Chapter 6 Claire

Chapter6 Claire

Dear Kitty, The war in Korea continues apace, but in sheer savagery the conflict cannot compare to the Bathroom Wars waged every morning at Briarwood House. I think Claire is going to stab Reka to death with a toothbrush someday.

I wish you were here. —Grace

Claire Hallett had learned three things early in life: love was for suckers, luck was an illusion, and there was never a bathroom available when you really needed one. “ Reka ,” she shouted, hammering on the door with her sponge bag, “haul your wrinkled old haunches out of there!”

“Hold your horses,” Reka grunted from inside the bathroom. “It takes time to pee at my age.”

Claire glowered. She hadn’t had her coffee yet, a bathrobe-clad Nora was shifting from foot to foot behind her, and at this rate they were all going to miss breakfast. Doilies Nilsson always whipped the last speck of scrambled eggs and rubbery bacon off the table downstairs at seven twenty-nine and fifty seconds, no grace for those who got stuck at the end of the bathroom line.

“If y’all would just set your alarm for half an hour earlier, you’d be fine ,” Arlene cooed, perfectly pulled together in her powder-blue skirt and sweater set, waltzing toward the stairs with her pocketbook. “Early bird gets the worm, you know. And the bathroom!”

“Give Bea’s door a knock, won’t you?” Claire asked sweetly. “Or she’ll be late for work. She was out so late with Harland again, she must have slept through her alarm.”

Nora laughed, and Arlene’s smile curdled. “I don’t see you getting many dates these days.” Her eyes went deliberately over Claire’s broad hips and broader bust. “Small wonder. Though small isn’t really the word...”

“I’ve already got my Sid.” Claire smacked her own hip so it jiggled. “And he loves all of me, thank you.”

“Nobody’s ever met your Sid,” Arlene said. “I think you made him up.”

“Have not! Want to see a picture?” Claire had her wallet in her bathrobe pocket, because she was never without her wallet even on a morning trip to the bathroom: she dug out Sid’s much-handled picture and flashed it around.

“Dashing,” Nora approved. “Clark Gable nose.”

“I’ll believe in him when I meet him,” Arlene said with a sniff and flounced downstairs. Reka came stumping out of the bathroom, wearing that flamboyant flame silk quilted robe she said she’d bought on her last trip to New York.

“Pushy kurva ,” the old woman grumbled as Claire flew past her.

“Stubborn old mule,” Claire retorted and slammed the door. Into the shower and out again, of course the hot water was already gone; when she had a house of her own she was going to have a claw-foot tub the size of Rhode Island and hot water for days... Twisting her damp red curls into a turban, Claire saw a jade drop pendant on the tiles. Reka’s, also from that last New York trip—Claire dropped it neatly into her pocket and veered off to cram herself into a girdle and stockings, a blouse that gapped over her bust (why, why didn’t blouses have buttons closer together?), her second-oldest skirt, and a pair of penny loafers that needed resoling.

“Anyone see a jade pendant around here?” Reka was demanding downstairs in the dining room, as Mrs.Nilsson shooed Lina to leave her own breakfast and start clearing plates.

Claire nabbed the last strip of bacon off Lina’s plate. “Nope,” she said and headed out the door. She liked her housemates fine; she’d cook for them when it was her turn on Thursday nights, and she’d pitch in a buck for Lina’s glasses or spend an hour watching Angela when Fliss needed it—but at the end of the day, she always looked out for number one.

“You’re late, Claire.” But Claire’s boss smiled as she said it, coming out of her office for her ten o’clock meeting: Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, fifty-six, gray-haired, sharp-eyed, pearls around her throat.

“I’ve given up trying to be early, ma’am, because you’re always the first one here,” Claire chirped, thinking as she often did: I work for the most naive woman in Washington . “I’d have to stay overnight to beat you!”

“I suppose,” the senator said, laughing. “Do you have my rose?” She took the flower Claire gave her, threading it through her collar into the discreet tube vase that clipped to the other side of her lapel. It was Claire’s job, as junior assistant to the office secretaries, to bring the senator’s signature fresh rose every morning, for which expense she was reimbursed every Friday. Claire had been mooching free roses off Pete since he started up at Moonlight Magnolias and pocketing the reimbursement money for months. No one knew the difference, certainly not the senator as she headed out with chin lifted high over that rose. She wasn’t going anywhere critical, of course: she’d made an enemy of Senator McCarthy a few years ago and had been locked out of every important committee and function on Capitol Hill ever since. Hence, most naive woman in town , Claire thought. Senator Smith should have known that would be the outcome if she made a run at Tail Gunner Joe.

“Claire,” MissWing called over, “if you could take care of that filing—”

“Yes, Miss Wing.” Anyone who thought the business of government was glamorous had never been to the Old House Office Building across Independence Avenue from the Capitol, Claire thought as she took her stack of files and squeezed around the maze of desks, chairs, and bookcases toward the filing cabinets. Congressmen and their staffs were packed into this warren of offices like moles, only moles worked better hours. Senator Smith from Maine rated three rooms in Suite 329, which had a nice view of the Capitol and a picture on the door of the Maine coastline and not much else. Besides the front room and the senator’s office, the secretaries and their three assistants were crammed into a cubby the size of a broom closet. You know the only people in the federal system with less space than congressmen? MissWing had joked to Claire the day she was hired. Prisoners.

Claire shrugged mentally. It was just a job: typing, stapling, filing. She wasn’t a lifer like MissWing or MissHaskell, skinny chests puffed up with pride as they talked about being with the senator since her first term in the House, clearly planning on being with the senator until they were carried out of Suite 329 feetfirst in a box. No, Claire Hallett was only here for the paycheck, and she wasn’t going to be here forever. The moment her savings account hit eight thousand, she was gone.

Eight thousand. The magic number, and she was close , she was so close. Her bankbook said seven thousand six hundred and twenty-eight dollars and seventy-two cents. She pulled it out and looked at it in between shoving files into the cabinet. Not that she didn’t know her savings account down to the last penny at all times, but it eased the ever-present clutch in her stomach to check those neatly penciled lines, to flip the pages that had gone worn and soft with handling and check her figures and affirm that, yes, her calculations were correct. Seven thousand six hundred and twenty-eight dollars and seventy-two cents, saved over nearly twenty years. She was almost there.

“Claire, walk this mimeographic stencil over to the Senate Service Department; the senator needs a hundred copies after lunch.”

“Yes, MissWing.”

By the time Claire came back she could hear the senator on the telephone in her private office. “That man!” whispered Miss Wing to Miss Haskell—the loyalists wouldn’t even use his name. “He is haranguing her again.”

“Senator McCarthy,” came the calm voice of Claire’s boss through the half open door. Even from here, you could make out the hectoring sounds coming from the other end of the telephone. “Senator, keep quiet a minute, will you? I haven’t said anything while you were talking, now I’m going to have my say and it’s your turn to keep quiet.”

MissHaskell and MissWing sucked in a breath. Claire shook her head pityingly, dumping her heap of copies on the nearest desk. Joe McCarthy owned Washington, and he was a bully. You didn’t square up to bullies and spit in their eye; you let them careen on past you waving their lists of enemies and Communists and what have you. You kept out of their way and kept on your way, with your downcast eyes and your bankbook with its neatly ruled lines. That was how you survived. Someone should have told that to the senator from Maine, but it wasn’t going to be Claire. If there was a fourth thing she’d learned at an early age, it was don’t stick your neck out .

“You’re late,” said the housekeeper at Claire’s second job, answering her knock. “Mrs.Sutherland’s been waiting.”

“Slow tram,” Claire lied. She’d stopped off at a pawnshop on the edge of Georgetown to hock Reka’s jade pendant—the same place she’d hocked the crystal candy dish from Mrs.Nilsson’s parlor, a pair of Fliss’s cloisonné earrings, and various other Briarwood House sundries over the years . “What’s the missus got for me today?” she asked, trying a winning smile.

“Mrs.Sutherland would like you to run these dresses to the cleaners, take this bracelet to the jeweler’s to have the clasp repaired, and pick up a hat for her at Hecht’s.”

“All right if I pick up the hat tomorrow?” Running errands for rich women: a reliable way to make a little cash no matter where you were, because all cities had rich women and all rich women who didn’t work were convinced they never had enough time to run their own errands. Claire had marked the elegant Mrs. Sutherland down the moment she saw the woman giving Fliss a ride home from church one rainy Sunday early this spring; she’d been running her errands ever since.

“You can deliver it Saturday,” Mrs.Sutherland called from the hallway, clearly on her way out somewhere in spotless gloves and an ivory linen suit. “Can you watch my son for a couple of hours that afternoon?” she continued, clipping a huge pearl earring to one earlobe. “It’s the Fourth of July—our nanny’s off to see her mother. Drop off the hat then, and my husband can pay you for everything at once.”

“Of course, Mrs.Sutherland.” Claire folded the dresses (Chanel, Lanvin, Dior) over her arm, took the gold bracelet from the housekeeper and tucked it into her pocketbook without even a wistful glance. A good thief knew where not to steal from, and a house like this one was strictly off-limits.

“Thank you, that will be all.” Mrs.Sutherland whisked off again in a cloud of Joy perfume. Must be nice to be rich , Claire thought, heading out toward her third job of the day.

“You’re late,” grunted Mr.Huckstop as Claire came blowing past the Closed sign on the front door of Huckstop’s Photography. “Strip quick, I’m on a schedule. Got a lot of darkroom work tonight.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Claire dropped her pocketbook, slung Mrs.Sutherland’s Paris frocks over the nearest chair, and began unbuttoning her blouse. “The warhead again?”

“Ever since MissAtomic Blast got crowned in Vegas, they’ve been flying off the shelves.” Mr.Huckstop fussed around with his camera as Claire shimmied out of her skirt and blouse and girdle, tugged a set of cheap black fishnets over her nylons, and swapped her sensible shoes for a pair of fairly whorish stilettos he kept on hand for these little after-hours photo shoots. During the day when the shades were up, he had a studio setup with fake flowers and tasteful drapes for couples who wanted their picture taken and parents who wanted to commemorate a child’s birthday. Once night fell and the shades were drawn, a different set of props came out.

Claire climbed onto the papier-maché tube Mr. Huckstop had mocked up to look like a nuclear warhead, complete with cotton wool smoke and conical nose. “Tits out?”

“Tits out.” He started fussing with the lights, not paying Claire the slightest attention as she tossed her brassiere aside. You could say one thing for Mr.Huckstop—he was a cheap bastard, always trying to nickel-and-dime what he owed her, but he never ogled and he never tried to sample the merchandise. “Lips parted, chin on hand, you know the drill...” Claire bent over the papier-maché warhead, moistened her lips, and did her best to look aroused. “Good... Perfect...”

“Exactly why would a naked woman be sitting on a warhead, much less getting aroused by it?” Claire had snorted on her first photo shoot.

“Beats me, girlie, but they sell like hotcakes.” Mr.Huckstop had been the one to approach her: You interested in some after-hours modeling? I do a certain amount of under-the-counter photo work—you’re kinda fleshy but some fellas like that, and you got the rack. Claire hadn’t batted an eyelash. It paid better than filing papers or running errands.

“You think that girl you room with would be interested?” he asked, clicking away. “The classy one.”

“Nora?” Claire shifted into a new pose, crossing one fishnetted leg over the other and pushing her chest out. “Doubtful.”

“No, the English one. The one in here all the time getting pictures of her kid.”

Claire burst out laughing. “Fliss the priss?”

“Quit laughing, look sultry.” Click click click. “I can do something with an English priss. The touch-me-not girl in pearls, men like to fantasize about that.”

Claire lay flat along the warhead, raising her legs in the air, ankles crossed. “Men are so strange.”

“Girlie, you ain’t kidding.”

At least there were plenty of opportunities to make money off their strange ways, Claire thought. “I’m not the touch-me-not girl in pearls, so what am I?”

“The lady-bountiful type. Soft, welcoming. A guy looked any closer he’d see you’ve got eyes like flint, but they aren’t looking at your eyes.” Clicking away. “Know any good-looking young fellas who might be interested in posing?”

