Herself

by Leslie Carroll

  I rest my forehead in my hands. “David…ohh, David…if you recall, I was the one who made that suggestion to you in the first place. Way back in your apartment on the night you…chose to put an end to our personal relationship. My God, if it means the media can stop chewing on this months-old bone, then do it! Hold the press conference, and end it by saying that it’s time to put this b.s. behind us and stop distracting the voters. Time to put the focus entirely on the issues. But you know all that already. While you’re at it, challenge Dobson to a series of debates. I’ll look forward to watching you mop the TV studio floor with him.”

  “When I set up a date for the press conference, I’ll let you know.”

  I leave David still sitting in the campaign headquarters conference room, his handsome face a picture of determination and despair.

  A couple of days later I meet Cousin Imogen for a cocktail in TriBeCa. She’d driven into Manhattan for an Afternoon Delight with Roger the party planner. “A polo match,” she tells me, heaving an enormous sigh. “I’m so relieved the kids finally agreed on something. I swear to God I thought I was going to slit my wrists over this. So the reception after the ser vice is going to be held at the Bridgehampton Polo Club. Let me tell you, Roger had to pull a lot of strings to put all this together at the last minute. I had to make a sizeable donation to their upkeep fund—I mean how much could oats and a handful of horse blankets cost?—pay triple to have Tiffany’s print the invitations with a one-week turnaround, and we’ll have to FedEx all three hundred of them in order to give people enough of a heads-up.”

  “You’re saddling up a passel of thirteen year olds on polo ponies and sending them out on the field or what ever they call it, with long sticks in their hands?”

  “Mallets. And yes! Isn’t it so Ralph Lauren?!”

  I admit that well, yes, I suppose it is, and she insists that I bring Jamie to the bar and bat mitzvah, though I warn her it may come as a bit of a culture shock to him. On the other hand, this wildly over-the-top brand of celebration is alien to most normal people, even other Jews.

  “Imogen, isn’t there any self-awareness in a culture that prides itself on the concept of tzedakah—giving charitably to the less fortunate—when you spend as much money on a four-hour party for a group of teenagers as it would cost to send thousands of African children to school, or provide their families with clean drinking water?”

  “Save the speeches for your shiksa senator.” She shakes her head. “You don’t get it, Tess.”

  “What’s not to get?”

  “It’s…this is what our set does. You can’t not do it.”

  “Well, I could. But then again, I’m not in your ‘set.’ Remember the classic example our parents used to use? If Johnny jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do it?”

  “Well, in our case, we’ve got a yacht waiting for us in the East River with a giant air mattress on the bow.”

  Venus arrives, fresh from Jeffrey’s, having determined that a coveted pair of thousand-dollar boots will disintegrate on the streets of Manhattan if one wears them often enough to amortize the purchase into affordable bites, and despite the fact that she had planned to perform in them during the Dance for Cancer fund-raiser at Pink Elephant.

  She gives me a hug and a kiss before sitting and stowing her purse on the floor between her ankles. Imogen immediately leans over to her and whispers something. They both glance at me, and Venus cups her hand to Imogen’s ear and whispers her reply. Then they sit back in their chairs and regard me, grinning like a pair of Cheshire Cats.

  “We can tell,” Imogen says. “Do I know relationships, or do I know relationships? My radar is impeccable, but I was waiting until Venus got here for confirmation.”

  “Confirmation of what?” I ask her.

  Venus rests her chin in her hands. “You finally did it, didn’t you? You must have; your whole face looks different—your complexion, your color. Your posture is even different: you’re sitting up straighter. There’s the distinct look of the contented about you, T.”

  “My sex life is not open for discussion, ladies.”

  “Aha!” exclaims Imogen.

  “Since when?” demands Venus. “Clearly I don’t need to ask how it was.”

  “I wouldn’t tell you. Not in chapter and verse, anyway. Contrary to outward appearance at this particular moment in time, my life is not an HBO episode.”

  “Okay, then, share this: do you love Jamie?”

