And why.
CHAPTER 31
FRIENDLY ADVICE
(I)
THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, Senator Malcolm Whisted spoke at a campaign rally on the edge of campus, a risky decision in the middle of final exams, but the only time he could squeeze in a visit to his home state. He made a total of four appearances in that one day, not counting his informal tea with the political-science students, his own major before he had gone into the State Department, then graduate school, then a university sinecure of his own, then electoral politics. That night the Senator dined at the home of his old friends Lemaster and Julia Carlyle. The event was carefully not styled a fund-raiser, because Lemaster and Julia were hosting in their dual roles—as president and first lady of the university, and also as dear old friends of Senator Malcolm Whisted and his wife, Maureen—and could not, in either role, be seen as partisan.
Said Lemaster.
To the surprise of the meteorologists, the weather held, so everybody came. Once the renovations on the presidential mansion were complete, the Carlyles would entertain on campus, but for now a dinner at home meant Tyler’s Landing. The guest list at Hunter’s Heights was forty-two strong, not counting aides. Food was served buffet style. There was lots of eating on laps as the old roommates, very loudly, traded stories. Most of the guests were faculty, who mostly fawned over the Senator, perhaps jockeying for places in the forthcoming administration, perhaps merely exulting at the thought that the forces of the Antichrist might shortly be driven from the White House. Some were the dignitaries of Elm Harbor. Some were Carlyle acquaintances from the Landing, because to try to find “friends” would have taxed their abilities. Back in grimy, dilapidated Elm Harbor, which Julia had been in so great a hurry to leave, neighbors of several colors had been on their doorstep with casseroles and freshly baked cookies the day they moved in, and, through the process of reciprocal invitation, the Carlyle family had made friends. Six years on Hunter’s Meadow Road, where the houses stood continents apart, and Julia had learned the names of perhaps two families in the near vicinity. Here was the secret segregated truth at the heart of integration. No vandalism was committed. No crosses were burned. No epithets were uttered. The family was not attacked. It was simply ignored.
But, for Malcolm Whisted’s dinner, suddenly everybody wanted to come. Mostly people crowded around the guest of honor, who, like all successful politicians, possessed the gift of seeming to lavish every bit of attention on your little question or concern even when his mind was on tomorrow’s speech or this morning’s Times editorial. His aides kept coming over to whisper: another competition between the roommates was over who would be called away to the telephone the most times. Across the foyer was a library equipped with a private bath, so that it could double as an extra guest room. Senator Whisted had converted it into his temporary office for the evening, a place to take his calls or answer questions from his aides. As the evening wore on, he spent more and more time closeted inside.
Julia moved dutifully from group to group, wishing Lemaster were beside her instead of across the room doing the same thing. In the bay window near the piano, Suzanne de Broglie from the divinity school was explaining dreamily to Donna Newman, doyenne of Landing society, how no moral person could support the blood-for-oil hegemony of the current Administration. Out in the solarium, Marcus Hadley, a law professor and old crony of Lemaster’s, was lecturing Gayle Gittelman, the county’s leading criminal-defense lawyer, on how support for school vouchers among poor black parents in the inner city should be ignored, for it was simply evidence of careful racist brainwashing. Julia, who had loved the darkly joyous Clannish boister of Harlem parties when she was a little girl, had come to hate the confident white preachiness of the campus parties to which her status required her to go.
Now and then Lemaster smiled at her across the room as he worked it, or even kissed her as he passed, but Julia saw nothing straight just now, and suspected her husband of putting on a show for his guests.
At some point in the evening, as Julia struggled to extricate herself from a conversation in the corner of the living room about how the family could in good conscience worship at a crazed right-wing congregation like Saint Matthias, Jeremy Flew tapped her on the shoulder and asked to borrow Mrs. Carlyle for a minute.
