The Pieces We Keep(143)
Prison time. That’s what they had given him, not a death sentence.
Vivian strained to keep listening through her jumbled thoughts.
“Nobody was willing to risk letting Hitler find out that the reason we caught the spies was because they surrendered. And Hoover was more than happy to let the Bureau look top-notch. Not to mention himself. Now that the war’s over, though, Isaak is no longer considered a threat. So I helped push for an appeal and finally Truman granted him a pardon. I suspect Dasch and Burger will get the same before long.”
The details burned through Vivian like a flame on a wick, quickened by the potential ramifications. In front of Judith, she fought to keep from exploding. “Does Isaak know what you told me? All this time, did he think I just cast him off? Left him alone in a cell to rot? How dare you-”
“The idea,” he cut in, “was Isaak’s.”
With that, the flame was snuffed out.
“He didn’t want you waiting around for him, wasting more than a decade of your life. He pleaded for the favor. He was so desperate when he asked me ...” Agent Gerard broke from her gaze. He paused before continuing in a near murmur. “Doesn’t mean I haven’t wondered if it was a mistake. I came close to telling you months afterward, but I gave the guy my word.”
The motive behind Agent Gerard’s last invitation to meet, that day at Prospect Park, suddenly gained clarity. As did his inability to look her in the eye when he’d delivered news of Isaak’s death.
“Normally I wouldn’t have gotten so involved,” he went on.
“But I figured it was the decent thing to do.”
Decent? Allowing her to believe the father of her child had been sent to the electric chair, that he had been a traitor rather than an unrecognized hero, conjured many a word, none of which included decent.
She wanted to lash back, to seek vengeance for the tears and sorrow based on falsehoods. She wanted Agent Gerard-and Isaak even more-to feel the impact of the injustice they had inflicted. But before she could utter a word, metallic rustlings and a sharp giggle diverted her attention.
On the floor Judith was sprinkling paper clips like drops of rain. Her round cheeks glowed with purity and joy. In a flash, like a story told on the silver screen, Vivian saw an averted path-of prison visits with she and Judith in their Sunday best, of reproachful glares at a convict’s child, of a life without Gene Sullivan. And through the thicket of this vision, a burst of gratitude filled her chest.
“Where is he now?” she asked, still focusing on her daughter.
“Headed back to Germany. To an American-occupied zone. All three of them will be watched there. But kept safe.”
Judith, deep in concentration, crumpled her chin. The echo of a dimple, in its timing, shouted a message of a mother’s duty.
“In that case,” Vivian said, “I need the address.”
There was no sense to be made of the discovery. Then again, perhaps it all made perfect sense. Whatever the case, Vivian spent the day vacillating between two types of betrayal, one the product of speaking up, the other of staying silent.
Dear Isaak,
I have not the faintest notion how to properly compose this letter. Nothing about the past we have shared has been simple or clear. The present moment is no different, as I learned only this morning that your life was spared. I assume you must be questioning, from your view today at a distance, whether the child I was carrying in my arms is
Vivian raised her pen from the page. Seated at her vanity, she scoured her brain for an end to the sentence: the child I was carrying in my arms is ...
What, in fact, was Judith’s relation to him? A daughter. A blessing. An accident. A mistake?
Once more, Vivian wadded the stationery and flung it toward a scattering of other failed attempts. Every letter bore a variation of the same inept opening, each one blocked by a wall of consequence.
She yearned to purge her bottled screams but managed to refrain, unwilling to disturb Judith’s afternoon nap. Security and peace would fade from the child’s world soon enough.
Vivian placed the tip of her pen on the next blank sheet and forced herself to start again. What outcome was she hoping for with Isaak an ocean away? Whether she would ever mail the letter she couldn’t say. Certainly not without Gene’s blessing. Until then, she would set the words to paper, if solely to discern her thoughts.
From behind came the soft crackling of paper.
She glanced in the mirror, expecting to see Judith stepping on a discarded page; the girl had conquered the skill of climbing out of her crib. Instead, it was Gene, home from work early. He stood near the dresser, reading a wrinkled letter.
Vivian shot to her feet, dropping her pen. She pushed down a swallow. “Before you jump to a conclusion,” she began, but a look in his eyes eliminated the rest.