by Sally Quinn
“Sa-die, Sa-die, Sa-die,” they yelled.
Balloons were released earlier than planned, confetti thrown, horns blown, flags waved. When the cheers and applause didn’t stop, the band began playing “Georgia on My Mind.” More tears, more shouts, more rebel yells.
She hadn’t meant to cry. She had prepared herself not to. She had practiced little exercises, thought of things that would make her mad so she wouldn’t cry. Nothing worked. When she walked out on the platform and heard that welcome she simply dissolved. It didn’t help when Annie Laurie and Outland followed her and embraced her. When Willie came running out a few minutes into the applause and lifted his arms to be picked up, she totally lost it. She picked him up and he wrapped his arms around her neck, his legs around her waist, kissing her cheek to console her. She buried her head in his neck.
Her own emotional reaction to the moment was more than the delegates could bear. People began sobbing in the aisles, holding each other, embracing each other. Some even seemed overcome and collapsed in their chairs, burying their heads in their hands.
At the same time, reporters all over the country, both print and television, told the same story. It was a national catharsis. Nobody had predicted it. Certainly not the image makers who had planned to have her show up the last night as the pièce de résistance of the convention and the campaign. Certainly not Freddy, who had not expected to have the attention taken from him so completely. Certainly not Sadie.
As she began to regain control she lifted up her head to look around the hall, to try to acknowledge the extraordinary tribute. Her eyes scanned the sea of faces encircling the platform. On either side of it, to her right and to her left, were the press sections where the print journalists had their boxes. One of the most prominent was that of the Daily. Standing in the front row, next to the two top editors, was Allison. Next to her was Sprague Tyson. Allison was looking up at the network anchor booth. Sadie’s gaze followed hers. The anchormen and commentators had stood up and come to the front of their glass booths to look at the incredible scene below them. Her eyes rested on one of them, standing the closest to the window. He was tall and stocky with black curly hair and a square jaw. Even from a distance, she recognized him immediately. It was Des. From his posture she could tell that he had been wrenched by the spectacle. Instead of standing upright like the rest of the people in the booths, he was leaning forward, both hands pressed against the glass. It was as though he were trying to break through, to get down there to comfort her and Willie. His body was poised in such a way that it seemed he was straining in frustration against this act of fate that had conspired to keep him away from what was rightfully his.
When he saw her looking at him he held her gaze just long enough that he finally balled his hands, which had been spread out on the glass, into fists. For a moment she thought he might actually punch out the window, but then he turned and walked back toward the anchor desk, deliberately trying not to look at her or his son.
Sadie turned toward the other side of the hall. As she did she caught Allison staring at her. For a moment neither of them moved, each compelled by the other, by the irony of the situation. Then just as quickly, they both looked away.
The emotional frenzy lasted for over twenty minutes until everyone was drained. Up on the platform, which was crowded with Democratic superstars, it looked like the end of a group therapy session. There wasn’t a woman up there who didn’t have mascara running down her cheeks or a man without a red nose. Everyone was begging handkerchiefs from each other to wipe their eyes and aides were scurrying backstage trying to find boxes of tissues to pass around.
Not wanting to miss any opportunity, Freddy had taken Blanche by the hand and dragged her over to where Sadie was standing. He wanted to get in the limelight, have some of her magic rub off on him. She noticed that he didn’t touch her but put his arm behind her back to make it look like he had his arm around her. Blanche embraced Sadie with genuine warmth, trying to take her and Willie in with one hug. The three of them, and Willie, stood together, basking in the wave of love and admiration that was pouring out across the hall.
When it was over there was almost a sense of exhilaration, the way there often is after a funeral, when the mourners suddenly realize that they are still alive. After the hall had quieted down there was an eerie stillness for several minutes and then, without warning, another outburst of flag waving, cheering, and song singing, this time a celebration of Rosey and Sadie rather than a dirge.
Freddy had finally gone to the lectern. As she was about to extricate herself from Blanche so that they could listen to the President, her Secret Service agent pressed a note into her hand.
A sense of déjà vu overcame her. At first she didn’t dare look down at the note. She willed herself not to look at it. Then curiosity got the best of her. Casually, so no one would notice, she unfolded the note and glanced down. In handwriting that was all too familiar, and in words that even now burned a hole in her brain, the note said, simply, “Regrets Only.”
Being up on that platform again this day and receiving his query as she had four years ago came as a shock, even though in some way she had to have been expecting it.
She looked back up at the anchor booth. Des had walked toward the front again, and stood looking down at her, his hands jangling nervously in and out of his pockets.
When he saw her turn toward him he shrugged his shoulders in a questioning gesture.
This time, unlike that last, she smiled and nodded.
The band played “Happy Days Are Here Again.”
* * *
Freddy was ecstatic, not able to distinguish the adulation for Sadie from the lack of enthusiasm for him. Sadie rode back to the hotel with them in the presidential limousine, with the sirens and motorcycles, passing through crowds of admirers and well-wishers, flashbulbs popping, people screaming and waving. It was very heady stuff. She had a slight twinge of wanting it again for herself. Yet when she had had it, all she wanted was out.
