Shining Through (10 page)

“Yes, Mr. Leland.”

“
No one
sees these forms. Should there come a time when you do work for me, that work is to be completely confidential.”

I folded the papers carefully and stuck them in my steno pad and wondered: Does this mean I won’t be working for John anymore? I clutched the pad so tight the wire top cut into my hand. Does this mean that with Nan in Reno, John might be leaving the firm and they had to find something else for me, that—

“I’ll only need you now and then. Naturally, you’ll continue to work for Mr. Berringer,” Mr. Leland said. “Do you find the arrangement satisfactory, Miss Voss?”

“Yes, sir.”

He stared at me again. “Well, I look forward to working with you, Miss Voss.”

“Thank you, Mr. Leland. Will that be all?”

“For now.”

By eight o’clock that night, I was overtired the way a little kid gets: clumsy, and so irritable I felt on the verge of tears. My whole body was so weary, so limp, that if I didn’t watch myself, I’d flop forward and crack my head on my typewriter; I could see the blood dripping onto the semicolon and the
L
. And what made working late even harder was thinking about my mother home alone, all made up, with no one to tell her how beautiful she looked before she went out into the night.

66 / SUSAN ISAACS

But I perked up fast, and it didn’t take a gallon of coffee. John came out of his office, stood by my desk and picked up the letters I’d typed. He signed them fast. “I spoke with Mr. Leland late this afternoon,” he said. I stopped what I was doing, which was licking an envelope, and remembered just in time to put it down, or I would have wound up with an envelope dangling from my tongue. All day I’d been worrying about what to do if Mr. Leland had work for me. Since I wasn’t allowed to talk about it, I couldn’t say, Pardon me, Mr. Berringer, I have to stop what I’m doing for you and go to Mr. Leland’s office and take a spy letter.

And I couldn’t excuse myself to go to the ladies’ room and saunter back an hour and a half later. “He mentioned he’d given you some forms,” John added.

“Forms?” Mr. Leland had ordered me to stay mum. What could I say? Sure, I’ve got this mile-long FBI form to fill out.

Want me to show it to you?

John smiled, nodded, and gave me one of his special winks.

“You’re right, of course. You have no idea whether my interest…”

His hand rested on my typewriter: long-fingered, elegant—but not too elegant. “Good thinking, Miss Voss. I’ll ask Mr. Leland to let you know I’m all right.” I was mesmerized by his hand.

“You’ll find”—his voice dropped to almost a whisper, but a whisper full of pride—“that I’m working very closely with Mr.

Leland”—he pulled back his hand, slipped it into his pocket—“on this matter.”

I wanted to believe in John completely. I wanted to think there was nothing he did that wasn’t absolutely perfect. But I couldn’t.

If some guy’s daughter had turned my life upside down, I wouldn’t be bragging about working very closely with him.

And as far as Mr. Leland went, if a son-in-law didn’t have what it took to hold on to my daughter, I wouldn’t be sipping brandy with him and saying, Well, old bean, how do we best contain the growing Fascist peril?

And look at Nan. Twenty-one years old, a genuine intellectual, a girl everyone said, if she’d been a man, would have SHINING THROUGH / 67

gone as far as her husband, or even her father. A brain, but she runs into her father’s office blabbing away about Quentin when even a chimpanzee would have had the sense to close the door.

I couldn’t figure them. They didn’t act like real people—or even movie people. They acted as if they had secret rules no one else was in on. Stick John and Mr. Leland in a closed room where normal guys would throttle each other, and what happened? They got cordial. They worked “very closely.” Put Nan Leland Berringer in a public place, under pressure, where you’d think: Well, here it is, Stiff Upper Lip Time, and what do you get? A Smith College genius jabbering so loud about marrying number two—while she still has number one—that you could hear her in Hoboken.

I could sort of understand John: not his pride, but at least his unwillingness to tell a man like his father-in-law to go soak his head. The one I really didn’t get was Edward Leland. For all his expensive suits and good grammar, he was a guy
nobody
would want to cross. And what does he say to his one child? “Close the door, Nan.” Okay, no one knew what went on after, but everyone could see she got exactly what her little heart desired: a first-class compartment on the next train to Reno.

