To all 'The Americans' aficionados. The hardest fanfiction of all is below. Writing about Renee Beeman. I'm sure you both understand as well as agree.
Amongst the incredible scenes in Season 6 Episode 10 ('START') was a little teaser that's bugged just about everyone, it goes by almost unnoticed. Earlier in Paige's apartment garage, exposed KGB Agent Philip's parting words to his friend and FBI agent, a devastated Stan Beeman, was, "I don't know how to say this, but I think there's a chance that Renee might be one of us. I'm not sure." Then later, the scene of Renee on the Beeman's front driveway, kissing Stan for his trip to New Hampshire to break the news of his family to Henry.
Renee just stands there, blank look, assessing the chaos across the Falls Church suburban street, as the FBI takes apart the Jennings' house board by board, wire by wire.
Was she or wasn't she? Enjoy.
ONE FOR THE ROAD - DECEMBER 1987
The sun was not up yet, this being December, the days were as short as they could be.
At the table, Renee poured one last coffee for Stan, then filled his thermos with the rest. She was wrapping a lunch for the car - she was sure he was only going to stop for gas on his way from Falls Church to New Hampshire. As had been noted for Stan a few evening's previous, his parents and his sister had said to Stan, "Henry, he loves you." They pleaded with Stan to take care of the one who they were abandoning.
Because they had got caught. It was both as simple as well as terrible as that.
When the lunch was packed, Renee sat with Stan, silently sizing him up. It was clear that Stan's world had been shattered too, and that there was nothing she could do about it. This was unlike anything she'd seen in him, since their first date back on Leap Day, 1984. In fact with February 29, 1988, coming up, Renee had already planned a surprise for what amounted to their fourth anniversary…
"Look, Stan," she said jarring him back from his absent thoughts. "I know there's a lot I cannot know about what's going on…. but, geez, look across the street. Your people, agents, they've been there all night. Police have cordoned off our street, 'local traffic' and all that….."
Having been jarred back into the room Stan made a motion to stand, but Renee motioned that he remain seated.
"I want you to know that I've talked with Henry," she volunteered.
Only half hearing it, he straightened and said, "what!?"
"I'd seen Elizabeth out getting their mail, we just happened to meet. I was trying to settle her, she looked so ragged. She'd missed all of Thanksgiving for her work - said something about wanting to make it up to Henry - maybe over Christmas." Renee paused, "she then said that with all that was going on, that she'd not be able to call him - that getting him at the dorm was hit and miss as it was…."
Stan asked, "why are you telling me all this?"
Renee looked at him, "I dunno, so much has happened. I'm still not clear what's going on with the Jennings - their house, you driving up to St Edwards….. it all sounds 'FBI-ish'. Elizabeth - pardon the French, Stan, but she looked like shit. You could smell the cigarettes from our mailbox." She paused then asked outright, "where are they, Stan? Where's Paige?"
Stan stared blankly at his wife. Unbeknownst to her he was contemplating that he might be in a second marriage in which he had no idea who his mate had been, like the first with Sandra. Stan Beeman, the 'legend of the hunch' in FBI Counterintelligence, now at sea with regards to his bedmates.
He looked at her, scanning for anything, any clue. Finally he answered her question about the Jennings with, "Renee, do you love me?"
At that she rose, went over to him to massage his shoulders. "Stan, you're the love of my life. I waited a long time to find you…"
Stan reached up to his shoulder and grasped her hand. He stood and faced her. After a moment's pause he said, "Renee, I really don't need any more surprises. My life is a joke as it is…."
She looked amazed, "wow, what's that's supposed to mean?"
He thanked her for the coffee and the lunch, got on his coat and headed out to the car - neither beckoning her to follow, nor shooing her away. This early, he was on autopilot.
After putting everything on the passenger seat, he looked over at his people disassembling the Jennings across the street. Cars and vans every which way on their front lawn. Bright lights everywhere. Philip, he had spent many a spring greening up that lawn - to keep pace with the neighbours. That with Philip keeping his picket-fence painted bright-white every year….. even painting the fence had been a lie.
Renee joined him spectating the scene. She'd never once related to the Jennings as anything other than a neighbour - as the wife of Philip Jennings's best friend. Along with Stan, she had befriended Philip's son, Henry, especially. As she was later to tell FBI investigators, outside of when the four of them had got together - for a restaurant dinner, or for a backyard barbecue - she could count on the fingers of one hand, the times she and Elizabeth had ever had a neighbourly word - over the fence. Except that in their case it was mainly across the street (only when they both happened to be outside at the same time).
Renee divided her gaze to following Stan's car up the street, with more than a dozen men loading garbage bags and boxes into the vans out on the lawn. Stan had told her that the FBI had rented an old airplane hangar at a military base, and that the pieces of the Jennings house would be meticulously placed there, in marked grid squares.
'Come to think of it', Renee thought as she returned to the house, 'Stan has told me more about this operation than all the others combined. He must really be hit hard by all this…..'
THE CALL CENTRE
When she got back to the kitchen, as if on cue the telephone rang. Picking up the receiver she answered, "hello?"
The young female voice said, "Mrs. Stansbury? There's a call for you from the publishing house." It was a strange call for the early hour!
Renee paused then said, "I'm afraid you have the wrong number. Please take this number off of your list."
