The Other Traitor (15 page)

Julian was on his feet, but Sephora blocked his path so he couldn’t reach Annette before she’d grabbed her jacket and stormed out of the apartment.

“What are you doing here, Sephora?”

“What do you mean? I live here.” She dropped her keys into her handbag and started to take her fur off. “God, it’s hot. How can you stand it?”

“Don’t get comfortable. You’re not welcome here.”

“Isn’t that a bit harsh?” She threw her coat over the sofa and then went to slide open the balcony door. Cold air rushed into the room with gusting rain. “I mean sure, we had a little fight, but all couples fight. It’s just a test of the strength of the relationship.”

“We don’t have a relationship anymore.”

“Of course we do.” She picked up one of the bottles of wine, checking to see if it was empty. It was. “Because lucky for you, I happen to be the forgiving type. And I’m not going to make a thing about you bringing some girl back here.”

“This is my apartment and it’s over between us.”

She waggled the empty wine bottle and looked down at the half-full one. “What is it, like seventy-two hours, and you’re working on getting laid again? Not that she wasn’t cute. A little unsophisticated maybe, but I can see you rebounding with someone simple like that.”

He picked up the heavy fur coat and pressed it into her arms. “Goodbye, Sephora.” He released the coat, but she let it drop to the floor.

“Julian, baby. Let’s sit down for a minute.” She took him by the arm, but he resisted. “I had no idea you were so hurt. I mean, I’m the one who should be upset here. First you come home Friday to tell me you’ve quit your job and we’re moving to Brooklyn. No discussion, just the done deal. Of course I got angry. We’re a team. We’re supposed to talk things through together.” She touched his arm again. “Then you skip your birthday party and don’t respond to my texts and I have to make excuses for you with all my friends.” She squeezed his arm. “I was angry, Julian. I was deeply hurt.”

The fury he had been feeling evaporated. He sagged against the sofa, not sure what he had been reacting to. Annette’s deviousness? Sephora barging in on them? Or maybe it was simply too much wine. All he knew was that now he felt deflated. And very much alone.

Sephora sidled up in front of him and began massaging his shoulders. “I know you’ve been under a lot of stress, baby, but we can work it out.”

Her skin was practically iridescent, her eyes a glittering green. She leaned in to kiss him. Gently, he held her back. “Sephora, I’m sorry. It’s me, not you. I can’t be in a relationship right now. Not with you or anyone else.”

“Sure you can.” She stroked his chest, then reached for his hand. “Let me show you how good I can be for you.”

He tugged his hand out of hers. “Please go.”

She cocked her head, making a cute, pouty face as she studied him. Then her expression hardened and she pulled back. “Fine,” she said. “I just wanted to give you a chance not to be such a dick, but I can see you’re beyond help.” She leaned over and scooped up her coat, then headed out the door. “Enjoy your misery, asshole,” she called over her shoulder. “You deserve it.”

Julian slammed the balcony door closed and toweled up the rain that had sprayed inside. Sephora had become a nuisance. An infection that occurred if you didn’t clean a wound properly. But she wasn’t what had gotten under his skin.

He cleared away the wine bottles, uneaten bread and cheese, and dumped it all in a garbage bag. It wasn’t that he was a neat freak. He just didn’t want to be reminded of Annette’s presence. He rinsed out the wine glasses, put them away, then took the garbage out. He could hear the sound of glass breaking as the wine bottles smashed against the garbage chute. Yeah— he should have put them in the recycle bin, but it was too late now.

There were lots of things he should have done that it was probably too late for.

Annette had lied to him. Sure, he had suspected from the beginning that she hadn’t really been interested in writing about his grandmother’s sculptures, but she had used him. And worse, she had used his grandmother. She was no better than Sephora. Annette had her agenda and she didn’t care whom she hurt in getting what she wanted.

But Julian was done with trying to please women and losing himself in the process. He went into the bedroom and took his old sketchbook and pencils from the carton. He stretched out on the bed and began to draw. A few strong lines, a jaw, a nose, a frowning brow, pouty lips, a beauty mark above the mouth.

He stared at the face, then ripped the page from the sketchbook and tore it up.

Annette could hardly breathe as the rush-hour crowd pressed against her and carried her through the subway tunnel beneath Bryant Park. The wine was finally dissipating from her head along with the blurry numbness that had helped her get through the last hour. There had been major delays on two train lines and she’d been shuffling through the subway system trying to get home since leaving Julian and his red-haired harpy.

