Shining Through Read online

  Susan Isaacs

  Shining Through

  In memory of

  Gloria Safier

  She lived.

  Contents

  1

  In 1940, when I was thirty-one and an old maid,…

  2

  “Linda, honey, put on some rouge, stick your boobies in…

  3

  John Berringer could hardly bear the loss of his wife.

  4

  The window behind Edward Leland’s desk was open, and the…

  5

  The sun sparkled, and the surface of the dark water…

  6

  The file room had Blair, VanderGraff and Wadley’s records starting…

  7

  They never touched this one in business etiquette. Not one…

  8

  All those nights I had been working—legitimately working—I had never…

  9

  Snoring, my mother sounded like a huge, slow, rusty machine.

  10

  September 7, 1940. The Battle of Britain was in its…

  11

  The high-ceilinged room in City Hall smelled of cigarettes ground…

  12

  Henry and Florence Avenel lived somewhere in West-chester, in an…

  13

  During the bleakest days of the Depression, in 1931, the…

  14

  December was a miserable month, bitter cold. And almost the…

  15

  North Africa, the Balkans, East Africa, Crete, Iraq, Yugoslavia. The…

  16

  I’d never thought my life could be so interesting, but…

  17

  John had a new office, but that was only to…

  18

  The fourth of July fell on a Saturday, and for…

  19

  John wasn’t at his office. As I came through the…

  20

  “This isn’t foolish!” Edward’s fist crashed down on a table.

  21

  “Say as little as possible,” Konrad Friedrichs muttered. We walked…

  22

  “There’s an old berlinersch expression,” I said. “‘Eine jute jebratene…

  23

  If he’d lived in the United States, the best a…

  24

  Bombs scared me as much as the Gestapo. Maybe more,…

  25

  I didn’t dare risk sleep, so I sat up. All…

  26

  The linen napkin I put over the wound was like…

  27

  My bed was like a crib, with high white railings…

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Susan Isaacs

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  In 1940, when I was thirty-one and an old maid, while the whole world waited for war, I fell in love with John Berringer.

  An office crush. Big deal. Since the invention of the steno pad, a day hasn’t gone by without some secretary glancing up from her Pitman squiggles and suddenly realizing that the man who was mumbling “…and therefore, pursuant to the above…” was the one man in her life who could ever bring her joy.

  So there I was, a cliché with a number 2 yellow pencil: a working girl from Queens who’d lost her heart to the pride of the Ivy League.

  And to make matters worse, John Berringer bore absolutely no resemblance to the typical Wall Street international lawyer, the kind whose gray face was two shades paler than his suit. Sure, a girl could wind up losing her heart to one of those dreary men. There’s nothing quieter than an old maid’s bedroom, and in that black stillness it’s so easy to create magic: A lawyer with the profile of a toad—Abracadabra!—is transformed into an Adonis, pulsating with passion under his pinstripes.

  But John didn’t need any of that midnight magic to turn him gorgeous. The big joke in the law firm was how could I not have a mad crush on him. “You’ve got to be made of iron, Linda,” one of the girls said at lunch, “not to go nuts for those blue eyes. They’re blue like—” Someone at the far end of the table called out, Twilight! And someone else chimed in, No, like a clear lake…but with a funny kind of depth, like on a cloudy day. John Berringer made poets out of stenographers. Someone else piped up, Come on…blue like pansies, and Gladys Slade, my best friend, called out from the head of the lunch table, “How can anybody even think of the word ‘pansy’ in the same sentence with ‘Mr. Berringer’ in it?” Everyone giggled.

  In private, Gladys said, “Listen, Linda, don’t kid a kidder. I’m the first person to understand your not wanting to make a public announcement, but even if you didn’t care about looks, think about brains. I mean, you’re always reading the papers and wanting to talk about—oh, God, you know—English naval power. Or French politics. So aren’t you attracted to someone brilliant like him? I bet he loves all that boring stuff.”

  “It’s not boring. Three quarters of the world is—”

  “He’s so charming,” she cut me off. “Like a blond Cary Grant.”

  “Gladys,” I explained, “when you sit across the desk from this guy day in and day out, you realize he’s always charming. It kind of wafts up from him, like B.O. Don’t you get it? It doesn’t mean anything. And his looks…Yeah, he’s handsome, but what’s behind it?”

  “That’s for you to find out,” Gladys ho-ho-hoed.

  “I’ve got to tell you,” I said, “there’s something deep-down unappealing about a man who knows he’s stunning and uses it. You know, like it’s six-fifteen and you’re so tired all you want to do is suck your thumb, but he has forty-seven letters he still wants to dictate. So he flashes that five-thousand-watt smile and that’s supposed to brighten up your life and make you want to go on. But see, a guy who pulls that sort of thing isn’t…”

  “Isn’t what?”

  “Isn’t masculine.”

  “Oh, come off it!”

  “I’m serious, Gladys. And he’s much too blond. Girls are fair. Guys should be dark. And with those big blue eyes. It’s like some artist made him up to illustrate ‘Cinderella.’ Can’t you just see him, with green stockings and those bubble shorts, holding a glass slipper?”

