The Pursuit of Happiness (2001) (70 page)

‘Mr Winchell?’ I said pleasantly.

He looked up and quickly scrutinized my face. When it was clear I wasn’t worth his attention, he picked up his pencil and glanced back down at his copy.

‘Do I know you, young lady?’ he said, a hint of gruffness in his voice.

‘Actually you do,’ I said. ‘But you know my brother even better.’

‘Oh yeah? What’s his name?’

‘Eric Smythe.’

I could tell that the name didn’t register, as he pursed his lips for a second, then continued making a correction.

‘And how’s Eric?’ he asked.

‘He’s dead, Mr Winchell’

His pencil stopped for a moment, but his eyes remained fixed on his copy.

‘Sorry to hear that,’ he said, sounding dismissive. ‘My condolences.’

‘You don’t know who I’m talking about, do you?’

He said nothing. He continued to ignore me.

‘“He may be Marty Manning’s best scribe … but he used to be a Red.”
You wrote that about my brother, Mr Winchell. He lost his job after that, and ended up drinking himself to death. And you don’t even remember his name.’

Winchell now glanced up - in the direction of the maitre d’.

‘Sam,’ he shouted, pointing towards me. I continued speaking - the tone of my voice remaining conversational, strangely calm.

‘And I bet you don’t even remember
me,
do you? Even though you wrote about me just a week ago. I’m the Sara Smythe who,
“according to our spies, is churning out a column featuring a lot of cheap cracks about Our Way of Life for all those bitter expats who choose to live away from these great shores. Memo to Miss Smythe: if you don’t like it here, why not try Moscow?”
Amazing how I can quote you chapter and verse, Mr Winchell.’

I felt a hand touch my arm. It was Sam, the maitre d’.

‘Miss, would you mind going back to your table, please?’ he asked.

‘I was just leaving,’ I said, then turned back to Winchell. ‘I just wanted to thank you for that recent mention, Mr Winchell. You wouldn’t believe how many work offers I’ve had since you wrote about me. It just shows how much clout you still wield these days.’

Then I turned and headed back to my table. I said nothing to Alison about what had just happened when she returned from the Ladies’. I just suggested we order a final round of drinks. Alison agreed, and motioned to the waiter to freshen up our gimlets. Then she said, ‘I bet you Winchell will now write something about you drinking too much at lunchtime.’

‘That man can write whatever the hell he wants,’ I said. ‘He can’t hurt me anymore.’

But, after our one and only meeting, Walter Winchell never mentioned me in his column again.

Still, he really had been most useful on the professional front. I now had so much work on hand that I was pleased when the phone eventually went quiet again. It allowed me to get on with a large backlog of assignments. As always, I especially liked writing over the weekends - as it was a time when all my assorted editors weren’t working, and when the vast majority of my friends were with their families. Sunday, in fact, was the one day I was assured of never getting a single call - which also made it the perfect day to work straight through without distraction.

Until the phone rang one Sunday morning in May at the early hour of nine. I reached for it.

‘Sara?’

My pulse spiked. The phone shook in my hand. I had been wondering if this call would ever come. Now it had.

‘Are you still there?’ the voice asked.

A long pause. I wanted to hang up. I didn’t.

‘I’m here, Jack.’

‘S
O
,’
HE SAID.

‘So,’ I said.

‘It’s been a while.’

‘Yes, it has.’

‘How are you?’

‘Fine. You?’

‘Fine.’

He didn’t sound fine. His voice was constricted, diminished. He was as nervous as I was. I heard street noises in the background.

‘Where are you?’ I asked.

‘The corner of Seventy-Seventh and Broadway.’

Just like old times, I thought. Sneaking out of the house to phone me.

‘Are you busy right now?’ he asked.

‘Kind of. I’ve got a deadline …’

‘Oh. Too bad.’

‘Sorry. It’s just … well, work.’

‘I understand,’ he said.

‘How did you know I was back in town?’

‘Walter Winchell.’

‘My biggest admirer.’

He laughed - but the laugh quickly transformed into a cough. It took him a moment to bring it under control.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a little bronchial infection …’

‘You shouldn’t be standing on a cold street corner …’

‘Well, it was my turn to take the baby out.’

That took a minute to sink in.

‘You have a baby?’ I asked.

‘Yes. A daughter. Kate.’

‘How old?’

‘Seventeen months.’

‘Congratulations,’ I said.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

Another pause.

‘Well …’ he said. ‘I just wanted to say hello.’

‘Hello.’

‘Sara … Meet me. Please.’

‘Jack, I really don’t think that’s a good idea.’

‘It’s been four years.’

