Family Secrets

by Nancy Thayer

  She spent most of her nights with Erich.

  He was out of town a lot these days, traveling to New York on business. Companies were gearing up and modernizing their factories for faster production; that meant money loaned right and left.

  When Erich was out of town, she relished her time alone in her ugly little room. So far there was only one other boarder at Mrs. Connors’s, so Jean could be selfish with the bathroom. She spent luxurious hours washing her hair, soaking in bubble baths, hand-laundering her underwear, blouses, and dresses. She’d started keeping an elaborate diary, and the nights she was by herself she wrote in it for hours. Hal Farmer had liked her suggestion about being their Washington correspondent, but he advised her to take her time about it. Keep track of everything, he’d told her when he’d called her one night from Boston. Write down detailed descriptions of every diplomat and congressman and general who walks through the office. Note how often certain people show up. If you have dinner at home, listen for any news your father might drop. Send me a weekly letter briefing me on whatever you’ve learned, and I’ll let you know if we’ve got anything we can shape into an article. Sometimes Jean’s hand cramped from all the writing she did in her large, locked diary. So far she was disappointed; she hadn’t come across anything very exciting. But she would. She knew she would.

  When Erich was in town, she didn’t have time to write. It wasn’t just that they spent hours and hours making love in his room or hers, but that before those sweet nighttimes, they met at restaurants for dinner. Neither one of them was interested in cooking, and there were plenty of inexpensive cafeterias where they could sit at a table for hours, talking to each other. They made each other laugh recounting the stories they’d heard. An American woman sat outside the Senate chambers every day wearing full mourning garb—black dress, hat, and veil—hoping her presence would move the congressmen to avoid war. A fat, monocled German tried to crash various embassy parties, each time dressed in the costume of a different country. An aristocratic matriarch from Georgia rented a mansion and moved into it, announcing her plans to give a party a week until she found husbands for her five daughters among the diplomats and commissioned officers flooding the city.

  They speculated on what Hitler would do. They wondered aloud about the part the Soviet Union would play in all this—relations with Russia were shaky at best. The current ambassador from Russia, Constantine Oumansky, kept the town buzzing with tales of the offensively anti-American tirades he launched at any public gathering, including high-level diplomatic dinner parties. Already the Russians had invaded Finland, but Jean couldn’t get excited about Finland; she couldn’t imagine it the way she could England and France.

  The core of her discussions with Erich centered on what they could do as individuals to keep peace. They had joined a new group called the American Peace Mobilization, but so far all they’d done was sign petitions. Jean wanted to do more. She burned to make a difference.

  These were passionate, vivid, glorious days and nights for Jean. Her ideological fervor was pale compared to her lust for Erich. She could not believe what they did to each other in bed. No one, not even experienced Midge, had told her that such things could happen between a man and a woman. She was shameless. There was nothing Erich didn’t do to her. There was nothing Jean wouldn’t do for him.

  One night toward the end of February sleet fell, making the roads dangerously slippery. Erich had been in New York for three days and was due home that evening. Jean waited in her rented room heating up canned soup, afraid the weather would keep him away. She was longing for him.

  To her relief, he arrived at nine. He tossed his soaking coat over a chair, his suitcase on the bed, crossed the room, and held Jean to him. They kissed, but Jean sensed an urgency in his embrace that had nothing to do with love. She pulled away.

  “What’s wrong, Erich?” she asked, searching his face.

  His smile was forced. “Nothing, Jean. I’m just tired from the trip. Let me catch my breath and have a drink and I’ll be back to normal.”

  Jean poured him a scotch and water, just the way he liked it, and fixed a weak drink for herself. Erich collapsed in the armchair. She handed him his glass, then sat on the arm of the chair and massaged his shoulders. Dark circles stained the skin beneath his eyes. He leaned his head back against the chair and stared at the ceiling.

  Rising, she leaned over him to undo his tie. Often when she did this, the closeness of her body caused him to pull her down on top of him, and they’d begin to make love. But tonight he only sat motionless, preoccupied.

