Waking the Dead

by Scott Spencer

  I turned quickly. Bertelli was making a little As You Wish bow in Brewer’s direction and I was not so far gone that I didn’t realize it was now up to me to say something. I cleared my throat and waited for a moment, hoping that perhaps I had been listening all along and all I needed was a beat to recall what had just been said and what my reply ought to be. But the silence brought nothing but the faint hum of itself.

  “Mr. Pierce?” said Brewer, and at that moment his voice sounded patient, infinitely kind.

  “Tomorrow is the election,” I said, in a soft voice, and as I heard those words I realized I was simply speaking with no idea what I would say, no idea whatsoever. “And I am very aware of the presumption involved in my asking you to send me to Washington to represent you. I’ve been campaigning for this office, trying to make myself known, trying to listen to and understand the people of this district … and now tonight. The end of a short, but intense time. And it strikes me now that there are certain questions I never answer, certain questions I think we’ve pretty much forgotten how to ask. I worry about what sort of people we are becoming. Me. You. All of us. Why don’t our marriages last? Why can’t we educate our children? Why does public life become more and more uncivil? Why are the streets empty at night?”

  I heard my voice as something coming from a long distance and the faces before me had sunk into a swirl, drowning in the turbulence of my own vision. Yet suddenly I did see a familiar face. Father Stanton was sitting about twelve rows from the stage and he smiled as my gaze touched his. I felt a rush of heat go through me and a stabbing, passionate pressure behind my eyes.

  “I think we’ve come to a point where the right thing to do seems so obscure, or so relative, that we’ve excused ourselves from trying to do it. When I was offered this chance to run for office”—I glanced over at Bertelli and he looked back at me with his great cow eyes—“I accepted the opportunity because—” And then I stopped for a moment. A sadness was crashing down on me like the collapse of a wall. “Yes. I was going to say I accepted because it would give me a chance to serve my country. But it was a lot more complicated than that. I have wanted this opportunity for as long as I can remember. And when you want something for that long then just getting it becomes the most important thing, more important than all the reasons why you wanted to achieve it in the first place. We become like dogs chasing after a mechanical rabbit around a race track—and then what do we do with this thing once we have it in our jaws? And now with the race almost run, I can’t help but ask myself: What will I make of the opportunity I am asking you to give me?”

  I stopped. I felt suddenly so calm—and I knew what this meant. I had cut loose from my senses; I was just letting it happen. Caution was like moral gravity and now that it was gone I was free-floating.

  “Maybe it all comes down to vanity,” I said. “But I have always believed and I continue to believe that I can make a difference. I feel a part of me can genuinely hear the voice of suffering. And I can feel the lack of opportunity, the lack of caring, the lack of … love that we have allowed to spoil our great national dream. And I don’t think I’m alone in this. Others see it, too. You see it and feel it. But I am willing to live with it and try to move it and to try and direct our world toward justice inch by inch. I am willing to make the compromises and endure the boredom and paperwork and all the moral murkiness of politics and I believe that I can go through it all without really losing sight of the vision of goodness that I think many of us hold in common. Politicians make an awful lot of promises. But I want to make one more and I don’t have the right to expect anyone to believe me. We’ve all been lied to so many times we’ve lost the ability to believe people in public life—lost the power to believe in the very idea of public life. But with that in mind, let me just finish here by promising always to believe in the democratic dream and to help others continue to believe in it, too, and to help protect what’s left of the best of ourselves from the profiteers and the warriors and the selfish and the brutal.To make this world as close to paradise as we can make it—which may not be awfully close at all, in the end, but what better way have we to spend our lives than crawling toward it?”

  I sat down.There was applause, though I can’t say how much. I put my hand against my chin and rubbed it. I had a dim sense that I might have just lost the election. Bertelli was jotting down notes on his yellow pad. I finally took my hand away from my chin and looked at my palm. There was a little red mark of blood in it. The fissure left by Mileski’s roundhouse had opened again.

