I would have said nothing, he wanted to tell Lewey. But Lewey avoided his gaze.
All of this Harold told to George.
“So it’s time?” George asked.
“Yes,” said Harold. “I think so.”
They had put their plan into place several months before.
There had been suicides already since the HUAC was formed. (Among themselves, they never called it the House Un-American Activities Committee; they called it the Inquisition.) Five, ten, fifteen suicides within the State Department alone. They were men and women fired from their lifelong work—men and women who could not fathom another life. Some of the deaths were labeled accidental. Everyone knew the truth.
“They wouldn’t notice another,” said George. And at first Harold was confused. He did not understand.
“Are you suggesting,” he said, wounded, and George shook his head emphatically.
“No, no,” he said. “I don’t think you should actually do it. Only that you might be able to make it seem as if it had been done.”
Harold gazed at him.
“It would blend in,” George said. “They wouldn’t investigate it further. It wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. It would make sense to them.”
He was right, Harold thought. They would think, Of course. They’d think, What else did he have to live for? No family, no job. A sex pervert. A freak. They would be relieved. It would solve problems for the State Department, in fact—one fewer to worry about. One fewer to keep track of. An item crossed off a list.
“But then what,” said Harold. “What would I do next?”
“You’d become someone else,” said George.
“Who?” said Harold.
There was a family friend of George’s whom George knew to be like them—a comrade. “Don’t say comrade,” Harold had said.
“An ally, then,” said George. “Someone built like us.”
His name was Robert Pearse. George had known him since he was a child. He was powerful, said George, but secretive: not even George’s estranged parents knew the truth about him. But he and George were still in touch: Pearse had reached out to George when his parents first sent him away, offering him guidance, help, friendship. He had invited George to his town home on Beacon Hill for a weekend: he had introduced him to his partner, Jack Greer; he showed him an alternate way to exist. Since then, they had had a correspondence. “If there’s anything I can do,” Pearse had always said.
“He can help you,” George told Harold.
One weekend, in August of 1950—two months before Tillman and Doherty arrived in his office—George and Harold had gone to New York City.
It was an act of love, on George’s part—he had avoided the city for years, dreading an encounter with his parents, with any friend of the family.
“Well, here we are,” he said, with something like disdain, as they got off the bus.
He took Harold to all the places he had frequented as a child.
“Write this down,” he said. “Memorize it until it’s yours. Then burn it.”
All weekend, George narrated to Harold the story of his life. And Harold took notes, as avidly as a reporter. The name of every school companion; the name of every relative. The family tree. A chronological order of trips that he had taken, places he had been. The places in New York that a family like George’s might frequent.
There was a conflicted pride in George as he showed Harold his old haunts. “Here’s where I went to church,” he said, outside Calvary Episcopal.
“Here’s where I went to school,” he said, outside Trinity.
“Until they packed me off to St. Paul’s,” he said.
“Are you writing this down?” he asked, and Harold assured him that he was.
George had saved his house for last, wanting to wait until it was dark outside to venture there.
Before they walked to Gramercy Park, they had a good dinner together near Union Square, in a sort of little bustling cafeteria, noisy enough to prevent their being heard.
Later in life, he would stop into it, anytime he had an opportunity to go to New York City. He would take his daughter there: he would tell her it had been his favorite place. And from that moment on, it was.
Around them were young men and women who looked like George.
When they finished, George stood up abruptly from his chair and nodded toward the door.
“Are you ready?” he asked Harold.
The house was grander than anything Harold could have imagined.
“There it is,” said George unhappily. “The Sibelius homestead.”
It was dark outside, but the little lamps from Gramercy Park illuminated the area just enough for him to be nervous. He glanced over both shoulders repeatedly.
“Now you know what it looks like,” he said. “It’s even more horrible inside.”
After a pause, they walked away together, the two of them, until they were certain they were out of sight. Then they paused, and George took Harold by the shoulders.
“Do you have any questions?” he asked.
“I don’t think so,” said Harold. “Nothing I can think of right now.”
“It’s yours,” said George. “It’s all yours. I don’t want it anymore.”
He looked tired. He looked like a man who’d been carrying a burden.
Robert Pearse, George’s family friend, was the president of the Boston Institute of Technology.
When they returned from New York, George called him on the phone. Harold, in the background, listened anxiously as he explained their situation.
George fell silent for a long time. When he hung up, he turned to Harold.
“Yes,” he said. “He’ll help.”
For some time they had a plan in place. It remained a hypothetical, an unhatched parachute, for some time after that. It was something, at least: it gave Harold some measure of comfort and control. Some assurance that his professional life would not be over if he was fired.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Harold asked for the thousandth time, and George nodded emphatically.
Every dollar George earned was off the record; his politics demanded it. Already he had invented a way to live outside society, in plain sight, in the middle of Washington, D.C. He intended to keep it that way, he said, for the rest of his life.
“You’re young,” said Harold. “Suppose you change your mind.”
“Oh, Harold,” said George, “don’t patronize me.” But he said it kindly, and Harold saw that he was serious.
“I can find other work,” said Harold. “I can keep my name.”
“Who’ll hire you?” said George. “Without credentials, blacklisted by the United States government. They’ll make sure you don’t get hired anyplace.”
“Then I’ll become a hermit,” said Harold. “A mountain man. I’ll solve math problems in my head from my perch in the woods.”
“Don’t be stupid,” said George.
“A chef,” Harold continued, enjoying himself now. But he knew that he would not be happy. His work made him happy; it was the only thing that ever had.
“You need my name more than I do,” said George.
“Besides,” he added, “I hate it. I can’t wait to be rid of it. And that’s the truth.”