  “I can see him with green stockings…and without green stockings.” This was a very racy remark for Gladys, whose idea of wild sex was Fred Astaire loosening his tie.

  “He’s Prince Charming,” I said. “Who needs it? I’ve got to stay late when he asks me, even if he looked like a pile of you-know-what. It’s my job. But he thinks: Ha! I’ve charmed her. I’ve got her where I’ve got all the girls, in the palm of my hand.” I looked Gladys straight in the eye. “You know why he doesn’t do a thing for me? Because he’s a woman’s man. Not a real man.”

  Naturally, I was lying through my teeth. But I kept my secret love a secret. I would not let myself (as his secretary) be honorary president of the John Berringer Fan Club. What I felt for John wasn’t meant to be shared with the girls. It was precious, and different.

  Because even way back then, I felt I was different.

  But was I (am I?) really different in any way from all the women from Brooklyn and Queens and the Bronx who trekked up the stairs from the subway every morning and got lost in the dark canyons, the gloomy buildings that loomed over Wall Street? Well, I’m not in Queens anymore. I’m certainly not a secretary. I’m not the girl I was.

  But how did I get all the way here from there?

  Because when America finally did go to war, the other subway secretaries fought Hitler by saving their bacon grease in tin cans and putting makeup on their legs instead of silk stockings. My fight, though, was different—perilous, real. I wound up in the middle of the Nazi hellhole. Me, Linda Voss.

  So what I did dur
ing the war: Was it my fate? Was it courage? Or was it inevitable? Did I finally realize that all those people in Europe could be me, so that I had to be responsible? Or did I just take so many small, stupid steps that I slipped over the edge, into an abyss where I had to either do—or die? Would any girl in my shoes have done the same?

  Now they say I’m a hero. But who are the heroes, anyway? The brave? Or the terrified ordinary?

  I still don’t know. The only thing I do know is that when I start going over all that happened, the first thing that pops into my mind is not one of those major moments, which proves: Hey, that Linda! So special. I had more than enough of those major moments. If you saw them on a movie poster—PASSION! BETRAYAL! WAR! DEATH! LOVE!—you’d assume you were getting one hell of a double feature.

  But when I look back, it’s funny. What I remember first is just a regular day—the last before my life slowly began to change.

  At home that morning, I put the old, dented coffeepot on to perk and looked out the window. Nothing unusual: a dull white January sky, like a bleached-out sheet. The attached houses of Ridgewood, six in a row, were as lifeless as cardboard cutouts: no hyacinths popping up, no maple trees turning red, no kids on roller skates. My down-the-street neighbor’s cocker spaniel, Champ, came and did his business on a Christmas tree that had been lying on the curb all week; then he trotted off, leaving drippy tinsel and a yellow stain on the dingy snow.

  At work, the view of Manhattan from the forty-sixth floor wasn’t what you’d call thrilling, either: not at all that exquisite jagged line of skyscrapers you see in those turn-me-upside-down-and-I-snow paperweights. I glanced out at the narrow streets and overpowering buildings. New York looked gray, tired of itself.

  In the office, the radiator clanged, reheating the air it had already overheated. My face flushed hot and red. My lips were so chapped it would have hurt if I smiled. And my sweater had fuzz balls.

  But who cared? John Berringer, the man I loved, was there. He sat at his desk. Naturally, he didn’t bother to look up.

  “Are you positive you gave me the Kunstadt contracts?” he asked. I stood up, put down my pad and pencil, walked around his desk and stood by his chair. His hair gleamed gold and soft under the light of his desk lamp. I imagined touching it.

  Was this one of those magic moments they’re always singing about on the radio? Did I somehow know? No. But still, looking back, that ordinary day in January 1940 is lit so bright that I can see everything about it: even the streaks of bronze and platinum that shot through John’s beautiful fair hair.

  “The contracts are right here, Mr. Berringer.” I tapped the pile of papers with my finger, and it slid back the quarter inch into his line of vision.

  “Oh. Thanks.” He paused, then looked up and smiled. “What would I do without you?” Probably get up, go to the men’s room, then come back, pick up the telephone and call the employment agency for another bilingual secretary. “You’re the best there is, Miss Voss. You know that, don’t you?”

  I thought to myself: This guy is so full of it that it pours out in an endless, effortless stream. I knew that what he was saying meant absolutely nothing to him. But guess what? I still believed it.

  He picked up the contracts and, of course, forgot me. That was the end of my excuse to stand close to him. I went back to my seat and picked up my pad.

  I can see myself sitting there, like in a spotlight. Pretty. Really pretty if you bothered to look close, but if you didn’t—a secretary.

  But in one way maybe I actually was different: I wasn’t just some girl worshiping her boss from afar, cherishing the very impossibleness of her dream. See, I was a true democrat; I honestly felt I deserved John.

  He may have known the difference between an ode and a sonnet, but I had no doubt, even then, that I was as good as he was. If it hadn’t been for a few twists of fate, you could have seen our engagement announcement and my picture (with pearls) in the New York Times. And the reason you didn’t was just a few not-so-giant twists.

