A Woman of Intelligence

by Karin Tanabe

  After an hour had gone by, there was a loud knock on the door. The room immediately fell silent. Levine moved swiftly to Turner and whispered something. Turner nodded, and Levine went to the door and opened it a crack. He said a few words, then opened it fully.

  Even Turner could not conceal his surprise. Standing next to Levine was Ava Newman. Clearly, he had no idea she was coming.

  “All of my excuses,” Ava said as she made her way into the room. “I’m sure I scared all of you turning up unexpectedly like this. I couldn’t leave my office until very late, as it was my last day of work. I’m terribly sorry.” She took a breath and smiled. “I’m Ava Newman.”

  Anne, turned Ava, walked into the room, the Miss America of communism. She was not in her beautiful orange dress, but in navy blue slacks and a simple pink blouse tucked in, she was clearly not dressed for housework like I was.

  I attempted not to faint against the woman next to me, as I was now sure that it was Ava who had followed me, who I had seen on the subway. Meanwhile, Ava explained that she had just left her job at the New York Public Library and that she wanted to join a street unit quickly. Her unit leader was supposed to have sent word to Levine. But she did not? Oh, she was terribly sorry. Incredibly embarrassed. But what luck. She knew someone in the group. What a small world, she said, looking directly at Turner with a million-dollar smile.

  “It’s so nice to see you again,” she said.

  “And you,” he replied, barely able to conceal his shock.

  “Why, it’s only been a few days since we ran into each other with Comrade Gornev and our other friend,” she said, nodding toward me.

  “Yes,” I replied, and a murmur of acknowledgment crept through the room. Some of the members were clearly familiar with the name, if not the man. And by connecting me with Gornev, Ava had vouched for me, too.

  “Yes,” said Turner. “You know Hanna Graf as well.”

  She smiled warmly at me and my new name.

  “Let’s continue with the meeting,” Levine said as a young man eagerly offered Ava his chair.

  After the finance secretary collected dues, we were invited to buy materials from the literature agent, a young Negro man who seemed equally devoted to Turner and The Daily Worker.

  After my arms were filled with two copies of the paper and a book on materialism, I’d spoken to the kind woman who had congratulated me on surviving with a baby, and told her about how I knew Turner and had become involved with the CRC. Finally, Ava approached me, moving as elegantly in her trousers as she had in her tangerine dress.

  “Katharina, I can’t believe you’re here.” She gave me a hug and then sat on the floor, motioning for me to join her. She smelled like jasmine and oranges.

  “Does Jacob know?” she asked quietly.

  “Does Jacob know … oh,” I said, looking away from her, at the people in the room, at Turner. He was having a conversation with two female members, but clearly trying to slip away to help me. He needed to slip much faster.

  “I hadn’t seen Jacob since college,” I said, turning back to Ava. “He doesn’t know anything about me other than what he knew of me at twenty-five, and what I told him when we ran into each other that day.”

  “So, Jacob doesn’t know you’re in the party?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “But maybe he assumed something because of Turner Wells?”

  I thought of the way Wells had said “Rina” when we’d said goodbye. About how closely he’d walked next to me as we approached the drugstore, how closely he’d sat next to me tonight. The way his face looked when he’d slowly lifted his chin to look up at my window from the sidewalk on Fifth Avenue.

  “Well, I’m sure Jacob assumed something,” she continued, grinning. “Just maybe not this.”

  Before I could reply, Wells came to speak to us, his shoulder brushing mine just slightly.

  “Comrade Newman, Ava,” said Wells. “I’m sorry I did not know you were coming tonight.”

  “Oh, no, I’m the one who should apologize for being late. I know how disconcerting it is when there’s an unplanned knock on the door. Moving meeting venues every week can only do so much to conceal us,” she said, her voice dripping with sincerity. “And what an unexpected surprise to have you here, and Katharina. It’s just such luck.” She ran her left hand through her perfect hair, exposing a very thin gold watch that had been hidden by her sleeve.