‘I know, but …’

‘Four years. That’s a long time. I’m asking for nothing. I just want to see you. Half an hour of your time. No more.’

The phone started shaking again in my hand. I finally said, ‘Gitlitz’s in ten minutes.’

I hung up. I stood by the phone, unable to move. A baby. A daughter. Kate. No …

I wanted to flee. To pack a bag, and run to Penn Station, and catch the next train to …

Where?

Where could I run to this time? And even when I got there, he’d still be with me. As always.

I resisted the temptation of a steadying slug of Scotch. I forced myself into the bathroom. I stared at myself in the mirror. He’ll think I look older … because I am older. I brushed my teeth. I quickly applied lipstick. I brushed my hair. I put down the brush. I gripped the sink, trying to steady myself. The urge to flee hit me again. I forced myself out of the bathroom. I put on my coat. I left the apartment. It had started to snow outside. I turned my collar up against the cold. I lowered my head. I marched the two blocks east to Gitlitz’s.

When I entered the deli, the first thing I saw was a large blue baby carriage parked by a booth. I approached the booth. Jack was sitting there, both hands wrapped around a cup of coffee, staring down into its black surface. He didn’t notice my initial arrival. This was fortunate - as it gave me a moment to absorb the shock of his appearance. He had lost a frightening amount of weight. His cheeks were hollow, his skin pasty. His hair had thinned. His eyes radiated fatigue. He did not look well. He had aged twenty years since I’d last seen him.

He glanced up. His eyes met mine. He attempted a smile, but he couldn’t bring it off. I tried to smile back - but I could see that he registered my alarm at his condition. Instantly, he slid out of the booth and got to his feet. Standing up, the severity of his weight loss was even more disturbing. He reached for me with both hands, then thought better of it, and proffered his right one. I took it. It felt thin, emaciated. His eyes were locked on me. I found it difficult to meet his gaze.

‘Hi,’ he said.

‘Hi.’

‘You look wonderful.’

I didn’t supply the normal refrain - ‘You do too’ - because it was impossible to do so. Instead, I looked down into the baby carriage. Kate was asleep - a pretty, chubby baby in a snowsuit, covered by a thick plaid blanket. I reached into the carriage. I stroked one of her hands. Instinctively, it opened. Her tiny finger closed around my pinky. I stood there, trying to hold everything in check.

‘She’s beautiful,’ I said.

He stood by my side and looked down with me.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘she is that.’

‘Dorothy and you must be very pleased.’

He nodded, then motioned for me to take a seat. I gently disengaged my pinky from her hand. I slid into the booth. He sat down opposite me. He ordered more coffee. His hands curved around his cup again. We said nothing for a while. He finally spoke, his eyes focused on the table.

‘This is … I was always wondering … I … I’m glad to see you, Sara.’

I didn’t know what to say. So I stayed quiet.

‘I don’t blame you for hating me,’ he said.

‘I don’t hate you.’

‘You did.’

‘Maybe. For a while. But … hate is a hard thing to sustain. Grief isn’t. Grief is something that can stay with you for a very long time.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘There have been periods over the last four years when I thought: will it ever get bearable?’

‘Did it?’

‘No. Never. I missed you every hour of every day.’

‘I see.’

‘And your grief for Eric. Did it ever … ?

‘Dissipate? No. But I learned to live with it. Just as I learned to live with my grief for you.’

He looked up at me again.

‘You grieved for
me?
he asked.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Endlessly.’

He stared at me with wounded bemusement.

‘But … you refused to talk to me.’

‘Yes. I did.’

‘And you never read my letters?’

‘That’s right, they were never opened.’

‘Then how can you say …’

‘That I missed you all the time? Because I did. Because I loved you. More than anyone.’

He put his head in his hands. ‘Then why the hell didn’t you let me make contact, Sara?’

‘Because … I couldn’t. The grief was too big. I loved you so damn much that, when you betrayed Eric and me … when Eric died … I couldn’t face you. What had happened was just too terrible. What made it even more terrible was … the fact that I understood why you had to do what you did. How you’d been put in an appalling situation; a situation in which it would have been easy to panic, to make a very wrong call. But that still …
still
… didn’t lessen the repercussions of your choice. Because it took away the two people I valued most.’

The coffee arrived. He continued looking down at the table. He said, ‘Do you know how often I’ve replayed that scene in my head?’

‘What scene?’ I asked.

‘The scene where the two Feds were interviewing me in a conference room at Steele and Sherwood. The company’s lawyer was with me. The interview had gone on all morning. I kept ducking and diving the question of the Communists I knew. For three hours, I stuck to my guns - and just named the people who had already named me. Finally, the Feds got frustrated - and asked to see the company lawyer in private. They must have been gone around twenty minutes. He came back alone. And said, “Jack: if you don’t give them another name, you’re going to be called in front of the Committee as a hostile witness. And your career at Steele and Sherwood will be finished.”

