Sounding the Waters

by James Glickman

  “Well,” he says. “I should have known.”

  “Known what?” Kurt asks.

  “That there are no shortcuts.”

  On Monday he goes to the Department of Student Health and starts to see a staff psychiatrist. He goes twice a week all the way until springtime. Gradually but steadily, what his doctor calls his case of “atypical depression” lifts. In later years, when they develop more knowledge about these things, his state of mind will be called post-traumatic stress disorder. He thanks me for urging him to see someone.

  ✳

  I have always felt good about my advice. At least I have until this morning. Representative Richard Wheatley says in the paper after releasing his records, “The public has the right to know the health of the person they’re voting for.” He has been a United States congressman for eight years, but this conviction did not come over him until this week.

  Richard Wheatley, I read again, is fairly healthy, apart from his enlarged prostate and slightly elevated cholesterol. I don’t think, however, he would be inviting the public to consider his prostate and lipid levels and urging Bobby, who is eighteen years younger than he, to release his medical records unless he and Clive Sanford and Gerry Dolan have something up their sleeves. Something bad.

  I am right.

  8

  By noontime I am sitting in Bobby’s living room with a select few: Laura, Bobby, the highly paid campaign consultant Scott Bayer, and me. Cindy Tucker, though back from a few days of visiting her parents, has not been invited to this meeting. She and Annie are at a movie. Bobby has asked me as a personal favor to come over to consult about a “campaign matter.” He knows that by making his request personal, I will not refuse. He does not know I have made a guess about why he has asked me. And if my guess is right, I am in a sense personally responsible for this particular “campaign matter.”

  We are drinking coffee and eating some freshly baked cinnamon rolls Laura has made. Scott Bayer is an urbane, well-dressed man whose deep, resonant voice is reminiscent of a radio announcer’s—warm, unhurried, good-humored, yet still intimate and coaxing. He enjoys a reputation as one of the country’s premier campaign advisers, someone whose simple signing-on to a candidate’s organization is immediately worth an upward tick in the professionals’ estimate of that candidate’s chances of victory. Scott Bayer is especially famous for picking candidates who begin as underdogs but, under his tutelage, end as winners. Every two years his face becomes well-known to those who watch television news, usually seen in repose above a snowy-white collar. Bobby and he talk about the campaign in a general way for a few minutes, and then Bobby turns to me.

  “Did you see the papers this morning?” he asks. I say I have. “Let’s get started, then. The question is: what is Wheatley up to?” He turns to Laura, who has been correct but distant. “What do you think, Doctor?”

  She looks surprised to have been asked. “I don’t really know… I suppose one possibility is that he wants to defuse the age issue before it has a chance to c-come up…”

  Scott Bayer taps the paper. “Then why is he happy to have it on the front page that his prostate is big as a baked potato?”

  She smiles slowly and without humor. “I said it was a possibility. I’m s-sure you experts will do better.” I listen for the irony in “experts,” but she remains, as before, correct.

  “Ben?” Bobby asks.

  “I believe he’s plotting something. I think Clive Sanford and Gerry Dolan have unearthed something they think you can be tarred with. And the medical report is a setup for it.”

  Bobby nods. He turns to his campaign adviser. “Scott?”

  “I don’t know what he’s up to specifically—you folks know Wheatley and his staff better than I do—but I’ve got an idea about what path he’s heading down.” He takes out a piece of paper from his suit coat pocket and lays it on the coffee table. “This is raw data of some poll results this week. On virtually every issue—abortion, education, how to lower the deficit, aid to the farmers, political reform—things are starting to cut your way. The few issues Wheatley has been pushing that have some support—tax cuts, death penalty, government spending, drug sentences, industrial development—just aren’t giving him legs right now. And our focus groups confirm it.”

  Bobby picks up the paper and studies it. “What about the race, head-to-head?”

  “We’re doing a phone survey this afternoon and evening. We’ll have the results tonight. But I can tell you based on the issue polling, if politically the earth is still round, you’re closing in.”

  “So what is Wheatley up to?” Laura asks.

  “When the issues aren’t working for you, you’ve really only got one choice left. Go personal. Prove you’re this state’s kind of guy. And at the same time make your opponent seem…weird.”

  Bobby and I nod.

  “So,” Bayer says, leaning back and crossing his legs at the knee. “Can Wheatley do it? Make you look weird?”

  Bobby weighs the question for a moment, then says he doesn’t think so. “I can release my medical report anytime, including first thing tomorrow morning. It will show I was successfully treated for thyroid cancer when I was sixteen. That I’m in excellent shape, have had no other conditions requiring surgery or medication, that I run, bike, and swim regularly, and except for my left hand and left leg, my old war injuries have completely healed. No problem there.”

  “Good,” Scott Bayer says, looking at Bobby steadily. “Then where is the problem?”

  “Why are we all here? Let me put it to you straight. I saw a psychiatrist for six months back when I was in college.”

  So it is what I suspected. I sit back. Scott Bayer leans forward. He does not blink. “Any medication?” Bobby shakes his head. “Hospitalization?”

  “No.”

  “Shock treatment?”

  “No.”

  “And nothing since?”

