A Fierce Radiance (17 page)

“To the future.” The toast made her feel like crying. The future existed on so many levels. The war, Charlie, this man across from her. Gradually something shifted inside her. They drank the wine, spoke freely, and she lost herself in the moment, something she rarely allowed herself to do. As the hours passed, she realized that she’d forgotten the joy of simply being with someone, the pure pleasure of talking, for hours, with ease and grace, sharing opinions on the books they’d read, the movies they’d seen, re-creating their past lives for each other, finding common ground.

In an abrupt confession, Jamie said, “Another penicillin patient died today.”

Initially he’d resolved not to darken their evening by discussing this. Now he needed to trust her with it. “This morning.”

Instinctively she reached across the table and took his hand. “Tell me.”

He squeezed her hand in return. The case was different from Edward Reese in every way, and yet it was the same. “A teenage girl. Sophia Metaxas. Osteomyelitis. That’s a bone infection. For three days, she was better. She was even knitting a sweater in bed, as a way to pass the time. The sweater was dark red. Burgundy, I think, was the name of the color.”

Claire knew the talk of sweater colors was only a way to divert attention from his sorrow.

“She was going to give the sweater to Tia when it was done. Her immigrant mother made a fuss of taking Tia’s measurements. Then the medication ran out, and she died.” He rubbed Claire’s palm with his thumb.

“How do you go on?”

He paused before responding. “It’s my job, I suppose that’s the reason. What would I do with my time otherwise? It’s the only job I know,” he added with a touch of humor that he regretted. Humor was his usual armor against tough questions. He didn’t want to armor himself against her.

Claire sensed that he hadn’t yet found a way to reveal himself more fully. She didn’t speak, to give him time to consider, and after a moment, he said, “To tell you the truth, I don’t know.”

The waiter arrived, breaking into their conversation. “Finished?”

Each nodded assent.

After the waiter cleared the table and left them, Jamie added with a genuine laugh, “I’ll try to think of a better answer to your question for next time.” She wrapped both her hands around his across the table. He turned his hands so that their fingers intertwined.

They ordered coffee and cannoli for dessert. Claire savored hers.
For a few moments the tangy sweetness of the cannoli pushed aside issues of life and death and even the blare of war news on the kitchen radio.

Watching her, Jamie had trouble resisting the urge to press his palm against her gorgeous face. Only one other table in the restaurant was occupied, by two couples in the far corner calling for a second bottle of wine. Would they notice or care if he got up and kissed the place where her jaw met her ear?

Through his mind, an image flashed of Ellen, his great love—or so he’d thought. When their engagement ended, he’d felt lost. He’d had their future mapped out, the work they’d do together, the goals they’d achieve, the children they’d raise. All that, suddenly wiped out. He’d left Saranac on the train knowing that most likely he’d never see her again. Over the years, occasionally her name appeared on journal articles. She’d never married, but now and again the long trail of gossip brought him news of her affairs with this or that colleague. Somewhere in his mind he’d still thought that someday, somehow, they would marry. He’d used her as an excuse for avoiding the risk of committing himself to anyone else.

He understood this now as he sat across a dinner table from Claire Shipley at the window of an Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village, snow silencing the street outside. His feelings for Ellen were gone. He reached across the table and placed his hand upon Claire’s cheek, and she leaned into his palm.

After dinner, they walked through Washington Square beneath the lacy, interlocking branches of the snow-covered trees. The cool air steadied him after the wine. He let her lead the way. They turned west onto Washington Place. Lights glowed behind the curtains of the town houses. Debate continued in the press about a blackout or dim-out for New York City, but so far the authorities had reached no decision. Claire was glad to see the hints of life through the windows, the intimations of warmth and family. Washington Place led to Sheri
dan Square, which led to Grove Street. They crossed Seventh Avenue and continued on Grove. The snow was three inches deep, the sidewalk was slick, an excuse for her to take his arm. He pressed his hand against hers, securing her arm in place.

