Senator

by Richard Bowker

  I cringed. I don't like it when people claim kinship with me because we're fellow Harvard grads; what do I care if they went to the same school or shared the same undergraduate house? "Great to meet you, Brad," I said, and tried to move on.

  He wouldn't let go. "I was a colleague of Amanda's at Hub," he continued. "Such a tragic loss."

  Oh, that Brad Williams. Why wasn't I better with names? Amanda had mentioned him to me. The former Crimson editor, now doing dreary articles about Boston's hottest singles bars and the fifty most eligible bachelors in the city. What a comedown. For some people the real world is never as exciting as Cambridge. He had lusted after Amanda. She had dated him a couple of times, she told me, and decided he was a pig. "Yes, indeed," I said, trying to extricate my hand. "Such a tragedy."

  "Did she ever mention me, Senator?"

  "Mention you? Why, no, I don't believe so." You self-important loser.

  "Just wondering. And this is your wife?"

  He was pushing it. Why? Was he just a jerk? Was he going to ask for an interview? Did he expect to get the real inside scoop on the murder from his fellow Harvard grad? "That's right," I said. I didn't offer to introduce Liz.

  "Great job at the press conference Saturday, Mrs. O'Connor," he said to her. "Wish I could've been there, but Hub has someone else covering the campaign."

  "My loss, I'm sure," Liz said. She turned away.

  Williams turned back to me, grinning with too many teeth. "Well, good luck in the campaign, Senator."

  Go crawl back under your rock. I gave a slight nod and looked for Kevin. It was time to get out of here.

  We retired to the car, and in a few minutes the procession to the church started. I stared out at the grayness, thinking about Amanda, the police, the campaign.

  "Do you believe in life after death?" Liz asked me suddenly, breaking a long silence.

  Kevin's head turned slightly, but then he went back to watching the road. "Sure," I said. I wasn't going to get into anything with her.

  "You didn't use to."

  "I'm getting older. I've decided life after death is a good idea after all."

  "I think the spirits of the dead are always with us," Liz said. "There's so much they could tell us if only we could open ourselves to them." I looked across the back seat at her. Her eyes were glowing. And I thought, hardly for the first time: Does she really believe this stuff?

  When Kathleen was settled in school, I more or less expected Liz to go back to teaching. She was always so obsessed with money, well, here was her chance to earn some once again. But instead she put it off and put it off: There was the election campaign for the Senate, after all, and then the abortive attempt at living in Washington with me. But then, when nothing was standing in her way, she finally announced she was going to start the program at Cabot.

  Why? Perhaps she didn't think that a senator's wife should be a mere grammar school teacher. Perhaps she was doing it to get back at me in some obscure way. See, I can screw up our finances, too. Perhaps it was to work on our relationship, as I suggested earlier, or to escape from the burden of it. I just couldn't figure it out, so my response to Liz's course of study has been an edgy defensiveness, tinged with a sarcasm that infuriates her.

  It was no different this morning. "The police would certainly like it if Amanda would tell them some things," I said.

  Liz shook her head. I didn't get it; I had never gotten it. "Why should the dead care about the same things the living care about? That's why we have such difficulty communicating with them. We're too bound up in our everyday concerns. We don't have the right perspective."

  "Mom, there's no scientific basis for any of this stuff," Kathleen would say to her. "How can you possibly believe it?" Kathleen had even less patience with her mother than I did. Liz would just smile an infuriatingly knowing smile at her and say, "There are some things your scientists will never understand, dear." And that would just drive Kathleen up the wall.

  "How do we find out what the right perspective is, Liz?" I asked.

  "That's what life is all about," Liz said. "Finding that perspective."

  We had reached the old stone church, I noticed gratefully, and the procession came to a stop. Kevin stayed behind in the car, and Liz and I walked quickly inside under the eyes of the waiting cameras. Good. We would be seen on the news tonight going to the funeral together. Liz had done her job.

  We slid into a pew, and in a few moments the mass began.

