I had to convince her I was real. I had to convince her that we were real. I tried at Danny's wedding, I tried at candlelit dinners in fancy restaurants I couldn't afford. I worked at winning Liz the way I later worked at winning public office. Finally I tried in a supermarket. We were in the Stop & Shop one night; I pushed the cart for her while she studied her coupons. This seemed to me to be about as domestic as you could get; do reprobates take their girl friends to the supermarket? "We should get married," I said yet again.
"Trouble," she muttered. A coupon had expired.
"Why shouldn't we?"
"We're too different," she said. "We're opposites, in fact. I'm a Democrat; you're a Republican. I squeeze from the bottom; you squeeze anywhere you damn feel like. I think; you talk. How could we ever get along?"
"You're a woman; I'm a man," I said. "We're not talking about a dating service here; we're talking about love."
"We're not talking about love; we're talking about marriage," she responded. "I don't care where you squeeze if we don't share the same toothpaste."
"But don't you see, Liz? It's the differences that will make us strong, that will make our lives interesting. You wouldn't want to be stuck with someone who sat around and brooded all day, and I couldn't stand it if I lived with someone who talked as much as I do. We complement each other. We need each other. The whole is more than the sum of our parts."
Liz stopped in the middle of the health and beauty aids. Had she never considered this before? Had I produced an epiphany? Or did she simply give in, tired of the struggle? I don't know. I just know that she said yes and threw a huge bottle of store-brand shampoo into the cart, and before I realized that she had accepted my proposal, she had already headed for the deli counter.
So we got married, and our new life, filled with old problems, began. I could have avoided a lot of the problems by staying out of politics. Liz wanted to protect her privacy, fearing that her father's scandal would emerge to shame her once again. She also wanted us to make lots of money, so that she could reclaim her lost childhood and never have to worry about tuition bills. But I was the one making the money; grammar school teachers don't get rich, and when Kathleen arrived, we no longer had even that meager source of income. And my ambition and inclination led me in exactly the wrong direction, from Liz's point of view. I didn't take the personal cost of my plunge into politics lightly. I knew it worried her, but I believed her worry was misplaced. "I'm not your father," I insisted, having finally figured out the connection. "I'm not going to let you down. Just wait and see."
Well, it's been more than ten years now. Our problems, like most people's problems, have never really been resolved. I can't live the way she wants, and she can't live the way I want. The differences between us have made our lives more interesting, but they haven't made our lives any easier. So what to do? I don't know. Have an affair. Go to graduate school and study pop psychology. Smile in front of our child, who understands the situation as well as we do. And occasionally make love to each other in the gray light of dawn, searching for the happiness that we still think must be somewhere just out of our reach.
* * *
I waited till I was back in Massachusetts again. The last free Friday night before the election. Kathleen was staying in, so I couldn't talk about it at home. "Your mother and I are going for a drive," I announced after supper. "Kathleen, you're in charge until we get back."
"Hot date?" she asked hopefully, but she saw her mother's puzzled look, and she knew this wasn't a date.
"Exactly right," I said. "Watch Washington Week in Review for me. Take notes."
She made a face. "I'll tape it," she said. "So where are you guys going—in case there's an emergency or something?"
"Good-bye, Kathleen," I said.
Liz got her jacket and silently followed me out of the house.
I drove to Nantasket, a seaside neighborhood a few miles down the road from Hingham. We didn't speak on the way. I parked near the beach, as far away as I could get from the teenagers hanging out along the seawall, smoking cigarettes and listening to their boom boxes. We got out of the car and sat on a bench facing the sea; the sun hadn't yet set, and the air was warm for a change. I looked at Liz, and she could have been twenty years younger; we could, in fact, have been on a hot date, getting ready to neck to the sound of the surf. "Remember when we used to take Kathleen walking along the beach here when she was little?" I said.
Liz nodded. "I remember that time she found a crab and thought it was interesting. She wanted to study it. That's when I knew I'd given birth to a stranger."
I laughed. "Sometimes I think it's a bad idea to live in the same area all your life. The memories crust over everything. You can't see things fresh. I remember my father used to take us here to Paragon Park once every summer, and Danny and I would stuff our faces with junk and then go on the roller coaster, and we'd spend the rest of the day trying not to throw up."
"Did your grandmother go, too?"
"Not on the roller coaster. But yeah, she'd come. She had no vices, but she loved cotton candy. Dad would buy us each one when we got here, and Gramma would snarf hers down faster than any of us. I can still see her walking along in that blue-check dress she always wore, with a parasol in one hand and this cloud of fuzzy pink goop in the other. Smiling as if life just couldn't get any better."
Liz smiled, too. She looked out at the ocean. A carload of kids raced by, shouting obscenities. She zipped up her jacket. Once the sun went down it would be too chilly to sit outside—unless we put our arms around each other and started necking, of course.
But I had other things on my mind. "Why did you go to see Amanda in her apartment a few weeks before she died?" I asked.
"She wanted to interview me for her book," Liz responded.
"Bullshit."