  Jean pulled the rickety wooden kitchen chair across from him and sat down. She took a hearty swig of her drink.

  “Erich,” she said. “Talk to me. Please.”

  He looked at her then with an expression in his dark eyes that she’d never seen before. It was as if he were judging her, weighing her. Then he sighed deeply, set his drink on the table, and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped under his chin.

  “Anything I say to you now must not be repeated out of this room. Even if what I say angers you, even if you leave me, you must promise me you won’t tell anyone else what I’m about to say.”

  “Erich! For heaven’s sake! I love you! I’d never repeat a conversation if you asked me not to!”

  “I’m asking you to swear to that.”

  Jean grinned, from embarrassment and surprise.

  “All right, Erich. I promise. I swear on the Bible—I swear on my life—that whatever we say tonight will never go past this room.”

  He continued to study her face in silence. Then, abruptly, he rose and paced across the room in his stockinged feet, turning to look at her before pacing its length one more time.

  “You know how I feel about you, Jean,” he said, when he was standing as far away from her as he could in the small room. “I can’t promise marriage, or security, but I love you. I guess you know that. I know you love me. But what I’m about to ask of you could very well cause you to walk out now and away from me for good.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous—” she began, but Erich cut her off.

  “What I’ve got to ask is offensive, I know that. It’s just damned difficult to say what I’ve got to say.”

  “I won’t be offended,” Jean said softly. “Nothing you say could offend me.”

  Erich came back and sank down into his chair. “All right, Jean. I’ve joined a group of businessmen who are fighting for peace. Half the time when I’ve been in New York I’ve been meeting with them. I can’t tell you who they are. I can’t give you any names. But you’d be surprised and probably thrilled to know how many of our top people want to keep America out of this European war.

  “One of the leaders of this group, and I can’t divulge a single thing about him, except that he owns a large company that produces something the military’s going to need if we do enter this war, this man—this man needs some information that your father has.”

  He paused. Jean’s heart skipped a beat, but she remained silent, waiting.

  “As you know, your father’s an expert cryptographer for naval intelligence. The navy’s gotten hold of a coded message between Berlin and a German officer on the Western Front. If your father can break that code, the navy will have access to invaluable information. We want that code. We’ve got a man who could break it faster than anyone in the military, and if we can get to the information before the navy does, we’ll be able to forge an antiwar plan to take to the president.

  “I know your father often takes his work home. You’ve told me, and so have some other sources. It’s more than likely that he’s taken this code home to work on in the peace and quiet of his study at night. The War Building’s a three-ring circus these days. I’m sure he can’t concentrate there.

  “I want you to look in his study, on his desk, see if you can find anything that looks like this code. Get it, bring it to me, let me have it for a few hours, then you can put it back.” He looked at Jean. “Can you do that
?”

  Jean hesitated. “I don’t know … You know how I feel about my father, but …”

  Erich rose in one brusque, almost angry move and walked toward the window. “I understand. I never should have asked you, Jean. Forget it.”

  But she jumped up and caught his arm in her hands and turned him to face her. “No, wait. I do want to help you. Look—couldn’t I copy the message for you?”

  “No. We’ve got to have the original. It could be in invisible ink or ink that shows up only in certain lights, and the code might be difficult to duplicate. Never mind. I’m sorry I asked you.” Shaking his head, looking tired and distracted and worried, he gently pushed her away from him and returned to sink into his chair. He leaned his head back and ran his hand over his eyes as if they hurt.

  Jean bit her lip, then made up her mind. “Erich.” She crossed the room and knelt in front of him, taking his hands in hers. “Please. I do want to do this. I will do it. Tell me when.”

  Erich opened his eyes and studied her face for a long moment. “Jeanie, I don’t want you to do anything you object to.”

  “No. I really want to do it.”

  “We need it as soon as possible.”

