He smiled back, and was about to say more, when the telephone rang. To Eddie’s surprise, the fun ran out of his sister’s face, and she looked, suddenly, droopy and old and unhappy. She excused herself snuffily and, turning her back, snatched up the heavy black receiver.
“Yes? Yes, operator…Hi…No…Not yet…I told you, I’m fine with it now…. Yes…No…You don’t have to worry about…Not yet…He’s here now, and…Okay…I can’t…Okay…Okay…Yes.”
Hanging up without saying goodbye.
It was a moment before she could turn around, and Eddie was not about to make her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, face pinched.
“Was that—”
“You’d better go.”
“Is he coming over?” Eddie demanded, feeling oddly fierce.
Junie laughed. “Coming over? Eddie, he’s never coming over again. Believe me. He wouldn’t want to. And I wouldn’t want him to.” The smile vanished. “I don’t know why I ever—” She stopped, rephrased the point. “He’s evil, Eddie. Just plain evil.”
Suddenly she was in her brother’s arms. Her belly bumped awkwardly against him, and there was laughter in the tears. At the door she offered him more advice.
“You think evil is obvious, Eddie. It usually is. But be careful, brother, dear. Sometimes evil is invisible, except to God alone.” Then the mischief was back. “Now, get yourself a lawyer and fix your life.”
She shut him out.
(II)
IT TOOK SOME FANCY FOOTWORK. As his sister had directed, Eddie got himself a real lawyer. He sought a recommendation from Oliver Garland, the crisp Wall Street attorney who was Kevin’s cousin. Oliver sent him to one of the top litigators in Manhattan, a slim, courtly man named Lloyd Garrison, who had represented Oppenheimer. Sitting in his spacious Park Avenue office, Garrison heard Eddie out. Let me make some calls, he said. A week later, without making a point of it, Garrison took his new client to lunch at a club known to admit no Negroes. Nobody wanted to argue with the lawyer, because he was likely to sue or, worse, resign. Garrison explained the deal. Following his sister’s counsel, Eddie sat and listened. He did not argue or question. He just nodded. Eddie spent two days meeting a pair of agents, neither of them Stilwell, one of them obviously very senior in the Bureau. The meetings took place in an apartment in Riverdale. His lawyer and a court reporter were present. When they ran out of questions, the agents thanked him gravely. The next day, they had his statement ready for signature. Eddie hesitated. The document would come back and bite him, he was sure of it. The senior agent held out a pen. Garrison whispered encouragement. Eddie knew that the mess was of his own making and that this was the only way out but still found that he was scared. He heard Junie’s confident words: Hoover doesn’t want a fight. He wants to scare you into doing what he wants. Garrison asked if Eddie needed a minute. Eddie shook his head, took the pen, and, boldly, signed.
Three days later, very quietly, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested an artist and photographer named Emil Goldfus who had his apartment and studio in a ritzy building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and stored his equipment in a warehouse in Brooklyn. They charged him with espionage. Within a week, the arrest was public knowledge. Eddie saw the picture on the front page of the paper. The caption said that he was a colonel in the KGB, that he had operated under a pseudonym, and that his real name was Rudolf Abel.
(III)
THE CELEBRATION, such as it was, remained muted, because almost nobody knew what was going on. Aurelia, whose husband had still not returned from abroad, found an excuse to go up to Boston to visit a sorority sister, and joined Eddie for lunch at Junie’s apartment in Cambridge while supposedly out shopping. Junie disliked the women of the Negro sororities of that day, even though her mother and big sister were in one. Fortunately, she hit it off with Aurelia, who could charm the snow off Everest. The two women spent more time laughing and chattering with each other than either did celebrating with Eddie. Eventually, he decided to take himself off for a walk through Cambridge, a town whose vibrancy he loved. The afternoon was sultry. He took off his jacket and slung it over his shoulder. He strolled down to the Square to buy a couple of overseas papers and listen to the street music and the odd undiscovered poetic genius declaiming on the sidewalk for pennies. The madcap afternoon energy seized him. He felt freer than he had in years. He was spending time with Aurelia and loving the risk. They never even touched. They did nothing but enjoy each other’s company. Eddie did not know what his behavior meant. He wandered into a bookstore and found a couple of copies of Field’s Unified Theory. He was about to track down the manager and offer to autograph them when he glanced up and saw, attacking the vast mountain of travel guides, Margot Frost.
