And so she held her head high and wore Lefty's pearls around her neck, medical bills mounting, and dreamed of Lake Como as she and Lorenza carried him from bedroom to living room so that he could welcome his visitors like a gentleman in his BarcaLounger, under the Chagall painting of an upside-down groom and his bride dancing in front of a laughing cow.
“See that, Toots? It's my favorite picture. But when I'm gone, sell it and buy something interesting.”
“Oh, Lefty, don't talk like that. You're not going—”
“Yeah, I am, Toots, and since you're not coming with—not for a long time—promise me you'll sell the picture and get something terrific for yourself.”
“Like what?”
“Something important … like a political career.”
Claire laughed. She'd hardly laughed in the last few months. There'd been dozens of emergency rides to the hospital, so many that Lefty had memorized the ambulance drivers’ names and kibbitzed with them even as they untangled his life-support tubes. She hadn't even answered her mail or opened Harrison's last five or six letters. She didn't think she could bear to hear about Italy right now. Romantic Lake Como. She didn't want to feel guilty betraying Lefty, even if it was only in her thoughts. If she didn't open Harrison's letters she wouldn't be tempted to long for him. But once in a while it was nice to close her eyes and dream, momentarily wiping out the smells of rubber sheets and isopropyl alcohol.
Eventually, Lefty grew too weak to be helped down the stairs, so before his oldest clients and friends began arriving for the cocktail hour, Lorenza and she helped fold a shrunken Lefty into the dumbwaiter so he could ride down.
“I'm coming down with the lamb shanks and the matzo balls,” he quipped. “Just make sure I'm riding with the good silver.”
After that he zoned in and out of consciousness. So when he told Claire that Sara had been to see him, she chalked it up to the effects of medication. But the nurse confirmed that her daughter with the wild red mane of hair had come and gone.
“What? She was here? Why didn't she stay to see me?” Claire felt betrayed. After a year of nursing Lefty in a fluorescent room filled with whirring machines and IV tubes, she needed someone to talk to.
“Listen, Toots, it was my deathbed scene. What you should be proud of is that she came. Maybe she never will be your best buddy. But the point is, there's a good person inside your demon daughter.”
Turning away her tear-stained face, she gathered up the Sunday New York Times. He loved it when she read to him.
“And don't forget, Toots, if I check out on some Wednesday I want you back on the block by Friday. You've been sitting shiva for a year now. Enough.”
Claire smiled and turned to Section One to read the political news. Her heart stopped as she saw the picture and read the story.
Ambassador William Henry Harrison IV of New York and Washington wed Starling Millbrook Fillmore of Tuxedo Park and Newport in the ambassador's home on Lake Como, where he is at work on Volume II of his series The Roosevelt Years.
Claire let out such an anguished sigh while her muscles shook visibly out of control that Lefty asked Lorenza to help him up to hold his wife.
“Somebody has to console her in her grief. Might as well be me.” He rocked her gently in his arms. “C'mon, Toots. Don't lose it now. We're in the home stretch.”
She nodded through her tears. “Did I ever tell you that I love you, Lefty?”
His smile was broad. “No, but I kinda figgered. You coulda left with the big tweedy guy anytime, but you always stayed. I never did understand why. I'm sure you get points for that”
And they held each other, giving each other the gentle comfort they had always reserved only for one another.
After Lefty was buried at Hillside Memorial Park, Claire sat shiva for two nights, hosting Lefty's friends and serving his favorite deli platters from Nate ‘n’ Al's. On the third night, however, even as the guests were arriving to read prayers and pay their condolences, Claire was out the door and winging her way to Washington with a long gown in a garment bag thrown over her arms. She was headed to the black-tie Chagall retrospective at the National Gallery of Art to rearrange the place cards.
She was going to seat herself next to Fenwick Grant.
Chapter Seventeen
Party Girl
A woman's life can really be a succession of lives, each revolving around some emotionally compelling situation or challenge.
