I Married a Communist (35 page)

On the facing page was a photograph of Sylphid, but not the Sylphid I knew, not the large, sardonic twenty-three-year-old in the gypsy clothes who had hilariously helped me through my dinner that night at the party and who afterward had delighted me by filleting one after another of her mother's friends, but a tiny, round-faced Sylphid with big black eyes, in pigtails and a party dress, smiling at her beautiful mommy over a Beverly Hills birthday cake. Sylphid in a white cotton dress embroidered with little strawberries, its full skirt puffed out with petticoats and cinched by a full sash tied at the back in a bow. Sylphid at forty-two pounds and six years of age, in white anklets and black Mary Janes. Sylphid not as Pennington's child or even Eve's but as God's. The picture achieving what Eve intended at the outset with the misty daydream of a name: the deprofanation of Sylphid, the etherealization from solid to air. Sylphid as saint, perfectly innocent of all the vices and taking up no room in this world whatsoever. Sylphid as everything that antagonism is not.

"Momma, Momma," the brave child cries helplessly to her mother in one climactic scene, "those men up in his study are speaking Russian!"

Russian agents. Russian spies. Russian documents. Secret letters, phone calls, hand-delivered messages pouring into the house day and night from Communists all over the country. Cell meetings in the house and in "the secret Communist hideaway in the remotest wilds of New Jersey." And "in a parlor-floor apartment briefly leased by him in Greenwich Village, on Washington Square North, across from the famous statue of General George Washington—an apartment acquired by Iron Rinn chiefly for the purpose of providing a safe haven for Communists on the run from the FBI."

"Lies!" I cried. "Completely crazy lies!" But how was I to know for sure? How was anyone? What if the startling preface to her book was
true?
Could it possibly be? For years I wouldn't read Eve Frame's book, protecting as long as I could my original relationship to Ira even when I had been progressively abandoning him and his haranguing to a point where I had all but accomplished the rejection of him. But because I didn't want this book to be the awful end to our story, I skipped around and didn't read thoroughly beyond the preface. Nor was I avidly interested in what was written in the papers about the treacherous hypocrisy of the leading actor of
The
Free and the Brave,
who'd been personifying all these great American characters despite having cast himself in a more sinister role entirely Who had, according to Eve's testimony, been personally responsible for submitting every one of Sokolow's scripts to a Russian agent for suggestions and approval. To see somebody I'd loved publicly vilified—why would I want to take part in that? There was no pleasure in it, and there was also nothing I could do about it.

Even putting aside the charge of espionage, accepting that the man who had brought me into the world of men could have lied to our family about being a Communist was no less painful for me than accepting that Alger Hiss or the Rosenbergs could have lied to the nation by denying that they were Communists. I refused to read any of it, as I had earlier refused to believe any of it.

This was how Eve's book began, the preface, the bombshell of an opening page:

Is it right for me to do this? Is it easy for me to do this? Believe me, it is far from easy. It is the most awful and difficult task of my entire life. What is my motive? people will ask. How can I possibly consider it my moral and patriotic duty to inform on a man I loved as much as I loved Iron Rinn?

Because as an American actress I have sworn myself to fight the Communist infiltration of the entertainment industry with every fiber of my being. Because as an American actress I have a solemn responsibility to an American audience that has given me so much love and recognition and happiness, a solemn and unshakable responsibility to reveal and expose the extent of the Communist grip on the broadcasting industry that I came to know through the man I was married to, a man I loved more than any man I have ever known, but a man who was determined to use the weapon of mass culture to tear down the American way of life.

That man was the radio actor Iron Rinn, alias Ira Ringold, card-carrying member of the Communist Party of the United States of America and American ringleader of the underground Communist espionage unit committed to controlling American radio. Iron Rinn, alias Ira Ringold, an American taking his orders from Moscow.

I know why I married this man: out of a woman's love. And why did he marry me? Because he was ordered to by the Communist Party! Iron Rinn never loved me. Iron Rinn exploited me. Iron Rinn married me the better to infiltrate his way into the world of American entertainment. Yes, I married a Machiavellian Communist, a vicious man of enormous cunning who nearly ruined my life, my career, and the life of my beloved child. And all of it to advance Stalin's plan for world domination.

"T
HE SHACK
. Eve hated it. When they were first lovers, she'd tried fixing it up for him; she hung curtains, bought dishes, glasses, place settings, but there were mice, wasps, spiders got into the place, and she was terrified of them, and it was miles to the general store, and since she didn't drive, a local farmer who smelled of manure had to drive her there to shop. All in all, there was nothing much for her to do in Zinc Town except fend off all the discomforts, and so she started to campaign for them to buy a place in the south of France, where Sylphid's father had a villa, so that Sylphid could be near him in the summers. She said to Ira, 'How can you be so provincial? How will you ever learn anything that isn't screaming about Harry Truman if you won't travel, if you won't go to France to see the French countryside, if you won't go to Italy to see the great paintings, if you won't go anywhere except to New Jersey? You don't listen to music. You won't go to museums. If a book isn't about the working class, you don't read it. How can an actor—' And he would say, 'Look, I'm no actor. I'm a working stiff who earns his living in radio. You
had
a la-di-da husband. You want to go back and try him again? You want a husband like your friend Katrina has, a cultivated Harvard man like Mr. Loony, like Mr. Katrina Van Gossip Grant?'

