A change of gravity

by George V. Higgins

  "I know," Mercy said, "I have told you that. I've told myself, too, many times. But I've never been able to prove it, actually prove he was lying. I've never been really sure."

  "Yes, you have," Diane said calmly. "Back when McGovern was running and they had that big fundraiser for him in Boston? Dan was supposed to introduce him and either he was about two hours late or else he never showed up at all? You told me then, what you heard people saying. Even your mother told you she'd heard rumors, where he'd been instead of where he should've been."

  "It was that he'd been with Stacy Hawkes," Mercy said. "I got very upset. I asked him about it and he assured me, he wasn't seeing her.

  He was very contrite. He said he knew it looked bad, but it really wasn't what happened. He said he got tied up in a very hush-hush leadership meeting in the Speaker's office after five, something about the strategy they were going to use to grease a tax bill through or something, and he got so involved he lost all track of time. Not only that but he also thought he probably might've let it happen, in a way; allowed it to happen, some kind of a Freudian slip, accidentally-on-purpose. Because he'd let himself get roped into making the introduction at the McGovern dinner by someone he couldn't say No to be owed the guy a favor and might need him in the future.

  When he wasn't really for McGovern, anyway; he'd wanted Kennedy. He hadn't wanted to make the speech in the first place.

  "I don't think I really believed him. But he said it'd also hurt him with the party bigwigs, his not showing up like that, and he knew it'd also hurt me, and he gave me his solemn promise he'd never let it happen again. He promised me he was going to shape up, stop getting himself into situations like that where that's what people thought he was doing. And I didn't say any more."

  "In other words, he admitted it," Diane said. "And he promised you he wouldn't do it again. Those weren't the words he spoke to you, but that was what he was saying, and it was what you heard. You let him get away with it because you didn't want to hear him say the words he actually meant. And then you quickly made a very clear but unconscious decision: you decided you'd be better off staying with him even though you knew he'd been out fucking around on you than you would be without him, as long as he didn't do it again. That was what you said to him; he'd hurt you but you forgave him and were going to believe he wouldn't do it again. And on the strength of that you were giving him another chance.

  "Those weren't the words you used, because you didn't want to hear yourself saying them. But that was what the words you did say meant, and so that was what he heard. And that was how the two of you, by working very well and carefully together, got through a major crisis.

  Teamwork. If it'd been handled any differently with any less delicacy; with brutal honesty, say it would probably have meant the end of your marriage. The perfect, picture-book couple, working together to resolve the crisis but at the same time making absolutely sure neither one of you had to come to grips with what'd caused it; take a good hard look at how damage'd been done. That way you could pretend there hadn't been a crisis, or any damage. You could tell yourself your marriage was rock-solid; everything still A-okay. And he could tell himself you'd given him permission to fool around, if he'd only be discreet.

  "So," Diane said, "McGovern, you said? That would've been ten years ago. Stacy's long gone, but things haven't changed. Since then there've been other times when you've told me other, but similar, stories. Not really that many, but I've never thought that was because there weren't many to tell you just preferred to keep them to yourself; that way they wouldn't seem so real."

  "Oh, gee, yeah, I guess," Mercy said, shaking her head. "Sometimes it's been pretty hard."

  "Hey," Diane said, 'you two did a very impressive job that night, shadow-boxing with each other. Textbook example of how two people whose marriage is in deep trouble can keep it together if they both really want to, provided they're willing to compromise and then both work really hard. You both wanted to, had a lot to lose. You, the marriage, and Dan his political career. So you reached a modus vi vendi a way to live with each other."

  Mercy held the stem of her marguerita glass between the tips of the fingers of both hands and impassively met Diane's gaze with dry eyes.

  "Happy?" Diane said.

  Mercy snickered. "No," she said, drawing it out. Then she said: "That surprise you?"

  "Yeah, sort of," Diane said, 'if you were happy living this way, I'd say the accommodation you and Dan arranged was a very good one.