Claire realized that she’d lost track of these intricacies of affection, the initial wariness in the smallest gesture, the flicker of happiness when each small gamble was rewarded with an equal gamble by the person beside you. Each move brought them closer. The street looked like the snow photographs of Alfred Stieglitz. Not a car passed, no plows lumbered by, the sidewalks weren’t shoveled. No one was out but them. Snow had conquered the neighborhood. Jamie and Claire walked in silence, and the silence felt like a cocoon.

How unlike her former husband Jamie was. Bill Shipley was always taut, eyes stripping bare everything he saw. To him conversation was argument. A casual comment, such as that they needed more milk for Emily and Charlie, elicited a cataloging of where in a twenty-block radius milk was freshest at any given hour. When they met in college, he at Columbia, she at Barnard, the intensity of his attention convinced her that they could build a professional life together that would serve and help others. They thought of themselves as a team, Claire taking the pictures, Bill doing the writing, covering stories of injustice and poverty across the nation. Together they’d change the world. Despite their extravagant idealism, their plan worked until they had children. A child, Claire learned, needs time simply to be, to gaze, to do nothing in particular. Bill couldn’t tolerate hours filled with nothing in particular.

Compared to Bill, the man walking beside her seemed at peace with himself. He had nothing to prove, or perhaps he’d already proven whatever he needed to prove to himself. She sensed his calling as a physician; he could soothe even those screaming in pain, emotional or physical. Instead of feeling challenged and too often found inadequate, as she had with Bill, she felt calmed and safe.

“Look at that dog,” he said.

She gazed down the street. Lucas was sitting on the front stoop, holding his leash in his mouth, which he wasn’t strictly allowed to do. Snowflakes covered his muzzle and his floppy ears. Turning his big head from side to side, ears poised, he searched eagerly through the snow.

“That’s my dog. That’s my front stoop, where he’s sitting. His name is Lucas.” Charlie must by asleep by now, so Claire didn’t have to worry about him peering out the upstairs window and wondering who this man was, accompanying his mother home. “Lucas loves the snow. He’s hoping for a walk.”

“He knew when to expect us?”

“He’d wait outside for hours like that, knowing that eventually I’d turn up. My housekeeper is looking after Charlie tonight, so she must be keeping an eye on Lucas from the parlor.”

Jamie felt an ache of yearning in his chest. The dog waiting on the front stoop. The two empty milk bottles on the top step, ready for exchange by the milkman in the morning. The lights beckoning within. These meant home. For too long, his home had been a hospital, sickness and death all around him. For months, the only milk bottles he’d focused on were filled with green mold. He wanted to be able to walk into that house and take her upstairs and make love with her, for the rest of his life. He felt tears welling in his eyes, from the cold, from the night, from his desires.

Lucas greeted Claire by bounding down the steps and running toward her, snow flying off his fanlike tail. When he reached her, he leapt up and placed his paws on her shoulders, not strictly allowed either, but she gave him a hug, which was what he wanted, before she pushed him down.

A wave of sadness came over her: Pets were forbidden in air raid shelters. Last week she’d done the illustrations for a story on what to do with pets during bombing raids. Lucas had been the story’s fea
tured dog. In the event of an air raid,
Life
explained, dogs should be chained to the firmest fixture in the house, such as a bathtub foot. A blanket, a bowl of water, and a chew toy should be left with them while their owners went to the shelter. Lucas, freshly groomed for the occasion, had been quite game for his star turn, posing with his blanket, bowl, and stuffed duck while leashed with a heavy chain (provided by the research department) to the bathtub foot. The prospect of leaving Lucas alone in the bathroom while bombs fell on the city filled her with a grasping love for him.