“What, on a warhead?” Tipping her head back, Claire felt her curls spill over the warhead’s cotton smoke.

“More leaning on a motorcycle, y’know? I got a chromed-up one that doesn’t run but looks good under some young fella with nice arms, wearing an undershirt and not much else. More suits than you think want to look at Marlon Brando than Marilyn Monroe when they—” A certain gesture. “You’d be surprised.”

“Not that surprised,” said Claire. “We done here?”

“Always a pleasure, Hallett.”

Claire climbed off the warhead and held out a hand. “Pay up.”

It was after eight by the time Claire tramped upstairs to her Briarwood House room. The walls were mustard yellow-brown and the faded chintz curtains had been hanging in the windows since she moved in—Claire had never seen the point of decorating something temporary. She never intended to stay here so long, but Grace had moved in and somehow with the Briar Club and the Thursday dinners and everything else, the place had become a lot more pleasant than cheap boardinghouses ever were, in Claire’s experience... Kicking off her shoes, she flopped across her bed and counted out the handful of bills she’d managed to make today: from Mr.Huckstop, from the pawnbroker for Reka’s pendant, even the quarters and nickels she’d quickly scooped from MissWing’s desk at the senator’s office. Totting it all up, Claire jotted the new total in her bankbook. She’d drop by the bank tomorrow before work and deposit everything.

Reaching under her bed for her box, she carefully added the clipping she’d cut out of the Washington Post on her lunch hour: a neat, gabled box of a fresh-painted house on an even neater square of lawn. Magnificent modern colonial home in Hillcrest! Open today, 12 to dark!

Claire dug out a packet of Nabisco sugar wafers, reading. Eighteen-foot beamed cathedral ceiling, living room finished in Pickwick Knotty Pine paneling, sliding door closets, complete General Electric kitchen... “Not bad,” she said aloud. She’d never have a house this big—it would take her another thirty years to save that much—but eight thousand would buy you something compact and cozy across the state line in Maryland, no problem. Eight thousand was the amount Claire had worked out long ago, full of flint-hard anger, her shoulders set in a defensive hunch from too many sucker punches. Eight thousand equaled home . Not a big home, not a Georgetown mansion like Mrs.Sutherland had, not even a modest colonial with Pickwick Knotty Pine paneling and a General Electric kitchen, but a home.

Even so, she liked to collect pictures of palaces. Turning on her side and crunching up another sugar wafer, she sifted through her box of clippings. Marilyn Monroe’s latest Hollywood home! Four bedrooms, four and a half bathrooms, two-car garage, pool and spa out back...

That’s too much house for one person. Claire imagined her Sid laughing, dark eyes crinkled at the corners. What would you do with four bedrooms?

“Throw you down in every single one of them,” Claire said aloud to the sickly mustard walls. Sid’s feet were always cold; she missed those icy toes twined with hers. This weekend , she thought, feeling herself smile involuntarily. She was getting a little soppy about Sid, if she was honest with herself. She’d have to make sure that got nipped in the bud, because Claire Hallett didn’t get soppy about anyone or anything, ever. “Bright colors and a white roof add sparkle to the simple lines of this Florida house,” she read aloud from another clipping, banishing Sid from her mind. “Three bedrooms, one and a half baths, carport, and paved terrace...”

“Join us for hot dogs in the park?” Grace gave one of her easy smiles, pausing on the landing as Claire came out of her room. “Lina made a cherry pie, and if Bea gets back from that scouting trip in Bowie, I have a feeling she’ll corral us all into another sandlot game. There’ll be fireworks, too.”

“Can’t, got to work.” Claire locked up her room. Most of the Briarwood House women didn’t bother, but Claire never left anything to chance, good fortune, or other people’s honesty. Besides, Doilies was a snoop.

“Work? On the Fourth of July?” Grace blinked, patriotically festive in a red shirtwaist dress and blue kitten heels. “If that’s not sacrilegious, I don’t know what is.”

“Not my favorite holiday,” Claire said, shoving back some particularly ugly memories. It used to be her favorite day of the year, but that had been a long, long time ago, so she pushed her way down the stairs and out of Briarwood House before Grace could probe any further. Claire liked Grace fine; the woman had a positive gift for bringing sunshine into even the most dreary setting—but she could keep those lazily curious eyes on her own business, thank you very much.

“MissHallett, is it?” The man of the house glanced up with a smile as the housekeeper ushered Claire into the drawing room. (Once a house passed thirty thousand dollars and five thousand square feet, a den turned into a drawing room . Claire’s study of housing ads had taught her that much.) “You’ll be looking after my little man today while I take the missus out to hear the military bands and the speeches on the Mall?”

“Yes, sir.” Only her second or third time laying eyes on him, but he’d remembered her name. She had no trouble recollecting his, but that was to be expected—you didn’t forget a name like Barrett Sutherland, Yale law, former army lieutenant, Bronze Star, fourth generation of his family to serve in Washington. Gearing up for his first run at the House of Representatives, or so the rumor went, so he’d be prepared to take over his father’s seat in the Senate someday. He wouldn’t be the handsomest man in Congress—that would be the junior senator from Massachusetts; Claire had seen the engagement photos in LIFE of John F. Kennedy and his brunette fiancée—but Mr.Sutherland was handsome in that tall, tanned, toothy way that silver-spoon boys so often seemed to be. Claire couldn’t help but think of them as boys , even when they were older than she was.

“Miss Hallett!” Barrett Junior ran into the room: crisp shorts and buttoned shirt and a patriotic red-white-and-blue cockade just like his father’s. “C’n we go to the park?”

“Sure, kid.” Claire wanted to ruffle his hair, which had been painstakingly combed into place. He was a nice boy, at least right now. Later he’d probably turn out just like his father, and then he’d have a loud voice and crew for Yale and talk about the Negro problem over martinis with other men just like him, so she might as well enjoy the kid while the nice stage lasted.

“Darling, I’m so sorry—” Mrs.Sutherland rushed into the drawing room in an exquisite blue Balmain dress and pearls. “It’s come a day early, simply the worst timing. My time of the month—” She broke off with a blush, seeing Claire in the opposite doorway. “I’m sorry, MissHallett, I didn’t see you there.”

Claire gave a polite people-like-you-never-see-people-like-me-anyway smile. Mr.Sutherland frowned. “My father will be expecting us both at his speech.”

Mrs.Sutherland lowered her voice. “You know Dr.Rock says I should lie down as much as possible during my time of the month. To optimize our chances... Why don’t you take Bear instead?” She always called her son Bear rather than Barrett or Junior . “Father and son on Independence Day; I can’t think of a more perfect picture at your father’s speech.”

“Dad, pleeeeeeease ?”

The crease between Mr.Sutherland’s eyebrows hovered a moment, then smoothed away. “Okay, champ. Let’s go see your grandpa. Someday you’ll be watching your old man give the Independence Day speech, and someday even further down the road it’ll be you...”

A flurry, then: Mrs. Sutherland getting jackets and hats for her menfolk, fluttering about how she’d just dismissed the housekeeper for the day, Mr. Sutherland shoving a few bills at Claire (“A little extra for your trouble, sorry you came out here to babysit for nothing—” He was always generous, she’d say that for him). Claire retrieved her pocketbook, fussed toward the door, yelped something about forgetting to leave the hat she’d picked up at Hecht’s for the missus, doubled back to the drawing room... Where she and Mrs. Sutherland stood, waiting for the sound of Mr. Sutherland’s Hudson Hornet to disappear from earshot.

“Did your time of the month really come a day early?” Claire asked.

A big, slow grin. “No.”

Claire crooked a finger. “Come here, Sid.”

Sydney Sutherland came crashing into her arms, bending that long, long neck down like a swan so their lips could meet. That neck had been the first thing to fascinate Claire, even before the endless jet-black lashes and soft curving mouth. “You have a neck like a giraffe ,” she’d said the first time they kissed, having to go to her tiptoes as if she were embracing a tall man. “A neck like a giraffe, and your legs come up to my shoulders—are you even real?”

Sydney Zuill of Bermuda and London, now Sydney Sutherland of Washington, D.C., had laughed that particular laugh she never let her husband, her father-in-law, or their constituents hear. “I’m very real, MissHallett.”

She was laughing that laugh now, soft and remarkably wicked, the laugh that did things to Claire’s innards. “I was hoping on Thursday that you’d pick up my hint about bringing the hat today—”

“Subtle as a train wreck, Sid.” Working her fingers down the row of buttons on that blue Balmain dress. “You shouldn’t have begged off Fourth of July. Too important to him—”

“If I had to stand around in the hot sun all day listening to marching bands and patriotic speeches and firecrackers rather than lying in lovely cool sheets with you, I was going to go barking mad.” Sydney dragged her lips away from Claire’s, looking disheveled and kiss-flushed and perfect. “Come upstairs. My husband won’t be home with Bear until after dark.”

Who seduced who? Looking back, Claire wasn’t sure. Always a delicate dance, looking at a woman and wondering if her eyes were willing to take a sideways wander from the male of the species. Claire had never had any trouble approaching a man she wanted; she threw out her chest and let her eyes go shiny the way they did for the camera when she climbed on a papier-maché warhead, and that was usually enough. Women, though... You could drive yourself mad, wondering Did she hold my eyes a moment too long just now? Did she linger, touching my hand just now? What did she mean just now? Knowing that if you got it wrong, if you made your move on the wrong woman, you’d retreat with your cheeks slapped and a cry of PERVERT! ringing in your ears, praying to God she wouldn’t call the cops.

“I had my eye on you from the beginning,” Sydney claimed. “The first time I saw you in the doorway of Briarwood House when I dropped Fliss off from church—you had the coolest expression, but your hair was coming out of its pins, and your blouse was slipping a button, and it was like you were bursting out all over. All that hair, all that strawberry skin, you try to contain it but you can’t. Right from the beginning, I wanted a taste . ”

“But I’m the one who kissed you first,” Claire protested. “The third week I was running your errands, when I came by to drop off the gloves you’d had mended, and you fell off your shoe.” A momentary insanity; she’d been telling herself sternly that she was not to make even the smallest overture to this overelongated, overprivileged Georgetown political wife, but everything had come undone in a single instant: Sydney’s slender ankle rocking in her tall patent heel, sending her long body crashing against Claire’s; her arm coming round Claire’s shoulder for balance; her red-lipsticked mouth suddenly within reach... Claire hadn’t thought for a moment; she just dove for that mouth and found it opening under her own like a flower.

“The old fall-out-of-your-heel trick,” Sydney said, nodding sagely. “Works every time.”

“You played me?” Claire’s outrage was only half faked. Who conned a con as good as she was? And she knew she was good.

“Listen, Strawberry, I walked fashion shows in London for three years in four-inch pumps when I was working as a model. You think I’d ever fall off a heel unless I meant to?”

And maybe that was when Claire started getting a bit soppy about Sydney Sutherland, and not just lusting for her long legs and blooming skin. Because this overelongated, overprivileged Georgetown political wife was a con, too, in her way.

“What’s happening at Briarwood House?” An hour of blissful rolling about on the peach satin duvet of Sydney’s rosy-walled bedroom, and now Sydney stretched those endless legs out so she could twine her ice-cold feet with Claire’s, making a little go-on motion. “Tell me everything. Is Mrs.Nilsson still refusing to send Pete back to school? Did Bea get that job scouting for the Senators?”

“Why are you so interested in my housemates?” Claire demanded, propping herself up on one elbow in the nest of sheets. “They’re just women , completely ordinary.”

“I used to share a flat with three other models in London,” Sydney said. “I miss those days—passing gin flasks around when someone had something to celebrate, arguing about who borrowed whose mink stole for a big date. Ever since I married it’s nothing but men: my husband and my father-in-law and all the toadies around them. Sad little kings of sad little mountains... Even Bear, nothing but little boys running all over the house when he has friends over. Most of the political wives are older than me, and the ones who aren’t, I don’t seem to have anything in common with.” A shrug. “Anyhow, I like your Briarwood House crew.”