Liz looked at me. "You don't want to know the truth," she said calmly. "You just want things to go along. Have your wife and your mistress, have your home and your apartment, have the voters think you're wonderful. Why change anything?"
"Well, things have changed, haven't they? Whether I wanted them to or not."
"Poor Jimmy. Let it go. You'll win your election. No reason to worry."
"I've got every reason to worry. What was going on between you and Amanda?"
Liz shook her head. "I made a mistake. I thought she was an airhead, just a blonde with a tan and too many teeth. I thought she was beautiful enough to interest you without being bright enough to hold your interest. I thought maybe she was the right one to help you get it out of your system."
"What do you mean? Get what out of my system?"
"Oh, come on. I'm not as stupid as you think, and you're not as innocent as you sound. I spent enough time watching the two of you together, the way she looked at you, the way you joked with each other. And you were together down there in Washington every day. And of course, you'd have to work late; your job is so important, after all. And your wife doesn't understand you; that damn Liz has been nothing but a problem ever since you got into politics. She was the one I was worried about, not some bimbo reporter."
"Marge," I breathed, beginning to understand.
"Marge," Liz mimicked.
"Let me see if I have this straight," I said. "You thought Marge and I were having an affair, and so you—what?—set me up with Amanda to make me forget about Marge?"
She shook her head; her eyes were glistening. "Not an affair. I suppose I could live with an affair. But you and Marge—that was the real thing. You used to talk about how we were opposites and how that was good, it made us stronger as a couple. But you haven't thought that lately. You look at Marge, and you see your soul mate, someone who approves of what you are, of what you do. You look at me, and you see problems. You see judgments. Well, I am not going to be traded in for a newer model. I am not going to be pitied: 'Oh, yes, she's the ex, poor thing. Couldn't hold him. Bearing up awfully well, though, don't you think, for a middle-aged woman with no prospects?' Fuck that shit
, Jim O'Connor."
The tears overflowed. I offered my handkerchief. She took it and turned away. I waited until she seemed calmer and then resumed the interrogation. "You figured I'd have an affair with Amanda and that would somehow cure me?" I asked.
She raised her hands in a despairing gesture. "I thought it was worth a try. I don't know. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. The bitch asked me to put in a good word with you about an interview, and I was going to laugh, her little scheme was so transparent, and then I thought, Why not? Things can't get any worse. Maybe he'll have a fling with her, and Marge will find out and dump him. Or he'll get his hormones under control, cure his little crisis or whatever, and realize he doesn't want to spend the rest of his life with an airhead. So I said, 'Why, of course, Amanda, dear, I'd be happy to mention you to my husband. He's been dying to have an affair with a beautiful blonde.' God, how stupid can you get?"
Liz fell silent. "I never made love to Marge," I said.
She flashed me a don't-give-me-that look. I felt a rush of righteous indignation, recalling the effort it had taken to avoid having an affair with Marge. But it wasn't worthwhile pursuing the subject. I was hardly going to convince Liz of my purity and self-denial at this point. It was more important to stick to the main topic of discussion.
"So why did you go to see Amanda, Liz? Did you know we were having an affair?"
"Sure I did. No one had to tell me. I just knew. And then I realized how stupid I'd been. How could I be so sure you'd get over her easier than you'd get over Marge? And if I had to get dumped, I'd rather get dumped for Marge, who at least is right for you. You and Amanda wouldn't have lasted a year if you actually had to live together without the thrill of sneaking around behind people's backs, if she had to wash your underwear and you had to listen to her at breakfast. So I decided to go and have a little chat with her."
A boy and girl walked past, and Liz fell silent. They both wore leather jackets, and the boy's hand was pressed casually to the girl's backside, his thumb in a belt loop of her skintight jeans. The girl was talking animatedly. "So I says to my mother, 'I don't have no homework, they didn't give me no homework,' and she goes—" Her voice was drowned out by the surf.
"I felt like I was in a soap opera," Liz went on. "The betrayed wife visits the mistress in a vain attempt to win her husband back. What a joke. I was so nervous I thought I'd faint. She's oh-so-pleasant on the phone and invites me over to her sleek modern apartment, nothing out of place, decorator magazines on the glass coffee table, would you like some tea or perhaps a glass of white wine? And she's so sincere, she admits that yes, there was something between you, but that's all in the past, she hasn't seen you in over a month. And of course, I didn't believe her; I saw the way you moped around over the summer as if you could barely stand to be parted from her for a day. And then she starts talking about what a wonderful human being you are, how warm and witty, such a dedicated public servant. And I thought: Maybe they should start the canonization procedures early, while he's still alive. And I thought: He's cheating on his wife. Doesn't that make him something less than a saint? And I started to get angry. I didn't feel like being civilized and understanding. I felt like telling her the worst thing I knew about you. And so I did. I put down my tea and I smiled—not as nice a smile as hers, of course—and I told her about you and Jackie Scanlon."
Liz crossed her arms. The sun had gone down, and she was starting to shiver. I was feeling pretty cold myself. "Let's get back in the car," I said. We left the bench and returned to the Buick. I started the engine and turned on the heat.