  The police would have their questions for Amanda, and I would have some, too, I thought. I looked at the burnished wood of the casket as it sat at the foot of the altar, facing the church filled with the grieving and the dutiful and the merely curious. Here lies Amanda Taylor: loving daughter, hardworking reporter, loyal friend. Here lies. The priest in his white vestments would repeat all the clichés, and maybe there would be a tear-choked graveside eulogy that would repeat them yet again. So what was the truth, Amanda? Not about the clichés, but about what mattered to me? Lover or liar? Which was the charade: the interviews with friends and relatives or the long romantic dinners, the dreamy conversations, the passionate sex?

  Or was it all true? And was I just too stupid to understand?

  I remembered the first time we met: fifteen minutes in my Senate office. As often happens, the meeting was delayed while I rushed off to vote in the Senate chamber and got caught up in procedural issues that wasted an hour or two. I wouldn't keep the networks waiting, but a magazine reporter wanting to write a book about me? Not important. After all, I was seeing her in the first place only as a favor to Liz.

  I finally got back to my office, and Mrs. Sullivan showed her in, after first informing me that her thirty minutes had to be chopped in half if I wanted to make it to the lunch with the delegation from the South Shore Chamber of Commerce.

  So Amanda Taylor came into my life: expensive black suit, white silk blouse, gold necklace, gold watch. Money, I thought when I saw her. Money, and youth, and beauty—and the self-confidence that those three things provide. Her grip was firm and her hand was cool when I shook it. "It's such a pleasure to finally meet you, Senator," she said.

  I smiled. "What's your position on splitting infinitives, Ms. Taylor?"

  Her slightly slanted eyes looked puzzled for a moment, and then she laughed a brilliant laugh that displayed her impossibly white teeth. "I keep a little silver hatchet in my handbag," she replied, "just in case I come across an infinitive that needs to be split."

  I nodded. "It's good to be prepared. Have a seat." I motioned to a comfortable upholstered chair in one corner of my office. She sat and crossed her legs, showing enough thigh to convince me that she was aware of the power of her beauty and willing to use it. I sat opposite her. I didn't like sitting behind my desk for this sort of thing: too formal, too intimidating—although sometimes intimidation is useful. "So, why should I cooperate with you on this book project, Ms. Taylor?"

  "Please, call me Amanda." Another smile. "You should cooperate with me, Senator, because I think you want to run for President, and a book like this will help establish your reputation nationally. It will make you look like a serious contender to the people whose opinions count."

  "A book like what?"

  "A book that examines your philosophy and, more importantly, the man behind the philosophy. Why do you believe the things you do? Why have you been so successful? What makes Jim O'Connor tick?"

  I considered. "Shouldn't that be 'more important,' not 'more importantly'?" I asked. Amanda reddened; she didn't know. I felt pleased with myself, but I let the victory pass. "Why should you write the book, Ms.—Amanda? Why don't I write it myself or have it ghostwritten? Are you interested in ghostwriting?"

  She shook her head. "No, it would be my book. But that would be to your advantage, Senator. No one pays any attention to candidates' autobiographies; they're so obviously tendentious. But a book written by an objective outsider would be taken seriously."

  Tendentious. No one uses "tendentious"
in conversation. She was trying to make up for "more importantly." All right, that told me something. "Don't I run the risk that you'll be too objective, Amanda? Or perhaps you have your own agenda here. I don't know anything about you. What if you decide to trash me in this book?"

  "I assure you that I'm not out to trash you, Senator. But if I were, wouldn't it be better to at least let me interview you, so you can have your point of view represented?"

  I shrugged. "Not necessarily—not if I have no control over how you do the representing. Besides, if I don't cooperate, you don't have a book. I assume you haven't sold your proposal yet, right?"

  "No, but I have a lot of publishing contacts, and—" Amanda stopped short, as if she realized that she simply didn't have the arguments to convince me. She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward. "Think of it as a challenge," she said. "To win me over. To make me believe in you. I've read a lot about you: working your way through Harvard, the spectacular legal career, then giving it up to run for office....You've been taking on challenges all your life. This is just one more."

