The Pursuit of Happiness (2001) (49 page)

‘You must find out who named you.’

‘What good would that do?’

‘Maybe you could exert some ethical pressure on them to retract their denunciation …’

‘Ethical pressure. You’re a bright lady, S … but right now, you sound like Pollyanna. There are
no
ethics to this game, S. None. It’s every man for himself - and that’s what Joe McCarthy and his asshole cronies are playing upon: that basic adult fear of losing everything you’ve worked so hard to achieve. Bert Schmidt is right: when faced with the choice of losing your livelihood, or shopping your friends, you’re going to screw your friends.’

‘So you’re going to cooperate?’

‘Don’t look at me that way,’ he said, suddenly hostile.

‘I’m not looking at you any way, Eric. I was just asking …’

‘I don’t know. I’ve got… what? … two and a half days to make a decision. I’ve also got no money in the bank.’

‘What do you mean, no money? You made over sixty thousand last year …’

‘Yeah, and I spent over sixty thousand.’

‘How the hell did you do that?’

‘It’s easy. So damn easy that I now also have something called debt.’

‘Debt? On your paycheck? How much?’

‘I don’t know. Seven, eight thousand, maybe …’

‘Oh my God …’

‘Yeah: oh my God. So you see my problem here. If I don’t cooperate, not only am I branded a Commie and a pervert, but NBC also turns off the money faucet. And I am bankrupt on all fronts.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘I haven’t a fucking clue. What would
you
do?’

‘Honestly?’

‘Yes, honestly.’

‘Honestly …’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’

T
HE NEXT TWO
days were nightmarish. I insisted that Eric see a lawyer. Naturally enough, he turned out to be Joel Eberts. As soon as nine o’clock arrived, I called Eberts’ office. He answered the phone himself, and told us to come downtown immediately. Given his union background, Mr Eberts was completely sympathetic with Eric’s dilemma. But after trawling through his contract with NBC - and also hearing about the FBI’s information on Ronnie - he said he could do nothing except offer moral support.

‘Of course, we could fight this in court. But - as the NBC counsel told you - they can well afford to have this thing drag on for years. In the meantime, you’ll be branded a Red. And - although I don’t give a damn about who sleeps with whom - I’m afraid they can hang you on the morals clause. Worst yet, if you do take them on, they’ll leak stuff to some slimeball like Winchell. Next thing you know, the dirt’ll be dished in his column. You’ll be through.’

‘So what am I supposed to do?’ Eric asked.

‘My friend - that is completely your call. And I don’t envy you your options one bit. Because, either way, you lose. The real question here is: what do you want to lose
least?’

Eric shifted anxiously in his chair.

‘I simply cannot turn stool pigeon on people who were guilty of nothing more than the same dumb idealism which I once shared. Jesus Christ, even if these people were the Rosenbergs, I still couldn’t turn them in. I’m probably not patriotic enough.’

‘Patriotism isn’t the issue here,’ Joel Eberts said. ‘Joe McCarthy and that clown Nixon are probably two of the biggest patriots imaginable. And they’re both swine. No, the question here is a harder one: can you harm yourself to save others … even though you also know that, eventually, they’re going to be harmed anyway. Of course, it’s easy for me to sit here and tell you how I might react. But I’m not in your situation. I’m sure Hoover and his henchmen have a file on me as well, but they can’t get me disbarred for my politics. Or, at least, not yet. They can’t ruin my life. But they can ruin yours.’

I watched as Eric kneaded his hands together. Without realizing it, he kept rocking back and forth in his chair. His eyes seemed vacant, haunted. He desperately needed sleep - if only to escape this ordeal for a couple of hours. I so wanted to help. But I didn’t know how to help him.

‘There’s only one piece of advice I can give you,’ Joel Eberts said. ‘And if I were in your position, it’s the action I’d follow: leave the country.’

Eric considered this for a moment. ‘But where would I go?’ he asked.

‘There are a lot of other places on this planet besides America.’

‘I’m asking: where would I go to make a living?’

‘How about London?’ I said. ‘They have TV in London, don’t they?’

‘Yeah - but they don’t have my sense of humor. They’re English, for Chrissakes.’

