by Susan Isaacs
“How is he?” I had asked, pushing a ball-point pen hard on the paper, trying to force it to give up its ink.
“Fine. Still a little stiff in the old back, but he’ll soon be as good as new. You want another pen?”
Jerry never displayed profound emotions in front of other people. I knew what he felt because he told me. So, because much of our recent time together had been spent in ungiving silence, I could not predict how he would behave when he came home. He had given no signals. He might hold me and plant gentle kisses on my eyelids. He might toss me a casual hi. He might not speak at all. Or he might suggest I find a new apartment. I wanted him back. I feared his return.
“Hey, Marcia! Marcia, over here!” I opened my eyes to locate a faintly familiar voice. “Here.” The room was full, with about twenty people, some of them standing. It took me a moment to locate a beard behind several pairs of shoulders. It was the governor’s speech writer. I waved unencouragingly “Hey, Marcia, Paterno was well prepared on that one. But don’t worry, we’ll get him yet.”
“Right, Ted.” He was a know-nothing from upstate whom I had known in Washington. He had been working for—and subsequently fired by—a congressman from Bing-hamton who was almost his intellectual equal. I snapped my eyes shut again before he had a chance to come over and chat. I wanted to think about Jerry.
“Excuse me,” another voice said. Sensing it was addressing me, I opened my eyes. It was a man I had spotted with the Appel contingent. “Are you Marcia Green?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m David Hoffman.” Even casually dressed, like the rest of the Appel group, he looked like a man of substance. His jeans were so smooth they must have been dry cleaned. His shirt was a white and brown and gray tattersall, and its sharp-edged collar formed two perfect v’s on either side of the neckline of his lightweight beige sweater. Like his posture, controlled and conscious, his clothing seemed well thought out.
“Hi,” I said, somewhat nervously. Occasionally my reputation preceded me. Sometimes I ran into men who had heard about my speech-writing abilities. Sometimes I ran into men who heard I was an easy lay. Both types seemed friendly and eager, and I hated the slow agony of discovering their interest.
“I’m really glad to meet you,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“I’m a friend of Philip Drexler. Your cousin Barbara made me promise I’d introduce myself to you if we ran into each other.”
I flashed a smile that would have satisfied even my Aunt Estelle. “I’m glad you came over. Do you want to sit down?” David sat on the segment of couch next to mine. He smiled. His teeth were large and white, but they merely added to his substantial appearance. No one would ever make Bugs Bunny jokes about David Hoffman. “How do you and Cousin Philip know each other?” I asked.
“We went to law school together.”
“’Law school.’ Well, you have incredible restraint, not blurting out ‘Harvard.’”
He kept smiling. Even on the low couch, David Hoffman managed to look impressive. Most of us had given up, allowing gravity to curve our spines into weary arcs; he sat erect among the slouchers, but not so erect as to seem stiff. “How do you think the debate is going?” he inquired.
“That depends on who your candidate is. You’re with Appel?” He nodded. “Well, you might consider being a little nervous, because he’s coming across as glib.”
“He is glib. In all the years I’ve known him, he’s never uttered a single thoughtful sentence.” David Hoffman sounded like what a friend of Philip Drexler’s should sound like. My mother would have observed that his voice was cultivated. In any case, it was deep and pleasant.
“May I ask you a question, David?”
“Of course.”
“How come you’re working for Appel?”
“How come?” He seemed to find the question intriguing.
“Yes. I mean, you look like a solid citizen, a nice, normal person. Not the sort who’d wind up working for a politician.”
“Well, I’m not exactly working for him. I’m helping out a little. But I actually came here tonight to see what a television studio looks like, to watch the debate live.” He peered at me. “You look like a normal person,” he observed. “Aren’t you?”
“Yes, but not in your sense. I keep crazy hours, spend most of my day dealing with megalomaniacs and sociopaths. Most people would run from it, screaming.”
“But you like it?”
“I love it.”
