She hesitated, and then nodded. “All right,” she said, doubtful but obedient, and reached up to pat the hand he was holding to her cheek, almost as though she were reassuring him.
He made instant coffee, deciding that time was more important than taste right now, and while waiting for the water to boil he glanced at her, and she seemed totally self-absorbed. She had one forearm resting on the table and was frowning at her hand, studying the spread-out fingers.
When the coffee was ready, he carried the cups over to the table, sat down beside her, gave her a smile that was meant to be encouraging, and said, “Are you all right now?
“I think so,” she said, and briefly returned the smile. “You’re right, I wasn’t making any sense before.” She reached for the coffee cup.
Robert waited, watching her.
Evelyn sipped coffee, put the cup down, and leaned over the table to gaze moodily down into the cup. In that position she said, narratively, “Bradford told me last night that he intends to go to Red China, to live there permanently. He says he can do something to bring about world peace if he goes there, he has a whole involved theory about it, I didn’t really understand what he was talking about.” She glanced at Robert, and back down at the coffee. “He was telling me because he wants me to go with him.”
“With him?”
“He’s been in secret communication with the Chinese,” she said, “ever since that time there was the fuss at the gate.” She glanced up at him. “Remember?”
“Two Chinese in the back of a limousine,” he said. “I remember. What do you mean, secret communication? Secret from our government?”
“Yes. That’s what he told me.”
“And now he wants to defect to China?”
She shook her head slowly, frowning. “He doesn’t exactly want to defect,” she said. “He doesn’t think of it that way.”
“But that’s what it would be!”
She lifted her head again to look at him. “Would it? That’s what it seemed to me, but he acted so sure...”
“There wouldn’t be anybody in the world who would call it anything else,” Robert said, “no matter what explanation he gave. Evelyn, are you sure he wasn’t pulling your leg?”
“He was serious,” she said. She was offended, and added, “Robert, I’m not a silly little girl. I wouldn’t have come here if it wasn’t serious.”
“I’m sorry, you’re right. But Good God, you come out of the blue and say Bradford Lockridge is going to defect to Red China! I mean, it takes some getting used to.”
“And I just don’t know what to do about it,” she said. “For all I know, he’s changed his mind again by now, it could be the same as when he was going to run for Congress.”
“But you don’t think so.”
“How can I know?” And suddenly she was on the verge of tears. “It’s becoming so nerve-wracking with him, never knowing what he’s—” She shook her head and said, as though pleading for belief, “It didn’t used to be this way. I don’t know what’s changed.”
Robert, casting around for a role he could perform, some meaningful action he could undertake, said, “Do you want me to talk to him? I didn’t do much good with that Congress business, he talked himself out of it without any help from me, but I’m willing to try.”
“I don’t know,” she said. She folded both hands around the coffee cup and slowly shook her head. “He wouldn’t like it if he knew I told you. But I can’t handle it by myself, I don’t have the arguments, I don’t know what to say to him.” She looked up at Robert again. “Do you have a copy of that article you wrote? About the Fuehrer?”
“Yes, of course.” He was about to tell her that it had just been accepted for publication, but realized that was irrelevant now.
She said, “May I read it?”
“Sure. But why, what’s it got to do with Bradford?”
“He told me about it, it’s one of his reasons for going. Or one of his illustrations, I suppose, of what’s wrong, why he has to go.”
Robert grinned uncertainly, all at once suspecting some sort of mad gigantic practical joke. “Bradford’s defecting to Communist China because of my article? I’m that bad a writer?”
“No, of course not. He said—” She stroked a palm across her forehead, suddenly looking weary beyond endurance. “I don’t know what he said. That there’s a climate of opinion leading to repression, or making it possible for repression, something like that. And your article shows that climate of opinion, or emerges out of it. Something. I don’t really know, the ground kept shifting all the time he talked.” She looked directly at Robert, as though the thought had just now occurred to her, and said, “Why didn’t you ever show it to me?”
He felt obscurely embarrassed. “I don’t know, I suppose it’s — it just didn’t occur to me. It doesn’t seem like a man-woman thing, you know? To show you a piece of hack scholarship I wrote.”
“Hack scholarship?”
But he was still gnawing at her last question, and now he said, “No, I’ll tell you why. It’s because my wife — my ex-wife wouldn’t have wanted to see it. She’d have put it down.”
“I’m not your ex-wife,” Evelyn said, and when he looked at her face her expression was ice cold.
“I know you’re not,” he said. “I’m sorry, old habits die hard.” He reached out and grasped her hand on the tabletop. “I am sorry.”
“Yes,” she said, nodding, and it seemed she had not so much forgiven him as simply put the problem to one side for the moment, there being more urgent things to consider. “I’d like to read it,” she said. “It might help me to understand what Bradford has in mind.”
“Sure. I’ll get it for you.” He glanced up at the wall-clock; two-forty. “I have a three o’clock,” he said, “and then I’m done for the day. If you want, I’ll try to get somebody to take the class.”
“No, don’t do that. I’ll read the article while you’re gone. And try to think.”
“Think about whether you want me to go talk with Bradford or not.”
“I will. I’m just afraid he’ll stop trusting me, if he finds out I told you. It’s bad enough now, but if he wasn’t talking to me, wasn’t telling me about his plans, that would be even worse.”
Robert released her hand. “I’ll go get the article,” he said, and got to his feet. At the doorway, he stopped and looked back with a sheepish grin to say, “By the way, it was just accepted for publication.” He turned away again before she could choose a response.
ii
They traveled down to Eustace together in his Jaguar, leaving her Mustang in the driveway beside his house, and on the way they talked about his article. Evelyn said, “I do see what Bradford means. It’s a very pessimistic article, isn’t it?”
“I suppose it is,” Robert said. “To tell you the truth, I don’t see much reason for optimism right now.”
“Neither does Bradford. But do you really think America is going to have a dictatorship? I’m sorry, but it sounds awfully far-fetched.”
Robert said, “I think the chances of it are better now than at any other time in the last hundred years, including the Joe McCarthy period. If McCarthy’d had larger ambitions, he might very well have been able to take this country completely apart and put it back together again different.” He glanced at her, in the passenger seat beside him, and looked back out at the highway again, saying, “You know the form of government we have in this country isn’t a natural law, like the shape of a rabbit’s ears, it’s simply an historical accident. A thousand things might have happened along the way to make this country far different from what it is. In fact, at the very beginning we came very close to being a monarchy.”