The Vixen

by Francine Prose

I’d never heard a woman say that. I’d thought that using humor to stave off anxiety was something only men did, that only my father did for our little family.

  “I would never have typed Mein Kampf. What do you think I am? The Vixen was just so boring. Even by bad-book standards. I could hardly stand to type it. I assumed no one would read it if it ever did come out. It makes Gone with the Wind look like, I don’t know, Macbeth.”

  Julia’s mentioning Gone with the Wind made me want to tell her about meeting Anya in Charleston Gardens, but I didn’t want to think about that lunch, or that model home.

  A silence fell over the baby’s sweet rhythmic wheeze. I felt bizarrely content. I wanted to stay here forever. I dreaded the thought of leaving. I could deal with anything if I could just be with Julia and the baby. One more day, one more hour, one more minute with them. Then I could return to the world in which three people I’d trusted—some more, some less—had conspired against me.

  She said, “My parents are divorced. I wasn’t going to do that to a kid. But now I’ve done worse.”

  “Evan looks like he’s doing fine.” Was it fine for a baby to cry so much? It seemed like the right thing to say. Julia made me want to be kind. Already a better self was emerging from the arid chrysalis that had admired Crowley—and Warren.

  “I never hear anyone say Evan’s name. Except his dad, who comes around every so often, and the pediatrician when I take Evan in for checkups.”

  Wasn’t it premature for me to be jealous of the baby’s father? Had Julia loved him? Did she still? I’d been reflexively jealous of Elaine and Warren, of Anya and Warren. All that was a mistake.

  “Whenever someone calls him Evan, I have the strange feeling he’s already grown up and left me. I’m filled with dread. I’m with him every minute, and it drives me crazy, but I want to cry when I think about what a short time I’ll have until he’s on his own and gone.”

  I saw my parents’ sad faces every time I left their apartment.

  I said, “You’ve got decades before that happens.”

  On the table was a half-dried splotch of orange goo.

  “Baby carrots,” Julia said.

  What was funny about baby carrots? Nothing. It didn’t matter. I was so happy to be here, laughing at nothing with Julia.

  I said, “Will you copyedit it?”

  “I already did,” said Julia.

  “No,” I said. “This version. Just give it a once-over—it doesn’t need much. I looked it over myself.”

  We both knew it didn’t need anything. If the book was never going to come out, what did comma placement matter? How patiently Anya had submitted to those tedious corrections of something she hadn’t written. I shouldn’t have thought about Anya. I didn’t know why I was.

  I wanted encouragement. Courage. I wanted someone who knew what I was doing and thought it was right. Someone who would stand by me. It was selfish, implicating Julia in a scheme that could backfire, badly. I have no excuse except that I was young and wanted so much to be with her.

  “We’ll get this to the printer. You’ve worked for them, so no one will think twice if we pay you, higher than the normal rate because it’s a rush job.”

  “Don’t tell Warren you hired me. He’ll get suspicious.”

  “I won’t.” Another level of agreement had been reached between us. Agreement or conspiracy, we were in it together.

  “You think they’re really going to publish this? Warren’s signed off on it?”

  “Warren will sign off on something. But not this, exactly. Trust me.”

  This was how espionage must feel. False reassurances, fake confidence, the pretense of expertise. If one mission failed, you lied and moved on. There was no reason for Julia to trust me. But she liked hearing me ask her to try.

  The baby whimpered in his sleep.

  “You’d better go,” she said. “When do you want this done?”

  “The sooner, the better,” I said.

  In the doorway, we hugged goodbye. Our contact was brief and neutral, but in those days it was less common for acquaintances to embrace. A hug meant more then, and I was encouraged.

  Riding the subway downtown, I felt lighter, as if by leaving the manuscript with Julia I’d shed such a heavy burden that I kept checking my pockets for my wallet and keys.

  I WENT DIRECTLY to my parents’ house. Everyone who was important to me, everyone but my mother and father, had lied to me and betrayed me. And in the space of one day I had fallen deeply in love with Julia, the only person I knew—besides Mom and Dad—who hadn’t plotted against me. Julia had failed to warn me, there was that, but I understood.

