The Senator and the Priest

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “I’m only a very junior member of the Senate,” I said. “I don’t represent the American government or the Senate. I think the State Department would not approve. Moreover, as you will note, Senor Presidente, I speak with a Mexican accent, indeed a Sonoran accent. Your members will of course be polite, but they will want to laugh.”

  “We do not want you to talk policy,” the President of the Upper House of the Cortes argued, “but only describe how the American Senate works. The American Ambassador says he would be delighted. You are already very well known in Spain. They say you will be President some day.”

  “They are mistaken.”

  I called my office to make sure there was no objection from the State Department. Chris called back and said they would like to see a copy of my text, after I gave the talk. That didn’t seem unreasonable.

  I wrote out a twenty-minute address in Spanish and gave it to Mary Margaret for correction of my mistakes. She approved of what I intended to say. My wife, by the way, attracted quite a bit of attention in Madrid. Some of the locals claimed that she was a true Spanish beauty. “Pre-Visigothic,” my know-it-all daughter claimed. “We are throwbacks to the original Celts, the kind you can still see up in Galicia.”

  Our hosts nodded their solemn agreements.

  “These people don’t look like Latinos,” Maran complained.

  “They’re not, silly,” her sister informed her. “They’re Spaniards, a mix of Celts and Romans and Goths and Arabs.”

  Anyway I was sweating profusely when I rose to the podium of the Cortes. I sensed that there was an undercurrent of anti-Americanism in the group. Who did this little punk think he was, daring to address one of the oldest parliaments in the world!

  “Because Spaniards are an infinitely polite and courteous people, I presume you will not laugh at my atrocious Mexican accent. I grant my permission for you to smile discreetly. When I speak in Chicago, I am accused of not speaking good Mexican because my family and I learned the language of Cervantes and Lope de Vega in Hermosillo where we spent some of our summer months learning the language and studying the culture of that infinitely fascinating and infinitely complex country. We are happy now to expand our experience of the wonderful heritage with which Spain has painted much of the world, such that the political entity in which our Congress works is called the District of Columbia. We are very grateful to the Admiral of the Sea for discovering us.”

  There was polite laughter, not particularly forced, I thought. In the gallery my good wife gave me the thumbs-up sign.

  “I have been asked to explain to you how our Congress works. My answer is that we work very hard much of the time and that the institution works barely if at all, and most effectively on the last day before recess. My feeling is that there is no such thing as an efficient parliament in the free world. If a parliament works efficiently, then some power behind the scenes is manipulating it. Inefficiency, incompetence, frustration are all necessary consequences of representative democracy. So, if you think you have problems, let me tell you some of ours.”

  To my surpise much of my humor did survive translation. The applause at the end was genuine enough as were the handshakes and the comments over the wine we drank afterwards. In fact, however, the Spanish parliamentarians were considerably more interested in conversation with the women in my family. I couldn’t blame them.

  We were about to leave for Toledo, Sevilla, and Granada and then double back through Barcelona and the Costa Brava. I knew my children would think it was not as nice as Grand Beach. Just as we were about to leave our hotel, Chris was on the phone.

  “Let me read your very good friend Leander Schlenk.”

  TOMMY GOES ON A JUNKET, SPEAKS TO PARLIAMENT WITHOUT PERMISSION

  Cute little Tommy Moran, the Tom Cruise of the Senate, is reported to be thinking of a run for President two years from now. However, according to reports from Spain, Tommy already thinks he is President. Without seeking permission from the American Embassy or the State Department, he talked to the Spanish parliament the day before yesterday, something that is usually reserved for visiting heads of state. Tommy attacked Senatorial junkets while he was running for the Senate, but now apparently he is changing his mind. His wife and children are traveling on the junket with him, including the daughter who allegedly cheated one of her classmates out of the valedictorian role. That case is still before the courts.

  I felt sick to my stomach again. One can never escape from Leander, not even in our castles in Spain.

  “What do you and Manny recommend?”

  “The usual. We point out that once again Mr. Schlenk is careless with the facts. You are paying your own way. The invitation was cleared by the American Embassy and the State Department. The case before the courts is against the Jesuits and has been repeatedly turned down because of lack of evidence. Your daughter withdrew from the race. We print the text of your speech on our Web page. We deny that you are considering a Presidential race.”

  I thought about it. I wanted to attack him, to destroy him. That would be a mistake.

  “Go with it.”

  “You want to see a proof for the Web page.”

  “Not necessary.”

  “Have a good trip.”

  “I’ll be looking for castles in Spain.”

  “Leander?” Mary Margaret asked.

  She was wearing pantyhose and a bra, a costume that used to turn me on. Not any more. My fault.

  “Same old stuff, junket in Spain on taxpayers’ money.”

  “Does he believe that stuff?”

  “’Course not. It’s what he does for a living.”

  I do not, I told myself, have the stomach to be a United States Senator. I really don’t. Let Crispjin have it back.

  During the exploration of Spain beyond Madrid, the kids vied with one another to see who had piled up the most knowledge, especially about El Greco. I opined that the man was sick and really thought people looked that way.

