Free The Unwitting by Ellen Feldman Page B

Department, the Army, government offices, schools, libraries, and every woodpile in the nation, though he could never decide on the actual number. One day it was 205, then 57, then 81, then 10. He would have been ludicrous had he not been so dangerous. But he could not have done what he did without help. Reporters blared his every accusation, no matter how far-fetched or loony; editors plastered his leering photograph across front pages. The junior senator from Wisconsin sold newspapers and made careers, and newspapers and reporters made the junior senator in return.It was a sweetheart deal if ever there was one. But it had nothing to do with Abby and me.
    HOW LONG DID I live in that cocoon, six months, eight? Abby was born in August 1953, and the Army-McCarthy hearings began in April 1954. Years later, I would watch the Watergate hearings with Abby and, after that, the Clarence Thomas–Anita Hill hearings while babysitting her daughter Elizabeth, but the Army-McCarthy hearings were the first nationally televised congressional inquiry, and for thirty-six days, 188 hours—I didn’t keep track, I wasn’t that bad, but the statistics were all over the papers—I was chained to the ABC or DuMont network. CBS and NBC preferred the revenue from their soap operas. I moved Abby’s playpen into the bedroom to keep an eye on her or held her on my lap and turned the pages of Goodnight Moon or The Velveteen Rabbit while I watched Senator McCarthy drone and bully. His chief counsel, Roy Cohn, lurked at his side, looking, with his smudged heavy-lidded eyes and pouty mouth, like a sullen mean-spirited boy, the kind who ends up on the front page of a tabloid for murdering his parents and setting fire to the house to destroy the evidence.
    The longer the hearings went on, the more convoluted the drama grew. The Army accused McCarthy and Cohn of trying to get special treatment for a staff member named Schine, who had been inducted into the service. McCarthy countered that the Army was holding Schine hostage to prevent McCarthy’s committee from exposing a veritable coven of communists in the military. The proceedings featured monitored phone conversations, doctored photographs, fabricated memoranda, and other assorted skulduggery.
    McCarthy and Cohn were repellent, but, though the hearings made me sick, I could not turn them off. I shouted at the television. Once I made Abby cry. I also fought with Charlie about them.
    My first idea was that Charlie should write an editorial. He said it would be premature. The hearings were barely under way.
    “But if we wait, it may be too late,” I argued.
    “McCarthy isn’t going anywhere. More’s the pity.”
    “Exactly my point. That’s why we have to speak out against him.”
    But Charlie was adamant. I stopped arguing and started writing my own article. I even paid Orchid, who came down from Harlem to care for Abby, to take her to the park for a few extra afternoons so I could work without interruption. I spent my days watching the hearings, reading about them, and outlining the article. The bulletin board over my desk was covered with notes, clippings, and charts of names and dates. I kept waiting for Charlie to wander into my study and ask what I was working on. He didn’t.
    The article went more quickly than I expected. That was because I spent every moment I wasn’t actually writing the piece thinking about it. One night, a week or so before the end of the hearings, I handed Charlie the article as he walked in the door. I didn’t even let him put down his briefcase or loosen his tie.
    “What’s this?” he asked.
    “A piece I’ve been working on.”
    He put the papers on the hall table. “Do you mind if I have a drink first?”
    He started for the living room, loosening his tie and taking off his jacket as he went.
    I picked up the pages and followed him.
    He made two drinks and gave me one. I took it and handed the article back to him.
    He looked down at the title. “Senator