A change of gravity

by George V. Higgins

  "That alderman seat was theirs for as long as they wanted it. It's out of their hands now because there's no new Carnes available right now to sit in it. Maybe there will be, eight or ten years from now, when Roy Junior's son's grown up, but right now there isn't. The man who's in it's a fool, and he probably isn't ever going to get any smarter. But he probably wont leave, either. He'll never try for anything higher, because dumb as he is, even he knows he'd probably lose.

  "So what happens when Roy's kid is ready? By then Gilson'll've been there too long to throw him out. The Carnes kid'll have a fight on his hands.

  "So then, why not save him the trouble? Go to the Carneses now and ask them if they'd like to help you change that. You'll knock Gilson off for them now, and then because you'll want to move on before too long, you'll leave it open again. As long as it keeps changing hands, when Roy Junior's kid's ready he'll have a chance. I bet Roy and Arthur would see your point. I bet they could help you a lot."

  "You old enough to have a beer?" Hilliard said.

  "Have one, yeah," Merrion said. "Buy one? Not legally."

  Hilliard began to see the need for change around the end of March of '66, but he waited until evening of the third Friday in April to see if Merrion would raise the subject. He did not do so. After they parted that evening outside the office, Merrion declining to have a beer on the ground that if he did he'd flunk a quarterly in advanced psychology, Hilliard took inventory on the way home.

  Things were unquestionably good. The black '65 Ford Falcon convertible with the red vinyl interior was hocked, but still nearly brand-new.

  Mercy's Country Squire wagon was only four years old. The pale-blue three-bedroom half-brick raised-ranch house, two-car garage under, where he lived with his family on the north slope of Ridge Street in Holyoke, was a better one than his parents owned. There was no primary opponent in sight and the few Republicans in the district the southeastern part of Holyoke, Canterbury, Hampton Pond, parts of Cumberland and Hampton Falls as usual were snarling at each other. His grip on the middle rungs of the House leadership ladder was secure enough to permit a swift lunge in the next term for the chairmanship of Ways and Means. "Too good," he thought. "Must be time to fuck something up."

  Over dinner of fried filet of sole with Mercy and their three young children, Hilliard tried out his decision to address the subject when he and Merrion had their customary week-ending meeting at the office the next morning. "Do something about it. Get it over with once and for all."

  "Suspense getting to you?" she said. Marcia Hackett Hilliard had natural ash-blonde hair and blue eyes spaced wide apart, and she was a cheerful person. Even when she was obviously getting angry she looked like she still might laugh instead. She knew this and regretted it.

  She didn't like fights 'unlike my dear husband, who goes around looking for them." She was convinced that she had more of them than she would have had if people believed her when she said she was getting mad.

  Timmy Hilliard, who was five, thrust out his lower lip and used his fork to push his fish around his plate. Mercy, not looking at him but at her husband, put her right hand out and took hold of Timmy's wrist.

  "But I don't like fish," he said, whining, trying to pull away. "You know I don't like fish."

  "Tough darts, kid," his mother said. "I'm talking to your father.

  That's what the meal is tonight. Either you eat it or you go hungry."

  "Oh, partly the suspense, yeah," Dan Hilliard said. "Not wanting him to stew about it until Labor Day and then decide some crisp cool morning couple months before election he can't stay another year, doing what he's been doing since he was a teenager he's got to do something grown-up. So then he tells me, and what shape am I in? No election fight, no, but I'll still have my hands full, back in session after the summer. All kinds of things I want to do there, but now I am distracted.

  "Suddenly I'll now also have to do something for Amby, right off. And it'll really have to be good, owing the guy like I do. While I'm making plans at the same time to find somebody else to put in his place and then get him or her trained while of course the new person trains me. Everybody who's good will've already signed up to run somebody else's operation. I'll have to settle for whoever's left.

  "I'll be standing there sucking my thumb, marking time getting acquainted. Before I can even think about actually revving up what Amby and I've been planning to do since last Memorial Day. And anything that Amby'd like will've been filled since July Fourth, or promised anyway, people lining up support for the election. No, the time's come to deal with it; the time to do it is now."