“You shouldn’t have come over on Decoration Day. A whole afternoon of not being able to exchange a look—how on earth was that worth it?” Claire did not believe in across-the-room burning glances. Frankly, that whole picnic—watching Sydney slurp up long strands of spaghetti, watching her run clumsily after a sandlot baseball in Grace’s borrowed shorts—had been torture.

“Fliss invited me after church the previous week. Besides”—Sydney traced the back of Claire’s hand with one perfect, polished nail—“I wanted to see you. Not to mention all your Briar Club friends.”

“Just how many of my housemates do you know by now?” Claire refused to call this little pinching feeling jealousy, because that would be ridiculous.

“Reka, first... She came to the house once or twice over some old matter with my father-in-law. Don’t ask; it’s her business. And because of her I met Fliss, and once I knew Fliss was a nurse she helped me with—” A mute gesture toward her belly. “I’ll never cease owing her for that.”

“Barrett still doesn’t suspect?” Another of the quiet little cons Claire admired Sydney for: the efficient subterfuge by which she was shutting her body off to her husband’s plan for a flotilla of little Sutherlands.

“Well, he’s starting to think Dr.Rock is a quack, considering how I’ve been back and forth to Boston for this fertility study , and no results yet.” Sydney’s beautiful face went still for a moment. “At some point he’ll insist I go see someone else, but I’m hoping I can string it out another year.”

Claire ran her hand down the supple, endless length of Sydney’s naked back. “Well, if you want Briarwood House gossip, I can tell you Lina’s cakes really have improved,” she said, tone deliberately light. “We all praise her extravagantly to encourage the progress. And Reka’s hopping back and forth between here and New York almost every other week now, seeing this art show and that art show—she came into some money, though she’s cagey about how. And Bea did get that job scouting for the Senators, and about half the men in the office are trying to haze her into leaving, which shows they don’t know Bea. Nora gets a huge bunch of flowers every week with a card that just says ‘X’ and she gives them away or dumps them—”

“No! Who’s sending them to her?”

“No idea. She’s MissNational Archives, all about the job. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her doll up for a date. Pete made his Swedish meatballs again for the last Briar Club meeting...”

Sydney groaned. “Don’t say meatballs to me. I haven’t eaten a gram of meat in two weeks. I have to whittle three pounds off; it’s all black coffee and chopped salads—”

“You do not need to lose three pounds!”

“Barrett says I do,” Sydney said simply.

“Barrett can go screw himself,” Claire snapped, but Sydney just gave her a look and she subsided. It was the silent place between them: Barrett Landry Sutherland, the small pinching bruises Claire sometimes saw on Sydney’s satin skin, the fact that she could charge exquisite clothes and expensive lunches all over town but never had more than a fifty-cent piece on her for cash. Why did you marry him? Claire had been foolish enough to ask once, maybe their second or third time together, and Sydney had given her a remarkably cynical look.

Because he was the best I could get, and I was raised to be married , Claire. Because he was very charming and very kind, and he said he’d take me away from London, which was so gray and horrible and bombed out. Because he never gave me a single smack until we’d been married six months, and by then he held all the cards.

What Claire did not ask—then or now—was What will you do? Because it was none of her business; because this thing they had only existed here, two bodies twined together on a peach satin duvet, and that was how she wanted it to stay.

Sydney was changing the subject now, asking something about Senator Smith. “—as much of a firebrand as I’ve heard?”

“Firebrand?” Claire thought of the woman she worked for, her quick eyes and steady smile. “She’s not a firebrand. She’s just another gray-haired Republican senator.”

“I’m fond of her if only because of the headaches she gives my husband’s father.” Sydney laughed, rolling onto one side. “You should have heard him rage when she gave her speech against McCarthy. Said she was a disgrace to the Republican Party, and he’d see she was run out of Washington tarred and feathered. He’s very much in McCarthy’s pocket, my father-in-law. Thinks he’s got the right idea about the Commies.”

Claire shrugged. She didn’t care much about Commies—who actually knew any Reds, anyway? This was Washington, not Moscow; she didn’t think for a moment that there were Marxists hiding under every rock no matter how many lists some crackpot from Wisconsin waved around. If anything about McCarthy alarmed Claire, it was the comments about lavender lads in the State Department , and sexual perverts infiltrating the government . Because everyone knew sexual perverts didn’t mean the florid family men who pinched their secretaries on the rump every day, oh no. It meant the ones like Claire and Sydney. Though thank god women had it easier hiding that kind of thing than men did. The year Claire started working for Senator Smith, everyone had been gossiping about how ninety-one queers had been forced to resign from the State Department—only two of those had been women. Claire felt badly for the eighty-nine men who had found themselves in those crosshairs, she truly did, but she wasn’t going to complain that lavender lasses had an easier time hiding than lavender lads. Women so rarely had anything easier than men, she’d take it wherever she found it.

“My father-in-law thinks McCarthy has the right idea about the queers too,” Sydney said as if reading her mind, leaning down to kiss Claire’s freckled shoulder. “He says any man against Tail Gunner Joe is either a Communist or a cocksucker. Gets all red in the face and starts thumping the table. These deviants pose a danger to our nation’s safety every bit as lethal as the Reds —”

“I just do not understand that logic,” Claire objected.

“Darling, you think McCarthy types are all that strong on logic?”

“No, I mean it. Exactly how is someone like me a threat to the nation’s safety? I don’t want to overthrow Congress. I want to buy a house and be able to eat breakfast in bed every morning in peace.”

“Ah, but homosexuals on Capitol Hill are more subject to blackmail and thus are targets for Russian moles,” Sydney recited in a pompous bass. “All a Kremlin operative has to do is find out who the queers are and threaten to expose them, and they’ll just roll over and start selling state secrets.”

“Oh, seriously ...”

“Serious as a heart attack. Hopefully my father-in-law will thump and roar his way into one someday soon.”

Claire raised her eyebrows. “You’re that eager to be rid of him?”

“Can’t stand the old bastard,” Sydney said candidly. “Forever telling me to leave off the suntan oil, darlin’, so you don’t get any darker than you already are . He has no idea I sit there at his Sunday dinner table pushing overcooked peas around my plate and daydreaming what I’ll wear to his funeral.”

Her voice was brittle under its flippancy, and Claire looked for another topic. “ Sydney ,” she mused, plaiting her fingers through her lover’s black hair. “I don’t think I ever asked how you got a name like that, Bermuda Girl. Was your father from Australia?”

“No, London. Sydney Barclay-Jones, Esquire, a real Eton-and-Oxford type, came to Hamilton to drink gin and tonics and write his memoirs... Instead he found my mother. She named me Sydney after him—I was supposed to be a boy, Sydney Barclay-JonesII. They were both disappointed, but if he didn’t give me his surname at least he paid for me to go to school in England.”

“Is that why you sound like Princess Margaret Rose?”

“Naturally, darling,” Sydney drawled. “My mum used to cane me across the knuckles if I let my vowels slip. She always said the voice was what would get me places, even more than my legs. A proper English voice, an educated voice, and she was right.” Making a face. “I used to be able to switch—be the proper English miss at school, come home and slip back into my old vowels and be an island girl again. I can’t do it anymore. Mum would be proud.”

Claire twined a loop of black hair around her fingers. “Do you see her often?”

“Once a year, when Barrett takes us to the beach house outside Hamilton.”

“You have a beach house in Bermuda?” Claire flopped on her back with a groan. “Of course you do.”

“It’s pale green and white; looks like a wedding cake sitting on the edge of the water. You’ve never seen water that blue in your life.” Sydney’s face scrunched. “I wish I could show you... The houses are all different colors there like rainbow sherbet, lemon yellow and mint green and coral pink, but all the roofs are blinding white and stepped like stairs. And the children learn to swim there before they learn to walk, and everyone’s in and out of the ocean all summer to cool off...” She sighed. “Barrett lets us have two weeks there every summer, at least. I always find a way to sneak off and meet my mother for coffee.”

“Why do you have to sneak to see your own mother?”

“She never thought it wise to meet Barrett,” Sydney said matter-of-factly. “She’s darker than me... she said it would hurt my chances.”

Claire’s hand twined back into that black hair. “Sid...”

“Hush,” Sydney said fiercely. “Hush—” She rolled over and pressed herself against Claire. Claire had to kiss her with such care; she couldn’t leave any marks on Sydney’s satin skin that her husband might see, but Sydney had no such restraints—she kissed her way across Claire’s neck as if drinking her way to the bottom of a bottle of ambrosia. Claire closed her eyes, back arching as Sydney’s lips traveled across the curve of her waist, lower, and she bit down savagely on the side of her own hand to keep from crying out at the end. Cries of passion weren’t supposed to be coming from this house when the husband was away, and Claire knew exactly how cautious they had to be. Not something to forget, even dazed and dizzy and drowning in pleasure.

“Remind me,” Claire mumbled into the stars behind her own eyelids, “to send a thank-you note to that English boarding school of yours. Whatever they teach their girls, it is vastly superior to any American school district curriculum.”

Sydney gave that wicked laugh of hers again. “Lock a lot of teenaged girls together, and they’re going to experiment!”

“I have always been a firm believer in the scientific method.” Claire rolled over and pinned Sydney down with nothing more than a featherlight kiss to her throat. “My turn to conduct some experiments...”

Eventually they ended up down in the kitchen, Claire in her blouse and underwear, Sydney in one of her exquisite lilac satin robes that made her look like Ava Gardner. “I’d cook for you,” said Claire, giving the gleaming range a dubious look, “because you need feeding, you skinny thing. But I can’t cook a bit, so...”

“You sit down, I’ll cook. I’m hardly allowed to, ordinarily, and look at this enormous kitchen!” Sydney reached for some browning bananas and a packet of dark brown sugar, fished under a back shelf, and came up with a bottle of Black Seal rum. “Proper Bermuda rum,” she approved. “The only thing for frying up bananas in brown sugar and eating right out of the pan. My mum would make it for me as a treat sometimes—Barrett says it’s too native , and I said it wasn’t so different from bananas Foster, which he couldn’t get enough of on his trip to New Orleans, and he didn’t like me saying that very much.” She massaged her jaw a little, unconsciously. “I don’t dare have more than a bite, but let me dish up a mess for you. Mum always said you only make fried bananas in rum and sugar for someone you love.”

Claire’s stomach turned over. She looked down at her blouse, plucking at the button coming loose over the bust. “Don’t bother,” she said, deliberately not looking up. “Can’t have the neighbors wondering about the smell of cooking when you’re supposed to be laid up in bed! Some other time, Sid—” And she began to make noises about getting on her way, ignoring the tiny flash of hurt across Sydney’s beautiful face. She had no business feeling hurt, not over a bit of illicit peach-satin afternoon fun. Because that’s all this was.

Happy Fourth of July.

Sydney’s Fried Bananas with Bermuda Rum Cease-Fire Halts 37 Months of War.”

“Okay.” Claire shrugged, not having given the conflict in Korea more than a thought or two over the entirety of those thirty-seven months, and went on shuffling through her mail. But Grace began exclaiming, climbing down off the step stool where she’d been hanging little stained-glass suncatchers in the windows to reflect the light, and Pete (who’d been on a war-movie kick since seeing Stalag 17 , combing his hair like William Holden and trying to walk with a soldierly strut) wrestled the paper around and began reading. “‘Truce signing brings nervous peace to Korea...’ ‘3,313 Yanks to be freed in POW deal...’”

“I don’t see what the fuss is.” Arlene leaned over his shoulder to read. “It was just a police action, not a real war!”

“Real enough for the ones who died,” Pete objected. “Look at that: ‘Cost of War to US: Lives of 22,000 Plus 15 Billions.’”

“You’d think we’d have heard more of a hullabaloo in the streets about this.” Grace leaned over his left shoulder to read, still dangling a blue glass suncatcher from one hand. “When the news came down in ’45 about the war in Europe being over, everyone was running into the streets to celebrate. Shouting and dancing and hugging complete strangers—did anyone even care about this war if they didn’t have someone in it?”

