A Fierce Radiance

by Lauren Belfer

  Among the men in military uniforms and business suits talking in tight groups, Claire felt an urge to escape. To take Lucas for a walk across the island of Manhattan. To visit the Metropolitan Museum and lose herself amid the paintings of Rembrandt and Vermeer. She’d say good-bye to Jamie and then she’d slip away. He had to attend a memorial luncheon at the Institute for his and Tia’s colleagues, but he would be coming to Grove Street afterward.

  “A sad day.” Nick Catalano stood beside her. She hadn’t spoken to him since the evening at her father’s. She felt an instinctive, visceral attraction toward him. His lean body, the bad-boy edge to his attitude, the blond hair and brown eyes. Six months ago, before becoming involved with Jamie, she would have acted on it, taken a chance, why not. Now she felt the need to maintain a distance from him. Maybe Nick felt a similar attraction and a similar need: he stood beside her rather than in front of her, so that they were facing the crowd without obviously being together, two strangers waiting for friends to arrive.

  “Yes,” she said simply. And yet…Jamie had told her about Nick’s reaction at the morgue. Maybe he’d loved Tia, or had some understanding with her. Claire owed Nick kindness today. Where to begin?

  “Did you think about standing up to talk?”

  “No, I’m not public about things. Memories, I mean.” He laughed ruefully. “Feelings.”

  “I understand.”

  “All this seems a little foreign.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “Left me wishing for communion and the collection plate, and the incense.”

  Now it was Claire’s turn to laugh ruefully, the Episcopal prayers for the dead still running through her mind. “I agree.”

  “Is your father still here? I saw him sitting next to you.”

  “No, he had to get to his office.”

  “I enjoyed meeting him, that night. After the Chinese costume party.”

  “He’s very hospitable.” Claire remembered that night, of course. Remembered dropping Nick off at the Institute, and how they’d commented on the light visible in Tia’s lab. Had Nick gone to visit her? Claire paused, trying to reach for the proper words to approach him, and to console him if that was what he needed. “Look, Nick, I know you and Tia were friends. I want to say, I’m sorry for your loss.”

  He was silent for a few beats too long. Then he said gruffly, “Don’t worry. Thank you. What I mean is…” He seemed on the verge of saying more, of making a confession. Claire felt an urge to touch him on the shoulder to encourage him, and simultaneously she sensed him pulling back from her. “Well, I’m trying to make sure Jamie’s okay.” They caught a glimpse of Jamie through the crowd. He was holding the hands of a frail, elderly woman who leaned toward him, as if she couldn’t support her own weight. “I’m sure you are, too. That’s what’s important now. To think about the people who are still alive. Don’t you agree?”

  “I—” But before she could respond, Dr. Rivers came over and, ignoring Claire, pulled Nick into a private conversation. A standard photograph in wartime: men in military uniforms whispering to each other, pursuing their own priorities as they determine the fates of millions.

  She was ready to leave. Yes, she would go to the Metropolitan Museum. She hadn’t been in years. She longed to go. She wanted to visit her favorite Rembrandt portrait, Woman with a Pink. A pink was a carnation, a symbol of love and fidelity. Of marriage. Claire wanted to give a pink to Jamie. The woman in the painting seemed, to Claire, to stare at the viewer, and her gaze riveted Claire. What was the woman thinking as she held her pink carnation?

  Claire slipped away, moving toward the perimeter of the crowd. Jamie was still greeting people on the receiving line, and she didn’t want to push her way through to him. She couldn’t leave without saying good-bye to him, but she had to get away. She’d take a walk in Stuyvesant Square, she resolved, and then return to say good-bye.