  Timmy's sister Emily, nearly seven, ostentatiously used both hands, fork and spoon at the same time, to eat all of her fish, her mixed peas and carrots and her mashed potatoes too. The baby, Donna, eighteen months, sat in her high-chair with a small bowl of dry miniature shredded-wheat biscuits in front of her, staring vacantly at an invisible point midway between her father's left shoulder and the top of her brother's chair. Timmy sat far back in it, his shoulders hunched, and scowled at Emily, angry at himself now for giving her the brown-nosing opportunity she was exploiting. "You're gonna be hungry later on, Tim," Dan Hilliard said.

  '1 ate all my fish, daddy," Emily said.

  "I know you did, sweetie," he said.

  Timmy stuck out his tongue and said: "Poop."

  "I mean it, Tim, really," Hilliard said. "You know we both want you to be healthy and strong."

  Timmy shook his head. "Don't care," he said. "Don't like fish. Don't care."

  "Future office-holder," Mercy said. "Got the hang of it already.

  Rather be mad and go hungry 'n eat something he didn't think of to ask for."

  Her husband laughed. "Uh uh," he said, 'not quite right. Future office-seeker."

  "You're sure that's where Amby is now," Mercy said. "At the point where he has to move on?"

  "Reasonably sure, yeah," he said. "And absolutely sure that if he isn't at that point yet, I am. It's what I think he oughta be doing.

  Getting started on making a life in the real world for himself. He's a talented lad. He works hard. He should have a good life. He should have a nice family, like I've got. Good wife, like mine; a few kids, even though they don't always eat what their pretty mother works so hard to make for dinner every night so they'll be healthy, grow up to be big and strong."

  Timmy reset his scowl and hugged himself. "Don't like fish," he said.

  Then he thought about it further and decided to speak louder. "Hate fish. Wanna leave the table."

  "Why, Timmy," Mercy said, 'that's an excellent idea. You get out of your chair right this very minute and march yourself straight upstairs to your room. And get undressed and put your pajamas on and get into bed, and you know what you will've done then?"

  "No," Timmy said. Emily smirked delightedly. Donna gazed into space.

  Now and then she patted her right hand on the tray of her highchair.

  "You will've put yourself to bed without any supper," Mercy said.

  "You'll've saved me and Daddy all the trouble of punishing you, which we really don't like to do. Only you don't behave.

  But this time even though you're making us angry, acting like a perfect little wretch, you're also saving us the worry about what we're going to have to do with you. You've decided what the penalty should be for being a little stinker at the dinner table."

  "No," Timmy said. "Not gonna do that." Emily giggled a little.

  "In fact," Hilliard said, you' ll punished yourself more, I think, harder, than your mother and I were thinking would probably be enough to teach you a lesson we think you need to learn. What did you have in mind, Mercy, to make Tim see the error of his ways?"

  "Well," Mercy said, 'to tell you the truth, I hadn't decided. I was wavering between using the pliers to pull out his toenails and setting his hair on fire."

  Emily giggled exuberantly. "You shut up, Emmy," Timmy said.

  "You know, Timmy," Hilliard said, 'until you just
made things worse by talking like that to your sister, I was about to say I thought what your mother just said sounded a little severe. But now you've made me unsure." He sighed. "I guess I really don't know what to do to you."

  Timmy looked apprehensive.

  The transition from the stage of Timmy's disobedience to imminence of his actual punishment made Emily uneasy. She became solemn, pursing her lips as she began to pity Timmy. Donna began to shake her head slowly back and forth but her pupils remained fixed on the same point in space.

  "How about," Mercy said, 'how about we tell him that he has to do what he said he was going to do, put himself to bed without any supper. I thought that was pretty good. But so he doesn't get the idea he's going to be the one from now on who decides what it's going to cost him to misbehave, we also yank his TV privileges for, oh say, about two weeks?"

  Emily looked both absorbed and horrified.