  Daddy!

  They loved Sevilla, Granada, and especially Toledo. If the purpose of the trip was to expose them to Spanish culture, it was a huge success, though they briskly dismissed Spanish boys as narcissistic creeps. They also were not enthused by Las Ramblas in Barcelona and rejected the concept that what bordered the Mediterranean in the Costa Brava was a beach.

  “A beach has sand, DAD-dy!”

  “Not gravel!”

  “And there’s no room to walk!”

  “It’s gross!”

  “Grand Beach is nicer!”

  “Let’s go home now!”

  I tried to explain that not all the beaches in the world were like those in the Indiana and Michigan dunes.

  Anyway, they managed to put on their bikinis and suntan cream and lie under an umbrella to protect themselves from the sun, which didn’t last very long anyway.

  “We were never that way when we were kids,” I protested.

  “I was! They’re fun kids. Enjoy them!”

  “I do that!”

  “They like to bait you, though this Costa Brava really doesn’t compare with Grand Beach.”

  So we went home and went up to the Dunes for Labor Day and I was wiped out by some kind of Spanish bug and carried off to St. Anthony’s hospital on Labor Day Sunday. My stomach settled down and my fever went away and I returned to the Beltway furnace, more than ever convinced that I did not belong there.

  One more year and I’d be able to announce my retirement in October and begin to relax.

  I did have some fun at an Armed Forces hearing with the Secretary of Defense on a budget hearing.

  “Why should we have any confidence in these budgetary projections, Mr. Secretary? They’ve been wrong so often, that I can’t believe any new ones.”

  “Senator,” he said, trying to be patient, “war is an unpredictable event.”

  Here was another burned-out case. He would be glad to escape from the mess he had created for himself.

  “Like your prediction that the Unite
d States could win the war with a hundred and thirty thousand men?”

  “We did win the war. Now we’re fighting an insurgency which we will defeat.”

  “An insurgency which might not have happened if we had the force that General Sheneski recommended.”

  “I’m not going to go through that argument again.”

  “Why not, Mr. Secretary? I don’t think you’ve admitted yet that the General was right and you were wrong. Why did you think you could abolish the Powell theory of overwhelming force? Why didn’t you plan for a war which would continue into an insurgency?”

  “Time, Senator,” said the chairman.

  “Saved by the bell, Mr. Secretary.”

  I walked out of the hearing and returned to my hideaway to work on the new book which didn’t have a title yet but was about the themes I had discussed in Madrid. My tentative title was “Why Democracy Doesn’t Work.”

  Then Robbie surprised me when I was most vulnerable.

  CHAPTER 27

  I WAS HALF asleep in my hideaway pondering in a hazy—and unproductive—reverie Winston Churchill’s wise comment that Democracy is a bad way to run a government until one considers the alternatives. Someone knocked at the door, against the rules I had imposed on my staff. Maybe it was Hat McCoy. I opened the door. It was Robbie with the top two buttons on her blouse open.

  Well, it had to come sometime. The question I told myself was how I would react.

  She walked in and closed the door. I leaned against the desk, trying to recoup my resources. She unbuttoned the blouse down to her skirt, her sumptuous breasts constrained tightly in a lacy bra. She looked at me shyly, fragile, vulnerable, as open to my pleasure as if she were my slave. A sense of sweet opportunity, the beginning of a wonderful experience fell on me like a cloak of golden gauze. Why not? There would be no costs. I could enjoy her, make her happy for a little while and then be free. It was only an interlude, joy and bliss with no serious repercussions. Wasn’t it? Mary Margaret need never know.

  I prepared to seize the gift she was offering me, a gift of herself in all her youthful glory, a chance I might never have again.

  Instead I buttoned up her blouse.

  “You shouldn’t be here, Robbie,” I said as gently as I could. “Don’t come back here again.”

  The light went out of her face, her shoulders slumped. I had crushed her.

  “I appreciate the gift you offer me,” I stumbled on, “but it is a gift I cannot accept. I’m a married man and I love my wife. Please try to understand.”

  She turned and quickly fled the little office. I heard her sob as she closed the door.

  I fell back into my chair, spent, shaken, unclean.

  Had I really turned her down? How could I have done that? I had broken her poor confused heart.

  That’s not what the script had called upon me to do.

  I was a fool.

  Maybe it was all my fault. Maybe I had led her on. Thank God my brother would never find out.

  The next morning I went over to the set of “Fast Pitching,” a rough and tumble interview program. I had met the anchor at a party which seemed to be mostly loud, contentious, and interesting Irish Catholics. He begged me to come on the program. Like an idiot I agreed. Chris and Manny said it would be a tough interview. I said it would be fun. It was both. I brought a copy of the tape back to the office, so we could excerpt it for our Web page.

  INTERVIEWER: Don’t you think, Senator, that you have an obligation to the Democratic party to announce your candidacy for the presidency?

  MORAN: I’m not running for the presidency. I haven’t even made up my mind to run for reelection to the Senate.

  INTERVIEWER: Are you waiting for the convention to draft you?

