I had always assumed that the end of the war in Korea might feel something like the indelible finale of World War II. I’d been only seventeen on V-J Day, nearly a senior in high school. Everyone in my little town poured out of their houses, like hibernating animals who hadn’t seen the sun in quite a while. Neighbors who we knew had lost someone in battle, who’d been isolated in their grief for months or even years, came streaming outside, their faces soaked with happy tears. I’d gotten drunk, truly drunk, for the first time in my life, when Paul and I stole a bottle of our father’s favorite cheap whiskey to bring to our cousin Jimmy’s house. At the time, I thought Paul held his liquor better than I did because he was a boy, but now I know he must have stayed fairly sober so that he could watch out for me. Throngs of people stumbled through the streets of Ossining that night and gathered near the river, to set off homemade fireworks close enough to singe your hair, to grab strangers and shake them, hug them in a cathartic frenzy. Paul ended up half carrying me home as we sang “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” at the top of our lungs. Even as I stumbled going up the back steps, with Paul’s sturdy hand on my elbow, we couldn’t stop laughing, intoxicated by the feeling of excitement, of possibility, of the weight of that capital “V” for “Victory”: we had won.
The conclusion, if you could call it that, of the war in Korea was an entirely different matter. The news came over the radio as I prepared for work on a Monday morning, bringing me to my knees on the floor of my apartment. A cease-fire agreement had been signed. Three thousand prisoners were going to be released, though no one knew when. I clutched my scarf against my face and sat there, not breathing, for what felt like a full minute. When the phone rang and I opened my eyes to get it, the scarf was all wet.
It was Joe. He sounded breathless. “Did you hear?”
“Oh, yes, darling. Yes, yes.” Tears streamed down my cheeks. “It’s the best news I could have gotten today. I feel like throwing a parade.”
“I’m relieved for you, Lou. I hope now you’ll finally get news about your brother.”
I sniffed. I didn’t like how he’d phrased it—I’d have preferred “Now your brother will come home.” Paul had been taken prisoner, of course he had. He’d have been too smart to get himself killed. His superiors would’ve looked out for him.
“Yes,” I said pointedly, “I suppose it’s only a matter of time before we get the news he’s on a ship home.”
Joe paused. “Of course.”
An uncomfortable silence followed, as I waited for him to say more. We at last agreed to meet at the Biltmore at six-thirty, and I hung up with the funny feeling that I wasn’t as happy or relieved right then as I should have been.
That evening, I arrived at the Palm Court at half past six with some pep in my step once again. I had an idea.
It was easy to spot Joe at one of the little round tables among the ferns and miniature palm trees. The place was half empty as my heels click-clacked across the marble floor. He looked up, his face alight with affection when he saw me coming. He stood and kissed me, his hands on my shoulder blades.
“Boy, this place is dead,” I mused. I took a seat, looking around. Typically, we saved the Palm Court, the lounge at Grand Central Station’s tower hotel, the Biltmore, for Fridays, when the hustle and bustle of the train station seemed to usher in the weekend. Today, despite the news, the crowd felt subdued. A single saxophonist played Dixieland in the corner. Under the glass skylight, two quiet young couples pulled their cane-backed chairs together to share a cocktail menu. A handful of men in their thirties waited for a friend by the famed gold clock, heading to catch a train back to Westchester.
“I’d say you brighten up the joint,” said Joe, taking a sip from the rim of a very full cocktail. “Hope you don’t mind I guessed on your drink. Manhattan?”
“Peachy,” I said, but I didn’t take a sip. I splayed my hands on the table, fingers spread. He took hold of one, the left, touching my ring finger, and I got a little flutter in my chest. I blinked to focus. “I’ve got an idea, Joe.”
“So do I,” he said, folding his hand atop mine, like birds’ wings. “You first.”
I took a deep breath. “I could write an article about the end of the war, for Downtown. This could be my first one under my real name, because I’d talk about Paul.” He started to reply, but I put my hand up to stop him. “Hear me out—I’d offer total transparency. It would be a piece written by the sister of a soldier, about the relief and, all right, the bitterness the cease-fire brings. The dissatisfaction. No parades, no unilateral excitement, not for our generation. We’re in a new, cold world, and I’m just the girl to write about it.”
He frowned a little and took his hand back, then fetched a matchbook from his jacket pocket and lit a cigarette. “Are we so sure the war’s over?”
I felt an itch of irritation at the base of my neck. My fingers fumbled to scratch it as I leaned forward to take a sip. “Of course it’s over. There’s a cease-fire.”
“But what’s been resolved? Korea will probably be split into two states. The northern half will remain Communist. We didn’t use all our might to stop that from happening, as we should have.”
I had a headache coming on now. “Are you saying we should have kept fighting?”
“Louise, honey. Your brother may be coming home as we speak! Let’s talk about something else. As a matter of fact, I—”
The saxophonist had finished his solo; I clapped loudly to cut Joe off. I wasn’t going to let him derail me. “I’m sure you’re going to print something about the end of the war, aren’t you? Why shouldn’t I write it?”
Joe took his time in replying, his lips pulled shut. As he lowered his drink, a glug of it sloshed on the table. “We will,” he said. “But we’ll probably find someone who can write with more…” Carefully, without looking at me, he cleaned up his spill with a square cocktail napkin. “More rational detachment.”
I fell back against the cushion on my chair. My mouth hung open. “You mean someone…” You mean a man, I thought. “You mean someone who agrees with you.”
He tried to make a joke of it. “It is my magazine, isn’t it? Oh, don’t give me that look, Lou. You haven’t heard my news yet! I do have an assignment for you, and it’s what you’ve been after all this time. You can use your own byline, none of this ‘Alfred King’ bullshit. It’ll be an interview by Louise Leithauser.”
I still had my body twisted away from him, arms crossed, my fingernails digging into my upper arms. “Who am I interviewing? The cheesecake girl?”
“No, not the cheesecake girl. It’s a good thing you’re sitting down.” He looked around, leaned close to me, and blew the final exhale from his cigarette in one sharp stream toward the band. “Hemingway,” he said, his lips pursed in a sideways grin.
At first I thought he had to be pulling my leg, but then I saw his face. “Hemingway?” My blood began pulsing rapidly, in my chest and ears. “What in the world—why would you give me Hemingway?”
He shrugged. “It’s what the man himself wants—a girl. A writer, but a girl. He’s on his way to New York from Cuba next week, only doing a handful of interviews, wouldn’t grant one to Harry or me. At least, that’s what his wife said.”
“His wife said he wants to be interviewed by a girl?” I tried to imagine being that wife—Hemingway’s fourth, I was pretty certain—requesting a young woman to interview my husband. It was all too bizarre. But still. Hemingway. An interview by Louise Leithauser.
It was plain Joe could see the stars in my eyes. He looked mighty pleased with himself, the cat that ate the canary. He leaned in for a kiss, and I let him take it. As much as I wanted to stay cross with Joe, I felt my heart swell. An interview with Ernest Hemingway, published in Downtown. My own byline. “This could be a big break for me,” I admitted, more to myself than to him.
Joe smiled wide. “Huge.”