A Fierce Radiance (9 page)

He felt grateful for the change of subject. “In a sense, I am in the military: Dr. Rivers had us sign up for the naval reserve months ago. He thought it was the best way to keep the staff together, when and if America entered the war. Plus he loves his uniform and already thinks of himself as a commanding officer.” The staff joke was that Rivers had arranged for them to sign up solely so he could be their commander. But as of December 7 and Pearl Harbor, being in the reserve was more than a joke.

“Dr. Stanton?” Nurse Brockett held a report for him to review, calling his attention back to the battle in this room.

At 6:00
PM
, Mr. Reese’s fever was 104.2. Bacterial colonies in his blood were over 50 per milliliter.

Dr. Stanton asked Patsy if she wanted a priest or a minister to be present. She shook her head no. He told her that “it might be best” if she asked a friend or family member to join her. Without emotion, numb, she made a telephone call. Soon a woman arrived. This woman resembled Patsy in her style and demeanor, in her pearls and cashmere twin set. When she reached the door and saw the man withered on the bed, his lips blue, she hesitated, taking a step backward. Claire sensed her talking to herself, steeling herself to do her duty. She came in. She hugged Patsy firmly. She introduced herself. She was Cindy, Patsy’s older sister. She carried herself with a forthright bearing that said, we will not show these strangers our fear.

Mr. Reese had calmed. Only his eyes were wild, glaring with a vehemence that seemed to Claire like madness. At 7:30
PM
, the children telephoned to say good night. Still alert enough to be self-conscious, he struggled to control his voice. “Good night.” He wheezed the words. “Good night. Good night,” his voice escalated. “Good
night
,” he shouted.

Nurse Brockett wrenched the receiver from his hand and gave it to Patsy.

“Daddy was playing a game,” she told her children.

At eight o’clock, the fever was 104.9. Mr. Reese’s breathing turned raspy. He sank heavily into the pillows, weak, defeated, drifting in and out of consciousness.

Claire waited for Patsy or Cindy, or even James Stanton, to tell her to leave, but no one noticed her. She’d achieved her professional goal: she was invisible. No doubt later, Patsy and Cindy would regret that they’d allowed her to stay, would demand to review her photos before they ran, would question the permission form that Patsy had signed. In the meantime, Claire shared Edward Reese’s death. Patsy sat on a stool at the bedside, holding her husband’s hand, resting her forehead against his arm. Cindy stood in the corner, her face an impassive mask. Claire tried to maintain an emotional distance, to narrow her concern only to the technical work at hand, but she felt a dread within her chest.

Blood tests revealed a surge in the bacterial level, over 100 colonies per milliliter. At 8:30, the fever was 105.3. Dr. Stanton tracked the vital signs every fifteen minutes. He ordered more blood tests, and when he received the results, he put the sideways figure 8 in the chart, the sign for bacterial levels at infinity. He’d made his peace with himself. He was supervising an experiment. Soon he would supervise another experiment. He would double the first dose, he would raise the other doses, somehow Tia and David would provide the medication—over and over he told himself this, and the repetition brought him comfort and hope.

Mr. Reese looked both sunken and swollen, glowing with the heat and force of the fever, at the mercy of the infection. Gradually he became delirious. “Lights, lights, turn off the lights,” he called. The room was dim. Frantically he thrashed his head and shoulders back and forth, back and forth, to escape the nonexistent lights that cut into
his eyes. His back arched. His breathing was a tortured rattle. Patsy tried to grab his hand, his shoulders, to calm him, but he twisted away from her.

At 9:51
PM
, Edward R. Reese Jr. age thirty-seven, died. His brown eyes stared at the ceiling in a vacant, frozen gaze.

Dr. Stanton wrote on the chart and in his notes that the cause of death was staphylococcal septicemia, resistant to sulfa drugs but responsive to penicillin. He left the room to get a death certificate.

This was Claire’s final shot: Nurse Brockett leaning across the bed, pressing Edward Reese’s eyelids firmly closed with her businesslike palms.

