Fellow Travelers (19 page)

“Would you let me make you dinner some night?” she asked.

“Really?”

“Really,” she assured him. “Just the two of us.”

“Of course,” he replied, knowing there
would
be a third, incorporeal presence at her table. For the first time in his life he would be talking to somebody about Hawkins Fuller, saying his name, making judgments and speculations about him, offering amusing stories in which he himself figured. But were there any stories that Tim could actually tell? Ones that didn’t have nakedness and the bedroom for their costume and setting? Banishing this reverie, he spoke again at last: “Hawk got dragged away to meet someone.”

“I know,” Mary said. “I was taken over there, too.” She pointed toward a spot by the railing.

“Oh, my gosh,” said Tim, “that’s Mrs. Wilson!”

The widow of the twenty-eighth president remained plump and pretty, sitting in a white metal garden chair atop this hotel whose opening she had attended in 1917. He watched Hawk standing over the former first lady, charming her. She was playfully swatting him with a heavily ringed and braceleted hand, its adornments probably having come wholesale from her first husband, Mr. Galt, whose old jewelry store survived a few blocks away.

“No,” said Mary. “Fuller was taken to meet the one standing next to her.”

Tim noticed a well-tailored blond girl alternating her gaze between Hawk and Mrs. Wilson, smiling as if her life depended on it.

“She’s pretty,” said Tim.

“You think so?” asked Mary, who then seemed surprised by her own cattiness. “Some distant relative of Senator Saltonstall’s,” she explained. “Down from Massachusetts for a summer course at the National Gallery. Lucy something-or-other.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

July 20, 1954

Dear Tim,

The christening will be at Church of the Holy Rosary on S.I. (Jerome Ave.)—Sunday, Aug. 1, just after the 11:00 Mass. There will be a little party afterwards, but we’ll expect you and Mom and Dad for breakfast beforehand.

The baby is twice the size she was when you saw her, and Mom (who I must say was a big help) has finally decided she can go back to Stuy Town. All the middle-of-the-night crying does make Tom very cross, which peeves me (since he’s not around to hear it all
day
), but I suppose we’ll get through this patch. (They say even Marilyn M. and DiMaggio are having their troubles.)

What a strange Fourth of July! I was still woozy from the anesthetic when you all got here…not exactly the holiday picnic you’d been expecting when you came up from Washington. Being a week early was the last thing I’d expected, but I was so glad you were here to see Maria when she was brand-new.

We’d missed you at Easter, and at Mother’s Day, and on Father’s Day, too. (I miss you period, brother. Or should I say “godfather”!) Even on the Fourth, I could tell through the haze I was in that you were eager to get back to the ferry and Penn Station…eager to be far away. A week ago Mom told Dad there’s a kind of veil between you and the world these days, which made me think of that flimsy old curtain (a “scrim”?) on the stage in the Holy Cross auditorium. Mom says she’s sure you leave more out of your letters than you put in.

Grandma Gaffney heard all this between Mom and Dad and put a stop to their conversation by squawking: “If Timmy’s got something to tell you, he’ll tell you.”

So tell us. I don’t want to pressure and pester you, but you
are
my baby brother, not to mention Maria’s godfather, and I worry about you. Think about clueing me in a little…even if you are a government bigshot now.

With love from Frances, Tom, and Maria Loretta

XXX

P.S. Grandma G. says the baby’s name “makes her sound like a dago.”

The pages of Francy’s letter now lay, limp with lunchtime humidity, on Tim’s office desk. Realizing he still wasn’t ready to respond, Tim folded the letter and put it into his left pants pocket, the right one already being occupied by a postcard he’d received from Maine, where Hawkins would be staying until August 1. As the baby’s godfather, he could hardly miss going up to Staten Island that day, but in truth, he’d give almost anything to remain in Washington, on the chance he might be allowed over to I Street for a first-night-back reunion.

The approaching click of Potter’s canes, along with the high-pitched voice of Tommy McIntyre, made Tim clear the remains of a sandwich and its wax paper from his blotter. Returning from a closed lunchtime session of the subcommittee, the senator and Tommy were pulling a small entourage of reporters, including Kenneth Woodforde, into the office.

“A Pulitzer!” Tommy cried. “A Pulitzer to the first photographer who gets a shot of Cohn saluting Zwicker!”

McCarthy had scheduled a subcommittee meeting to investigate reports of subversion at a Boston defense contractor, but the Democrats had wrested away the agenda, and Potter, by voting with them, had just created a 4–3 majority forcing the resignation of Roy Cohn. The committee counsel was now expected to begin his own long-deferred military service in the National Guard at Camp Kilmer—under the very general that McCarthy, back in February, had pronounced “not fit to wear the uniform.”