That gave Renee two things to do before the morning was out. First, she had to find a payphone - any public phone on the way to the FBI building downtown would do. Second, she would then go to the FBI's human resources department, to drop off the final papers she would need - so as to join their personnel department in the New Year.
As Stan had said, her application would be a shoo-in - even before C.I. Director Dennis Aderholt had vouched for her. Being accepted would also be a large salary cut from what she was used to in the private world.
She had told him, "but what better way to serve my country, than within the FBI!"
MEETING WITH GRANNY - 1984
Renee was fresh from the gym, working off her excitement about being so proactive at work. In 1984, single women in America, they were simply paid less for doing the same work as men. She administered the same number of files as her male colleagues - only a few of whom overtly had said that they would support her when she announced, "I'm going to march right into the boss's office and demand equal pay."
After that unmitigated success, she celebrated on the stationary bike! Unlike some of the other women in the gym-changing room, she always let her hair settle just to where it settled. Unlike the divas, that meant she had time for coffee before she went home, while the prima donnas were re-styling their hair to 'be presentable', as one young woman had said. (Presentable for what?)
As Renee settled with her coffee and paper, she noticed an older woman eyeing her, a lady perhaps in her sixties - maybe even seventies. Genuinely frumpy. She'd never seen the woman before, but there was something eerily familiar - not since Renee had been 'handled' back in Seattle, had she'd been in the vision of a woman of her vintage.
That had been five years ago. Long before she'd moved - a move on her own and by her own decision - to the Washington D.C. metro area.
Grabbing the initiative - which is what Renee had done ever since high school - she closed up her paper, arose, took her coffee and joined the woman. Without a word from either of them.
After a silence, Renee said, "are you who I think you are?"
The elderly woman replied, "that depends, dear. Who do you think I am? You, you're Renee. We've been looking for you, you're a hard one to find."
"I'm not hiding," Renee said, putting her cup on top of the unread paper. "I left Seattle, that's all. It wasn't a big secret. You people, you know how to find people - jeez, it's what I did for you out on the west coast."
"Well, I just wanted to make my acquaintance. I'm Claudia."
"Wow, you're just like the lady out on the coast. Same outfit. No surname, just 'Claudia'. The other one, she was from Los Angeles, more tanned than you, but my-good-Lord, do they only have one demographic of you people?" Renee asked sarcastically. "You should switch places, you could use some sun…."
Claudia leaned back. "Today, I just have one question. Do you want back in? If so, we have a mission…. as they used to say on T.V., should you decide to accept it."
Renee said it more as a statement than as a question, "Do I want a new mission? Well, it's not like I miss Seattle. Me, I just got a raise at work, I'm making it on my own. Why would I trade horses now?"
"Well," Claudia observed, "that's for you to decide. But this one, it's for the long term. 'If' it succeeds, that is. Not all honey traps succeed."
"Oh Jesus," Renee said, "I'm not 23 anymore!"
Claudia took out a picture of a statuesque, strawberry-haired middle-aged man, somewhat Renee's age. Showing it to her, Claudia said, "you can dangle yourself - all you'd need do is change the gym you go to. If it doesn't work, that would be that. You'd probably not see me again. But if it did work….. well, we'd meet periodically. I would find you."
"I guess that's the only question, isn't it? How much I miss the work." Renee scratched the back of her head, then asked, "will you leave my brother alone?"
Claudia reminded her, "you've kept your word - so far, so why wouldn't we. Besides, you blame Johnson and Nixon for his plight more than you blame us. Vietnam, it still lingers in this country."
"Like Afghanistan in yours," Renee countered.
"I also saw you leafed through The Militant at the library two weeks ago. You don't need us to put a fire in your belly…."
Renee said too loud, "you followed me!" She then calmed down, because she also appreciated that the people she worked with out in Seattle had also been thorough like that.
Renee then said more calmly, "Okay, if it works, what's the timeline?"
"Five years, maybe 10."
"Wow." Renee got up, then said, "let me think about it. I've just been settled at work."
"It's the 1980s in America, honey," Claudia observed. "You can be a housewife AND have a career….."
Renee sat again. "So…. I'm to marry this dude? What does he do?"
"It's best you not know, dear. It'll keep things more spontaneous. I'm sure you agree….."
Renee leaned back. "Five….. ten years?"
Claudia pulled out one more picture, this one of every 13-year old American boy there ever was. "If you make it with the redhead, we want you to run this boy. Don't make it creepy, but bring him into your trust - where you and he can be discrete."
Picking up the picture, Renee said, "well, I don't do 'creepy'. What, is this his son?"
Claudia spoke more quietly and imperceptibly more slowly. "No, not really."
"Not really!?" Renee said.
"A neighbour kid, spends his time at the man's house."
"So, it's the man who's creepy….."
"Definitely not. You'll see what I mean, if any of this works out. That boy, he's like you - a born American. It would also be good to have access to his typical American suburban family in that neighbourhood…. they're in the travel business….."
This time, it was Claudia who got up, readying herself to leave. She said, "Americans have this bizarre custom, dear. February 29th is coming up, on a leap day a woman here gets to ask a man on a date. I don't understand any of it, but if your fellow turns out to be shy or needs a shove, keep that in mind."
Renee thought to herself, that for her, 'every day must be a leap day'.
(to be continued…..)