Reds in the Beds

by Martin Turnbull

  He pushed his chair backwards. The sound of its feet scraping on the marble floor shot through the chamber as Marcus stood.

  Thomas banged his gavel. “Sit down, Mr. Adler, you haven’t been dismissed yet.”

  Marcus planted his hands on the table and focused on the largest microphone, ready to tell the panel that he’d said everything he had to say. But a realization hit him.

  It didn’t matter. He didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

  As he turned his back to the panel, the Committee for the First Amendment started to cheer while the press chattered like overwrought monkeys. Marcus fumbled his way through the warren of desks and cables. Flashbulbs exploded in his face, blinding him, blocking his path out of the room. Somehow, he managed to find the exit. He threw his shoulder against the door and fell into the witness holding room.

  He looked at the pallid faces around him, Gary Cooper and Leo McCarey among them. “Good luck,” he spat out, and staggered toward the opposite door. It led to a hallway; miraculously it was empty. He spied a sign—TO THE STREET—with an arrow pointing to another door at the end. Marcus trailed his hand along the wall as though to guide him away from hell. He tried to open the door, but it was locked. He pressed his head against it, and closed his eyes. Instantly, he wished he hadn’t. All he could see was his father’s face.

  CHAPTER 45

  As streetcar 56 crossed the Monongahela River and rattled its way into McKeesport, Marcus thought about the day he arrived in Los Angeles and took the streetcar to the Garden of Allah. That was twenty years ago. Now Los Angeles was home, and McKeesport was foreign territory.

  The whole town knew their mayor was a Commie. Did he really think he could sneak in as though he was the Invisible Man?

  Maybe Thomas Wolfe was right. You can’t go home again.

  He fanned himself with the telegram he’d received the previous day.

  WE STILL LOVE YOU SIGNED KOG

  When he realized “KOG” stood for “Kathryn, Oliver, Gwendolyn,” he sat on his hotel bed and cried. He knew he couldn’t count on much back in LA, but at least he had three friendly faces waiting for him. He wasn’t sure whose idea the telegram had been, but the letter “K” made him cry extra hard.

  He couldn’t get his bearings until he found himself on Walnut Street. It was busier than he remembered. There were traffic lights now. More stores, taller trees. When the streetcar conductor gave him directions to the West Penn Furniture Company, he failed to mention how far it was, but Marcus didn’t mind. It gave him a chance to wander through the streets of a town he never thought he’d see again.

  The factory was a block long and made of weathered red brick, with few windows. The closest door was marked Retail Showroom—Public Welcome.

  On both sides of the center aisle stood a range of sofas, breakfronts, dining tables and occasional chairs. A girl with lopsided bangs the color of dried corn smiled as he approached the desk. When Marcus told her he wanted to see Doris Adler, she asked his name.

  He debated the wisdom of saying it out loud. “I was kind of hoping to surprise her.”

  The receptionist buzzed Doris and told her she was needed in the showroom. As Marcus retreated into the furniture display, a wave of fatigue overtook him. A very public humiliation had been followed by a gloomy two-day whiskey binge that may or may not have included a sexual encounter with the room service waiter, then a four-hour steam bath followed by a sleepless ride on an overnight train. No wonder I feel like I’ve been flattened by King Kong.

  A wild scream pierced the air.

  Marcus’ sister came running toward him, her arms outstretched. She slammed into him, wrapping her arms around him as she gurgled incomprehensibly into the nape of his neck. When she pulled her face away to look at him, his shoulder was wet with tears.

  “How? When? Why?” she gurgled.

  “Surprise!” he said weakly, and looked around for a quiet corner. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

  A frown flickered across her face, but only for a moment. She led him down a long corridor and into an office with a large desk, trio of telephones, and a wall of filing cabinets.

  She sat him down on one of the armchairs facing her desk, and she took the other. She then grabbed up his hands and squeezed them with surprising strength. “So what gives? You couldn’t send a telegram?”

  “It was a spur of the moment thing,” Marcus said.

  “All the way from Los Angeles? That’s a heck of a spur.”

  “I’m en route back from Washington.”