  Claire didn’t know that Jamie had been surreptitiously tracking her presence despite his receiving-line duties. As he spotted her moving through the crowd, he found himself yet again spellbound: she was the most striking woman he’d ever encountered. He wanted to follow her, but he couldn’t: Jenny Murphy, the stout, red-haired Irishwoman who cleaned the lab according to Tia’s eccentric specifications, was gripping his sleeve and reminiscing about the time Tia asked her, as a special favor…. He couldn’t bear to listen. In the past half hour, he’d heard more stories about Tia than he could process. He craved these stories, but he was overwhelmed. He pretended to listen to Jenny, then laughed when she laughed. Her laughter was big and deep. Suddenly Jenny was crying. Now he was consoling someone who’d come here to console him. This happened over and over. Claire was lost to his view.

  Claire reached the doorway and stepped outside onto the flagstone path and into the heady scent of lilacs. Breathing deeply, she walked down the path. The news photographers had departed; John D. Rockefeller Jr. had been their big catch for the day.

  “Mrs. Shipley?” a man called from behind her. “Mrs. Shipley, isn’t it?” the man called again.

  She turned. A man pushed his way through the crowd to catch up with her. He appeared about her age and was of moderate height. His hair was dark, thick, and carefully groomed. He was well built and square shouldered, with the appearance of an athlete in top shape. He wore a finely cut, carefully pressed dark blue pinstriped suit with a red and blue bow tie. He held a panama hat. His appearance touched on the foppish. He clasped her right hand in both of his and greeted her like a long-lost friend, although she couldn’t place him.

  “How wonderful to see you again, even on this sad occasion. Are you heading out? Me, too.” He spoke a bit too loudly, as if for the benefit of those standing nearby. “Whatever have you been doing with yourself?” Putting on his hat, he took her arm and began leading her down the path toward the front gate.

  Ordinarily Claire would shake such a person off and demand an explanation, but her senses had been dulled and she could only look at this man in surprise.

  “I was hoping to find you here today,” he announced as they passed, just outside the front gates, a group of six men in dark suits leaning toward one another in a circle, as if sharing secrets. The group was especially noteworthy because none of the men was in uniform. What were they discussing? The stock market? This year’s prospects for the New York Yankees or the Brooklyn Dodgers? The death of Tia Stanton?

  Once they were on the city sidewalk, Claire gathered her strength. “You’d better explain yourself or I’m liable to make a scene.”

  “Forgive me.” He dropped her arm. “Listeners all around, I’ve noticed.” He glanced back at the men in their clutch. “Would you walk with me in the square for five minutes? I’d like to speak to you.”

  “I don’t mean to sound like a prude, but I don’t generally walk with men I don’t know, even if they claim to know me.”

  “Forgive me again.” He put a hand over his heart. “Andrew Barnett. Andy. Please don’t shake my hand. I’d like to maintain the pretense that we’ve met before.”

  “Why?”

  He laughed. “I do beg your pardon, Mrs. Shipley.” He gave a half-bow. “I’m fairly new at my job, and I’m afraid I’m still not especially good at it.” He said this with a full measure of self-confidence. “It’s not very much like the movies, I’ve discovered.”

  “I shouldn’t think so. Not much is. What’s your new job?”

  He evaluated the question. “I’d appreciate a few minutes of your time, without having to resort to coercion.”

  “You want to tell me your intentions before we contemplate coercion?”

  “I understand your feelings and possibly I can assuage them by saying that your son is growing into quite a handsome boy. Seems to enjoy school, too. His teachers like him, from what I understand. Too bad about that bout with scarlet fever last year. All too common, alas. How curious that attempts to cure scarlet fever, among other fevers, are exactly what brought us together today.”

/>   She stared at him. He looked into the distance. A car horn honked and honked again. The sound hurt her ears. She felt pressure behind her eyes, a headache coming on.

  “This neighborhood is nice, isn’t it?” he said.

  In the park, the branches arched over to touch the grass. The cherry and crab apple trees were just past. Pink and white blossoms blown off the trees lay in a carpet upon the lawns and walkways. In the noontime sunlight, the fountains threw flashing rainbows into the air.

  “I’ll walk with you, Mr. Barnett.”