  Excellent, in fact. After all, the truce's held. It's worked for eight fairly peaceful years. You could even call them "contented."

  You've gotten along without any major blow-outs, far as I know. Your kids've turned out well; they seem to be in good shape. Peaceful two-parent families're good for small persons; the two of you're good parents.

  "Dan's been successful. He doesn't drink any more than most of the men his age that I know, including my own dear husband. That's far too much, of course, but this isn't a perfect world. He doesn't gamble and he doesn't hit you. You may not think you still look as good as you did in your twenties, and you're probably right about that so, say you now only look like about nine-hundred-thousand bucks. That still ain't chopped liver, dearie. You've got a lovely new home. You're making good progress toward an interesting career of your own.

  "This's not a bad life that you two've made, not a bad little life at all. You're what, forty-two? And he's forty-six? You've been married about twenty years? Somebody did something right. Many people would look at what you and Dan have and say it looks pretty damned good.

  Dan's habitual and persistent infidelity's just about the only flaw in it, at least that I can see. If he did decide now that he wanted to change, for whatever reason some philandering close friend of his were to die of AIDS and throw a big scare into him he probably couldn't do it. He's priapic. By now he most likely can't help it."

  Mercy sighed.

  "It isn't an uncommon problem, Marcy," Diane said. "Several of the Kennedy men seem to've suffered from it. Lots of marriages that have it survive forever, and I don't mean just royalty, either. Far more couples than most people think stay together despite incorrigible infidelity or at least until one of the spouses dies, as close to forever as we get. If you're able to be happy even though it means you'll always have to overlook his one shortcoming — maybe that isn't the right word my advice would be: Leave it alone.

  "But if you were happy, or could convince yourself you were, you and I wouldn't be having this conversation. Or any of the others we've had about essentially the same subject through the years. So then, if all of that means that you haven't been happy, just unhappily sort of inert; that you're not happy now and don't really see much chance you ever will be, as long as you stay with him, for the rest of this one life you have left, then I would say: "It's over; it's dead and ain't gonna get better pronounce it. Call it quits. Kick him out."

  Then the Sunday night dinners suddenly became very important to Hilliard, taking on an aspect of poignant urgency.

  Merrion was compassionate. He had watched a number of people whom he knew reasonably well as they stumbled and staggered emotionally and mentally through divorces, and he was satisfied that the days and nights that they exhausted invariably brought demoralizing anguish under the best of circumstances. "But yours is going to be worsen the usual mean pissing contest, and God knows those're bad enough. This one I'm braced for."

  "Oh, she's going to crucify me," Hilliard said, sharing a six-pack of Heinekens one night in the office on High Street.

  "I reckon she'll try to," Merrion said.

  "And you don't blame her," Hilliard said.

  Merrion had prepared for that question. "Danny," he said, "I didn't say anything, you start having the one-night stands while you're staying in Boston. I think it was prolly quite a while before I begin to know about them. Mercy knew as much as I did, I think, and what I knew was nothin'. You were bein' very careful then.

  "But then
around me this's just around me; I don't think you've gone completely out of your mind so that you've started tippin' off Mercy it seems like you maybe start getting' a little careless. Droppin' a few hints here and there; sort of letting things slip out. I was stunned.

  It was so outta character for you. Adultery wasn't like you, Dan.

  "Cheating? On his wife? Danny Hilliard doesn't cheat, not on anybody.

  He doesn't break his word. Dan Hilliard told you something? It's gold; you can take it to the bank." I think that's how you got away with it so long. People who'd known you a long time, including me and Mercy, we never dreamed you'd ever do a thing like that to her. We weren't looking for the signs and so we didn't see them.

  "So you start givin' clues. I do my best to ignore them. If you're getting laid in Boston, well, I didn't think it was the best idea you ever had maybe get yourself a little herpes you then bring home to the bride; might be tough, explain that but then I'm not your chaperone, tell you to keep your pants zipped. You didn't hire me for that. I'm your, what, "close advisor"?" '"Confidante," Hilliard said. "That's what they call you. They think I confide in you. We've heard the chimes at midnight. Tell you what it is I've got on my mind; ask you what you think I should do."