“‘U.S.–British Clash Seen Over U.N. Seat for Chinese Reds,’” Arlene read aloud, ponytail bobbing. “Wasn’t the whole point to kill off the Reds, and now we’re talking about admitting them to the UN?”

“Who cares ?” Fliss burst out in an utterly un-Fliss-like shout. “ Dan’s coming home! ” She burst into tears, sweeping Angela up and weeping into her little ruffled dress. “Your daddy’s coming home! Yes, he is—”

“Well,” Grace said, laughing as she gave Fliss a hug, “it may not be Thursday night, but this calls for a party.”

“I’ll cook!” said Arlene quickly. “I’ll make my famous Victory Pie I made for V-J Day!”

It was really all the Victory Pie’s fault, Claire reflected later. The drinks did tend to flow at the parties in Grace’s room, but usually everyone remained at least somewhat vertical. But when Arlene passed around generous wedges of Victory Pie on Grace’s chipped plates—“My flaky Texas piecrust, filled with chicken salad folded together with shredded cheese, crushed pineapple, and slivered almonds, topped with mayonnaise and whipped cream, decorated with carrot curls!”—everyone reached for the spiked sun tea and just did not stop.

“Hey, look at thish.” Bea was definitely slurring as she reached for the crumpled newspaper that had been passed around, sat on, spilled on, and used as a napkin by this point. It was dark outside now—eight, nine?—and it felt like midnight. “‘Preshident Eisenhower to Attend a Charity Ball Game to Benefit the Red Crosh’—between Washington and Boston! Will likely mark the firsht time Boston slugger Ted Williams has appeared in a Red Sox uniform since hish return from fighter pilot duty in Korea!” Bea flopped on her back on Grace’s braided rug. “Ted Williams back on the diamond! Kill me now.”

“Shut up about baseball already,” Arlene moaned, even as Claire said, “You’re drunk” and removed the pitcher of sun tea from Bea’s proximity to pour herself another slug. It was crashing into her empty stomach like a cannonball, but what the hell. The secretaries at Senator Smith’s office tomorrow weren’t going to notice if she was hungover. Those old maids had probably never had a drink in their lives.

“We’re all drunk,” Grace declared. Not slurring much herself, though, Claire thought. Tidy as ever, curled on the window seat with her cat in her lap, looking over the rest of the Briar Club, who sprawled in a lazy circle across bed, floor, and chairs, or with backs against walls.

“If we’re drunk , that means it’s time for a game ,” Arlene declared, pink-faced and glittery-eyed. She’d been waxing giddy over the thought of all those GIs coming home from Korea , men in uniform positively aching to settle down with the girl of their dreams. “It’s called Taboo, back when I was playing with my friends growing up. What is the most shocking thing you’ve ever done? No lying, now!”

“I’m not going first,” said Claire, because this kind of game felt like a fishing expedition to her. Getting the dirt, so you could use it later. But Reka had already turned away from the wall vine where she was somewhat crookedly slopping a magenta-orange flower and grunted: “Robbery. Bald-faced unabashed robbery.” And she let out a witchy grin, sharp gray edge of her bobbed hair swinging.

“Look at you, Attila,” said Grace, stroking the ginger cat. “Robbing the rich to feed the poor, like Robin Hood?”

“Not exactly,” Reka said and turned back to the wall vine.

“Details,” Fliss begged, but Reka flapped a hand at her.

“We said we’d spill, not that we’d spill everything! I did mine, it’s someone else’s turn.”

“I tell my mother I read the Bible verses she mails me,” Bea hiccuped. “But I never read anything but the sports page.”

“That is not exactly a shocker, Bea.” Nora giggled.

“All right, how about you, MissNational Archives?”

Nora arranged her long stockinged legs beside her like a lady, hands folded primly in her lap. “I am in love with a career criminal, and it’s been over for ages but I don’t seem able to entirely get past it,” she said, and hiccuped.

The Briar Club pounced. “Those flowers—”

“The Great Dane—”

“Nora, you dark horse, you—”

“That is all I am saying,” Nora said and tossed the rest of her sun tea down the hatch. “Jesus Christ on a crutch, I’m dizzy...” And she toppled over and leaned her head on Pete’s shoulder.

Pete briefly stopped trying to look like William Holden, and just looked thrilled. He grinned when they all started yelling Your turn, your turn and ruffled his hair. “I buried Mom’s Chipped Beef De Luxe at the bottom of the trash and told her we ate it. I looked her right in the eye and lied like a rug.”

“Good for you, Hammerin’ Pete. We are citizens of the land of the free, and as such we do not have to eat Chipped Beef De Luxe,” said Grace. “Fliss?”

“Sometimes I look at Angela and I just feel tired.” Fliss sighed. “That’s it, just tired . It’s not happening as often as it used to, but it still happens—”

Confessions were rushing now, Claire observed, sitting back on Grace’s narrow couch-bed with her ankles crossed. Something about the velvet dark outside the window, the gin, the empty stomachs and flushed cheeks and the end of a war made everyone want to lean closer. She leaned back, sipping the last of her sun tea.

“My hometown in Texas was invaded by a Communist army,” Arlene blurted. “And I slept with the enemy.”

Everyone looked at her. “I think you’ve had enough of that gin,” Grace said, moving to take Arlene’s glass.

“I’m serious! A war game was staged in my hometown. ‘Maneuvers by the US Army and Air Force to Simulate Thwarting an Invasion and Recovering from Attack,’” said Arlene, clearly quoting from somewhere. “Soldiers parachuted in, playing the part of the invading Communists. Another force came in and ‘liberated’ us eighteen days later, but for over two weeks it was like living in Moscow or something.”

“There is no way something this idiotic ever happened,” Bea hooted.

“It did too! Curfew imposed in town, churches closed, propaganda movies being shown at the local theater, armed checkpoints. Walk home at night and you’d see the guns of the tanks sticking out of the brush in the woods—”

“And people just let it happen? They didn’t stage a revolt?” Pete blinked, clearly envisioning himself/William Holden retaking the town against the invading Reds.

“Are you kidding? It was the most exciting thing to happen in Lampasas in years.” Arlene tightened the band on her curly ponytail. “A town like that, you grow up knowing every man on every ranch within a hundred miles, and suddenly there’s simply thousands of new men in town, clean-cut army boys pretending to have Russian accents. All the high school girls went sashaying by with pies for the soldiers—”

“War games.” Reka spat the words as though they were an epithet. “ Szar. Those generals and colonels need a few old women on staff at these meetings so there’s someone on hand to say, ‘That is the stupidest idea on God’s green earth.’”

“It wasn’t stupid! It was a simulation . I don’t have to imagine what it would be like if the Ivans invaded.” Arlene looked around the room. “Because I know .”

“Sugar pie,” said Grace, “if the Ivans ever do take over Lampasas, Texas, trust me: you won’t be coming by with pies for the invaders.”

“I don’t know, maybe she would.” Claire grinned, feeling mean. “You led this story off with I slept with the enemy . Which Ivan got into your pants, Arlene?”

“I slept with a paratrooper who came in as one of the invading forces. All the girls were doing it—soldiers get pensions; if you marry one, it’s a one-way ticket out of Nowhereville. So I slept with him.” There was an ugly gleam in Arlene’s eyes, and Texas was seeping strongly through her vowels—not the syrupy southern belle drawl she put on whenever good-looking men were around, but a flat, mean, ranch-country twang. “Eighteen days later he moves out when the town is liberated, not a backward glance. So I moved here and now I let every man I date assume I’m a virgin. Serves them right.”

“What is it, this thing men have about virginity?” Grace wondered. “Virginity is so overrated...”

Claire got up to return her glass to the kitchenette area. Grace had left a tube of lipstick on the edge of the table—Revlon Certainly Red. Slipping it into her pocket, Claire sauntered back into the tiny living room. Everyone had moved on from Arlene’s story of hometown Russian invasions, apparently. “—your turn, Grace!” Bea was insisting, waving her glass of spiked sun tea so it splashed the bed. “What’s the most shocking thing you’ve ever done?”

Claire leaned against the door, folding her arms across her breasts. “Yes, let’s hear it.”

Grace ran a stroking hand down her ginger cat from ears to tail; it arched and purred into her hand. “Assault and battery?” she said lightly. “Or—oh dear—is cannibalism more shocking? Or the fact that I stole my cherry pie recipe from my neighbor back in Iowa and never told her...”

That got a big laugh. Of course it did, Claire thought, knowing all the tricks someone could use to slide away from questions they had no intention of answering. First misdirect, then make a joke, then redirect the question back on someone else. So she wasn’t surprised when Grace said, “Let’s hear yours, Claire.”

The most shocking thing I’ve done? she thought, arms still folded tight. The fact that she posed for dirty pictures, stole everything that wasn’t nailed down, or rolled around naked with a married woman? The fact that she’d traded her body at sixteen for a steak dinner and a place to stay the night, and that wasn’t the only time? The fact that there really wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do, to stop from going back to where she’d been at sixteen?

She slammed the box shut hard on those memories before they could get out. Even so a tentacle or two wriggled under the lid, waltzing across the surface of her memory with a dry hiss.

“I’m never going to marry my Sid,” she said finally. “But that doesn’t mean we still don’t meet up whenever we can to do the horizontal tango.”

The best way to answer a question you didn’t want to answer, even better than Grace’s misdirect-joke-redirect routine? Answer with as much truth as you could, but leave out the important details. Everybody clamored to see Claire’s picture of Sid then, and she showed it around—she’d slipped it out of a little silver frame she’d pocketed at an antique shop; hocked the frame but kept the picture because when you liked rolling around with women, you kept a man’s picture in your wallet to deflect suspicion.

After that the clock struck ten and everyone started moaning about how hungover they were going to be tomorrow and began trailing downstairs. Pete had to nearly carry Nora next door to her room. “Grab me those glasses, would you?” Grace smiled, clearing up her cluttered living room. “Thanks, Claire... You all right? You had an odd expression when the game came round to you.”

“Right as rain.” Claire dumped the glasses on the makeshift counter as Pete came back to wave a sleepy good night and tiptoed away, the last of the guests to leave. “Cross my heart.”

“Mmm. You sure?”

“Come on, Grace.” Claire raised her eyebrows. “Quit digging. I know everybody in this house has cried on your shoulder and told you all their secrets by now, but I’m not going to. It hasn’t exactly escaped my notice that everybody spills to you, but you never spill back. I admire that, actually.” Raising her empty glass in a toast. “But you don’t fool me.”

Grace smiled, not disconcerted at all. The ginger cat strolled across the carpet and she picked him up, tucking him under her chin where he purred like a live fur tippet. “Good night then, Claire.”

Claire stepped back into her flats and headed for the door.

“Oh, by the way,” Grace called. “Would you mind leaving that lipstick on my bureau? Certainly Red is my best color.”

Claire shrugged. “Mine too.” She rummaged in her pocket, dropped the tube on the bureau, then sauntered off down the stairs.

“Where’s the fire?” Claire arrived at Case’s Sandwich Shop on F Street out of breath. “I had to hoof it clear from the Hoover Building.”

“What on earth are you doing over there? Congress is in recess.” Sydney looked up from her seat in the booth nearest the door, sipping a root beer in a tall glass, cool as strawberry ice cream in a dusty pink linen suit and white summer straw hat. “Don’t tell me your senator still has you on the hop in August?”

“She’s back in Maine, so I’m filling in for the month at the Department of Commerce steno pool.” Claire slid into the seat opposite, wincing slightly at the looks they were getting. Sydney with her pearls, her spotless gloves, her heaped shopping bags from Jelleff’s and Peck said it wasn’t so bad, but...

“Nothing like that. I have something for you, that’s all.” Rummaging among her shopping bags. “Want to order a hamburger? You may as well have one so I can stare mournfully at it.”

“I have to head back in ten minutes, Sid. I don’t have time for a hamburger.” Claire stole a sip from Sydney’s root beer. “I’ve got about six months of backlog typing to do for Mr.Morrow—he’s the Negro adviser at the Commerce Department, and none of the other secretaries will work for him.”

