Establishment (6 page)

“You're kidding.”

“Why don't you look?”

He stared at her for a long moment. Then he put down his drink, crossed the room, picked up the bag, and set it on the coffee table. He opened it and gazed silently at the neatly wrapped packages of fifty- and one-hundred-dollar bills.

“Now you don't have to rob a bank,” Barbara said gently.

He turned to her. “How the devil did you know I thought of robbing a bank?”

“Only because if there were one impossible, romantic way to go, you'd go that way.” He stood there and she watched him. “Did you ever wonder why I love you so much?”

“Now and then.”

“I'll tell you. Because now and then you make me feel quite wonderful. I'm trying very hard not to be maudlin. When do you want to go?”

“You can still say no. You're not Jewish and your father has no stake in this.”

“Maybe he has.”

He sat down, toying with his drink and staring at the briefcase. Barbara waited. Minutes went by. Then he said, “I'll call Brodsky and get him over here tonight. I think it's time you met him. We'll leave in the morning. I'll take my Ford, and we'll drive down. I'll arrange for Gomez to pick it up at Barstow after we leave—if we leave. That should be in two or three days.”

“I want you to keep in touch with me.”

“Sure. No question. I'll call you from L.A. and from Barstow. And then wherever we stop.” He went over to her and drew her to her feet. “I don't know what to say.”

“Get back quickly, that's all. We'll work things out. We have a lot of years ahead of us, Bernie.”

“When you talk to your father, tell him that someday I'll find a way to repay him.”

“He doesn't want to be repaid.”

“It won't be long. Two, three weeks. I promise you, Bobby.”

“Just do it and get it over with.”

***

They made love that night tenderly, as if they had just found each other, as if they were two people who had met by chance and discovered that each delighted the other. As Barbara lay beside him, naked, his hands touching and caressing her, she remembered the first time, so long ago, and she recalled the same tentative quality that had charmed and seduced her then, as if in each movement he feared rejection, his hands conveying his wonder and pleasure. In a way, his lovemaking was like that of an adolescent; it was touched with disbelief. His gestures apologized for his huge, hairy, muscular bulk, and she loved it that she was so small beside him, so slender and womanly. She lay in his arms in a strange valley between joy and anger, sensing both emotions at the same time, and afterward, when he slept, she put her face in the pillow and gave way to tears.

***

There were no tears in the morning when she said good-bye to him and to Irv Brodsky. Brodsky was the epitome of the unheroic. He was small and skinny, diffident, vulnerable, smiling shyly as he told her not to worry. “The only thing dangerous about a thing like this,” he told her, “is getting nervous, and me and Bernie, we don't get nervous. We been through a lot together from the Spanish war on. And I'll send him back. You can count on that.”

They left, and Barbara went back into the house. Through the window, she watched them crossing the street, the big, lumbering man and the small one walking quickly to keep up with Bernie's long strides. They didn't look back.

Barbara went into the tiny room on the first floor where she did her writing. She rummaged through her files and found a letter that Bernie had written to her in 1941. It was a long letter, explaining why he had left her in Paris and what had happened to him during his journey to Marseille. She didn't have to read it. She knew its contents by heart; and trying to understand what had prompted her to dig it out again, she had a strange, frightening feeling that this man, her husband, Bernie Cohen, had never really been there and that all she possessed of him was this letter.

Barbara shook off the thought, put the letter back in the file, and went upstairs and dressed Sam to go outside. She felt relieved, as if a great weight had been lifted off her shoulders, and she had a very strong feeling that Bernie felt the same way. She had been married less than two years. She wondered whether any marriage was very different—or whether perhaps thirty-two is past the age where a woman can mold herself into the shape a man demands. Or the man mold himself to what she desired? Hopeless. Yet she loved her husband and he loved her. If either had told the other that it was useless, that he or she wanted a divorce, there would have been a period of emotional agony. This way there was nothing. The thought frightened her. Why was there nothing? Why wasn't she sprawled on her bed, weeping her heart out? Suppose Bernie never returned? Why wasn't she stricken with terror at the years of loneliness she might face? Were all her feelings, all her writings, all her high-minded thoughts a fraud? Barbara did not regard it as a virtue that she was incapable of subjective pretense. She had no gift for lying to herself. She was not grief-stricken. That was the plain fact of the matter.