“The Senator would like a word with you,” murmured the little man, turning her over to one of the Senator’s people, who knocked on the library door. Inside, Malcolm Whisted was sitting atop the desk, tie loosened, one long leg swinging, his elegant wife, Maureen, sagging exhausted in an armchair.
Maureen said, “Thank you for having us to dinner, Julia.”
“It’s our pleasure. And our honor.”
“We really need to get together more often. You need to call us next time you’re in Washington.” Using need like a command. “We can’t let it be this long again.”
“I agree,” said Julia, trying unsuccessfully to watch them both.
A look passed between the pair. The Senator said, “I’d like to explain about what happened with Astrid.”
“Oh, no, no, you don’t have to—”
“I run only clean campaigns, Julia. No other kind.”
“You need to understand that,” ordered Maureen, perfect political wife and, some said, the brains of the outfit. “You need to remember what kind of man my husband is.”
Whisted glared at her, but contrived to turn it into a fond gaze before Julia could be sure. His voice had the tone and conviction of the answer to a reporter’s question. “Astrid Venable worked hard for us. I wish her all the best. But she wanted to dig up dirt on our opponents, and we don’t do that.” Eyes still on his wife. “We’re the good guys.”
“I understand,” said Julia, hands massaging each other nervously behind her back.
“And we ask our opponents for the same courtesy,” the Senator said.
“Of course.”
“Nobody’s a saint, Julia. Everybody has secrets in the past. I do. You do. Everybody does.”
She went very still.
“What my husband is saying,” Maureen explained, unnecessarily, eyes tightly shut, “is that we all had our wild periods.” She brushed graying hair from her forehead. She had slipped off her shoes. Long ago, before her husband got into national politics, Maureen used to tell people she could read palms and auras. One night, at a party in the Hamptons, she had read Julia’s, predicting decades of warmth and joy. “I can’t imagine why anybody would try to dig those things up. You have to realize it has nothing to do with how a man would govern.”
“Campaigns should be about ideas,” said the Senator.
“Not about personalities,” added his wife.
“About the future.”
“Not about the past.”
“About who a man is now.”
“Not who a man used to be.”
A knock on the door, an aide poking his head in. The Senator said they would be another minute, and the head disappeared. Everybody was in motion. The Senator was straightening his tie, Maureen was slipping on her shoes, Julia was backing away. Somehow Whisted had her hand in his and pumped it twice, then continued to hold on, dark, sincere eyes burning into hers. “Let’s keep the campaign clean,” he said, and slipped out to meet his admirers.
Maureen lingered. “Julia.”
“Yes, Maureen.”
“My husband is a good man. You need to know that.”
Julia felt tired and, unaccountably, afraid. She had thought it was Scrunchy. If it was one of the Horsemen, it was Scrunchy. But now she was less sure.
“I know that, Maureen. I promise.”
“He had a youth. We all had a youth.”
“I understand.”
“Julia, listen to me.” Taking both of Julia’s hands in both of hers. Maureen was a tall woman, in small ways endearingly awkward despite the surface elegance. “Nobody cares about what anybody did at that age. Most of us did things at that age we wish we hadn’t. My husband did thin
gs I’m sure he wishes he hadn’t. But he would never hurt anybody. Never.”
“Maureen—”
“My husband is not a wealthy man, Julia.” A sudden smile, like unexpected treasure. “The Whisteds have always believed in public service.”
“I understand,” said Julia, who did not.
“I’m sorry about Astrid. Truly sorry. Please don’t hold it against my husband. It’s going to be a tough campaign. Astrid understands.”
“Believe me, Maureen, I don’t hold anything against your husband.”
“Good. I’m so glad.” A long look, as if considering how much to tell. Then a polished detour. “Call me when you’re in Washington. We need to spend more time together.”
“Thank you.”
“Or if we can do anything for you. Call.”
“I will.” She tugged but could not get her hands free. “Thanks.”
