The Chelsea Girls(95)

What if Hazel was completely wrong about all this, and had simply gotten caught up in the drama of the evening? She charged on, anyway. “I know it all, Maxine. I know that Arthur was known as Silver, that he was at the top of a network of spies that included Julius Rosenberg. You were his protégée.”

A leap of faith, that last statement, but Maxine wouldn’t know it was just a guess.

“No, that’s not true. None of that is true.” The words came out robotic, the worst line reading ever.

Hazel softened her voice, let her hands fall to her sides. “That was all a long time ago, Max. A lot has changed since then, we all know that. I’m just trying to make sense of it all. We all did what we could to get through, in a terrible time. I want to hear your side of it.”

Maxine responded with a tiny sigh. The air around them shifted, and Maxine’s face went slack. Not with fear, but with relief. Hazel suspected she was desperate to confide her side of the story.

“You can tell me, Maxine,” said Hazel. “It’s water under the bridge. After all this time, I deserve the truth. That’s why you stayed with Arthur, right? Even though he was a beast. I realize now that you didn’t have a choice.”

Her gaze flickered. “I wanted to tell you for so long, but I couldn’t. It would put you in danger, but hell, let’s be honest, I didn’t have the courage.” Maxine paused. “I met Arthur, like I told you, long ago, when I was still in Seattle. I didn’t realize it until later that he was grooming me, training me from the very beginning. I was young, a teenager, and he was powerful and smart. I thought I was in love. With him, with the Communist Party. The two were one, in my mind.”

“Did he bring you to New York?”

“Yes. I was sent there, to work as an agent. Soon after, I was told I’d been made a member of the underground. It was an honor, it meant they regarded me as important. It also meant I cut off all contact with regular communists, didn’t go to meetings, distanced myself from the Party. Not even the communists knew I was a communist.”

A terrible realization dawned. “What really happened with you and my brother? Was he trying to recruit you or was it the other way around?”

Maxine’s face crumpled. “He was on our list of potential recruits. I was told to get a sense of where his political sympathies lay, but when he took me to that protest, I was completely blindsided. That was exactly the type of scene I was supposed to avoid, being deep underground. I let him go after that. I told them that he was too patriotic, that he wouldn’t be turned.”

Hazel wasn’t sure whether to believe her or not. In fact, she was having a difficult time aligning the woman before her—someone who had been trained to lie and scheme—with the changeable drama queen she’d met in Naples and practically lived with in New York. Which one was the real Maxine?

Hazel backtracked, returning Maxine to more comfortable territory. “Did they make you join the USO tour?”

“They thought it’d be a good way to monitor what was going on in Europe, but the controls were too strict, I couldn’t get word back to Arthur, so for a time I was told to cut off all communication. That was the first taste of what it’s like to be a normal person. When we met, when we were trying to help Paul. That was all true. You know that, right?”

Hazel stayed silent.

“After the war, I went back to California to help them infiltrate the film industry, but after I lost the part to Marilyn Monroe, they sent me to New York, to try to revitalize my career on the stage.”

“In my play.”

“Yes, in your play.” Maxine’s voice trembled. “It was a calculated move on their behalf, but I wanted to play Lina more than anything. It was a beautiful part, the best I’ve ever had. Then Julius Rosenberg was arrested, and everything fell to pieces. Arthur came up with the idea to use you and Charlie as a diversion, once the show had opened to raves. But I couldn’t let them do that to you and Charlie, so I, I . . .” She trailed off.

The image of Maxine standing on that stage, floundering like an amateur, came to mind. “Oh my God,” said Hazel. “You threw the show. On purpose.”

“I was protecting you.”

“How?”

“I hated to do it, Hazel, I swear. I figured by screwing up, I’d get you out of the spotlight, keep you out of Arthur’s reach.”

Her excuses enraged Hazel. “I had one chance. Only one. And you ruined it.”

Maxine shuddered. “I wasn’t in my right mind.”

“What about the evening of your birthday?” Hazel demanded. “That was the night you helped Arthur escape, right?”

She nodded, slowly, surprised. “An operative followed me to the theater, said I had to return to the hotel and let in Arthur through the town house, that the Feds were closing in on him.”

“That man who wanted your autograph?”

“Yes. So I left at intermission, took a cab there, let Arthur in, and then he insisted on coming back to the theater with me. I was trapped.”

Playing the victim again. Hazel couldn’t stand it. “So after all that, you not only flopped the show, you still set me and Charlie up that day in the hotel. You told the photographers where to find us, and ruined Charlie’s career as well.”

“No! I had nothing to do with it. My guess is Arthur stole my stationery and wrote that note. You have to believe me.”