Sydney’s whole face softened. “But you will.”

More because I want the money than because I’m a crusader , Claire thought . That look in Sydney’s eyes made her slightly ashamed and slightly greedy, knowing she didn’t deserve it, but still wanting more of it. “You said you had something for me?” she asked brusquely.

Sydney pushed a bag across the table. “Merry Christmas.”

“It’s August .”

“Don’t be a crosspatch!”

Claire eyed the label on the bag. “Jelleff’s? Bit out of my league. Don’t all the First Ladies shop there?”

“Will you shut up and open it?”

Claire pushed aside the nesting tissue paper, peeking discreetly. Bright red nylon jersey, white decorative buttons... “A bathing suit?”

“A Claire McCardell halter-top two-piece.” Sydney’s eyes sparkled. “You’ll look like a gorgeous ripe strawberry.”

Claire thought of her saggy old navy-blue Lastex suit. When was the last time she’d taken a day off from the yammer in her head, the yammer of money money money , to go swimming? “Well,” she said at last, stuffing the tissue paper back on top of all that wickedly ruched red fabric. “Thank you.”

“I thought maybe we could go to North Beach in Maryland this weekend when my husband takes Bear on a hunting trip.” Sydney didn’t reach across the table to take her hand, but her own hand in its white glove moved an inch closer. “It’s only an hour’s drive, and we could have a whole day—the beach, a picnic, go out somewhere for once. I know what you’re thinking, it wouldn’t be safe,” she said, voice dropping below the shop’s lunchtime hubbub. “But two friends on the beach together, people don’t suspect that. If we’re careful—”

“What’s the point?” Claire said it fast and hard, before she could think twice. “We’re not friends who go to the beach. We’re friends who...” Fuck . She mouthed it silently. “We go somewhere to be alone, and scratch the itch that needs scratching, that’s all.”

She didn’t stop to see the look on Sydney’s face at that. She could already imagine it, so she didn’t need to see it, so she didn’t look. She grabbed her pocketbook, grabbed the Jelleff’s bag, mumbled “Thank you for the suit—” and piled out of the booth, getting out of Case’s as fast as she could.

Doing a lot of that lately, aren’t you? The voice in Claire’s head sounded uncomfortably like Grace.

3900 Macomb Street, a classic brick four-bedroom between Wisconsin and Massachusetts. Open today, 12 to dark! the newspaper ad had said in the Saturday paper, so Claire turned up just before twilight. The agent looked dubious about showing the house to a woman alone, but Claire flashed the dime-store wedding band she slipped on whenever she found it convenient to pass as married and twittered something about her husband being called into the office, weren’t men just awful for working on the weekend? But he’d sent her on to look at the place, see if it was what they were looking for...

“Wonderful neighborhood,” the agent said, escorting her in. “Gray slate porch, fenced backyard for summer grilling. Perfect place to raise the kids!” But he hustled off to attend the other couple already examining the dining room, leaving Claire to wander, which was how she liked it when she went to a showing. Looking at everything, planning just how her dream house would look someday.

Well, not her dream house. Her dream house, if she was conjuring up castles in the sky, money no object, would probably look like Sydney’s beachside palace in Bermuda: a pale green wedding cake of a house, a dock leading out into a dazzling turquoise ocean and a white roof stepping up toward the sky, a woman in a bikini standing on the dock and waving... But Claire was a realist; she wasn’t going to have a beach house in Bermuda (or any of the rest of it). A three-bedroom with a white picket fence, though? Yes. So she liked to go to house showings and mentally furnish it: yes to that elegant glass-fronted sideboard; she’d have one just like that; no to those heavy velvet drapes, she’d have sheer curtains that let in every ounce of sunlight...

This place was nice. Bachelor house, you could tell—that walnut bar, the den with its deep leather armchairs, the lack of vases or decorative touches. Big, square rooms; wide windows; crown molding... Saving for a house since you were sixteen made you an expert in things like crown molding. Claire wandered into the kitchen, hoping to see one of those new General Electric ranges.

Whoever the bachelor of the house was, he clearly didn’t do much cooking. This was the domain of some daily housekeeper, from the cherry-printed curtains to the decorative flour and sugar crocks. Claire wondered if she might swipe the smallest one into her big pocketbook... And then she saw the iron trivet on the counter and went still as stone.

It’s not Mama’s , she tried to tell herself. Not Mama’s. But it looked exactly like Mama’s, a cast-iron trivet shaped like an American flag rippling in the wind. Claire could see Mama hoisting a sizzling hot pan off the burner and setting it on the trivet so the oil wouldn’t overheat before she finished grating the potatoes for the placki ziemniaczane . Mama was always impatient; she invariably got the oil heating too soon, and then ended up grumbling how blessed long it took to grate potatoes, and after that she’d usually end up grating a fingertip or two and shouting, Michael, I don’t care how much you love them, I am never making potato pancakes again! And Dad would come in with Band-Aids for her skinned fingertips and end up sitting her down with a gin and tonic while he placidly finished grating the potatoes and pressing them into little cakes for the hot oil...

And then the iron trivet would come to the middle of the dining room table, and the iron Stars and Stripes would shield the tablecloth from the hot platter of potato pancakes while they all helped themselves. Chattering, the three of them, about their day.

Claire stumbled out of the kitchen, away from that horrible flag trivet (Mama kept refusing to leave it behind; she’d insist on lugging it from boardinghouse to boardinghouse, rented room to rented room—it was like she refused to admit they were never going to have a kitchen of their own again to make potato pancakes). Out to the backyard, gulping in the evening air and the smell of evergreens from the stand of trees against the fence. Claire wasn’t smelling cooking oil and frying potatoes; she wasn’t .

A cold nose pressed itself against her hand, and she yelped. A big dark dog, pricked ears, wagging tail, nearly the size of a pony... “Duke?” she said, before she could stop herself. It looked just like that dog Nora had kept for a while, the big friendly Great Dane. For an entire year, the Briar Club had used his long back for a footrest when they balanced their plates to eat in Grace’s room.

“Down, Duke.” A cigarette ember flared in the shadows under the evergreen trees, and a man came forward, snapping his fingers. The dog bounded obediently back to his side. “You okay?” he asked Claire.

She realized her cheeks were damp and scrubbed at them furiously. “Yes, I— Yes. Is this your house?”

“I came home early. Waiting out the last of the prospective buyers.” He was burly, dark-haired, watchful, sleeves rolled up and jacket thrown over one shoulder. “You know Duke?”

“My housemate kept him for while. I guess you’d be the owner who was out of the country? Is that why you’re selling the place?” If Claire had a house like this, she’d never let it go.

“In a manner of speaking. Some bad memories here. Turning over a new leaf.” He looked at her as if he was flipping some mental file. “You’re one of the Briarwood ladies.”

“Have we met?” Claire was beginning to regret coming to this showing. First kitchen trinkets bringing unwelcome memories, now nosy men.

“No. I know who Nora’s neighbors are, that’s all.”

Claire suddenly remembered that game of Taboo in Grace’s room, Nora blind drunk on spiked sun tea: I am in love with a career criminal, and it’s been over for ages but I don’t seem able to entirely get past it . “I’d better be going,” Claire said, edging toward the deck.

“Red hair,” he said, nodding as he thumbed to the end of that mental file. “Claire Hallett. I remember because you were the only one going by a false name.”

Claire froze. Duke wandered up and pushed his nose into her hand again.

The dark-haired man looked—chagrined? Impatient? Hard to tell; he had one of those swarthy, immobile faces. “Look, I’m not trying to scare you. I keep an eye on Nora—she’s got some bad-news family, so I keep tabs who comes and goes around her, if anybody’s a threat. She doesn’t want me around so I don’t come around, but I do what I can to keep her safe. Your name flagged because it’s not your real name, but I don’t give a good goddamn why you changed it, all right? Long as you don’t mean Nora any harm.”

“I don’t,” Claire managed to say.

“Good.” He flicked his cigarette butt away. “So we can be friends.”

“Not sure I want that, but I definitely don’t want to be your enemy.”

He laughed, lighting another cigarette. Mr.X , Claire thought. The one who sent Nora flowers with a card marked X . “Been a while since I had a conversation like this. What’s your real name?”

“Clara,” Claire heard herself saying. “Clara Halecki.”

Haleckis are lucky. Claire’s father had told her that when she was a little girl. My grandfather never owned a home of his own in Krakow, and look at us now! Gesturing at the walls around them, the neat little house in the suburbs of Annapolis. It’s a great country, Clara. The greatest on earth, because if you work hard here you’ll always be lucky. He believed in luck, and so did little Clara. Why wouldn’t she? She had an accountant father who was always singing over his ledgers, everything from Cole Porter to his grandmother’s ancient Polish lullabies, and a lovely mother who brushed Claire’s curls out every night and told her red hair was the prettiest so don’t listen to what people said about blondes. Of course Clara Halecki believed in luck. She was the luckiest girl in the world, living in the greatest country on earth.

Until she wasn’t.

Until ’29, when everything crashed, when the whole country broke . When everyone was suddenly tightening their belts, when the accounting firm had to reduce staff, and her father came home in the middle of the day with his briefcase, looking suddenly old.

Never mind , nine-year-old Clara remembered him telling her mother, trying to make light of it. I’ll find something else soon, don’t you worry. We live in the land of opportunity, remember!

“You okay?” Mr.X was looking at Claire; she realized her eyes were brimming all over again.

“Your kitchen trivet.” She looked up at the sky so her lids wouldn’t overrun. Nearly dark, fireflies beginning to dance around the lawn in bright sparks. “It looked just like my mother’s.”

Darling Mama, so house-proud. So happy to keep house because she loved that house: the rose garden, the fresh-ironed curtains at her kitchen windows, the immaculate sideboard with her grandmother’s silver. The silver had been one of the first things to go, down at the pawnshop when the bills piled up and Clara’s father hadn’t been so quick to find a new job as he thought. The family silver, then the good china, then the shiny Packard her father washed down every Sunday afternoon with such pride... Don’t worry, Clara. Something will come up any day now.

But it hadn’t, not in time to save the house. The house that Clara had assumed they owned , but somehow they didn’t, somehow the bank owned it. And then Mama was weeping as she wrapped up the iron flag trivet and a few kitchen essentials, because the rented rooms where they were moving wouldn’t accommodate even half their things, and the women who had been Mama’s friends picked their way through the house at the estate sale as if they’d never come to gossip in her kitchen and tell her she made the best lemon cake in town. I’ll just take those candlesticks off your hands , the woman next door said, as Clara had stood there with rage billowing as red as her hair, watching them strip her home bare.

“I started going by Hallett once I went to work,” Claire heard herself saying aloud, rubbing the Great Dane’s head. “So I’d never get passed over for a job because I sounded like a dirty Polack.” No one had called them dirty Polacks when they had silver in the sideboard, but when you were on the breadlines, the names came out. No daughter of mine will have to leave school for a job , her father had said, but Claire was sweeping out movie theaters for change by the time she was twelve, and that was when his red hair started to go gray. From movie theaters to offices by thirteen; it wasn’t legal but she already had tits and an ass so she could pass for fifteen, and that meant people would wink and pretend she was sixteen if that meant they could pay her less. She’d clerked at stores, she’d stocked shelves, she’d done anything that brought a little money home, even if it meant getting felt up by the manager. And it still wasn’t enough, the whole damn country limping along hungry and cold, Clara’s tiny family limping along with it. Limping from boardinghouse to rented room, each a little shabbier than the last. Our luck’s about to turn , her father said. It’s still the land of opportunity! Only now Clara and her mother turned their faces away when they heard it.

“You want the trivet?” Nora’s Mr.X asked. “You can have it if you want. I don’t even know what a trivet is.”

“No, thank you.” Claire’s mother had loaded it into the big pocket of her overcoat when Clara was fifteen, loaded the other pocket with cobbles, then jumped off a bridge. Claire wondered why she’d even bothered to weigh herself down—she was so thin by then, so worn-out, she’d have slipped motionless under the water without a struggle. You’ll manage better without me was the only note she’d left for Clara and her father, in the cupboard-size rented kitchen that smelled like grease where they had to shoo rats out of the pantry.