Freddy was on such a high, he wanted a celebration. Sadie was the reason for his high. How could they celebrate without her? The champagne without the bubbles. She begged off, explaining that she was exhausted. Freddy wouldn’t hear of it. She finally had to whisper to Blanche that the evening had been a wrenching experience; she missed Rosey terribly; she needed to be alone with her thoughts and her memories. It wasn’t totally a lie.
Yes it was.
She went to her room and waited. How would he contact her? Where would they meet? She examined the damage in the mirror. She looked as if she had just come from a funeral. She freshened her makeup, brushed her teeth, combed her hair, squirted perfume behind her knees. Why was she doing these things? Habit? Anticipation?
The phone rang.
“Will you accept a call from Mr. Desmond Shaw?”
She would.
“I’m in my limo at the back of the hotel. Can you get your agents to bring you down?”
“I’ll be right there.”
She had told Toby she might be going out later. She explained the situation. Both agents could ride in the front of the limo.
She put on her wig, her dark glasses, her scarf. They certainly were getting a lot of wear these days. She smiled to herself. What they didn’t know in the women’s magazines.
The limo was waiting at the back entrance. She needn’t have worried. There was no one around. He opened the door for her from inside and she quickly got in. Her agents got in the front. The window between the front and back seats had been raised so they couldn’t be seen or heard.
She took off her disguise and shook her hair out, looked up at him, and smiled.
“My, you’ve certainly come a long way from a lowly print journalist to a big TV star with a limousine.”
She said this in her most beguiling Southern accent.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said.
She sucked in her breath.
They couldn’t take their eyes off each other. She was b
eing pulled toward him like a magnet. She had no control.
“We can’t,” she whispered as she began moving to him.
He reached out and slid her body across the seat with his arm until she was crushed up against him.
“Not here,” she protested lifting her face to him.
His mouth was on hers, his hands everywhere.
“It’s such a cliché,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck.
He clutched her hair, pulling it back tightly as he laid her down.
“Not with you,” he said. “Not with you.”
She was overcome. So was he. She had not made love to anyone since Michael. Seven months. Before that almost two years. She suspected Des hadn’t either since before the baby.
She didn’t know which she missed more—sex or love. Right now it was sex. Pure, down and dirty sex. She’d think about love later.
She helped him take off her jacket and he unzipped the back of her now demolished linen dress. He didn’t even bother unhooking her bra. He just pulled it down and took her breast in his mouth.
With the other hand he pulled at her underpants, practically ripping them off.
She managed to get to his zipper and undo it, grabbing him and pulling him out in desperation, as though she would lose him if she didn’t get him inside her that minute.
They were both gasping, clawing with need, gnawing and biting each other until their teeth crunched. She wrapped her legs around him. He rammed himself into her as hard as he could. Again. And again. And again.
There was no gentleness, no tenderness, only unfulfilled lust. When it was over they lay together, recovering—their breath, their equilibrium, their senses.
He was the first to move. He released her, pulled himself up, struggled with his pants and leaned heavily against the door. She lay there for a moment, then did the same. They were far apart now, on opposite sides of the car, not touching.
She was the first to speak.
“We seem to be repeating ourselves,” she said.
Their first time had been in a car, in the front seat of his Thunderbird at Great Falls on the way back from lunch.
“Yes.”
There wasn’t much else to say.
They rode in silence. She was pleasantly aware of the smooth hum of the limousine, the velvet plush of the seats. She felt spent emotionally and physically. She also felt totally relaxed.
Des turned on the radio and found a soft, smoky ballad. He reached in the cooler and pulled out a bottle of white wine, opened it, and poured two glasses. Their fingers brushed when she took her glass but still they didn’t reach for each other.
She leaned back and slowly sipped her wine. She felt utterly content as this moment. She wanted nothing more. She wanted to stay exactly where she was forever.
After a while the limo driver called back on the speaker phone, asking about their plans. Des told him, much to Sadie’s disappointment, to head back to the hotel.
As they approached their destination she put on her disguise. The car pulled up to the back entrance. As the agents leaped out of the car and came around to open her door, Des reached over and touched her hand lightly.
“Next time,” he said, as she turned to get out, “next time, we’ll make love.”
* * *
They did. Slowly and sadly, wistfully even, they made love. To the sound of the waves lapping the shore they made love in her bedroom in the house in Easthampton, as they had the night they made Willie.
Labor Day weekend, the end of summer. The air was turning cooler in the evening but the sun was still deceptively hot enough to burn. The Republican convention was over. Des had come just for two days.
He had moved out of Allison’s house, back to his own house on 21st Street, when he returned from Atlanta. According to Jenny it was mutual. Only after Sadie learned that did she invite him to Easthampton. She never really thought he would say yes.
He spent that first day on the beach with Willie. She didn’t go to the beach anymore. Aging and skin cancer had scared her away. They came back at five, tanned and sandy and exuberant. They fell into the pool, laughing and splashing each other. She joined them, sitting on the edge, dangling her feet while Willie dove off Des’s shoulders. He was swimming like a little fish.