  “Nothing since,” Bobby says.

  The campaign consultant cups his chin and is silent for a moment. “No other health problems, then? Minor operations—vasectomies, hemorrhoids?”

  “None. Two moles on my back that turned out to be nothing.”

  “Okay. Then we have got to assume Wheatley knows about the psychiatrist, and that that’s his angle. He’s going to try to show folks you’re not a regular kind of guy.”

  Laura finally says something. “But if Bobby got all the votes of anyone who has ever seen a counselor or a therapist, he’d win in a l-landslide.” I look at her. This blue-sky kind of remark is not like her. She’s usually as astute as Bobby on how an issue will play.

  Bayer shrugs. “There is a school of thought that says with people spilling their guts out every day on afternoon television and every evening on radio talk shows, as long as it comes before October, a juicy secret is good publicity for a candidate. That’s the there-is-no-such-thing-as-bad-publicity school. I’m not myself enrolled in that school. I see this is as a serious matter and probably just an opening salvo. It distracts voters from the issues, and if Wheatley can connect it to anything else—including through rumors or plain old outright lies—he’ll have you doing damage control from here right until November. And all those issues you’re running on won’t mean a thing.”

  “Wheatley and his staff love that kind of campaign,” I say.

  Bayer nods and then shrugs again. “I’ve seen it happen a dozen times. All I can say is, we’ve got to handle it very, very carefully. This is no presidential race, but let me remind you that when Bush just spread the rumor that Dukakis had seen a psychiatrist, despite the fact it was proven false, Dukakis dropped over ten points in the polls in a single week.”

  It is my sense I have been brought here for this meeting less because of my political insights than because I know all about the psychiatric counseling. I don’t see any point to leaving Bobby wondering about my loya
lties. “Look,” I say. “Let me make it clear right now that if anyone ever asks me if Bobby ever saw a shrink, I’ll tell ’em, ‘No.’ Period. If they press the subject, I’ll say, ‘Not to my knowledge.’”

  Laura looks at me, her eyebrows lifting in surprise. “You’d lie?”

  “Saying ‘No, not to my knowledge’ is not a lie. I never went to Student Health with Bobby. I never saw him seeing a therapist. How would I know if he were really seeing someone? Maybe he was just telling me he was going to a psychiatrist so I’d leave him alone.”

  “Denial is one way to handle it,” Bayer says. “You can—”

  Bobby holds up a hand. His jaw is set and he has that old, familiar settled look on his face. “I’ve been thinking about this business for a long time, even before this came up, but I wanted to talk it out first. There’s only one way to handle this. I’ll release my medical files, call a press conference, and tell ’em about the psychiatrist.” Bayer sits back on the couch as if pushed. “I know. I know it’s risky. But if you’re right, Scott, that there are rumors and lies coming down the pike, people are going to get damned suspicious as the weeks roll along that I’m always denying things. You own up to something like this, though, and people will believe you when you deny something later on.”

  Laura and I know Bobby too well to bother to try changing his mind. If we wanted to. Which I for one don’t, since I think he’s right, politically and otherwise. Scott Bayer, however, warns him of the dangers, pointing out that the only two men in politics who ever revealed they’d undergone psychiatric treatment were both hugely popular incumbents. “One of them,” he adds, “got dumped like a rock from the vice-presidential slot. The other won the governorship of Florida in a race that turned out twelve points closer than it would have been without his revelation.” Watching Bobby carefully, he explains they’re going to lose momentum for at least a week and probably longer, that it’s uncharted ground they’ll be walking into, and in one form or another the story’s likely to show up not just in the state but in the national press. Bobby listens and nods. “Let me put it this way,” Bayer says. “You ready to talk about this on Nightline?”

  Bobby shrugs. “In the long run, it’s the best way.”

  Laura and I each register our agreement.

  Bayer holds up his hands. “All right… It’s your show. I just want you to know what you’re in for. It’s going to be a hell of a lot harder in the short run. And some very ugly stuff will get bandied around.”

  “Like what?” Laura asks.

  “Well, here’s a for-instance. It is my bet Wheatley’s people will try to link it to Jeannie’s machinations about the highway placement. Claim the Parrishes are all mentally untrustworthy, if not unstable.”

  Laura frowns, no doubt wondering what effect such a claim might have on the Parrish children.

  Perhaps it is because I am the one who pushed him to get therapy in the first place, but I feel implicated in what Bobby is about to go through. The meeting seems as if it is about to break up, and a thought occurs to me. “Bobby, are you going to announce this all in one press conference? The medical report and the psychiatric news?”

  “I don’t know. Probably.”

  “If Mr. Bayer—”

  “Scott,” he corrects me.

  “If Scott is right about Wheatley’s plans—and given what we know Clive Sanford has been up to, I’m sure he’s right—then maybe you should wait on the psychiatrist stuff.”

  “Wait? Why?”

  “Let them bring it up first. Then you respond more in sorrow than in anger about the indignity of their campaign tactics. That way you can alert everyone to the fact they’re running a dirty campaign right at the start. It’ll make it harder for them to throw mud later on. Plus you’ll also find out who in the press they’re using to help them do their dirty work.”