"Whenever she'd bring up France and buying a vacation house there, Ira got going—it never took much. It wasn't in him casually to dislike somebody like Pennington or Grant. It wasn't in him casually to dislike anything. There was no disagreement that his outrage couldn't make use of. 'I traveled,' he'd tell her. 'I worked on the docks in Iran. Saw enough human degradation in Iran...' and so on and so forth.

"The upshot was that Ira wouldn't give up the shack, and that was another source of contention between them. In the beginning the shack was a holdover from his old life and for her a part of his rube charm. After a while she saw the shack as a foothold apart from her, and that also filled her with terror.

"Maybe she loved him and that's what spawned the fear of losing him. Her histrionics never registered on me as love. Eve cloaked herself in the mantle of love, the fantasy of love, but was too weak and vulnerable a person not to be filled with resentment. She was too intimidated by everything to provide love that was sensible and to the point—to provide anything but a caricature of love. That's what Sylphid got. Imagine what it must have meant to be Eve Frame's daughter—
and
Carlton Pennington's daughter—and you begin to understand how Sylphid evolved. A person like that you don't make overnight.

"The whole despised part of Ira, everything disgustingly untamed in him, was also wrapped up for her in that shack, but Ira wouldn't get rid of it. If nothing else, as long as the shack remained a shack, it was Sylphid-proof. Nowhere for her to sleep other than on the daybed in the front room, and the few times each summer she visited for a weekend she was bored and miserable. The pond too muddy for her to swim in, the woods too buggy for her to walk in, and though Eve would endlessly try to keep her entertained, she sulked indoors for a day and a half and then headed back on the train to her harp.

"But that last spring they were together, plans began to be laid to fix the place up. Big renovation to start after Labor Day. Modernizing the kitchen, modernizing the bathroom, large new windows, brand-new floors, new doors that fit, new lighting, blown insulation and a new oil-heating system to properly winterize the place. Paint job inside and out. And a large addition at the back, a whole new room with a huge stone fireplace and with a picture window overlooking the pond and the woods. Ira hired a carpenter, a painter, an electrician, a plumber, Eve made lists and drawings, and all of it was to be ready for Christmas. 'What the hell,' Ira said to me, 'she wants it, let her have it.'

"His coming apart had begun by then, only I didn't realize it. He didn't either. He thought he was being shrewd, you see, thought he could finesse it. But his aches and pains were killing him, and his morale was shot, and the decision wasn't made by what was strong in him but by what was breaking. He thought by making things more to her liking he could minimize the friction and ensure her protecting him against the blacklist. He was afraid now of losing her by losing his temper, and so he began to try to save his political hide by letting all that unreality of hers flow freely over him.

"The fear. The acute fear there was in those days, the disbelief, the anxiety over discovery, the suspense of having one's life and one's livelihood under threat. Was Ira convinced keeping Eve could protect him? Probably not. But what else was there for him to do?

"What happened to his cunning strategy? He hears her calling the new addition 'Sylphid's room,' and that takes care of the cunning strategy. He hears her outside with the excavator saying, 'Sylphid's room this' and 'Sylphid's room that,' and when she comes inside the house, all glowing and happy, Ira's already undergone the transformation. 'Why do you say that?' he asks her. 'Why do you call that Sylphid's room?' 'I did no such thing,' she says. 'You did. I heard you. That's not Sylphid's room.' 'Well, she
is
going to stay there.' 'I thought it was just going to be the big backroom, the new living room.' 'But the daybed. She'll be sleeping there on the new daybed.' 'Will she? When?' 'Why, when she comes here.' 'But she doesn't like it here.' 'But she will when the house is as lovely as it's going to be.' 'Then screw it,' he says. 'The house won't be lovely. The house will be shitty. Fuck the whole project.' 'Why are you doing this to me? Why are you doing this to my daughter? What is
wrong
with you, Ira?' 'It's over. The renovation is off.' 'But
why?
'Because I can't stand your daughter and your daughter can't stand me—that is why.' 'How
dare
you say anything against my daughter! I'm getting out of here! I will not stay here! You are persecuting my daughter! I will not have it!' And she picked up the phone and called for the local taxi, and in five minutes she was gone.

"Four hours later he found out to where. He gets a phone call from a real estate woman over in Newton. She asks to speak to Miss Frame, and he tells her Miss Frame isn't around, and she asks if he'll give Miss Frame a message—the two darling farmhouses they saw
are
on the market, either one is perfect for her daughter, and she can show them to her the next weekend.

"What Eve had done, after she left, was to spend the afternoon looking for a summer place in Sussex County to buy for Sylphid.

"That's when Ira phoned me. He said to me, 'I don't believe it. Looking for a house for her up here—I don't
comprehend
it.' 'I do,' I said. 'To bad mothering there is no end. Ira, the time has come to move on to the next improbability.'

