Establishment Read Free Page B

been a day in the past year when I didn’t think about what’s going on over there. Now I look at it this way. I’ll help them find the money to buy the planes, then I’ll make the flight. I’ve spent ten years of my life being a soldier. I’m worth my weight in gold over there, and I’m needed. That’s the thing. I am needed. I fought for the Spanish Republic, and for six years I fought for the damn Limeys. And I wasn’t needed. There were twenty million others. Here you count heads. I’m a Jew. You forget that.”
    â€œYou never let me forget it, Bernie.”
    â€œAnd I’m not walking out on you. It may take a few months to work things out over there, but we will. Then there’ll be peace, and I’ll be in a place that I made. I’ll have a function. My life will make some sense. Then you and Sam can join me.”
    She shook her head. “No. This is my place, Bernie, here in San Francisco. I had my romantic dreams. It’s your place too.”
    â€œThen I’ll come back. I’ll do what I have to do, and I’ll come back.”
    â€œFunny,” Barbara said, “so damn funny.” She fought to hold back tears, to keep her voice steady. “You don’t come to me and say, Let’s discuss this. Let’s talk about it. Let’s weigh this against that. You don’t ask me how I feel, what I want. Good heavens, Bernie, we’re man and wife. And now you tell me that you’re going off to another stinking war like you’re going across the street for a pack of cigarettes. Is that what this whole thing means to you? Weren’t two wars enough for us? And if you’re killed, what then?”
    â€œI won’t be killed. A few months and I’ll be back.”
    â€œDamn you!” she exclaimed. She pushed back her chair and ran out of the kitchen, up the stairs to the bedroom, where she flung herself on the bed. She heard his steps following her, and she closed her eyes and pressed her face into the counterpane.
    â€œBobby, Bobby,” he said, bending over her. “I love you. I don’t want to hurt you.” He lay down beside her, pressing his head close to hers.
    â€œDon’t go away,” she begged him. “Please, Bernie, don’t go away and leave me alone again.”
    ***
    Eloise was a timid woman. It was one of the qualities that endeared her to her husband, Adam Levy. She was blond, with a peaches and cream complexion and golden hair that fell in natural ringlets. She was small-boned, gentle, and totally vulnerable, and on first encounter she often gave the impression of being entirely empty-headed. The impression was far from the truth; she was not only sensitive and aware, but well educated and on her way to becoming one of the Bay Area’s foremost authorities on modern art. Adam and his wife lived in the Napa Valley, in the house he had built for her on the grounds of the Higate Winery, which his family owned, but she spent two days a week in San Francisco, where she acted as curator for the gallery of modern art that Jean Whittier had established in the old Lavette mansion on Russian Hill. For the most part, Adam would accompany her to San Francisco, and they would spend the night in a room that Jean had provided for them in the house on Russian Hill.
    Eloise suffered from an ailment called cluster headache, which was little understood in the forties and simply diagnosed as another form of migraine. One of the most painful afflictions known to medicine, it caused her constant and devilish suffering, which she managed to bear without complaint and with surprising cheerfulness. If her husband adored her, it could be said that she worshipped him. Some of the worship was based on contrast. Her first marriage, in 1941, was to Thomas Lavette, Barbara’s brother, and that had endured for five years that she remembered as a particularly nasty nightmare. The only positive result of