Close Relations (26 page)

“Bullshit, Marcia. And I’m telling you, this is your last warning.”

“And two is that you are in no position to be making grandstand plays. You’ve got to pull this campaign off, and you need all the help you can get.”

“From you?”

“From me and wherever else you can get it. Come on, Lyle. Half the support you counted on went to Parker because he’s the incumbent.”

“You come on, Marcia. A couple of old farts who couldn’t even bring in their own election districts went to Parker, that’s who. I’ve brought in a hell of a lot more support than your boyfriend could have.”

“And the other half you counted on, the important half, is drifting to Appel. Mrs. Appel’s money can buy the best, Lyle. The campaign has hardly started and already—”

“You’re a real cunt, Marcia.”

“You’re interrupting me, Lyle. I was saying you’re in big trouble even now. You promised Bill you’d bring in all of Gresham’s people.”

“I did not.”

“All right, most of them. But you forgot one thing. Gresham is dead. D-e-ad. Thereby out of office. You have no clout anymore, Lyle. Your padrone choked to death on a liver knish, and you are fucked.”

“The check,” he hissed into the darkness. He turned his head away, but I could hear him breathing heavily. Minutes went by. Then he looked at me again and said, “I guess you don’t want to be friends.”

“I guess not.”

“I don’t understand you, Marcia. Here I offer you my hand in friendship, show you I’m willing to let bygones be bygones, and what do I get? A slap in the face. Here I am, busting my chops to run a decent primary fight, and you’re sabotaging me at every turn. I can’t follow you, Marcia. I’ve tried to be a friend to you.”

“Is that why you called me a cunt?”

“Come on. Even friends get mad. And I’ve been a gentleman. No one’s heard from me what I got from you.” The waitress put the check on the table. Lyle grabbed for it and knocked his champagne over, soaking his hand, his shirt cuff, and the check and making a small lake of champagne in the ashtray. “Goddamn it. Give me a napkin.” I handed him the tiny square that had been sitting under my wine. “What was I saying?”

“Good night, Lyle.”

I tried to telephone Jerry from a phone booth just outside the bar, but I was again reflected darkly and afraid that Lyle would see me on his way out and begin his assault again, so I decided to walk a few blocks to a phone booth. But once outside, away from the spooky loneliness of the bar—the U.N. diplomats and high-fashion models had obviously found a more chic place to toast each other—I felt too tired to risk another confrontation right away. So I kept walking uptown, through the rich, warm spring night, past couples lured outside by starlight, entwined together, kissing each other’s ears or biting each other’s lips, while pausing for the light to change or waiting for that final rush of blood that would send them hurtling home into bed.

I wound up in front of Eileen’s building. The stone urns on either side of the front door were filled with white and purple hyacinths. I inhaled, wanting to put down my attaché case and handbag and bury my face in their scent.

“Yes?” demanded the doorman.

“Ms. Gerrity,” I said, before I could decide whether or not to disturb her.

“Anything wrong?” she asked as she opened her apartment door. She wore a long pink robe of some expensive-looking silky fiber. Her white-blond hair was loose on her shoulders.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you’d have company. I’ll speak to you tomorrow.”

“Marcia,” she said, opening the door wider, “you’re behaving very strangely. Who would be here on a work night? Come on in.” I passed by her, feeling slightly shocked by the private Eileen, dressed in an elegant robe, her hair let down.

“Are you expecting someone?”

“Yes. Six men are due any minute to serenade me on the lute. But meanwhile, sit down. Maybe I can spare one. Now, what’s happening? Naturally, I’m glad to see you, but it’s not like you just to drop in.”

“I can’t go home. I don’t know how to deal with Jerry.”

“What do you mean?”

“We had a fight.”

She said nothing but swept over to a small brass and glass cart and, from a silver ice bucket, took a handful of cubes and dropped them into a glass.

“Are you sure no one else is coming?” I asked.

“Yes. Why do you keep asking that?”

“Because you’re so—so prepared. Your ice bucket is full.”

“Of course it’s full. I generally have a drink.”

“But don’t you think most people would just go to the freezer, grab a few cubes, and dump them into a glass?”

“They might, but this is nicer. Now, what happened between you and Golden Boy?”

“Eileen, he’s so hurt.”

“He should be. Keep talking.”

“He really seems to need me now.”

“I’m sure he does.”

“Are you being sarcastic?”

“No. I’m sure he needs you. Would you like a drink?” I nodded. She poured some white wine over the ice cubes. “How, specifically, did he express his need for you, Marcia?”

“What do you mean?”