  “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

  And so they began to walk through an exquisite late-spring day. A light breeze blew around them. Their footsteps crushed the pink flower petals that covered their path. The petals clung to the soles of their shoes. Their shoes were slippery with flower petals. The implied threat against Charlie gave Claire a heightened sense of reality. The edges of the leaves looked razor sharp, cutting at her eyes. The birdsong exploded in her ears. She tried to stay calm.

  “Are you from New York, Mr. Barnett?”

  “Alas, no.”

  “Whereabouts, then?”

  “I grew up in Chicago, but I live in California now. Or at least I did. Palo Alto.”

  “Stanford.”

  “Indeed. I was a professor of economics at Stanford until, well, until recently.”

  “Until you got your new job. The one which is nothing like the movies.”

  “Exactly.” He sounded grateful for her understanding.

  Claire felt far distant from him, as if she were staring at him through the opposite end of a telescope. She breathed deeply. She’d heard rumors about upper-level professors being recruited for espionage work. To Claire, professors didn’t seem like the most competent or promising candidates, but apparently those in charge, products of the Ivy League and the social elite themselves, tended to trust their own.

  “I’m withholding judgment on you, Mr. Barnett.”

  “And I on you. Since I already know a good deal about you, perhaps it’s fair to tell you that until winter break, I was teaching economics at Stanford. I’m an expert in the theory of the automatic reabsorption of displaced labor, particularly in regard to issues of technological progress. Well, that seems like a long time ago,” he said wistfully. “I was tapped, I suppose is the way to describe it, to go to Washington to do some government work.”

  Just as she suspected. “Sounds better than the infantry. Or a ship in the Pacific.”

  “My thoughts exactly, Mrs. Shipley. I gladly accepted this offer to do government work. I didn’t think the Pacific would suit me. Too damp. Nor the deserts of North Africa. Too dry. I’m glad we understand each other. Anyway, after a pitifully small amount of training and a great deal of bureaucratic rigmarole, I wound up under the jurisdiction of the Office of Scientific Research and Development.”

  Jamie’s department, she realized—although Jamie had never mentioned this man to her. “That must be interesting,” she said blandly.

  “In fact, extremely interesting. A new challenge every day. I believe that would be many people’s definition of an interesting job. I’ve often thought that a job like yours, for example, would achieve the standard of interesting.”

  She said nothing. They crossed Second Avenue, which divided Stuyvesant Square. The park’s gardens smelled of rich, churned-up soil. Claire imagined Tia here, gathering samples for her jam jars. Tulips burst in colors of apricot and white.

  “I had lunch with Tia Stanton once, but I can’t say I knew her well,” he mused. “She was quite an unusual personality, that much I recognized. A counterintuitive type: vivacious, elegant, and spending her nights with mold. I’m here to look into her death from a more…private perspective than the police can manage.”

  He seemed to expect a reply from Claire. “Indeed.”

  “You see, Mrs. Shipley, her work took her into confidential areas. As you probably know from Lieutenant Stanton.” This was said with a bit of a leer, an attempt to suggest that he did, in fact, know everything about her. “The death of a person working in confidential areas is a very serious matter.”

  This time Claire said nothing.

  “It’s a curious situation. No doubt the police are correct and she had an accident. But she was a rather careful person in most ways. At least according to her friends and family—although we must keep in mind that friends and family don’t always know everything there is to know about a person. Sometimes friends and family are the least likely to know what’s most important about a person. Especially when suicide, for example, is the cause of death. The suicide of someone involved in government work is taken extremely seriously.”

  “Tia Stanton didn’t commit suicide,” Claire said.

  “What makes you say that?” he asked lightly.

  Only her own wish, she realized. Her desire to spare Jamie and assuage her guilt.

  They continued walking. Barnett didn’t press her for a response, but he didn’t speak for a full minute. Then: “Did you know, my dear, that Norway was overrun with Nazi spies before the invasion? They entered the country quite legally, on tourist visas. Bird-watchers, fjord-admirers, even absentminded professors, I daresay. All keeping their heads down and waiting for the proper moment to strike. Of course with the Bund so popular right here in New York City, foreign operatives are probably completely unnecessary.”

