“So what do we do?”
“We job-lot it for five cents on the dollar.”
“So people will be walking around carrying Copeland Leather with the stitches coming out.”
“We’re still alive,” said Cornell. “With starvation wages, all the money you have, the practically non-existent sales revenue, no extortion increases, and an easing off on the sabotage, maybe we’ve got a year. Then we’d have to shut down. In conditions like that, Harry, a year goes by both very fast and very slow.”
“I understand, but we’ve got a year, and then one way or another we’re done. Look at it that way. In a year, no matter what, it’ll be over.”
This did not cheer Cornell, who said, “I forgot to tell you. Catherine’s father was here. Billy Hale. The man can dress, but I felt comfortable with him.”
“What was he doing here?”
“Looking for you.”
“That’s strange. He does have a telephone. Was Catherine with him?”
“Just him. I showed him around. He was interested in everything we do.”
Harry met Catherine in front of her parents’ house. As they approached one another from opposite ends of the street it was as if they grew lighter. In Catherine’s eyes and her smile was Harry’s memory of her voice, which came from deeper within than there was a within. Although she was unaware of it, the breeze lifted the collar of her coat up from the shoulder and suspended it in the air. A thousand lights of buildings and bridges came on as night fell, a halo that could not do her justice as she rushed toward him, in the wind, on an October evening, with the whole world glittering behind her.
As it often was in the autumn, the house was heated by three or four fires and the light of many lamps. Had the central heating been on, it would have been like an oven, but now the temperature was just right, and as they threw orange and gold rays across slate or marble hearths, the fires made a pleasing noise like that of streams. Billy greeted Catherine, as he always did, as if the last time he had seen her he might never have seen her again. Evelyn was more hopeful that neither she nor her husband were likely soon to drop dead, perhaps because unlike Billy’s friends most of hers tended not to keel over at their desks.
They sat down in the dining room, a fire burning nicely. The first course was soup. “What the hell is this?” Billy asked.
“Yosenabé,” Evelyn reported.
“Yosen what?”
“Yosenabé. It’s Japanese.”
“Why suddenly are we having Japanese soup?”
“I read about it.” It was a clear soup with shrimp, scallops, clams, and seaweed.
“In what, a war-crimes tribunal?”
“They killed us, Billy, and we killed them,” Evelyn said.
“They started it.”
“I know, but it’s over.”
“Not for everyone. I’m sorry, Evelyn, but it reminds me too much of the Taylors, the Drews, the Vanderlyns, the Davises. . . .”
“Which Vanderlyns?” Harry interrupted.
“James.”
“James George?”
“That’s right.”
“Why does it remind you?” Harry asked.
“They all lost boys in the Pacific.”
“The Vanderlyns, too?”
“Their son died on Guadalcanal. He was a marine.”
“How old was he?”
“I don’t know, maybe twenty-four or twenty-five. Not long out of Harvard, but he must have gotten there after you left. That was a big thing, at the time. His father went to Yale. Stupid stuff, but not really serious. He was proud of him but he would joke about being betrayed. He used to say that his son had converted. Why do you ask?”
“The name is familiar,” Harry said.
“Of course it is. They’re a bigger firm than we are. Deadly enemies of the Marrows, like almost everyone else. In the early days, Willie Marrow screwed Vanderlyn out of more deals than you can count. He had—what do you call it, a mole, a plant?—in Vanderlyn’s office. This was before the Crash. We were about your age and, excuse me, we didn’t know a goddamned thing, but we thought we did. Vanderlyn’s uncle ran the firm, but Vanderlyn was the hot one. He would set up a deal, working eighteen-hour days, doing all the research himself, and then Willie would come in at a couple of thousand dollars under. And Willie was smart enough sometimes to come in over. Vanderlyn found out because he followed the mole uptown to Grand Central—rat would be more precise—where the rat, mole, whatever he was, went into a telephone booth and Vanderlyn took the next one, pressing his ear up against the wall and listening as his trusted aide fed everything to Willie Marrow. Even though Willie Marrow has mellowed, God has made the very report of it a tongue twister to let you know that you still must be careful of him. Vanderlyn then began to feed Willie some very wrong information that caused Willie to lose a great deal of money. Then he dispatched the rat to someplace in Southeast Asia, to wait for six months for information about a deal that never existed. While the rat was there, Vanderlyn sent him a cable that said, ‘Go to Tibet immediately, using your own funds,’ and then shut him out of his firm and his mind forever. Vanderlyn is not the kind of man that I would ever, ever, want to be my enemy. While his son was in the Pacific, he himself was in Europe. He doesn’t have much to do with anybody anymore, at least socially. It was his only son, their only child. You don’t get over that.” Billy shot a glance at Catherine.
Harry was more or less unable to speak. Catherine kicked him under the table, and then changed the subject. She had invited herself and Harry to dinner for a particular reason, and she wanted to glide up to it gently. So she talked about the now steady performances, and how she was learning to do her job without thought of recognition, merely to face the audience and do her best. This made her parents feel not only proud but right about having prepared their own moment.