C
laire, it’s Mack.” From the gruff voice, she knew it was Mack the moment he said her name on the phone. “I already told them it was a go,” he said to someone else. She heard animated voices in the background at his end. It was Saturday afternoon, a week after Edward Reese’s death. Claire sat at her desk at home, writing out checks to pay bills. The magazine closed on Saturday nights, and the final hours before each issue was put to bed were frantic. She wasn’t surprised Mack was at the office. “Claire. Just found out—you made the cover with the army wives story.”

“No, I didn’t.” The cover closed several days before the rest of the magazine, so when she hadn’t heard anything on Thursday, she’d assumed the editors had gone with something else.

“Would I kid you?” From his good-humored banter, she understood that he wasn’t kidding. With the rush of developments in the war, Mr. Luce must have delayed his decision on the cover until the last possible moment.

“This is a surprise, Mack.” After four years on staff, it was her first cover.

“Doesn’t it make you happy? I only called because I figured it would make you happy. If it doesn’t make you happy, I can hang up.”

“Yes, it makes me happy. Of course it does.” She raised her voice in anger and impatience, because the news made her happier than she could let him know or suspect. A cover story represented not sim
ply professional recognition but also job security, a little leeway in the grinding competition to hold on to her staff position. She had to conceal the tears that smarted in her eyes. She was a woman in a man’s profession, and she’d learned to keep any emotions her peers might consider feminine, like joy or sorrow, strictly to herself. Her renowned colleague Margaret Bourke-White had a reputation for using strategic weeping fits to get what she wanted from both her bosses and her subjects, but that wasn’t Claire’s way.

The day after Reese’s death, she’d gone directly into a story about the army officers’ wives living with their children on Governor’s Island in New York harbor. This was the nature of her job: overpowering emotion, and then straight into the next story with no break to recover. Claire was supposed to keep herself distant and objective, but she couldn’t. She suspected that her work would lose its impact if she tried.

A short ferry ride from lower Manhattan, Governor’s Island was a military base that had become a town unto itself, with acres of barracks, public schools, grocery stores, and an enclave of old mansions. The husbands of most of the women in Claire’s story were posted with the Army Signal Corps on Wake Island, under relentless attack by the Japanese. Each day, with increasingly stiff, silent despair, the wives waited for news from the Pacific.

“Billings especially liked the shot of the wives and kids walking home after school and staring at the new recruits waiting in line to get processed at the fort.” John Billings was the managing editor. “That old innocence-versus-experience perspective. Always brings tears to my eyes.”

“That’s what keeps you fresh, Mack. All that crying.” She was crying, too, even as she teased and bantered.

“I don’t deny it. My personal favorite was the mom sitting in her dark living room clutching her three little kids and listening to the radio news like some kind of goddamned Madonna. How’d you get her face to glow like that?”

“Professional secret.” She’d bounced the light off three umbrellas, including one behind the woman’s head to create a halo effect, but she wasn’t going to tell Mack. He might share the idea with her rivals.

“However you did it, that one got a full page.”

That shot was her favorite, too. The kids leaning against their mother’s skirt, reaching up to touch her shoulders…the composition reminded her of paintings of the Holy Family by Raphael. The woman, Rosemary Connor, was from Canton, Ohio. She’d never been to New York when she found her family transferred to Governor’s Island and a small house with a magnificent view of Manhattan. Before her children were born, she’d taught first grade. She and her husband were high school sweethearts. Most likely he was now dead, or soon would be, on the far side of the world. Of course none of this information was in the picture itself, but knowing it helped Claire to create an image that evoked something of the woman’s character. “Which shot did Luce pick for the cover?”

“The pretty young mom standing at the railing by the harbor, holding her kid’s hand and staring at the Statue of Liberty in the distance. Sunlight sparkling on the sea, ocean breeze whipping her hair, her back straight and stalwart against the enemy, Lady Liberty leading the way. America the Brave.”

“That’s a great shot, I have to admit.” She’d taken about forty exposures to get one that worked. The glare off the water was awful that day.

“You’re on the A-list now, Shipley.”

“That’s nice to hear, Mack, since I’m sitting here doing the bills.”