I felt like Kathleen when she was younger and we finally gave her the answer to some puzzle she couldn't quite solve. "Why did you tell me?" she would whine. "I almost had it. Don't tell me next time, okay?"
But the answer to this puzzle just brought more puzzles, and I had no answers for the new ones. "How did you know about Jackie Scanlon?" I asked.
"That night Danny came over to beg for help—I was home, or don't you remember? You went into your office with him. You kept your voice down, but Danny didn't have enough sense to. I could figure out what was going on. You may think I'm just a dumb housewife, but I know more than you give me credit for. When nothing happened to Danny, and then later I read the stories about how they thought someone was tipping off Scanlon about the government investigations, I could put it all together.
"Of course, I didn't expect you to talk it over with me. Why should you? Obviously it's more important to save Danny's ass. It doesn't matter if you risk ruining the lives of your wife and daughter to do it. After all, look at everything Danny has done for you."
Liz stopped talking, and I tried to think of a response. I couldn't come up with one. She was right. I should have discussed it with her. But I couldn't bring myself to do it, couldn't stand the thought of the confrontation that would have resulted. Better just to do what had to be done and hope that I got away with it. And here was the result. "I'm sorry," I said. "What I did was wrong. You have every right to be angry at me. But Liz, telling Amanda doesn't just punish me; it could punish you and Kathleen, too. If the police find out that Amanda knew about Jackie Scanlon, I can guarantee that Cavanaugh will have me arrested for murder. It gives me the perfect motive. If you were fighting for your marriage, there must have been a better way of doing it."
"Well, I certainly didn't sit around plotting how to tell her," Liz responded. "It just happened. Besides, I'm not the one you should be blaming. If she really was in love with you, why was she planning to use that information?"
"Do you know that she was planning to use it?" I asked.
"Of course she was. I gave her the biggest story she was going to see in her life. She was more interested in the story than she was in you. I'm the one who stood by you, even when you betrayed me."
I had to get to the bottom of this. "Did she say anything to indicate that she was going to do something with what you told her?"
Liz looked at me in disbelief. "You still love her, don't you? You're still trying to believe she was innocent. Why did she tape those interviews they mentioned in the papers if she wasn't working on a story?"
"I don't know," I said. "I was just wondering what you know."
"I know you're a fool, for one thing. As soon as you become a successful lawyer, you throw away your law career so you can be a big man in politics. You risk throwing away your political career to help a no-good brother, and then you have an affair with a tarty reporter looking for an exposé. Not to mention what you risk losing in your wife and daughter. You're a fool, and you deserve to lose this election. And maybe that's not all you deserve to lose."
I decided that she didn't know anything, and it was futile to push her any further. All she wanted to do right now was hurt me, and she was too good at that. "Why, Liz?" I asked instead. "Why did you agree to stand by me after the murder, if this is how you feel?"
She shrugged, and I could feel her retreating from the battle. "I don't know," she said wearily. "It just seemed easier to go along. Get it out of the way, think about it after the election. Let's go home, Jim. I've had enough of this."
Liz put her hand to her brow as if to keep her head from bursting. I looked out at the ocean. And for some reason I thought of President Kenton calling her Elizabeth. And how that had gotten me thinking I could beat him. Poor Liz. A senator's wife can stay out of politics. A presidential candidate's wife really can't. How could I dream of subjecting her to that?
Well, I had.
"Liz, did you mean what you said about me at that press conference?"
"What did I say?" she asked.
"That I was a good senator and a good man."
She was silent for a long while. "Did you kill her?" she asked finally.
"No," I replied. "I swear to you. And Amanda was telling the truth: It was over between us."
Liz didn't believe that any more than she believed that I hadn't slept with Marge. "But you just happened to still have the key to her apartment when y
ou went there the night she was murdered," she pointed out. "You're a fool and a liar, Jim," she said. And then, after a pause: "But I guess you're not a killer. And I guess you do the best you can." She paused. "And so do I," she whispered. Then she turned away from me and stared out the window.
Not a ringing endorsement, but apparently it was the best I was going to get. I started the car, and we drove back home in silence.
Chapter 18
I awoke in the middle of the night convinced that Liz had murdered Amanda.
It was an eerie feeling, as if I had been visited in my sleep by one of Liz's astral presences. More likely my subconscious had simply worked through the ramifications of what I had learned from Liz earlier that evening. Now a lot of things I apparently hadn't wanted to think about were buzzing around my brain.
I looked at her, asleep beside me: the familiar blond hair splayed against the pillow; the familiar features—the small nose, the big ears that she hated and tried to keep hidden beneath her hair—the familiar, gentle rise and fall of her chest. How many times had we breathed since we met? I had known her half my life, more or less. But what did I know?
I remembered her silence, her lack of surprise when I told her about Amanda's death. She hadn't even asked me if I was the murderer. Granted, she had asked me in Nantasket a few hours ago, but that was different. The first reaction was the important one; everything afterward could be just pretense.
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