  Around my parents, I had to act as if nothing were wrong. It was better to pretend to be strong, better than falling apart. I couldn’t risk saying anything that might lead to the subject of Uncle Maddie—Dad’s brother—and his role in this. Nor could I hint that I was giving up the life that my mother had lobbied so hard for me to live.

  It turned out to be a good night, lucky and historic.

  The ninth of June 1954.

  The night McCarthy began to fall.

  McCarthy had gone after a low-level army defense employee, a devout church lady whose crime against our democracy was not knowing how to cancel her dead husband’s free subscription to the Communist Daily Worker. McCarthy had persecuted a Jewish dentist from Queens just because he went to college with Julius and knew Ethel.

  Then McCarthy made a fatal mistake: he insulted a brigadier general. He should have left the army alone.

  In the spring of 1954, the government investigated McCarthy on charges that he and Roy Cohn had tried to obtain special privileges—no kitchen duty, custom-made boots, a free pass to leave the base whenever he wanted—for Cohn’s friend David Schine, who had been drafted into the army after going on a whirlwind luxury tour with Cohn, investigating Communism abroad.

  On that night, the ninth of June, they replayed the hearings about Schine’s custom-made boots. My mother said, “Getting comfortable shoes for your boyfriend is a million times better than ruining innocent lives. The boots were the least terrible thing they did.”

  Dad said, “People don’t like the rich getting special shoes.”

  “That’s what the Communists say they don’t like,” my mother said. “And they give rich people the fanciest shoes plus fur coats and limousines, and they send everyone else to Siberia.”

  During commercials my mother brought plates of food from the kitchen: chicken, potatoes, pastries, cookies, coffee. Could she tempt us? Yes, she could. Her feeling better tempted us. Making up for lost time, she ate everything. If this kept up, she’d be back in her classroom in the fall.

  “Listen,” said my father. “They’re kicking McCarthy’s ass.”

  “They’re yelling about points of order,” said Mom. “They’ve been doing that all day. Point of order! Point of order!”

  McCarthy was up to his usual bullying tricks, insisting a rumor is proof, this time targeting Fred Fisher, a young lawyer working for Joseph Welch, the special counsel for the army.

  My parents and I watched Joseph Welch play the country attorney out of a ’30s Hollywood movie, an older, craggier Jimmy Stewart, or Henry Fonda as the young Abe Lincoln. A folksy, plainspoken trial lawyer who’d taken the train down from Boston, a hick in a tweed jacket and a bow tie. He said he’d think up some questions to ask the witnesses. And if he didn’t like the answers, well, then, gosh, he’d ask another question.

  He was the spirit of American democracy going after McCarthy. Why didn’t McCarthy see? Why didn’t McCarthy know that America was waiting for the slipup that would let the country lawyer go in for the kill?

  My mother shook her head as McCarthy spoke about how this young man, this Fred Fisher, belonged to the legal arm of the Communist Party. Then he called Joe Welch an actor who played for a laugh and was blind to the danger posed by the Communist menace.

  My mother said, “He’s got that part right. Welch is an actor who acts
like he’s not acting.”

  Before today, the word actor would have made me think of Anya. Actually, it still did, and still hurt, but not as much as it would have if I hadn’t spent the day with Julia.

  Dad said, “McCarthy should have watched more Jimmy Stewart films.”

  Welch said, “May I have your attention?” but McCarthy kept talking.

  Welch repeated, “May I have your attention?”

  McCarthy said he could listen with one ear and talk—

  “I want you to listen with both.”

  Joseph Welch sounded like a calm but firm preschool teacher.

  And there it was. Something happened. The power had started to shift.

  Welch defended Fred Fisher. The “legal arm of the Communist Party” turned out to be the Lawyers Guild. Welch announced that Fred Fisher was now the secretary of the Newton, Massachusetts, Young Republicans Club.

  “Another éclair, Simon?” my mother said.