  Twist one: John’s father’s family had made it out of Germany three or four generations before my father’s family did. And so the Berringers had plenty of time to drop their lederhosen and lose their accents. To become real Americans.

  Twist two: John Berringer did not seem to know I was alive. Well, in a way he did. I mean, he wouldn’t have allowed a dead secretary to hang around his office. But although he was always charming—with the wide smile that showed both rows of teeth (perfect and white, but with one slightly crooked front tooth, to prove he was human, flawed) and the wink that said: This is our private joke, Linda—what he offered me was really no more than he gave the bookkeeper or the shoeshine boy: reflexive enchantment. I wasn’t really real to him in the way, say, lawyers were; I was less than a person but more than a typewriter.

  And I don’t know if this was a twist or not, but John was all that Americans are supposed to be (Protestant), and I was only half. My mother’s family, the Johnstons, had been Americans—Brooklyn-Americans—for a hundred and fifty years. But my other half happened to be Jewish. Granted, John didn’t seem like the prejudiced type, but how many people are there in the world who jump for joy over a Jew? Not that he, or anyone else in the office, knew. I wasn’t an idiot. Wall Street law firms didn’t hire Jewish secretaries (to say nothing of lawyers), so since I didn’t look it, why volunteer? Besides, no one in my family had anything at all to do with being Jewish. So the couple of times people said, Um, what kind of a name is Voss? I’d look them right in the eye and tell them the truth: It’s German. Well, it was.

  Oh, and finally, twist three or four (depending on how you count): There was a Mrs. John Berringer.

  But still, I knew I deserved him.

  If I’d gone to college, we could have had brilliant conversations.

  If my great-great-grandfather Ludwig—or whatever his name was—had come to Manhattan around 1800 instead of hanging around a Berlin butcher shop flicking chickens, John would be getting me my coat instead of vice versa.

  If only John knew what I really was inside, he would love me. I was positive. He would want to kiss me exactly the way I wanted to be kissed. He would get up, walk around to my chair, pull me up and hold me so tight against him that I would feel the itch of his worsted trousers through my skirt. Oh, Linda, he’d practically moan, and before I had time to say, Mr. Berringer! and try to push him away so he wouldn’t think I was cheap, his hands would be all over my—

  Enough! I fought to keep those thoughts out of the office.

  I was almost always hysterically busy, and I couldn’t allow myself to do what I really wanted to do: retreat into a world without houses or trees, without anything except me and John, a world of desire. But to tell the truth, taking dictation in two languages, typing, and filing tons of paper kept me from creating ten thousand different sizzling scenes of our coming together. When you’ve got an inch-thick contract to type in German, and it’s seven o’clock at night and your boss wants it by seven-thirty, it doesn’t help to imagine his muscular, hairy thigh rubbing between yours. For real lust, you need leisure.

  And another thing. I was usually too nervous around John to relax enough to let those thoughts rise up: nervous just being so near to him, nervous that I’d make some stupid slip of the tongue that would let him know the score. I could actually goof and call him John. Oh, God, less than a month before, I was saying, I want to wish you a Merry Christmas, Mr. Berringer, and I couldn’t believe it, but I almost said, I want to kiss you a Merry Christmas. Every time I thought of that I got the shivers.

  He said, “I want those letters to Frankfurt to get out today. I know it’s asking a lot…”

  “Oh, it’s no problem, Mr. Berringer.”

  He started to dictate again. His hands, holding the contract, shone in the circle of light made by the fancy modern desk lamp his wife had picked out. The lamp was long and skinny, like Alice in Wonderland’s neck, but with a bulb instead of a head at the end.

 
I sat up straighter. If nervousness wasn’t enough to keep steamy thoughts away, his cold, modern office could; it was the talk of the law firm. But because of who his wife was, the talk was very respectful: Oh, what sublime taste! She’d picked out everything for him. Black furniture so shiny, every time you lifted a pencil it looked as though another hand, trapped inside the desk, was doing the same thing. Ultra-ultramodern design. His carpet and chairs were somewhere between brown and gray, the color of new sidewalks. The walls were such a bright white that even if you worked forty-eight hours straight, you couldn’t doze off.

  Like the office she’d designed, Nan Berringer had no soft edges: no lace around her neck. I’d only seen her twice, but both times she’d worn those severely plain, fantastically expensive dresses classy fashion magazines call simple. But if that makes her sound hard, she wasn’t. Even if you’re like Nan, aristocratic and intellectual, it’s hard to be hard at twenty-one. And besides, she was terrific-looking.

  John stopped dictating and cleared his throat. “I have to be away from the office this afternoon. And probably tomorrow as well.” He sounded a little stiff, but that was because he was still talking German; sometimes when he finished dictating in it, he’d forget he was still speaking it. “I hope you will have time to finish all the work I have given you.” Was his accent great! Before law school, he’d spent three years at the universities in Cologne and Heidelberg. He spoke the language as if he’d been fraternity brothers with Goethe.

  My accent was nowhere near so hotsy-totsy. It was pure berlinerisch, courtesy of my grandmother. People always say that berlinerisch is to German what cockney is to English. For all I know, they could be right; I never met a cockney. “Is there anything special you’d like me to do?”