Sure, Nan was probably a handful, but couldn’t her father—a real tough customer, who handled handfuls for a living—couldn’t he say: Listen, sister, you were so crazy about this guy you couldn’t wait till college let out in June to marry him, so what are you doing? Throwing him over in less than three years?

Come on. Give him a chance. Go home, have a couple of kids.

And if I hear one more word about this Quentin, you’ll get a good, swift kick in the pants.

That’s what my father would have said.

The worst thing about being a secretary is the little chairs.

They’re very low, so when your boss comes over to your desk, that first instant you turn to him—guess what you’re staring at.

Not that you could see anything, because in the entire history of the Association of the Bar of the City of 68 / SUSAN ISAACS

New York there has never been one single pair of revealing trousers.

John came out of his office again. He was so near, reaching across me to put down a bill of lading. “You’ll see this gets to Mr. Withey first thing in the morning,” he said.

“First thing,” I said from my chair.

He was so close his arm brushed against my shoulder, and that second my guard must have been down, because all of a sudden, wham! Desire that started deep, low down, then exploded, destroying my sense. My face got feverish. I was dizzy.

I tried to get control, to slow my breathing so it didn’t give me away; I concentrated on a piece of carbon paper. I held it up to the light, pretending to check if it was still any good. That let me turn away from him, because it wasn’t just the heat of my own face I was feeling. He was close enough that I could tell some of that heat was coming from him.

But it wasn’t me who was heating John up. I felt it anyway, the rising temperature of a man in desperate need of a woman, a man dying to rush out of the office, leave the day behind him.

He shifted from one foot to the other, ready—more than ready—to break out into the night.

“Is there anything else, Mr. Berringer?”

“Excuse me?” He was distracted. It wasn’t fatigue.

“Anything else tonight?”

“No. I’ll be going now.”

Where to? Back to his apartment? To eat dinner alone? To get into bed, to lie on sheets he hadn’t changed since she’d left a month before, to breathe deep, trying to pick up the dying scent of her perfume?

Or to go with someone else? A lady, another Nan, who would ease him, massage his neck with cool, smart fingers? Or to some tramp, as hot and ready as he was?

“See you in the morning, Mr. Berringer. Have a good—”

But he was halfway down the hall. He didn’t even take his briefcase.

Whoever made the modern furniture in John’s office was a great craftsman. In the darkened room, lit only by the hall SHINING THROUGH / 69

light, his black desk had such a gorgeous, deep glow it looked alive. I sat in his chair and swiveled back and forth. No one was left in the whole law firm, not even the cleaning lady. In the silence, I pushed aside all the other women I’d imagined John with and thought about him alone in his apartment. I pictured him throwing aside his jacket, loosening his tie, unbuttoning his shirt, feeling the soft night air on his chest. Standing there, in a foyer or living room as dark as his office. Alone, in the quiet, aching to be touched. Just like me.

I stroked the desk’s silky wood, ran my fingers over the smooth corners. Beautifully made.

Strong too. There was no way you could get the locked lower-right-hand drawer open without a key. Not that I would have done anything funny with a hairpin, but with most drawers, you don’t need burglary tools: one good fingernail and a sharp yank would do the trick.

I sat up straighter; I would never jimmy open a drawer. Then I felt under the blotter and the base of the desk lamp. Nuts.

Nothing. Not in the unlocked drawers, either. But in the end I found it, inside a flap of his leather calendar: his desk key.

Talk about good craftsmanship: The key opened the lock without even the tiniest click, and the drawer slid out as if I’d whistled and it couldn’t wait to come to me. I felt around. Just one thick manila envelope.

I got up and locked his door. If you know you’re doing something you should be ashamed of, you should either stop or do it thoroughly; there’s no such thing as a semi-sin.

Then I came back and switched on John’s desk lamp. The envelope was one of Blair, VanderGraff and Wadley’s. It had nothing written on it. I eased open the metal clasp, spilled everything out onto the desk, memorized the mess, then arranged it all into a perfect pile. I may have been a sneak, but no one could say I wasn’t a great secretary.

Then I looked through it. It was all hers. John had collected enough mementos to open a Nan Leland Berringer museum.

Except it would have been a pretty pathetic museum: love tokens of a wife in love with someone else.

