Escape the Night (3 page)

Backing from the library, from the hatred and confusion in her eyes, Peter Carey understood what he had done. He had destroyed his mother, and stolen his father's love.

In the loveless act that led to Peter's birth, Charles Carey had felt the death throes of his marriage.

The chill had touched him months before.

Tension ran through Allie's laughter, in the way she grasped at moments, inflating them with brittle gaiety. A bottle of champagne became perfect in his company, its cold tang lingering like velvet on her tongue. At the Byline Room, she sat transfixed by smoke and darkness, the pulse of jazz notes crowding, fighting, pushing one another for space as still others blew them out the door, until the night was magic. The filet at “21” was flawless, Maria Tallchief more tensile than Pavlova. She cried hearing Robert Lowell.

Charles Carey was her thrilling lover.

She writhed against him, body glistening with sweat, strain and hysteria until she lay exhausted, eyes fixed and staring as though in desperate search for what she had not found, and then in a rush of words she would describe to him the beauty of their act.

On their wedding night, she wept.

In subtle flight, for the first time in his life, Charles Carey retreated from reality.

Suppressed, doubt festered in his subconscious, leeching conviction from his laughter and the things they did in bed. Allie could not speak to him of her fantasies; Charles could confess his fears to no one. She became gayer and more desperate, drinking more champagne as she organized vast parties, placing new friends or entertainments as barriers between them, flirting carelessly with Phillip. Bereft of real intimacy, Charles's lovemaking turned mechanical, brain cooling to an eerie detachment in which he came full circle to the truth: his wife was an actress in bed.

He began to contemplate divorce.

The last time they made love was in the morning. Fall sunlight through their window seemed to etch his life with crystalline clarity. Coolly, deliberately, he began stroking her arm until it prickled with goosebumps, then turned her face toward his and kissed her neck, his mouth and tongue running toward her nipple, lingering there to raise it as he slid two fingers between her thighs. His tongue moved downward across her stomach to where his fingers had been, and slipped into her moistness. Her hips thrust upward. She screamed when he entered her.

As she called his name again and again, he knew that the sounds came from her throat and not her body. He made love to her for over an hour, driving, pounding, moving slow and then fast, sliding and teasing, back glistening with sweat, jaw and sinew clenched in an agony of reaching, straining to at last wrench cries from deep inside her, until she scraped his back in a spasm of feigned climax, signaling its finish, and he looked over her shoulder, at his watch.

Two months later, Alicia Carey told him she was pregnant.

From the first weeks of her pregnancy, John Carey watched their hot, buried anger rise to split his sons. They disagreed more often; championed different books or authors; grew more caustic in debate. With mixed pleasure and concern their father guessed the reason: Phillip feared that the unborn child which now trapped his brother might become the grandson that John Carey wished.

But the strain seemed worst in Charles. In Alicia Carey's eyes—which glinted but could not connect—John Carey saw the anguish of his son reflected. Charles's confidence as a lover, unspoken and unflaunted, had fed his confidence as a man. A child bound him to the woman who had stolen it.

Curiously, this time of unhappiness became in other ways Charles's best. Finding a new black writer of rare eloquence and talent, Charles insisted that they publish his first novel, which now rode a crest of fine reviews. Three more of his young authors already had best sellers; now he acquired a novel of a Roman slave rebellion, which might become one more. Yet too often he was moody and distracted: with each month that his child's birth drew closer, his judgment frayed …

All at once, facing a stranger too rife with potential menace for the Careys to mishandle, John Carey saw how swiftly Charles's nerve and courage might turn back upon them.

The curiously unsettling Englehardt came from Washington, as emissary of the House Un-American Activities Committee's literary witch hunt, to warn that those who published Charles's slave novel were tools of Joseph Stalin.

“Does Stalin read much?” Charles asked him politely.

