Establishment (27 page)

In any case, come what might, she had her son, a year and a half and a month, weighing thirty pounds, walking with a tight hold on her finger as she pushed the stroller, which already he disdained. Life resumed itself, renewed itself. The sun rose each day; the cool wind blew from the Pacific; it was a cliché to say that life belonged to the living, but it was also an unadorned truth. The cable cars lumbered past, and Sam watched them with joy. When she took him out with no stroller, just the two of them on foot, and then, with him in one arm, swung onto a cable car, he was transported into the seventh heaven of delight. She thanked God that she was a large, strong woman; thirty pounds is no small weight. They would ride the cars from one end of the line to the other, Sam gurgling with pleasure as the car slid over the lip of a hill with the precipitous slope down to the bay in front of them; and then she would return home, content to turn him over to Anna while she went to her typewriter.

She was writing again, and she felt a new depth, a new strength in what she wrote. Barbara was not unimaginative, but as a writer she felt incapable of dealing with things she had never experienced, and when she engaged in sheer invention, she felt that her writing became listless and meaningless. Though she found it difficult to believe that one day, sooner or later, she might be arrested and forced to stand trial for what still struck her as a bit of impossible lunacy, the thought was never entirely out of her mind, and she felt a tremendous need to finish her book before it happened—if indeed it was to happen.

This book was a departure from what she had previously written. Her first two books dealt with her own experiences in Paris and Berlin before the war and then in North Africa and India and Burma during the war years. Her new novel was a deceptively simple love story about a returned soldier who married and settled down in San Francisco—certainly nothing to trouble her nervous publisher, who had begged her not to make it too political. It was a much harder writing task than either of her previous books, the more so since Bernie's death had happened when she was halfway into it. For weeks afterward, she could not face the thought of writing; now she could work on it each day, and she had a feeling that it was good.

Early in July, Barbara received a letter from Herb Goodman in Israel. He enclosed a snapshot of a grave, one of many graves that Barbara could see in the background, spaced in the neat, geometrical rows that define a military cemetery. Her eyes misted and her throat choked up as she looked at it, and for a long while she sat holding the photo, unable to read the letter.

It was not long: “Dear Mrs. Cohen: I thought you would like to have this picture of Bernie's grave. He is buried in a military cemetery on a hillside outside of Jerusalem. He lies with other men who fell in the struggle for a Jewish homeland, good, brave men. Next week, I am being married to a Sabra, which means that my wife-to-be was born here in Israel. We have decided that we will name our first child, no matter whether it's a girl or a boy, Bernie, not only because I liked him but because he was one of the best. The second child will be named Irv after Irv Brodsky, who died with Bernie. I don't know how much this will mean to you, but I thought you would like to know. I am enclosing, with the snapshot, a sort of map with exact directions on how to find the grave if you should ever come here and want to see it. Now that the war is over, care will be taken of the military cemeteries, and the grave will be kept in good condition. I don't know what else to say except to wish you all the best. I can imagine your sorrow, because my girl's brother was killed in the war, and almost everyone you meet lost someone. We just hope this will be the end of war.”

Anna came into the room and saw Barbara holding the letter and crying. “Is it bad news, Señora?”

Barbara shook her head. “Just a letter from a friend of my husband.”

A few days later, Sally came to San Francisco to visit Barbara. She had left her baby with Lola Gonzales, the wife of Joe's associate at the clinic. “I had to get away,” she said to Barbara. “I felt I was choking, drying up and dying. I'm a terrible person, Bobby. I have no patience and I'm a rotten housewife and I make poor Joe miserable, and he's the most wonderful, decent kind of human being, and he deserved better than me. I'm miserable too. Can I stay here overnight? Then I'll drive back in the morning.”

“Aren't you going to Higate to see your folks?”

“No. I can't bear to go there. They're happy and content, and all they care about is that precious wine of theirs, and I can't bear to be with Eloise because all she wants out of life is to be a service organization for my dumb brother, Adam—oh, Bobby, I'm miserable.”

