Establishment (44 page)

“But if you teach granny how to do it, I am sure she can change the stories properly. I think of you all the time because I love you so very much. I can close my eyes and see you quite clearly, and you must do the same thing. Just close your eyes and think—and then you will see me. It takes a little magic, and you have always been very good at magic. I send you love and many kisses.”

To Jean and Dan, she wrote: “Here I am, facing my second night in prison. It is by no means as awful as I had imagined it would be, and I am sure that compared to the Los Angeles County Jail—note a conversation daddy and I had awhile ago—this is a very civilized place. The letters are censored, and I have been told that I must not write in specific terms about the prison. Well, I'll try to keep it general. We are not in cells but in rooms, and we are not locked in at night. The food is edible institutional food, and I don't foresee any difficulties much worse than boredom and loneliness in the coming months. In the short time I've spent here, I've already heard the expression ‘building time.' Apparently that is the great hurdle everyone faces in a prison. At home, when I write, time runs away from me. There is never enough time for anything. Here the whole thing is reversed. Time is your enemy. Time is endless. But why do I go into this? Good heavens, you have enough to worry about.

“As for Sammy, I am enclosing a letter to him. I don't want you to lie overtly to him. At the same time, I don't want him to know about this now. He can't handle it yet. When he can, I'll tell him. Meanwhile, just keep up the illusion that I am working elsewhere, a place I can't take him to.

“Now for requests. I would like a subscription to the
Chronicle
. You are allowed to provide that for me, and I can receive the newspaper each day. At least it will be a link to the home town. Also, I would like to read Faulkner's new book,
Requiem for a Nun
. That must come to me from the publisher, so you will have to send them a check.

“When I learn all the details about visiting hours and rules, I'll send them on to you. Meanwhile, I guess the only other thing I can ask for that the rules allow are letters, so you might pass the word around to anyone who might care, especially to Sally and Joe and Eloise and the others at Higate. Also, write me in great detail about the new venture that is to bring the finer things in modern art to the philistines of the Bay Area. And for daddy: coming here, we drove by your old shipyard. It has the look of a sad, abandoned place. And for both of you, all my love. I don't know what I would do without you.”

The following day, Barbara was called into the office of Mrs. Roberts, the case manager, a small, rather severe-looking woman, whose small, dark eyes studied her carefully. “Cohen, Barbara,” she finally said. “Are you Jewish, Barbara? I ask you that because we do have church services, and although we have no Jewish inmates in the present population, we have a visiting rabbi available.”

“My husband was Jewish. I'm not.”

“I see. You're a widow? Or divorced?”

“A widow.”

“Well, the chapel is elective. You can go or not, as you wish. Many of the girls find spiritual comfort there.”

“I understand.”

“This is a work prison, Barbara. According to your record, you are an educated woman, and I am sure you can understand that it would be a woeful waste of the taxpayers' money to bring people to an institution like this and then permit them to become demoralized by idleness. Here, everyone works, with the hope that work habits will find a permanent place in the prisoner's character.” While she spoke, she was going through a folder on her desk. Without looking up she said, “You test very high. Unusually high. You're down here as a writer. What do you write?”

“I was a correspondent during the war. Since then, I've been writing novels.”

“Under this name?”

“No, I use my maiden name, Barbara Lavette.”

“Barbara Lavette.” Mrs. Roberts wrinkled her brow. “No, I don't think I've read any. Well, the obvious place for you would be the education department. We have such difficulty finding qualified inmate assistants. But that wouldn't do. We have instructions from Washington. No reds in the education department.”

“Reds? Mrs. Roberts, I am not a red.”

“This is not for me to decide. Personally, I simply cannot imagine how anyone in his right mind would want to overthrow this government by force and violence, but as I said, it's not for me to decide.”

Barbara sighed and kept her peace.

“Somehow I don't see you at a sewing machine. Can you sew?”

“Not very well, no.”

“Do you know anything about gardening? We're just about the only federal prison without a farm attached to it, but we do have a small truck garden and a greenhouse, and we're a bit shorthanded there. The girls are not fond of gardening.”

