Palace Council

by Stephen L Carter

  For a moment he was wordstruck. Wasn’t it obvious? “You’re my sister. I wanted to find you.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that I might not want to be found?” Before he could answer, she made a sound of disgust, somewhere between a snicker and a spit, what their mother used to call snupping. “I told them it was a stupid idea. I told them we wouldn’t fool anybody.”

  “By them, you mean Mona and Aurelia.” When Junie said nothing, he added, “And you’ve fooled everybody for a long time. I don’t think anybody else knows.”

  “Except whoever’s following you.”

  “Nobody’s following me, Junie. That’s all over.”

  “My name is Gwen.” She had given the ball to the cat, who had leaped from her lap and was chasing it around the throw rug. “And I stopped believing in the Easter Bunny a long time ago.”

  “You have to tell me.” He did not budge from the sofa but struggled to cross the space between them. “It’s been almost twenty years, Junie. I know most of the story. I need the rest. No matter how terrible it is, I need the rest.” He considered telling her how he had almost died looking for her, but decided he would evoke no sympathy: his sister had surely been through worse.

  “Terrible. Right.” She laughed without humor. Her hair was twisted into a long ponytail. From the table beside her chair, she took a pair of glasses. She did not put them on but toyed with the stems. “You don’t know what terrible is, bro. You don’t know what it’s like to huddle in a safe house waiting for the battering ram that announces the arrival of the pigs, and then have the house blow up the next day, while you’re out buying milk. To crawl across borders with your chin in the mud because you’re on your government’s classified shot-while-attempting-to-escape list. To know that one of your own bullets—” She stopped, bit her lip, eyes following the cat as it tumbled around the carpet. “Terrible. Right. It was terrible.”

  “Junie—”

  “I knew you’d figure it out. I just didn’t know it would take you so long.” Her tortured gaze came up. “Or did Aurelia peach?”

  “No. She kept your secrets.”

  “I told her to marry you. She said she couldn’t marry you, not with this on her conscience.”

  “She was keeping me at a distance. For your sake. If she married me, how could she keep me from finding out?”

  Junie made the snupping sound again. “That wasn’t it. Aurelia’s great at keeping secrets. She fooled you in Harlem, talking about her parents and her childhood. She might have fooled you about me for the rest of your life. She was just afraid, if you ever did find out, you’d be furious at her for not telling you. That’s why she wouldn’t marry you. She was afraid you’d hate her. Do you hate her?”

  “No, Junie. I love her.”

  “Gwen.” She tilted her head. “She’s in the car?”

  “But she didn’t drive over. I did.”

  Junie nodded. “Mona called. You must have known she would.”

  “I thought she might.”

  “She warned me to get moving, but I spent ten years on the run. I’m not running any more.” She tapped the gun. “And I’m not letting them lock me up. I’ve done prison already.”

  This surprised him. “When did you do prison?”

  “One of the countries where we hid for a while had this idea that we—Never mind. It doesn’t matter.” Suddenly she smiled, bright and gay, Junie of the fifties. “Eddie. Look at you. The writer you always wanted to be. Famous around the world. Friend of Presidents and Prime Ministers. Are you happy now? Having everything?”

  “I don’t have everything—”

  “No kids. No wife. That’s because you’re a silly romantic. Remember the Junie Angle? Disaster versus Godsend?”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, your life is a Godsend. You decided to pine over Aurelia. That was a silly choice, but it was your own choice. You could have married anybody.” Her face closed down again. “My life is a Godsend, too. I want you to understand that. Not disaster. Godsend. I was in a mess, and God led me out. I have a job I like, I’m near my children”—almost, but not quite, a sob—“and I’m enjoying it. I’m their silly old Aunt Gwen. I get to watch them grow up, I paint my pictures so I don’t go out of my mind, and I wait for the pigs. Eddie, what are you doing here? Please, go away.”