  Was he implying that Tia was murdered?

  “Tia Stanton was almost a sister-in-law to you, wasn’t she? Did she seem despondent? Did she have boyfriend troubles? Were there new people in her life, people who might have been trying to blackmail her? You must have come to know her well. And from a perspective outside her usual circle of acquaintances.”

  “I didn’t know her well at all,” Claire said, her guilt, and her anger at herself, returning in full force. Could she have stopped Tia’s death, if she’d just made some effort? She’d been so wrapped up in Jamie, in Charlie, in work, she hadn’t taken the time to look beyond her own interests and needs.

  “Surely you have some insight.”

  “None.”

  She wanted to get away from this man. Immediately. What did she know of Andrew Barnett? Nothing. How could she know he was who he purported to be? She couldn’t. He might be working for any number of people. He said he’d spoken to Tia’s friends and family, but she had only his word for that.

  “Mr. Barnett, I don’t know who you are, you’ve shown me no identification, and I feel no requirement to answer your questions.”

  He thought about this. “Well,” he said with patient resignation, “you may feel differently as time passes. In fact I’m sure you will. Do please remember that anyone, anyone at all, could be a Fifth Columnist. The person we least suspect. Henry Luce himself. That’s a joke, of course.” He smirked at his fine sense of humor. “At any rate, I need to be moving along. I have a train to catch. But if you change your mind and want to talk, give me a call, would you?”

  “I have nothing to talk about.”

  “Well, well, you never know.” Taking from his inside jacket pocket a silver, engraved cardholder, he gave her his card, a fine piece of vellum. It listed only his name and a phone number in Washington.

  “So glad to have met you, Mrs. Shipley. Seeing as I know so much about you already. Perhaps one day soon I’ll have an opportunity to meet your fascinating father. Or take your adorable dog for a walk.” He put his hand out for her to shake, and she followed through. She was dressed formally and wore gloves, so she didn’t have to feel his skin against hers. “I do hope we’ll meet again under happier circumstances. Good-bye.” He headed off, presumably to hail a taxi to Penn Station.

  Claire stood at the corner, feeling a growing sense of rage, at Barnett and at herself. Rage mixed with sorrow, for the loss of Tia, for Emily, for Jamie’s pain. Claire recalled the look on Tia’s face as she sampled the miniature chocolate éclairs, that momentary expression of bliss.

  She turned back. Hoping to catch a
glimpse of Jamie, she studied the crowd emerging from the Meetinghouse. She wanted to reassure herself of his love, reassure herself that she had a place in his life. She didn’t see him. Her strength seemed to drain away. She needed to sit down. She didn’t want to return to the crowded, overheated reception room until she’d steadied herself.

  Out of her gaze, Nick Catalano stood just inside the Meetinghouse doorway. He’d been there for several minutes, watching her. He hoped Barnett hadn’t upset her. Nick wished he’d been more…what? Forthcoming, in their earlier conversation. But Rivers had called for his attention, and then Claire had disappeared.

  Nick would never know what, if anything, might have happened between him and Tia. In their first approaches, he’d found her a little intimidating. He was more accustomed to girls who were just looking for fun, or who at least hid their true desires beneath a veneer of lightheartedness. Tia was, in fact, the sort of woman he’d always imagined spending his life with. A true equal. But when faced with her actual self, he’d had trouble talking to her about anything besides work. He was acutely aware that she was from a different world, her father a banker, her grandfather a professor. The difference in their backgrounds had made him hesitant, a feeling that was unfamiliar to him, especially in regard to women. And yet…in an ideal world, he imagined a kind of perfect harmony between them. A perfect love. This fantasy was what made him break down and weep in front of Jamie at the morgue.

  “Very nice cookies, Catalano.” Sergei Oretsky was beside him. “Have you tried? Here, have one.” Oretsky offered him a small plate of oatmeal cookies.