“Well, you don’t sound abnormal. Besides, you’re Barbara Drexler’s cousin. She’s one of the finest, sanest people I know. How crazy could you be?”
“Just mildly deranged.” We smiled again. He was not wearing a wedding band. “But you still didn’t answer my question.”
“Excellent. You’d make a good lawyer.”
“David, it doesn’t take three years at Harvard to figure out you don’t enjoy talking about Sidney Appel.”
“Oh, Sidney. He’s my uncle.”
“Your uncle? Uncle Sidney? You don’t look anything like him.” David’s face was big and squarish; even sitting, he looked fairly tall and large-boned. He bore no resemblance to an elf.
“He’s my uncle by marriage. He married my father’s sister.”
“Oh! Cat food!” Then I added quickly, “Sorry.”
He lowered his head and laughed. “I keep away from cat food. I practice law.”
“On your own?”
“No. With a large midtown firm. I specialize in tax.”
“And that’s more fascinating than cat food?”
“Barbara warned me you’d be snide.”
“I thought I was being charming.”
“You were. And to answer your question, tax law is much more fascinating than cat food. And frankly, it’s paradise compared to a political campaign. My God! Every time I go over to his headquarters, I’m stunned by some new irrationality.”
“You were expecting an exercise in Jeffersonian democracy?”
“Well, I was expecting something a little different from what I found. May I ask you something, Marcia?”
“Sure.”
“Doesn’t the boredom bother you? I spent a day traveling around with Sidney, running from place to place, hearing him mouth the same speech over and over again. It’s so prepackaged, so routinized.”
“Well, it may be boring to the press, because they have to hear the same thing over and over. The candidate can handle it better because his ego is fed by each new audience. But it’s not boring for me.” I stretched out my legs again, took a deep breath, and began a lengthy explanation of how I worked en route. “You see,” I concluded, “if Paterno’s gotten a last-minute invitation for a Hellenic Day festival, I can write a zingy speech on how terrific Greeks are while we’re riding out to Queens to mend fences or while he’s talking to a business group on diddling the capital budget. And if I’m not writing something, I listen to him. Try to figure out what lines get the best response, what lines bomb.”
David gazed at me as I spoke. His eyes, which should have been brown to match his outfit, were actually hazel, with dots of yellow and green and gray. They were his best feature. The rest of his face was filled up with an ordinary broad-bridged nose, a large mouth, and a determined-looking chin. He seemed to be about Philip’s age, forty, with a network of busy-looking lines around his eyes.
“Listen,” I said, “I really didn’t mean to make fun of your tax law. I don’t even know precisely what it is. What do you do?”
But he didn’t have a chance. I heard a shout of “Marcia!”
The three candidates stood outside the waiting room until Paterno, in an artful subway maneuver, elbowed Parker and Appel aside and stood framed in the doorway. “Let’s get going,” he called. “I want to get back to headquarters.”
I stood. David did also. I was about to shake his hand and tell him it had been nice meeting him but Paterno came over, clamped onto my arm, and said, “Come on! Let’s get out of
here.” With his other hand he reached for an upstate staff member who was standing nearby and pulled us both toward the door.
“Bye,” I called to David.
Paterno’s car careened toward headquarters, barely slowing down when a hubcap flew off from the shock of a large pothole. I stared out the window, trying to figure out why my cousin had never mentioned David Hoffman to me before.
“Well, what do you think, Marcia?” Paterno demanded. “You haven’t said a word. Was I awful? If you think I was terrible, tell me.”
“You weren’t terrible.” I turned to him. He was wiping his television makeup off with a large white handkerchief.
“Well?”
“You were fine. You know that.”
“Really?”
“Yes. You were very specific, and you have to keep that up. Appel is coming across as superficial, and the more exposure he gets, the more evident that’s going to be. So what you’ve got to do is keep dazzling them with your knowledge, your expertise.”
“You’re right.” He paused. “What about Parker? Do you think he has a shot after tonight? I actually felt ashamed for him, he was such a fool.”
