Shining Through (24 page)

The next bad thing was watching John at the far end of the table, seated between Florence Avenel and Carrie Post, being charming, laughing at Florence’s clever remark, which I knew couldn’t be clever, admiring Carrie Post’s locket and listening seriously as she told him about something like her gall bladder or her son in boarding school. It wasn’t that I was jealous. It was that I realized, observing John from a distance, how he gave himself equally to everybody—or, more accurately, to nobody.

He didn’t look down the table at me even once. Why should he? I only had one reason for being; all I could do for him at the Avenels’ would be to embarrass him, and since I 174 / SUSAN ISAACS

hadn’t, he could forget me until we got home—or partway home, when he’d take his hand from the steering wheel, reach over and grab mine, and press it between his legs.

Another bad thing was sitting back and having to listen to a roomful of Republicans talk about the presidential campaign.

Okay, Wendell Willkie wasn’t the worst person in the world; he’d even started out a Democrat. But to hear these so-called smart lawyers go on and on about him, you’d think he was Jesus Christ.

They called him Wendell, as if he was one of theirs, and I suppose he was. Edward Leland, of all people, sitting on Florence Avenel’s other side, who I’d thought had more brains than the rest of the table combined, referred to FDR with sarcasm, calling him “our esteemed leader” and saying, “The average American cannot comprehend that it’s a tacit New Deal policy to encourage unemployment. Their bureaucrats have nothing to gain from a healthy private sector. What they want is a perpetual Depression, so they can keep their jobs.” I couldn’t believe he was saying things like that. Of course, he was better than Henry Avenel, who called Roosevelt “the cripple” and said Willkie would “kill him” on election day. I felt like taking his wife’s potato soufflé or whatever it was and dumping it on his fat head.

And the last bad thing was that after the soggy apple pie, the men went someplace to have brandies and smoke cigars, and I was left in the living room on a club chair, while the other women gathered in tight twos and threes and admired each other’s outfits and hairdos. Occasionally one of them would allow a glance to pass over me. There’d be a whisper and then a soft

“Shhh!” They didn’t try very hard to hide their elbow nudgings; they barely muffled their giggles. And that was how I knew these ladies weren’t ladies.

I wasn’t going to fall apart. When the men came back, I made myself stay in that stupid chair; I’d be damned if those rich bitches would see me leap up and run to John.

So I sat there, staring out the night-blackened window, deliberately not watching John, although out of the corner of SHINING THROUGH / 175

my eye I saw him swirl his brandy and nod at whatever Russell Weedcock was spouting off about. And just then, a man sat on the arm of my chair and said, “Well, how are you enjoying yourself?” I didn’t have to look up, although I did. I knew Edward Leland’s voice.

“It’s a very nice party.”

“You seem to be having a fine time,” he said coolly.

“Very fine.”

“Good!” he said in his deep voice, and everyone turned and stared. “I noticed how enthralled you were with the political discussion at dinner. No doubt you’re a great fan of our Mr.

Willkie.”

“He has wonderful hair.”

“Oh, come on. You can give him more than that.”

“Okay. Other than FDR, he’s the strongest supporter of the Democratic Party platform we have around.”

“Please,” he said, looking annoyed and disappointed, as if he’d overestimated my intelligence by five hundred percent.

“Look, Mr. Leland—”

“Please, call me Ed.”

Oh, God, I thought. As if this night wasn’t hard enough.

“Willkie’s a me-too candidate. He’s for everything Roosevelt’s for: the draft, aid to England—”

“Nonsense!” He shifted on the chair arm so he could look me right in the eye. I sensed, more than saw, the whole room watching us, trying to hear what we were saying. “He made it quite clear he feels Roosevelt is courting a war—a war we’re completely unprepared for.”

“Yeah? Well, it’s a war we could have been prepared for if your isolationist Republican buddies, your big hero Lind-bergh and Senator Vandenberg, hadn’t been holding us back—and sending Hitler kissy-kissy, do-whatever-you-want signals.”

“You must know better than that. Wendell Willkie has always been a friend of European democracies.” I looked up and noticed a thin white scar running down the side of Edward Leland’s face, from his temple all the way down to his jaw. “He’s not that sort of Republican.”