  Ava Newman was a baffling communist. She looked and sounded as if she should be saying, “Oh, no, I’m the fool that dropped the red dress in with the tennis whites / forgot to move the large pile of diamond bracelets on the card table / drank all of Grandfather’s priceless champagne during the clambake.” It was as if she’d wandered into the wrong building, the wrong life, all except for one thing. Her intensity. The rest of the evening’s attendees were calm—engrossed and attentive, but calm. Ava Newman looked as if she had a ball of fire in each pants pocket and was ready to throw them at anyone who crossed her. In this case, anyone was the United States government.

  It was no wonder she’d been tasked with going to Washington. What I needed to know was how Ava Newman, country club communist, had ended up at the same meeting as me? Did she follow me of her own accord—or had Jacob enlisted her help?

  “Who is the unit organizer at the public library?” Wells asked her.

  “Mary Krol. Dedicated woman.”

  “I’ll ask Levine to connect with her, then,” said Wells breezily. “I’m sorry you’re no longer employed at the library—important work—but we are happy to welcome you here.”

  “I’m delighted to be here. A change of pace can really lift one’s spirits. And can reaffirm even the firmest commitments.”

  “Yes, it can,” Turner agreed. “But I don’t remember you being involved in the CRC before. Is this a new interest?”

  “Oh, no, not new, just stronger lately, what with Hoover closing in. Rumor is that he’s trying to get the CRC and others to register as Communist front groups, so it feels like an important time to be involved. Long story short, Turner. I’d like to be more involved.”

  “You should speak to Rina about it,” he said, shifting his eyes to me. “She’s been spending the little free time she has traveling to D.C. on our behalf. Our being the CRC. We have a man there. It’s complicated, but important. She can fill you in, right, Rina?”

  “Of course,” I said, my heart sounding like a timpani in my chest.

  “Rina, shall we go to the little cafeteria around the corner and have a coffee together? A little chat?” Ava asked when Turner had left. “I feel like this is fate and the world wants us to get to know each other better, don’t you think?”

  I nodded helplessly.

  Fate. Ava Newman and I at the same meeting was about as fateful as Caesar falling on Brutus’s knife.

  CHAPTER 20

  “I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but you’re quite different from the other women I’ve met in the party.” I was speaking quietly, even though Ava had told me when we entered the McCord Cafeteria on Ninety-seventh and Third Avenue that I didn’t have to. That after nine o’clock, the place was full of party members, men and women who stayed for hours carrying on the conversations they’d started in their meetings or dorms. Ava had struck me as an improbable communist when I’d met her with Jacob, but now that I’d been to a meeting and seen other party members in person, and hadn’t only read about their red eyes and horns and fangs in the newspapers, the impression was confirmed. They certainly did not look like the monsters the press made them out to be, but they definitely did not look rich, or like leading ladies of the silver screen à la Ava Newman. Over coffee, against my better judgment, I said as much.

  “How so?” she asked, looking surprised.

  Did Ava Newman really not see that her pointy bra and big pink smile stood out in an old T-shirt-and-ChapStick crowd? “I suppose the other women I’ve met—”

  Ava began to laugh, s
howing off her straight white teeth. Even her tongue seemed to be the perfect color. I wondered if she believed the masses were entitled to the kind of orthodontia she’d likely received.

  “Stop, really, please.” She held up her hand. “I didn’t mean to tease you. Trust me, Katharina, I know I don’t look like your average card-carrying party member. Is it the hair? Too blonde?” she asked, flicking it over her shoulder. “It’s God-given. I have no control.”

  “Nope, it’s the money,” I retorted, finding my voice. “Not too blonde, too rich.” Even dressed down, Ava had a whiff of generations-old bank accounts about her. “You sound rich, you look rich, and you speak like—”

  “I’ve just eaten a truffle?” she joked, puffing out her cheeks.

  “I know rich people. I married one,” I continued. “So, if you’re not rich, you’re very good at giving the impression that you are.”