  “No thanks,” I said. “One is enough.”

  “You can’t really refrigerate them. And then you get food poisoning.”

  “Please,” my father said. “Both of you. Please.”

  Welch said he’d underestimated McCarthy’s recklessness and cruelty. Recklessness and cruelty, the most obvious words. So why had no one said them in public till now?

  “Here it comes,” said my mother.

  Welch said, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

  Decency. The magic word that broke the spell of the wizard’s enchantment. We were by no means out of the woods, but we could glimpse the bright clearing.

  “Finally, someone says it! It’s over,” said Dad. “Simon, spend the night with us. Let’s celebrate.”

  “It’s not over,” said Mom.

  “Maybe,” said Dad. “But it’s ending.”

  My father opened a bottle of warm champagne that exploded all over the furniture. We were too happy to bother wiping it up. I couldn’t let myself notice that it was cheap champagne, nor remember how annoyed Anya was because Warren hadn’t stocked champagne in his car.

  I was ready to go to bed, to close my eyes and think about Julia.

  My parents and I toasted Joe Welch, the United States, democracy, freedom. With each toast, the champagne tasted better. How dear and kind my parents were! How selflessly they loved me, how intensely they hoped for the best for me and asked nothing in return.

  Could I bring Julia to meet them? It might be tricky. She had a child. I was getting ahead of myself, but that was where I wanted to be.

  “To home,” I said. “To family. To . . . work.”

  My parents raised their glasses.

  “I’m sleepy,” I said. “It’s been a long day.”

  “A long good day,” said Mom.

  A long good day. She was right.

  “Good night,” I said.

  “Sleep tight,” said Mom.

  “Good night, sweet prince,” said Dad.

  * * *

  A few days later, I picked up the manuscript from Julia’s. I didn’t stay long. I didn’t have to. I needed to be on my way—but only to prove to myself that I could resist the desire to stay forever. Julia knew what I was doing and why. She was on my side. She wanted me to stay. She knew I would come back. The most casual look, the most “accidental” touch, was freighted with meaning and promise.

  She said, “Technically, is this sabotage? Treason? Not that I care. Not that I’d tell you not to do it. I’d just like to know. Actually, I do care. I don’t want to go to jail. I have a child.”

  “You won’t.” I was sorry for promising something I didn’t know for a fact. Baby Evan was napping. I apologized, in my head.

  Julia grinned and encircled my wrists with her fingers, like handcuffs. I blinked to dislodge the image of the handcuffed Julius embracing Ethel.

  I liked the idea of Julia and me as brave Resistance fighters. It was sexy, starting off as an outlaw couple, the Bonnie and Clyde of commercial-fiction sabotage. It would have felt like being kids again, two teenagers falling in love, but the presence of baby Evan reminded us that we were grown-ups and that our actions had consequences.

  The word consequences reminded me of Warren. I worried he might have poisoned certain words for me, forever.

  * * *

  I left the lightly edited manuscript on Warren’s desk. It was close to what he’d given me, with enough small changes to make him think I’d done something. I carefully placed the note I’d typed, on top of the title page:

  Here you go. Crossed every t, dotted every i. The Vixen is locked and loaded and ready to go out and bewitch the world.

  Warren would notice that locked and loaded suggested a gun, which didn’t go with bewitch. A gun would be ready to shoot the world, not enchant it. Fine. Let Warren disapprove of my mixed metaphor, be distracted by my word choice. A while ago, it would have been unthinkable to let Warren doubt my command of the language.

  In the note I added that I was sending it to the printer.

  In fact I sent the printer my own heavily altered version, with a few small corrections from Julia. I didn’t tell Warren that.

  Warren sent me a note, via office mail. Bravo! Last-minute kudos for finally pushing out the baby.

  I filed an invoice that said: Copyediting $100. Could it be paid in cash? If the finance office asked why, I’d invent a story about the copyeditor’s tricky divorce and sticky tax situation. But no one asked. Less paperwork to fill out. An envelope with two fifty-dollar bills appeared on my desk.