Barbara knew absolutely nothing about gardening—she simply watered her house plants when they required it—but the thought of being able to work in the open, in the Southern California sunshine within sight of the ocean, was so exciting that she lied without hesitation. “Oh, yes, of course. I'm a very good gardener. As a matter of fact,” she said, embellishing it, “I took a course in college,” hoping that no one would inquire of Sarah Lawrence, since she was quite sure they had never given a course in any branch of agriculture.

“Vegetables?”

“Oh, yes. Vegetables.”

“Indeed. It sounds promising. I'll take it up with the board. Meanwhile, you have a few more days in isolation before we assign you to a work unit.”

“Can I use the library?” Barbara asked. “You do have a library?”

“A very good one. Ask Ellie to take you there. She's the little colored girl in charge of isolation.”

In the library, Barbara found three books on gardening. She read each one from cover to cover. Two days later, at breakfast, Ellie said to her, “You report to the truck garden today. Sister, you will have one sore back.”

***

Sally Lavette awakened with a splitting headache and with a mouth that tasted like leather soaked in vinegar, she sat up in bed and stared in bewilderment and then in disgust at the man sleeping beside her. She rammed her elbow into his side, and when he came awake with a squeal of distress, she snapped at him, “Who the hell are you?”

He sat up in bed, naked under the sheets. “For Christ's sake, Sally. Jerry Donner. Last night—”

“I don't give a damn about last night!” she shouted. “You get your clothes on and get your ass out of here in the next thirty seconds, or I call the cops and tell them you raped me!”

“Are you crazy? Have you gone nuts?”

She pulled open the drawer in the night table next to her and took out a gun and pointed it at him. “I'm counting to thirty. I want you out of here and downstairs and out of my house, or so help me God, I'll commit justifiable homicide. And the way I feel right now, it would be a relief.”

“All right, all right—take it easy. I'm going.” He pulled on his pants, stuffed tie and socks and undershorts into his pockets, pulled on his shirt and jacket, stuck his bare feet into his shoes, and stumbled from the room. She heard him going down the stairs. She had reached twenty-two. She stopped counting and flung her daughter's water pistol across the room in disgust.

“Oh, God in heaven,” she whispered. “What has gotten into you, Sally? That creep! That disgusting, spineless, little sonofabitch! Why? Why? Tell me why!” She felt sick and dirty and crawling with hatred of herself. From somewhere Groucho Marx's line flashed into her mind: “I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.” And she paraphrased it for her own need: “I wouldn't want to be caught dead with anyone who would crawl into bed with Sally Lavette.”

“No, I would not,” she said.

She douched and showered, washed her hair, and then sat under the dryer, wondering whether she should go to her doctor and have a Wasserman test. She had wrapped her last picture two nights before, but she had a conference with Hargasey and her agent scheduled for eleven o'clock today, and after that, lunch with Fay Killens, who did the Hollywood gossip column for United Press. She had no idea what time it was. The blinds were closed, the drapes drawn. While she was under the dryer, Jovida, her housekeeper, came in and parted the drapes and tilted the blinds. The sun blazed in.

Sally turned off the dryer and asked in Spanish, “What time is it, Jovida?”

“Ten. Mr. Hargasey called. He doesn't want you to be late.”

“The hell with Hargasey. What went on here last night?”

“Big party.”

“Was I very drunk?”

Jovida shrugged.

“Where's the kid?”

“In her room, playing.”

Sally closed her eyes and nodded. She shivered slightly. May Ling had become a very quiet, withdrawn child. She was only four and a half years old, but she was strangely adult, quiet, almost joyless, a slender little girl with straight black hair and ivory skin that was almost translucent.

“Here is the mail,” Jovida said.