  “I’m not,” she said, smiling. “My father is. House in Newport. Mayflower ancestors and all that. But he’s also a union supporter and unbeknownst to most, a communist.”

  “Now this,” I said, signaling to the waitress for more coffee, “is a story I’d love to hear.”

  “It’s just your average Darien, Connecticut, Methodist-mining-executive-turns-communist story. Don’t you know one or two of those?”

  “Can’t say that I do.”

  “You should get out more.”

  “That’s the understatement of the century.”

  Ava eyed me curiously. “I can see why Jacob liked you so much.”

  “Did he like me? I suppose he did.” I thought back to the nights—and days—we’d spent tangled in bed together. To the conversations that shifted seamlessly among English, Russian, and German, touching on food, history, the weather, the war, though never, I realized with a start, political ideology.

  “Of course,” she insisted. “That was quite apparent when he saw you. He was looking at a woman he’d loved.” She was quiet a moment, moving her cup of coffee slowly around in a circle. “But it’s funny, isn’t it?”

  “What is?”

  She moved the cup a little faster. “That after all these years, both of you living in Manhattan, you never ran into each other. Not once.”

  I looked up, trying to hold the pleasant expression on my face and not let the shot of adrenaline I felt ruin my response.

  “That’s the worst part about college.”

  “What is?” Her voice, for the first time, revealed a slight edge.

  “Leaving. When we were all living in Morningside Heights, practically shouting distance away, it felt like the classes, our conversations, our friendships, would carry on forever. But then you’re handed a diploma, and everyone scatters, forced to put on the hat of adulthood. Especially during the war.”

  Ava stopped spinning her cup. “I suppose it is that way. I went to Mount Holyoke, and I only keep up with two or three girls. Sad, really, when we were all such good friends.” The edge had disappeared. Her voice was cashmere again.

  “Now we have new communities,” I said lightly, feeling as if I’d managed to shut my window seconds before it rained.

  “We do,” she said, smiling.

  “And while ours is a global one, it also feels tight-knit, that’s what I appreciate,” I said. “You, Turner, and I at the same meeting, I just love coincidences like that.”

  “Don’t you though?” she said, revealing nothing.

  “Do you know Turner well?” I asked, realizing I didn’t know the answer to that question.

  “Well, no,” she said, glancing down at the table. “We’ve met, through Jacob, a handful of times over the years. I’d call us … comrades,” she said, looking back up.

  “When did you find out? About your father? If you don’t mind me asking.” She clearly was not going to divulge that she’d followed me on the subway or the source of her new passion for the CRC.

  “Not until five years ago. When I was twenty-five.” She pushed up the sleeves of her blouse, the verve returning. “I wasn’t involved with the party at all before then. If anything, I was far on the other side. Too busy studying eligible men up and down the East Coast. I had a job at the NYU library, and I didn’t think about much of anything except enjoying my very Manhattan life.”

  “You’re not the first.”

  “And not the last. But I’m trying to change that. Not the enjoyment part, just the who-gets-to-have-it part.”

  “Which brings us to the why.”

  “My father is the why. But you have to look beyond that. Because before my father was the why, he was my everything.”

  “Is he alive today?”

  “He is. Don’t even ask that question. Feels like a curse.” She shuddered convincingly.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She waved off my apology. “He is alive, but my mother is not. She died when I was five, and it’s just been my father, my older sisters, and me since then. Three girls and Papa.”

  “That can’t be easy.” I parented alone 90 percent of the time. I knew the loneliness of screaming out for help and receiving nothing but an echo, a reminder that all you have is two hands when you’re desperate for four.

  “It wasn’t easy. But certain things helped.”

  “Like the party?”

  “Like money,” she said, grinning. Suddenly she grabbed the menu from the table. “I’m terribly hungry. But I always am. Are you? Shall we share something?”

  “Anything.” I would have eaten a bowlful of grasshoppers to keep Ava talking.