  “Junie—”

  “I know what you want to ask. Was I Commander M? Yes. Was the first baby Lanning’s? Yes. Yes. Whose was the second? Not your business. Who suggested this idea? Your girlfriend. We hit it off, Eddie. Back when I was pregnant the first time. We used to talk on the phone at night a lot. Then I graduated, and, well, after that, we kind of fell out of touch. When I wanted to come out, I got in touch with Aurie. Arranged a meeting. I wanted to see my kids. I didn’t want to go to jail. There were things to arrange. Documents. A place to live. A job. It took almost a year, Eddie. By that time, Aurie had talked to Mona, Mona had agreed—okay? Happy now?”

  “Why didn’t you get in touch with me?”

  “Because everyone in the world was watching you. They probably still are. Plus, you would’ve disapproved of what I’ve been doing. You don’t know what it’s like, bro, to face your disapproval. When your jaw juts out and your lip curls? It’s worse than That Voice ever was. No wonder Torie Elden couldn’t stand you.” She softened. The cat was back in her lap. “It wasn’t a lack of trust, Eddie. And it wasn’t a lack of love. But it wasn’t a good idea. It still isn’t. I’ll probably be arrested tomorrow.” Her nervous eyes cut toward the window once more, then down at the gun. “Maybe tonight.”

  “You won’t.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do.”

  Another long moment, the siblings finding uncomfortably little to say to each other. Three women, he reflected. Three brilliant, beautiful women who should have been the champions of the darker nation, all sacrificing, and suffering. Aurie never marrying again. Mona raising Julia and Jay as her own, calling them twins to put everybody off the scent, marrying a succession of white men she did not love so that everyone would think her obsession explained the interracial kids. And Junie herself, alone with the cat, the art her only therapy. All those watercolors, New England peace pierced by jagged red arrows of pain.

  Eddie said, “There’s a part you’re not telling me.”

  “There’s a whole lot I’m not telling you. There’s a whole lot I’m never gonna tell you.”

  “I mean, about your babies.”

  “What about them?” Defensively, almost snarling. Even the cat noticed.

  “Your daughter. Julia. She was born in 1957.”

  “So?”

  “So, you’re still protecting Aurelia, aren’t you? No wonder my private detectives couldn’t find any trace of the baby at the agencies around Boston. Little Julia was in the Midwest, wasn’t she? Maybe even being raised by the same nuns who raised Aurie.” He was talking half to himself now. “Then you went underground. You got pregnant again—maybe you were still seeing Lanning, maybe it was somebody else—and it was two years later. That’s when you got in touch with Aurelia again. Not when you wanted to come out. You wanted to make sure the kids were taken care of. You had the baby—Jay—and somehow you got him to Aurelia. Maybe Perry helped. I know you won’t tell me. But you got Jay to Aurelia, Aurelia got him to Mona, and then they went to the orphanage in Cleveland to get Julia, so they could be raised together. Mona told everybody in Harlem they were twins, and then she went straight to New Hampshire so nobody could see that Julia was bigger than Jay. She stayed away for years, and by the time she came back to visit, she could just explain that Julia was taller because girls mature faster than boys. Mona must have known the truth, but—”

  “Are you done?”

  “Done?”

  “Done proving how smart you are. I know you’re smart. That’s the other reason I never wanted you involved. There’s such a thing as being too smart, Eddie. Too curious. Sometimes you have to leave things as the
y are.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I’m not going to talk about this any more, and I don’t want to listen to you talking about it, either.”

  Eddie nodded. He said, gently, “I’m just glad you’re all right.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And you are, aren’t you? All right?”

  “Sure.” But the eyes were haunted again. “I’m fine.”

  “Do you need anything? Can I help you somehow?”

  The snupping sound again. “I earn my own money.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” he said, although it was. He realized that he was talking to a stranger, that the little girl who used to crawl into his bed and whisper her dreams was gone forever. The special connection between the two of them had died long ago, everywhere but in Eddie’s own rosy memories.

  “If you want to help,” she said, oddly belligerent, “you can use some of your connections to get Sharon Martindale out of prison.”

  “My connections don’t run that high any more.”

  “Or you think she deserves to stay in.” He said nothing. Probably Junie was right. “She’s no worse than me, Eddie. The sooner you get that through your head, the sooner you’ll see why you shouldn’t have come.”