  The printer called to give me the date when the proofs would be ready. I asked if we could skip the galley-proof stage, since the novel had been so meticulously edited. He said it was unusual, but he didn’t see why not. Less work for him. Just so everyone understood: if typos and mistakes crept in at the end, it wouldn’t be his fault.

  I told him not to worry.

  * * *

  I expected to get caught the first day that The Vixen, the Patriot, and the Fanatic appeared as a hardbound book. The official pub date was still three weeks away. A mail room guy brought five advance copies to me and, I assumed, to Warren. More copies must have gone to Elaine. I skimmed through it. Word for word, it was what I wrote. My version of The Vixen.

  I still wanted to think well of Elaine. I wanted to believe she hadn’t meant to hurt me. My view of her hadn’t darkened enough to include malice. I still couldn’t have stood that. If not malice, then . . . severely misguided humor. In which case she might enjoy the story of The Vixen taking yet another turn. This time the joke would be on Warren. I wondered if she knew that I knew. If she knew how much I knew. I imagined her worrying about what she would say to me, whether she would apologize. I was curious, but I avoided her. It required quick turns down corridors, hasty trips to the men’s room, but I managed not to run into her at the office.

  And yet I was never for one moment unaware of where she was. Along the mazelike corridors, behind closed office doors, I tracked her from my desk. I thought about her so much that, in a way, we were closer than we’d been when we were friendly, when I let my crush on her obscure who she was and where her loyalties lay. I imagined different scenarios: She begged my forgiveness. She laughed at me. She denied having misled me or having done anything wrong. Only one of these things could happen, and if we actually met, one of them—perhaps the worst—would turn from fantasy into fact. It was easier not to see her, to let my doubts and grief remain foggy and abstracted instead of fixed in memory: sharp, permanent, and cruel.

  I willed Elaine not to read The Vixen until Warren saw it. I wanted him to read it first, to come to it without having been warned. I wanted him to be horrified—and worried about how his Agency friends would react.

  Writers are often asked about their readers, asked whom they write for, whom they imagine as their ideal audience. But writers only rarely picture someone actively reading their book. Maybe they do when they first send out a manuscript, or
when a book is newborn, its fate uncertain. But after a while that fantasy—a stranger, a chair, a light, their book—feels too personal, too intrusive, too much like really seeing yourself through a stranger’s eyes.

  And yet I loved imagining Warren reading The Vixen, the Patriot, and the Fanatic. I loved wondering on what page he would finally figure out that something was terribly wrong. That the book shared only its characters’ names and the first ten pages with whatever witchy toxin he and Elaine and my uncle Maddie had brewed at those whiskey-soaked weekly meetings.

  Not just words and sentences, but the novel’s entire substance had been changed.

  I liked to picture Warren making this discovery in various settings. On the commuter train going home, in his office at the end of a day, at the bar in the Cock and Bull, at his kitchen table late at night.

  I imagined him reaching a certain point in the book and yelling, What the fuck is this? The thought made me smile. It was among the reasons I’d bothered. For the pleasure of imagining this, though not for the pain that was sure to follow.

  I waited for the ominous knock on my door, or for the door to fly open. How slowly time passes when you’re expecting trouble. But none of the dreaded outcomes occurred. Elaine must have been busy. Warren wasn’t paying attention. That was unusual for him, fortunate for me. He must have been focused on something else. Neither of them seemed to have read The Vixen beyond the first few pages. Quite possibly they hadn’t even opened the book.

  An anonymous reader “in government” was the first to alert Warren that The Vixen, the Patriot, and the Fanatic had “severe problems.” The wheels of power are said to turn slowly, but it took less than a week for the US Information Agency to cancel its order to stock American libraries abroad.

  Warren called me into his office and shouted, as I’d known he would. Having imagined this scene so many times made it marginally easier, though I couldn’t have known how often he would call me pathetic, stupid, and idiotic. What stupid fool, what pathetic, idiotic moron, would do such a thing, and why? I kept saying that I didn’t know, but I did.

  I knew why I’d done it.