Grinning her toothy political grin at him, the one she inherited from her father.
Friendly hug. Quick polite conversation of ex-lovers.
“What are you doing here?”
“Lanning is meeting some of his old professors. They’re going to teach him everything there is to know about foreign policy in three hours.” The same sparkling mischief in the dark eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“Visiting my sister. You look great, Margot.”
“So do you. I read the novel. I loved it.”
“Thanks. How are things with you?”
“Spectacular. Lanning is running for the House next year. I’ll tell you a secret. Daddy’s retiring. He’s anointing Lanning for his Senate seat in ’62.”
“So the White House can’t be far away.”
“Having it off in the East Room.”
“That’s right.” Both of them joking. The spark, for a thousand different reasons, was dead. Margot was still a handsome woman. But he noticed changes. Her hair was now perfectly coiffed, as befitted the future First Lady. Her tidy nails bespoke countless hours at the manicurist. She was wearing a loose summer dress, but the cross at her throat was silver and tiny and right side up.
“Call me if you’re ever in Washington.”
“Call me if you’re ever in New York.”
Walking back along Massachusetts Avenue, he wondered why Margot had not asked him what his sister was doing in Cambridge. Maybe it was liberal politeness, not wanting to embarrass him when it turned out that she scrubbed bathrooms at night. Maybe it was something else.
On the subway ride back to Boston, Aurie asked him what had taken so long.
“I ran into an old friend,” he said.
Or she ran into me.
CHAPTER 13
More Friendly Advice
(I)
“YOU’RE AN IDIOT,” said Mona Veazie.
“I figured that part out for myself.”
“Why didn’t you ask me before you went down there, Aurie? I would’ve told you what would happen. I know how you are about him and I know how he is about you—”
“We didn’t have sex,” Aurelia whispered.
Mona laughed—or, more properly, hooted. They were in Mona’s bedroom, for she still lived in her parents’ mansion on Edgecombe Avenue. Her mother, a distant Garland cousin, was the most prominent Czarina in Harlem. The view was of the walled garden, and the rear entrances of other houses. Mona sat at her dresser. Aurelia was lying on her back on the bed.
“‘We didn’t have sex,’” Mona echoed. “You should put that one in the Sentinel. Everybody would believe it, right? ‘What recently married Harlem hostess spent the night alone in an apartment with her ex, then denied to this reporter that they had intimate relations?’ I can see it now.”
“We didn’t spend the night together. The driver dropped me at Janine’s and then took Eddie to his hotel.”
“The FBI driver.”
“Yes.”
“So the two of you are probably in Hoover’s files by now.”
Aurelia rolled onto her side. “Stop teasing me, Mona. I’m in trouble. I need help.”
Mona’s eyes sparkled. “If I believed you, I’d help you. I know how much I owe you,
honey. But you never needed help in your life. You’re just up here whining because you don’t want a lecture.”
“I don’t want a lecture. That’s true.” Aurelia propped herself on her elbow. “What am I going to do?”
Mona rubbed her temple like somebody with a migraine. She was wearing slacks, as she almost always did, even as she topped thirty, when skirts and dresses were de rigueur among Harlem women of a certain class. Mona was about to receive her doctorate in psychology, and had lined up a postgraduate fellowship at the University of Chicago, where she would teach a little, do some research, and hunt for a full-time faculty position worthy of her credentials. She was the smartest person Aurelia had ever met, and also one of the wisest. They had been friends since the day they met. Mona, the great rebel, had a string of men behind her. Aurie was more choosy, even though Harlem believed otherwise. Eddie was not the first man with whom she had found herself sexlessly entwined.
