Shining Through (19 page)

‘Oh, Linda, you
must
have a crush on him.’ And you said, ‘Oh,
no
, Gladys. I’d tell you. We’re
such
good friends. But Mr. Berringer is so boring, with his big blue eyes. He’s
too
good-looking.

Like a third-rate movie star.’
That’s
what you said. Oh, you must have felt so superior, you smug—”

“Please, let’s sit down after work. I want to explain—”

“
Explain?
”

“Gladys, what else could I have done? I know you won’t believe me, but I feel terrible. I’ve done you a great wrong, and I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

“What does ‘shouldn’t’ mean to someone like you? You’ve been
doing
it with him!”

I couldn’t help it. “Oh, stuff it up your nose!” I blurted out.

Was she ever the wrong person to say that to! “Look, Gladys, standing you up yesterday
was
a rotten thing to do, okay? And not confiding in you was…maybe…was worse. But let me tell you, what I did doesn’t compare to how you almost ruined me in there. Everyone was treating me like a leper. They’re going to think—”

She cut me off. “You must be so proud of how you deceived me. ‘I can’t meet you for a drink, Gladys. Mr. Berringer’s rushing off.’ He was rushing off to you! ‘I’m sorry, but I have to work late.’
Work
.” She rubbed out a fingerprint from the patent leather on her handbag. “What kind of ‘work’ do you do for him? Does he pay you overtime?”

“Is that what you want, Gladys? The details? Fine. You want me to give you a blow-by-blow description?”

“You are utterly revolting!”

“Listen!” My voice sounded far off, and strangely tough. “I don’t want to hear one more damn word from you. And if you ever pull anything like what you tried at lunch today—”

Gladys simply walked away. Well, why not? She was positive she had me. She could be mysteriously cold to me for a week or two, savor the attention and then…One word to Helen or Marian, and in ten minutes all the secretaries would be whispering. By three o’clock, enough hints would be dropped to enough bosses that the lawyers would start 136 / SUSAN ISAACS

finding excuses to go past John’s office, past my desk, to look me over, and then go laugh in the men’s room. By four o’clock I’d be called in, maybe by John with a “You stupid…” or even by one of the senior partners. Oh, my God, by Mr. Leland: Under the circumstances, Miss Voss…

“Gladys!” I barked.

She stopped only because she hadn’t expected to hear anything more from me. I caught up with her and walked along beside her. I smiled as Mr. Ervine from Real Estate passed. We made way for him and he said, “Hello, girls,” and kept walking.

“Gladys, listen to me, because if you don’t you’ll be sorry.”

“Don’t you threaten me, you tramp.”

“You say one word, just one word to anybody—the secretaries, Lenny Stevenson, the janitor—and you’re finished.”

“No,” she said. “
You’re
the one who will be finished.” A nasty look, pretty close to a malicious smile, passed over her face. “I really wasn’t going to say anything in there, you know. But now you’re threatening me, and I
do not
like threats.”

“I don’t care what you like, Gladys. Just shut up and listen. I know that one word from you, and the whole office will know.

And I guess that will give you satisfaction.”

“I’m not that small-minded.”

“It’ll give you satisfaction,” I repeated, “but it’ll also get you fired.”

“Oh, come on!”

“John is ready, willing and very able to do
anything
I ask him,”

I said. “I have him in the palm of my hand.” She blinked, then did it again and again, until it became a nervous tic. Blink, blink, blink. She couldn’t stop. “Don’t test me, Gladys. No more cold shoulder at lunch, or you’ll find yourself out on the street. Do we understand each other?”

She blinked again.

“John loves me. Whatever makes me happy makes him happy.”

SHINING THROUGH / 137

“All right,” Gladys said at last.

“So if you like your job…”

“I never had any intention of saying anything.”

And then she rushed away.

1 0

S
eptember 7, 1940. The Battle of Britain was in its second month. On that afternoon, a Saturday, the German
Dreck-ensch-weine
sent three hundred bombers and six hundred fighters to attack the London docks. And later that night, they sent in more bombers; dark orange fires burned along the banks of the Thames, lighting the night fliers’ path toward their targets. But that was over there.

