by Susan Isaacs
“You have no right to do this, Barbara.”
“I have every right. You’re one of the most intelligent women I know. Or were. I remember, no matter what we talked about—literature, art, music—you always had an original comment. All through college, all during the time you were married to Barry, you were so alive. I’d call you up and first thing, you’d say, ‘Hey, you’ve got to read so-and-so’s book. It’s brilliant. It’s witty.’ I mean, you’d get excited, passionate. And now—”
“Now I’m not a twenty-year-old kid with a goddamn library card. I’m thirty-five and have a demanding job, and as for Jerry …”
Barbara stopped in front of the small chair I was sitting in. Her shoes, added to her height, made her loom over me like a giant threatening shadow in a horror movie. “You are a thirty-five-year-old woman who is cheating herself. I know you’re going to say I sound foolish, but sex and politics aren’t enough. Even for you, Marcia. Look at you. You dress in the drabbest colors!”
“What would you like me to do, Barbara? Go on a shopping spree to Dior with you? Spend a month’s salary on a scarf? I didn’t marry a—”
“Marcia, you’re making a decent living. There’s no reason in this world why you can’t afford nice-looking clothes, clothes that will emphasize what you are—a wonderful-looking woman. You dress like a beatnik, with those black tights. You never do anything anymore. When was the last time you went to the theater? When?”
“I’ll answer when you stop badgering me, damn it.”
“I’ll tell you when. It’s when I threatened never to speak to you again unless you saw The Iceman Cometh with me. When Philip had the flu. And before that? Probably something in Washington with Barry. Listen, if you were some philistine, I wouldn’t be saying anything. But I was with you. I saw how excited you got, how involved you were in the performance. But you’ve cut yourself off from that pleasure. Anything beautiful, anything fine, is no good to you.”
“What do you want me to do? Tell me.”
“Allow yourself to enjoy things, feel things.”
“Barbara, I do. It’s just that my interests aren’t what yours are. I don’t want marriage. I don’t want an estate on Long Island. I don’t want an apartment in Paris.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not you. Understand that, Barbara. We’re cousins, we’re close friends, but we’re very different people. I don’t just work for money, because I have to. I work because I love to. And I don’t live with Jerry Morrissey because no one will marry me.”
“You’re living with him to ensure no one will marry you.”
“Barbara, first you give me this gorgeous lunch with the most perfect chicken salad I’ve ever tasted and then you follow it up with out-of-season raspberries that must cost the same as a pint of rubies and then you give me indigestion with this glib analysis that sounds like you stopped off and picked it up at your mother’s house on your way into the city. Come on, now. You were raised to marry, to be a wife, and you do it better than anyone else I know. But I wasn’t raised the same way. Really.”
“Of course you were. You were raised with the same goals, the same aspirations I was.”
I stood. “But I put them aside when I divorced Barry. I’ve found other things that mean more to me.”
“No you haven’t.”
“Yes I have. I really have. But I’m not going to try to persuade you of that. I don’t have to justify myself. If it comforts all of you to think I’m walking around unhappy, incomplete just because I don’t wear fancy shoes—”
“Marcia, it’s not the shoes. It’s what will make you truly happy. Being married to someone fine, someone caring …”
“Someone rich. Go ahead. Say it.”
“You know, that’s a very cruel thing you just said.”
“Well, how do you think I feel, Barbara? You call me, tell me how much you miss me, how you can’t wait to see me, and then when you see me, you tell me that my life is sterile.”
“All right. I’m sorry. All I’m saying is that you can have sex and politics and everything with marriage. You want what I want, Mar. It’s just that…” Barbara paused and adjusted the strap of her thin, elegant gold watch. “Okay. No more. I promise. Really. I’m sorry if I overstepped the bounds of cousinhood and friendship.”
I sighed, weary from our argument, from wielding her heavy sterling knives and forks and minding my manners while her maid served us. “Okay. Listen, I have to go now. I’ll speak to you next week.”
“Are you sure you don’t have time for just one gallery?”
“I’m sure. Positive.”