“You’re a married woman,” said Mona, with her mother’s chilly authority. “You have a child. You’re not going to do anything. Eddie was over the day you said yes to Kevin.”
“Eddie thinks that we—”
“It doesn’t matter what Eddie thinks.”
“We could have a harmless lunch now and—”
“You saw what having a drink almost cost you.”
Aurie frowned. “When did you get so hard? You never followed anybody’s rules.”
Mona grinned. “I never got married, either. Respect the institution.”
(II)
THE ARGUMENT with Mona took place after the trip to Washington but before the trip to Boston. For days Aurelia wondered. At that time Kevin had been gone for almost two weeks, without any serious effort at explanation. He did not seem to be respecting the institution—not the way Aurie thought the institution was supposed to work. Bewildered, she walked little Zora in her carriage, visited other Harlem wives, wrote the occasional column for the Sentinel. Several times over the next couple of days, she was on the verge of calling Eddie—surely there was nothing wrong with a lunch—but her hand always froze before she could lift the receiver.
Then she ran into Eddie one night at the salon maintained by Shirley Elden, and when they happened to pass in the empty hallway—no doubt a coincidence—she asked him, matter-of-factly, how the business with Hoover had been resolved. Eddie explained. Flushed with relief, she actually gave him a congratulatory hug, and kissed him on the cheek. The intimacy was dizzying, and it was in that moment of weakness that she whispered that she would try to meet him in Cambridge for the celebration with Junie—a choice she did not regret until she got home.
Anybody could have seen her.
Was she out of her mind?
Then it got worse. Two mornings after her return, Aurelia had an unexpected visit from her father-in-law, who stopped by on his way to work. He brought along a box of imported chocolates. She made coffee, and dandled the baby on her knee while they talked.
“My boy’s not perfect,” said Matty calmly. “Not by a long shot. I don’t imagine living with him is all sweetness and light. I understand that. He married a beautiful younger woman, and he leaves you here alone for weeks at a time. Bad situation all around, Aurie. Very bad.”
She could not meet his eyes, and so played with Zora, who was nibbling on an animal cracker but mostly smearing it on her mother’s blouse.
“We’re the same, you and I. That’s what I love about you. We’re the kind of people, we see something we want, we go after it, and nothing will make us happy till we get it. Right?” Still she said nothing. He did not want her answers or her agreement. He wanted her attention. “The only trouble is, Aurie, people like us get bored easily. We work and work till we get what we want, and then—as soon as we get it?—we want something else. You know how the Bible says, hold tight to that which is good? I’m not sure people like us are so great at that one.” He raised a hand to forestall her response. “Me, I don’t judge anybody. Live and let live. Besides, my life—well, it’s not a model for anybody to follow. Except for one thing. My marriage. My Wanda. That’s the one thing I’ve done right in life, being true to my wife and taking care of her.”
Aurelia was shaking her head. “I’ve never cheated on Kevin, Matty. Please believe me. I never have, and I never would.”
His eyes were wide with feigned surprise. He laid a hand over his heart. “Oh, no, honey, no. Did you think that’s what I meant? I know you would never hurt my son. Never. Not that he doesn’t deserve it, goodness knows.” He leaned over and chucked Zora’s chin. The toddler tilted her head back like a Czarina in training. “What I’m saying is, I know this has been hard, the way Kevin is acting. Believe me, Aurie, when he gets back, I’ll be giving him a serious talking-to. Just what I told you, honey. Holding tight to that which is good.” He was on his feet, hat in hand. “You remember, Aurie. You’re worth ten of him. He needs you more than you need him. He’s not so bad, really. Try to meet him halfway. My wife does that. I’m hell on earth to live with, and my Wanda’s a saint. But you don’t have to be a saint, honey. All I’m asking is that you give my boy a chance. I’ll talk to him. And I’ll tell him, Aurie. If he ever does anything to hurt you—really hurt you?—I’ll pay for the divorce myself and give you what I’m leaving to him in my will.”