—Wallis, Duchess of Windsor
The caviar canapés and sturgeon-lined baskets of quail's eggs were floating around the room on silver trays held aloft by white-gloved waiters. Quite a contrast, Claire thought, to the hospital food and gray uniformed orderlies of the past year. In the marble galleries of the museum, Claire turned heads as she beelined her way to his table. In Washington, apparently, black-gowned widows didn't barge uninvited into gala affairs.
Fenwick Grant raised one eyebrow as she deftly purloined the place card next to his and replaced it with the one in her hand.
“I figured I'd be hearing from you. Just not so soon. Sorry about Lefty.” He squared his shoulders. Grant was a hard-boiled newspaperman, and Lefty had died three days ago—yesterday's news, as far as he was concerned. He watched her as she rearranged the seating as if the National Gallery of Art were her private dining room, putting herself on Grant's left.
“I always knew you were crazy about me.”
“Don't flatter yourself. I have to file in two days if I run for Hathaway's vacant congressional seat. I want to know if I have your support. Pass the butter.”
Grant handed her his butter plate. Apparently Lefty had willed her his chutzpah.
He liked her style, the notorious air that she breezily carried around like an expensive accessory, the vanilla-like smell mixed with something musky, and her softly delivered tough talk. He noticed, though, that she was a good ten pounds thinner than the last time he'd seen her, and there were faint blue shadows under her eyes.
“I was wondering if I could meet your editorial staff in your office tomorrow morning? The from-the-horse's mouth sort of thing—just so nothing gets lost in the translation when I plead my platform. You have fifty-six or fifty-seven papers in your news empire? How about if your California dailies endorse me and cover me favorably and the others print good national coverage? Sorry to hurry you, Grant, but I need to know before dessert.”
He thought the expectant look on her face was delicious. “Why not just give me until the chicken à la king gets cold? Don't stand on ceremony or be shy. Just say what's on your mind.” His newspaperman's eyes reappraised her. “You won't quite fit in, Claire. You're too attractive. You know what I've always said: Politics is Hollywood for ugly people.”
Claire covered her laugh with a black handkerchief.
“Careful, Claire, you've got a new reputation to uphold. Congressional politics is a different game. And Washington's a pretty stodgy town.”
“That reminds me. I'd like you to fire Anita Lace in the morning. I'll be in at nine-thirty A.M., SO why don't you break the news to the little darling at nine-fifteen?”
Grant was intrigued. “And precisely what does Grant Publications get in return?”
“Lefty's deathbed forgiveness. You'll be back in the Hollywood inner circle. Your entertainment reporters will be back in the loop. Deal?”
“Ax Lace at nine-fifteen. Smoke the peace pipe with you at nine thirty.”
Fenwick Grant felt he was being railroaded, but it promised to be an interesting ride. Each time this lady reinvented herself to fit into the changing terrain, she went all out. First a socialite, then a murderess, then a Hollywood power broker. Writing about Claire as candidate would certainly be a circulation booster. And an endorsement now, he thought to himself, didn't mean he couldn't do an expose later.
He grinned widely, smile lines extending all the way to his ears, as they shook on it.
“Do you actually have a platform, or is this some California analyst's therapy
for getting over Lefty?”
“We can go over my platform point by point tomorrow in your office.” The reporter in him sensed her intentions. She would not tell him more news tonight. He shifted gears.
“Did you happen to see the Chagall exhibit as you walked in?”
“It's extraordinary. Lefty loved Chagall.”
“Winthrop Pauling underwrote the show. He and his wife are major collectors. They convinced the lender of the huge blue-and-yellow painting to sell to them. It's in the arts and style feature in Sunday's paper. Anita Lace did the story.” Grant waited for her reaction to the name. Out of all the publications in his tightly run empire he was most proud of the Washington Herald. Even more than U.S. Week, which was number two, just behind Time magazine. Grant leveled his gaze at this woman who had been news in the “People” section of both of them, a half-smirk on his ruggedly handsome face.
Claire smirked back. She had her own plan for dealing with her poison-pen nemesis. Now she was merely wondering if the Paulings had an early Chagall in deep reds, yellows, and blues of a bride and groom and a cow in their collection.