  “DC?”

  “I was there for the HUAC.” Doris looked at him blankly. “The House Un-American Activities Committee hearings?”

  It took a moment before his promptings registered. “Oh yeah, I heard about that. Must have been something, huh? Or was it just boring government stuff?”

  Christ almighty! Marcus’ body slackened. McKeesport’s mayor is revealed to be a Communist and it doesn’t even make the news. What sort of podunk town did I come from?

  “Marcus, you’re scaring me. Has something happened?”

  He lifted his head. “Can we clear out of here and go someplace? Preferably a bar. I’ve got something to tell you and when you hear it, you’re going to need a drink in front of you.”

  * * *

  Doris tossed back the last of her lime rickey. “I don’t believe it,” she said.

  “You mean the news that my testimony didn’t reach McKeesport, or that our father is a Commie?”

  She fiddled with the dusty silk daisies sitting in a vase at the center of their table. “Do you think it’s true? About Dad, I mean?”

  “He was a member of the United Mine Workers back then, and Communists are all about unions. So . . . maybe? It doesn’t mean he still is, though,” Marcus added, “or that he ever attended meetings.”

  Doris grabbed up her handbag and fished out her change purse. “I have a friend at the McKeesport Daily News. We can trust June to be discreet.”

  She beckoned him to follow her to the line of telephone booths lined up against the far wall and insisted they squeeze in together so that he could listen in.

  When Doris asked if June had heard anything about McKeesport getting mentioned during the HUAC hearings, she said she hadn’t, but offered to check the wires again. After a few moments, they could hear the sound of the girl’s shoes slapping against the linoleum.

  “Holy moly!” she panted. “There was nothing on the teletype today so I pawed through the trash. You’re right! Roland was mentioned. How did we miss that?”

  “What does it say?” Doris asked.

  “It says, ‘In a startling series of revelations—wait, your brother who went to Hollywood to write for the movies, isn’t his name Marcus?”

  “What does it say, June?”

  “It talks about his testimony on the twenty-third and how he denied being a member of the Communist Party but wrote some pro-Russia movie, and . . . blah blah blah . . . oh, and how—is he really a friend of Charlie Chaplin?”

  “Go on.”

  “Okay, so then they go back to the bit about Russia. And then they ask him if he’s the son of Roland Adler, because—” June gasped, then there was silence.

  “June?” Doris whispered. “Are you still there?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Can you keep this under your hat? At least for the time being?”

  “It’s my job to take news to the editor. If I put it off too long, he’ll want to know why. In fact, he’s coming toward me right now. Gotta go.”

  The line went dead.

  Even in the murky light of the Tube City Bar and Grill, Marcus could see his sister going pale.

  “What’re you going to do, Marcus?”

  “Jump on the next streetcar leaving town.” He headed back to their table to gulp the last mouthful of whiskey and pick up his hat. “How often do they run these days? Can I catch—” He caught the stricken look on his sister’s face.

  “You’re not even going
to see Mom?”

  It was now coming up to five o’clock. From what June had just said, it sounded like the news of Roland Adler’s Commie past was about to break the surface. He hooked his arm through hers and made for the exit. “In your last letter, you mentioned Mom’s old trouble. Is she okay?”

  Twilight was starting to descend when they stepped into the parking lot.

  “I was talking about the way she volunteers too much,” Doris said. “Remember how she’d work so hard that ol’ Doc Hawker would have to order a weeklong bed rest? It got real bad during the war, and I really don’t want her to do it again. She has the drive, but not the constitution. She’ll be crushed if she hears you were in town and didn’t come see her.”

  “And Dad?”

  She unlocked her car. “I’m driving you to see Mom, we’ll spend as much time as we dare, then I’ll take you into Pittsburgh. If you miss the train to Chicago, we’ll find you a nice place to hang your hat for the night. Get in!”

  * * *

  As Doris hurled her Ford Tudor around the darkening streets of McKeesport, Marcus grew excited to see his mother. He nodded when Doris told him their father never got home before six thirty—“That gives us more than an hour”—but the truth was he didn’t care much. What could my father say to me that’s any worse than what I’ve just been through?