Here, between daylight and dark of that day, I sat on a green plaid couch finishing an article in an overthumbed
Good
Housekeeping
from January. “Hollywood has little trouble finding new and lovely girls to photograph—witness Dorothy Lamour, Rosemary Lane, Sigrid Gurie and the lush Hedy Lamarr, to mention only a few of today’s raw recruits—but able actresses are not come by so easily.”

Good Housekeeping
knew. “You’re a lousy actress, Linda.” Dr.

Guber shook his head wearily a few minutes later in his office.

“
Me?
” I asked, opening my eyes wide so I’d look honest and innocent, unlike lush Hedy Lamarr.

“Come off it, kiddo.” His desk chair creaked as he leaned forward. “I’ve known you all your life.”

Dr. Guber was so tall and thin you could see the stringy muscles where his arms dangled out of his short-sleeved white doctor coat. He was built like a cowboy but talked with a thick New York accent.

“I got a cancer and a rheumatic fever out there,” he went on.

“You think I’m gonna play
Let’s Pretend
that it’s your 138

SHINING THROUGH / 139

mother’s specimen that killed the rabbit? Your mother drinks so much her uterus probably looks like a pickled corned beef.”

Dr. Guber pushed back his chair and stood up. He must have looked at me then, at the moment the smile I’d worked so hard on collapsed, because he came over to my chair and squeezed my shoulder. “Come on. You’re a big girl.” He paused. “You must’ve had a clue.”

I must’ve. Even a supreme moron could add up what sex seven days a week plus two missed periods equals. It took high intelligence to have found new ways to keep avoiding reality the way I did. Every morning I woke up and ran to the bathroom, and when I didn’t find my period, I’d think: Oh, God, oh, no, please! But then I’d think: No. Calm down. It’s nerves. You’re getting yourself in such a stew you’ll never get another period again. Relax!

But then, oh, I knew. Every afternoon the last month, I’d felt sick. Like I was going to give back my lunch when I leaned over a drawer in the filing cabinet. And smells. Mum deodorant: sickeningly sweet, like decaying corpses in detective stories. The roll of Life Savers in my purse stank, especially the purple ones.

And I couldn’t help it, but I kept thinking of food, maybe because I wasn’t able to eat all that much, but I’d imagine a hamburger patty or split-pea soup, and a wave of nausea would rise up in me.

I couldn’t pretend anymore.

“Come on, Linda, let’s go in the examining room,” Dr. Guber said, in the too-calm voice people use with people about to get hysterical. “Five, ten percent of the time, it’s something else that kills the rabbit—a heart attack, or who the hell knows. Anyway, their little pink noses stop twitching and people get nutsy for nothing. You could be fine.”

His long legs took Texas-length strides, and I had to do double time down the narrow corridor. He opened the door to his examining room and stood back to let me go in first. The room had a black leatherette table in the center. He handed me a sheet and said, “Just take off your bottom stuff and your shoes and get up on the table.” He turned away and whistled “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true,” while I

140 / SUSAN ISAACS

pulled off my pants and girdle and he pulled on a rubber glove.

“You ever have an internal?” he called out.

“No,” I said, and took off my shoes and stockings and stretched out on the cold paper that covered the table.

“Listen, it’s nothing. Easy, just so long as you relax.” He turned back and started to pull the sheet first down and then up, as if he was a fussy housewife, so it covered even more than the vast areas I’d already covered with it. Then he began the examination, staring straight into my eyes. “So how’s your mother lately?”

He pushed up with the gloved hand and, with the other, pressed down hard on my stomach.

“Fine,” I gasped.

“Fine, I don’t want to talk about her, or Fine, she’s quit boozing and is studying ancient Greek?”

He was pressing so hard. If I really was pregnant, he could squash the baby. “She’s still drinking.”

He switched on a floor lamp, then pulled over a stool and sat at the foot of the table. “Too bad. She looked like hell last time she was in here.” He lifted the sheet and bent over. “Such a beauty-ful girl. I remember when she first came in, years ago, pregnant with you.” All I could see were the tops of his ears.

“Am I?” I asked. In London, the air raid sirens were screaming.

In Dr. Guber’s office in Ridgewood, it was still.

He looked up. “Yeah, Linda. You’re about two, two and a half months into it, I’d say.” Dr. Guber swallowed his discomfort; his Adam’s apple bobbled nervously in his long, scrawny neck. “Sorry, honey.” His hands appeared from under the sheet.

