The Pledge (20 page)

“And what do I tell your mother? Who was your father? Where is your mother? What schools did you go to?”

“Tell her the truth. Either she lives with it, or she refuses to believe it and tells herself it's not so.”

“That's pretty damned cavalier.”

“What are the alternatives? Do I marry a woman never to be seen by my mother and father? Or do we dress you up in a suit of lies? I hate lies. This world stinks of lies. Not only do I love you, but you're beautiful and one hell of a remarkable woman.”

“All right, damn you. Dress me. What do I wear?”

“Flats, to begin. They're not tall, and I don't want you to tower over them. I think my father's five-ten or so. Mother is five-six, if I remember.”

“OK. Hair?”

“Tight in back. Do it in a bun. No lipstick.”

“How many times have you seen me with lipstick? Or didn't you notice? Oh, the hell with all this! I have a decent gray flannel skirt and a white silk blouse.”

“You brought it up,” Bruce said. “I never would have presumed to tell you what to wear.”

“Oh, shit!” she exploded. “Sometimes I wonder how I ever got into this. I'm a Mick kid. I have no graces, and I'm not going to learn any to please a couple of American Gothic characters who don't know which side is up.”

“You're spoiling for a fight that isn't going to take place. You have more graces than anyone I ever knew, and you just happen to be the most well-read and the most erudite lady I ever encountered. So don't give me any crap about being an ignorant Mick kid. You cling to those memories of yours the way one of those cheap royal clowns we bumped in the war clings to his memories of being a king.”

She burst into laughter. “What a hodgepodge of mixed metaphors. No, we won't fight, baby. Anyone who raised you can't be wrong. Tell me, were you ever an Eagle Scout?”

“That's a hell of a thing to throw at me. Half the time around you, I don't know whether I'm being insulted, put down, or praised. OK. I was an Eagle Scout. Make something out of it.”

She threw her arms around him and said, “Darling, I love you so much, and I would have been disappointed if you hadn't been an Eagle Scout, and I only laugh at you because you're so delicious and because I never knew anyone like you.”

And when Bruce came to pick her up to take her to his parents' home, he might have well said that he had never known anyone like her. She had bought herself a new skirt that fell halfway down her calf in the courtly sweep of the New Look, a bold kelly green that was perfect with her red hair. The hair in the bun was no less startling in color, and her broad hips and straight shoulders gave her a queenly presence.

“Beautiful,” Bruce said. “You are something.”

“We're also pretty stodgy,” Molly admitted. “Back in the early thirties, Party members never bothered about such niceties as marriage or parents. I feel an awful cloak of respectability settling upon me. Also, I think they're going to fire me down at the
Worker.
I have too many fights with them. Today I wrote a story about a young Negro girl. I was told that there were no Negro girls because that was a term of oppression, and I argued that I had been a girl and was still an aging girl, and nobody was oppressing me except this stupid editor at the city desk, and I refused to make the change, and I told him that if he made it, I'd buy a bow and arrow and shoot one into his private parts —”

“No kidding.”

“God's truth. I told him he had the mind of a pettifogging Jesuit. I'm not long for that place.”

“None of that at Mother's,” Bruce said sternly. “She never heard of the
Worker
, and we'll keep it that way.”

“What floor are you on?” Molly asked, as they entered the old stone apartment house on Riverside Drive.

“Ninth floor — wonderful view of the river. It's a sort of Columbia University place, at least a dozen professors and a few of the truly rich. It used to be posh, but now the neighborhood's changing.”

“It's plenty posh for me.”

She was wary as a cat. Standing in front of the apartment door, she whispered that she shouldn't have worn a kelly green skirt. That was crazy. Why had he ever allowed it? He squeezed her hand. A young woman with a Scandinavian accent opened the door for them into the wide entryway, and Bruce's father appeared to greet them. He smiled with pleasure at Molly. Men did that. The maid wore a black dress with a starched white apron. She took their coats and disappeared, and Bruce said, “This is my father, Dr. Bacon. And this is Molly.”

She held out her hand to him and he took it in a warm grasp, and said, “I'm glad you could come.”

His mother was waiting for them in the living room. She sometimes did that, but more often she came to the door to greet a guest. This was for Molly, and he wondered whether Molly knew. Of course she knew. She had antennae all over her. She missed nothing, finding every detail of the place without any appearance of awe or blatant curiosity, the beamed ceilings, the polished walnut woodwork, the oil paintings, each with its own little light to illuminate it, the somber etchings, the Persian rugs on the floors, the big overstuffed chairs and the antique wood pieces, and, of course, Mrs. Bacon. She was in her sixties, slender, delicate, dressed for the evening in muted, rose-colored crêpe de Chine, as if she had anticipated the kelly green skirt and the flame-red hair.

She held out her hand for Molly, but there was no enthusiasm in the grasp. When Bruce said, “This is Molly Maguire, Mother,” she merely nodded and attempted a smile. The wide folds of the green skirt became a flagrant assault of color in an otherwise colorless room. Nothing about Molly Maguire blended with the place. After ten minutes or so of trying to be demure, she returned to herself. Dr. Bacon had mixed martinis. “I'm not one for cocktails,” he said, “but occasionally a celebratory drink is called for.” Mrs. Bacon refused. Bruce and Molly accepted with pleasure. A limited time was allowed for such nerve-soothing measures, during which time Mrs. Bacon directed at least a dozen covert glances at the kelly green skirt. Once seated at the dinner table, Mrs. Bacon could not resist mentioning the color. She supposed that Molly's background found security in green.