  She signaled the waitress and ordered an egg salad sandwich with tomato.

  “Anyway, the rest of the story,” she continued. “The summer of 1948, my father was wrongly accused of stealing from his place of employment, Richard R. Myers Iron Holdings. They own several mines in Connecticut. Did you know there were mines in Connecticut?”

  “Can’t say I know very much about mining.”

  “Fascinating industry. Anyway, that summer, out of nowhere, Daddy was accused of cooking the books and stealing some ungodly sum of money. It’s a big company, heaps of cash. Even worse, he was also accused of stealing away his boss’s wife—taking her straight to a hotel room—repeatedly. He was swiftly fired, as you can imagine. Then he was deemed unhireable because said boss along with said wife slandered him from Maine to Manhattan. Even the sulfur mines wouldn’t take him, and they’ll take just about anybody with a nose that can handle the stink.”

  “But he was redeemed?” I asked, conjuring up a mental image of Ava’s father as Cary Grant in a miner’s hard hat.

  “He was redeemed because of the miners themselves, the union. They had documents that proved it was a mucked-up accusation. They saved his hide, and he was made head of the whole company. But the best part is that his boss had to go work in … guess,” she said, looking at me, her cool blue eyes shining.

  “Sulfur?”

  “That’s right.” She rapped her fingers happily on the table. “Now he comes home to his wife stinking like an egg salad sandwich gone wrong.” She picked up her half and took a satisfied bite. “Now, let’s be honest,” she said after she’d swallowed. “The part about bedding the boss’s wife was probably true. But my father’s unattached. Why should he be punished?”

  “And after the dust settled?”

  “He felt indebted to the union, which led to him becoming a sympathizer, and a few months later, a card-carrying communist,” she said proudly. “Not publicly, as you can imagine, but he’s as devoted as they come. And now so am I.”

  “Because of your father?”

  “Because of the men who supported my father. Because of seeing people motivated by something other than money. Trust me, where I grew up, the only true motivations are money and sex, and the two are usually laced together, tighter than a girdle.”

  “I don’t think much changes past the Connecticut border.”

  “Oh, but it does. People in New York are motivated by delightful things. Like food, and art, an afternoon
at the theater, a night on the town. And some, like Jacob and Turner, by the idea of a better life—for everyone.” She took a last bite of her half of the sandwich and leaned back against the banquette. “Well, that’s enough of Daddy and Connecticut. Let’s talk more about Jacob, the reason we found each other in the first place. And more about Turner Wells,” she said after a pause. “The other reason we found each other.”

  “Jacob,” I said brightly. It was easier to start with Jacob, considering I had spent a grand total of twelve hours with Turner Wells.

  “Let’s start with Turner,” she said just as brightly. “What is it that you’re doing for the CRC exactly?”

  It was probably the only question I was prepared to answer.

  “They have a man,” I said quietly. “A janitor at FBI headquarters. He’s a good man, and he’s become a friend to Turner. He’s been able to pass along a few … insights.”

  “This man is at the FBI?” said Ava, looking truly shocked.

  I nodded yes.

  She sat back, looking at me like I could walk on water. “I must say I’m utterly amazed. And you’re involved?”

  “I’m helpful,” I replied. “Or I’d like to think so. I go to Washington for Turner. I meet with the man, I head back up to New York. Our meetings are brief, but useful.”

  “Useful,” she said, finally smiling. “I’m sure Turner finds them more than useful.”

  “I have a great amount of respect for Turner Wells,” I said, finally uttering something that was not a lie.

  “As do I,” she said, spinning her watch around her thin wrist, her wheels clearly turning. “Do you think Jacob is aware that Turner has a man in the FBI?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m sure he’d like to know. No, he’d be thrilled to know,” she said. She tucked her watch back under her sleeve.

  I nodded, very ready to change the subject.

  “I can speak to Turner,” she said. “But maybe it’s better if you did. You’ve known him longer than I have.”