An hour and a quarter later, I stood before Paterno’s desk, listening to him read the speech on civil defense I had just written. “Preparedness doesn’t stop at the Pentagon,” he intoned. “We must push—”
“Wait,” I interrupted. “Too many p’s. Take out ‘push’ and put in ‘move.’”
“I’m not looking forward to tonight,” Paterno said. He put both elbows on his desk and rubbed his big forehead in his hands. “I’d rather rest up. It’s been a rough week, and these guys are an awful audience. Remember last year? Half of them were soused and kept calling out questions.”
“Yes. Oh, God, now I remember. They were awful. That guy who got up to ask you about where you had stood on Vietnam and then started yelling about getting it in the hip in Normandy. What finally happened? You just stopped, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Sure. Especially after that idiot with the medals started arguing with the guy about Normandy. What was it?”
“Trenches, I think. Whether the trenches were deep enough. Anyway, you’ll sound like a tough militarist tonight. They’ll probably salute instead of applauding.”
“Why do I have to go through this? Speaking to all these jerks about things I don’t know about. Why a city official has to jabber on and on about defense posture, I’ll never know. Even a candidate for governor. What the hell—excuse me—can the governor of New York do about West Africa or East Asia? Why can’t I just shut up and work?”
“Because I need the job, Bill.”
“Well, I guess that’s as good a reason as any. Where was I?”
“Getting rid of ‘push.’”
Paterno marked his copy of the speech. He sighed. “I should have listened to my mother, been a tenor.”
“What stopped you?”
“No talent. Did you ever think of doing something different?”
“No,” I replied. “Never.”
Four
William Paterno’s lawyer suggested that he get an electroencephalogram.
“You really think so?” Paterno demanded, his large head bent forward intently, his slender shoulders hunched up around his ears.
“Well,” Eileen Gerrity said, “it could rule out a brain tumor.”
“Dammit, Eileen!” Jerry, from the chair nearest Paterno’s desk, glared across the room at the couch where Eileen and I were sitting. “This is no time—”
“I mean,” Paterno said, ignoring Jerry, “I’m not really worried that it’s a brain tumor. It’s just that I’ve been getting these headaches for the last few weeks. All of a sudden. I’ve never been headache-prone, and now, every morning, I wake up with this tightness around my forehead, and by the time I get dressed and downstairs for breakfast it’s developed into a—”
“Look,” soothed Eileen, smoothing out a crease in her gray flannel skirt, “you’re under a lot of pressure. Why give yourself something else to worry about? I’ll make a few calls, get the number of a good neurologist, and you can go have yourself checked out.”
“Does this kind of thing, I mean, around the forehead, have any—urn, significance?” Paterno asked, talking to a pile of papers on his desk.
“Yes,” Jerry hissed. “It means you’re a marked man, Bill. You’ll be dead before sunrise tomorrow.”
“Jerry,” Eileen said softly, glancing up at the ceiling.
“Eileen,” Jerry crooned, matching her voice in softness, “if
you cater to that kind of crap, he’ll be in a wheelchair by the time Marcia drafts his declaration. Just ignore him.”
Her voice grew a little sharper. “You don’t just ignore something like that. If he’s on edge, doesn’t it make more sense to reassure him?”
“No,” said Jerry, “no, no, no.” He slammed his fist on the edge of the desk. “Once you start playing his hypochondriac games…”
Paterno still leaned forward, listening intently, his dark eyes darting from chair to couch to chair. It was not clear whose side he was on, although he seemed to nod more when Jerry spoke. I shifted around, trying to find a perfect niche for myself, somewhere between the back and the armrest of the sofa, debating whether or not to direct the meeting back to its purpose: deciding the best time for Paterno to declare his candidacy for governor.
Eileen stretched a long thin finger at Jerry and suggested he was insensitive. Jerry countercharged with an accusation of mollycoddling. Paterno remained aloof, although an expression of contentment that seemed nearly a smile played about his mouth. He glanced aross the room, finally focusing on a gleaming brass log basket that sat by the mahogany mantel of his massive nonworking fireplace.
