I Married a Communist

by Philip Roth

  "Four hours later he found out to where. He gets a phone call from a real estate woman over in Newton. She asks to speak to Miss Frame, and he tells her Miss Frame isn't around, and she asks if he'll give Miss Frame a message—the two darling farmhouses they saw are on the market, either one is perfect for her daughter, and she can show them to her the next weekend.

  "What Eve had done, after she left, was to spend the afternoon looking for a summer place in Sussex County to buy for Sylphid.

  "That's when Ira phoned me. He said to me, 'I don't believe it. Looking for a house for her up here—I don't comprehend it.' 'I do,' I said. 'To bad mothering there is no end. Ira, the time has come to move on to the next improbability.'

  "I got in the car and I went up to the shack. I spent the night, and the next morning I brought him to Newark. Eve phoned our house every evening, begging him to come back, but he told her that was it, their marriage was over, and when The Free and the Brave returned to the air, he stayed with us and commuted to New York to work.

  "I told him, 'You are in the hands of this thing like everybody else. You are going to go down or not go down like everybody else. The woman you are married to is not going to protect you from whatever is in store for you or for the show or for whomever else they decide to destroy. The Red-baiters are on the march. Nobody is going to fool them for long even by living a quadruple life. They're going to get you with her or they're going to get you without her, but at least without her you're not going to be encumbered by somebody useless in a crisis.'

  "But, as the weeks passed, Ira became less and less convinced that I was right, and so did Doris, and maybe, Nathan, I wasn't right. Maybe if, for his own calculated reasons, he'd gone back to Eve, her aura, her reputation, her connections would have worked together to save him and his career. That is possible. But what was going to save him from the marriage? Every night, after Lorraine had gone to her room, we'd sit in the kitchen, Doris and I going over and over the same ground while Ira listened. We'd gather at the kitchen table with our tea, and Doris would say, 'He's put up with her nonsense for three years now, when there's been no sane reason to put up with it. Why can't he put up with her nonsense for another three years, when at last there is a sane reason to put up with it? For whatever motive, good or bad, he has never pushed to completely end the marriage in all this time. Why should he do it now, when being her husband might possibly be helpful to him? If he can salvage some benefit, at least his ridiculous union with those two won't have been in vain.' And I would say, 'If he returns to the ridiculous union, he is going to be destroyed by the ridiculous union. It is more than ridiculous. Half the time he's so miserable, he has to come over here to sleep.' And Doris would say, 'He's going to be more miserable when he's on the blacklist.' 'Ira is going to wind up on the blacklist either way. With his big mouth and his background, Ira is not going to be spared.' And Doris would say, 'How can you be sure everyone is going to get it? The whole thing is so irrational to begin with, so without any rhyme or reason—' And I would say, 'Doris, his name has appeared in fifteen, twenty places already. It's got to happen. It's inevitable. And when it happens, we know whose side she'll stand by. Not his, Sylphid's—to protect Sylphid from what's happening to him. I say end the marriage and the marital misery and accept that he is going to wind up on the blacklist wherever he is. If he goes back to her, he's going to fight with her, he's going to battle the daughter, and soon enough she is going to realize why he is there, and that will make it even worse.' 'Eve? Realize anything?' Doris said. 'Reality doesn't seem to make a dent in Miss Frame. Why is reality going to rear its head now?' 'No,' I said, 'the cynical exploitation, the parasitical leeching—it's too demeaning. I don't like it in and of itself, and I don't like it because Ira is not capable of pulling it off. He is open, he is impulsive, he is direct. He is a hothead and he is not going to be able to do it. And when she finds out why he is there, well, she will make things even more miserable and confused. She doesn't have to figure it out herself—somebody can do it for her. Her friends the Grants will figure it out. They probably have already. Ira, if you go back there, what are you going to do to change the way you live with her? You're going to have to become a lapdog, Ira. You can do that? You? 'He'll just be shrewd and go his way,' Doris said. 'He can't be shrewd and go his way,' I said. 'He'll never be "shrewd" because everything there drives him crazy.' 'Well,' said Doris, 'losing everything he's worked for, being punished in America for what he believes in, his enemies getting the upper hand, that will make Ira even crazier.' 'I don't like it,' I said, and Doris said, 'But you didn't like it from the outset, Murray. Now you're using this to get him to do what you have wanted him to do all along. The hell with exploiting her. Exploit her—that's what she's there for. What is marriage without exploitation? People in marriages get exploited a million times over. One exploits the other's position, one exploits the other's money, one exploits the other's looks. I think he should go back. I think he needs all the protection he can get. Just because he is impulsive, because he is a hothead. He's in a war, Murray. He's under fire. He needs camouflage. She is his camouflage. Wasn't she Pennington's camouflage because he was a homosexual? Now let her be Ira's because he's a Red. Let her be useful for something. No, I don't see the objection. He schlepped the harp, didn't he? He saved her from that kid beating her brains in, didn't he? He did what he could do for her. Now let her do what she can do for him. Now, by luck, through sheer circumstance, those two people can finally do something aside from bitch and moan about Ira and war on each other. They don't even have to be conscious of it. Through no effort on their part, they can be of use to Ira. What's so wrong with that?' 'The man's honor is at stake, that's what,' I said. 'His integrity is at stake. It's all too mortifying. Ira, I argued with you about joining the Communist Party. I argued with you about Stalin and I argued with you about the Soviet Union. I argued with you and it made no difference: you were committed to the Communist Party. Well, this ordeal is part of that commitment. I don't like to think of you groveling. Perhaps the time has come to drop all the mortifying lies. The marriage that's a lie and the political party that's a lie. Both are making of you much less than you are.'