  “Excellent,” Scott says, giving me a closer look. He asks me my name again.

  Scott Bayer and Bobby talk about when polling will be done daily, how soon to start the TV ads, whether to bring in some famous national party big shots, and of course, money, money, money. The decision on the psychiatrist issue, however, seems settled. The campaign consultant has to get to the airport. Bobby looks at his watch and begins to grumble about the Rotary Club barbecue at which he is expected to make an appearance. Annie and Cindy Tucker are going to meet him there. Laura, on call this weekend, says she has to remain at home. She shakes hands with Scott, kisses Bobby goodbye, and tells him he’s made the right decision. “I hope so,” he says, then he looks at me. “Call me a fool, but I got the impression you’re getting interested in this campaign. Careful, my friend.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  He pulls on his coat. “There’s always a place for you, you know.”

  “Thank you. But I think it’s better this way. Why not run some of this past Jeannie? Or if you want, I could.”

  He sighs. “She and I agreed she should stay separated from the campaign.”

  It occurs to me as Bobby heads out the door to a staffer’s waiting car that, over all the years since college, Laura and I may have never been alone in her house. Then I am annoyed that this occurs to me.

  She invites me to sit down and, before I can make up my mind, does so herself. “I’d forgotten you worked for Governor Roberts,” she says.

  “Not much about it to remember.”

  There is a silence. I put my hands on my knees and am about to excuse myself. Laura offers me some more coffee. I shake my head and say I have to get back to work.

  “I don’t know which is worse,” she says, looking at the door. “Workaholic or alcoholic.”

  My stomach clenches for a moment. Then I realize she is comparing Bobby to her father.

  ✳

  It is a week before college is going to begin for me for the fall term. I have made the fourteen-hour drive to Charlottesville in one stretch, at the legal seventy-miles-per-hour limit the whole way, stopping only to drain my bladder and fill the tank at stations saying Gas War out front and charging thirty-nine cents a gallon at the pump. My arrival is to be a surprise. We had some arguments before school let out, and we have tiptoed around them on the phone and in letters since. I am hoping to clear the air in person. I stop under the green dinosaur of a Sinclair station, get directions to Laura’s street, drink a Coke from a cold, thick bottle, and wait for the hum of the road to fade from my ears.

  I knock on the screen door of her blue split-level just before dinnertime. A clump of footsteps brings a towheaded boy to look at me through the screen. Behind him a television blares manic merriment to an empty room.

  “Are you Billy?”

  He blinks, then nods his head.

  “I’m Ben, a friend of Laura’s. Is she home?’’

  He nods again. I know that Billy is nine years old and has a younger sister, Amy. Other than that, I know almost nothing about Laura’s family.

  There is something sad and subdued about Billy. He does not turn and holler for his sister. He walks quietly away and comes back a few moments later. “She’s comin’,” he says, and continues to stand and look steadily at me through the screen door.

  I gesture toward the television. “What are you watching?”

  He gives this question some thought, then shrugs. “Nothin’.”

  I am surprised to find she lives in such a small place with such old furniture and to see the room behind the screen to be in disarray. Her summer travels and her poise made me assume she lived in suburban ease of one kind or another. I don’t myself care whether she has lived in a shack or in a mansion, but her surroundings give me my first pang of anxiety about whether she might be happy to have me show up unannounced. She comes to the door, a wooden spoon in hand, apparently in the middle of cooking. Her face has the weary, set expression of someone searching for a way to politely turn aside the encyclopedia salesman.r />
  I grin at her. Her eyes widen and her jaw drops. She may be happy to see me, but as I step inside and she looks at the living room through a visitor’s eyes, her face grows pink. We hug and she leads me into the kitchen for some iced tea. When I say I hope my dropping in is not too sudden, she shakes her head and says, “No, no, no. Not at all!” As time passes, though, her apparent pleasure at seeing me begins to fade. Her parents are each due home from work around six, and as that time nears, she grows more and more quiet. Finally I say, “Is there anything I ought to know about your mom and dad?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean are they Spiro Agnew fans or do they hate Midwesterners? You know—is there anything I ought not to bring up?”

  She reflects for a moment, then shrugs, looking at that instant just like her sad little brother. “I suppose you ought to leave out the Chicago convention. They’re not big on protests.”

  Her mother comes in a few minutes later. I hear her voice before I see her. Though a bit tired-sounding, it is a pleasant, high-pitched, almost girlish voice. She asks Billy to go call Amy in for supper. Laura, who is stirring the spaghetti sauce, yells, “Hi, Mom!” in an agreeable tone. And then in comes her mother. I am startled. She looks extraordinarily like Laura, if Laura had been ravaged by life. Not yet forty, Betty, as she asks me to call her, looks at least ten years beyond her actual age, her face managing to be both puffy and lined. She greets me kindly, apologizes for the appearance of the house, and kisses Laura on the cheek, asking if she needs any help with the dinner. After Laura says everything’s fine, Betty turns to me and excuses herself to go make herself “a bit more presentable.”

  I wait for some comment from Laura. She tastes the sauce, grinds in some pepper, and says nothing.

  “What does your mom do?”