Close Relations (24 page)

“Let’s have a proper talk.”

“What do you want?”

He remained silent. His hands were folded prayer-fashion on his chest and he gazed at them.

“Look,” I muttered, “I’ll go out for the papers and bagels and maybe when I get back—”

“Have you given any thought to your—what’s the best way to put it?—your status?”

“My status?”

“It seems to me it deserves some thought,” he added.

“Yes,” I said.

“Marcia, you’ve been with me long enough to understand these things. I just want to know where you stand.”

“Jerry, I’m not sure I do understand. Please, what are you talking about?”

“Look, you know it’s over.” I stood immobile. “It can never be the same again. Not after Bill has gone the full route, publicly humiliated me.”

“Oh.”

“Even if he doesn’t win the primary—and with Appel definitely in he may not—there would be no question of my ever going back. The basic trust is gone. I mean, even if LoBello leaves—and he will if Bill loses—I wouldn’t consider going back.”

“I see. You hadn’t said anything.”

“What was there to say? I knew you knew what my only alternative was. Why belabor the issue by talking about it?”

“Jerry, what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to lie here and rest my back, all the while collecting a salary. Then, when I don’t look like a pretzel anymore, I’ll get another job.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.” He sounded bland, bored, as if contemplating switching to a new brand of toothpaste. His face, framed by the pillow, was pale, but now it was the pallor of the convalescent, not the anxious. “No more politics, that’s for sure.”

“What are you going to do? Jerry, I’m sorry, I don’t want to sound a sour note, but you’re forty-seven years old and you’ve been in politics all your life. What else—”

“I can sell insurance, real estate. I’ve got connections over the whole damn city. I can represent a union, some contractors’ association. I can set myself up as an urban affairs expert, for Christ’s sake, and get funded by one of those diddly-poop foundations. That’s not the problem.” He glanced from his hands over to me. “It’s you I’m worried about.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Look, for better or worse, you’re associated with me. How long do you think LoBello’s going to let you hang around?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know damn well what I mean. Do you think he’s going to trust you?”

“Yes.”

“Come on. You’re talking like a kid, some wide-eyed, asshole reformer.”

I sat on the edge of the bed. “I am talking,” I said, finally starting to understand him, “like the professional I am.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, what?”

“Okay, if you have faith in your job security, let me be the first to congratulate you.”

“You don’t have to be sarcastic.”

“I’m not being sarcastic, Marcia. I’m being realistic. Do you think LoBello and Bill are going to trust you, let you listen in when they’re having a conference over some legislative matter, or—”

“Yes, goddamn it.”

“Yes, if you start sleeping with little old Lyle again. Don’t look surprised. The whole world knows.”

I shifted my position on the bed. The mattress sank enough to cause Jerry some discomfort.

“All right,” he said, seconds later. “I’m sorry.”

I stared at the fuzz balls on the blanket and gave a sigh I could have learned only at my mother’s knee.

“I said I’m sorry, Marcia. I can’t crawl on the floor to beg your forgiveness or I would, okay?”

“You don’t trust me,” I said. “I don’t believe it. You think I would …”

“Come on, sweetheart. You didn’t come to bed with me dressed in white.”

“Either did you, Jerry, you goddamn hypocrite bastard. But that was your damn business and I don’t go throwing it up in your face—”

“Look…”

“Just let me finish. Never, never one single time since the first time I slept with you have I even thought of sleeping with anyone else. I have been loyal. I have been true. I have been faithful. And I assumed you were the same. I never—”

“There are other kinds of loyalty, Marcia.” He was using his noble Christian voice, patient and compassionate.

“Up yours.”

“I said I apologize for the remark about the sex business. But you stay there, day after day, not saying a word to me.”

“What kind of word do you want?” I yelled. “You refuse to discuss anything.”

“You don’t have to shout. I just want a word you’re on my side.”

“Whose side do you think I’m on?” I demanded.

“Your own.”

“Oh, come on. Do you honestly think we’re on different sides, Jerry?”

“As long as you’re the speech writer for William Paterno, you are not on my side.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I don’t want you to do anything. It has to come from within.”

“You want me to quit? Is that it?”

“I want you to do what you think is right.”