Her father had gone a year later, on July Fourth. Dock accident, because the only job he could get in Hoover’s America—her gentle, educated father with his college degree and his accountant’s license and his lovingly shined shoes—was as janitor for a dockside office, working even on a federal holiday, and a swinging crate had come loose and crushed him flat. The man who believed they lived in the land of opportunity had died on the Fourth of July.

And Clara Halecki had buried her father in a pauper’s grave, cleared her things out of their rented room because she was going to be evicted in two days, and then she’d gone to the thirty-five-year-old manager of the store where she clerked and told him she’d fuck him for a steak dinner and a place to sleep. And as soon as he was snoring, she’d stolen his wallet and his watch and a silver paperweight off his desk and every silver spoon in his cutlery drawer, and took off for Washington, D.C., where she introduced herself as Claire Hallett. Claire Hallett, who would do anything, steal anything, screw anything if it meant food in the pantry and money in her hand. Claire Hallett, who knew she was not living in the land of opportunity, who knew that love was for suckers, luck was an illusion, and nothing on earth mattered but security.

Claire Hallett, who was going to have a house someday—a house like this, foursquare and picket-fenced, just like her mother’s, only she’d buy it cash in hand so that no one could ever, ever take it away from her. And she was almost there! Almost twenty years of scrimping, and she was almost there: eight thousand dollars, the magic number.

If she didn’t throw it all away, getting soft over things that didn’t matter. Friends who poured you glasses of sun tea. Dark-haired women with wounded eyes.

“Tell Nora I said hello,” said Mr.X, seeing Claire start buttoning up her overcoat.

“No,” said Claire, “don’t think I will.” And she walked out dry-eyed, with a face like stone.

“Hey, MissClaire! Mr.Huckstop said he took your picture recently.”

Claire stopped dead on her way down the stairs, looking up at Pete on the landing above. “What’d he say?” The thing she’d worried about, that someone might recognize her from those cheesecake photos. Huckstop swore he didn’t sell to locals—

But Pete wasn’t toeing the carpet or blushing, like he certainly would if he’d seen her with her tits hanging out over a fake warhead. “I went in to pick up prints for Mrs.Fliss—her latest ones of Angela—and Mr.Huckstop asked if I’d ever considered getting my picture taken. I could use some photos of a young fella , he said, and he asked me to come by some evening. He said you did sometimes, to get your picture taken for your boyfriend?”

Pete’s freckled face was just shining with sincerity, in that way that made Claire’s stomach squirm guiltily. How old was he now, sixteen? Too young to be dealing with an under-the-counter photographer without many scruples. “Pete—”

“He said I could make some money,” Pete went on, sounding a little puzzled.

“Listen, Pete,” Claire began, feeling uneasy, but Mrs.Nilsson called from the backyard and he went bounding off before she could finish her warning, and then Lina’s voice piped up.

“Mail, MissClaire—and could you try one of these?” Hauling an enormous platter of brownies over.

Claire braced herself as she selected one—Lina had improved a lot, but one of her roofing-tile brownies had broken a crown last year, and hadn’t that taken a chunk out of Claire’s savings. But it was unexpectedly delicious: big chunks of chocolate, and were those dried cherries? “Good work, Lina.”

“I want to enter the junior division of the Pillsbury Bake-Off,” Lina blurted. “Would this do it? The best bakers in the country enter, and you have to be at least twelve to qualify for the junior division, but I’ll be twelve next year...”

Claire looked dubiously at Lina: still looking ten at most, not a very appealing child with her slightly crossed eyes and her gummy please-like-me expression. But the entire Briar Club had made it their mission to buck Lina up whenever possible, so Claire said, “Sure you can, kid” and pilfered another brownie before heading to the hall table for her mail. She flicked through a few advertising circulars and began to saunter back upstairs, only to hear the front doorbell ring.

“Can you get that, MissClaire?” Lina’s voice floated from the kitchen. “I’m up to my elbows in batter...”

Claire shrugged and went to swing the door open—a warm Saturday evening in September; who on earth was calling? But her mouth dried up utterly when she realized who was there. “ Sid? ”

It didn’t look anything like her Sid. This crumpled woman with her arms about her middle slumped against the doorjamb, no pocketbook, no gloves, no hat. Her knuckles bruised and scraped. Her hair falling lank over her face, not hiding the fact that both her eyes had been blackened.

What did he do? Claire thought in utter horror. What did he do ?

“H’lo, Strawberry,” Sydney slurred, managing to look up. She had finger marks around her long, long neck, above the ripped collar of her blouse, Claire saw in the endless, horrified moment before that tall, slim body crashed into hers, as Sydney whispered, Help .

“He told me how he won his Bronze Star.” Sydney kept saying it, over and over, as Claire got her up to the third floor without old Nilsson seeing, eased her down on the bed, slipped her jacket and blouse off. “He told me how he won his Bronze Star...”

Claire stared at Sydney’s ribs, utterly at a loss. She’d been disjointedly thinking of ice packs and a soothing drink, but this—

“I’ll be right back,” she mumbled, heart fluttering in her throat, clutching Sydney’s cold hands. “Don’t go anywhere, sweetheart. Please promise you won’t go anywhere?”

“He told me how he won his Bronze Star,” Sydney whispered, staring at the carpet. Claire took that for a yes and bolted out the door, down the stairs to Fliss’s room. Fliss was a nurse, she’d know what to do—but no one answered her frantic hammering. Dammit, if Fliss was at the park she could be hours running Angela around the pond... Claire hesitated only an instant before running right to the top floor.

“Grace,” she panted when the door opened, “I need help.”

Why Grace? Claire wondered belatedly. Was it because Grace gave off the impression—despite her smile and her curls and her flower vine—that she was tougher than old boot leather? If you couldn’t have a trained nurse in an emergency, you wanted someone tough. Someone who wouldn’t flutter or demand explanations, but do exactly what Grace actually, in fact, did: come right downstairs without a word, take one long look at Sydney, and not bat an eyelash when Claire stuttered out, “I’m n-not wrong, am I? Those are shoe prints—she’s been kicked —”

And then Claire’s throat closed up completely and she could feel the panic rising, her own carefully cultivated toughness completely melting away, but Grace just fetched a blanket and unfolded it across Sydney’s shaking shoulders, commenting, “Let’s get you warmed up, all right, Stretch?”

“S-Stretch?” Sydney’s teeth were chattering.

“Because you’re so tall. I’m thinking your mama took you by your head and your heels when you were a baby and stretched you out like a rubber band. Just let those shakes go right through you; you’re in shock. How about some tea?” Heating the kettle on Claire’s hot plate, talking inconsequentially in that warm Iowa voice. “Lots of sugar, that’s good for shock. Claire, have you got any brandy, whiskey—”

Claire flew for the pint of Virginia Gentleman she kept stashed in her laundry basket away from Mrs.Nilsson’s prying eyes, feeling useless. She’d been knocked around before—the mugger who snatched her handbag last year and shoved her into a wall when she fought him for it; a black eye from the assistant manager she’d sucked in a stairwell when she was eighteen and had asked for her money up front—but she had no experience at all with something like this. Black and blue , everyone used that phrase: My goodness, the way the children climb all over me, I’m black and blue! But Sydney was literally black and blue, bruises the entire length of her torso, her face, her long arms, her shins—she’d clearly been on the ground shielding herself from punches and kicks...

Claire bolted for the hall bathroom and retched. Pull yourself together , she said viciously, dragging a hand across her mouth. How dare she be sickened by this, she wasn’t the one who’d had to endure it. Sydney had come here, to her. Hold it together, for her.

Sid was sitting up straighter when Claire returned, one hand curled around her mug of sugared tea with its slug of bourbon, one hand holding an ice pack to the worst of her black eyes. Grace was feeling gently around her rib cage. “Maybe a few of these ribs are cracked,” she was saying. “But nothing broken. Not your ribs, your nose, your eye sockets...” Finishing her gentle probe of Sydney’s stomach: “Does it hurt here? Here?”

“Not badly. He was— By the end, he was careful. Kicking my arms. My hips. Not my center.”

Grace sat back. “Then you’re in a bad spot, Stretch.”

“Really?” A burst of semihysterical laughter erupted out of Claire. “You think so? Really? ”

“Think about it.” Grace’s customary amused expression had utterly disappeared. “He made a point not to break ribs, damage organs. He did all this”—a wave of her hand over Sydney’s injuries—“yet he was in control enough for that.”

“But he wasn’t in control,” Sydney objected. “He’s never been like this, it’s never more than a slap, a pinch—”

“Yes, it is,” Claire heard herself saying. “He’s used a fist before, you said—”

“Rarely anywhere someone can see. Today was different.”

“I’m sure it was. Today, he didn’t care about damage people could see.” Grace looked at the black eyes, the finger marks around that long throat. “But he cared enough that you wouldn’t have internal injuries and need to go to a hospital.”

Sydney looked down into her mug. Claire’s lips felt dry.

Grace’s gentle voice was merciless. “What happens when he finally stops caring even that much?”

“I won’t set him off,” Sydney whispered. “I know better. I shouldn’t have asked...”

“How he won his Bronze Star?” Claire finished.

Sydney looked down into her mug again and told them.

“It started with one of his long afternoons at Martin’s Tavern,” she started. “Shaking hands and buying rounds and talking policy... Got to glad-hand the movers and shakers if you want that House seat , that’s what Barrett’s father tells him, and he wants it so badly. Hours and hours of whiskey, but it’s not the whiskey. He can hold his liquor, drink half a pint and never slur a word. But he’s not free around those men, the ones he needs to impress, he has to weigh every word, so he comes home and he needs to talk.”

A long pause, biting her lip.

“They’d been at him all afternoon to tell the story, how he won his Bronze Star. When his company was ambushed by a German patrol on the push through France, and he saved them all. He knows how to tell it, the eyes down, the aw shucks . I didn’t know there was anything more to it, but he was so drunk when he came home... I suppose he felt like he had to tell someone the real thing.”

Claire wasn’t going to ask, but Grace did, voice steady. “What was the real thing?”

“He did save his men. That part was real. It’s just what they did with the German soldiers afterward.” Sydney’s voice was flat. “In the report, the enemy had all been killed by exchange of fire. That wasn’t what happened. There were seven German soldiers taken prisoner, only Barrett didn’t take them prisoner. He lined them up on the side of the road and gave orders to mow them down with a machine gun. Because they were all Nazis and the rules didn’t apply.”

In the silence, Claire heard the blare of a horn from the square outside. The nonsense rattle of some little girls on the sidewalk below, singing a hopscotch rhyme.

“That was the first time.” Sydney looked up, her blackened eyes blank. “Once he learned they could get away with it, he said they didn’t always bother taking prisoners. They were just—storming through France, drunk on the terror of victory. Hunting down everything they could. For most of them, if it moved it died. Barrett said he used to man the machine gun himself. Not that I wanted to , he said. Because I had to set an example. A good officer takes the lead. ”

Germans , Claire tried to tell herself. Germans, who had been the villains in everything for so long. The black-hatted devils who deserved everything they had coming to them.

“He’s not sure how many...” Sydney’s pause was so long this time, Claire wondered if she was going to speak again at all. “But they wrote up the reports to make it look right, and no one really cared. They were the winners, the heroes, every one of them Gary Cooper in a white hat. H-He said that it was the best time of his life. All the dead Krauts you could want, and all the grateful French women, afterward. And then he added something about how sometimes the women weren’t all exactly grateful, but there was no one they could complain to so it amounted to the same thing. So who really cared.”

The little girls outside were really quarreling over that hopscotch game now, Claire thought frozenly. Impassioned cries of That’s not fair! and I’m telling! drifting up through the window.

“I should have just let him pass out,” Sydney whispered. Her tea was down to cold sugary dregs now, but she still stared into it like it was a magic mirror with all the answers. “But I started—shrieking. How could you? How could you? I stormed out and started throwing things into a bag for Bear and me. I said we wouldn’t stay one more night in a house with a war criminal . And he went mad.”