  IT WAS A long wait for the results. A few hours after the polls closed we knew it was going to be close and it remained close all through the night and into the next morning. It was not the election night vigil of which dreams are made. There was no bunting, no gay vapor of champagne, no straw boaters, no band. It was just the hard core and me in the campaign offices, listening to all-news radio and making phone calls. As the night wore on a kind of informal system seemed to have taken shape and my staff took turns in waiting around with me, like a dutiful family spelling one another during a death watch. “I’m going to take Dad home,” Caroline whispered to me about two in the morning, and no sooner had she left him than Tony Dayton appeared, his hair still wet from the shower, his eyes bright from his quick nap.

  About five that morning, Tony left, saying he was going to get some sweet rolls and coffee and run some errands, and a few minutes after he was gone Sonny Marchi came in with an off-duty cop, the two of them swapping stories about stolen cars. A woman named Doreen Fisher, who had been helping answer the phones during the campaign and whose husband was an outrageous bully, had decided to endure the long haul rather than go home, though now she was asleep at her desk, her head on her arm, her harlequin glasses still on. The sound of Marchi and the cop woke her up and she looked at me.

  “Nothing yet, Doreen,” I said. “Are you sure you want to stick this out?”

  “Oh please, yes,” she said. “I’d hate to leave.”

  I nodded. I knew how she dreaded going home; I didn’t much care for it, either. Then I thought: If I win, I’ll ask her to stay on. And the thought that I could offer her a job, take her to Washington, untie her like Pauline from the train tracks of her marriage vows, sent a rush of emotion through me.

  Outside, the sky was lightening and the filigree of ice on the windows turned rosy for a moment. Kathy Courtney’s car pulled in in front of headquarters. She got out, carrying the morning Tribune. The headline said IRAN ORDEAL CONTINUES.

  Kathy came into the office trailing the winter cold behind her like a silver robe. She was wearing a black suit, a white dress with a high fluffy collar: it was another day on the job.

  “Heard anything new?” she asked, coming next to me.

  “Not really,” I said. “Too close to call.”

  “Well, I wanted to say something, Fielding,” she said. She took off her coat, placed the newspaper on an unoccupied desk, sat down on a folding chair. Stalling for time.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I don’t want to sound presumptuous, because we haven’t won yet and you haven’t offered me anything,” she said, folding her hands and placing them in her lap. “But I want you to know that I’ve decided not to go back to Washington after this.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “That’s just what I feel most comfortable with,” she said.

  “It’s been pretty hard working with me, hasn’t it,” I said.

  “It’s not that. All you guys are hard, believe me.”

  “Then what is it?” I asked, though if I hadn’t been so exhausted I probably would not have.

  “It’s just too complicated. When I came on with you, I figured my knowing Sarah might be a problem. So I thought about it and decided to tell you. But I think that just made matters worse. Don’t you see?”

  “I don’t think it made matters worse,” I said. I let my nerves settle for a moment; I had a decent instinct for when I had a fighting chance to get
my way and I knew with some certainty that no matter what I said to Kathy she would not be coming to work for me.

  “Do you have another job lined up?” I asked.

  “No. Not yet. I was thinking of taking some time off. I haven’t read a book in five years.”

  “I like you, Kathy.”

  “I know. And I like you too, Fielding. I really do. I think you might even do something in Washington.”

  “Then help me,” I said. I took her hand in mine; it felt light, cool, smooth as soap.

  “I am,” said Kathy. “Do you think this is easy for me?” Her face colored; her eyes moved away from mine. “No matter what happens,” she said, “last night was good. You know, hanging around politicians, I think I was starting to forget why I went into this business to begin with. Last night I started to remember again.”

  “Then stick it out with me,” I said, with a sudden urgency.

  “I can’t,” she said. “I’m sure of it, Fielding. I never should have told you I knew her—but I would have felt like such a liar. And that night you said you were going to call. I was home. And the phone rang and rang, but I just sat there and I just couldn’t answer it. I mean, I wanted to be with you. But when the phone started ringing I realized you weren’t coming to see me. You just needed to be with someone who knew Sarah.”