  "Okay," Merrion said, 'so I'm your "confidante" then. "Friend" would've been what I would've said, somebody asked me what I was, I was trynah be anyway, but "confidante" 's okay. Lemme see if I got this straight now: this would then mean that when you started dropping the hints you'd been fucking your brains out and I mean that here, literally you were meaning to do it. You weren't being careless at all: You were confiding in me that you were getting a lot of out-of-town pussy while you're far from your happy home, and asking me for my advice.

  "Geez, I'm really sorry, Dan; I blew it. Really let you down; didn't realize that's what you wanted. If I had've, my advice would've been I didn't think it was very damned smart, fucking around on the side. In fact I thought it was fucking stupid, that is what I thought it was.

  "Then I would've told you what you should've already known: "Seeing how I'm getting laid now and then, not as often's I'd like, but not bad, I know I'm not being a good example for you; but I'm not trying to be one. Being a good example's never been part of my job. If it had been, I wouldn't've taken it.

  '"And furthermore," I now see I should've said when what you were after was advice about extra-curricular fucking, but I was too stupid to see it I should've reminded you of something that I would've thought you already knew, without me reminding you; I should've said: "I am not married. This is a very important distinction when what we're talking about's getting laid. I know there're people, still lots of people, who don't approve of getting laid unless the person who's in bed with you's your wife. Or if you're a woman, your husband. But nobody seems to think you should be punished for it if she isn't unless she's someone else's wife, or you've also got a wife. Then they think you should be at very least admonished heavily, like we sometimes say in the court. Some would even go so far as to say you should be booted out on your lying ass and see how you like that." And as of course we — and the rest of the population of the entire Commonwealth of Massachusetts now know, Mercy belongs to that group.

  "But that stands to reason. She's a wife. Wives're especially prone to this kind of thinking, or so I've been told. I do not have a wife.

  Once I thought I probably would, some day, if Sunny ever decided she oughta maybe come home and slow down a little, but as you know she died first still goin' strong. Too bad. But the result is I not only don't have a wife; I never did have a wife and I never ran for office, so what I do is nobody's business. It's always been okay for me to get laid. Not always easy, but if I got lucky, okay.

  "Since you do have a wife," as you did, back then, when I wasn't giving you the advice you wanted; pretty soon I now think you're not gonna, "getting laid isn't okay, no matter how big the young lady's tits are, or how hot she is for your rod. So my advice to you is "Cut it out."

  "But you wouldn't've," Merrion said. "If I'd advised you to stop fucking around, you wouldn't've done it you would not've stopped fucking around."

  "Probably not," Hilliard said, looking gloomy.

  Merrion laughed. "Absolutely not," you mean," he said. "Never in one million years. Because when you started letting me know you had all these gorgeous women coming onto you down there, you weren't being careless you were doing it on purpose. And you weren't doing it so I would then clear my throat and give you lots of good advice you wouldn't take. You were doing it to let me know I wasn't the only guy who could get a piece of ass; even you, a married guy, were getting more, and better. What you were doing was bragging, old chum, just plain old locker-room bragging."

  Hilliard looked miserable. He rubbed the knuckles of the ringers on his left hand with his right thumb, and pursed his lips. He mumbled something to himself.

  "I know, Danny, and I'm really sorry," Merrion said, 'but I think you oughta hear this. You fuckin' earned it. When you were hurting Mercy, you were also putting me in a box, you started letting me know what you'd been doing. You hadda know it, too; that you were putting me in an awful position with Mercy.