“All right,” Barbara said. “Of course you can stay overnight. Go up to the guest room and put your things away and then take a hot bath, which is the best medicine I know for most varieties of misery. Then we'll have dinner together and we'll talk, just the two of us.”

At the dinner table, Barbara said, “Sally, why don't you stop trying to explain that Joe is some kind of tin-horn saint and tell me what's wrong. Joe is my brother, but I love you very much, believe me.”

“Do you, Bobby, truly?”

What a strange girl
, Barbara thought.
She has the most astonishing face of anyone I have ever known. One moment it's a mask of utter tragedy, and the next moment it's like the face of some divine clown, with that wide mouth and those incredible pale blue eyes and that long yellow hair. I do wish she wouldn't wear her hair like that. But to cut it, she'd have to grow up.
“Yes, I do,” she answered.

“You know how madly, divinely in love with Joe I used to be—”

“I don't think you were.”

“Bobby!”

“You were in love, oh, yes. But with Joe, Sally? Or just in love?”

“Bobby, I don't know. I am bored, bored to tears. I do love my baby—most of the time. She's darling. But who am I? What am I? That house we live in depresses me so. Joe comes home, and he's too tired even to talk, and when we do talk, there's nothing for us to talk about. When I read him my poetry, he pretends to listen but he doesn't. He fell asleep once right in the middle. And he never does anything mean or cruel, and I know he's giving his whole life to the clinic, because if he were in private practice he could make all the money in the world. They say he's one of the best surgeons in Los Angeles, and there are surgeons who don't have half his skill, and they make a hundred thousand a year and live in those big, posh homes in Beverly Hills—”

“Is that what you want, Sally, the money and a big house in Beverly Hills?”

“Oh, you know I don't, Bobby. Yes, enough money to hire someone to take care of May Ling and to have a decent car instead of the old wreck I'm driving. That's why I wrote the screenplay.”

“Did you, a screenplay?”

“Being a poet is like a public service. I was so excited when they published my book of poems. My royalties amounted to exactly eighty-six dollars, and when I sell a poem to a newspaper or magazine, it's ten or fifteen dollars, so that's no way to get rich, is it? And I see all those dreadful movies and I'm sure I can do better. So I wrote this and I brought it with me. Would you read it, Bobby? It will only take you an hour or so.”

“I'll read it, yes, I'd love to,” Barbara agreed.

“And then, you know, I remember years ago Joe telling me how your father built a yacht for a director who was very important in Hollywood?”

“Yes, his name was Alex Hargasey. As a matter of fact, I saw a picture of his about four months ago. It was called
Fretful Desire
, or was it?”

“That's the man. Now if Dan could call him up and make an appointment for me to see him with my screenplay…?”

“I'm sure daddy would,” Barbara said. “I'll read it later.”

Barbara was not impressed with the screenplay. She felt that it was mawkish and sentimental, with very little dramatic impact. But as she said to Sally, “I simply don't know about such things. Truthfully, it's the first screenplay I've ever read, and I have no idea what the limitations and the standards are.”

“But did you like it? You, just as a reader?”

Barbara could remember how once, long ago, when she had been living with Dan and May Ling in Westwood and attempting to write her first book, she had given some pages to May Ling to read, and how May Ling had been truthful and merciless. The pages were torn up, and after a brief spell of fury at May Ling, Barbara had begun the book again and more rewardingly. Yet she could not do that with Sally. It was not only that she was unable to judge a screenplay in any professional sense, it was also quite evident that Sally was disturbed.

“I liked it,” Barbara lied unhappily.

“Oh, did you? I'm so glad, Bobby. And you will ask Dan to speak to Mr. Hargasey?”

“Yes, I will.”

Sally leaped up, ran over to Barbara, and kissed her. “Oh, I do love you. Bobby, what about Billy Clawson?”

The question was totally unexpected. “What about him?”

“I think he's in love with me.”

This time Barbara was capable of no response. She sat and stared until Sally said uneasily, “You did hear me. I said I think Billy Clawson's in love with me.”

