibition at a local gallery. In contrast, Ainslie and I began to bicker. What I used to find charming and mildly exasperating I now found irritating. His habit of whistling constantly, his need to always have something in his mouth (a cigarette, a pipe). His responding to everything with a joke, which I used to find so jollying, now struck me as juvenile. I don’t know what had come over me.
As I was packing up my desk, Childress asked if he could take me to lunch to say goodbye.
We went to the local steak house. This is where he took people he wanted to impress. I’d never eaten there before, though I’d been in to deliver messages and once to pick up steaks for some VIP who either didn’t want to be seen in public or else just preferred eating in our windowless office. The restaurant was made dark by mahogany wood wainscoting and maroon velveteen wallpaper. The tables were lit with lamps masquerading as gaslights.
Childress had gotten even bigger with successive years, though I would have sworn that it wasn’t possible. His shirts strained at the buttons; the banquette looked dwarfed in comparison to his shoulders. He ordered a scotch, so I had a martini, though I was not used to drinking during the day. It would be my last for a while, I reasoned. I ordered the prime rib with a baked potato. We made small talk while we waited for the food, and when it arrived we were occupied with the business of eating.
Childress’s bites were as large as his person. I worried for a minute that he wouldn’t be able to fit a particularly large piece into his mouth, and then, when he did, that he wouldn’t be able to chew and swallow it, and I almost applauded when he managed.
“So, back to the old island, huh?” Childress asked me when his plate was clean.
“I liked it there,” I said. “It was quiet. Don’t underestimate the pleasure of no telephones.”
“No.” He laughed. “I would never underestimate that.”
We made small talk for the rest of the meal. He ordered another scotch and I ordered a coffee.
“It’s a shame,” he said, then hid behind his drink.
“I’m sorry?” I asked. “A shame about what?”
“That whole business with Ainslie.”
My toes went cold. “What do you mean?”
“Just that being forced out…I did what I could for you, because I like you.”
My mouth went dry; it was wide open. I wasn’t exactly sure what Childress meant, but I knew that we should not discuss it further.
“That’s very kind of you,” I said. “We appreciate everything you’ve done for us.”
The rest of that afternoon I was in a state of unparalleled anxiety. The other receptionists in the office gave me a cake as a send-off, and the sugar coursed through my veins. I thought I might be having a heart attack, that’s how quickly my heart was beating. I was tempted to telephone Ainslie, but there was nowhere private to talk, and what could be said over the phone? Finally it was five o’clock, and I stood in the bus the entire way home, willing it to go faster.
When I arrived home, Ainslie was out. I poured myself a drink to calm my nerves. And then I poured another. I looked at the level of the bottle. Throughout his entire four-year absence I had nursed three bottles with Joseph’s help. Since Ainslie came home, I had purchased six bottles. And he was not solely to blame.
When Ainslie came in the door, his hands full of packages, I was more than tipsy.
“You have a lot to tell me,” I said.
“I do?” He set down his packages. He moved with his typical grace.
“I had lunch with Childress today.”
“How is the old so-and-so?” Ainslie said. He opened the refrigerator and took out some water. He liked his water cold, another preference to be altered on the islands. “He make you pick up the check?”
“He said he pulled strings to get us to the Galápagos. What did he mean by ‘get us to the Galápagos’? I thought they were asking us to go.”
Ainslie downed his water and washed the glass, placing it upside down next to the sink. He didn’t look at me. “Ah, yes, well, there was some talk of me not being in the navy anymore.”
“Civilian life? Were you going to discuss this with me?”
“It was, shall we say, not exactly voluntary, this potential retirement.”
“Ainslie, stop being coy!” I raised my voice. I could hear its note of hysteria. “Just tell me.”
“I was caught, all right? They set me up—it was like Newport all over again, sending in someone to make advances while I was on the Rock. And I got caught. I was due for a court-martial, dishonorable discharge at the minimum. I didn’t know it was Childress who pulled the strings. I’m grateful. I would hate prison. Though Alcatraz wouldn’t be much different from Baltra, I suppose.”
“It would be a military prison,” I said. “It wouldn’t be Alcatraz.”