  The infusion of carnality into the mix is so new. I can’t dissect things and don’t want to. Putting our relationship under a microscope…right now I don’t want to go there with my girlfriends. I analyze enough in my journal, where I confessed to feeling a little guilty about being so happy and satisfied so soon after my breakup with David.

  “I haven’t told him I do yet.” This will have to suffice as an answer.

  “Has he said it again to you?” Venus wants to know, after ordering a Cobb salad without dressing. Her willpower perpetually astounds me, arousing my envy as well. I’m such a bacon-cheddar-burger kind of woman that it’s a dietary sacrifice to ask the waiter to hold the bacon.

  I chuckle. “He tells me he loves me every day. Right before he heads off to feed and water his horse. Did I ever tell you that his carriage horse is a mare named Diesel?”

  “And you haven’t said it back. Hmm,” muses Imogen.

  “Shades of David,” adds Venus. “Maybe you two were the perfect couple after all.”

  I ask her if she’s deliberately playing devil’s advocate and receive a Mona Lisa smile.

  “You do know that despite his daily affirmations, and no matter how much he says he loves you, he won’t marry you until his mother dies,” she reminds me, disposing of her croutons onto my plate.

  “‘A lady’s imagination is very rapid: it jumps from admiration to love. From love to matrimony. In a moment,’” I tease.

  “Thank you, Miss Austen.”

  “Only it’s your imagination doing the leaping here, not mine, V.”

  “Oh, don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it,” Imogen counters.

  “I’ve already been married.”

  Imogen looks at Venus. “She’s being evasive.”

  “I definitely have strong feelings for Jamie, but I’m not ready to think about being married to him. Not yet. It’s been enough of an adjustment to live with him! And FYI, Imogen, he didn’t become any less of a slob because we started sleeping together.”

  “You told her he’d do that?!” Venus is dismayed. She’s never been able to stomach Imogen’s willingness to be dishonest, even if my cousin lies with good intentions.

  “I thought it would help,” Imogen says defensively. “Speed things up a little in the romance department. I didn’t expect her to believe me. Tessa isn’t ordinarily so naïve.”

  “Then she must be in love,” Venus concludes.

  On my way home I stop to pick up a copy of the late city edition of the New York Post. Jamie insists they have the best sports section. Splashed on the front page in 72-point type is the headline: SECOND HEART BREAK FOR WEYBURN.

  Switching my cell phone off “vibrate,” I discover a plethora of messages from the press requesting a comment from me as his former head speechwriter. Bottom feeders. I return none of their calls.

  Panicked, I phone Jamie’s mobile first, catching him in the middle of taking a golden anniversary couple from Wisconsin around the lower reaches of Central Park. “Did you read the papers? David had a second heart attack! Did anyone call our apartment before you left for work? Do you know where they took him?”

  “Mo cushla, I haven’t got the answer to your questions. I do feel guilty as shite though because I got so upset with you for runnin’ down to his campaign headquarters like that. Men can get jealous too, y’know? But I was off-base, and I’m sorry about your old…boss. Now take three deep breaths and call your friend Gus.”

  “Right. Of course.” I guess I called Jamie first because you always ten
d to phone your closest loved one in a crisis. I guess that makes him…

  I speed-dial David’s campaign manager. “Gus! Where is he?” I bark into the phone.

  “His home-away-from-home, darlin’. St. Luke’s. I’m on my way over there now, though I don’t know if they’ll let us in to see him. I don’t know how bad things are. Like the man said, ‘All I know is what I read in the papers.’”

  “Don’t go all Will Rogers on me now, Gus. I’ll see you over there.”

  I run into Gus Trumbo in the depressing CCU waiting room. David is already listed as being in “stable” condition, though he remains confined to the Cardiac Care Unit.

  Dr. Gupta doesn’t keep us waiting long. “Has Congressman Weyburn been under any additional stress recently?” she asks us.

  “Beyond the usual it takes to run for re-election?” Gus snorts.

  I place my hand on his arm. “The congressman came to a major decision a couple of days ago. A very difficult one, because it flew in the face of his principles.”