  "You and I both know she's never been that keen on me," Merrion said, 'not from the very beginning, I first started working for you. What I was then, and what I'll always be, at least to a certain degree, is someone who Mercy put up with. But since then as the years'd gone by, when you first started letting me know you'd been out getting strange, things'd gotten so they'd started improve a little. She still wouldn't've picked me as her sponsor for Confirmation, but now and then, I said something, she laughed. It wasn't much, but it was progress. In this world you take what you can get.

  "So this is where we are, Mercy and me, you decide things're too quiet.

  It's starting to get a little better with us, between me and her. I no longer have to wear a coat indoors if she's around, so I don't get a stiff neck from the chill. She still didn't like me; I'm not saying that. But I think she got to the point where she decided that you hadda have someone who can do my kind of work, cutting the balls off a guys; and who also knows what certain kinds of people aren't refined like you two are, think about what's going on. As I do, being one. And she sees that the reason that you have to have someone like me's because there's more people like men there are of you two, you want me to put it bluntly. So if you wanna run for something, what we roughnecks think is important, and you'd better have someone who can tell you. And once Mercy'd realized that, that was when things between us got better. She still thinks I'm a bad influence on you; and I know she'll never change that; but I think she's decided there has to be one, and I'm about the best one you could find.

  "So at that point what we were, Mercy and me, we're partners in a small business. The plant and the product is you. Dan Hilliard Political Futures. Way she sees it or used to at least, 'fore you got your thing caught inna zipper her job is to keep you in good shape: physically, mentally, husbandly, fatherly throw in morally, too. My job's to look after the other stuff you do; make sure you're in good shape politically and publicly. We don't have regular meetings, her and I, every month or two, but both of us know what we're supposed to do. What areas we're supposed to take care of. We've both got an interest in you.

  "Then, thanks to you, several years ago I begin to realize we have got a malfunction-red light flashing in the morality area. Alarms going off in the husband and father sections too. The product looks like it may be onna way to destroying itself. Something needs to be done. I know this. But I'm not in charge of those sections. I have got no jurisdiction. I'm not even supposed to go into those areas; they're off-limits to me. And I can't report the malfunction to the person in charge of those sections because while I'm very sure she'll want to make the necessary repairs, immediately, I'm afraid she'll react in a way that'll damage the product's condition politically and publicly, by taking a hammer to it making a big fuckin' stink. And when she does that, the product'll get mad a
t me, because the way he's gonna look at it, I damaged him confidentially and I abused his trust.

  "So there I am now, right where you put me, spang in the middle: I'm fuckin' stuck; I'm helpless. All I can do is keep my mouth shut, and just hope an' pray you get over this hot spell of yours before Mercy finds out what's now become two things: one being that you've been runnin' around, which I know'll destroy you with her; and two that I knew and I didn't tell her, which'll finish me off with her, too."

  Hilliard shook his head and cleared his throat, but he kept his eyes downcast and did not say anything.

  "Those hopes and prayers did not quite work out as I wanted. I could see this. So when you stopped bein' coy, droppin' hints, come right out and told me you were fucking Stacy you're like a little kid with a new electric train; you're fucking Stacy Hawkes, and you two just invented sex I figured that was it; the shit was in the fan. You weren't coming to your senses; there was nothing I could do. Well, that was when I finally said I certainly hoped that you knew what an awful chance you were taking. And furthermore, I also said I'd seen some self-destructive assholes in my time but you took the cake. And you know what you said to me? Do you remember, Dan?"

  Hilliard remained downcast and shook his head. He mumbled something.

  Then he gulped. Merrion said: "What?"

  Hilliard did not look up, but did manage to nod. "Yeah," he said, 'yeah I remember. I know what I said."

  "You laughed at me," Merrion said. "Then you told me to go fuck myself. And then a week or two after that chat, you missed the McGovern dinner." He paused. "I figured that was the end of you. I had you down as totaled. History. I thought you'd never survive it.

  So there I am, I'm all prepared for the bomb to go off- thanking God that at least I'd been smart enough to get my court job before you decide to commit suicide. And then weeks went by and no bomb went off.