For a second, Tim’s mind went longingly back to General Airlie and the rest of the spectating brass that Mr. Welch used to assemble in the Caucus Room, but another burst of glee from Tommy put an end to any daydreaming. “Dave and Royboy will be wearing the same shade of khaki now!” he shouted. Senator Potter tried to project dignity against Tommy’s merriment, concluding whatever remarks he’d been making to Woodforde by stressing “the importance of getting back to serious investigations, ones that will respect people’s rights while uncovering the truth. You know, Mr. Woodforde, these Communists are real.”

“Since you acknowledge their reality,” Woodforde asked, “does that mean you’re now ready to recognize Red China?”

Potter looked baffled.

“Wise guy,” said Tommy.

“Can’t blame me for trying,” replied Woodforde, who closed his notebook and let the two other reporters proceed without him to Potter’s inner office.

“There’s more of them to recognize all the time,” said Tim, once he realized he’d been left alone with Woodforde. “Communists, I mean.”

“Thanks to magazines like
The Nation
?” asked Woodforde.

“Well, yeah, actually. It looks as if we’ve now got twelve
million
more to recognize in Indochina.” A peace conference at Geneva, following the Communist victory at Dien Bien Phu, was about to divide Vietnam in two.

“You mean those twelve million people who’d be so much happier and freer being ruled by the French?”

“Yeah, those,” answered Tim, trying to speak with a smile. “The ones who are having their new country designed by Molotov.”

“
Two
new countries,” Woodforde reminded him.

“Right. Korea, Germany, China, now Vietnam. All those big half loaves, and the Communists always stay hungry.”

“The Communists will be evacuating South Vietnam within ten months,” said Woodforde, reciting what had been pledged at Geneva.

“You don’t believe that, do you?” asked Tim. “Or that they won’t kill any more French priests in the meantime?”

“None that don’t have it coming.”

Tim shook his head and turned on the radio, not in any real display of anger, just to make plain that he couldn’t continue a conversation in this vein.

Over the airwaves, the voice of Roy Cohn was explaining the toll that this past year had taken on his parents in the Bronx. Senator Potter, tape-recorded ten minutes earlier, was wishing him well. A statement from McCarthy’s office, just released and now being read by the announcer, struck a less forgiving note: “The resignation of Roy Cohn must bring great satisfaction to the Communists and fellow travelers. The smears and pressures to which he has been subjected make it clear that an effective anticommunist cannot long survive on the Washington scene.”

Woodforde was smiling—over this formulation that might soon become McCarthy’s epitaph for himself—when a colleague from
U.S. News
stuck his head in the door: “Come on down. Flanders is starting his speech.”

Woodforde waved for Tim to join them in the gallery. “Here’s something we can all agree on, no?”

Still uncertain about the censure movement, Tim nonetheless felt glad of a truce and agreed to accompany the two reporters. He fell in step beside Woodforde, wondering as they double-timed it down the corridor why some part of him felt drawn to this left-wing provocateur.

The gallery was more crowded than the floor. Democrats—worried about appearing overeager—were thin on the carpeted ground below press and spectators. But rhetoric was soon off to the races. Flanders invited his colleagues to consider “the Senator as Führer,” even if that role had come to McCarthy “without conscious intention on his part.” A chance for Joe to change his ways was being offered, the Vermonter insisted, “in a spirit of Christian charity.”

“See,” Woodforde whispered to Tim. “Even the priests approve.”

“Paul says it’s over a hundred degrees in St. Louis.”

“I guess we shouldn’t complain,” said Tim.

Mary Johnson, who’d had to persuade the boy to remove his seersucker jacket, fluffed the chicken hash on the burner and disagreed. “Oh, sure we should complain.”

“Doesn’t it get even more steamy than this in New Orleans?” Tim asked.

“They know how to build
shade
there. We used to spend half the day in the dark, behind the shutters.”

She looked at him as he set out the plates and napkins, and had trouble believing he would spend half his life like that, hiding in shadows. He reminded her a little of Lon McCallister, that slight, sweet actor who’d had to kiss Katharine Cornell in
Stage Door Canteen
and had just walked away from the movies at thirty. Right now she herself felt a little like the grand Miss Cornell, or at least Our Miss Brooks, though she couldn’t be more than a few years older than Tim.

“So, have you heard from him?” she was suddenly moved to ask.

He brightened up as if they’d decided to go straight to dessert.