‘All I had to do was say no. That’s all that was required. All right, I might have lost my job, but … I would have found a way of putting bread on the table. But they had me in a corner. And those Feds - they were so good at sniffing out your weaknesses. Jesus, did they play on mine. They knew all about us, of course - and they kept dropping hints about how, if I didn’t cooperate, not only would I be fired from Steele and Sherwood, but word would probably get around about my complicated domestic arrangements. Not only would I be branded a pinko sympathizer, but Mr Flexible Morality. I remember exactly what one of the Feds told me: “Pal, if you were running two households in Paris, no one would give a shit. But in America, we operate according to a slightly harsher moral code:
get found out, get fucked over.
You’ll be lucky to end up shining shoes somewhere.”

‘That’s when I gave them Eric’s name. As soon as it was out of my mouth, I knew I had killed everything. It was just a matter of time before you found out. And when Dorothy found out, she told me I was beneath contempt.’

‘But didn’t she understand that you did it for her and Charlie?’

‘Oh, she got that all right. But she still saw it as another of my betrayals. She kicked me out for a while after that. Told me that she’d give me the divorce I’d always wanted … that I’d now be free to be with you …’

It took me a moment or two to speak.

‘I didn’t know,’ I said.

‘If only you’d read my letters … if only you’d let me contact you … I kept thinking: this is the shittiest irony imaginable. And it’s my own fault …’

He broke off, reached into his overcoat pocket, and fumbled around until he found a cigarette. He screwed it into a corner of his mouth. He picked up a book of matches off the table. He lit his cigarette with shaking hands. The light of the match cast his face in a gaunt glow. He looked so shrunken, so denuded, so defeated by everything. I saw myself throwing out his box of letters. Letters which he must have spent hours writing. As I spent hours writing him throughout the winter of ‘46 … when I simply couldn’t believe the wonderfully delirious love I felt for him. For four years, his letters sat gathering dust in Joel’s office. Four years. I let them sit there. And then, on the day I returned to New York, I simply tossed them away - as a final act of reprisal. Why didn’t I read them when he first sent them? Why did I have this need to punish him? A punishment which would now haunt me. Because I would always wonder: had I read those letters in the months after Eric’s death, might I have understood? Might I have found a way of forgiving him? Might we have discovered a way back to each other?

‘What happened after Dorothy threw you out?’

‘I spent around six months on a fold-out couch in Meg’s apartment.’

Meg. Her letter to me in the winter of ‘53:

What can I say, Sara? Except this. I know how deeply you once loved him. I don’t ask for a miraculous reconciliation. All I ask is that, somehow, you find a way to forgive him - and to communicate your forgiveness to him. I think it would mean an enormous amount to him. He is now a deeply unhappy man. He needs your help to find his way back to himself.

But, oh no, I couldn’t be seen to weaken from my position. I had self-righteousness on my side. He had to be permanently condemned. He’d made his bed (as I so caustically wrote back to Meg). Now he could lie in it. Alone.

‘Eventually, Meg engaged in some delicate diplomacy with Dorothy,’ Jack said. ‘At heart, my wife has always been a complete pragmatist. And the reason she took me back was an utterly pragmatic one: living alone with a small child was difficult. “As far as I’m concerned,” she told me, “you’re a second pair of hands, nothing more. Except, of course, to Charlie. He needs a father. It might as well be you.’”

‘And you still went back after she said that?’ I asked.

‘Yes. I went back. To a loveless marriage. But I’d made a vow, a commitment. I tell you, Catholic guilt is something to behold. But the real reason I went back was Charlie. I couldn’t stand to be apart from Charlie.’

‘I’m sure he needs you very much.’

‘And I him. Without Charlie, I don’t think I would have made it through the last couple of years.’

He suddenly shook his head, with annoyance.

‘Sorry, sorry - that sounds melodramatic.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Never better,’ he said, taking a nervous drag on his cigarette.

‘You look a little … wan.’

‘No. I look like shit.’

‘You’re not well, are you?’

His fingers closed around the coffee cup again. He continued to avoid looking at me.

‘I wasn’t well. A bad bout of hepatitis. Word of advice: never eat cherrystones at City Island.’

‘It was just hepatitis?’ I asked, trying not to sound overtly sceptical.

Another fast drag of his cigarette.

‘Do I look that bad?’

‘Well …’

‘Don’t answer that. But yeah - hepatitis can really kick the crap out of you.’

‘You’ve been off work?’