“Well, there are still two more debates. He could redeem himself a little. Or maybe there’s a big underground stupid vote. But the main thing is …”
“What?” Paterno demanded.
“If you or Appel aren’t seen as individuals, if you don’t make a strong and distinct impression, then people are going to go for Parker just because he’s a known quantity.”
“But he’s a fool.” Paterno looked peeved. His mouth pulled tight at the corners. “He honestly doesn’t comprehend what’s going on.”
“That may be, but he’s a familiar fool. Anyhow, if you keep up the level of tonight and come across as authoritative—and if Sidney keeps mouthing his slogans—then you have a real shot.”
“Just a shot?”
“You know the polls better than I do. Appel’s ahead.”
“I know, and it’s killing me. I’m the best man. No one can do the job I can.”
“I know that, Bill. But it’s not getting across the way it should.”
“Well, why the hell not? I’m pushing myself to the limit, risking a major coronary, running around the whole state tearing my guts out, eating hamburgers in airports—”
“You can’t expect me to be objective, Bill.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the support you were counting on has been going elsewhere. The advice you’ve been getting has been less than stellar. I think it’s been slick and shallow.” The upstate aide, a LoBello protégé, turned around from his seat next to the driver and glared at me. “And that kind of superficiality, well…” I let my voice trail off and then resumed. “Why bother going on? You know my prejudice. I can’t even swear to you that what I’m saying is the objective truth. My loyalty to Jerry may be getting in the way. But don’t forget, besides my loyalty to him, I have a very strong loyalty to you. I’ve always been straight with you, Bill. And I think you’ve got to consider making some changes.”
Paterno nodded. At headquarters, he sloughed off LoBello’s pat on the back and retired to his own office. The upstate aide snarled at me and pulled LoBello off for a private conference. I adjourned to my own office to rewrite a speech on the right of public employees to strike and decided I didn’t care what they did. I sighed, wondering what my cousin Barbara had told David Hoffman about me. I changed my typewriter ribbon. Then I shrugged, sighed again, and got up. But as I waited for the elevator, Lyle LoBello sidled up beside me, pushing me as if we were on a rush-hour subway car together.
“You fucker,” he hissed. “I’m going to get you for this.”
“Go away, Lyle.”
The night had become sticky. The air was so thick and stagnant it was almost viscous. And it was hot, like a foretaste of August. I caught an air-conditioned Fifth Avenue bus and worried my way downtown in a finger-numbing chill.
Maybe my fears and sadness were due to some tediously predictable mid-life crisis, the sort that every thirty-five-year-old who reads magazines is susceptible to. Maybe it was some primeval need burgeoning within, forcing me to nest and breed, making me smile at David Hoffman. By Fourteenth Street I thought about Jerry. If he would just come home and shepherd me into bed, I wouldn’t spend another moment feeling fearful or sad or the least bit vulnerable.
Back at the apartment, I undressed and lay across the bed musing about him, like a mortal waiting for Zeus to transmogrify into a cloud and come down for a visit. But after a half hour I grew restless. I showered and put on one of Jerry’s pajama tops. I looked around the bedroom for some useful employment: washing out pantyhose, trimming toenails, reading the sonnets I had written in tenth grade—with titles like “Silence” and “Song of Seymour”—which were in a shoe box on the top shelf of my closet.
Instead, I called my cousin. “Hi, Barbara.”
“Marcia! How are you? Feeling better? Did Jerry get back yet?”
“He’s still upstate, but I’m okay. Am I calling too late?”
“No. Philip’s in the library working on a law-review article and I was just reading in bed.” The library was in their house. “Now tell me, have you heard from Jerry? Has he called?”
“No. Not a word.”
“Are you upset, Marcia? Talk to me. You know it makes me crazy when you pull your uncommunicative act, especially on the phone. Anyway, you need to get things off your chest.”
“I met your friend,” I said softly.
“Who? What friend?”
“Don’t ‘who’ me, Barbara. The cat-food king.”