"I got in the car and I went up to the shack. I spent the night, and the next morning I brought him to Newark. Eve phoned our house every evening, begging him to come back, but he told her that was it, their marriage was over, and when
The Free and the Brave
returned to the air, he stayed with us and commuted to New York to work.

"I told him, 'You are in the hands of this thing like everybody else. You are going to go down or not go down like everybody else. The woman you are married to is not going to protect you from whatever is in store for you or for the show or for whomever else they decide to destroy. The Red-baiters are on the march. Nobody is going to fool them for long even by living a
quadruple
life. They're going to get you with her or they're going to get you without her, but at least without her you're not going to be encumbered by somebody useless in a crisis.'

"But, as the weeks passed, Ira became less and less convinced that I was right, and so did Doris, and maybe, Nathan, I wasn't right. Maybe if, for his own calculated reasons, he'd gone back to Eve, her aura, her reputation, her connections would have worked together to save him and his career. That is possible. But what was going to save him from the marriage? Every night, after Lorraine had gone to her room, we'd sit in the kitchen, Doris and I going over and over the same ground while Ira listened. We'd gather at the kitchen table with our tea, and Doris would say, 'He's put up with her nonsense for three years now, when there's been no sane reason to put up with it. Why can't he put up with her nonsense for another three years, when at last there
is
a sane reason to put up with it? For whatever motive, good or bad, he has never pushed to completely end the marriage in all this time. Why should he do it now, when being her husband might possibly be helpful to him? If he can salvage some benefit, at least his ridiculous union with those two won't have been in vain.' And I would say, 'If he returns to the ridiculous union, he is going to be destroyed by the ridiculous union. It is more than ridiculous. Half the time he's so miserable, he has to come over here to sleep.' And Doris would say, 'He's going to be more miserable when he's on the blacklist.' 'Ira is going to wind up on the blacklist either way. With his big mouth and his background, Ira is not going to be spared.' And Doris would say, 'How can you be sure everyone is going to get it? The whole thing is so irrational to begin with, so without any rhyme or reason—' And I would say, 'Doris, his name has appeared in fifteen, twenty places already. It's got to happen. It's inevitable. And when it happens, we know whose side she'll stand by. Not his, Sylphid's—to protect Sylphid from what's happening to
him.
I say end the marriage and the marital misery and accept that he is going to wind up on the blacklist wherever he is. If he goes back to her, he's going to fight with her, he's going to battle the daughter, and soon enough she is going to realize why he is there, and that will make it even worse.' 'Eve? Realize anything?' Doris said. 'Reality doesn't seem to make a dent in Miss Frame. Why is reality going to rear its head now?' 'No,' I said, 'the cynical exploitation, the parasitical leeching—it's too demeaning. I don't like it in and of itself, and I don't like it because Ira is not capable of pulling it off. He is open, he is impulsive, he is direct. He is a hothead and he is not going to be able to do it. And when she finds out why he is there, well, she will make things even
more
miserable and confused. She doesn't have to figure it out herself—somebody can do it for her. Her friends the Grants will figure it out. They probably have already. Ira, if you go back there, what are you going to do to change the way you live with her? You're going to have to become a lapdog, Ira. You can do that?
You?
'He'll just be shrewd and go his way,' Doris said. 'He
can't
be shrewd and go his way,' I said. 'He'll never be "shrewd" because everything there drives him crazy.' 'Well,' said Doris, 'losing everything he's worked for, being punished in America for what he believes in, his enemies getting the upper hand, that will make Ira even crazier.' 'I don't like it,' I said, and Doris said, 'But you didn't like it from the outset, Murray. Now you're using this to get him to do what you have wanted him to do all along. The hell with exploiting her. Exploit her—that's what she's there for. What is marriage without exploitation? People in marriages get exploited a million times over. One exploits the other's position, one exploits the other's money, one exploits the other's looks. I think he should go back. I think he needs all the protection he can get. Just
because
he is impulsive,
because
he is a hothead. He's in a war, Murray. He's under fire. He needs camouflage. She is his camouflage. Wasn't she Pennington's camouflage because he was a homosexual? Now let her be Ira's because he's a Red. Let her be useful for
something.
No, I don't see the objection. He schlepped the harp, didn't he? He saved her from that kid beating her brains in, didn't he? He did what he could do for her. Now let her do what she can do for him. Now, by luck, through sheer circumstance, those two people can finally do something aside from bitch and moan about Ira and war on each other. They don't even have to be conscious of it. Through no effort on their part, they can be of use to Ira. What's so wrong with that?' 'The man's honor is at stake, that's what,' I said. 'His integrity is at stake. It's all too mortifying. Ira, I argued with you about joining the Communist Party. I argued with you about Stalin and I argued with you about the Soviet Union. I argued with you and it made no difference: you were committed to the Communist Party. Well, this ordeal is part of that commitment. I don't like to think of you groveling. Perhaps the time has come to drop
all
the mortifying lies. The marriage that's a lie and the political party that's a lie. Both are making of you much less than you are.'