Whereas Catherine had drunk her soup using the right hand to grasp the spoon (with her left hand hidden beneath the table), during the main course her left hand was busy with the fork, holding it while she cut, handing it off to the right hand, and taking it back. A simple ring Harry had bought at Tiffany’s took the firelight, and she knew that her mother would notice the dull gold sheen. And when her mother did, it was no small thing.
“Catherine,” she asked, her voice grave, “do you have something to tell us?”
Billy, who didn’t notice things like rings or shoes, had no idea what was coming—an announcement for which, by feminine observation, Evelyn was now fully prepared.
“Yes, we do,” Catherine said, carefully choosing her words.
Billy obliviously speared potatoes.
“What, dear?” her mother asked, in a tone that would not have been different had a tidal wave twenty storeys tall been racing up the East River.
“Well, we got married.”
Billy had just put a slightly too big potato in his mouth. It shot out like an artillery shell. Before it landed—somewhere—he lunged forward as if he were choking, which he wasn’t, and knocked over his water glass. “What did you say?”
“We got married.”
“Who?”
“Who do you think?”
Billy stared at the puddle of water on the table and tapped it rapidly with his right index finger. His hand looked like a woodpecker. “When?”
She told him.
“One would have thought that you might—might—have invited your parents,” Evelyn said.
“I’m sorry,” Catherine told them. “It had to be quick, and secret.”
They readied for what was next, but were relieved when she said, “I’m not pregnant. And at the right time we can have a ceremony and reception in East Hampton, an orchestra, announcements, all those things. We’d like to do that, but it could never be better than what it was. We had no choice.” She told them why, leaving out what Harry and she were going to do. Billy and Evelyn knew of course that Harry had run afoul of the mob, and understood the reason for dissociating their daughter from Harry publ
icly. Although they could not help but be shocked, they were grateful that it had been done. It was sensible. It was what they would have recommended. And it led right into what Billy had prepared for them.
“I can’t eat,” Evelyn said. “Can you eat?” she asked Harry and Catherine, who could. “Billy, can you eat?”
“No.”
“We’ll go into the living room,” Evelyn told her daughter and, now, son-in-law, “and when you’re finished, come in. With my encouragement, your father has something to tell you.”
They left, Evelyn moving with the dignity of a fully rigged clipper, Billy walking unselfconsciously and erratically, like either a schoolboy fascinated by cracks in the sidewalk, or a goose. Harry and Catherine ate quickly. “That wasn’t so bad,” Harry said. “What do you think they want to talk to us about?”
“My guess,” Catherine told him, “is that they want to get us out of New York, set us up in Paris or somewhere with something that would be lucrative and dignified if we had accomplished it ourselves, but lucrative, demeaning, and destabilizing otherwise.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“You know I can’t either.”
“Okay,” said Billy. “Okay. So. Congratulations. Would you like dessert?” He lifted his eyebrows.
“We had dessert, Daddy,” Catherine said. She took a seat by the fire and crossed her legs. Harry sat down next to Evelyn, catercorner from Catherine so he could look at her. She was wearing a suit of beige satin, stockings with a whitish tinge, and pearls. When he was kissing her he hadn’t noticed in detail how she was dressed, but only the sweetness of her kiss. Her power and sophistication were increasing, and he guessed that by the time she was thirty they would be formidable. What made this even more magnificent was that as she was beginning to know it, she was discovering how to deploy it. Sitting by the fire, perfumed, her legs crossed and ensilked, her jewelry occasionally clinking softly as she moved, her hair glinting and elastic, she was impossible to resist.
Very beautiful women—whether mainly from the physical attributes that can radiate even over a distance, or from some combination of body and spirit in proportions decided not quite here on earth—sometimes soften their overwhelming presences by adopting imperfections: a slight stammer, a dipping of the head, a deferential lowering of the gaze, like someone who is very tall accommodating someone who is short by bending forward to greet him. Not Catherine. Her full effect, amplified by her lack of ameliorative gestures, was almost cruel, the very silence and stillness of their absence allowing the shock of her beauty to penetrate like infrared. To say that her lack of mannerisms was artificial would be to state a contradiction. It was just that she was too interested in the truth of things to waste time stammering even slightly with her soul. She was, to those who appreciated it, painfully beautiful, and that was that. There was no cure for it.
“I haven’t,” said Billy, so late in delivery that no one knew what he was talking about.
“You haven’t what?” Evelyn asked him.
“Had dessert.” Then he forgot dessert and navigated ahead, after a fashion. “You’ve heard of the Gordiani? Or maybe it was Gordioni?” he asked, standing up and walking close to the fire. “The consul and his son in Roman North Africa who were pressed into rebellion against the emperor Maximin? Maximin was literally and figuratively a barbarian. He was an Ostrogoth, or something like that—I hate Ostrogoths—a giant whom the troops called Hercules. He started out not as a soldier but as a servant and camp follower. There was a wrestling match. . . .”
“Billy?” Evelyn said. He turned to her. “Get to the point.”
“All right. I will. You’re married now?” he asked Catherine. She nodded. He turned to Harry. “Legally?” Harry nodded. “Then it makes even more sense.”
“What makes sense?” Catherine inquired.