  “All right.” Her knees hurt, and she stood up and paced the small room, restlessly. “I feel so—excited. So important!”

  “You are important. You could be crucial.”

  Erich’s words were like a match to dry timber. “I’ll go on Sunday. Mother’s always begging me to come for Sunday dinner. Probably she can’t bear to be alone with Betty now that Bobby’s off in submarine officer training. Father usually takes a nap after dinner. That will be the perfect time for me to slip into his study.”

  “It may not be left out in the open,” Erich said. “He might have it hidden in books, or beneath files of routine paperwork. It’s not the sort of thing he’d leave exposed, not with all the people who come and go in your house. You’ll have to be imaginative. I suspect you’ll have to spend some time searching.”

  Jean smiled, a slow, smug, Cheshire Cat smile. She crossed the room and slowly slid onto Erich’s lap. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she said, “If it’s that important, I know exactly where it will be. In his safe. And I know the combination.”

  “You do?” Erich’s eyes widened. “Good girl!”

  “What’s my reward for all this?” Jean asked, softly squirming against him.

  For just a split second, she felt him resisting, holding himself tense. “This isn’t a joke, Jean. It’s serious.”

  “I understand that. But this is serious, too,” she replied and bent to kiss him.

  Their lips touched, his breath hot and sweet against hers, and Jean slid her hand up his thigh and twisted on his lap so she could press all her body against his, but Erich put his hands on her arms and gave her one small shake, like a parent trying to shake sense into a child. When he spoke, his voice was husky with emotion. “Wait, Jean.” He gently pushed her from his lap and, rising, crossed the room and stood looking out the window, his back to her. He stood there a few minutes, as if in deep thought, as if conversing with himself, and then seemed to come to a decision. He shook his head several times and said in a low voice, “No. This is the only way. It has to be done this way.”

  “Erich?” Jean stood waiting by the chair. “Is something wrong?”

  Now he left the window, came up to her and, cupping her face in both his hands, tilted her head so that she was looking up at him. His dark eyes were luminous with emotion and with what even might have been the beginning of tears.

  “Dear Jean—my sweet, beloved Jean,” he whispered, the very tone of his voice a caress, “I love you so. I would rather die than endanger you or cause you any kind of suffering.”

  Jean stared at him, puzzled, then replied, “Don’t worry about this code business, Erich. I know I can do it. I’m not afraid.”

  “You’re wonderful,” he told her.

  “So are you,” she said, smiling, glad to see the worry leave his face.

  “I do love you, Jean, with all my heart,” Erich said.

  “I love you,” she told him.

  Later they lay naked together in her narrow bed.

  “Is there anything more you can tell me?” Jean murmured. “I mean, my father’s desk and study is always the most amazing hodgepodge. I’ll have piles of papers to sort through, not to mention whatever he’s got squirreled away in his safe.”

  Erich shifted so that he lay facing her. He drew his fingers through her hair as he spoke. “We don’t have much to go on. It could be in German, or English, or Swahili for all we know. It could look like a mathematical formula. But it will be brief. On a strip of paper, one that’s been folded or curled. One thing we do know is that it was sent by carrier pigeon.”

  “Carrier pigeon!” Jean burst out laughing. “You must be kidding. Germany’s got submarines, fighter planes, and torpedoes, and you’re telling me plans for using them are transported by a bunch of birds?”

  “We can keep better track of machines than we can of birds,” Erich said. “It might be antiquated, but it works. Or it did until your father’s people intercepted one of the messages.”

  “All right, then, what I’m looking for is a curled or folded strip of paper with a message on it.”

  “Right. It could read like a love note or a cake recipe or a crib sheet off the bottom of a college student’s shoe. But it will be brief. That’s the clue.”

  “You can wait until Sunday, can’t you? Otherwise they might get suspicious. I haven’t spent much time there, as you know. But Erich, what if Father goes into his study after his nap to work on the code later that evening?”