“It’s the Landing,” Maureen explained, eyes hammering at her. Her flesh was slick and warm. Julia squirmed. “I remember from when we lived here. The Landing affects people. The things that happen here are always so—”
She stopped, hugged, went out.
(II)
IN THE FOYER, Julia said goodbye to the Senator and his wife and, rubbing her eyes, watched as the tide drifted out, the last few stragglers among the guests draining toward the door. The Senator wanted her to stop. As simple as that. Malcolm Whisted wanted Kellen’s surplus to stay buried, and so did his wife.
Which meant—
“So—you heard about Tice?” Marcus Hadley was suddenly beside her, white and hefty and confidently judgmental. His family had been around the university even longer than the Lands. His uncle had been one of Lemaster’s predecessors as president. His grandfather had discovered a famous dinosaur fossil. Back when Marc and Lemaster were professors together, they used to run a competition—a serious one, with rules nobody else understood—to figure out which of the two was the most brilliant member of the law faculty. “That lawyer? The one with the commercials?”
“Tony Tice?” she said, as foreboding rose.
“Right. Lemaster told me how he bothered you.”
Julia realized that she had been holding her glass all this time. She handed it to a waiter, feeling the room waver. “What about him? What did he do now?”
“Beat up his girlfriend. Gayle Gittelman was telling us.”
“What? He did what?”
“Tice. Tricky Tony.” Eying her. “He’s been arrested.”
CHAPTER 32
DENNISON
(I)
THE FOLLOWING MONDAY, Julia and Lemaster drove up to New Hampshire to pick up Aaron at Exeter, where the fourteen-year-old was marvelously popular, perhaps because of his considerable charm, or perhaps because his father was president of a university where a not-inconsiderable number of the school’s graduates hoped to matriculate. They had decided to do it together, but conversation during the drive was more muted than usual. Preston had called the night before from Cambridge to announce that he would not be home for Christmas. He and his latest girlfriend were heading to Mexico. Julia was stunned. None of the children had ever missed Christmas. She pleaded. She argued. Preston was, as always, immovable. She decided to detour and see him, but Preston told her not to bother: they were leaving on the early flight.
Tonya Montez, chief local Sister Lady, liked to say that parenthood was the process of watching your children slowly lose interest in you. With her eldest, that process was already over.
They drove by his apartment anyway, just to be sure. There was no answer at the buzzer. “I suppose he already left,” said Lemaster.
“I suppose,” said Julia, worried, secretly, that Preston was ignoring them. She wished she knew why her firstborn so determinedly avoided his parents. If wishes were horses, Granny Vee used to say, then beggars would ride. Around Preston she always felt like a beggar.
Leaving Cambridge, they headed across the bridge into Boston and stopped at a row house in the endless maze of narrow, crooked historic streets of Beacon Hill. Parking is impossible but Lemaster eventually managed the miracle, squeezing the Mercedes into a spot that looked, at first glance, large enough to hold a child’s bicycle. He pumped his fist, because beating the odds was his hobby, and she kissed his cheek, because congratulating him was hers. The sky had the flat, hazy look that comes only from heavy smog or heavy weather. Their feet slid on the bumpy, cobbled sidewalk, the stones slippery because not every homeowner was equally diligent in clearing the seasonal mess. The houses were of stout brick, cramped and expensive. Few had lawns of any consequence. Windows opened directly into the street, like they did in many parts of Europe; walking past, you caught glimpses of neighbors sleeping, shaving, dressing, embracing, the full spectrum of activity among the newly wakened. Julia felt newly wakened herself. For the first time in years, she was taking risks. She would find Kellen’s evidence and save her daughter: unless, of course, her pride led to a fall, which she admitted was always possible.