Jamie’s thoughts were elsewhere as he did a quick calculation: spying housekeeper, easily awoken child, wet excitable dog. Probably not the best setting for what he had in mind. Nor could he easily take her to his rooms at the hospital: lots of prying eyes in the corridors, as well as a distinctly unromantic atmosphere, reeking of disinfectant. He should have thought ahead, secured a hotel room. He’d do that next time, or with luck she’d arrange for the child to stay with a friend.

“Shall we take the dog for a walk?” Jamie asked, both to prolong the evening and to show her that he wasn’t the type to pressure her.

“If you’re not cold, I mean.” Taking off his glove, gently he rubbed the back of his hand against her cheek.

She stepped toward him. Moved her face against his fingers. How warm his skin felt. She rued the fact that she hadn’t planned better for the end of their evening. She’d imagined making love with him, but hadn’t planned for it. Or perhaps this was her true planning, to be able to move ahead only so far but no further; to set up the circumstances that made a fling impossible.

“No, I’m not cold.” In fact she was freezing, her toes and fingertips numb, but the touch of his hand was warm upon her face, and she no longer cared about the cold. “Let’s walk to the churchyard at St. Luke’s.”

“You walk a dog in a churchyard?” he asked.

“He’s a very religious dog.” She snapped the leash onto the dog’s
collar. Climbing the front steps, she opened the door and greeted Maritza, who was indeed waiting in the parlor.

“I’ll take Lucas for his walk,” she said. “Thanks for looking after Charlie. Good night.”

He couldn’t hear the housekeeper’s response. Claire and the dog rejoined him, and she walked ahead.

“You have to see Grove Court,” she said, beckoning to him. They stood at the gate, which opened onto a cobblestone courtyard. A row of small houses lined the far side of the courtyard, houses otherwise hidden from the street. Their lights seemed to flicker through the snow. This wasn’t the New York he knew. Claire was introducing him to an alternate city, a place outside normal time, where she lived her daily life. In the light from the streetlamps, her face was eager with the expectation of his appreciation. Because his appreciation went far beyond Grove Court, he could find nothing adequate to say. He squeezed her hand instead, which for some reason made her laugh. She took his arm, and they continued down the street.

St. Luke’s Chapel was a simple church, consecrated in 1822 as a country parish when this part of New York City was still farmland, a place where people escaped from the noise, crowds, and recurring epidemics of cholera and yellow fever in lower Manhattan. Claire related this history to Jamie, who enjoyed hearing it because she so clearly enjoyed telling it. The church had a plain tower, suited to an English village. The gate to the churchyard was kept latched but not locked. Claire led the way down the path, around the back of the church and into the garden on the opposite side. The garden, protected by a tall wrought-iron fence, was lit by a streetlamp, a golden-yellow orb glowing through the snow. In the spring, Claire came here often with Lucas (despite the signs prohibiting dogs) to sit and read upon the wooden benches beneath the flowering apple trees. She’d come here almost every day after Emily died, even though she lived uptown then, because she discovered consolation here, a tiny, precious kernel of peace.

Jamie wiped the snow off a bench, and they sat close beside each other. Claire was aware of every aspect of his presence, alert to how easily and naturally she could slip her hand onto his leg and stroke his ankle, his calf, his inner thigh. But she didn’t. She waited for him.

She was breathtaking, he thought, with snow covering her hat and the curled hair that flowed around her shoulders. He sensed that she waited for him, and the thought filled him with pleasure. His pleasure made him move even more slowly, because he wanted to prolong it.

“Look at you, you’re covered with snow.” Gently and carefully, caressingly, he brushed the snow away. He wrapped his arms around her and felt her turn to move closer against him. He kissed her eyelids and she responded by kissing the line of his jaw and his neck, and finally he found her lips upon his own.

Y
ou have four minutes.” Henry Luce spoke without looking up from his hunched-over examination of the page proofs on his desk. He didn’t need to set a stopwatch; he seemed to have one running relentlessly in his brain. He had a cigarette going, and the ashtray was already full at 9:20
AM
. The room was stuffy from the smoke. His penthouse office, on the thirty-third floor of the Time & Life Building at Rockefeller Center, was a palazzo in the sky, with ornate furniture, wood paneling, thick rugs, and double-height windows. The morning sun glittered upon the windowpanes of the surrounding buildings. Luce, however, didn’t waste time staring out of windows. “What do you want?”

