A Fierce Radiance (50 page)

“I began to comprehend the outrage perpetrated against us. Soon my patients and their families made the link, too. Most of us are citizens of the United States. I know we are a people without a voice, without rights; let us be frank, a people who are reviled. But surely this is not justice. As a medical professional myself, I know you have to tell people the possible side effects in advance, so they and their families can weigh the risk.”

Claire leaned forward in her chair. “Did you try to do anything about this?”

“What recourse do we have? I managed to secure some information from the Food and Drug Administration in Washington, but apparently they have no jurisdiction. Or aren’t willing to accept jurisdiction. I took the situation to the director of the camp, a military man, who listened with great sincerity and concern and promised to look into the matter. Two weeks later, I received orders to report to a Nisei unit on its way to the front. Forgive me for possibly sounding
over-dramatic, but in my travels here from Idaho, I have sensed that I am being watched.

“What makes an American? That’s what I wonder. I am an American citizen, born and raised in America. My parents are American citizens, born and raised in America. My grandparents were immigrants. Does being an American mean you have the opportunity to fight for your country? To aid the soldiers fighting for your country? If so, that is what I shall do. Tomorrow I go to Governor’s Island to be processed. My wife and children will stay at the camp in Idaho. I will be sent to Europe, not to the Pacific, where I would face the Japanese enemy and—the authorities fear—be tempted to turn traitor. I do not consider myself an enemy, but apparently I look like the enemy. Appearances can be deceiving, however, as we tell our children.” He stopped. For a moment he stared at her without blinking. Then he looked away.

“In any event, I am grateful to have an opportunity to stop in New York City and share this information with you and Dr. Lind.”

“Do you have any proof of your—” Claire almost said
accusations
, but caught herself. “Your concerns?”

He took a sealed envelope from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. “I copied this from their record book. Not everyone suffers the side effects. Only a few. Perhaps that is their excuse. And I reiterate, no deaths can be traced to the medication. But I must also reiterate that some of these patients were only mildly ill and might very well have recovered without the medication. Once I overheard several of these so-called medical men discussing their expectation that this drug will receive full patent protection and be available for sale to the public within a year or two.”

Claire didn’t know what to say. Dr. Ito put down his teacup and sat with his hands flat upon his thighs.

“I wish I could have brought you a sample. I watched, I tried. I am sorry that I have failed in this regard. They were very careful. The used syringes were cleaned promptly. The medication was kept in a
locked refrigerator. They were alert to spies. They didn’t want this miraculous medication to make its way to the Empire of the Sun.”

Dr. Lind said, “The reason we came to see you, Mrs. Shipley, is that I thought you might be able to convince your magazine to cover this. It’s outrageous, probably against the Geneva Conventions, to conduct medical experiments on prisoners.”

“Do you have any idea what company was making the drug?” Claire could take this information to her father. He was in a position to discover more. She would also alert Andrew Barnett and Vannevar Bush.

“I tried to find out, but the vials were unlabeled.”

“What did it look like?”

“Ah, yes. I neglected to mention this to Dr. Lind. Its appearance was astonishing. Worthy of a haiku. A color like the brightest mountain lake. Like the sky on a cold winter morning. A color I have seen created by humans only in the finest watercolor paintings. An extraordinary shade of pure, transparent blue.”

H
ow’s your son?” Mr. Luce asked Claire. His penthouse office was hushed, as usual.

“As well as can be expected.”

“Does he need anything?”

“Things are stable now. Thank you for asking. He’s at a summer camp for deaf children. He’s enjoying himself.”

“Who’s paying the fees?”

“My father.”

“Good. Let me know if Charles does need anything. If either of you needs anything. No time to be shy.”

“Thank you. And thank you for giving me so much time off to care for him.”

He shrugged off her thanks. “You made this appointment for?”

“An injustice has been brought to my attention. A story the magazine should investigate.”

She explained what Dr. Ito had told her, made her case. Luce listened without interrupting.