She felt as though she’d descended through Dante’s
Inferno,
and was now hovering over the Eighth Circle of Hell—Fraud.

She should have known the moment she stepped into his ridiculous apartment that a relationship with Julian was hopeless. The man in the army-surplus jacket didn’t belong in a place like that. So either the apartment was a lapse for him or Julian was a fraud. Clearly, it was the latter. Julian Sandman was an even bigger liar than she was.

She reached the platform for the northbound A Line just as a train was pulling into the station. The crowd swarmed around her, pushing her as they got off or on the train. She clutched her satchel as the train door closed behind her. The corner of the letter box stabbed her in the chest, a painful reminder of where she stood in her investigation.

There had been nothing useful about Isaac Goldstein in her grandmother’s letters, and now, on top of that, Annette would never have the opportunity to interview Mariasha Lowe again. But that was her own fault. She should have known better than to drop her guard.

What kind of journalist was she? She had lost sight of her objective and been taken in by the sincere-looking guy who called his grandmother ‘Nana.’

The train jerked and yawed and she fell against a man in business attire. He smiled at her. She quickly looked away.

How could she have been so stupid? Hadn’t she learned anything from her mother’s experience with her dad, not to mention every one of her own disaster relationships? Men were not to be trusted.

But she wasn’t going to obsess over her mistakes. She would find a fresh angle for learning the truth about her grandfather or go to Hell trying.

It was dark when she got out of the subway station. She pulled up her hood and hurried home in the sleety rain. She ran up the stoop to her brownstone, stomped the slush off her boots. Once inside
, she changed into sweat clothes and sat down on the sofa with the box of letters. She reread them, understanding at an even deeper level the feeling of isolation, loss and sadness her mother and Grandma Betty must have experienced. The letters made her more determined than ever to prove her grandfather had been a victim. Perhaps then her mother would have some consolation for her unhappy childhood. She put the letters back in their faded box and set it on the steamer trunk.

Without Mariasha Lowe or any letters that Grandma Betty may have written while her husband was in prison, she needed to pursue a different route.

The radiator clanked and a fresh wave of heat filled the room.

Bill’s voice from her first journalism class came back to her.
Don’t rely on one source, no matter how great you think it is. Put out lots of feelers. Remember, the more shit you throw against the wall, the more will stick.

She had been foolish to put so much faith in Mariasha Lowe’s connection to her grandfather. Just because Mariasha and her husband had appeared in Grandma Betty’s photo album didn’t mean that Mariasha was privy to Isaac Goldstein’s possibly subversive activities. Annette had reacted to the old photos and then to the woman more based on feeling than on logic. And while Bill had also taught her to value her intuition, she knew that nothing replaced solid research.

She pulled out her computer and began to do what she should have been doing all along. She found articles and books on Isaac Goldstein and made lists of everyone who had been supportive of her grandfather and/or believed he’d been set up. There were dozens of journalists, politicians, film makers, historians, biographers and, in recent years, former KGB agents. She assembled a bibliography of all of them. Then, where she could, she read articles and excerpts from their books online, hoping to find a fresh perspective or lead.

Unfortunately, everything she read seemed to be a regurgitation of the same material. Many of Isaac Goldstein’s advocates believed he had been a scapegoat for the government. Others put the blame for his execution on his lawyer, David Weissman, who they claimed wasn’t qualified to represent Goldstein and had botched the defense.

One by one, she went through her list, making sure she had identified everything they’d written on Goldstein, and then ascertaining if they were still alive so she could interview them.

She was dismayed to discover that the majority of Goldstein’s early supporters were dead, as were all of the principals at his trial. Florence Heller, who had been the key witness against him, had been killed in a car accident a few months after the trial. David Weissman, the attorney, who would have been a terrific source of information on Goldstein, had died of a heart attack in 1954 and written nothing on Goldstein or his defense of him prior to his death. She found an article by his son, Arnold Weissman, from 1968. In it, the son defended his father’s handling of the case. It was a well-argued, informed piece and she learned in the brief bio that accompanied the article that Arnold Weissman was a lawyer as well, at least back when he wrote the article.