  Before he could answer, the telephone rang in another room.

  (III)

  WHEN JUNIE CAME BACK, she did not sit. She had changed into a thicker sweater, as if talking to her brother had chilled instead of warming her. Her arms were crossed, and her eyes were lost. “It’s time for you to go,” she said.

  “Junie—”

  “Gwen.”

  “Gwen. Who was on the phone?”

  “The FBI. The CIA. My boyfriend. My girlfriend. What difference does it make?” She pointed to the front window. “Aurie is out there worrying. Probably freezing, too. You should go.”

  “We could invite her in—”

  “No.”

  Eddie clenched his fists, fighting the frustration. He did not know what he had expected, but he had not expected this. “Junie—Gwen—look. I’ll come back. As often as you’ll let me. Every week, every month, whatever suits your—”

  “No.”

  “No, what?”

  “No, you can’t come back.”

  “Sure I can. It’s not that far, and—”

  Junie lifted her palm and covered his mouth, the way she used to. A ghostly smile danced across her lips. “That’s not what I mean, bro. Sorry. This time I’m the one who has to be selfish, not you.” Her hand fell to her lap. The fingers trembled. “I’m sorry, Eddie. I am. But I can’t let you get close to me. If you come up here once, well, fine, you’re visiting Mona. You come twice, and all your friends—the Bureau, the Agency, Lanning, everybody—they’ll wonder why. A third time, and everybody will come sniffing around. My cover’s good, but not great. What keeps it intact is, nobody has any reason to look behind it, and, well, nobody has the resources to investigate every woman of my age in the country. The easiest plan is to follow you until you lead them to me.”

  Junie crossed the room, tugged the curtain aside, peeked. She did not turn back toward the room. Her shoulders shook, and Eddie supposed she was crying, but he knew better than to offer comfort. It occurred to him, far too late, that among the many reasons his sister had kept her distance all these years was the undeniable fact that he had indeed once served as an informant for the FBI, in the capture of Rudolf Abel. Junie herself had arranged it.

  “I’m where I am, Eddie,” she resumed after a moment. “I’ve made my peace. I can’t have my old life back. So I have this one. I do my art, I teach my students, and, every now and then, I see my kids.” She let the curtain fall. “The alternative is to go to Algeria or someplace, or else to go to prison. They’ve got indictments waiting for me everywhere.”

  “But you didn’t do anything,” Eddie protested, a bit stupidly. “You were just—the whole thing—it was imaginary.”

  “Agony did a lot of things,” said Junie.

  “You didn’t do them personally.”

  “I was the commander, brother of mine, and that makes me liable.” A harsh laugh. “And, besides. You have no idea what I did.” She swung around and, for a moment, the gray eyes went flinty. “No idea,” she repeated.

  Eddie could not meet her gaze. It implied too much that he would rather not envision. He wondered whether she ever confided in anyone, but knew at once that she did not. These despairing arguments with herself were all Junie had. Life alone is a terrible thing.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “You should go.” This brought his head up. Junie’s cheeks puffed out with the effort of holding in whatever she was really feeling.

  “I just got here,” said Eddie, his limbs in any case too leaden for him to rise.

  “You still should go.”

  “I have a question.”

  She shook her head. Her voice was steel. Commander M. “No, brother of mine. No questions. I’m not going to tell you where I’ve been or how I got here or who else helped me. I’m not going to tell you the names of my six best lovers or my six worst enemies.” She read something in his face. “What do you want me to do, bro? Go to the newspapers? Call my congressman? I’d be dead before anybody answered the phone.”

  Eddie saw this quite clearly. “What I want to know is—Junie, look. I’ve read the memo. Castle’s testament. I know about the meeting at Burton Mount’s house. I know who was present. I know why they picked you to lead Agony. They were looking for somebody who would see to it that no real harm was done. You were a pacifist, Junie. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. That’s why they picked you.”

  “I’m not going to discuss it,” she repeated, and turned stubbornly away.

  “I’m not asking about the history, sis. How you got involved in Agony, any of that. I just have one question, and it isn’t about the past. It’s about now, Junie. I want to know if you’re still a pacifist.”