Quietly, Grace replaced the half-melted mess of ice in Sydney’s cold pack with a fresh mass of cubes from the icebox, wrapped in a fresh towel. Sydney pressed it to her other eye.

“You know the worst part after that?” Her words were starting to slur now, whether from the shock or the bourbon. “Bear walked in at the end. My little boy, seeing me on the floor trying to shield my face from being kicked. And he ran in crying, trying to jump in the middle, and Barrett just... switched off. Flicked it off like a light switch, all that rage, and he picked Bear up and walked him back and forth, holding him and patting his back while he cried and I just—huddled there, bleeding. And then he sat Bear down on the edge of the bed when he was done crying, sat him down where he couldn’t see me, and explained very kindly that there are times when daddies have to discipline mommies, and it’s just part of being a grown-up. Like when I have to give you a spanking when you’re bad. Daddy doesn’t enjoy it, but it’s what the man of the house does, okay? You’ll learn that someday. And he took him out of the room to get ice cream down in the kitchen, and I lay there thinking, My son is going to grow up just like his father .

Sydney looked between them, from Claire to Grace and back. Claire’s mouth felt thick, like someone had crammed it full of cotton wool. “You can’t go back,” she heard herself say, but Sydney gave a reflexive, instinctive shake of her head.

“Don’t tell me it’s because you still love him,” Grace began, but Sydney shook her head to that too.

“How would I leave?” she said simply. “I don’t have five dollars cash or a charge card in my name or a single relative in this country. Where would I go? What do I do?”

“You can’t go back,” Claire repeated, heartsick, helpless, but Sydney was still shaking her head.

“There’s no chance I could get away—”

“There will always be a chance,” Grace said quietly. “This is the land of second chances. You can find yours.”

Claire was less certain. Because Sydney was going to go back, she could already see that. In another hour, when she’d pulled herself together and restored a little order to her hair and borrowed a scarf from Grace to cover her bruised throat, she’d don a pair of sunglasses to cover those blackened eyes and slip into a cab, lips trembling.

And Claire was the one left thinking What do I do? as she watched that cab disappear toward Georgetown. Because it was no use—no use at all—pretending anymore that she did not love this woman desperately, painfully, horribly, to the end of the earth and back.

Claire had never seen Senator McCarthy up close. At a distance a few times; he always seemed to be moving in a cloud of lackeys and hangers-on, just another bad-tempered man with a loud voice. But that Monday—four days after watching Sydney head back into the monster’s lair she had to call home, three days after a quick whispered telephone call of I’m fine; he’s already cried on my shoulder and told me he didn’t mean it at least reassured Claire her lover hadn’t walked home into another beating—she saw the junior senator from Wisconsin close enough to count every bristle on his unshaven chin.

“Do hurry, Claire,” Senator Smith called over her shoulder as she pushed the button for the office building’s elevator. “I want to pick up that folder from Lewis before I head out again...”

“Yes, ma’am.” Claire followed the senator into the elevator, clutching the minutes she’d just taken at a meeting so boring she couldn’t tell you what it was about. A man’s heavy hand slapped the doors open before they could close.

“Margaret,” Joe McCarthy greeted Claire’s boss. The man who waved lists of Communists in the State Department; the man who said the government was riddled with homosexuals. Tail Gunner Joe, who probably wouldn’t have gotten as far as he had without a nickname like that. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Fancy that,” Senator Smith answered calmly and turned to Claire. “File the minutes when we get back to my office, then see if MissHaskell needs any typing done. Once I’m back from committee—”

Claire nodded, more conscious of the man moving heavy-footed into the elevator at her boss’s other side. That face, familiar from the newspapers with its perpetual five o’clock shadow; the wrinkled collar and tie pulled askew. He stank of whiskey; the elevator reeked as the doors slid closed. Claire could see Senator Smith’s nostrils twitch, but she kept talking calmly. “—and the meeting at five, but I’ll have MissWing take that—”

“I’m not sure I’ve been up this close with you since summer of ’50, Margaret,” McCarthy interrupted them. “First of June, wasn’t it?”

“You know it was, Senator,” Claire’s boss replied.

He was standing too close to her, Claire thought. Looming, almost, with his liquor breath and meaty hands and big smiling teeth, the man half of America revered and most of America was petrified of. Except Senator Margaret Chase Smith, who had stood on the Senate floor, looked him in the eye, and said: Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism...

“I remember asking you a question that morning, Margaret,” Senator McCarthy went on, clearly enjoying himself. “When we bumped into each other on the way to the Capitol. I said, ‘You look very serious, are you going to make a speech?’”

The right to criticize , Claire thought, wondering why exactly she remembered so much of that speech when she’d thought her boss a fool for making it . The right to hold unpopular beliefs. The right to protest. The right of independent thought.

“I said yes I was,” Claire’s boss replied now, “and that you weren’t going to like it.”

“Well,” McCarthy answered as the elevator descended. “I didn’t.”

The exercise of these rights , Claire thought, her brain still unhelpfully reciting the words that had been spoken on the Senate floor that day, should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood, nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know someone who holds unpopular beliefs. Who of us does not? Otherwise none of us could call our souls our own.

“Senator,” Margaret Chase Smith said evenly, “words cannot describe how little I care that you didn’t like it.”

He laughed at that, the sound big and sudden in the cramped space. Claire flinched. “You still think it was worth it, Margaret?”

Stop fucking calling her Margaret like she’s your secretary , Claire thought.

Senator Smith stared straight ahead at the elevator doors. “I do. Joe. And that was the goddamn point.”

His face darkened. “If you think—”

Claire dropped her armload of paperwork in a sudden shower of mimeographs and foolscap. “I’m sorry, ma’am—” Scrabbling to collect everything, Claire managed to wedge herself on Senator Smith’s other side when she straightened up again, forcing McCarthy to take a step back. “Don’t forget your two o’clock appointment, ma’am. With the committee in charge of—” There was no two o’clock appointment, but Claire made up details about it until the elevator doors opened (finally) and they could escape the malevolent whiskey reek breathing down their necks.

“Thank you, Claire,” Senator Smith said once the elevator whisked away. There was just the tiniest tremor in her voice that made Claire wonder if she wasn’t as iron-calm as she’d seemed, trapped in that too-small space with the biggest bully in America.

The biggest bully except, maybe, the man who had bruised Sydney black-and-blue, who had put his hands around her neck and choked her when she said she wouldn’t spend one more night with a war criminal. The man who was very likely going to be a senator himself someday, just like McCarthy.

“Ma’am,” Claire blurted, blushing when her boss’s clear gaze turned back on her. “Why did you do it? Give that speech.” The speech about which MissHaskell had snorted, If a man had done it, he’d be our next president. “Weren’t you afraid?”

Because when you called bullies to account, they weren’t likely to back down. They were more likely to put their hands around your neck and choke you.

“Of course I was afraid.” Margaret Chase Smith seemed surprised by the question. “I had such butterflies in my stomach, I didn’t think I could actually go through to the end of the speech.”

“Then why? Why stick your neck out like that?” Why ever stick your neck out like that?

“Because something had to be done about that man,” Senator Smith replied. “And no one else seemed likely to do it.”

“But he’s still here. Wreaking havoc.”

“He won’t always be,” said the senator from Maine. “His time is coming to an end; he just doesn’t know it. Now, if you’ll take those minutes back to MissHaskell—”

Claire obeyed, thinking that for the first time, she knew why MissHaskell and MissWing were lifers here. Because for every McCarthy this country threw at you, it also threw a Margaret Chase Smith. And by god, when you found one, you backed her up because she was going to find herself in a lot of tight corners.

Her words kept echoing through Claire’s mind, all day.

Something had to be done about that man.

Something had to be done.

“Mrs.Sutherland isn’t home,” the housekeeper told Claire when she came by the Georgetown house with some flimsy excuse of gloves she had been asked to drop off. “She’s at the family home in Virginia, recovering from a minor car accident.”

Car accident , Claire thought. Of course the Sutherland family would need an excuse for why Sydney was battered head to toe. The wife plowed her Packard into a lamppost; women drivers, eh? sounded so much better to your future congressional colleagues than I beat her to a pulp when she found out I was a war criminal .

Claire mumbled some platitude and retreated from those immaculate front steps. After that, it took nearly a month of telephone calls—one a week, pretending to be a club chairwoman or a secretary for a fundraiser—before Claire finally heard the words she’d been waiting for: “Yes, Mrs.Sutherland is back in the District; may I take a message? She’s at the park with her son at the moment.”

Sydney should have been at one of the nice Georgetown parks, the ones with endlessly green grass even in October, where you saw more nannies pushing expensive baby carriages than actual mothers. But Sydney had come to Prospect Park just down the street from Briarwood House, of course she had—when Claire came dashing through the gates, there Sid was, poised and exquisite on a park bench in a scarlet swing coat and black patent pumps, watching her son chase ducks around the pond. So beautiful she brought Claire to a stop on the path with a feeling like she’d been kicked in the chest. How did I think I could know you without loving you?

“Gentle with those ducks, Bear!” Sydney was calling to her son. “Be a teddy bear, not a grizzly bear. Soft paws—” Demonstrating with a mock growl. Her face didn’t have even the hint of a bruise anymore, Claire saw, but if you knew her well you’d realize she was moving just a hair stiffly. As though her ribs still hurt, even if they no longer bore boot prints. And Claire nearly doubled over on the path with hatred for that gleaming bastard with his Yale vowels and his teeth and his Bronze Star. She’d have sunk him in the Prospect Park pond if she could, held him under until he stopped breathing and never lost a wink of sleep.

But she wasn’t going to think about Barrett Sutherland now. She took a deep breath, hands in her pockets against the growing autumn chill, and came up to Sydney’s bench. “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

“Looking for a strawberry patch.” Sydney smiled, but something had gone out of it—some essential, effervescent light. Claire wanted to weep, she wanted to reach out and pull Sydney’s head against her breast, but she couldn’t do any of those things. Instead she sat down on the bench at Sydney’s side.

“I missed you,” she said in a low voice.

“I missed you, too.”

Claire looked at the triple strand of black pearls around Sydney’s long neck. “Nice rocks.”

Sydney stretched her chin upward a little as though the necklace were a noose. “Barrett likes to deliver his apologies via Cartier,” she said tonelessly. “By now they should offer me a promotional: every fourth beating, I get free earrings.”

“Sid—”

“I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”

Claire took a deep breath. “Not what I was expecting to hear, I have to admit.”

“Grace was right about something.” Sydney looked down at her lap, where she was slowly strangling her fur-trimmed gloves. “Barrett’s never yet hit me so hard he didn’t care who knew it. But if he ever finds out about you, he will. And then he’ll come for you.” She looked up, endless lashes glittering with tears. “I couldn’t ever bear it if he hurt you, too.”

“So you’ll just let him hurt you instead? Forever?”

“If that’s what it takes to protect Bear.” Sydney’s voice was so flat, so dead. “I don’t know how to get Bear away, so I have to stay to protect him. And I can’t protect him and you.” Sydney looked out over the duck pond. “Better go, Claire.”

There was a small, ugly part of Claire that wanted to. Walk away from this damaged, doomed woman and the trouble she brought in her wake; be selfish; stick to the plan Claire had clung to since she was sixteen. Look out for herself and no one else, because love was for suckers and happiness meant a well-stocked bank account and a house you bought cash in hand, not the gorgeous uncertainty of a woman’s smile.

Instead she reached into her bag, took out her worn bankbook with its precisely ruled lines, and placed it in Sydney’s hand. “Run away with me.”

Sydney stared. “What?”

“You can’t get away from Barrett because you have no money. I have money.” Pointing at the balance. It had just tipped over the eight thousand mark a week ago. A moment she’d been anticipating since she was sixteen, but she’d been too sick with worry over Sydney to do more than blink dully at the milestone as it dropped in her lap. “We’ll leave together, you and me and Bear. Take a train to California or Florida, somewhere with blue water for my Bermuda girl.”