176 / SUSAN ISAACS

“There are a lot of dead Dutchmen and Poles and Czechs and Belgians saying, ‘You made us what we are today, O Party of Lincoln.’”

He shook his head and began to smile. “You certainly fight the fair fight, Mrs. Berringer.”

“Why not fight the way I want to? What can you do?” I smiled. “Fire me?” Then I looked straight into his eyes. “Oh, and please, call me Linda.”

He let go and started to laugh. Really laugh. And everyone in that room turned and watched Edward Leland being amused, and suddenly, all of them, including my husband, were moving in, smiling at me.

John was pretty detached later that night. God forbid, he could have said, Well, that must have been a real strain for you, but you did just fine. Or even a casual, husbandly, What the hell was that potato glop? Instead, he whistled to himself on the way home, and not something nice, Rodgers-and-Harty, but a slow, creepy classical thing that sounded German, probably some Wagner stuff, a lament for Wotan or Kriemhild or one of those types.

“What did you think of tonight?” I finally asked, when he was sitting on the edge of the bed, pushing a shoe tree into his shoe.

“It was all right.”

“Did you have fun?”

“No.” He started on the other shoe. “But these things aren’t fun.”

“So why do you go?”

He stood, walked to his closet and slipped the shoes into their place in the lineup, between another pair of black ones, exactly like the ones he’d just taken off, and some cordovans. “I go,” he said, as he took off his pants and folded them over the hanger,

“because it’s part of my job. It’s a professional obligation. Just like a Bar Association meeting or sending out Christmas cards to clients.” He took off his jacket. “Did you order the Christmas cards?”

“Yes.”

SHINING THROUGH / 177

“From Tiffany’s?” He put the jacket on the hanger, buttoned it, and shook out the suit before returning it to its place among eight other dark, dark pinstripes.

“Yes.”

“Did you pick out the one I showed you, the one I sent”—the one
they
sent—“last year? White with—”

“No. I picked out something with chartreuse polka dots and naked elves.”

He smiled. “Sometimes you’re very quick.”

“You could say smart.”

He moved close to me. I took off his tie. “I’ll consider it,” he said, and kissed me.

“I have some smart things to say about the party,” I managed to say between kisses. “Want to hear them? Like about Roger Post. You know about him and—”

“Let’s forget tonight,” he said, as he took off my suit jacket and then my blouse. And so we did forget.

But the next morning, a warm, hazy Sunday, as he sat in the living room, surrounded by newspapers, it was clear he remembered. “What were you talking to Ed Leland about?”

“Willkie.”

“Oh, Jesus! Did you say anything?” he demanded, his voice filled with something close to dread. “Ed’s a personal friend of Willkie’s.”

“I didn’t call him a creep or anything.”

John let the
Tribune
financial pages drop to the floor. “What
did
you call him?”

“Hey, what are you so upset about? I didn’t start anything.

He…”—I made my voice very low—“‘Please call me Ed’…he asked
me
what I thought about the candidates.”

John made a small circle with his lips and exhaled very slowly.

“And so you told him. Leaving nothing out, I’m sure.”

“Well, if I call him up on election day and say, ‘Hey, Ed, I voted for FDR,’ I don’t think he’ll clutch his chest and fall down with a major heart attack from shock.”

I picked up the
Times
—the
London
one! After sex, and knowing that for the rest of my life I could look across the 178 / SUSAN ISAACS

dinner table and see this extraordinary man, and (I hate to make myself look grasping, but I was, a little) being able to walk into Saks Fifth Avenue with a hundred bucks, the best thing about being Mrs. John Berringer was that I could buy every single newspaper and magazine I wanted—even English and German ones—because he wanted them too. Still, I was like a kid given a giant spoon and absolute freedom in an ice cream parlor.

I started to read again. Even though you had to take everything in the British papers with a grain of salt because of wartime censorship and their need to keep up morale, it was pretty clear that the Battle of Britain wasn’t going to be the fast triumph the Germans had thought it would be: a few bombs, then invasion.

That Wednesday, the Royal Air Force had lost twelve planes.

Not good, but the Luftwaffe had lost nineteen.

“John, do you think if the German losses—”

He cut me off. “Tell me what you said to Ed about Willkie.”

“For God’s sake!”