“A postcard from Bar Harbor,” he answered, reaching for it in his pocket. “‘Dear Skippy,’—that’s a nickname he has for me—‘Nothing up here but the Bucksport papers, and even they still echo with praise for Citizen Canes.’ That’s what he calls my boss. ‘I won’t return until the first, by which time an air conditioner is supposed to be installed in every front window of 2124 Eye Street. You can come over when you need to get that scapular unstuck from your overheated skin. Sheen’s TV show, by the way, doesn’t reach these parts, so Mother will have to remain in the clutches of the Reformation for a while. HF.’”

She saw his face contract with embarrassment as he finished—not because it was too much; because it was too little. Where were “love” and “wish you were here,” or even a double entendre about the lighthouse pictured on the front of the card? The scapular might suggest intimacy, but of a small, controlled sort, a rationing prompted not by fear of the postman’s prying eyes, but wariness of the boy’s ravenous heart.

She had to give him the chance to display his feelings, had to force herself to say some words that would allow that: “You must miss him.”

The gratitude on his face was immediate, though he stopped short of saying anything.

“We even miss him in the office,” she declared, helpfully. “Though, of course, he
is
impossible.”

“He is, isn’t he?” said Tim, whose laughter was still more nervous than relieved. As if remembering his manners—and that he ought to share such pleasure—he asked: “Is Paul impossible, too?”

Mary thought for a moment. “Paul is, I’d say, very…possible.”

Tim smiled. “Is that a compliment?”

“
Possibly.
” She doubled her Southern accent to keep him amused, while realizing that this was not a question she wanted to entertain. “Okay,” she said, “the hash is finally hotter than the room.” She poured a tumbler of ice water for herself, and a glass of milk for him. He reached for it quickly, as one would for a ringing telephone. “Did he tell you that? About the milk-drinking, I mean.”

“Yes,” said Mary, glad to give him this small, additional thrill, though in truth, while Fuller might be indiscreet about the boy’s existence, he never said too much about Tim himself.

She had gone as far as she could in one night. She could
not
take conversation about Fuller, let alone Paul, any further. But what else could she ask this boy about? He had less ambition than any young man she’d ever met in Washington. He already
had
a career—a vocation, she supposed—in Hawkins Fuller.

“So,” she said, resorting to a topic of the day, and a question that didn’t come out as well as it might have. “Do you think the army will make a man out of Roy Cohn?”

The Sand Bar’s piano player started in on “Some Enchanted Evening,” and Tim ordered a bottle of Senators beer. He couldn’t remember the one that Mary’s fiancé brewed, but this would do fine. And
he’d
be fine here. He had heard Hawk mention this place once or twice, and he’d decided to walk all the way to it from Mary’s apartment.

As exciting as it had been to talk with her about Hawk—and as grateful as he’d been for the permission—he had ended the evening feeling like a specimen, a sympathetic object of study. Mary seemed to recognize the same thing herself, and just as clearly to regret it, but her own attempts at being natural had somehow made things worse. In saying goodbye, she’d apologized for any awkwardness and expressed the hope that their dinner might be considered “a first try”—thereby heightening, once more, the atmosphere of scientific inquiry. However appealing she might be, he’d been relieved to get back out onto the streets of Georgetown, and now, a half hour later, to this bar in Thomas Circle. The place was bringing him a step closer to Hawk, the way smelling one of his shirts might do, were he only permitted entry into the I Street apartment while Hawk was away.

Two stools to his left, a slightly built man with dyed hair and plucked eyebrows nodded to him. He nodded back and, never having been by himself in a bar—let alone this kind of bar—worried that he might have just given a signal that was open to misinterpretation. As soon as his bottle of beer arrived, he got up, deciding to drink it against the wall at the other side of the room. But the man with plucked eyebrows shook his head and pointed to a sign behind the bar.
NO DANCING. NO CARRYING DRINKS
.

Tim mouthed the word “thanks” just as the man’s friend returned from the bathroom.

“You’re crazy,” said the man, resuming the argument he and his friend had evidently been having.

“I am not—I repeat
not,
” said the bulkier friend, “putting in for promotion.”

“You work at the
Interior
Department, Donald, not the Atomic Energy Commission.”

The bartender, to keep them from exploding at each other, began to sing “Don’t Fence Me In.”

“They still investigate,” said the Butch One, as Hawk would have called him.

The fairy rolled his eyebrowless eyes and said nothing.

“There’s a Master List,” the bigger one insisted. “Of
us.
”

“No, there’s
not,
” said the fairy.

“Behave,” the bartender instructed him. “He’s the daddy.”

The two of them walked off toward the jukebox, leaving their drinks where they were. The piano player was starting his break, so they put in a nickel for “How High the Moon.”

The bartender, well-muscled and weatherbeaten, pointed to the Butch One and speculated to Tim: “I guess when you’ve managed to get out of Rich Square, North Carolina, you figure you don’t need to be promoted on top of things. Where are
you
from?”