“How the hell do I know what’s right? All I know is that I’ve been working since college and I’m good at it. I’m one of the best there is, damn it. What else would I do?”

“Come on. There are millions of jobs.”

“Not decent speech-writing jobs. Not here in New York. You know that. What do you want me to do, quit Paterno and then get another job in Washington and say good-bye, shake your hand, and hope you’ll think I did the right thing?”

“Well, it’s interesting to see you’ve considered it and rejected the idea.”

“Jerry, I’m just thinking aloud, for God’s sake. You know how I feel about you. You know how upset I’ve been.”

“But not upset enough to show your faith in me.”

“If I were in hot water with Paterno, if my job were in jeopardy, would you quit to show your faith in me? Would you, Jerry? Or would you say ‘Gee, poor Marcia’ and keep right on working.”

“Don’t shit me, Marcia, and don’t shit yourself. You know goddamn well if I offered you a wedding ring you’d quit in a minute. The only reason you’re hanging on to your job so tight is that it’s the only secure thing you have.”

“Well, you’ve said it, haven’t you. You want me to give up the one secure thing in my life just so you can have the pleasure of giving Bill Paterno a good hard kick in the pants. I think you stink, Jerry.”

“Jesus, have you twisted things. I may be a lot of things, but I am not vindictive. And I don’t use people. I just thought you ought to put things in perspective. You ought to look beyond this primary. How are you going to feel afterward?”

“After what?”

“You really don’t understand, do you, Marcia?”

“What? What the hell do you want from me?” Jerry explained softly that he wanted only what I could give. “But what do you want me to give?” I demanded. “Do you want me to go in and resign? Is that the display of faith you need?” He said that faith was nothing you put up for display. “What are you talking about? Are you using some kind of Jesuit secret code, for God’s sake? Speak to me. Tell me what you want.” He would not. He told me he wanted to take a nap, he was tired, and would I please turn off the lights. If I wanted to read, could I do it in the living room so he wouldn’t be disturbed by the rattle of pages turning.

O
ur adversary, Sidney Appel, announced his candidacy for governor of New York from beneath a flowering dogwood. He stood behind a row of microphones which reached toward him, like flowers in different stages of bloom seeking warmth or nourishment from his mouth.

His wife stood at his left. Political strategists hold differing views of a wife’s position. Some say she should be on his right to show her importance: “She’s my right hand.” Others say the left, the wedding-band hand, is better, more clearly associated with marriage. Mrs. Appel wore a blue shirtwaist dress, appropriate for a country wife under a dogwood tree. Her expression was unreadable, although it might have been the late-afternoon Catskill sun in her eyes. Perhaps she was annoyed that, despite her cat-food millions, she was forced into a cotton dress when she could have been draped by Givenchy. Perhaps the cameras made her nervous. Maybe she didn’t care. She could have been drugged.

On Appel’s right was Senator Maryjo Beinstock, two years into her first term, wearing her usual sensible suit and, quite unsensibly, taking sides very early in the primary. Squinting through her thick glasses, she looked pleased with her decision though, pleased with Appel, with life, and with the television coverage. She was a liberal, a Reform Democrat. She and Paterno were polite to each other, but he had no reason to suspect she would back him. Yet he seemed upset, angry with her.

“Damn Maryjo,” he spit out. We were standing in LoBello’s office, in front of his color television, watching Appel declare. “Not even a courtesy call. She just marches out there wearing those goddamn eyeglasses of hers.” Paterno, just back from an upstate swing, was trying on moods until he could find the right one. He had been pleased at the attention paid to him by the press, chagrined that the mayor of Utica would not endorse him, angered that the crowd at the Albany airport had been so sparse, delighted that the teachers’ and the steamfitters’ unions had come forth with hefty contributions, irate over Sunday dinner in Syracuse. “Could you believe it? Rare chicken,” he had told me. “Disgusting. I almost threw up.”

On each side of “the two best supporters a man could hope for” were arrayed Appel’s backers and key staff people. His media director had obviously decreed that this was a simple plain-folks event. All of them—from Lowell Drutman, a normally pin-striped congressman, to Phoebe Nemo of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, who generally preferred made-in-U.S.A. green sateen—were dressed as if about to choose partners for a square dance.