‘I’m sure you’d find some niche for yourself. And if not London, then there’s Paris or Rome …’

‘Oh yeah, me writing gags for the French. What a swell idea that is …’

Joel Eberts came in here. ‘Your sister’s right. A talented guy like yourself will find work anywhere. But that’s a secondary concern right now. What you should be focusing on is getting out of the country within forty-eight hours.’

‘Won’t the Feds come after me?’

‘Probably not. The pattern so far is that, once they’ve frightened you overseas, they generally leave you alone … unless, of course, you try to come back home.’

‘You mean, I’ll never be allowed back to the States again?’

‘Mark my words - within a couple of years, this whole
meshuga
blacklist business will be completely discredited.’

‘A couple of years,’
Eric said, sounding disconsolate. ‘Who the fuck ever heard of an American having to go into exile?’

‘What can I say? These are bad times.’

Eric reached out and took my hand. He squeezed it hard. ‘I don’t want to go. I like it here. It’s all I know. And have.’

I swallowed hard and said, ‘The other options are terrible ones. At least this way, you’ll be able to get away as cleanly as possible.’

Silence. Eric continued to shift uneasily in his chair, struggling with the decision. ‘Even if I did decide to leave, there’s a problem. I don’t have a passport.’

‘That’s not a problem,’ Joel Eberts said.

He told us what to do. I insisted that we act on his advice immediately - because, as Eberts warned Eric, he could not afford the luxury of a reflective decision.

‘Forty-eight hours from now, they’re going to expect a list of names from you,’ Eberts said. ‘If you don’t give it to them, that’s it. The steamroller heads in your direction. You’ll be out of a job. You’ll get a subpoena from HUAC. From that moment on, the Department of State will block any passport applications until after you’ve testified. They did that to Paul Robeson. They’ll certainly do it to you.’

The way around this, however, was to get Eric a passport within the next twenty-four hours. According to Eberts, it usually took two weeks to process an application … unless you had proof that you were traveling at the last minute. So, as soon as we left Eberts’ office, we took a taxi uptown to a big branch of Thomas Cook’s on Fifth Avenue and 43rd Street. After some checking around, one of the travel agents there found a single berth on the SS
Rotterdam
sailing for Hoek van Holland the following night. We bought the ticket, then raced uptown to the Passport Office on 51st and Fifth. The clerk inspected Eric’s ticket to Europe, and told him that, in order to get the passport issued by five p.m. tomorrow (a mere two hours before the SS
Rotterdam
sailed), he’d need the proper photographs, a copy of his birth certificate, and assorted notarized signatures by close of business today.

It was a scramble - but Eric just managed to clear the deadline that afternoon. The clerk assured him that he’d have the passport by the end of tomorrow - which would give Eric an hour to dash across town and make it to the ship by six (he had to be on board at least an hour before it sailed). It would be tight, but he’d make it.

Once we were finished at the passport office, Eric suggested we head back to his apartment at the Hampshire House. Once there, I helped him winnow through his large wardrobe and choose just enough to fit into a single large suitcase. As he put the cover on his Remington typewriter, he suddenly sank into his desk chair.

‘Don’t make me get on that ship,’ he said.

I tried to stay controlled. ‘Eric, you have no choice.’

‘I don’t want to leave you. I don’t want to leave Ronnie. I’ve got to see him tonight.’

‘Then call him. See if he can get back here.’

He started to sob again. ‘No. I couldn’t bear the goodbye. The scene at the docks. All that heart-rending crap.’

‘Yes,’ I said quietly. ‘I’d avoid that if I were you.’

‘I’ll write him a letter - which you can give him when he comes back here at the weekend.’

‘He will understand. I’ll make sure he does.’

‘It’s absurd, all this.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is absurd.’

‘I’m just a jokesmith. Why the hell are they treating me like Trotsky?’

‘Because they’re bullies. And because they’ve been given carte blanche to act like bullies.’

‘Everything was going so well.’

‘It will go well again.’