Claire burst out laughing. Her laughter must have startled him, because now he did look up. He evaluated her. Carefully he reviewed her legs, her clothes, her hair, her face, the front of her low-cut silk blouse. His blue eyes were sharp and intense. He was known to appreciate a good-looking woman, and this morning Claire had made certain she fell into that category, with a tight skirt instead of her usual trousers, high heels, her hair in a Veronica Lake wave. She sat at the end of the chair, legs crossed, skirt pulled above her knees.

For his part, Luce was not particularly attractive. He was only forty-three, but his scowling, weighty demeanor made him seem older. Generations older than Claire. He was tall, but with a roundness that suggested short. His dark hair was thinning, his eyebrows
bushy, his suit rumpled and frayed at the cuffs. Cigarette ash dusted his tie. His accomplishments were astonishing. He was the founder, publisher, and editor of the most important magazines in the country. He and Brit Hadden had invented the weekly newsmagazine. His empire included the phenomenally successful radio and newsreel series
The March of Time
. Raised in China, the child of missionaries, Luce was said to be inspired and motivated by the Christian teachings of his father and to believe that America had a God-given duty to lead the world.

As far as Claire knew, none of his employees had ever seen him smile. Much of the staff was terrified of him. Claire had heard a rumor that at high-level meetings, the top editors of his various publications maneuvered to take the seats farthest away from him, praying that he would overlook them. She resolved to stand up to him. She was one of his star photographers, or so she told herself. She’d had two recent cover stories. He wouldn’t fire her, if only because he wouldn’t want her to take her work to
Look
or
PM
. She was entitled to speak to him the same way he spoke to her.

“I have an idea for you.” Good. She sounded focused, objective, and professional.

This appointment had taken weeks to set up. Luce had been away over the holidays, then traveling, then absorbed with work. They were already into February. His secretary made certain Claire understood how lucky she was to get the appointment. Claire didn’t tell Jamie or her father that she was meeting with Luce; there’d be plenty of time to tell them if she accomplished anything.

“Yes?”

“We both know that you killed the medical story I did because penicillin came under government jurisdiction.”

“That’s a supposition.” He returned to his reading, correcting and querying the proofs with a sharp pencil. At his elbow rested a cup stuffed with similarly sharp pencils, at the ready for quick comments.
She imagined him knocking the cup to the floor, pencils rolling across the carpet. The image fed her determination.

“I presume you know also that the government is devoting a fortune to the research and mass production of this drug. From reviewing my story, you know that similar drugs are being developed. They’re made from substances in the soil. From the earth itself. The entire philosophy behind these drugs is revolutionary. You’ll want to tell the full story in your magazines when it’s no longer a secret. A story of American technological achievement transforming human life. You’ll want to be the one to document it from beginning to end. To present the American heroes who made it happen.”

He looked up from the page proofs and squinted at her. “What’s this to you?”

She hesitated. She didn’t want to be too personal with him, too
female
. But she also knew that to be taken seriously, she had to tell him why it mattered. Her father had told her to claim this territory as her own, and now she did. “I don’t generally discuss personal matters at work.” She hoped he would respect her years of professional forbearance. “I had a daughter who died when she was three. Of blood poisoning.” Emily, lying on her bed, lifeless, hands crossed. Claire felt a constriction in her throat. She paused to let it pass, to stop her voice from quivering. “Penicillin might have saved her life.
Would
have saved her life. I already know the scientists involved with this story. I understand the issues. I only ask that I be the one to follow the story, wherever it leads.”

Impassive, Luce stared at her for a long moment. Was he remembering Briton Hadden, his dear friend and business partner who died from a cat scratch? “How’s your son?” he asked, surprising her.