They sat in the conference room at Van Dreelen & Carey—John Carey flanked by his sons—facing a crew-cut man with gray, lynx's eyes and no taste for irony. Dressed in a bow tie and black bargain-basement suit, he seemed colorless, odorless and tasteless, like poison gas. By his lack of facial lines Englehardt could not be over thirty, yet his youth seemed long dead, and his strange, relentless monotone had become as excruciating as the repeated drip of water. John Carey, who feared little, instinctively feared this man. He leaned back, closely watching both Charles and Phillip.

“You fail to amuse,” the man replied to Charles. He had a cruel slash of a mouth and a bleak, level stare that took in the leather books and polished mahogany as though he wished them his. “Your list is riddled with left-wing writers …”

“Such as …?”

“Aside from this one?” Methodically and without inflection, the man named seventeen books by author, title and date of publication, specifying the reasons for their offensiveness. “You see,” he finished quietly, “I'm not here by accident.”

“Just by mistake,” Charles shot back. “Although your memory is excellent.”

“A professional requirement.” A pride close to arrogance flashed through his eyes, the first true emotion John Carey could detect. “And the mistake is yours: purchasing this piece of propaganda just when its author has publicly refused to give testimony before our Committee. We're in a war of ideologies, and those of us who know this are curious as to which side you're on. I think you may recall John Garfield …”

“I recall.” Charles went pale with anger. “We ate at Downey's two nights before he died, as
you
damned well know. In the eighteen months since your committee sicked the FBI on him he hadn't had a part. His marriage had broken up, and he was much too thin. You'd read his mail and rousted his friends until there weren't many left …”

“We were investigating …”

“You were sniffing through his life like a pervert through a drawerful of panties, until he had no grace or privacy—all for the crime of signing petitions. It's as sick a way to break someone as Stalin ever dreamed of—”

“I view it less emotionally—”

“I'm curious, Englehardt. How do your people like watching me? Do I keep them amused? Maybe I should join the NAACP …”

“Wait, Charles.” Phillip leaned forward, holding up one hand as John Carey turned to watch him. “We're getting into personalities, to no point. We at least owe Mr. Englehardt a hearing …”

“Under HUAC rules, I hope.”

“Well, I for one don't wish to publish books which aren't in the national interest …”

“As defined by whom, J. Edgar Hoover?” Charles spun on Englehardt before Phillip could respond. “He's
my
author. I speak for the firm here. Our answer is no. If it's subversive the public won't buy it, and we'll lose money. Their choice, our risk:
that's
the American Way, not snoopers destroying lives to enhance their own. You know where the door is, I imagine.”

Englehardt's returning stare at Charles Carey was expressionless; once more John Carey felt fear, sensed the effort with which he masked his fury. When Englehardt turned toward Phillip Carey, appraising him as he would a slide beneath a microscope, he smiled with a curious look of comprehension that softened his face. For a long, silent moment they regarded each other, as if no one else were there. Without turning, he said to John Carey, “You might do well to listen to your
younger
son.”

“Whatever differences we have do not concern you.” John Carey leaned into his line of vision. “I respect your motives, if not your methods. But Van Dreelen and Carey is something other than a ward of Congress. We must make our own decisions.”

Englehardt was still; only his pupils seemed to widen. He spoke with equal quiet. “Then when you make them, Mr. Carey, you should consider the scope of our investigative powers. Your decision may have great consequences—for this firm, for you, and all those who come after.” He looked back at Charles. “I'll particularly expect to hear from
you
.”

“Oh you shall, Mr. Englehardt, you shall. I've been rather hoping you'd train your investigative powers on Mr. Hoover, though.” He smiled faintly. “One hears distressing rumors that he likes little boys. A lot of us who know that are curious as to which side he's on.”

Englehardt's gem-cutter's stare at Charles Carey was the more piercing for his stillness. Then he shook his head, and rose from the table with a faint, lingering smile at Phillip. He walked to the door, turning back once more to survey Charles as if absorbing his thoughts and features, and left, closing the door with fearful gentleness. The room sounded with its echo.