She didn’t reveal that she suspected this was the drug that had made Charlie deaf, or that when Dr. Ito described its color, she had gasped. She didn’t tell Luce that she hoped against hope that someone else had stumbled upon the medication, that some other company, not her father’s company, was testing it at Camp Minidoka. Anyone could have found that mold. She wanted to know the truth before she con
fronted her father. She felt as if she’d had a veil across her eyes, and now the veil had fallen away: a logical conclusion was that her father was indeed responsible for the ransacking of her home and possibly even implicated in Tia’s death. Nonetheless, she couldn’t reconcile her image of such a man with the loving father and grandfather she knew. Her motivations for agreeing to pursue Dr. Ito’s story were deeply personal—although she would never share that fact with Mr. Luce. With Luce, she’d be strictly professional.

After Dr. Ito had gone, she’d tried to contact Andrew Barnett. When he didn’t respond, she’d tried to reach Dr. Bush. Neither one had returned her telephone calls. She’d been cut off without an explanation. With Bush and Barnett apparently stonewalling her, Mr. Luce was now her only recourse.

She gave Mr. Luce the list of names with test results and the side effects Dr. Ito had noted.

Luce examined the list and gave it back to her. “What do you propose I do with this information?”

“You should send me to Idaho with a writer to unravel this story. Find out the name of the company. Put a stop to testing this drug on innocent people who are essentially prisoners of war.”

He said nothing.

“In addition, you should brief your wife on the situation and ask her to hold congressional hearings about conducting medical experiments on internees.” Claire Boothe Luce had been elected to Congress from Connecticut the year before.

“You ask for a lot, Mrs. Shipley.” Luce paused. “You may not know that a while ago, Mack sent a team to one of those internment camps in the desert. What did the photographer come back with? The Japs have organized themselves into music groups and dance studios and foreign-language classes. They’ve created their own newspapers and baseball teams. They’re acting as if they’re perfectly normal Americans under duress.

“Mrs. Shipley, I take seriously the power of the photographic essay, its power to move men’s minds and hearts more deeply even than words. I have a responsibility to the nation. The people in that camp who became ill might well be dead now without this medication. From your description, the problem was that they weren’t told in advance. And some, you say, had mild symptoms. We both know that mild symptoms can turn serious, even fatal. As things turned out, these patients didn’t die. They received a free and unmerited gift, many would say.”

“Mr. Luce, the drug causes a variety of severe side effects in a number of patients, and those people might not have become ill in the first place if it weren’t for the camp conditions.”

Luce had the power to change the world with his influence, with his ability to bring problems to the attention of the nation. He wielded that power every day.

“And I must tell you that in the”—she reached for the proper word—“in the private work Vannevar Bush asked me to do, this was one of the issues he raised: companies devoting themselves to antibacterial medications other than penicillin.”

“I don’t want to know the details of any private arrangements you may or may not have with government officials. You should brief them on the situation, not me.”

“I have attempted to do so. Dr. Bush has not responded to these attempts.”

“Ah, well. That tells us a good deal, doesn’t it.” He wasn’t asking a question.

“Mr. Luce—”

“Not a good time for muckraking, my dear,” he said gently. “The troops need penicillin. I’m in favor of whatever Vannevar Bush needs to do to get it to them as soon as possible. Maybe someday, when the war is over, we’ll have the luxury to debate whether potentially life-saving medications should or shouldn’t be tested on internees without their knowledge and consent.”

She stared at him. He picked up a pencil and began to work on his page proofs, as if she were no longer there. She stood up and left.

T
he Rockefeller Center promenade was crowded in the noontime rush. Usually the opulent gardens and towering skyscrapers glinting in the sunlight invigorated Claire. Today, as she mulled over her options, their glory was a rebuke.

She made a mental checklist of colleagues at other publications who might be able to take the story, but she didn’t get far. Most likely their editors wouldn’t be interested in muckraking during a war, either.