“Linda, this is important.”

“Why?” He just crossed his arms. “Okay. What I basically said was the best thing about Willkie was his hair, and he was a me-too candidate, and that his program was pretty much lifted from the Democrats’ platform.” John’s mouth tightened. He was across the room, so I couldn’t tell if it was with annoyance or anger. “Listen: Mr. Leland—Ed’s seen my FBI papers. He must know I’m a Democrat.”

“Christ.”

“It’s not like I’m a Nazi or a prostitute. For God’s sake, my father was a sausagemaker who lost his job in the Depression.

What am I supposed to do—be a cheerleader for Herbert Hoover?”

“You’re supposed to have the sense not to alienate one of the most important men in the country.”

“Alienate him? He was having a good time talking to me.”

“He was being courteous.”

“No! He was being amused. Listen: He doesn’t need SHINING THROUGH / 179

another person to bend over backward not to offend him. The line’s probably ten miles long.”

“I’m not suggesting you be a sycophant…someone given to false flattery. But there’s absolutely no need to be so damned direct.”

“Why not? My pal Ed thinks I’m a breath of fresh air.”

John leaned forward. His hair fell into his eyes, and he shook his head to get it off his forehead. “Can’t you begin to understand the awkwardness of the situation?”

“Yes.” He sat back. So I leaned forward. “He’s your former father-in-law.”

“That’s right.”

“And he’s probably heard an earful about you from Nan, and you, being a gentleman, of course, can’t defend yourself. You can’t tell him that his daughter’s an immature, spoiled—”

“Enough! We’re not talking about Nan.”

“Sure we are! When we’re talking about Ed, we’re talking about Nan. For God’s sake, let’s clear the air, John. Take an objective look at her. Forget her morals. Think about her character. She doesn’t have any. She’s a two-bit little sneak.”

He stood up and roared at me: “Don’t you
dare
talk about her!”

I found myself roaring back. “I am sick and tired of tippytoeing around every damn time the name of one of the Lelands comes up. She was an
adultress
. Don’t you get it? And for all her class, she didn’t have the guts to come to you and say, ‘Listen: I’ve made a mistake marrying you.’ She betrayed you instead, and you talk about her like she was a saint!” John turned and stalked off toward the bedroom. I rushed after him, almost running to keep up. “And Edward Leland…” I was breathing hard. “You carry on like he’s God himself. He’s not. He’s a
man
.”

John turned to me in the corridor just outside the bedroom.

“Edward Leland is everything I could ever hope to be.”

“Like honorable.”

“Yes.”

“And brave.”

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“Yes.”

“How about scary-looking? Do you think if you took a land mine in the face he’d finally have respect for you? Why is this man so important to you?”

It took a long time before he was able to answer. “It’s not the sort of thing you’d understand.”

“Try me.”

“I care about excellence. Do you understand that? I care about decency, fair play.”

“So do I.” He shook his head, like saying, You don’t get it.

“Listen: I have a great idea. If you’re so crazy about decency, why not practice it on me?”

“Did it ever occur to you, Linda, that despite all the self-effa-cing noises you make, you are monumentally self-centered? We cannot have one discussion without your saying, ‘I want more!

I
demand
more!’”

“John,” I began, “all I want is to be treated like—”

“Like Nan. I’m truly sorry, but I can’t accommodate you. You aren’t Nan. But I believe I am treating you decently and fairly.

I’m trying, Linda. I’m doing the best I can.”

“But I want better. I know you’re capable of so much more.

If you’d only—”

“Please don’t hold on to those kinds of hopes. This is not…this is not a love match. It has nothing to do with you. It’s me. I’m the one who can’t…Linda, you can’t get blood from a stone.”

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D
uring the bleakest days of the Depression, in 1931, the sausage plant closed down for nearly a year, and my father had no job. My salary, fifteen dollars a week, was all we had, and so we’d alternate: one week food, coal, doctor bills; one week mortgage money. But by March it was clear we couldn’t keep up the payments, and sure enough, a foreclosure notice came in the mail.

My father sat on the couch, his face in his hands, his shoulders heaving, the letter on the cushion beside him. I stood in the hallway, not knowing what to say, when my mother slipped past me, brushed the notice off the couch and sat down beside him.