“I didn’t say you were up for a raise, I said you’re on the A-list. There’s a difference.”

“I’m positive I heard you say I was up for a raise.”

“Don’t worry, when you are up for a raise, I’ll be the first to let you know. I already said I don’t want that,” he told someone else. “Don’t come to me with the same question twice.” She heard him shuffling
papers. “Oh, Claire, by the way, the higher-ups killed the penicillin story.”

“Now that really isn’t true.” She’d seen the final layout the day before. “Check with production. You’re mistaken, Mack.”

“No mistake. I got official word this morning. ‘Too dispiriting for these difficult times,’ I think is how they phrased it. In other words, the guy dies at the end. No patriotic uplift, no consolation, no moral justice.”

“That’s ridiculous.” The layout was terrific, the story flowed smoothly from the arrival of the ambulance to Nurse Brockett’s final gesture, closing Edward Reese’s eyes. “It’s the best story I’ve ever done.”

“I agree. It
is
the best story you’ve ever done. Next week you’ll have another chance to do the best story you’ve ever done.”

“You have to fight for it.” Suddenly she felt enraged. Not for the loss of her story, but for the loss of Edward Reese’s life. She owed Reese this, at least: that his story would be told. His death, and his life, would be commemorated. She owed it to him, and to Patsy and their children. To James Stanton and Tia Stanton, even to Nurse Brockett. She couldn’t simply accept the fact that this thirty-seven-year-old man was dead from a scratch on the knee. She needed to believe that he’d died a hero in the battle to develop a medication that would save the next man and the next. A medication that would save the next Emily.

“Look, Claire, I happen to know that the old man”—their code for Mr. Luce—“loved it, too. But in the end he said to pull it, and we’re pulling it.”

“Don’t you think that’s a little strange? First he loved it and then he didn’t? Don’t you think that deserves an explanation?” She knew she was overreacting, but she couldn’t help herself. The story cut too close.

“This happens all the time, Claire. You know that. Besides, you got the cover with the army wives, so forget it.”

“The penicillin story is important.” Publicity would get more scientists involved, get more money devoted to the cause. “Lives are at stake.”

“Claire, the world’s exploding. I’ve got more lives-are-at-stake stories than I know what to do with. Ending with a shot of a dead man when the nation’s at war isn’t the most cheery note to go out on.”

“Tell Mr. Luce to reconsider.”

“For God’s sake, Claire, his closest friend died of blood poisoning.”

She remembered. Briton Hadden. They’d established Time, Inc., together. Hadden died in 1929 from septicemia brought on by a scratch from a pet cat. According to company rumor, Luce and Hadden had a complicated friendship. Hadden was charming and fun loving, Luce serious and businesslike. When he died from the cat scratch, Hadden had just turned thirty-one.

“Story must hit too close to home,” Mack said. “That’s probably the reason Luce got interested in it and the reason he got uninterested. Thought he could save Hadden, instead Hadden died all over again.”

“Hadden’s death makes the story even more important. Okay, penicillin didn’t save a life this time, but it almost did. If the scientists can figure out a better way to produce it, it’ll save the next Hadden.” She didn’t mention Emily. Her daughter’s death was too painful for Claire to discuss in the context of work, where she had to appear forever confident and forthright. “I’ll fight for the story myself.”

“Do what you need to do, Claire”—a warning came into his voice—

“but you’ll be on your own. And don’t think the old man will be happy debating this with you when he’s just given you the cover. And I hate to be blunt, my dear, but your opinion on this doesn’t count.”

She took a deep breath and steadied herself. She was becoming too emotional, too
female
.

“Okay, enough of that,” Mack said, holding no grudge. “I’ve got something new for you. A complete change of pace. I can tell you need it. Just in time for the holidays, a new Rockette.”

“Pardon?” Claire didn’t understand him.