“Where are the Paulings?” Claire turned and craned her neck.
“Two tables over, with your Senator and Mrs. Bostwick, and Averell Harriman and his wife.” He angled his lantern jaw in the Paulings’ direction.
“Thank you, Mr. Grant. See you in the morning.” And Claire picked up her place card and moved toward the Paulings’ table.
“Oh, and let your date know, I only ate her roll. I didn't touch her silverware. I'll have the waiter tell her your ‘emergency interview’ is over.” She flashed him her best diplomatic smile, tinged with just enough Hollywood to make it interesting. “What's her name again?”
Suddenly Fenwick Grant couldn't remember.
“Patience,” he called after her. “I just remembered. Her name is Patience.” There was a wolfish grin on his lips as he watched the way her back curved into her narrow hips.
But Claire was already on her way. She had lovingly nursed dear Lefty night and day for two years. She was forty-two years old and there was an open seat in Congress for which she had two days left to file and announce. Now she had neither time nor patience.
On her way early the next morning to the chrome-and-green-glass headquarters of Grant Publications, Claire thought how proud Lefty would be of her. She whirled herself through the revolving doors of the imposingly ugly building. Last night she had made her pact with power, brokered a calculated peace with the press, sold the Chagall for her campaign chest, and scheduled a lunch with California's influential Senator Bostwick. All between cocktails and dessert. She had one thing left to do. Her high heels resonated with authority on the speckled marble floor. In an effort to blend in with the Washington crowd, she hadn't accessorized her severely cut business suit with anything except white gloves and Lefty's pearls. Still, she could tell from the newsroom stares that her demeanor was still more Bel Air than Beltway, as if her shiny Hollywood veneer couldn't be scrubbed away overnight.
She followed the explicit directions Grant's secretary had given her to the labyrinthine newsroom with its vast expanse of desks all topped by ringing telephones and whirring typewriters. There in the center of it all she found a red-faced Anita Lace angrily emptying out the messy contents of her desk drawers and muttering under her breath. Her short gray-and-brown hair bristled around her square head. She wore half-glasses hanging from her neck on a plastic lavaliere, and was skinny everywhere except around her ankles. Claire was reminded of the loyal battalions of humorless, thick-necked women in Eleanor's army. When Anita looked up and saw Claire standing over her she hurled a few spicy expletives before she went back to collecting her clutter.
“Come to gloat, have you?”
“No. Actually, I hear you might be in the market for a job. I thought I might employ you.”
“You bitch. I don't do social secretary stuff. I ought to thank you. Maybe now I can go back to politics,” she mumbled, a cigarette dangling from her dry lips.
“That's exactly what I had in mind. I'm running for the House of Representatives. Hathaway's seat. And I need the savviest press secretary around. Someone who's not afraid to talk back to me.”
“After what I've done to you?”
Lefty's words rumbled through Claire's mind: “Get the press, Toots, before they get you. Bring out your own skeletons—they're less interesting if you clean out your own closet!”
“Yes, Anita. You know the facts. You certainly know how to misrepresent them. And you were the best war reporter around until you started your social skullduggery.”
It was hard to tell if the red flush on Anita's face was from embarrassment or some oxygen deprivation caused by trying to light a fresh cigarette while hanging her head down in a deep drawer to remove her things.
“But I butchered you.”
“So you can butcher my opponent. Furthermore, you'll be able to anticipate the worst they could print about me and deflect it. But I shall expect and demand absolute loyalty from you.” She leaned down to ignite Anita's dangling cigarette. “We'll play war, Anita, but we can win and make a difference. I never took what you wrote about me personally. You only put Ophelia's vitriol into colorful sentences.” A fleeting look of remembered sorrow crossed Claire's face.
“I want to make sure divorced mothers don't lose custody of their children just because they're poor. Like I almost did before I moved to Italy. Anita, I want to make children's rights a real issue. Along with day care and affordable health care for families with catastrophic illnesses. Like cancer.” An impassioned Claire continued even as she brought her voice to a lower pitch. “You know, the feminists are just discovering what my aunties have always known. That women pulling together leads to women's power.”