Aurelia had never known a man who could make her cry so easily, but Matty was a salesman and could wring tears from a statue. By the time they walked to the door, she had recovered sufficiently to ask a question.
“Matty?”
“Yes, honey?”
“Have you ever heard Kevin talk about shaking the throne?”
His fleshy face crinkled in bewilderment. “About what?”
“Shaking the throne. Pandemonium. Anything like that.”
“Sounds to me like the music you kids listen to.” He kissed her on the forehead, and was gone.
(III)
KEVIN RETURNED from London the following week. From Idlewild, he went straight to the office, and arrived home several hours later chastened and apologetic, bearing a beautifully wrapped box from the royal jewelers, Garrard & Co. of Bond Street. He hugged her desperately. He told her he loved her. He made promises. He would never again go away without telling her. He was sorry to have frightened her. He would never hurt her again. What he called “the bad patch” was over. He was done with his mysterious travels. Aurelia wondered whether his promises meant he had located Castle’s testament. Kevin was still talking, holding her close. What they needed, he said, was a second honeymoon: the chance to begin anew. After that, a house in the suburbs, so that the children would have a yard to play in.
Aurelia felt her childhood dreams gathering gently around her like clouds of triumph. A well-off husband who would never hurt her again. A grand house full of children. She remembered the orphanage, the nuns doing their best amid the crowding and the dampness and the fear. If the bad patch was really over—
She studied Kevin’s earnest face and chose to forgive him.
That night, they got to work on the new baby.
A month later, opening her eyes one morning to find Kevin smiling down at her as the Tuscan sunshine poured through the windows of the rented villa, Aurelia decided that the revival of his former tenderness was real. They made love. On the second day after their return to Edgecombe Avenue, she waited for her husband to leave for work, then went into the tiny sewing room that served as her office. She gathered the notes she had made from the documents she had found in the safe, burned them in an ashtray, and threw the ashes out with the trash.
CHAPTER 14
Quonset
(I)
“I DON’T READ CONTEMPORARY FICTION,” said Aunt Erebeth, patting Eddie’s hand with papery fingers. It was like being touched by a ghost. A tongue so pale you could almost see through it emerged from the ancient mouth, sliding over invisible lips. Snowy hair was straight and brittle, as if she was afraid to let her maids touch it. Gary Fatek often said, laughing nervously, t
hat his great-aunt was about six hundred years old. Just now, Eddie could believe it. “I don’t read anything written after Trollope. A little Dickens now and then, you understand, but I’m more a Milton woman. You’ll have read Milton back in college, of course, won’t you? Every real writer has.” Malicious confidence glittered in the old eyes. “You are a writer, aren’t you? Gareth says you make the critics swoon. But Gareth voted for Stevenson, not Eisenhower, the ninny, so we know what his opinion is worth.” She coughed, spraying Eddie with the remnants of dinner, and left unclear exactly who was the ninny. Eddie was seated on her right, the place of honor, across from Gary, and on the left of Tamra, whom Erebeth described as her minor domo. The dining room of Aunt Erebeth’s Quonset Point redoubt was an ill-lit cavern. The polished rosewood table could easily seat thirty, but tonight there were just four of them. The gloss was so high that Eddie could see himself, in full color, each time he bent over for a bite. It was early June. The windows were open to the murmuring night sea.
“I am indeed a writer,” Eddie agreed, wondering how on earth he had allowed Gary to talk him into this weekend. But one did not ignore invitations from the likes of Erebeth Hilliman.
“I’ve never heard of you,” she snapped.
Gary looked at his plate: Limoges, custom-designed with the family crest. Tamra looked at Erebeth. Eddie longed to smile but fought the urge. Aunt Erebeth, according to Gary, hated two things in life: levity, and the Democratic Party. “My career is young,” said Eddie, hoping to sound modest.
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