The three top officials of New York City, Paterno, the mayor, and the comptroller, all worked in surroundings that would have been appropriate only for an Anglican bishop. In Paterno’s office, the chairs and couch were all of a worn oxblood leather, except for the chair Jerry sat on. That was a pull-up of glossy mahogany, upholstered in a faded blue brocade. It looked as if it had been dragged in from some dining room, an extra seat for a visiting vicar.
“Listen, you two,” Paterno began slowly, “we really ought to get down to the business of planning a campaign.” He rubbed his hands together, not in glee but in a kind of awed respect, as if conscious of touching the hand of the future governor of New York. But none of us spoke. We peered out the window, down to our shoes, over at the painting of Giovanni da Verrazano Discovering the Narrows. We looked everywhere except at William Paterno.
“Let’s get started,” he finally ordered. “You three are the core of any campaign organization I’m going to have, and you’re just sitting here like you’ve got sunstroke. Wake up! That’s better. Now, Eileen and Morrissey, no more bickering, okay?” They nodded. “Good. Marcia, you have to speak up more. There won’t be time to write memos. All right?” I nodded. “Good. Now, the first thing we have to come to grips with is timing. Now, today is …”
“March tenth,” I offered eagerly.
“Good. Thanks. Okay, it’s March tenth. We have a few weeks of enforced grace, at least till the end of the month, when the official state mourning period is over. It would not look good if I declared my candidacy and the TV cameras picked up a flag still flying half mast for Gresham. Right? By the way, does anyone have to go to the bathroom or anything before we really get started? No? Okay, now, when are petitions due?”
“Not till June fifteenth,” Eileen said.
“Hmmm.” Many men, when thinking, rub their foreheads. Paterno massaged his nose between his thumb and index finger. “So if we figure six weeks for a decent petition drive, we can wait to declare till the beginning of May, which should—”
“That’s too late,” Jerry said.
“No it’s not,” Paterno argued. “Not if we have everything ready to go. Not if—”
“By that time, do you know how many deadheads will have declared? Six thousand radicals, five thousand one-issue jerks who told their mommies to watch for them on television, and three or four viable candidates. And you’ll be viewed as just another one of them.” Jerry caressed the cleft in his chin with the knuckle of his index finger.
Paterno looked at Jerry and stopped rubbing his nose. “But if we declare too soon—” Paterno began.
“Bill, listen to me,” Jerry continued. “If you come out soon, right in the beginning of April, you’ll get all the coverage you want. They’ll treat you like a statesman, a gentleman. Every other candidate who declares after that will automatically be compared to you.”
“I don’t know,” Paterno muttered, shaking his head slowly back and forth. “It’s so soon.”
“Jerry’s right,” Eileen said. “And it would give us an extra month to fund-raise, to approach a lot of heavy contributors before everybody else does.” Although she and Jerry routinely sniped at each other, their political judgment was remarkably compatible. According to Jerry, they didn’t dislike each other at all; they were simply too much alike, coming from similar lower-middle-class Irish backgrounds, to find each other interesting. Bickering, he explained, helped them to keep awake in each other’s company.
Eileen acknowledged that their outlooks were very similar but felt obliged to inform me that men like Jerry were, beneath a thin layer of charm, sexist, narcissistic, and anti-intellectual. When we were alone, she teased me about being a sucker for a pretty face and called him names like Heartthrob. She had suggested that men like Jerry were a dime a dozen in her old neighborhood in Jackson Heights.
“Thank you for your support, counselor,” Jerry said, flashing her a wide, bright-toothed smile.
And it did seem that she avoided men like Jerry, selecting soft, quiet, bookish men to date, men whose pale lips matched their eyeglass frames, men who called to discuss the body politic.
Eileen turned from Jerry back to Paterno. I felt bad that they couldn’t enjoy each other, because I wanted the three of us to be friends. But each said they had enough of the other in the office, so my friendship with Eileen was limited to long lunches and to evenings when Jerry was busy. She came to our apartment only once, when Jerry was safely in Houston at the Democratic Convention. She had gazed around the living room and asked, “Kathye Baron?” I had nodded. “Well, she certainly tried, poor thing.”