“Attaboy, attaboy,” Des kept saying, encouraging Willie to try new things. Des would beam with pride when Willie managed to do something he thought he couldn’t. Willie basked in it. She did, too. She felt such love for both of them, and such sorrow, too. Des and Willie together broke her heart. That was all.
They cooked out. Hot dogs and hamburgers and roasted marshmallows. Just a typical American family on Labor Day weekend.
They tucked Willie in together, Des telling him a bedtime story about growing up in Boston. She sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed Willie’s head. Willie said his prayers, on his knees. Pressing his palms together he recited, “Now I lay me down to sleep…” At the end he added “and God bless Mommy, and Uncle Des, and Monica and…” he listed everyone in his family. Then as an afterthought, “Please God, let Uncle Des come and live with us and be my daddy.”
Des hugged him so hard she was afraid he would squeeze the life out of him. She had to leave the room.
Later that night they went for a walk on the deserted beach. They held hands as they walked barefoot in their white ducks and T-shirts. The moon was full and Sadie couldn’t help studying Des’s features as they walked, listing all his attributes in her mind. He was so handsome, so strong and masculine. He was a good person, too, kind and gentle when he needed to be. He was smart. He was Willie’s father. He loved him very much. It could be so easy with Des. So perfect. Why wasn’t it? Was there just too much sadness there for both of them to overcome?
They walked up from Georgica Beach to where the pond met the ocean, and sat down, protected by the dunes. She picked a piece of dune grass and began tickling Des’s ear with it.
“What are we going to do, Sadie?” His voice was solemn.
She sighed. “I don’t know.” She waited. “What about Allison?”
“I don’t think we can make it. There’s too much pain. She looks at me and sees dead babies.”
“Oh God. Poor Allison…” She waited again. He said nothing.
“Do you still love her?”
She wasn’t as afraid of the answer as she thought she would be.
“Of course I still love her. The question is not do I. The question is can I.”
“How do you mean?”
“How can I love someone who looks at me and sees what she sees? How can I love someone who needs to blame me because she’s angry at my God for causing her such suffering? How can I love someone who’s too afraid to love anyone for fear of losing that person? I just don’t think it’s possible.”
“Oh Des. It’s all so sad, isn’t it? What’s happened to us? Is it our ages? Is that what happens to everyone? Is the state of grief just a natural part of life’s passage? I don’t know anything anymore. I used to think I was a happy person with problems. I generally thought of my friends the same way. There were always a few weirdos in college who were ‘depressed’ in quotes. Somehow I thought then it was an affectation. Now I wonder. I look around me and all I see are people who are hurting, some because of things they have done but mostly because of things that have happened to them. There’s nothing that prepares us for this, is there? There ought to be courses at school. Life 101. Pain 304. Grief 65. No one’s exempt. Nobody gets off free. I feel as if my whole life is one big exam nightmare; I go to take the test and I haven’t been to a class or read an assignment. Somehow, if I’d done the work I’d get through it easier. But then I think I have done the work, goddammit. I’m a good person. Why is it so hard for me? Then I look at the starving Africans, the displaced Kurds, the hundreds of thousands who’ve drowned in Bangladesh and I feel ashamed. How dare I complain? I, who have so much, I who am so privileged. Yes, my husband was assassinated; yes, my child is the child of
a man I can never acknowledge; yes, I’m in love with…”
She stopped quickly. He looked at her, not quite understanding.
“I’m in love with that man.”
She wondered if he had caught her dissembling. It wasn’t that she didn’t love Des. It was just that she had been thinking of Michael. Of how she had failed with him, failed to make him accept her love.
Des reached over and put his arm around her and they sat together, looking up at the stars, as though they would find the answers there.
Later, that night, he came to her bed. She had put him in the room next to Willie’s for appearances and because she felt awkward about it, him, them.
This time their lovemaking was sweet. They both seemed to be trying not to hurt each other, emotionally or physically. They touched each other’s bodies as though they were touching tender wounds, brushing so gently that they could barely feel fingers pressing on skin.
They lay in the dark afterward listening to the waves and the curtain fluttering in the breeze. On their sides, they faced each other, stretched out naked, a shaft of moonlight falling across them. Softly they traced each other’s features with their fingers. Making love made them feel perhaps not fulfilled but not as achingly lonely either.
He kissed her finally, slid out of bed, wrapped a towel around his waist, and disappeared.
Neither one of them had said a word.
The next morning, when she woke, she went to Willie’s room. He wasn’t there. Monica wasn’t up yet so she searched the house. Not being able to find him, she woke Monica. Frantic, she was about to call the police when she decided to check with Des.
Slowly she opened the door to his room. What she saw made her put her hand over her heart, made her eyes blur. Des was lying on his side, curled up, disheveled, and dead to the world. Cupped under his arm, in a little round ball was a miniature, an exact replica, a clone. Sound asleep in his father’s embrace was Willie.
* * *
She couldn’t believe it was almost the end of October, almost Halloween. Could it have been five months since she had seen Michael or even talked to him?