  “He did?” Gus looks amazed that he hadn’t been informed.

  “I’m guessing, since you didn’t know about it, that David—Congressman Weyburn—was still agonizing over whether or not to go through with it.” I tell Gus and the cardiologist about David’s press conference plans.

  “The newspapers didn’t report the whole story,” Dr. Gupta tells us. “Because they didn’t know it. We had to perform bypass surgery.”

  I can actually feel the blood draining from my face. Gus and I exchange anxious glances. His lower lip is trembling.

  “I spoke with the congressman before he went into surgery,” says the doctor. “I explained to him that his age can make for an even better recovery…but that recovery is a ways off. These things take time. When we…I am speaking about the medical community…see such a relatively young man with such a condition, it presents a red flag, so to speak. The congressman will have to take it easy for several months in order for a full recovery to take place.”

  “What are you really saying here?” I ask Dr. Gupta.

  “I am saying, as Congressman Weyburn’s doctor, that it is not in the best interests of his health to continue to pursue this re-election campaign.”

  “It’ll kill him to withdraw,” Gus replies angrily.

  “I think what Dr. Gupta is trying to tell us is that it could kill David if he doesn’t.”

  “Our best hope for the future health of the country brought down by a crock of bullshit,” Gus says, crushing his baseball cap between his hands.

  “It’s a damn national tragedy is what it is,” I lament. Referring to Len Avariss and his cronies, I add, “Those bastards are evil. I wonder how they sleep at night.” I sink onto one of the leatherette couches and let the tears flow.

  “They don’t, sugar. They prowl about the country by moonlight in search of genuine red-blooded Americans to feed upon, for only by sucking out another’s life force can they sustain themselves; and even then it’s merely a temporary victory. They must continually replenish their conscience in order to appear by day to have a shred of humanity.”

  Hours later, we gather around David’s bedside while Dr. Gupta delivers her verdict. David is crushed. In fact, he looks very much like he wants to cry. But there he is, once again hooked up to beeping, blinking monitors and stuffed with tubes.

  “You fought the good fight, big guy,” Gus murmurs. “But I think the doc makes a good point. And fuck-it-all, I think you’ve got to go along with it.”

  “Do it, Gus,” David says evenly. “Release a statement. You know the drill.”

  I feel like I’m attending a funeral for the living. There’s a long silence between us. My heart is breaking: for David, for his constituents, for the country. “What will you do now?” I ask him.

  “Except for the facts that I need to heal and that Congress is in session, I’d love to disappear for a while. Drop off the planet and go someplace where no one will find me. Tasmania. Mars. My mother’s condo in Boca.” He asks for a moment or two alone with me. “Call me when you want to, Tess. I’ve missed hearing your voice.”

  I was miserable over his condition, but now I feel even worse. Wiping away a tear I whisper, “I still love you, pal,” into his ear.

  On the way home I start to ponder whether it’s the same kind of love as I’m beginning to feel for Jamie, or whether it’s another variety altogether, the kind where nostalgia and an abiding affection create a special chamber in the heart for someone. And although you may never actually visit that place, you’ve accorded them a permanent rent-controlled lease. In New York real estate terms, it means they’re never going to move out.

  “I’m sorry about David,” Jamie says, leaning down to give me a kiss as he attempts to catch a head of lettuce before it rolls off the kitchen counter. “He seemed like a politician with some integrity for a change.”

  “I’m glad to hear you approve of my taste in men!”

  “What would it say about me if I didn’t?” When he’s not working late Jamie’s taken to making dinner. Getting me to eat more greens and cooking a lot of fish. The man certainly knows his fish, even when it’s not beer-battered and deep fried. As he’s apparently never met a pan or a pot or a dish he likes to wash, by default this task has fallen to me in the equitable distribution of labor. How arduous is it to put something into the dishwasher? Of course, I never liked doing dishes either.