Eileen was five years younger than I, thirty, but I thought of her as more than my peer. She never acted uncertain. She maintained a dignified distance from the raucous, boorish, political world she worked in. She could ignore the crass and smile at the grotesque. People felt calmer in her company; she exercised a kind of tranquilizing charisma: Our Lady of the Law.
She even looked a little like a madonna, full of pastel composure. She had placid green eyes and pink cheeks and light hair. Her hair was her best feature, a blond so pale it barely missed looking white. It was not very thick, but she had let it grow and piled it on top of her head with combs or barrettes, so it looked heavy, opulent. My mother would have pointed out her sharp nose and thin lips.
But I felt Eileen’s was the most congenial expression in the room, so I addressed my remarks to her. “It’s not too soon,” I suggested. Although I never minded attending meetings, I didn’t like to speak at them. Invariably I’d be challenged or interrupted or snapped at, and I’d stutter, turn red-faced, and wind up addressing clumsy remarks to the carpet. I preferred taking notes, so afterward, alone with my typewriter, I could declaim in an incisive, assertive fashion.
“Good. Glad you’re speaking up,” Paterno said. I smiled at him, then lowered my head. “Wonderful,” he enthused. I looked up at him and he said softly, “You were talking kind of low. What did you say?”
“I said, it’s not too soon to declare your candidacy. I can understand your wanting to wait for the end of the mourning period, but you really should do it very soon.”
“Why soon? Why not wait until May?”
“Because of the poll,” I murmured, wishing now that Jerry and Eileen would leave the room. My articulateness is inversely proportional to the number of people in a meeting. With just one I can be dynamic. With two I can hold my own. I fade with three and with five or more become indistinguishable from the furniture.
“Marcia, what do you mean by the poll?” Jerry asked in the gentle, patient voice people use when dealing with a retardate. He knew I didn’t excel in public speaking.
“I mean …”
“Which poll?” Paterno demanded. “Our poll? The News poll?”
“Well�
��”
“Marcia,” Eileen said, “would it be easier if we cut open your gut and read your entrails?”
“Yes,” I answered. “What I mean is, I’m referring to our poll, the one Victor Chang took.” The three others nodded. “Your upstate recognition factor is only twenty-two percent, and you need time to build that up.”
“Hmmm,” Jerry said.
“Ummm,” said Eileen.
“And that twenty-two percent isn’t a solid figure. Remember what Victor said, Bill?” Paterno blinked his black, bulgy eyes and caressed a liver spot on his right hand.
Victor Chang was the newest polling star in the political firmament, although he twinkled on a limited wavelength. He told the New York Times that he felt “morally obligated” to work only for “decent Democrats.” For a fast ten thousand dollars, he had done a quickie poll upstate the week before which showed Paterno with a “fluid twenty-two” percent of the respondents claiming to recognize his name. Apparently, ten percent of these voters approved of Paterno’s skills as a negotiator and “urban manager.” Another eight percent knew him but disapproved of him, believing that he had usurped the mayor’s role during the police and sanitation strikes, this despite the fact that the mayor’s only recognizable asset was his ability to keep his ears clean.
Of the remaining four percent, half had him confused with Fiorello LaGuardia, although Chang insisted that this was a plus; people still held the late LaGuardia in high esteem. The other two percent thought Paterno was someone outside of politics; a nightclub singer, a football coach, and a Mafia don were suggested identities.
“Well,” I said to my shoes, “what do you think?”
Eileen, who would never address her feet, cleared her throat and eyed Paterno. “Marcia’s right,” she announced. “We have a good, solid base down here, but we can throw the whole thing if we just concentrate in the metropolitan area. You’ve got to start calling in your upstate cards, Bill. And don’t forget, with the new campaign finance statutes …”
“I know,” Paterno said, inserting his upper lip between his teeth and gnawing on it.