She leaned back on the counter stool in her kitchen. Might the son have information about Isaac Goldstein that his father had passed on to him?

Google revealed that Arnold Weissman was a name partner in an uptown Manhattan boutique law firm. She called the number on the firm’s website and asked to speak with him. When the woman said he wasn’t in, Annette asked for his email address, rather than leave a voice message.

She began to type:

Dear Mr. Weissman: I’m a journalist researching Isaac Goldstein, hoping to prove Goldstein’s innocence. I understand your father was his attorney.

She paused. Would an impersonal plea from a journalist motivate the son of Goldstein’s lawyer to talk to her? She deleted the sentence and started again.

I’m Isaac Goldstein’s granddaughter and I want to learn the truth about my grandfather. Can you help me?

Annette Revoir

Less than a minute later, she received a reply.

Dear Ms. Revoir:

I don’t know whether I can help or not, but I’m happy to talk to you. I’m recently retired and no longer have an office, but you’re welcome to come by my apartment tomorrow around 2.

He signed the email Arnold Weissman and gave an address on Central Park West.

I’ll be there
, she replied, feeling a rush of adrenaline.

She was taking her investigation to the next level. Hopefully, it wouldn’t lead her
into Dante’s Ninth and last Circle of Hell. The one called Treachery.

It was dark in the room. How long had she been sitting here? Mariasha touched her face. Damp with tears from reliving that awful day when she and Yitzy said goodbye. Remembering her utter despair. Believing she would never see him again. Never be happy again.

But God, or whoever was controlling destiny, wasn’t quite finished with taunting her. He had a few more tricks up his sleeve.

She hoisted her stiff body to the edge of the chair and stood up shakily. So tired. She needed to lie down. Just for a few minutes. She wobbled like a drunk as she made her way to her bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed she had shared with Aaron. Forty years. They had been married forty years before he died. She had been twenty-five when they married and Aaron thirty-nine. A fourteen-year age difference, but they never felt it. She picked up their honeymoon photo from the nightstand. It was too dark in the room to see it clearly, but she knew the pose by heart. The two of them sitting in a toboggan wrapped in a plaid blanket at the Laurels Hotel. How happy and secure they had been at that moment, unaware that in just a few minutes their lives would begin their descent into disorder.

She stretched out on the bed and kissed the picture of Aaron’s smiling face.

“I loved you, my darling,” she whispered. “I hope you know that.”

Mari let Aaron help her out of the toboggan. She was exhilarated from the ride down the gentle hill and had happily posed with her new husband for the hotel photographer. Around her, fir trees and the leafless branches of maples and oaks held pillows of white from the first snowfall of the season, and the lake was covered with a glaze of ice that glittered in the sunlight. There was a hush in the air, with an occasional eruption from the raucous scream of a bluejay.

She and Aaron had arrived late last night from Manhattan to find the Laurels Hotel, a favorite honeymoon getaway, practically devoid of guests. Not surprising given so many young men had gone off to Europe and the Pacific in the last year. Her own Aaron was thirty-nine, just above the upper draft age, though to look at him with his freckled skin and laughing eyes, you would think he was much younger.

“Ready for some hot chocolate, darling?” Aaron asked, snuggling her against him.

How protected she felt in his arms. She was his wife now, completely safe for the first time in her life.

“Excuse me,” a breathless young woman called out as she ran to their toboggan. “Are you still using this?” She pronounced her words in a flat, unfamiliar way, as though she was from someplace other than New York.

“It’s all yours,” Aaron said.

“Oh, thank you.” The woman smiled, transforming her plain face. Then she waved to a man, who dragged his leg as he approached. “Over here, Isaac,” she called. “This one is free.”

Mari froze in place. Even across the span of snowy field, even with the limp, she recognized him.

“Are you on your honeymoon, too?” the young woman asked.

When Mari didn’t answer, Aaron filled the void. “We are. This is my wife Mariasha and I’m Aaron Lowe.”

“I’m Betty Goldstein.” She giggled. “I’m still not used to my new name, even though I’ve had it for three whole days. And here comes my husband,” she said, just as the limping man joined them. “Isaac Goldstein.”

Mari’s eyes met Yitzy’s. He started at the sight of her. His face was leaner and his lazy right eyelid had a more pronounced droop than the last time she’d seen him four years before.