‘I love what I do, S. I’ve found my niche. Not only does it pay me ridiculous amounts of money, but writing the show also happens to be a lot of fun. Which is something that work isn’t supposed to be. That’s what really hurts about having to run away - knowing that, for the first time in my life, everything is the way I want it to be. The job. The money. The success. Ronnie …’

He gently released himself from my arms, and walked over to the living room window. Night had fallen on Manhattan. Down below was the black interior of Central Park, flanked by the seductive glow of lit apartments along Fifth Avenue and Central Park West. What always struck me about this view was how perfectly it reflected the city’s spirit of arrogant indifference. It was a skyline that issued a challenge:
try to conquer me.
But even if you did - even if, like Eric, you were feted as a New York success - you still didn’t ever really make your mark on the place. All that striving, all that ambition - and the moment after you’d had your moment, you were forgotten. Because there was always someone else in Manhattan coming up right behind you, battling to have their moment. Today, Eric was the hottest writer in television comedy. When the SS
Rotterdam
set sail tomorrow night, word would spread that he’d fled overseas rather than name names. Some people would applaud his actions, some would deplore them. By this time next week, however, he’d be a tertiary consideration in the minds of any of his professional colleagues. Because that’s how things worked. His disappearance would be like a death. Only those who loved him would mourn his absence. For everyone else who knew him, the shock of his vanishing would be a temporary (and welcome) respite from all the incumbent pressures of work. For a few days, people would talk among themselves in hushed voices about the transitory nature of success; and the ethical rights or wrongs of Eric’s choice to flee the country. Then the subject would be dropped. Because it was the start of another week and a new show had to be written.

Just as it always did.

Though I didn’t ask him, I sensed that Eric was thinking what I was thinking, as we both looked out on the muted glow of that uptown skyline. Because he put his arm around my shoulders and said, ‘People spend their entire damn lives chasing what I’ve had.’

‘Stop talking about it in the past tense.’

‘But it’s over, S. It is over.’

We ordered in dinner from room service. We drank two bottles of champagne.

I slept on his sofa bed that night, wishing all the time that Jack was in town. The next morning, Eric drew up a list of his debts. He was nearly five thousand dollars in the red to places like Dunhill, and Brooks Brothers, and 21, and El Morocco - and assorted other watering holes and purveyors of luxury goods, with whom he maintained an account. He had less than a thousand dollars in the bank.

‘How did you land yourself in this mess?’ I asked.

‘I always picked up the tab. And I also discovered a post-Marxist weakness for luxury items.’

‘That’s a dangerous failing. Especially when coupled with reckless generosity.’

‘What can I say … except that, unlike you, I’ve never known the pleasures of thrift. Anyway, one good thing about leaving the country is that I’ll be out of reach of the IRS.’

‘Don’t tell me you’ve got a tax problem too?’

‘It’s not a problem, actually. It’s just that I haven’t filed a return for … I don’t know … maybe three years.’

‘But you have been paying them some tax, haven’t you?’

‘Well, if I haven’t taken the trouble of filing a return, why would I also bother sending them some money?’

‘So you owe them …’

‘Lots. I think it’s something like thirty per cent of everything I’ve earned ever since I’ve joined NBC. Which is a sizeable chunk of change.’

‘And you put
nothing
aside.’

‘For God’s sakes, S - when have I ever done anything sensible?’

I stared down at the list of debts, and resolved to settle them myself once Eric was on the far side of the Atlantic. In addition to my invested portion of the divorce settlement, I’d been saving consistently since writing for
Saturday/Sunday,
and I’d also just banked that five-thousand-dollar advance from Harper and Brothers. So I’d be able to clear my brother’s name at assorted emporia around town. The IRS would be another matter. Maybe I could sell some stock, or get a mortgage on the apartment. For the moment, however, I just wanted to get Eric aboard that ship. Worried that he might suddenly lose his nerve and vanish for a few critical hours, I made him promise to stay in the apartment until four thirty … when we’d grab a cab to the passport office.

‘But this could be my last-ever day in Manhattan. At least let me take you to lunch at 21.’

‘I want you to lie low, Eric. Just in case …’

‘What? That J. Edgar Hoover and his boyfriend have decided to tail me for the day?’

‘Let’s just get through this as cleanly as possible.’

‘There’s nothing at all clean about this.
Nothing.’

Eric didn’t like it - but he eventually did agree to stay put for the day while I did all the busy work. I got him to write me a check for the remaining thousand dollars in his bank account. I went to his branch of Manufacturers’ Hanover, cashed it, and bought him the equivalent amount in traveler’s checks. I paid a fast visit to Joel Eberts’ office and collected a power-of-attorney document. Then I rushed uptown to Tiffany’s and bought him a sterling silver fountain pen, and had it engraved:
From S to E. Always.