  Her expensive perfume wafted over me, and I almost laughed, the appeal was so blatant. But of all the important things I could be doing with my time, why should I want to spend it trying to win over Amanda Taylor? Why this challenge and not another?

  I didn't bother asking. Instead I stood up. "Let me think about it," I said. "I'll get back to you."

  Amanda's smile disappeared. "I take that as a polite rejection."

  "Then you take it wrong. Politicians aren't allowed to make decisions like this on their own. They're required by law to consult their advisers and get twenty-six different opinions about it before they make up their minds. I'll be in touch."

  Amanda stood up. "Then I'll keep hoping," she said. She held out her hand. "Thanks for 'more important,' " she said.

  I took her hand and held it a fraction of a second longer than I meant to. "My pleasure," I said.

  And then it was time for lunch with the Chamber of Commerce.

  We both were acting at that point, I assume, although Amanda later swore otherwise. For my part I was impressed by her, but I didn't feel especially tempted. Beauty, intelligence, and good breeding might be worth flirting over, but they were hardly worth risking my career over. Amanda's charm did get her something out of the meeting, though: I relayed her request to Harold and Marge instead of rejecting it outright, as I had assumed I would before meeting her. They were as dubious as I had been—Marge, especially—but they agreed to check her out.

  What they came up with wasn't encouraging.

  "She comes from good Republican stock," Harold reported. "Her father's a banker, and there's family money besides; she's got a trust fund she's using to underwrite her little venture into the work world. But there's no evidence that she's ideologically compatible with us. She's a reporter."

  From Harold that was not a compliment. "But she's got brains, right?" I asked.

  He shrugged. "She graduated from Smith magna cum laude in government, then got a fellowship to Oxford for a year. She's no dope."

  "What about her work at Hub?"

  Marge answered that. "She's been there for three years. She's done all right, I guess. She did an exposé of Boston building inspectors that shook things up a bit. Mostly, though, she's written fluff. Including, of course, the immortal piece on Cabot College."

  I could tell that Marge and Amanda would not be best buddies.

  "So why does she want to write a book about me?"

  Harold shrugged. "My guess is she's bored working at the magazine, and she's looking to move on. Three years is a long time at a place like Hub, and there's only so many articles you can write on local colleges. She meets Liz and figures maybe she can use the contact to get involved in something more exciting. Her entrée into the glamorous world of Washington politics. A chance to use her college major."

  "But who cares, Jim?" Marge broke in. "She's a lightweight. The last thing we need is someone like her trying to make a reputation off you."

  Hard to disagree. And yet... "Right," I said. "Well, thanks for the research, guys."

  "Anytime, Senator."

  * * *

  The priest was giving the sermon now, saying all the right, comforting things. A woman in the pew in front of us was crying silently into her handkerchief. She looked to be about Amanda's age. A classmate? Another reporter? In the front pew Mrs. Taylor leaned her head against her husband's arm. Liz stared at her folded hands as the grief for her rival welled up around her.

  Amanda? Are you there, Amanda? We did stop acting eventually—didn't we?

  * * *

  If Amanda Taylor was the last thing we needed, why did I call her back and set up another meeting to discuss her project?

  I wasn't consciously plotting a relationship with her; my virtue still felt safe. I just wanted to see her again, to talk to her some more, perhaps to find the reality beneath the perfect exterior. As she suggested, I found her a challenge, although what sort of challenge I couldn't really have said.

  We met for lunch at a Back Bay café during Christmas recess. If any proof of the purity of my intentions is needed, my agreeing to meet her in a public place in Boston should be sufficient. It was something I wouldn't have dreamed of doing a couple of months later.

  Amanda was dressed more casually this time, although her suede jacket hardly looked cheap. She seemed more at ease in a restaurant than in my office; the fact that I had called her back must have helped her confidence. Her smile still dazzled. "It's so good of you to see me again, Senator," she said. "Does this mean you'll let me do some interviews for the book? I'm ready to start anytime."