70 / SUSAN ISAACS

I started with the two letters. The first must have been written right when they began:

Dear John
,

On Sunday, I told you I am congenitally incapable
of being coy. Therefore, I will not try to subvert you
with feminine wiles, nor will I have some mutual
acquaintance drop my name before you at frequent
intervals. I will merely say I want very much to see
you when I get back to New York, right after my
exams
.

Yes, I realize this is awkward for you, that you
did not intend an afternoon’s conversation, a mild
flirtation, to be taken so seriously. Your womanly
ideal is not an eighteen-year-old college freshman.

And yet…And yet, I know you were drawn to me as
I was to you
.

You see, John, I told you I could not be coy
.

You said I must be getting the rush from the
Amherst boys. I don’t know if it is a rush. I do know
I have no interest in boys. I want a man, a man of
brilliance and sensitivity. A man like you
.

I cannot begin to tell you how much our conversation in the gazebo meant to me, to have someone
who not only cares deeply for the things I care about,
but who can express himself with such insight and
profundity. I want very much to talk again. I feel
we have a great deal to say to each other
.

I told you I was not coy. What I did not tell you
was that I am relentless. If you don’t call me, I will
call you
.

My best
,

She signed it “N.” I thought: That’s how they get rich, saving money on ink. And then I thought: I can’t believe an eighteen-year-old girl would have the guts to write that kind of letter. And even more, I can’t believe she had John Berringer alone in a gazebo and walked out in a tizzy over SHINING THROUGH / 71

his profundity. Profundity? But there it was, in black and white.

The second letter was signed “N” too:
Darling
,

I can’t tell you how sorry I am. It was my fault. I
should never have gone to the hotel with you and let
things get that far. I know you’re not some
adolescent, that you are used to having anything
you want from a woman and that your needs are a
man’s needs
.

I put the letter down on the desk. This was the worst thing I’d ever done. It was like being the lowest—a Peeping Tom.

But, John, when it happens, it has to be right.

It has to be done (please, oh, please, don’t think I’m
being pretentious) in a state of grace. I love you. I
adore you. And if you insist, I will do anything you
want to prove I am indeed yours. But I beg you,
don’t insist until, well, until it is truly the time
.

Forever
,

I held the envelope up to the light. The postmark was February 19, eleven days before they got married.

I put it down and thought of what I’d done with George Armbruster. If I hadn’t come so cheap, if I’d played my cards right and said, Uh-uh, nothing doing without a state of grace, Georgie—who knows? He could have introduced me to his bachelor brother the next day, saying, This here is a fine, upright girl. I could have had a house, two kids, a dinette set.

The life before me was more interesting than my own. I went back to the pile on the desk. Ticket stubs. A book by Goethe,
Divan of East and West
, which I’d heard was pretty hot stuff. It was from her, in it she’d written, “To mein Liebe, From N.” To my love. She may have been a genius, 72 / SUSAN ISAACS

but N could have used a couple of German lessons; if she was going to use “love” like that, it should have been
Für meine ein-zige Liebe
or maybe
mein Geliebter
. John would know that, but what could he say? My darling, “mein Liebe” is stinko German.

Your usage definitely isn’t anything to write home about. But he couldn’t say anything to Nan anymore. So he kept the book, the letters—all of it—because it was the closest he could get to her. In the late afternoons, when he said, No calls, Miss Voss, he was probably sitting there fingering the ticket stubs or rereading the Goethe.

There was a concert program from Carnegie Hall. The orches-tra must have been rotten, because all over the page that told about Bach’s B Minor Mass there were scribbles. “Putrid!” “The tempo!” and “Will it ever end?” in Nan’s handwriting. “I love you” in his. There were a couple of clippings from the society page: their engagement and wedding announcements. I got a few new pieces of information: a list of bridesmaids with expensive names—“The Misses Floria Wyatt, Honore Delafield, Dorothea and Alice Brinton, Eleanor Randel and Victoria Courtney.” I thought: I bet me and Honore Delafield could be great buddies. Hi, Honore. Linda, sweetie! Hi! I found out Nan’s real name was Anne and that the late Mrs. Edward Leland’s maiden name was Caroline Bell and that she was President Theodore Roosevelt’s cousin. I learned that John was the son of the late Mr. and Mrs. Charles Berringer of Port Washington, New York.