  “You should have answered the phone, Kathy,” I said. “It might have been an emergency.”

  “I know,” she said. “You’re right. And that’s why I can’t work for you.” She stood up and picked up her coat. “If you win it, there’ll be a press conference later on. We’ll be in touch and I’ll see you there. And I won’t leave you in the lurch. Not that you’ll have any trouble finding someone, but I’ll stick it through until you do.”

  I sat and watched her leave. She didn’t turn around, but when she was unlocking her car she knew I was still watching her and she looked up before getting in and made contact with my gaze through the bright icy window. She put up her hand and wagged it back and forth and then she was gone and a moment later the exhaust was rushing out of her car, turning the snow behind it dark gray.

  A short while later, the phone rang. “It’s Isaac,” Doreen called out to me.

  I stumbled out of my chair and across the office, my hand outstretched for the phone.

  “Hello, Isaac,” I said. “What’s the score?”

  “Final tally’s in,” he said. “You won.”

  “What was the margin?”

  “Six hundred and sixty-six votes,” he said.

  “Strange,” I said.

  “Why strange?”

  “That’s the devil’s social security number.”

  There was silence on the other end. Then, finally, “Well, there’s a lot to do. Will you be able to push on for a while?”

  “Yes,” I said. “My energy’s fine.”

  “Good.”

  “And Isaac?” I swallowed, sat on the edge of Doreen’s desk. She looked at me questioningly and I gave her the thumbs up signal. She clasped her hands together and brought them to her breast.

  “What is it, Fielding?” he asked, wary.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I hung the phone up and started to shake, like you do on a highway a few minutes after almost going over the side of the road. “I won,” I said to Sonny Marchi, raising my fist.

  Sonny and the off-duty cop had been sharing a laugh over a story about a kid from West Virginia, a stolen Plymouth Fury, and a backseat filled with tampon samples. The cop was oozing awful laughter like water out of a dirty sponge and Sonny flicked his reddish rabbit eyes toward me and gave me a smile whose weakness was made poisonous by its unearned confidence. “We won,”he corrected, smiling. “We won. And that is great news.”

  Four days later, I left Chicago in a light snow flurry and arrived in Washington in the afternoon, where the sky was a dome-shaped bruise and the rain was pouring down in huge windy flaps. Arrangements had been made for me to live in a residential hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue—steep tariff, but it was the best I could do. It was hard to say how long I’d last in Washington; there was really no sense in looking for somewhere permanent to store my gear.

  The facade of the Hotel Manchester was somber, plain. It had that well-made gray suit feeling to it. Inside, maroon carpeting, an occasional urn filled with white pebbles—God knows why—an anemic philodendron beneath one of those bright lightbulbs shaped like megaphones. One of those new breed of men with round eyes and sly cabaret smiles brought me up to my two-and-a-half-room suite. Bed, sofa, chairs, kitchenette, bath, old woodcuts of nineteenth-century Washington on the walls, a scent of Windex in the air. The hotel employee (concierge: imagine!) welcomed me, congratulated me on my election, informed me that he had a sister who lived in Chicago, though stopped short of asking me if I happened to know her. He gave me a brochure describing the various services available from the hotel and then directed my attention to the complimentary bottles of champagne and Scotch that had been provided for me. I spoiled the moment for him by asking that they be removed.

  I had an hour before dinner with my parents and Caroline. They had come to see my swearing in the next morning. Isaac and Adele would also be there, though they would not be joining us for dinner tonight. I was not focused enough to see that the Greens were now slightly uneasy with me. It was not that they could not forgive me for leaving Juliet behind, but they wondered if it was a prelude to my breaking with them. And so they were with me, but not in the spirit of celebration so much as the spirit of caution and subtly wounded feelings.