“Rockefeller Center at the holidays…a beautiful Christmas tree, beautiful ice-skaters, beautiful tourists, and a beautiful new Rockette. Just when you thought everything is going to hell, here’s something nice and snazzy. Dance shots, girls in tights, star-spangled costumes, guaranteed to cheer everybody up. This girl we’re doing, you’ll like her. She’s nineteen years old, five foot eight, and I won’t mention her measurements except to say—unforgettable. Born in Waterloo, New York, of all the godforsaken places. ‘From Waterloo to Radio City,’ that’s how we’ll headline it. Her name is Aurora Rasmussen. I’m thinking she must have changed it from Audrey, but we won’t mention that. Maybe you can get another cover, a row of Rockettes with their legs up, Christmas lights shimmering behind them. Our beloved Managing Editor Mr. Billings is excited already. Research has a packet for you, explains everything. You start Monday.”

There was no use fighting him.
Life
was popular in part because of its mix of stories, from army wives to Rockettes, and Claire covered whatever came her way. Her job was to use her artistry and technical knowledge to give even the most mundane stories a flair and an impact. Her only proviso was that she didn’t travel unless absolutely necessary, because of Charlie. This limited her assignments and made some of her colleagues regard her as a lightweight instead of a committed professional, but she didn’t care. She trusted she would have a long career, whereas Charlie would grow up too fast.

“All right, Mack,” she said, resigning herself to it. “I’ll see you Monday.”

“That’s my girl.”

They hung up. She leaned back in her chair, frustrated and exhausted. She felt as if she’d betrayed Edward and Patsy Reese, James Stanton and Tia Stanton. They’d trusted her, opened their lives to her, and she’d taken advantage of them.

James Stanton had phoned her twice since she finished the story.
The first call was strictly business: he reported that a writer and researcher from the magazine had contacted him, and he wanted to make certain that the factual information he’d given them matched the photographs she’d taken. She’d appreciated his attention to this, and she’d corrected a few minor errors.

In the second call, he’d surprised her by asking her out to dinner. This call had been brief and awkward, as if the invitation meant more to them both than was superficially apparent. They dealt with their discomfort by cutting the conversation short. She remembered their terse phrases, almost comically clipped, as if they were angry at each other: “How about next Friday?” “Good.” “In the Village?” “Fine.”

What could she say to him now? “The story hasn’t been scheduled, it’s out of my hands, thanks so much for your time and effort, someone will let you know”? These were the usual excuses, and in this case, they were insufficient. She hoped the news wouldn’t destroy the tenuous bond they’d formed. Once again she remembered Edward Reese sitting up in bed, reading the
Herald Tribune
.

An idea flitted into her mind. She would quit the magazine in protest. Turn freelance. Choose what she worked on. No more Christmas trees at Rockefeller Center. No more dancing girls. She would still accept assignments from
Life
, but she could also refuse if the proposal didn’t pass muster. She would do documentary photography, social justice commentary, like Lewis Hine and Dorothea Lange, two of her heroes. Pursue assignments from the new magazine
PM
, with its commitment to social change. Margaret Bourke-White was already there.

Even as she played out this fantasy, Claire knew that she wouldn’t quit. Couldn’t quit. She had friends who were freelancers. Either they had more work than they could handle, or they went for weeks with no assignments. She herself had worked freelance before
Life
was established. She’d managed to build up a good-size group of newspaper and magazine clients, but she’d been only too aware that her clients
could drop her without warning. She couldn’t risk it again. She needed a regular paycheck. Charlie couldn’t skip dinner for a week or a month because her phone hadn’t rung. She couldn’t pretend the roof wasn’t leaking because she was having a slow season. She couldn’t expect any boss but Mack, with his own four children, to sympathize with her desire to work close to home.

And the truth was, she loved working for
Life
. She had a voracious curiosity about people, about the tumultuous world and everything in it. She could indulge that curiosity at
Life
as nowhere else. Every assignment, even Aurora Rasmussen, presented a new challenge, required its own vision, and she wouldn’t give that up.

She checked her watch. Three o’clock. She was meeting Charlie at four. He’d spent last night with her father. This morning they’d gone to the Bronx Zoo, arriving early to beat the crowds.

She put the checkbook and the rest of the bills in the top drawer of her desk. She stood. Lucas, who’d been curled by her feet under the desk, stood, too, pushing his head against her leg.