  Doris swung onto Cleveland Street and suddenly the old Sullivan place on the corner came into view, and he was thrown back to the night his father ran him out of town.

  “You know there’ll be tears, right?” Doris said, patting his knee.

  “Hers, yours, or mine?”

  She pulled up to a familiar house set back from the street with a long concrete path, a wraparound balcony out front, and a steeply angled roof atop the second floor.

  Marcus needed a moment to fight off his father’s voice from twenty years before: Get into the car. I don’t want to hear from you until the train pulls out. You got that, boy? Not one goddamned syllable.

  “It’s white,” he said. The last time he’d seen this house, it was sky blue with navy trim.

  “It’s been white since Betsy moved out.”

  Don’t ever come back here again. And don’t even think of writing your mother. I’ll tell her something.

  They got out of the Ford and walked up the concrete path. Doris opened the door without knocking. “Mom? It’s me. I bought a visitor. You decent?”

  When he heard his mother’s laugh—a wind-chime sort of tinkling—he grabbed the stair banister for support. The streetlight out back of the house streamed in through the leadlight window at the end of the hall. It silhouetted Jean Adler in a halo of green and yellow, but obscured her face. She took a step toward him, then stopped. Her right hand flew to her throat.

  “Hi, Mom.” His words came out a low croak.

  She flew toward him, her hands outstretched. Before he could say anything more, their arms were wrapped around each other. Her blouse still smelled of Lux soap flakes. He drank in the scent that was the anchor of his childhood.

  She was the first to pull away, grabbing him by the shoulders and holding him at arm’s length. “Oh my, that California sun we hear so much about, it certainly does sit well on you.”

  He wanted to tell her how good it was to see her, how much he’d missed her, and how sorry he was that he never got to say goodbye, but he couldn’t get the words out. Instead, he soaked up every detail. Her face was still narrow, but her hair was gray now, pulled into a neat bun. She drew him into the front parlor. It hadn’t changed. The lace curtains. The straight-backed chair. Even the black mantel clock with the gold trim was still in its place, keeping exact time with its quiet tick-tick-tick.

  She led him to the sofa. Plain pink tufted muslin had replaced the floral damask, but otherwise it looked the same. “Doris and I always go see every MGM picture that plays at the Loew’s,” Jean said, wiping her eyes, “just in case your name pops up in the credits. Every now and then it does, and we get so excited. I’m terribly proud of you!” She tried to blink away her tears. “How about I fix some tea? There are fresh oatmeal cookies—”

  “I can’t stay long, Mom,” Marcus said. “I’m really just passing through.”

  “Oh?” Her smile deflated. She then pressed his hand between hers. They felt soft, like the sand along Venice Beach. “Tell me about yourself!” she exclaimed. “How’s your health? Are you good? You do look awfully well.” He nodded. “Are you married? Do you have children?”

  Marcus looked for signposts of the story his father told her to explain his sudden departure. But he saw only sincerity. “Nope, no wife and kids. Those studios, they pay a guy well, but they sure do exact their pound of flesh. It’s a good life, Mom. I work hard, but have great friends and a terrific place on Sunset Boulevard, so life’s good. Very good.”

  She nodded, then smiled at him a naughty do-I-dare? grin. “I know I probably shouldn’t ask, but is Clark Gable every bit the gentleman we hear him to be?”

  “Yes, Mom, he is.”

  “Oh, that’s so nice to hear.”

  “The first time I met him was during a costume fitting for Gone with the Wind.”

  “Imagine!”

  “I had a lunch date with George Cukor—”

  A flash of light filled the vestibule as the front door swung open and the voice of Roland Adler filled the entire ground floor. “JEAN! WHERE ARE”—he spotted Doris lingering in the parlor doorway— “Oh, it’s you. Have you seen your mo—?”

  The man stopped cold when he spotted Marcus on the sofa.

  The past twenty years had taken a heavy toll. Marcus’ father’s hair was now gray and wispy, and he was substantially thicker around the waist. His face had taken on the rubicund complexion of a heavy drinker. Not quite W.C. Fields, but getting there. He started breathing through his nose like an angry bull with several banderillas thrust into his neck.