  “It’s late, brother of mine.”

  Still Eddie could not budge. “Those threats against the Senator. Those are genuine. Those are from you.” Junie said nothing. She was playing with the cat again, tickling its nape. “You’re just keeping him off balance, right? You don’t actually intend to do anything about it.” The cat was occupying all of her attention now. She caressed it with both hands, calling the creature sweetheart and baby and snookums, and the cat mewled and stretched with pleasure. Eddie tried again. “You don’t want him to forget what he owes you. What he did to you. That’s his punishment, right? Not being allowed to forget?”

  “He ruined my life,” said Junie, mostly to the cat. “Yes, mmmm, yes, he did, the bad man ruined Mommy’s life, didn’t he, sweetheart?” She shook the cat’s cheeks. “He ruined my life. Look at me, bro. He ruined my life, and he deserves to suffer.”

  “Yes. He does. To suffer. That’s all.” He quoted Wesley Senior, who had measured his daughter’s crimes not according to the Bible but according to Gandhi: “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Uh-huh, meaning you agree?”

  Junie stood up, the cat now on her shoulder. “You better go,” she said, and her smile was like an unforgettable but hopelessly distant summer. “Before the bad guys start wondering where you are.”

  Their hug was brief, and felt like mourning.

  (IV)

  WHEN EDDIE CLIMBED BACK into the car, face stony, Aurelia started to speak, to apologize, to explain. Eddie covered her mouth with his hand. He kissed her. Then he leaned across her and opened the glove compartment. Inside was the jeweler’s box. He handed it to her.

  “No more secrets,” he said. “That’s the only rule.”

  Aurelia looked at him. Feeling queasy, she opened the box and took out the ring. It was old and heavy, and she guessed it must be an heirloom. Perhaps it had belonged to his late mother. She looked at him again, pondering. Time for the fine old truth. Mira the cat watched from the window. Gwen was nowhere to be seen.


  “This time I’m not changing my name,” Aurie said.

  EPILOGUE

  The Retirement Party

  (I)

  ON THE SECOND SATURDAY in March of 1975, Edward Trotter Wesley Junior married Aurelia Treene Garland in a private ceremony at the bride’s home on Fall Creek Drive in Ithaca, New York. The groom was attended by Gary Fatek, the bride by Mona Veazie. There were few other guests. Marcella represented the groom’s family. Nobody represented the bride’s, but her son and daughter jointly escorted her down the aisle. The afternoon was unexpectedly warm, so the small reception was moved out onto the lawn. Gary led off the toasts, just as he had at Aurie’s first wedding twenty years ago. Mona watched him closely. Of course, there were still people in the well-to-do corners of the darker nation who believed that the Hilliman heir was the father of Mona’s children, but the rumors would die with the generation that had spawned them. Black America was so spread now. The trickle of the middle class out of their segregated neighborhoods had become a flood, and the younger generation would spend less energy than their parents on what Langston Hughes used to call colored sassiety.

  Eddie watched Gary, too. He now understood his old friend’s furtiveness. He had been caught between the proverbial rock and hard place. Gary must have been the other link, the person who had helped Junie escape, and whom she had refused to name. That was why Aurie had been so upset at the thought that he might have betrayed them. It would have taken money and connections to set up Junie’s emergence from underground. Gary had both, and, back then, would have done anything for Mona.

  Including allow those rumors to spread, the lie so juicy that nobody would imagine a different truth.

  By five, the weather had cooled a bit, and the guests had departed. Zora left early, for the drive back to Cambridge. Locke, on spring break from school, left with Mona and her children for a week in New Hampshire. The honeymoon would be in the Caribbean. Eddie had already packed his wife’s station wagon for the quick jaunt to Tompkins County Airport. Waiting downstairs for her to decide she was presentable, he walked from room to room. The house was so big, but this was where Aurelia wanted to live. She loved Cornell, and she loved Ithaca. She had blossomed here, and did not want to risk unblossoming. Eddie was a man of the city, but he supposed he could write anywhere. Besides, Washington held no further attraction for him. He was through with politics.