“See, now, Frances, this is why I love
you.” Ainslie came over to me and put his arm around me. “Because that’s what you choose to comment on, when you hear I almost ruined our lives. That I used a bad metaphor.”
“You should have told me,” I said. “You should have told me straightaway. Take your arm off me; I’m angry.” I shrugged out of his embrace.
Ainslie stepped back. He noticed the empty glass on the table and went to the sideboard to begin to catch up. He poured me a good stiff one, then one for himself. And he got two ice cubes out of the icebox and dropped them in our drinks with a satisfying splash.
“I know,” he said.
“You keep claiming we’re a team, but you don’t tell me anything.”
Ainslie slumped down into a chair. “It’s hard.”
“I do a lot of hard things, Ainslie.”
“I’m ashamed. I want to stop. I try to, but then I have a few drinks and I forget that I’m trying to stop. Or, I don’t forget, but I just don’t care that I’m trying.” He was looking at his feet. His voice cracked. “Why is it like this?”
I sighed. “I don’t know. But you have to try harder. And you have to tell me everything.”
“I promise, Franny,” he said. “I want to go back. I was happy they sent us. I think, when I’m there, there’s no temptation. I can just be with you.”
“I want to go back too,” I said. “But I need to understand the circumstances.”
“It’s a punishment.”
“It sounds like a lifeline. A dishonorable discharge? You’d be unemployable.”
“That’s what you’re worried about?”
“Someone has to think of these things, because it’s patently obvious that you never do. You only think about your—” I gestured at his crotch.
I could see a change come over Ainslie’s face. His features hardened. “I’m the reason we went to the islands in the first place. You’d never have gone if it weren’t for me. You’d still be pushing papers for Childress in the vault.”
Always, I’d been afraid if I confronted someone they would leave me—end a friendship, a business relationship, a marriage. Now I had the upper hand, the leverage. I could decide to walk away. “How dare you!” I said. “You have lied to me from the beginning!” It felt good to scream.
“I didn’t lie—” Ainslie replied.
“You did, by omission. You didn’t tell me the truth.”
“You lied to me too. I know what you think about people like me. You wouldn’t have gone through with it.”
“You tricked me. What else haven’t you told me? What other secrets are you keeping ‘for my own good’?”
“You really want to know? Don’t ask, Franny, unless you’re prepared to handle the answer.” Ainslie marched to the liquor cabinet, angrily guzzled his drink, and poured another.
“I want to know,” I said. I took the drink from his hand and drank it like he did, the sandpaper slide of it soothing. He refilled the glass.
“You don’t want to know. You want to live on some enchanted island where German spies are your bosom buddies and the war is thousands of miles away.” He gestured with the hand holding the drink and it sloshed over. “You want to know the secrets? You do?” He was challenging me now.
“I want to know it all.”
Ainslie grew steely, his voice even and measured. “You never asked me what happened to Victor and Genevieve.” He looked into my eyes, his face sharp like a lava rock. “He heard me, talking with Hancock. It was something…important. I saw him on the ship’s ladder as I left. And then I had no choice.”
My chest hollowed out. Ainslie was right. I said I wanted to know, but I didn’t. If I thought about it, there was only one thing that could have logically happened to Genevieve and Victor. But because it was too painful to recognize, too scary, I had put it out of my little head.
But now I had to know the whole story. “How?”
“Knife. Lava pit.”
I fell onto the sofa and looked at the stain on the carpet intently. Ainslie poured himself another drink, then brought me one. This time I sipped it, still staring vacantly.
“Did you love him?” I asked.
Ainslie laughed mirthlessly, a single honk of a syllable. He shook his head slowly. “For someone so smart, Franny—”
“You scare me,” I whispered.
Ainslie shrugged.
*
I spent the night walking the city. It wasn’t terribly safe, I suppose, but I had protection in my age and my scowl. First I wandered through Lafayette Park, so as to wind myself and drive any thoughts from my head, but that succeeded only in sobering me up, so I walked downhill. I was tempted to stop in at a bar, but I got as far as the doorway before I decided I didn’t want more liquor. I didn’t want to numb and obfuscate the way Ainslie did.
So now I knew: Ainslie was a murderer. He had killed during the Great War, but a soldier killing a soldier was a far different thing than murdering someone you knew. Someone you’d been intimate with.