  "Too much, I would say, to do both," Hilliard said. "But it wouldn't be enough if we just did one of them. What I would say I'm probably leaning to right now would be either no TV for a full month or else your no-TV-for-two-weeks plus no allowance, either."

  "Either of those sounds about right to me," Mercy said. "Why don't you decide?"

  Emily had to squirm to deal with the suspense.

  "Okay, I will," Hilliard said. "But it's going to be hard and take me awhile. You know how I hate to punish people. At least let me finish my dinner here, 'fore this excellent fish gets all cold."

  "Okay," Mercy said, returning to her dinner, "I may even finish my own.

  We've both been so busy here Emmy's really the only one who's had time enough to eat and had all her dinner. She's waiting on us for dessert.

  Which of course I'm assuming you agree there'll only be three of those at the table tonight."

  Timmy sank down still lower in his chair and looked morose. He sneaked glances at his father and looked like he might cry.

  "Oh, that goes without saying," Hilliard said.

  "Unless, of course," Mercy said, 'when you and I finish up here and I ask Emmy to help me take the dishes to the sink, it should turn out there were four clean plates to pick up, instead of only three and one still with food on it."

  "You mean then I might not have to do it?" Hilliard said. "Not punish anybody? Well, that certainly would be better, lots more pleasant, if there were four clean plates. But there'd have to be an apology, too.

  I think. Two apologies in fact. One to you, for being naughty, and one to Emmy, for being rude. Then I'd probably go along."

  Timmy hesitated. He frowned deeply. Emily's face now displayed immense sympathy and hope. She urged him with her eyes. Timmy looked at her. Then he looked at his father. "I'm sorry," he said.

  "Oh, not to me," Hilliard said. "You committed your offenses against your mother and sister. You have to make your apologies to them. And then you have to eat your fish."

  Timmy told his mother he was sorry, and obviously meant it. She smiled at him and tousled his hair. He told his sister he was sorry, less sincerely. She showed she felt much better by sticking out her tongue at him. "Emmy," Hilliard said, 'don't think you need to start now."

  Emmy looked flustered and cast her eyes down. Timmy picked up his fork and began to eat his dinner. "I still hate fish, though," he said, thoughtfully. At first Mercy tried hard not to laugh, but Hilliard didn't and so she gave in.

  "Let it then be spread upon the record of this House," Hilliard said in a deep voice, 'that again-honorable Timothy Hilliard still hates fish."

  Timmy laughed a little and Emily giggled too. Donna's eyelids began to droop.

  "As I was saying," Hilliard said, "Amby should have a back-breaking mortgage to go with his school loans, just like everyone else. He should have worries. He looks and acts like he goes to bed at night and sleeps like a regular lamb. It's time he took on some adult obligations and responsibilities, keep him tossin' and turnin' all night like the rest of the grown-ups.

  "I like the guy. I'd hate to see him just drift into one of those second-banana lives so many bright young guys settle for. Amby's got way too much on the ball. You see it happening around you all the time. They get involved in politics, not running for office, just helping out, but the stuff that they're doing's worthwhile. At first it's all right; it's perfectly fine. They meet some new people a lot like themselves and they have a good time. They get something done that they feel good about, and they manage to keep their perspective.

  "But then the first thing you know, it starts to happen to them. You can see it happening, watch it right in front of you. They gradually start sliding into this sort of hip indolence. Get hooked on inside stuff; always in the know about what's going on before the dumb outside world gets a clue.

  "They overlook the fact that all they ever are's privileged spectators.

  All they've really got's their own personal knothole. The reason that they always know exactly what's going on is they spend all their time at the fence, lookin' through that damn knothole. They begin to think it's a big deal: they can look through the fence and watch this whole game that almost everybody else only hears about on the radio, TV, or read about the next day in the paper. Not too many people have this kind of access; it must be a distinction, something special. They think it must mean they're pretty special. They start to act like jerks, swagger a little, feel good.