She put Sam in his stroller and pushed him along Vallejo Street to her mother's house. It was a clear, beautiful morning. The fog had burned off, and a brisk wind set the whitecaps on the bay to dancing. It was one of those mornings when San Francisco appears to crackle with electric excitement and the people on the street share their aliveness, walk with an extra verve, and breathe a little more deeply than usual.

Oh, I do love this place
, Barbara said to herself.
But you have to be away for a long time to know it. It's a place you have to return to
.

Eloise's brother, Billy Clawson, was at the gallery when Barbara got there. He had come, hoping to find Eloise, but this was not her day to work. He was a tall, attenuated man of thirty, who had entered the ministry, Barbara had heard, to avoid the draft. Now, without a pulpit and with no desire for one, he spent his days doing absolutely nothing. The Clawsons were one of the wealthiest families in Oakland, and they had cast Eloise out of their lives and inheritance when she divorced Tom Lavette and married Adam Levy. The only redeeming thing Barbara had ever heard about Billy was that he did occasionally see his sister. Today he was wearing a clerical collar and explaining to Jean, “I do it as a lark. Of course, I'm a fraud, but aren't most men of God? My virtue is that I don't preach. But one does get the most interesting reactions from people. Do you know, they will stop you in the street to weep on your shoulder?”

He greeted Barbara and then departed. Jean picked Sam up from the stroller and hugged him. “He's such a good baby, Bobby. Doesn't he ever cry?”

“He certainly does. Mother, does Billy Clawson do anything?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Strange.”

“Not really. He's not unique.”

“Mother,” Barbara said, “can I leave Sammy with you, and will you feed him? I have a lunch date with Harvey Baxter.”

“Harvey Baxter?”

“He's my lawyer. You remember, he took over Sam Goldberg's practice.”

“Did Bernie leave this morning?” Jean asked abruptly.

“Yes.”

“You don't look very disturbed.”

“I'm working it out.”

“Would you like to talk about it?”

“No. Not now, please.”

“I would like to talk about it,” Jean said.

“Then perhaps we will, another time.”

Harvey Baxter, a stout, serious man of forty-three, was waiting for her when she got to Gino's. He had light brown hair, deep brown eyes, and he wore old-fashioned metal-rimmed glasses and three-piece vested suits of charcoal gray sharkskin. He had been with the firm of Goldberg and Benchly since he got out of law school twenty years earlier, and with the death of both partners, he had become the senior member of the firm. Goldberg and Benchly practiced civil and corporate law, and the firm had been Dan Lavette's lawyers since 1910. It was now known as Goldberg, Benchly and Baxter. As Barbara had, Harvey Baxter had worshipped Sam Goldberg, and he considered Barbara his personal responsibility, inherited from the senior partner.

Now he asked Barbara why she would not come to his office, and she replied that there they would be constantly interrupted.

“Of course not,” Baxter said. “You know I stop all my calls when you come to see me.”

“Whereas here, my dear Harvey, we are only interrupted by Gino, who tells me how beautiful I am, and today I need that. It is not absolutely the best day of my life. This was handed to me yesterday.” She took the subpoena out of her purse and gave it to him.

Gino hovered over them while Baxter read it slowly and painstakingly. “Shall I order for you?” Barbara asked.

“Anything.”

Barbara ordered salad, spaghetti, and veal cutlets. Baxter finished his careful reading and looked at her thoughtfully.

“I read it,” Barbara said.

“Then you know what it is. This is a subpoena to appear in Washington ten days from now to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. It's outrageous and, if I may say so, rather disgusting.”

“You may say so.”