He stood up and pulled off the rubber glove. It made a squeaky sound; I shivered. Before I could think of a thing to say, he lowered his head and stared at my toes. “Don’t…” he began.

“Uh…I can’t help you with this.” Five or ten possible sentences came into my mind, but they couldn’t get from there to my mouth. The doctor moved his eyes and stared at his own feet.

“And don’t go anywhere else, either. Don’t listen to your girlfriends.” Did he think we sat in the Blair, VanderGraff and Wadley conference room

SHINING THROUGH / 141

chatting about getting rid of babies over our cheese sandwiches?

“These guys are dirty, filthy. You could die.”

“Oh,” I said. Neither of us knew what to say next.

“The fella…” he said at last. “Is he married?” I shook my head, and Dr. Guber broke out into a smile. “Then you got nothing to worry about! Listen to me. He’ll be surprised, yeah, sure.

Maybe a little upset. You know bachelors. But then…he’ll be thrilled.” He pronounced it
trilled
. “You mark my words, honey.

Absolutely thrilled.”

The Monday after I went to Dr. Guber, I was sitting at my desk, in the middle of a tidal wave of nausea that came from some wandering secretary’s eau de cologne—and from my almost continual state of pure terror—when the phone rang. It was Mr.

Leland’s secretary. “Mr. Leland has a bit of dictation for you.

Would this be a convenient time?” Yes, especially if he’d like to see me throw up.

Lucky for me, Mr. Leland wasn’t wearing any deodorant or hair oil or talcum powder—anyway, none with a smell. I sat across from his desk and started to take down another one of his strange letters.

“Dear Felix,” he began. He was wearing a navy blue suit. A thick gold watch chain dangled from his vest, as if he was off to make a speech somewhere or attend a dressy funeral. “I hope you had a grand summer. It’s so refreshing, being close to the sea. I am enjoying the breezes, and the sight of birds diving into the water.”

He cleared his throat. I looked up from my pad. “Is there a word in German for seagull?” he asked.

“Probably,” I said. “Canary is
Kanarienvogel
.” God knows why, but I added, “We had a canary when I was a little girl.”

“What happened to it?”

“The usual canary things. It sang a lot, ate a little birdseed, and died.”

The half of his mouth that seemed to work right smiled at me.

We weren’t exactly what you’d call great buddies, but at 142 / SUSAN ISAACS

least I was a lot less terrified of him. Gradually, I’d noticed—from the way he treated his own secretary to the way he talked on the phone during calls he’d take while I was sitting in his office—that Edward Leland was, for all his importance, all right. Sure, if you crossed him he probably would do something very, very horrible back to you. But as long as you did your job, you were okay. More than okay, because he had a sense of humor: joking to secretaries, witty to lawyers, hysterically funny to clients. Well, why not? He was so high up in the world he could afford to laugh. He was far beyond having to worry about being taken seriously.

“No canaries in this letter. When you get back to your desk, find a seagull or a tern or some sort of ocean-type bird in your dictionary.” He paused and then added, “If you can’t find it, check with Mr. Berringer.”

A new wave of sickness came over me at the mention of John’s name. And to make it worse, not only did Mr. Leland realize something was wrong; he had been waiting for it. He may even have tossed John’s name out for curiosity, or a test, to see what it would do. It did a lot. For the first time in those five weeks of acute afternoon nausea, I felt I really was going to throw up. I lowered my head; it would be terrific, a bright addition to the dark colors in Mr. Leland’s Oriental rug.

“Are you all right, Miss Voss?” I could hear in his voice that he felt bad.

“I’m fine, thank you.” I raised my pencil—and then my head—so he could see I was ready to get going again.

But I must have looked pretty crummy, because he asked,

“Would you like a glass of water?”

“No, thanks. I’m okay.” He looked like he didn’t agree. “Really I am.”

So he began to dictate again. My dizziness didn’t go away, but my stomach calmed down enough so that I felt assured Mr.

Leland wouldn’t have to witness the reappearance of my ham and tomato sandwich.

“I spent the month of August sailing with my three sons,”

SHINING THROUGH / 143

he said. Of course, I knew he didn’t have three sons (just one beaut of a daughter). But this letter was no crazier than any of the others I’d taken in the past couple of months. “Please send my fondest regards to Maria and the two little ones. I remain, Yours, Vincenzo. V-i-n-c-e-n-z-o.”