  "The debate went on for five consecutive nights. And for five nights he was silent. I'd never known him to be so silent. So calm. Finally, Doris turned to him and said, 'Ira, this is all we can say. Everything has been discussed. It's your life, your career, your wife, your marriage. It's your radio show. Now it is your decision. It's up to you.' And he said, 'If I can manage to hold on to my position, if I can manage not to be swept aside and thrown into the trash can, then I am doing more for the party than if I sit around and worry about my integrity. I don't worry about being mortified, I worry about being effective. I want to be effective. I'm going back to her.' 'It won't work,' I said. 'It will work,' he told me. 'If it's clear in my mind why I'm there, I will make sure it works.'

  "That very night, half an hour, forty-five minutes later, the downstairs doorbell rang. She'd hired a cab to drive her to Newark. Her face was drawn, ghostlike. She came racing up the stairs, and when Eve saw Doris with me at the top of the landing, she flashed that smile that an actress is able to flash on the spot—smiled as though Doris were a fan waiting outside the studio door to snap a photograph with her box camera. Then she was by us, and there was Ira, and she was on her knees. Same stunt as that night out at the shack. The Suppliant again. Repeatedly and promiscuously the Suppliant. The aristocratic pretension of stateliness and this kind of perverse, unembarrassable behavior. 'I implore you—don't leave me! I'll do anything!'

  "Our little, bright, budding Lorraine had been in her room doing her homework. She had come out into the living room in her pajamas to say good night to everyone when there, in her very own house, was this famous star whom she listened to every week on The American Radio Theater, this exalted personage letting life run all over her. All the chaos and rawness of someone's inmost being on exhibit on our living room floor. Ira told Eve to get
up, but when he tried to lift her she wrapped her arms around his legs and the howl she let loose made Lorraine's mouth fall open. We'd taken Lorraine to see the stage show at the Roxy, we'd taken her to the Hayden Planetarium, we'd gone up in the car to see Niagara Falls, but as far as spectacles went, this was the pinnacle of her childhood.

  "I went and kneeled down beside Eve. Okay, I thought, if what he wants to do is to go back, if this is what he wants more of, he is about to get it, and in spades. 'That's it,' I said to her. 'Come on, let's get up now. Let's go into the kitchen, get you some coffee.' And that was when Eve looked over and saw Doris standing by herself, still holding the magazine she'd been reading. Doris, plain as can be, in her bedroom slippers and her housedress. Her face was blank, as I remember it—stunned, sure, but certainly not mocking. However, just her being there was enough of a challenge to the high drama that was Eve Frame's life for Eve to take aim and fire. 'You! What are you staring at, you hideous, twisted little Jew!'