Rowena Hollander, who would head Appel’s advance teams, actually wore a red bandanna over her short black hair. While this might have been acceptable on a teenager about to allemande right, it was odd-looking on a Smith alumna who hadn’t seen nineteen since the days of the Army-McCarthy hearings.

“Hey, look at old Rowena,” Lyle hooted. “Boy, does she look like a jerk.”

She had advanced for every major New York Democratic candidate since Harriman, and her decision to take up the veil, so to speak, for Appel was disturbing. I noticed Paterno shift his dark eyes to his jeans-clad advance man, who looked hairy and frenzied, like an electronic guitarist. The young man had come under LoBello’s aegis.

“Hey,” the advance man said, hooting a little like his patron, “that Rowena’s some trip.” Paterno closed his bulgy eyes.

Appel pointed his finger at Paterno and demanded, “Do we want government by the weary?” Paterno opened his eyes. “Do we want our lives ruled by the heirs of Tammany Hall? The poet Wystan Hugh Auden once said …”

I said, “Peter Messing is doing his speeches.”

“You’re sure?” Paterno asked. I nodded. “A lot of old Kennedy faces there,” he continued. “But none of the really top crew. Did you notice that, Marcia? The big guns are quiet.”

“Bill, Peter Messing is heavy armament.” Either Mrs. Appel’s money or her husband’s clout had convinced a lot of smart political operatives that this was a campaign where they could once again, in Peter Messing’s words, seek a brighter day or work for a time of decency, of caring, among all peoples of this earth. Messing’s speeches could have been written by a pocket calculator, but he traveled in the right circles. He went where the heavies went. I saw familiar faces, people who had been around since Robert Kennedy ran for the Senate in 1964, people who knew their way around New York far better than Lyle LoBello.

Appel’s smooth elf face puckered a little. “I’m going to state the facts and I’m going to name names in this campaign … starting right now. Let’s take our honorable governor, Mr. Lawrence Parker. I’m asking you, ladies and gentlemen, what has this man ever done? Just what has he done? Has he been a meaningful legislator? An executive? Has he ever met a payroll?”

“This is embarrassing,” Paterno said. He backed away from the television set and leaned against a wall. LoBello went into reverse and wound up beside him. Paterno was uneasy because he sensed he was next. LoBello whispered to him, pointing with his head toward the door, obviously suggesting that Paterno might be more comfortable being pummeled in the privacy of his own office where the attack might be contained on a tiny black and white TV. But Paterno shook his head, showing the assembled staff that he was tough enough to take whatever glib criticism Appel might fire off.

“And City Council President William Paterno. His title says it all.
City
Council. William Paterno sure knows New York City.”

William Paterno sure wasn’t a cool country boy. He exploded. “That bum! That bastard! Did you hear him?”

“But what Mr. Paterno doesn’t seem to understand is that the five boroughs—as crucial as they are—do not make up a state. Urban specialists are fine, I’m not saying they’re not. But why doesn’t Mr. Paterno run for mayor? Why, may I ask, is he running for governor of the great and varied State of—”

“That little stinker was born in the Bronx!” Paterno roared. “Born. Raised. Listen to him. Noo Yawk. He ties a goddamn scarf around his neck and everyone’s gonna believe he’s a hillbilly? Announcing up there with a tree hanging over his head!”

“—but even if we wanted a big-city governor, is William Paterno the man? No. No. And no again. Paterno. Parker. They all come from that same old school: the College of Closed-Door Deals. And let me tell you something, ladies and gentlemen. On this very day you and I are paying dearly for some of those secret deals made by Professor Paterno and Professor Parker….”

The door opened, and one of the fair-haired boys from upstate tiptoed in and tugged at my sleeve. His nearly invisible blond eyebrows were pulled together with concern, so I assumed it must be urgent. I slipped out of the room just as Lyle LoBello began a tight-throated chuckle, attempting to laugh off Sidney Appel. We were outside so I didn’t see if Paterno could be persuaded to see the humor.

“You have an important phone call, Ms. Green,” the kid said.

“From Jerry? Mr. Morrissey?” I asked, walking down the corridor and talking to the rug. When I tried to give Jerry a light kiss good-bye as I was leaving for work, he had averted his head and mumbled, “Leave me alone.”