“He’ll find us, he—”

“He won’t find us! It’s a big country, Sid—if we take new names, get new IDs, stay out of the limelight, he’ll never find us.” New names and papers to match wouldn’t be cheap, but she’d throw the whole eight thousand on the fire if it gave Sydney safety. “We’ll leave the country if we have to.”

“Even if he’d let me go, he’d never let Bear go. He’d never stop looking—”

“Isn’t that a risk worth taking, if it means your son won’t grow up in that house and turn out just like his father?” Claire couldn’t stop herself seizing Sydney’s hands then. “You’ll pass as a widow, and I’ll be your sister-in-law who moved in with you after my brother died in the war, to help raise your son. No one will blink, believe me. We’ll be a family.” Some part of her wondered if she’d gone completely crazy. Claire Hallett had gone from wanting no one, needing no one, to going down on one knee for a woman with a child in tow. “We’ll empty my savings and hock your jewelry; it’ll be enough for a future together.”

Sydney was shaking her head. “You’ve gone completely mad.”

“No, what’s completely mad is staying with that man until he kills you,” Claire cried. “You have to get away. You have to get your son away. Come away with me .”

Maybe it wouldn’t work. The Sutherland family had money and connections; they could rally the newspapers and mount a manhunt. They probably would. But surely there was some quiet corner in this huge country where two women could hide, and live, and love. Surely with eight thousand dollars in the bank, they had a chance of finding it.

“Claire,” Sydney began.

“Mama!” Bear Sutherland came barreling up, hair mussed, hands reverently cupped. “Look what I found! The biggest snail you ever saw—” He pointed out the snail’s retracting horns, the bands on the whorled shell, as Claire got her hitching breath back under control.

“It’s a very nice snail, Teddy Bear,” Sydney said in a strangled voice. “Be very careful putting it back.”

“I’ll put it in the bushes, so it doesn’t get stepped on.” Bear looked at Claire with his huge sunny smile. “Hi, MissClaire!”

“Hi, sport.” Managing some kind of smile.

“My daddy says Mama can take me trick-or-treating this Halloween! I’m going as the Lone Ranger...” Bear chattered about his costume, as Sydney’s hand stole out to smooth his dark hair and Claire’s shoulders still hitched with stifled tears. He really was a nice kid. How many little boys would have picked the snail up like a jewel, rather than stepping on it just to hear the crunch?

“I’ll never be able to get away,” Sydney whispered as soon as Bear zoomed off still cradling the snail. “Not with Bear. I’m not allowed to take him out of school without his father’s permission, and if I so much as take him out for a walk Barrett wants to know exactly when we’ll be back. The housekeeper keeps tabs on me; she telephones Barrett if I’m late anywhere —”

“Halloween night,” Claire said. “You’re already taking Bear trick-or-treating; that’ll buy you a few hours. As soon as the two of you go round the corner and out of sight, hail a cab straight for Union Station. I’ll take care of everything else, you just tell Bear that Tonto and the Lone Ranger are going on an adventure.”

For an endless, agonizing moment Sydney was silent, gnawing off her Revlon Cherries in the Snow lipstick, watching her son careen around the duck pond.

“Come with me,” Claire pleaded. “We’ll live in an apartment with too-thin walls and have to make love in complete silence so the neighbors don’t hear. You’ll learn to cook on a hot plate and I’ll teach you to make Polish potato pancakes. We’ll drop Bear off at school in the morning and then go to the beach, and maybe the water won’t be as blue as it is in Bermuda, but I’ll wear that ridiculous two-piece suit you bought me.”

“Claire—” Sydney’s eyes were brimming. “Do you know who you’re taking on? My husband would crush you if—”

“So?” Thinking of Senator Smith’s clear gaze, the way she’d faced down a bully simply because something had to be done . Now Claire looked Sydney in the eye and said, “You and your child have rights. Just because your husband holds all the cards doesn’t mean you don’t have the right to protest. The right of independent thought. The right to call your goddamn soul your own.”

Sydney’s tears overflowed. “The right to a second chance?”

“This is the land of second chances, Sid!” Claire heard Grace’s words fall out of her mouth and realized she believed them. She might have lost her childhood faith that it was the land of opportunity, but second chances? Yes. Opportunities were things that fell in your lap, but second chances had to be fought for—and you could always reinvent yourself in this country, if you were willing to claw your way toward a new path. You could always reinvent yourself, if you decided it was worth the fight.

This woman was worth the fight.

“I’m not much, Sid.” Claire took a deep breath. “I lie and I cheat and I steal, and I’m not even sorry for any of it. God knows what you see in me. I can’t buy you Lanvin dresses or black pearls, and I can’t give you a huge pale green beach house in an island paradise, but I love you. I will take you away from that bastard you married and I will never tell you that you have to lose three pounds or leave off the suntan oil for fear of getting too brown or lay a single finger on you with anything but love. So come away with me. Come away with me, please .”

She sat there with her heart in her throat and her hands trembling, waiting for her entire world to shatter or to take flight. Watched as the faint hunch in Sydney’s long back straightened, as her lips firmed. Sydney looked at her, and there it was, faintly rekindled: the light in those dark eyes that made her so much more than just a pampered Georgetown political wife.

Sydney pushed the bankbook back into Claire’s hand. “Halloween. Union Station. Five o’clock.”

Claire’s Potato Pancakes

6 medium potatoes, peeled 2 large eggs 1 / 4 cup flour

Salt and freshly ground black pepper Vegetable oil or canola oil Sour cream or applesauce

Grate the potatoes on the smallest setting of your grater. Rinse the grated potatoes, then squeeze them well to get out as much water as possible and place them in a large bowl.

Add the eggs, flour, and a pinch each of salt and pepper to the grated potatoes and mix together well. Line a plate with paper towels.

Place a large skillet over medium-high heat, add the vegetable oil to a depth of about 1 / 4 inch, and heat until the oil is hot but not smoking.

Add 1 / 4 cup of the potato mixture to the oil, flattening it to a small pancake about 1 / 4 inch thick. Fry until golden underneath, 3to 5minutes, then flip and repeat on the other side.

Remove the pancake from the skillet, drain it on the paper towel–lined plate, and repeat with the rest of the potato mixture. Serve the potato pancakes hot with sour cream or applesauce, and eat with someone you adore, while listening to “No Other Love” by Perry Como.

Potato pancakes, Claire reflected, were the food of love—meaning, they were such a colossal pain in the ass to make that no one would ever take the trouble except for love. By the time your fingertips were skinned from grating tubers, your hands sticky from potato starch, and your arms flecked with oil burns, you had better have a good store of love in your heart for whoever was going to eat those little bastards.

“Goodness!” Grace surveyed the platter in Claire’s hands, heaped high with crispy golden potato cakes, lacy at the edges and fried to perfection. “I didn’t think it was your turn to cook.”

“It’s not. But I know everyone’s coming over tonight for Halloween, so I thought you could serve up my father’s placki ziemniaczane . Dollop ’em up with sour cream or applesauce, as you like.”

“You’re not staying?” Grace took the platter, tilting her head curiously.

“Not tonight.” It felt like the only goodbye to the Briar Club that Claire could manage. They’d been friends, real friends, even when she hadn’t always been the best of friends to them (thinking of Reka’s stolen pendant, Grace’s filched lipstick, Fliss’s earrings). But she owed them: over the last few years they’d made living here something so much more enjoyable than she’d ever experienced in any of the cheap boardinghouses she’d called home. This place had started out as cheerless as any of those dismal flophouses, but Grace came along with her painted vine and her suppers, and now somehow there were flowers winding down all four floors of the staircase wall, and more flowers in vases in every room, and suncatchers throwing prisms of light in the windows downstairs... And the Briar Club, getting together now on more than just Thursday nights, on Halloween and the Fourth of July and end-of-the-war day, too, any excuse for a party.

And without the Briar Club Claire wouldn’t have Sydney. Because Reka had brought Sid into the house’s orbit, and Fliss had befriended her at church, and Bea had set her to playing center field in a sandlot game, and then Grace had done that thing she did and looped Sid effortlessly into the house’s fold.

No, Claire reckoned, she owed the Briarwood House ladies a lot. She just wished there was something more she could give them than potato pancakes. Because by the time they realized she was gone for good—probably on Monday, when Senator Smith would also be realizing that her most junior assistant hadn’t come in with her lapel rose, when Mr. Huckstop realized she wasn’t showing up to sit on a papier-maché warhead in a garter belt and fishnets—Claire would be long gone, looking at an entirely different ocean. A long way from these people who had somehow managed to befriend her, even when she was trying so hard not to be befriended. “Happy Halloween,” Claire told Grace around a lump in her throat and turned to head down the stairs.

“You, too, Strawberry.” Grace’s voice held a ripple of amusement. “A word of advice?”

“What?”

“Move around a lot the first year, you and Stretch. Avoid staying in the same place longer than three to four weeks. It’s safer.”

“How do you do that?” Claire turned around on the landing, the lump in her throat converting a laugh into a hiccup. “Figure out everything about everyone, while giving away absolutely nothing ?”

Grace arched a brow. “Years of training?”

“What’s your secret?” Claire asked. Because if she didn’t ask now, she’d never know, and god but she wanted to know. “What’s your secret, Grace? Because you’ve sure as hell got one.”

“You’d never believe me even if I told you.” Grace laughed, that sound of pure enjoyment that made everyone else want to laugh too. Claire was going to miss it. “Sure you don’t want to stay, eat some placki ziemniaczane ?” Her Polish pronunciation, Claire noticed, was flawless.

“Sorry.” Claire started down the stairs again. “I’ve got a date.”

The twilight street was already thronged with pint-size cowboys in ten-gallon hats and plastic six-shooters, tiny fairies in rhinestone crowns and wands, miniature witches in pointy black hats. Pete was taking Lina out—of course Doilies Nilsson was too cheap to get her daughter a costume, so Lina had an old sheet with eyeholes cut in it and was pretending she wanted to be a ghost again like last year and the year before. “I’m going to see she gets the most candy in Foggy Bottom,” Pete said, an extra pillowcase slung over his shoulder. “Say, you want help with your bags, MissClaire?”

“No, thank you.” One bag of her own down toward the waiting cab, then three of Sydney’s—Claire had collected them earlier this week in repurposed Jelleff’s bags, under the pretext that a stack of Sydney’s dresses had to be returned for alterations. Don’t walk out that door on Halloween night with anything more than your pocketbook , Claire had warned. That’s a dead giveaway. And as soon as you get into the cab, change something about your appearance, you and Bear both. Even if it’s just taking off your coats and hats, and ditching his Lone Ranger mask. You don’t want anyone to be able to describe a woman and child arriving at the station wearing the exact same outfits you left home in. And Sydney had nodded, grim as a soldier preparing to go over the top on a suicide charge.

She’d be helping Bear with his Lone Ranger mask now. Kissing Barrett Sutherland at the threshold, maybe. See you later, darling.

“Enjoy your weekend trip, MissClaire.” Pete threw her a salute, that freckled face of his so open and friendly. God, had he grown up. Hadn’t he only been about twelve when she came to this place? Here he was practically a grown man—but he wasn’t, not yet. Claire caught his arm, remembering something with a jolt. “Stay away from Mr.Huckstop, Pete. He asks you to come by after hours and take pictures, you tell him no, all right?”

“Why?”

“Because he’s mixed up in things you’re too young for. Steer well clear of him, all right? Promise me.”

“I-I promise?” He still sounded uncertain.

“Good kid.” Claire jammed the last of Sydney’s bags into the cab and got in, slamming the door. “Union Station,” she told the driver. Maybe Sydney was hailing a cab of her own now. We’re going on an adventure, Bear.

Claire closed her eyes as the cab pulled away from Briarwood House. “I’m coming, Sid,” she murmured. She had the train tickets, two adults and one child all the way to San Diego. She had the luggage. She had her money, cashed out neatly into banded stacks and buried at the bottom of her bag. All Sydney had to do was come. Lead her little Lone Ranger by the hand through Union Station, reach out her other hand toward Claire, and take hold of the future.

Claire closed her eyes and prayed.