In biting tones, Charles said to his father, “I thought for a moment that you were sitting this one out.”

John Carey looked at him with contempt. “I know you're spoiling for the day I'm dead and you can ruin this firm singlehanded. But that's
if
, Charles—only if
I
will it. So I find it necessary to determine just how long that job would take you.”

“I appreciate your support …”

“My concern is to support
writers
, not you. Compare us to the film studios, or even other publishers. Not one of our authors has had a book bounced back because these fools have pilloried him in public, or blown his brains out because we've helped them choke off his livelihood. Most important, I've still got a firm to pass on, intact. I've seen to that by not begging for trouble …”

“This man Englehardt came
here
…”

“And then you gave him no way out.” John Carey's voice hardened. “Never, ever, humiliate a man in front of others unless you have the power to destroy him. With this man it's the other way around: in time he may have the power to destroy
you
, and all I mean this family to keep. I watched his eyes while you were being clever. He'll remember you thirty years from now.”

“I want him to—men like that only prey on weakness.” Charles wheeled on his brother. “If you ever again cut me off in front of strangers, particularly someone who'll go for your throat if he sees any weakness at all, you'd better pray that it
is
you who inherits this firm. And while you're praying, pray that what happened to Garfield doesn't happen to you or anyone in this family, because there's no one who can survive that. Especially you.” He rose to leave, turning in the doorway to say in a softer voice, “It's not fatal that you lack Stalin's taste, Phil. But to lack his
guts
…”

He turned and left.

Staring at his stricken second son, still hearing the anger of his first, John Carey felt the unborn presence of the grandson who might follow them, to sit where he now sat.

Within weeks, Phillip Carey knew that their upsetting visitor would not forget the Careys.

Their writers were abruptly hauled before the Committee; Charles's tax returns were audited; the author of the slave novel was indicted for refusing to appear. At Committee hearings, in newspapers, the name Van Dreelen & Carey was constantly repeated. One department store refused their books …

Phillip began hearing noises on his telephone.

He could not explain this sense of dread.

What so clearly was in progress—a carefully calibrated form of torture—was ominous enough. Yet Phillip Carey kept seeing Englehardt's strange smile reach for him across the table, felt the penetration of his eyes. In that one moment, he had sensed this man looking back into his childhood until he saw Phillip as the boy Phillip still despised remembering, who envied Charles for his boldness, yet was fearful of offending. The young Phillip strove to please John Carey; Charles stole their father's gaze without bothering to notice. This injustice fueled a smoldering adolescent envy Phillip felt too unworthy to display; unlike the fearless Charles, he had not earned the right to his emotions. Growing, he took refuge in fine tailoring and a polished air, hoping that its shine would deflect deeper glances until he became the man John Carey was, and thereby gained his favor …

All this he had seen in one long look of infinite comprehension on the face of a total stranger.

He did not want this man to know him.

“They're watching us,” he told his father. “It's been three months now, and tomorrow HUAC's parading yet another of our Marxist authors, with no sign of stopping.”

The two brothers sat in their father's office. Looking from Charles back to Phillip, John Carey's eyes seemed to harden. “What is it you want?”

Phillip paused, distracted by the weary look with which Charles had arrived from one of those mysterious appointments to which he dragged the pregnant Allie. Perhaps there was a problem, some chance of a miscarriage …

Hastily, he answered, “To advise Mr. Englehardt that we're pulling the novel that offended him.”

“
Englehardt
.” Charles turned on him with a look of disgust. “You'd trade a gifted writer for the smile of a cockroach?”

Irresolute, Phillip wavered: he could not speak his fears in front of Charles.

“We're committed,” John Carey cut in. “To which Charles has added a HUAC problem we damned well could have dodged.”

“Too late for hindsight.” Charles's tone was flat. “Two men followed me here, the same ones I saw yesterday. It's time that we fight back.”