“David? You met David! Oh, I was hoping you would.”
“How come you never mentioned him to me?”
“Because I knew you’d go out of your way to avoid him.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“It is not. Every time I mention introducing you to one of Philip’s friends, you look at me as though I’ve done something disgusting, like throwing up at a formal dinner. Do you think I’d be crazy enough to say, ‘Marcia, there’s a nice lawyer I want you to meet; he’s highly eligible—and Jewish’? You’d never speak to me again.”
“Come on, Barb. Isn’t it that you were afraid how I’d behave with one of Philip’s fancy lawyer friends, that I’d pull down my panties on the first date or do something to besmirch the family name?”
“You are so impossible that I’m not even going to dignify that with a denial.”
“Oh, all right. Anyhow, why is he hanging around Appel?”
“Well, David’s genuinely interested in politics and this is a wonderful chance to see things up close. And …” Barbara paused, then shifted her voice to a confidential pitch. “Promise you won’t tell anyone?”
“I promise.”
“Well, he’s been spending so much time with Sidney Appel, keeping an eye on things, because his father and his other aunt are terrified that Appel is going to fritter away Aunt Marjorie’s—Mrs. Appel’s—entire legacy or trust fund or whatever. They wanted David to take a leave of absence from his law firm to really watch things, but David said absolutely not. He cannot abide his uncle. Can you keep a secret?”
“What?”
“Appel’s a real adulterer. With teenage girls!”
“I’ve heard.”
“You’ve heard? Really?”
“Sure.”
“Well, not only does he run around, but Marjorie Appel knows all about it.”
“No kidding. And she’s paying for his campaign anyway? Lovely. Your pal David sounds like he comes from a terrific family.”
“In fact, the Hoffmans are a fine old German-Jewish family.”
“Right. Did he go to prep school, like Philip?”
“I’m not sure. But he went to Harvard, undergraduate and law school. Is that good enough?”
“For my mother.”
Barbara’s voice grew smooth and teasing. “You liked him, didn’t you, Mar
?”
“He wasn’t bad. But I’m warning you, Barbara, please don’t try to push this. I’m still in the same place. Half the bed is mine, the other half is Jerry’s.”
“Who’s talking about beds?”
“David Hoffman is a nice guy and that’s that. Okay?”
“Sure. Honestly, the only reason I mentioned you to him at all is that he doesn’t know anyone in politics and if he ran into you, it would be a nice experience. I mean, meeting someone intelligent, fun. He’s spending a lot more time with his uncle than he wants to, and it’s only because his family is absolutely desperate.”
“They just don’t want Auntie Appel hitting them up for another few million. Your friend is probably protecting his own inheritance.”
“Marcia, that may be true, but that doesn’t take away from David as a person. He’s a marvelous man. Warm, sensitive, cultured.”
“Is he married?”
“He was. He’s divorced.”
“What went wrong?”
“Nothing. Don’t be so suspicious. It just wasn’t meant to be. He and his wife—his ex-wife—grew up together, had the same background, the same tastes …”
“Cat food?”
“Stop it. Everything seemed sweet and nice and right at the beginning, but then they discovered one thing: they were miserably unhappy. So they were divorced, but very amicably. She’s remarried and lives in Connecticut with the children.”
“How many children did they have before they figured out they were miserably unhappy?”
“Three. And I think it’s very unfair of you to be so sarcastic. He’s a good friend of ours. I’m not saying you have to love him or even like him, but you could at least be polite.”
“I was. I even bordered on charming. You wouldn’t have believed it was me talking. Ask him.”
“I will.” Soon afterward, she wished me good night. I imagined her running down a flight of curving stairs, dashing into the library, and announcing to Philip, “Marcia met David!” Or she may have just called her mother and said, “Guess what? It worked!”
Ascribing such manipulativeness to Barbara may be unfair, but I was never completely sure of her. I always needed her more than I wanted to and trusted her less than perhaps I should. She was, after all, a relation.