  "I have to tell you that I saw it coming; rather, I knew something was coming that wasn't exactly going to advance Eve's cause, and so I wasn't as flabbergasted as my little girl was. Lorraine burst into tears, and Doris said, 'Get her out of the house,' and Ira and I lifted Eve up from the floor and took her into the hallway and down the stairs, and we drove her to Penn Station. Ira sat in the front beside me, and she sat in the back as though she were oblivious to what had happened. All the way to Penn Station she had that smile on her face, the one for the cameras. Underneath the smile there was nothing at all, not her character, not her history, not even her misery. She was just what was stretched across her face. She wasn't even alone. There was no one to be alone. Whatever shaming origins she had spent her life escaping had resulted in this: someone from whom life itself had escaped.

  "I pulled up in front of Penn Station, we all got out of the car, and stonily, very stonily, Ira said to her, 'Go back to New York.' She said, 'But aren't you coming?' 'Of course not.' 'Why did you come in the car, then? Why do you come to the train with me?' Could that have been why she'd been smiling? Because she believed she'd triumphed and Ira was returning with her to Manhattan?

  "This time, the scene wasn't enacted for my little family. This time it was an audience of fifty or so people heading into Penn Station who were brought to a standstill by what they saw. Without a qualm really, this regal presence who endowed the idea of decorum with such tremendous significance threw her two hands up toward the sky and, upon all of downtown Newark, imposed the magnitude of her misery. A woman totally inhibited and under wraps—until she's totally uninhibited. Either inhibited and bound by shame, or uninhibited and shameless. Nothing ever in between. 'You tricked me! I loathe you! I despise you! Both of you! You are the worst people I have ever known!'

  "I remember hearing somebody in the crowd then, some guy rushing up who was asking, 'What are they doing, making a movie? Ain't that what's-her-name? Mary Astor?' And I remember thinking that she would never be finished. The movies, the stage, the radio, and now this. The aging actress's last great career—shouting her hatred in the street.

  "But after that, nothing happened. Ira returned to the show while staying on with us, and nothing more was said about going back to West Eleventh Street. Helgi came to massage him three times a week, and nothing more happened. Very early on, Eve had tried to call, but I took the phone to tell her that Ira couldn't speak to her. Would I speak to her? Would I at least listen to her? I said yes. What else could I do?

  "She knows what she did wrong, she says, she knows why Ira is hiding out in Newark: because she had told him about Sylphid's recital. Ira was jealous enough of Sylphid as it was, and he could not reconcile himself to the upcoming recital. But when Eve had decided to tell him about it, she had believed that it was her duty to let him know beforehand everything that a recital entailed. Because it's not just renting a hall, she told me, it's not just showing up and playing a concert—it's a production. It's like a wedding. It's a huge event that consumes a musician's family for months before it happens. Sylphid would herself be preparing for the entire next year. For a performance to qualify as a recital, you have to play at least sixty minutes of music, which is an enormous task. Just choosing the music would be an enormous task, and not for Sylphid alone. There were going to be endless discussions about what Sylphid should begin with and what she should end with and what the chamber piece should be, and Eve had wanted Ira to be prepared so he wouldn't go berserk every time she left him alone to sit down with Sylphid to discuss the program. Eve had wanted him to know beforehand what he, as a family member, was going to have to put up with: there was going to be publicity, frustration, crises—like all other young musicians, Sylphid was going to get cold feet and want to back out. But Eve also wanted Ira to know that it would be worth it in the end, and she wanted me to tell him that. Because a recital was what Sylphid needed to break through. People are stupid, Eve said. They like to see harpists who are tall, blond, and willowy, and Sylphid happened not to be tall, blond, and willowy. But she was an extraordinary musician and the recital was going to prove that once and for all. It was going to be held at Town Hall, and Eve would underwrite it, and Sylphid was to be coached by her old Juilliard teacher, who had agreed to help her prepare, and Eve was going to get every friend she had to attend, and the Grants promised to make certain that the critics were there from all the papers, and Eve had no doubt that Sylphid was going to do wonderfully and get wonderful reviews, and then Eve herself could shop them around to Sol Hurok.

  "What was I to say? What difference would it have made if I had reminded her of this, that, or the other thing? She was a selective amnesiac whose forte was to render inconvenient facts inconsequential. To live without remembering was her means of survival. She had it all figured out: the reason Ira was staying with us was because of her having believed it her duty to tell him truthfully about the Town Hall recital and everything it would entail.