  "They're partly right. The access, the entry, your own parking place:

  It's fun and it does mean something. It just isn't what they think it means. The reason there's the high board-fence around the game they're watching is the opposite of what they think it is. It's there to hide it. It's not there to keep the crowd out; it's there to keep the players in. The people without knotholes don't want 'em. They're the ones who put up the fence. They don't want to see the game. They think it's disgusting. If they had their way, they'd ban it like they do cockfights and bullfights and the dogfights in pits, and bear-baiting. Put in a king and then ignore him; that's what they'd choose to do, if you let 'em.

  "Young guys don't seem to understand that. That once they settle for their knothole, that's all they'll ever have and that's all they'll ever be. Up against the fence all day, following a game that only matters to the players, watching a circus you gotta be in for it to count. Always at the carnival, best seats in the house, but all they're ever doin's lots of heavy lookin'-on.

  "I delegate enough of my authority, give Amby enough responsibility, so that what his job amounts to is surrogate for me. An alter ego who works here while I'm on Beacon Hill. For a guy who's twenty-five, never ran for anything himself, most likely never will; knows he's better backstage than he could ever be out front: that's not bad at all. Very good, in fact. But it's not a career, or shouldn't be, for him. He's totally dependent on me. I lose, drop dead, or decide to be a judge? Amby's out of a job. But it'll become a career for him, though, by default, if he doesn't make a change pretty soon."

  After nine, when she had put the kids to bed and he had read the stories, they picked it up again in the living room. "The years're going by," Hilliard said. "He keeps it up long enough and some morning he wakes up and it's his forty-seventh birthday, and he says to himself "Hey, I'm getting' old here, just like everyone else always does, the ones that didn't die. What the hell've I become?"

  "He'll know the answer. He wont like it: Not very much. Just another political hack, gotten as far as he's ever going to, just waitin' the string to run out.

  "No, it's time he made plans to become an adult. Maybe about time even that he started giving some thought to getting' married, setting up a home and family."

  "With Sunny Keller?" Mercy said. Her tone was not as innocent of judgment as she would have liked if she had to speak at all and could not for once keep her mouth shut. Mercy had never wholly approved of the cottage arrangement at Swift's Beach. It bothered her, and Dan didn't make it any easier.

  From the outset of it back in 1962, Dan while willing to concede that his approach to
the landlady had been 'a little underhanded' thinking each time he did so that it was a lucky thing for him Mercy didn't know about the deals made, actions taken and understandings acquiesced in during his average week on Beacon Hill had dismissed her objections, saying it wasn't their job to elevate Sunny's or Merrion's morals.

  Mercy took a sterner view. She said they were 'deceiving' the woman who owned the house at the beach by encouraging her to think that they were renting it by themselves and the kids for the month, and that Amby and Sunny were merely friends who were guests, or related by blood to one or the other of them.

  Nor was that the only thing that bothered her. Regardless of what Dan said about it, Mercy believed that good Catholics did not countenance or condone fornication, 'especially by renting the place we know he's going to be using to shack up. And that's what it is: shacking up."

  She did not think she was being too strict; Merrion and Sunny had no intention to get married that she had heard about.

  "If she had a ring, it'd be okay, then," Dan had said.

  "Not "okay," she said, 'but I wouldn't mind so much."

  "Be kind of hard for you to mind at all, wouldn't it?" he said.

  "Maybe," she said, 'but since they aren't engaged, it's very easy.

  Unpleasant, but easy." As she saw it he was causing her to commit a venial sin by soft-soaping her into silent collusion, making her comp licit in the cottage rental.

  As he always did when she slipped up, Hilliard laughed that Friday night and said: "That's my little Emmanuel girl." And she to her helpless irritation blushed and felt embarrassed, as she always did, even though she knew that she was absolutely right and there was no reason why she should.

  "Should Amby marry Sunny?" he said. "I'm not sure I'd go that far.

  Rather be a lonely bachelor all the solitary days of my life 'n be a worried husband all the time, any time I left the house. Sunny still looks kinda footloose to me.