Aaron and the woman continued chatting, but Mari couldn’t follow what they were saying over the pounding in her ears. She couldn’t believe fate had thrown them together once again. And how was it possible, after convincing herself Yitzy meant nothing to her, that she should feel dizzy and light-headed at the sight of him?

Yitzy regained his composure before Mari did. “It’s certainly nice to meet you both,” he said.

She processed his words.
Nice to meet you both.
Just as when their paths had crossed at the anti-war rally, Yitzy was again choosing not to make their previous relationship known. Well, that would make things easier. She had erased Yitzy from her life, and she would be careful to keep out this man named Isaac Goldstein.

“How lovely to find another couple our age,” Betty said. “We’ve been here three days and there’s no one to talk to. Just a group of old folks, but they keep to themselves and their card games.”

Mari appraised Isaac Goldstein’s wife wondering why he had chosen her. Her eyes were too small, she had a pronounced overbite like Eleanor Roosevelt, and her pageboy-styled brown hair lacked sheen. And yet when Betty looked at him, her face was filled with an adoration that made her attractive despite her imperfections.

The photographer, who’d been hanging back near a fir tree, approached. “Can I interest you in a group photo?”

“Sure thing,” Betty said. “My sister Irene told me this was a boring place to go for our honeymoon. I want her to see how wrong she is.”

They posed for the photo, spouses’ arms appropriately entwined with spouses, as a brisk wind kicked up loose snow around them like sawdust.

“Got it,” said the photographer. “I’ll have your photos displayed in the lobby later today.”

“We were just going in for hot chocolate,” Aaron said to the Goldsteins. “Would you like to join us after your toboggan ride?”

“Oh, we’ll come along now,” Betty said. “It feels like the temperature just dropped. No reason to freeze to death when we can enjoy some nice conversation and warm ourselves by the fire.”

Mari walked with Betty a few feet behind Aaron and Yitzy on the narrow snow-crusted road. The two men seemed to have engaged easily in conversation. She was unable to hear what they were talking about as Betty chatted about her wedding, their apartment in a Lower East Side tenement that looked like it could come crumbling down around them, and how sad she was to be away from her family in Boston.

“You’re from Boston?”  As much as Mari wanted to distance herself from Yitzy and his wife, curiosity got the better of her. “How did you and Isaac meet?”

“Oh, it’s very romantic,” Betty said, holding her mittened hands against her heart. “Isaac was convalescing at a military hospital in Boston where I volunteered. He’d been injured during the landings in Sicily, but he was a real hero. Got a Purple Heart and the Soldier’s Medal for rescuing a drowning soldier. When I first saw him, he was trying to walk with his new crutches and he looked so frustrated that I couldn’t help myself and I started to laugh. He looked at me, angry at first. Then he laughed, too, and my heart just melted.”

The snow had seeped into Mari’s oxfords, freezing her toes. A war hero. Soldier’s Medal. Purple Heart. Injured in combat. So much had happened since her Yitzy had gone off to California to recruit Okies for the communist cause. He wasn’t the same man. Certainly not the man she’d once loved. He was Isaac Goldstein now.

“What about your Aaron?” Betty asked in a quiet voice, glancing ahead at the men. “Did he also get a medical discharge?”

Mari’s face got warm, as it did when people questioned why her seemingly able-bodied husband wasn’t off fighting. “He wasn’t drafted,” she said. “Too old. He tried to enlist anyway, but they rejected him because he has flat feet. He’s a professor,” she added, not sure why she felt it important that this stranger think well of her husband. “Does what he can to support the war effort.”

“Well, lucky for you,” Betty said. “I can only imagine how hard it is for women whose husbands are overseas. I don’t think I’d be able to bear it if Isaac had to go away.”  Betty stopped walking and looked at her husband with an intensity that surprised Mari. “I love him more than anything.”

The words stung Mari like a slap. Yitzy was Betty’s husband. She loved him. He probably loved her, too.

“But tell me about you.” Betty slipped her arm through Mari’s, and continued trudging down the snowy path toward the rambling Tudor-style main building. “You’re so gorgeous. Are you a model or an actress?”

“Gosh, no.” Mari shook her head, hoping to toss out any remnants of what might have been with Yitzy. “I’m a high-school French teacher.”

“French?
Ooh la la
!” Betty’s face got a dreamy look. “I’ve always wanted to go to Paris. Maybe Isaac will take me after the war.”