  "Well, the fact was that when Ira was with us he never mentioned Sylphid's recital. His head was too full of the blacklist for him to be worrying about Sylphid's recital. I doubt that when Eve was telling him about it, it had even registered on him. Following that phone call, I wondered if she had told him about it at all.

  "The letter she sent next I marked 'Addressee Unknown' and, with Ira's consent, returned unopened. The second letter I handled the same way. After that, the calls and the letters stopped. It looked for a while as though the disaster were over. Eve and Sylphid were up in Staatsburg on weekends with the Grants. She must have been giving them an earful about Ira—and, perhaps, about me too—and getting an earful about the Communist conspiracy. But still nothing happened, and I began to believe that nothing would happen so long as he remained officially married and the Grants figured there was some remote danger in it for the wife if the husband was exposed in Red Channels and fired.

  "One Saturday morning, who should turn up on Van Tassel and Grant but Sylphid Pennington and her harp. I would think the imprimatur awarded Sylphid by making her the guest of that program that day was a favor to Eve meant to insulate the stepdaughter against any taint of association with the stepfather. Bryden Grant interviewed Sylphid, and she told him her funny stories about being in the orchestra at the Music Hall, and then Sylphid played a few selections for the radio audience, and after that Katrina launched into her weekly monologue on the state of the arts—an extensive fantasy, that Saturday, of the music world's expectations for young Sylphid Pennington's future, of the anticipation already mounting for her debut recital at Town Hall. Katrina explained how after she had arranged for Sylphid to play for Toscanini he had said such-and-such about the young harpist, and after she had arranged for Sylphid to play for Phil Spitalny he had said so-and-so, and there was no famous musical name, high or low, she didn't make use of, and Sylphid had never played for any of them.

  "It was bold and spectacular and absolutely in character. Eve could say anything if she felt cornered; Katrina could say anything at any t
ime. Exaggeration, misrepresentation, bald fabrication—that was her talent and skill. As it was her husband's. As it was Joe McCarthy's. The Grants were just Joe McCarthy with a pedigree. With conviction. It was a little hard to believe that McCarthy was caught up with his lies the way those two were. 'Tailgunner Joe' could never completely smother his cynicism; McCarthy always looked to me sort of loosely covered in his human shabbiness, whereas the Grants and their shabbiness were one.

  "So—nothing happened and nothing happened, and Ira began looking for an apartment of his own in New York ... and that's when something happened—but with Helgi.

  "Lorraine got a bang out of this big broad and her gold tooth and her dyed hair swirled up in a helter-skelter blond bun storming into our apartment with her table and speaking in that shrill voice with the Estonian accent. In Lorraine's bedroom, where she massaged Ira, Helgi was always laughing. I remember saying to him once, 'You get along with these people, don't you?' 'Why shouldn't I?' he said. 'There's nothing wrong with them.' That's when I wondered if the greatest mistake any of us ever made was not letting him alone to marry Donna Jones, not letting him alone to earn a livelihood in the American heartland, unrebelliously manufacturing fudge and raising a family with his ex-stripper.

  "Well, one morning in October, Eve is by herself and desperate and frightened and she gets it into her head to have Helgi hand-deliver a letter to Ira. She phones her up in the Bronx and tells her, 'Take a taxi to me. I'll give you the money. Then you can carry the letter with you when you go to Newark.'

  "Helgi arrives all dressed up, in her fur coat and her fanciest hat and her best outfit, and carrying the massage table. Eve is upstairs writing the letter and Helgi is told to wait in the living room. Helgi sets down the table that goes with her everywhere, and she waits. She waits and she waits, and there's a bar and there's the cabinet with the dainty glasses, and so she finds the key to the cabinet, and she gets a glass and she locates the vodka and she pours herself a drink. And Eve is still upstairs in the bedroom, in her peignoir, writing letter after letter and tearing each one up and starting all over again. Every letter she writes to him is wrong, and with every letter she writes, Helgi pours another drink and smokes another cigarette, and soon Helgi is wandering around the living room and the library and into the hallway and looking at the pictures of Eve when she was a gorgeous young movie star and pictures of Ira and Eve with Bill O'Dwyer, the ex-mayor of New York, and with Impellitteri, the current mayor, and she pours herself another drink, lights another cigarette, and thinks about this woman with all her money and fame and privilege. She thinks about herself and her hard life, and she gets more and more sorry for herself and more and more drunk. Big and strong as she is, she even starts to weep.