“Did Bernie also receive a subpoena?”

“No.”

“That's very curious.”

“Why?”

“Isn't it obvious, Barbara? He fought in Spain. That might explain it, the way things are today. But you? That's simply outrageous.”

Barbara shrugged.

“I think Bernie should be included in any discussion of this. If you're subpoenaed, it stands to reason that he will be.”

“Not really,” Barbara said. “From all I've read of their methods, they love publicity. No one knows Bernie. I'm a reasonably well-known writer and I'm Dan Lavette's daughter.”

“That still doesn't explain anything. You're not a communist.”

“I certainly am not.”

“What about front organizations? Civil rights? Committees to free Tom Mooney—that sort of thing?”

“No, I'm not a joiner, Harvey.”

“I very strongly suggest we discuss this with Bernie.”

“He's out of town.”

“Out of town? Where? We'll call him.”

“No, we can't, Harvey. I don't want Bernie involved in this.”

“Where is he?”

“I'm sorry. I can't tell you that.”

“Does he know about this subpoena?”

“No. And I don't want him to know about it.”

“Barbara, when you appear before the committee, the whole world will know about this.”

“That's ten days from now. By then it won't matter.”

“What won't matter? Must I remind you that I am your attorney, that anything you tell me is privileged?”

“I know that, Harvey,” Barbara said gently. “I'm not trying to keep secrets from you. But I know how you think, and if I tell you where Bernie is, you are going to be so angry and so upset that we'll never make any sense out of this stupid subpoena. I don't want to talk about Bernie. I want to talk about what I am going to do.”

“That's very comforting.”

The waiter came with their food.

“Now please eat,” Barbara said. “I'm just starved, and I don't eat out very often these days, and I love the food here, and I won't feel a bit comfortable if I eat and you don't.”

“You are an extraordinary woman.”

“Not at all, Harvey, just hungry. We'll eat, and you'll explain this ridiculous business to me. I read about the writers and directors in Hollywood. They're going to prison, aren't they? Does that mean that I'll go to prison?”

“No! For heaven's sake, get that notion out of your head! You are not going to prison.”

“Harvey, don't be so upset. I shouldn't mind going to prison—for a little while. It would be a fascinating experience.”

“One you can well do without. Now let me explain something to you—”

“You're not eating.”

“I'm not hungry, you are,” he said with some annoyance. “Will you please eat and listen?”

“Yes, Harvey,” Barbara agreed. She was very fond of Harvey Baxter. He reminded her of Sam Goldberg. He had the same tone of voice and many of the same mannerisms, and she supposed that it came from years of working together.

“The House Committee on Un-American Activities—”

“Harvey,” she interrupted, “I don't even know what a House committee is. I'm a writer, but I'm not terribly well educated. I did leave college after my sophomore year.”

“I wish you would take this seriously. I wish you were disturbed. I'm disturbed.”

“I am disturbed, Harvey. That's why I'm lunching with you today.”

“All right. Now this committee is a committee of Congress. Congress has the right to set up committees to hear testimony, the right to call witnesses on the subject, and then to use the results to frame legislation. Not that this wretched committee has ever framed any legislation.”

“But what is the subject, Harvey?”

“Un-Americanism, as they put it.”

“That's such a silly, stupid word. Do you think I'm un-American?”

“It doesn't matter what I think. The point is that this nasty little committee has great power. Now in the case of the writers and directors who call themselves the Hollywood Ten, the committee charged them with using the film for subversive propaganda.”

“Is that why they're going to jail?”

“No. And I'm not at all certain that they are going to jail. I want you to understand very clearly that the only crime a congressional committee can charge you with is contempt of Congress, and the only way you can commit contempt is by refusing to answer a question that is pertinent to their inquiry. Contempt of Congress is a misdemeanor and is punishable by imprisonment of up to a year. Now I have no idea as to whether these Hollywood writers and directors are communists now or ever have been, but they were asked that question among others and they refused to answer. There were other questions that they refused to answer.”