The house was just like all the others, except that it sat on a corner lot and had slightly more than a postage stamp of a yard, guarded by a low wrought-iron fence in need of painting. Standing on the front step, they had an excellent view down the hill toward the Boston Common and the Public Garden. The brass knocker was an eagle, easily a hundred years old. A tall nurse of improbable beauty admitted them and whispered in a Haitian accent that Mr. Dennison was doing a little better today. Better than what? Julia wondered, but dared not ask. The nurse led them straight along the narrow hall to a chamber at the back of the house that could serve as dining room, parlor, or game room, because Bay Dennison, back in the day, had run a high-stakes poker game at which the powerful could do their dealing well beyond the scrutiny of the press; except, of course, for those members of the press who were invited to play.
The old man was in his wheelchair, wrapped to mid-chest in blankets, ignoring the view. He had lost weight to his several illnesses—his body was guilty of as many transgressions as the doctors chose to test for—but retained an insolent heft across the shoulders and a determined set to his jowly yellow jaw that reminded you of the power he had once wielded in American politics. Usually he would have a gofer present, but he fired them fast and, according to Lemaster, was between assistants just now. On the rolling table before him were scattered page proofs for the forthcoming third volume of his best-selling autobiography, and when they entered, he was hunched over, pencil in hand, furiously correcting the prose, obviously excited at the opportunity to spew more venom, although God alone knew who was left for him to skewer.
“With you in a minute,” he snapped without turning.
“Take your time, sir,” said Lemaster, and Julia glanced at her husband, who looked ready to stand and wait all day if commanded. He responded this way to nobody else. In fact, she had never heard him refer to another living soul as “sir.” She had never fathomed all the dimensions of her husband’s relationship with the man. But thirty-odd years ago, Representative Byron Dennison had started a far younger Lemaster on his path to professional glory, spotting the boundless potential in the summer intern, taking him beneath the same capacious wing that had launched so many other careers in the same generation of African America, opening doors, smoothing his path, and, as the years went by, making sure he stuck to it.
Unlike most of them, Lemaster never forgot.
“Not much time left,” the old man countered, scribbling hard with the red pencil. Peeking over his shoulder, Julia saw that he was now chasing the ghosts of his former friends in the civil-rights movement. Just what the country needed.
“You’ll outlive us all, Mr. Dennison,” said her husband.
“Only if you’re all planning to go in the next six months.”
“You should try to think positive.”
“Give me a reason.” He turned a page and returned to his agonistic scribbling. “Anyway, thinking positive didn’t help Zant, did it? Poor bastard. I thought they were all thro
ugh lynching our people down your way.”
Lemaster smiled behind his mentor’s back. “I brought Julia.”
The head came up, the chair made a circle, and a welcoming smile spread over the ravaged gray face, flesh hanging in loose folds as if ready to peel. One of the eyes was faded and wheeling, but the other was bright and sharp as ever. “So you did. Not that you ever deserved her. She’s too good for you, Little Master”—which was what Dennison always used to call him, and therefore still did. But Lemaster loved him, and they all knew it. In two months it would be time for the old man’s birthday party, still a raucous affair attended by hundreds of movers and shakers, an event Lemaster had never missed, and nowadays helped organize. “How about you, Julia? Had your fifteen allotted affairs yet? Because you should be looking for somebody better, gorgeous creature that you are. If I were married to Little Master here, I’d have left him years ago. I don’t know how you put up with him. You’re a saint. A martyr. They’ll give you a statue. Listen, you can have mine. They’re unveiling my bust up at the Capitol. Stupid-ass amateur idea. I’m not going. They said, It’s a short walk. I said, Do I look to you like I can walk? Amateurs.”
“It’s good to see you, too, Bay,” she said, smiling back, because he never expected any response to his bombast, and he had commanded her, years ago, to use his nickname, one of his many tricks to keep Lemaster in his place. He tried to keep all his protégés in their places; what made Lemaster different was his willingness to stay there, a trait Julia admired in him, even though she could not quite say why.
“How’s your mother?”
“Thriving.”
“Still in France? Robbing the cradle?” Because Mona lived near Toulouse with an Englishman called Hap, twenty years her junior—short, said Mona, for happiness.
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