A letter in an armed services envelope with a Korean postmark caught her eye. She threw the other letters on the bed and tore it open. “Dear Mrs. Lavette,” the letter read. “There is no easy way to write a letter like this. William Clawson, who was chaplain with the 4th regiment of the 7th Division, died of his wounds this morning in our hospital. I promised him that if he died, I would write to you and convey to you his very deep and sincere affection for you. I did not know him, but he appeared to be a very decent and honorable man. I do not know what else I can say.” It was signed “Major L. V. Cotton, M.D.”

Sally held the letter in trembling hands. She wanted a drink very desperately, and just as desperately she desired not to drink. She had not seen Billy Clawson since that night at her house, and that was so long ago. Everything was so long ago. How long was it since she had been to Higate or seen her father and mother or spoken to Eloise or Adam? Everything had stopped. Her life had been shattered into timelessness. Her eyes blurred as she tried to read the letter again. She put it down and wiped her eyes. Then she read it once more, and after that, she went to the telephone and called the clinic. A part of her mind remarked that she was not weeping, and she answered it by saying, “Tears come from the heart. My heart is cold as ice, so don't ask me to cry.”

Frank Gonzales took her call. “Hello, Sally,” he said somewhat strangely, as if she were a stranger.

“Is Joe there?”

“No.” Hesitation. “No, Joe went up to the Napa Valley to be with the family. Billy Clawson died. He was killed in Korea.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“We only got word yesterday.”

“Yesterday was yesterday. Today is today. What kind of bastards are you, both of you!”

She slammed down the phone, tears finally breaking through. Then she wiped them away, dressed herself, and pulled a suitcase out of the closet. With the suitcase half-packed, she broke off, picked up the phone, and called Pacific Coast Airlines. They told her they could put her on a twelve o'clock flight.

She ran to the door and shouted for Jovida, who came running up the stairs. “Pack a few things for May Ling—nothing fancy, just play clothes and some sweaters. Put them in that suitcase over there. We're going up north to Napa.”

“For how long?”

“I don't know.”

“What shall I tell Mr. Hargasey?”

“I don't care. Tell him I don't care what you tell him. Tell him anything.”

On the plane, May Ling said, “I like to go to Higate. I'm glad we're going there.” She sat very primly next to Sally, a well-behaved little girl with black hair cut in bangs.

“I didn't think you remembered.”

“I remember,” May Ling said. “Will daddy be there?”

“I'm not sure. He went yesterday, and he's a very busy doctor. So I don't know whether he'll be there today.”

“I hope he is.”

Sally did not reply to that. She didn't know what she hoped. She felt that Joe would be on his way back to Los Angeles, and that would be better for everyone concerned. She had not seen Joe for six months, and when she saw him before that, they had nothing to say to each other. They were strangers who were married.

At the San Francisco airport, Sally rented a car and drove to Napa. Over a year had passed since she had been home, and strangely, she could not remember why she stayed away. Her whole life now defied her memory. In America, next to being President, the most was to be a movie star, and maybe it was, more than being President. Those were the gods and goddesses of the times, and like gods and goddesses, they huddled in their shrines and hid from the worshipers. Otherwise, they moved to an accompaniment of whispers and swiveling heads and other acts of worship. Now she was here, back where she had been before, and bit by bit, she began to remember who she was. She drove through the city, across the Golden Gate Bridge, through Marin County, with the round, dark hills cradling the road, and then through Sonoma.

“It's very pretty,” the small dark girl by her side said. “Isn't it pretty, mommy?”

Long, long ago, before May Ling was old enough to understand words, Sally would write little poems to her, silly little poems. She tried to remember one of them, “Sally's baking cake. I don't care to bake, so I merely sit and watch her, making sure she doesn't botch her—job—no, that's not it.”

“That's nice,” May Ling said.

Today was the longest they had been together, side by side, in months, years? Sally tried to remember, then shook her head hopelessly. “We're in the valley now,” she said to May Ling.

“I know.”

Did she know? She was a wise little Chinese child. Yet she was only one quarter Chinese, and the rest was everything under the sun, English and Scotch-Irish and Italian and Jewish and French—all of it mixed up in this small, serious little girl.