“Today I went to Harry’s workshop . . . factory. I thought you’d be there. I thought we could all go out to lunch, Evelyn joining us, where I would have proposed what follows. You weren’t, so the colored fellow showed me around. It’s impressive, what you do there, but you’re in trouble. A man has died. You’ve been beaten almost to death, and you’re continually threatened. That’s no way to live, and obviously you’re in danger. Catherine is your wife. Therefore she’s in danger. She’s my daughter.”
Now he spoke very deliberately. “I understand that you’re young, that you’re brave, and that you want to see this through on your own. No one knows better than I the price of the deus ex machina: I was literally born in one. For people like me, who are responsible to family and fortune, it’s the greatest threat. That is, living as if in a glass case. I envy you, Harry, for having been the right age for the war, for having risked everything, for having been broken and for having come back. I was never broken, and I think that means I’ve never really known myself.
“But you’ve been there, you’ve proved yourself, and your strength isn’t in question. Let’s say by way of illustration that you’re the Olympic gold medalist in the marathon. Whoever he is, I assure you that he sometimes takes the train or rides in a car, and over distances less than twenty-six miles. Why risk your life, and that of every man and woman in that workshop, fighting a force from which the police and government will not and cannot protect you?”
“I can’t just fold,” Harry said. “Your decision was made in responsibility to your family and its fortune. I have a family, too, and its fortune, not in money, has a call on me. A part of life that fortifies you against death, and transcends it, is keeping promises.”
“To the dead?” Billy asked, although he knew the answer.
“Especially.”
“But you didn’t promise this to your father.”
“Yes I did. When I was born, my soul took shape in the promises I would keep. They were there by the score, waiting for me, and this was one of them. Catherine will be safe. That’s another. I’ll keep her safe, and if it gets really bad she’ll come home to you. I can’t just surrender the business, if that’s what you mean.”
“I don’t.”
Catherine shifted in her chair. Even her elegance shifted, as if it were a body in itself. Like most adult children, she oscillated between underestimating and overestimating her parents, which made her vulnerable to puzzlement and surprise.
“What I mean to do is to buy the business from you, take it off your hands, and end the problem there.”
“What would you do with it?” Harry asked, as if no one could do anything with it. No one could.
“Dissolve it and write it off as a loss. It would cost very little if that’s what we did.” He saw that Harry was not excited by the prospect. “Because it’s possible to offset profits from another area. You’d get a good price, I’d give a very generous severance to the employees, sell the inventory, machines, and the loft, and abandon the trademark to the public domain. Your adversaries would be left with nothing, and you and your workers would be whole.”
“And what would I do?”
“Whatever you want. Start fresh. Isn’t this what your father would have wanted?”
“Is it what your father would have wanted for Hale and Company?”
Billy was an honest man and probably would have been so even had he not been able to afford to be, so he said, “No.”
“What would you do?”
Billy thought, and surrendered. “I’d fight.”
“That’s what I’m going to do, Billy. Catherine will be safe.”
Now Catherine stood. Perhaps for the first time, her parents saw not the child whose image and memory they would always love, preserve, and carry with them to the end, but a woman who, just like them, was moving in the shadow of mortality. She hardly needed to say what she said, for they had read it in her stance and in the straightness and strength of her body as she rose, in the way she held herself, in her expression, and in her eyes. And before she said it, they had accepted it.
“I don’t need to be protected,” she told them. ??
?I’m not immortal. Just like you, I won’t last forever, and anyone who won’t last forever has to live courageously and well, or she’s left with, and leaves behind, nothing. If defiance gives you life,” she said, turning to Harry, “it gives me life, too. What do you think I do when, every night, I face an audience primed to disapprove of me? What do you think I do when I persist through what I’m told is failure? And why do you think I chose Harry? I didn’t choose him for certainty or protection, but for his courage.” Addressing her parents, she said, “I’m just like him, and I’m just like you. You should know this, starting tonight.”
Evelyn rose, and then Harry, the only one left seated, stood as well. It was a kind of standing ovation from love and respect. Her parents did not have to go to Catherine, for their embrace magically crossed the air. A tug sped down the East River, its lights shining through the dark. They were apprehensive, but never had the Hales stood prouder, except perhaps long before, when they had gone out to chase whales, or cross the sea, or rebel against the mother country. It was dark outside, but an edge of blue remained above the horizon, and the fire came alive as if someone had thrown open a window and the wind had rushed through the room.
Only a short time before, when Catherine had lived in a dorm with a curfew, little allowance had been made for either her natural powers or her durability. All the while that she was contending with Victor, her parents had assumed that she was as protected as when she was a young child, though she had understood by then more of the world, its sadness, and its risks, than they knew. Even then she had fallen deeply in love with an image that, though it might be lost, she could not dismiss, not even, she thought, for Harry. It had never left her. She would never let it leave her. For in it she had been given the gift, early on, of knowing who she was.
Now she tried, tentatively, to stretch her mandate. As she and Harry walked up Fifth Avenue before cutting across the park, she said, “I can handle a gun, you know. I’ve been out on the heath with a shotgun.”
“What heath?”
“The dunes at Hither Hills.”