Anita perked up. She had been born a liberal Democrat.
And then Claire closed her deal with what she hoped would be the clincher. “I want to make certain women get equal pay for equal work. And I'll make damn sure good writers don't get demoted just because they're women.” She watched as the thought sparked Anita's attention. “Of course, you'll be my speechwriter, too. Let's take on the big boys.”
It was as if Anita were a middle-aged Cinderella finally getting invited to the palace. “My gawd. You're the glam Eleanor.”
She stretched out her nail-bitten hand to Claire, her fingers black with typewriter ribbon. “So if we get you elected I'll be press secretary. Right?”
“Absolutely.”
Anita slammed the desk drawer. She wouldn't be needing the phone numbers of chatty hotel concierges and maître d's, her trusty spies for her social column, anymore. If Claire won, Anita could call her own shots from the hallowed marbled halls on Capitol Hill. As Congressman Glam's press secretary. Or chief of staff. Who knew where this thing might go?
“So, Mrs. Lefkowitz, where do we begin?”
“We're going to write my announcement speech. It will be televised throughout the state. The power of television is politically underutilized. I think I understand the medium.” She linked her arm through Anita's as she led the elfin woman down the hall to Grant's office and caused a commotion, shutting down the Smith Coronas in the city newsroom. The Poison Pen and her most maligned victim nodded in sync, separated by a good five inches in height but somehow with their heads huddled together.
“Incidentally, I'm going back to my Washington roots.”
The social scribe, caught off balance, crankily pointed a finger toward Claire's scalp. “What roots?”
“Oh, not my hair.” Claire caught her drift. “Just my name. I'm Claire Harrison again. It's simpler to remember.”
“And it's probably the most famous political name in America.” Anita marveled at both Claire's political savvy and her guts.
“It's the name I share with my daughter.”
“Oh, right. Will she come out for you?” Anita vividly remembered being instructed by Ophelia not to cover Sara's electroshock treatments and Claire'
s constant efforts to get help for her daughter, who had been relegated to the side shadows by the grandmother. She hadn't spoken to the old witch in years, but she'd heard that Ophelia had gone nuts herself when Sara had refused to attend the Tuxedo Hunt Ball on the arm of Edward Langley. Young Langley, of the Baltimore Langleys, had been in Sara's “class” at Wolford for shooting the family's house cats. “Is she still bonkers?”
Claire bristled at the question.
“Thought so. See? That's your weak spot. We'll have to work on your reaction. Reporters will ask you that.” She tugged on an unadorned earlobe. “Will Sara be campaigning for you?”
Claire composed herself. “Well, she's busy with her own life. She's getting married.”
“What?” Anita's rubber soles skidded to a stop. She had thought the kid was too crazy to marry. “Oh. I get it. Something you arranged. Some blue-blood schnook who wants to marry into the family. And Sara gets a love life. Good idea. America loves weddings.”
“Then they'll be disappointed. The young man is a poetry teacher. He's very nice. But the baby will be born soon after the wedding.”
She delivered the line calmly, but the hawk-eyed Anita could see her distress.
“Yeah, I get it. Maybe she should just work the phone bank. Any more surprises?”
“Just me.”
Anita wondered if the family thing might be a campaign obstacle. This certainly wasn't Beaver and Mrs. Cleaver. Not to mention those damn good looks of Claire's.
“How do you get along with Mrs. Average America? You know, will other gals vote for you?”
“I'm a gal.”
Amazed, Anita scratched some dandruff out of her hair and wondered what kind of speech would catapult Claire Harrison—“Why don't you all just forget about the Duccio years and leave out the Lefkowitz?”—into the hearts of the California voters.
“When is this speech scheduled?”
“Sunday. Right after The Wonderful World of Disney.”
“How the hell did you get the Sunday prime spot?”
The Chameleon Page 44