  The nightly local newscasts all lead with the story of David’s departure from the campaign, his bid to win a third term tanked by his second heart attack and subsequent bypass surgery. Reporters then trot out the specter of “WaterGayte” and David’s subsequent inability to make the rumors disappear in a steadfast decision to stick to the real issues as another determining factor in his decision to withdraw from the race.

  “At this point, we have no idea who the Democrats will tap to replace this favorite son of New York,” Suki Glassman smirks. “But they don’t have much time. With the November election only six weeks away, they’ll have to scramble to find someone who can capture the voters’ hearts, especially in the district that boasts the highest number of dog runs in the city, with a Republican challenger who is a house hold name in the pet care industry and has limitless financial resources and the backing of the entire party machine behind him. Mr. Dobson has also floated his ‘faith-based balloon’ as he terms it, calling for the more active participation in the community of churches and synagogues as a way of steering young people at risk onto a straighter moral path, as well as alleviating the already strained government coffers from bearing the lion’s share of the financial burden.

  “But there are other issues at hand,” reports Suki. “Dobson promises to pressure the Mayor to rescind the Pooper Scooper laws and lift the restrictions on city parks that limit the areas open to the free expression of our animal friends. Bob Dobson’s PAW—Pets Are Worth it—proposals would seek to roll back what he calls ‘the burdensome restraints placed on the personal freedoms of pet lovers that compel them to always travel with a purse full of plastic bags, and be forced to choose which outdoor spaces to frequent for their recreation.’”

  They go to some footage of a recent Dobson press conference. “The current laws infringe on Constitutional liberties, and as soon as I find out exactly which those are, I’ll be…I’ll be holding another press conference.”

  Enough. Enough to give me a raging headache. I might as well have steam coming out of my ears. Outraged by the circumstances, both pervasive and specific, that drove David back to the operating table and forced him to withdraw his reelection bid, I feel a rant coming on. “You’re a bastard, Bob Dobson! A natural disaster in human form. You, Len Avariss, and your rich, tin-eared cronies who live to destroy things instead of build them—unless it’s your own corporations getting the no-bid contracts! How can Americans have any faith in their leaders when they’ve so betrayed our trust? And the media ought to be ashamed of themselves. TV, newspapers—the Fourth Estate is rid
dled with termites. What would Edward R. Murrow have to say if he saw the short shrift given to journalistic integrity in this day and age! TV news directors want to grab ratings; newspaper editors try to compete with them for everyone’s precious time. No one has time for substance. That’s considered stodgy. Old hat. What does it say about our society when the most honest news reporting is presented on a comedy show? You cite facts, you’re at best a wonk and at worst a bore.”

  Jamie grins broadly. “Well, well, Tessa Goldsmith Craig. You’ve got an Irish temper after all!”

  “I hope the Dems can come up with someone viable pretty soon. Someone’s got to make sure this moron doesn’t get a ticket to Capitol Hill.” I switch off the TV and head into the bathroom to down a couple of aspirin. Although I feel like my head is going to explode, it also feels good to let it all out. My parents, many of my friends (Venus excepted), and just about all of my former beaux (including David), were always embarrassed every time I raised my voice, expressed an angry thought in a sudden outburst, or became “too passionate” about something. It made them palpably uncomfortable, so I learned to modify my behavior and put a cork in it as soon as my naturally outspoken nature began to bubble back to the surface. Whether he’s amused or impressed by my outburst, I’m unsure; but Jamie’s acceptance of who I am, even when I’m not putting a very good face on it, or being my best self, goes a long way.

  And then…I have an epiphany.

  I hunt down my address book (finding it on my desk, obscured by a back issue of Rugby World) and flip the pages. Not finding the number I want, I dial information and request the number for the Midtown Manhattan Reform Democratic Club.

  “Is that the downstairs buzzer? I’m on the phone,” I call out to Jamie. “Can you get it?”

  “Shite!” I hear something clatter in the kitchen. “Hold yer horses a minute!” he shouts at the intrusion.

  I bring the phone into the bathroom for a bit of peace and quiet. Jamie is shouting into the intercom. “Who is it? Who? What??! All I can hear is static through this feckin’ thing.”