“You are the most amazing young woman.”

“I know what you're thinking,” Sally said. “Everyone thinks that Billy is absolutely brainless and worthless, and I guess some people think he's a homosexual. But that's only because he can't really communicate with anyone, and because he's on this Jesus kick. I mean, sometimes I think he thinks he's Jesus Christ, and he lives in a stinking little furnished room down in the barrio and cleans the floors and acts as a male nurse in the clinic—”

“Hold on!” Barbara cried. “Sally, will you just stop talking for one minute and let me put my head together. Just stop.”

Sally took a deep breath and said, “O.K., if that's what you want. What did I say?”

“Nothing. Just nothing. Look, I know about Billy Clawson. Joe told me. I know what he's doing in Los Angeles. About Billy as a person, I know nothing. I've never said more than ten words to him. But he is Eloise's brother, and I feel about Eloise as I do about you. I love both of you, even though I must admit that you are absolutely insane.”

“That's not fair.”

“Perhaps not. Now tell me, Sally, are you having an affair with him? Or tell me it's none of my business. I just don't know how I got into this.”

“For heaven's sake, no. Absolutely not.”

“What then? Did he tell you he's in love with you?”

“No. He's a scared jackrabbit. He'd never tell me anything like that.”

“Are you in love with him?”

“No.”

Barbara rose and paced back and forth restlessly. “Sally, I don't know why you came to me with this. I'm not rejecting you, but look at the position you put me in. I'm Joe's sister. I don't know how to talk to you. The truth of it is that I don't know Joe very well anymore. We were very close before he went into the army, but he changed. I can understand the position you're in, but I can't help you.”

Sally went to Barbara and put her arms around her. “Poor Bobby, I'm the most selfish person in the world, and with all the terrible things that have happened to you, all I can think of is to dump on you.”

“It's all right,” Barbara whispered.

“No it isn't. Nothing's right. The whole world is screwed up. You find Bernie again after all those years, and he goes off and gets killed, and now those bastards are doing their number with you. Nothing's right.” She plopped into a chair and began to weep, and Barbara looked at her hopelessly.

***

Stephan Cassala was amazed at how fit Dan looked the first time he returned to his offices in Jack London Square in Oakland. He had lost weight and his hair was white, but his skin was burned brown from the long hours of lying in the sun on the terrace in back of the house on Russian Hill, and he looked trim and healthy. He had put off coming back. For the first time in his life, he was content to sit around and do nothing. Being with Jean was enough. He said to her once, sitting there on the terrace, “You know, Jeanie, I look at you and I'm still not sure of you.”

“That's as it should be, isn't it?”

“Oh? Maybe. Only after forty years—”

“Not quite.”

“Almost. After all that time, I ought to figure I know you. No. I still look at you and find myself conniving how to get up there on the hill and marry Tom Seldon's daughter.”

“You did, twice.”

“So I did, so I did.”

Now he was back in his office, reluctant to take the place behind his desk, pacing restlessly, while Steve Cassala watched him and asked cautiously, “How do you feel, Dan?”

“Pretty good. Maybe it makes you a little more alive to shake hands with death. And then you screw the old bastard, and you say to yourself, ‘I'm lucky. I guess I am pretty damn lucky.' How are we doing?”

“We're making money.”

“That's the name of the game, isn't it? I just wish to hell I cared.” He sat down behind his desk and stared at Cassala. “The trouble is, Steve, it doesn't make sense anymore. I don't care. I don't have to tell you what kind of a life I've lived. You were there every step of the way.”

“Yeah, we were both there, Danny.”

“What did I want? You know, these past few weeks, most of the time I'd just be lying around on the terrace, reading, with Jean there most of the time. I'd tell her to get out and do her thing, but most of the time she was right there. I'd try to work something out—who the hell is Dan Lavette? What does he want? Well, I wanted Jean, and I had her, sort of. I wanted May Ling, and I had her for as long as she lived, and now I've got Jean again, and I give a damn about that, but not much about this company.”