  “I’ll contact some of the others. They’ll see to it that your father is summoned out to an emergency meeting that will keep him up so late on Sunday night that he won’t have time to think of the code. You can go back on Monday morning on the pretext that you left something you need, and put the code back in his study.”

  Jean mused aloud. “We have Sunday dinner about one, after Mother and Father return from church. Then Father takes his nap about two or three and Mother listens to the radio and knits. But she often dozes in her chair. I ought to be able to slip into the study without anyone noticing. As soon as I find the code, I’ll kiss Mother good-bye, trot out the door, and down to the trolley stop.”

  “I’ll be waiting for you in the car at the trolley stop. That will save time.”

  “Swell. And I’ll leave my umbrella at the house. No, that’s too lame. Oh, I’ll think of something. Erich, I’m so glad to be part of all this!”

  I should have been an actress, Jean thought smugly as she sat at dinner with her family on Sunday. As she was growing up, she’d automatically fallen into role-playing: the Good Young Woman. Today she was outdoing herself. Today she was the Loving Daughter, more saccharine even than gooey Betty, who sat across from her twittering on about the colors for her wedding. Bobby was coming home in March, and they would be married then. Jean was to be one of Betty’s bridesmaids.

  At the head of the table her father sat eating in silence. He was preoccupied. An unexpected pang of sympathy pierced Jean’s heart as she studied her father. He looked older. He’d gained a lot of weight over the past three months, more weight surely than was good for him, and fat pouches of skin swelled under his eyes. He didn’t look healthy. He didn’t have the same kind of eager energy that so many of the military men she saw in the Munitions Building had these days. He looked worn down.

  If her father was aware of her scrutiny or her concern, he didn’t show it. He was absorbed in his own thoughts. But more than that, he seemed to have unofficially cut Jean out of his life. He was furious that she was seeing Erich when she should have married Al, a navy man and the man he had chosen for his daughter. He was embarrassed that his daughter was working instead of going to college, in spite of the fact that he was responsible for withdrawing her from school. As a final insult, Jean was working for the Army instead of
the navy. He knew where she worked, but he didn’t ask her about her job. He didn’t ask her anything or speak to her unless she addressed him directly.

  If it hadn’t been for Betty, blissfully chirping on about her wedding, the dinner would have been gloomy indeed. But they got through it in a civilized manner, at last Betty went home, and Jean’s father went upstairs for a nap.

  As they had for years of Sundays, Jean and her mother cleared the dining room table and did the dishes—it was Agate’s and Stafford’s day off. Jean was glad to have something to do. She was so nervous, she was nearly jumping up and down. Sitting calmly through dinner had been a trial for her, and several times she’d gushed about the forthcoming wedding in squeals that matched Betty’s. The rush of hot water and the hard work of scrubbing the roasting pan calmed her. Whenever she thought about what she was about to do, her hands shook.

  The dishes done, her mother went into the living room, turned on the radio, and soon was dozing off by the fire.

  Jean hurriedly tiptoed upstairs. The door to her parents’ bedroom was shut. She assumed her father was asleep. She scurried back downstairs and into his study, leaving the door ajar so she could hear any noises. She’d decided that if her father caught her in his study, she’d say they needed a copy of her birth certificate for her file at work.

  With only a glance at his paper-stacked desk, she crossed directly to the safe hidden behind a vast map of the world on the far wall. Cautiously, she lifted the heavy wooden-framed map off the wall and set it on the floor. She knew the combination as well as her own name and worked it in seconds. There. The door to the safe clicked open.

  The safe was crammed full. Jean had never seen it this way. Her father kept personal papers and the velvet box holding her mother’s diamond-and-pearl heirloom necklace on the bottom shelf of the safe. Official work was usually on the top shelf, but now both shelves were crowded. Jean grabbed the sheaf of papers from the top shelf and quickly flipped through them. What a mess! It seemed hopeless. There was just too much stuff here to sort through. No wonder her father looked so tired. Her energy evaporated, and a dreary feeling of hopelessness took its place.