I had wandered down to the docks, and there were soldiers all around me, in navy blues and army greens. I wanted to see one of the bars that Ainslie frequented, but I wasn’t sure how to find it. I walked out on the pier and threw a large rock into the bay. It disappeared in the night but made a satisfying plunk as it splashed, hurrying down to the bottom.
I made my way back. As I passed an alley, I heard a noise and turned to look. Two men against a wall, pants pulled down, both facing the bricks. Like penguins, one pinning down the other, grunting. I looked away. I no longer found this disgusting. It was animal, nothing more, animal desire, and I could no more condemn Ainslie for it than I could condemn the burro for desiring a burro.
I searched myself for fear and found that it had gone now that I had the leverage over Ainslie that he was always talking about. I imagined him stabbing Victor, pushing him into a lava tube, and watching as the water swallowed him up, to be eaten by sharks or swept out to sea. I never heard Genevieve scream. Perhaps she went first. Duty. Desire. These abstract concepts that dictate our lives.
Later, after the sun rose, I would go back to the apartment and climb into bed next to Ainslie, who would sleepily put his arm around me. We would make our preparations, buy our supplies, book our passage. I would make him promise to never again let me learn things secondhand. We would live our dutiful, desiring lives.
Now, though, I was relieved; I’d been holding my breath and was finally able to exhale. It wasn’t just leverage I had over Ainslie; it was understanding. Ainslie and I were laid bare. And beyond that, he had chosen me. I loved him. I knew him better than any other being, and he me. This was intimacy, the like of which I’d never known except with Rosalie, and even that relationship was fraught with secrets. We can know each other deeper than mere facts. We can love each other deeper than our actions.
Part Five
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
We spent two months on Baltra, Ainslie overseeing the dismantling of the base, giving away the building supplies. It made no sense to me—build a base and then allow residents to come cart away the supplies just when the war had ended. We’d had two world wars in thirty years; didn’t anyone think we’d need the base? A lot of military decisions were made like this, I came to see. They made sense in the short term, were politically expedient and curried favor, but disregarded any long-term good or savings.
Ainslie carried a clipboard everywhere he went, and I have to say he looked handsome in his uniform. He created a list of raw materials and a priority list ranked by need of locals who wanted the wood and furniture. The distribution, though, was as chaotic as all things Ecuadorian. Even the best strategies falter under native execution.
The whole process was remarkably quick. There was a fully functional (albeit almost empty) base one day, and the next the buildings were reduced to mere foundations, the locals having carted everything off like ants at a picnic. I took a walk among the ruins—that’s what they looked like, ruins. I’ve never been to Europe, but I assume this is wh
at the remnants of Greek civilization look like, a blueprint of what once was. Nature, too, had already started to encroach on the site, with grass and small shrubs poking up through any slit in the concrete. Iguanas had reclaimed their territory. A dozen of them were crowding onto one cement block, each refusing to cede his perch to another. I took a long walk down the runway. This would be the flattest walk I’d take for as long as we were on the islands. And the only one where I could walk upright without fear of a branch or a thorn catching me.
The sun beat down, the heat shimmering in the distance. “I’m sorry,” I whispered to no one, to myself. I think I meant it both ways: apology and regret.
*
Floreana gossip had reached us on Baltra. When our acquaintance Leif Jurgensen came to Baltra to collect building materials, he told us that the Muellers had caught a ride on his fishing boat to Chatham. Apparently they thought that Alexandre’s philosophy would help the German war recovery. So that left only Elke and Heinrich and the Jiménezes.
Only the latter came to greet us at Post Office Bay. Gonzalo was effusive in his handshake, Gansa squeezed me tightly, tearing up. She had worried about me in the United States, a country at war. It was useless explaining to her that although our country was very involved in the war, the closest actual fighting was several thousand miles off the coast. I think she imagined hand-to-hand combat in Philadelphia.
Gansa had given birth to two children in our absence, but both she and her husband looked unchanged in the four years we’d been gone. The children were perched placidly in baskets on Chuclu, who was still trodding his stubborn path. He didn’t look happy about having two papooses strapped to his side, but then he never looked happy about anything. I gave Gansa my congratulations, and told her I was sure I had something for the children in my boxes, once I unpacked.
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