  MORAN: If the angel Gabriel came down from heaven and recommended me, the convention wouldn’t draft me. Should they do that I’d turn them down.

  INTERVIEWER: Do you think the Democrats will lose again this time? Are you waiting four more years?

  MORAN: I am convinced that the Democrats will win easily.

  INTERVIEWER: Then you’d be eight years older before you get your chance. You’d no longer be one of the bright young Democratic faces.

  MORAN: I’m not sure that my face is so bright or young even now.

  INTERVIEWER: If the Democrats win and you’re reelected, you could have your choice of either Armed Services Committee or Judiciary, wouldn’t you? Have you decided which one you would take?

  MORAN: I haven’t thought about it. Should that develop it would be up to the leadership to decide.

  INTERVIEWER: Aren’t you part of the leadership?

  MORAN: Assistant Minority Whip. Back in Chicago that plus two dollars would get me a ride on Mayor Rich’s subway.

  INTERVIEWER: Let me ask you a hypothetical. If you found yourself running for President would you continue your policies of no negative campaigning and no personal fund-raising?

  MORAN: Certainly.

  INTERVIEWER: Your presumed opponent in Illinois is already running attack ads, isn’t he?

  MORAN: So I am told. He has been running them since the last election.

  INTERVIEWER: Have you seen any of them?

  MORAN: I don’t watch them. They’re bad for my digestion.

  INTERVIEWER: How will you run against them?

  MORAN: I think it would be pretty hard to overcome six years of a negative campaign.

  INTERVIEWER: I hear that your presumed opponent has already spent forty million dollars on these ads. Where does get his money?

  MORAN: I have no idea.

  INTERVIEWER: Some people say that most of it comes from Bobby Bill Roads, the oil tycoon.

  MORAN: Oil tycoons have a lot of extra money lying around these days.

  INTERVIEWER: Well, good luck to you, Senator Moran. I still think you’d make a very good President. MORAN: You and my daughters.

  With Maryro at Georgetown, Maran, a junior at Gonzaga, was the designated weekly luncheon partner in the Senate dining room. Some of my senatorial colleagues, especially the Southerners who fantasy themselves courtly, always paid homage to the daughter with a polite bow.

  “How do, Miss Maryro, nice to see you again.”

  “Maryro aw gone. Me Maran.”

  Our middle child, besides being a witch, was also the comedian of the bunch.

  “Do you smell any bad things here today?” I asked.

  Her nostrils twitched as though she were scanning the dining room.

  “No really bad smells. Just the ordinary ones.”

  “Does your boyfriend know you’re a witch?”

  “Jimmy?” she dismissed him with a wave of her hand. “He’s such a nerd. He keeps wanting me to do something like that dweeb Buffy does on television.”

  “Are there any vampires in the dining room, Maran?”

  She glanced around.

  “I’m not sure that I really do vampires, Daddy, but I don’t see any, just Senators.”

  “You can tell the difference?”

  “Oh, sure … Now about next August …”

  She and her siblings had decided that it would be “nice” if we went to Paris and Vienna and studied Napoleon and the Hapsburgs. We couldn’t do anything the following August recess because we’d be singing in the campaign.

  Even my children presumed I’d run again. Which meant that my wife did too. I was in a trap that I’d better escape before it was too late.

  “Do your friends at school know where you eat lunch once a week?”

  “Sure! They want to come along. They think you’re totally cool.”

  Kids that age didn’t recognize a burnt-out case when they saw one.

  “We’ll have to do that some time.”

  “Bitchin’!”

  She pecked at my cheek in front of my office and dashed off to her BORING afternoon classes.

  Why did the young have to possess so much more energy than their parents?

  Robbie was not at her usual desk in the bullp
en. I would have been surprised if she were.

  I gave the tape to Manny.

  “How did it go?”

  “He nominated me for President. I thanked him but declined.”

  She giggled.

  A couple of letters waited on my desk for real as opposed to robotic personalization. I signed them.

  Chris came into the office with a sheaf of work for me.

  “Robbie Becker resigned this morning and left, never to come back I assume.”

  “I noticed that she wasn’t here.”

  “She hit on you real hard and you turned her down?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’m surprised it lasted this long … She’s not so much a predator as a groupie who is an incorrigible romantic. She was so much in love with you that she could not believe that you didn’t love her in return. She told one of her friends that you have a heart of stone.”

  “Did I encourage her?”

  “No one in the office thinks so. You were pleasant to her as you are to everyone. Do you want to tell me what happened?”

  “She knocked on the door of the hideaway and came in with two buttons on her blouse open. She opened the rest of them. I told her that was against the rules, buttoned her blouse, and said thanks but no thanks and I loved my wife. She left sobbing.”

  Chris nodded.

  “Not many Senators would have done that.”

  I shrugged.

  “Chris, I knew it would happen. I keep asking myself what I could have done to discourage her.”

  “Nothing, Tommy, absolutely nothing, except firing her and that would have been a mistake.”

  “That’s what I thought too.”

  “She had two friends in the office to whom she whispered her love and her frustration. She even confided to them this morning what happened. Pretty much as you described it.”

  “Will there be trouble?”