Claire looked around. A naval officer squeezed the hand of the young brunette he walked with, and he placed her hand against his heart. She moved against him, and they walked shoulder to shoulder, the woman’s light summer dress pressed against her body by the breeze as they made their way along the Channel Gardens. Claire thought of herself and Jamie. The ache in her chest was staggering.

A black man pushed a bass in a white case that was taller than he was, no doubt heading to one of the jazz clubs on West Fifty-second Street. An elegant woman in a well-cut suit checked her makeup surreptitiously in her compact mirror before entering the RCA Building to meet her husband or boyfriend or lover. Or to do a job interview. A sailor kissed a girl in a doorway. Would any of these servicemen be alive a year from now?

Cornstalks filled the Channel Gardens. Rockefeller Center had its own victory garden. Wafting in the breeze in the middle of Manhattan, the thickly planted cornstalks conjured an image of prairies far away.

Distracted, Claire wasn’t looking where she was going, and she bumped into a bulky figure. “Excuse me,” she said, quickly pulling away. “I’m so sorry.” She looked at him, taking in the stocky frame, bullish demeanor, and thick dark hair. With a shock she realized who it was. “Bill?…Bill Shipley?”

“Oh.” He stepped back, an expression of unwelcome surprise on his face. “Claire Lukins.” Not a question, nor an especially happy statement. She hadn’t heard her maiden name in a long time. He didn’t make a move to give her a hug or shake her hand. Then Claire noticed the woman standing beside him. She was Claire’s age at least, most likely older, with reddish blond hair and a round face—soft features, soft body, that peachy English look that was so generally praised. Claire was glad to be wearing her Henry Luce outfit, complete with high heels and a new hat. “This is Pamela Thompson. Pammy, this is…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it.

“The first Mrs. Shipley,” Claire said, stepping forward to offer her hand.

Pammy flushed and glanced at Bill with a wide, wounded expression that told Claire he’d never quite gotten around to telling her about the first Mrs. Shipley. She did not reach out her hand to meet Claire’s.

“Would you give us a moment, Miss Thompson?” Claire asked.

Pammy looked at Bill, who nodded without meeting her eye. She went off toward a shop window. As she turned, Claire saw her wedding band. Was she married to Bill, or to someone else? Bill wasn’t wearing a ring, but he hadn’t worn one when he was married to Claire, either. Most men didn’t advertise the fact that they were married by wearing wedding bands. Claire never understood why women didn’t do the same, in protest. Once she’d wondered whether Jamie would wear a wedding band, a ring that she would give him. Well, at least they’d never had to confront that problem.

“So, Bill.” Where to begin with him? Best to be frank. “What are you doing here?”

He was watching Pammy as she stood at the windows of the Librairie de France. But he returned his attention to Claire. “Three weeks R and R. First vacation since before the war. Doing some sightseeing. Boston, New York, Washington. Giving some talks on the overseas
situation. Taking Pammy to meet my sister in Nebraska. Pammy’s a reporter with the
Guardian
.” Claire heard the pride in his voice. “She’ll be doing some pieces along the way. Everyday life in wartime America.”

“Sounds wonderful,” she said, and it came out kindly, like a compliment. Because of Charlie’s worship of him, Bill had grown taller and straighter in her imagination, but here, in the flesh, he was brought down to size. His hair was streaked with gray. He’d put on a good deal of weight. Weren’t there food shortages in Britain? Maybe he was drinking too much. She was astonished that she’d ever loved him, or been intimidated by him. Her life had moved far beyond him, to a place where he was irrelevant. He’d proven himself a coward by not writing, by disappearing after he’d found someone new. Luckily, because of her father, she no longer had to worry about Bill supporting his son. Claire could afford to be generous. “You want to see Charlie while you’re in the States? He’s away at camp, but maybe after your Nebraska visit…”

She asked without even thinking to mention Charlie’s deafness, a natural part of him now. She expected Bill would say no, anyway.

“Oh.” Bill looked surprised once more, presented with an option he hadn’t planned for. “You think that’s a good idea? I don’t want to give him any false hopes.”