  Marcus let go of his mother’s hands and stood up. “Hello, Father.”

  “You.” The word came hissing out from between Roland’s tense, pale lips. “You’ve got such walloping goddamned nerve showing up here, boy.” Each terse word came out loaded with the effort it took for the man to keep his fury in check.

  Jean’s voice took on a matronly authority. “Roland, we’ve talked about cussing inside this house.”

  He stepped to one side so that he could address his wife without having to look at his son.

  “I received a phone call from Victor at the Daily News. You know what he wanted? A statement about the allegations against me in those House Un-American hearings up in Washington. First I’ve heard of it, I told him. So I asked him what allegations he was talking about.” He waved his left hand at Marcus as though swatting a fly. “Your son testified I was a member of the goddamned Communist Party.”

  “I was testifying—”

  “I don’t care what you were doing.”

  You don’t get to talk over me, Marcus thought. Not this time. He raised his voice to match his father’s pitch. “I was testifying about a movie I wrote set in Russia, and all of a sudden they were waving a photograph in front of me—it was of your Communist Party membership card.”

  Marcus braced himself for an onslaught of denial, but Roland was stunned into silence.

  Jesus! Look at that gaping pie hole. It’s true!

  He used his father’s momentary lapse to face Doris. “Here’s a fun fact about our family history, sis. Apparently Adler is some little town on the Black Sea. Do you know where the Black Sea is?” Doris shook her head. Marcus faced his father. “It’s in Russia. Where all the Communists are.”

  Roland’s face, already boozehound red, deepened to a shade of claret. “I told you never to come back here.”

  “Since when do I have to do what you say?”

  “Dad,” Doris stepped forward, “you can’t blame Marcus for questions that committee threw at him. They’re the ones who dug into your past.”

  But Roland kept his eyes fixed on Marcus
. “Get. Out. NOW!”

  “No, Dad,” Doris persisted, “not this time. You ran Marcus out of town once—”

  Jean was on her feet now. “What does she mean, ran him out of town?”

  Roland clenched his fists and raised one above his head. “I will not stand for this in my own house!”

  “Try doing it in Washington,” Marcus retorted, “in front of microphones, and journalists, and committee members, and dozens of people you’ve worked with for years.”

  “You’ve ruined my life for a second time!” The spittle in the corners of Roland’s mouth flew in several directions.

  As Marcus stepped closer, he could see a film of sweat break out along the top of his father’s mouth. “Tell me father, did you join the Communist Party?”

  “You’re like a plague!” Roland thundered. “You blow into town spreading your lies and your perversions!”

  Doris stepped between her father and her brother. “For heaven’s sake, Dad, will you just calm down?”

  “You stay out of it, you silly girl!”

  He grabbed Doris by her shoulder and shoved her aside.

  Marcus caught her before she stumbled into a potted fern. By the time he’d spun around to face his father, he realized that if he’d never come back, Doris’ friend wouldn’t have pulled the old teletypes from the trash, and the news of his testimony could have passed the town by. In coming home, he’d caused the exact thing he was hoping to avoid.

  The idea struck him as funny, partly because he knew the screenwriter inside him was filing it away as a possible movie plot. Then he realized he was most likely no longer employed by MGM—nor probably was he employable by any movie studio. The irony of the whole situation made him snicker.

  “Look at him!” Roland pointed a pudgy finger at Marcus. “He wants nothing but to wreak havoc and destroy everything I’ve spent my life building up, and then laughs in our faces.”

  “I’m not laughing at you,” Marcus said. “I’m laughing at myself because I’ve spent the last twenty years slogging my guts out to show you I am capable, and smart, and that there was a whole lot more to me than what you walked in on that night. And now, here we are, all these years later and what do I find? That I don’t give two hoots about what you think. You’re just a small-town bully with a small-town mind. But the laugh’s on me because I’ve wasted two decades proving myself to someone whose approval I never needed in the first place. So thank you, Father, for being exactly the same as you were when I left. You can’t begin to know the gift of freedom you’ve handed me.”