  "I'm not sure," I said honestly. "My advisers are against it."

  "Why?"

  "For one thing, you're not a Republican. They don't think you're sympathetic to my views."

  "Oh, but I am sympathetic," she said, leaning forward, her eyes shining with sincerity. "I'm so impressed by the emphasis you put on personal responsibility. I mean, in a perfect world maybe a criminal would have had a good upbringing and wouldn't have broken the law, but ultimately he has to accept the blame when he commits a crime. The government should get the criminals off the streets and then get out of the way and let people live their lives."

  The waiter came. He was a young gay with close-cropped blond hair and a hoop earring; he recognized me. Amanda ordered a glass of white wine. I ordered a Coke.

  "So, if you can't afford health insurance and you need an operation," I said, "the government should get out of the way and let you die and let your children starve." I couldn't help it; it's the lawyer in me. Someone argues one side of the case, and I start arguing the other.

  Amanda seemed taken aback for a moment, but she didn't yield. "Tragedies happen," she said. "Liberals think government can prevent them. I have a sister who thinks like that. I used to think like that in college. But hasn't the experience of the past fifty years or so proved that this just isn't true? We can't provide a world where everyone is healthy and happy and has a good job. At best we can only provide the opportunity for those things."

  The waiter brought our drinks. He looked as if he wanted to join in the discussion. Amanda ordered a salad. I ordered an omelet.

  "All right," I said, "so you're a born-again conservative. The last time we met you said I should go along with this project because of the challenge of winning you over. So where's the challenge?"

  She laughed. "I'm sure there are issues where we disagree. Abortion, for example. The death penalty. I'm no match for you as a debater, but I'll say what I think."

  Why should I care what she thought? She's a lightweight. Well, I did seem to care. We talked. The food came, and the waiter lingered, as if hoping to put in a good word for gay rights or federal funding for the arts; we ignored him and talked some more. Amanda tried to draw me out, but I wasn't interested in hearing what I had to say. This was still a job interview. She was the one who had to make a good impression.

&nb
sp; Looking back on it, I can say that I wasn't fooled, at least not totally. I couldn't tell if she really was a conservative or if she was just parroting some of my positions to flatter me. At the time it didn't matter. What mattered was the energy she was investing in getting me to go along with her idea, the single-mindedness with which she strove to convince me. It was refreshing. I was so used to Washington cynicism. I was so used to Liz, who seemed bored with my positions, if not outright hostile to them.

  I liked her enthusiasm, and I liked her youth. I'm not old, as politicians go, and I work as hard as anyone to meet the goals I've set for myself, but a lot of that is just the routine that comes from a lifetime of overachievement. With Amanda, I could feel once again what it had been like for me, fresh out of law school, with a world to conquer and only my wits and my personality with which to conquer it. If you lie a little, if you push a little too hard, well, how else are you going to get anywhere?

  By the end of the meal I had agreed to a single interview. After that we would see. If it went well, I would cooperate. If it didn't, she could use the interview for a magazine article. Fair enough?

  Amanda was delighted. And I was nervous. I didn't tell Harold or Marge what I was up to—a sure sign of a guilty conscience. After some toing-and-froing, we agreed on her apartment for the interview. So that we wouldn't be interrupted, we said. I went there on a snowy night just before the end of the Christmas recess. Amazingly I found a legal parking space—a good omen, I decided. And then for the first time I walked through that lobby and smelled the disinfectant I was to smell so often; I saw the black and white of her apartment, and we had our first half-flirtatious conversation about it. And we sat down on opposite sides of her glass coffee table and had our interview.

  She didn't tape it, I'm sure. She didn't take notes.

  I forget what she asked me. I forget what I answered. I remember being attracted to the simplicity of the decor, in such contrast to the complexity of my life. I remember feeling warm and safe sitting there and talking to her in the middle of the storm. I remember thinking that this was starting to feel like more than an interview, thinking that if so, it was a big mistake. I remember not wanting to think.