“False hopes about what?”

“That we, well, you know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t. What do you mean?” She wasn’t going to help him.

“That we might be getting back together.”

“I don’t think he has any false hopes about that. I’m sure he’d enjoy seeing you, though. He reads your dispatches. Religiously, I’d have to say. Clips them and pastes them into a scrapbook.”

“He does?” This seemed to make Bill happy, although whether for Charlie’s sake or his own, she couldn’t tell. “He reads well enough for that?”

“He’s older now. You’d be impressed by how mature he is.” That was a gratuitous dig, and she retreated from it. “Yes, he reads well enough.”

“I remember him, well, younger.”

“He’s enjoys bird-watching and drawing. He’s learning to play chess. He gets good grades in school.” No, she wouldn’t say that he almost died of pneumonia and was deaf. Bill had relinquished his right to know the whole story. “But it’s true, we don’t want to get his hopes up.”

“I’m only in New York for, well, less than a week.”

“And Miss Thompson would be left on her own for a few hours. She might start to wonder. Especially if she wasn’t previously aware of the existence of a son.”

She expected him to argue with her, or even laugh, but instead he blushed. He was never one to gainsay embarrassing truths. She realized the sad fact: Bill was doing to Charlie exactly what Edward Rutherford had done to her. How much would Bill regret this later? He’d have to find out for himself.

“I wish I could give you something for him, but I hadn’t thought…” He held out his empty hands, as if to say, with so many burdens he’d been under—the war was the least of his trials—he couldn’t be expected to be carrying a gift right here in the middle of Rockefeller Center on a warm summer’s day.

“Don’t even think about that. He wants for nothing. I’ve got a much better job than I did the last time I saw you.”

“I’ve seen your stories. Your covers. Brava! Beautiful work. That Christmas Rockette!”

The Christmas Rockette would wind up as her epitaph. “Oh, the same for the
Herald Tribune
, I assure you. Everyone values your analysis.”

Then Claire knew what she had to do. Time, Inc. wasn’t going to take Dr. Ito’s story. She despised Bill, but he was tenacious. He could push through any muckraking story he got his hands on. If she couldn’t
get the information she needed herself, she’d get it indirectly through him. “I’ve got a great story for you, Bill. In case you have the time and inclination. You and Miss Thompson can look into it together.”

The daily
Tribune
didn’t compete with the weekly news magazines. Bill really was the best person to take the story. Plus, she didn’t think Bill knew that Edward Rutherford was her father. She hadn’t been in touch with her father during her marriage, and she couldn’t recall giving Bill any details about him. She’d tell Bill about Hanover & Company and her suspicions, while she clung to the idea that maybe, possibly, some other company had found and developed the medication used at Camp Minidoka. Not her father’s company. Not her father.

“What puts you in the mood for sharing?”

“Don’t quote me, but my boss doesn’t want the story. You’ll understand why when I tell you what it is. It has to do with a new medication…” She told him what she knew.

“Ah. I can see why the old man doesn’t want it,” he said when she finished. He licked his lips, as if hungry for it. “Not a particularly uplifting tale.” He pondered the possibilities. “Well, thank you, Claire. I’ll talk to my editor this afternoon. Experimenting on prisoners. The fact that the prisoners are Japs will make it a tougher sell, but I’ll pitch it as a business story. The business of medicine, a great tag. I expect I can get approval.”

“I’m counting on it.”

When he smiled at her, he almost looked attractive. “Nothing like a little crime and corruption to liven up the day.”

“Your
day, at least. Anyway, I knew you’d like it. There’s something else.” She hesitated. “There might be a murder involved, too.”

“All the better.”

“Not in this case. I met the ill-fated woman. Did a story with her. The police said it was an accident, but it hit home, given that we were acquainted.” Choosing her words carefully, she gave him an account
of the death of Lucretia Stanton. “Just remember, Bill, you didn’t hear any of this from me.”