“Well, not security, Mrs. Bacon. I think it goes with my hair. At least, people tell me so. I don't have enough clothes to make real problems, and I saw this skirt in a window in the Village, and I decided that as long as I tempered it with a white blouse, it might be very nice. Don't you think so?”

Oh, wonderful, wonderful, Bruce told himself.

“Of course,” Mrs. Bacon said.

When it came to her father, Molly simply said that he had died long ago. And were all the daughters married?

“Oh, I should hope not,” Molly said. “My sister Bernadette is a nun. It wouldn't do for her to be married, would it?”

“No, indeed,” Mrs. Bacon admitted.

Dr. Bacon tried to move the conversation by mentioning a very curious operation, the restoration of a severed thumb, but Mrs. Bacon cut that off with a reminder that there is no medical talk at the table when guests are present.

“I don't think of Molly as simply a guest.”

Worser and worser, Bruce decided, his head beginning to ache with visions of the tea party in
Alice in Wonderland.
Molly sat serenely, having dealt summarily with a thick slice of roast beef, potatoes, and spinach.

“I was so hungry,” she said to Mrs. Bacon, “and this food is so delicious.”

“Thank you, dear,” Mrs. Bacon said graciously. “You mentioned another sister.”

“My sister Mary. Oh, yes, she is married. She married Joe Carlino, and they live in Brookline and they have four kids. Still, she goes on with her work.”

“Professionally?”

“Yes, of course. She's a hairdresser.”

“And your mother is still alive, Miss Maguire?”

Bruce leaped into the breach with “Dad, do you remember the baseball games we used to go to when I was a kid — the time we saw Babe Ruth hit two of them over the fence in the same game? Well, Molly's never been to Yankee Stadium, and I'm taking her there Sunday morning, and we're due for a double-header and I have no idea whether I could sit through two games today or whether I'd want to, because it has to be at least fifteen years since I saw a baseball game —”

“Mrs. Bacon,” Molly said sweetly, “my mother is alive and well in Boston, and of course someday you must meet her.”

“Bless you,” Bruce said, once they were outside, “and all things considered, I do believe it came off better than I had expected.”

“Come on, Bruce, you know what I did. The damn skirt was a provocation, and then I felt so ashamed of myself, because they're both such sweet people. I ought to grow up. It's time, isn't it?”

“You could say that.”

“Do you still love me?”

“More or less.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means,” Bruce said, “that it's mostly more and once in a while less.”

“All right. I can live with that. Now listen, that classy lawyer may not think you need him down there in Washington, but you need someone. You are not going in there like a lamb to slaughter. That's a dark, lousy world down there, and you're not walking into it alone.”

“Molly, for God's sake, I'm a big boy. I can deal with it.”

“Maybe you can. But I want to be with you.”

“They may not let you in.”

“I've seen these things. I'll be in the waiting room. But I'll be there.”

“Yes, and if I get hung up, I tell them that Molly Maguire's outside and I have to question her about something.”

“No good, even as a joke. I'm not a lawyer. You can step out only to consult a lawyer.”

“Will the paper give you the time?”

“Either that or I'll take it.”

THE
STAR CHAMBER

   

T
HE TRAIN
from New York to Washington marked the first trip they had ever taken together, and in spite of the fact that his destination was nothing to glow about, Bruce felt excited and pleased. Most of the time in the train they spent in the dining car. They split a bottle of excellent wine, and the food was not half bad.

“Can we call it a honeymoon — premarriage?” Bruce wondered.

“Why not?”

“Oh, I thought of something esoteric, maybe India. I'd like to see what a free India is like. Different. Take you up to the hill country, Kashmir, or to see the Taj. There are so damn many things we have to do together.”

“All in good time.”

“Kids?”

“Oh, you bet your sweet life,” Molly said. “At least three before my birth clock runs out.”

“And speaking of first things first, we have to get up to Boston and meet your mother and sisters Mary and Bernadette.”

“True, not to mention getting married.”

“My mother's not entirely into that yet. We'll work it slowly.”

He greeted Washington dubiously, hesitantly, yet with enormous curiosity. “Do you know,” he said to Molly, “this is my first time as an adult?”

“No. It's just a hoot and a holler from New York.”

“A war comes. Four years of college, two years of graduate school, and then more than three years of war. It changes the normal progression of a life. Last time I was here was with my father, age fourteen. I don't remember too much, just an endless parade of white buildings, sort of like a great cemetery.”

They put up at the Mayflower Hotel. He had registered as Mr. and Mrs. Bacon. He had suddenly become very conscious of violating the law, but neither he nor Molly could think of anything that covered this. “Anyway,” she said, sprawled on the bed and watching him unpack his wardrobe of clean shirt, tie, and underwear and socks, “in the eyes of God, we've been married a good long time.”

“You do work God,” he said.

“Why not? I'm a Catholic. My sister's a nun. I'm as properly set with God as anyone.”

“You're also a communist and you belong to what purports to be an atheist organization. And didn't Marx say that religion is the opiate of the people?”

“Maybe so. I don't push it too hard.”

“Every time I think I understand you,” Bruce said, “I come to a new angle that makes no sense whatsoever.”

“That's as it should be.”

“Anyway, first time in a hotel. Can you believe it, I never thought going to bed with you was anything but an act of worship —”

“What? Are you nutty?”

“Absolutely. Tonight, it's pure sin.”

They had both worked themselves into a state of light pretense that did away with any thought of the committee, putting it neatly aside and downgrading it to the condition of a nasty nuisance and no more than that. On the way to the House Office Building, where the hearing was to take place, the pretense that this was a vacation or a picnic disappeared. Molly began to go over procedure again, reminding him that the trap was always in the question. He must not refuse to answer anything. He had all the time in the world, and they must not be permitted to hurry him or rattle him.