In the welter of contradictions that was Henry Luce, he could be generous and considerate. Last year when Charlie was ill with scarlet fever and out of school for a month, Luce had arranged and paid for a tutor to help Charlie keep up with his schoolwork. Luce was
known for his unpredictable generosity, which his detractors labeled paternalism.

“He’s well, thank you. And thank you again for sending the tutor for him last year. That was kind. It made a difference in his life.” She’d written Luce a note at the time, but she’d never thanked him personally. Staff members weren’t supposed to speak to him informally, weren’t supposed to ride the elevator with him or initiate a conversation in the hallways. Nonetheless he seemed to know everything that went on at the magazines. She never learned how he found out about Charlie’s illness; at the time, she’d been so distracted with caring for Charlie that she’d never pursued it.

He waved off the personal thanks as if it were an embarrassment. He flicked his cigarette, spreading ashes on the proofs across his desk. “Terrific story on the military wives. Ditto the Rockette girl. Excellent newsstand sales.”

He always kept track of the money. Yet Claire knew enough about his courageous positions on controversial issues to recognize that money was not his primary motivation. “Thank you.”

“Military wives. Brave. Moving. Showed America that the families in the trenches know how to behave. Know how to do the right thing. The right thing.” He tripped over his words. He’d had a bad stutter when he was young, and he still fought to overcome it. Often he repeated himself or spoke in machine-gun outbursts. “Exactly what I expected. The families of our military men—exactly what I expected.” Perhaps because of his childhood in China, he had a straightforward idealism about what America stood for and what the country could achieve.

“Yes.”

“My wife liked it, too. She’s noticed your work. She wants to do a story with you.”

Oh, no, here it was: Claire’s punishment for daring to come to see him. His wife, Clare Boothe Luce, was a successful playwright, journalist, and editor. The staff considered her a holy terror, snobbish, con
descending, and mean-spirited. She was notoriously charming to men in power whom she wished to court. Her play
The Women
had been hugely successful on Broadway and made into a film. “She’ll write the story. You’ll take the pictures.”

Traditionally, any Time, Inc., employee who crossed Clare Boothe Luce was in trouble. “I’d be honored, Mr. Luce.”

“Knew you would be,” he said without a trace of irony. “She’ll decide what she wants to do. She’ll be in touch.”

Claire could only hope that Mrs. Luce’s idea wouldn’t involve traipsing through a jungle somewhere during the rainy season; or that she wouldn’t decide that this was the perfect moment, with the Japanese rampaging across the Pacific, to visit China and lend some Time, Inc., support and prestige to Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek, a couple much beloved by the Luces.

“I’ll look forward to it, Mr. Luce.” Claire’s photographer buddies, especially those who’d had a special story or two killed over the years, were going to get a good laugh out of this.

“Excellent. I’ll tell her tonight. Now you can go.”

She’d accomplished nothing. She made one more attempt, with flourishes, what the hell: “You’re missing out on the most important medical story of our era.”

He glared at her, thick brows drawn together in a frown. “You’re just like my wife. You never know when to stop. When to leave well enough alone.”

This she had to interpret as a compliment. After all, he’d left his first wife and their two children to marry the divorced Clare Boothe Brokaw. Rumor was that he’d proposed after only three, some gossips said two, meetings. “Thank you, Mr. Luce.”

The frown eased. He looked almost relaxed. “Mrs. Shipley. I cannot discuss the penicillin matter with you. It touches on official secrets. As you know. But you can trust me to do what’s best. For the magazines. For the nation. Not for you.”

She couldn’t help but smile. His meager concession felt like a victory. “Thank you, Mr. Luce.”

“I look forward to seeing what my wife decides on for you.”

Was there the merest twinkle in his eye, to say that he understood his wife, knew what Claire would be up against? No, there wasn’t. He returned to his page proofs, showing that good-byes or even good mornings certainly were not in order.