  I lay on my new bed as carefully as I could, as if I wanted to leave as little evidence as possible of my having been here, in case I was suddenly recalled. My head was half on the pillows, half against the headboard; I took my shoes off, but nothing else. The light in the bedroom was grayish blue; the rain beat noiselessly against the thick windowpane. There was a glass-topped mahogany dresser on the other side of the room, with a large silver lamp on it.The lamp was segmented into three round parts, like an ant, and the shadow it cast appeared and disappeared from the smooth wall, as light came in and went out of the window, in and out, in and out, like breath. My mind was blank and for a few moments or more I fell asleep. I woke with a start and my face was slick with tears.

  THE RESTAURANT WE met at was called The Bengali. It was in Georgetown, with a bookstore on one side of it and a little shop selling pricey cooking utensils on the other. It was evening. The rain was still falling, though lazily now. I was wearing a tan trench coat, carrying a black umbrella. There were hundreds of men roughly my age wearing tan trench coats, carrying black umbrellas. We had to give each other a wide berth to keep the spokes of our umbrellas from tangling. I stopped for a moment in front of the bookshop. One of the books displayed in the window was something called Black Socks in the Bedroom: A Sexual History of the Nixon Years. I leaned to the side and bent at the knees so I could see the spine of the book and, as I suspected, it was from Willow Books.

  Standing in front of The Bengali was a massive Hindu doorman, with clear plastic taped around his pale orange turban to keep it dry. Inside, the restaurant was lined in red fabric with dime-sized mirrors sewn into it. Sitar music was piped in; tall, dark waiters moved slowly around the restaurant, weaving in and out of the tables like ostriches. My family was waiting for me at a table near the back—my parents, Caroline, and Danny. It was the first I’d seen of him since he’d left for Toronto with Kim.

  As I approached the table, my family all tapped their fingertips together, in a playful silent round of applause. I flashed my quick Pavlovian grin. “Danny,” I said, “they’ve got one of your books in the window next door.”

  “I know,” he said. “I talked them into putting it there right before I came here.” He raised and lowered his eyebrows. There were dull purple-black sacks beneath his eyes. He looked as if he’d lost ten pounds since I’d last seen him. His golden hair was dirty, as were his pink shirt, his charcoal jacket.


  “Sit down, Congressman,” said Caroline. A place was waiting for me between Mom and Dad.

  I sat. I leaned over and kissed Mom on the cheek and then patted Dad’s arm. “How’s it going?” I asked Danny.

  “I’m here, aren’t I?” said Danny, with one of those wan, existential smiles that were his specialty: he had known how to act brave and condemned even when he was ten years old.

  “How are the boys?” I asked Caroline.

  “Fantastic. Unbearable. Lovely. Grotesque. Moronic. And saintly. They are having an incredible time touring Africa with Eric. Sometimes I forget what a good father he is.”

  “Well then you’ll just have to be a better mother,” said Dad.

  “It’s not a contest,” said Caroline. “I thank God Eric’s a wonderful father.”

  “You don’t want to end up losing those kids,” said Dad.

  “The prices in this place are obscene,” Mom suddenly declared, closing the menu as if it were filled with smutty snapshots. “A family of ten could eat in India for a month for the price of one dinner here.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Danny, “this is a Willow Books party.”

  “Expense account money is still money,” said Mom. “And anyhow I don’t like being treated as if I was a sucker.”

  “I’ll convince you to do a book for us,” Danny said to me. “Like keep a journal of your days in Congress. Something like that.”

  “You know what?” said Dad. “That’s not such a crazy idea.”

  “I’m not in business to have crazy ideas, Father,” said Danny, without a trace of humor.

  “My family,” said Caroline, clasping her hands and batting her eyelashes. “I think I’ll kill them.”

  “Caroline’s right,” said Mom. “We can’t go off in a hundred different directions. Let’s just concentrate on being happy for Fielding.”

  “And then after that we can go back to trashing each other,” said Danny.

  Our waiter came to the table. He asked if we wanted something to drink before ordering our dinner and Danny took over. “We’ll have a Lillet with a slice of orange,” he said, “a Canadian Club and water, a Johnny Walker Red, a Wild Turkey on the rocks, and a glass of—make that a large glass of club soda with lime.” As he gave the order he pointed to Caroline, Dad, Mom, himself, and me.