The four of them sat on cushy chairs in front of the fireplace and sipped hot chocolates. The large, paneled common room was practically empty except for a group of older men playing cards, a foursome of middle-age women engaged in mahjong, and two young boys playing table tennis in the far corner that overlooked the lake.

Mari stole glances at Yitzy, who was talking to Aaron passionately about the U.S.’s responsibility in the war. It seemed ironic to her that Yitzy, once ardently anti-war, had changed his views so diametrically. Of course, different circumstances could easily flip your attitudes. In matters of war…and love.

“It took the U.S. a while to come around,” Yitzy said. “I was in California in thirty-nine trying to recruit new blood for the Party when the Soviets signed the non-aggression pact with Germany. As you can imagine, when that happened, no one was interested in jumping aboard the Red Train.”

“That’s for sure,” Aaron said. The two men had apparently learned during their walk that they shared beliefs as communist sympathizers. “Most everyone I knew who’d been a Party supporter was jumping off that train. It felt like a huge deception that the communists would join forces with the Fascists.”

“No one would listen to me,” Yitzy said. “I told them it was a ploy by the Soviets to buy time while they built up their military strength. They also were far better situated to defend themselves against Germany when they annexed half of Poland. The Soviets never trusted the Germans. They knew it was only a matter of time before the Nazis would invade and they wanted to be in the best possible position.”

The sound of a ping-pong ball echoed in the room.

“Maybe,” Aaron said, sipping his chocolate.

“Not maybe,” Yitzy said. “History has proven me right. But even after the Axis powers invaded Russia with four million troops back in forty-one, still the U.S. stayed out of the war.”

“The Soviets were able to withstand Operation Barbarossa without our help,” Aaron said.

“Only just,” Yitzy said. “And it was at a huge cost to the Soviets. Over three million soldiers dead or taken as POWs.”  He rubbed his leg that was extended uselessly in front of the glowing stone hearth. “I spent the next six months agitating for the U.S. to get into the war.”

“Mahjong,” a woman across the room called out.

“Isaac enlisted on December 8, right after Pearl Harbor,” Betty said. “He went straight into officer training.”

“Very commendable,” Aaron said, though Mari could hear the discomfort in his voice.

“The point is,” Yitzy said, “the U.S. finally committed to get those Fascist bastards and I was determined to be on the first deployment out of here.”

“Isaac was a big hero, you know,” Betty said.

“I’m sure.” Aaron gave a little smile.

Yitzy frowned and glanced around the room. “Oh look, Betty,” he said. “Those boys have finished their game. Didn’t you want to play table tennis?”

“Oh I did.” Betty clapped her hands together and looked from Mari to Aaron. “Do either of you play? I’m not very good.”

Aaron set his mug of chocolate of the coffee table and stood up. “Then we should be evenly matched.” He caught Mari’s eye. “You’ll excuse us for a game or two, darling?”

Mari nodded and watched her new husband cross the room with Yitzy’s new wife.

“I hope you’re not angry with me,” Yitzy said in a soft voice.

“About what?” Her heart sped up, though she willed it not to.

“That I acted like I didn’t know you.”

She shrugged and looked into the bottom of her mug. The dregs of the chocolate had settled like mud. She had once loved him. He had left her when she needed him most. Now he was married to another.

“I’m hoping the four of us can be friends,” Yitzy said. “Aaron told me you’ll be living on Ridge Street, a few blocks from us. We’ll be neighbors and it will be nice for Betty to know someone.”

“And you didn’t want her to know our history?”

Mahjong tiles chinked against each other making sharp little sounds. “I was afraid she’d be jealous of you if she knew.”

“Jealous?” Mari looked up. “She’s the one who married you.”

Their eyes held each other’s, until Yitzy turned away. “She’s not beautiful like you. She doesn’t have your strength.”

“Yet you married her.”

“She’s good for me. Her gentleness grounds me.” Yitzy leaned forward in his chair, his bad leg stiff, like rigor mortis had set in. “Will you be her friend?”

“I don’t like lying to Aaron,” she said.

The ping-pong ball went back and forth. Betty let out a squeal of delight. Mari and Yitzy both turned to look at her.

“Please, Mariasha,” he said. “For my sake.”

Mari took in a breath that burned her lungs. “I can only promise to try.”