“Does he want you to sit at his bedside? Meet his darlin’ mother in the Bronx? Run away to—”

“He wants me to quit.”

“Classic.”

“It’s not as simple as it sounds.”

“I’m sure it’s absolutely laden with ambiguity, Marcia. It’s just that on the surface it sounds as if he’s using you.”

“That’s not fair. He’s upset, threatened. And I think it’s important to him that I show my faith.”

“And then what?” she barked. “You show your faith, he’ll show his? Don’t just let things drift by. Analyze them. What will happen if you threaten to quit your job?”

“I don’t know.”

“Neither do I. But I have a feeling that Bill is already committed—for better or worse—to Lyle LoBello. He may be starting to regret his decision, but it’s a fait accompli. So unless you’re big on making fruitless gestures, hang on to your paycheck.”

“I hope I can.” I told her of my fight with LoBello at the cocktail lounge. She listened, sipping her wine and tapping her bare feet on the floor. The light caught the clear polish on her toes and sent off twinkly sparkles. “Wouldn’t it be the ultimate irony if I wound up getting fired because of whom I went to bed with? I mean, here I am, one of the best-known political speech writers in this part of the country, and I get the ax because first I was stupid enough to sleep with Lyle and then besotted enough to move in with Jerry. Wouldn’t that be something? Both of them, Lyle and Jerry, know my capabilities—I mean, out of bed. But all the games they’re playing have absolutely nothing to do with my writing. It has to do with my sex. I can’t believe it.”

“Believe it.”

“What am I going to do, Eileen?”

“What do you mean? What do you want to do? Quit?”

“No.”

“Then go to work. Write your speeches. You’ll ride this out. Nothing’s going to happen. You saw that tonight. Lyle LoBello’s running scared, and he’s not going to antagonize Bill by getting rid of another of his old staff, especially someone Bill is really comfortable with. LoBello will let you stay on as long as you don’t make a horrendous fuss or cause him any more embarrassment. He has too many problems to worry about to afford a showdown with you.”

“But if I stay on, Jerry will view it as an act of faithlessness.”

“What is he, the Grand Inquisitor?”

“Come on, Eileen. He needs a friend.”

“Friends don’t need proof of faith. God, this gets me so angry. He is so incredibly selfish. What kind of faith is he offering you? What will he give you?”

“I’m not asking for anything.”

“You sound positively Christian, Marcia. Next you’ll be wanting to die for the Immaculate Conception. Now be serious. What is he offering you? Love? Marriage? Would he marry you to show his faith and loyalty?”

“He’s not interested in marriage.”

“They never are. But you are. Come on, don’t shake your head. You can’t throw off your background any more than he can his. But you’re fighting your inclinations because you’re fighting your family. That’s self-defeating. Tell them to take a walk if you have to, but at least give yourself the chance to make a real life for yourself.”

“What about you, are you interested in a real life?”

Eileen lifted her hair from her shoulders and let it drop again. “I’m not averse to marriage. But I come from a very conventional Irish Catholic background, and for someone like me, marriage is a jail. Wives are chained inside a house until their deaths. Wives are boring. To themselves. To their husbands, God knows. I know intellectually that it doesn’t have to be that way, but I’m still afraid of it. Even of having children. Pregnancy is like being imprisoned from within instead of from without. I just hope all these feelings will pass and I’ll be able to approach the subject more calmly.

“But calm or not calm, I can understand Jerry Morrissey Don’t you see, he’s the other side of the same coin. And marriage is a trap for him too.”

“So why aren’t you more sympathetic to him?”

“Because he’s a man, damn it. Because he can go home to his mother’s house and have everyone make a fuss over him, praise him, adore him. He’s considered a wonderful, complete human being. I go home and they talk about this girl or that girl I went to high school with, and how many children they have, what their husbands are doing. Nothing I’ve accomplished—Phi Bete in college, law school, my job—is worth anything to them.”

“But Jerry has that too. He’s told me that every once in a while his mother lets him know that she really expected more from him. I mean, politicians aren’t up to her lofty moral standards. Minimally he should have been a hot shot in the Jesuits or a partner in a Wall Street law firm. Her perfect, brilliant, adorable Gerald is taking orders from some pol. An Italian pol, no less. She lets him know—very subtly—that she’s a wee bit disappointed.”

“But he just didn’t measure up. She still idolizes him. My parents view me as unnatural, denying my nature by refusing to marry and have a thousand children. It’s not that they just don’t idolize me. It’s that they view me as defective.” She paused and inhaled deeply. “Understand, Marcia, that my reaction to them is completely irrational.”

“If I can’t understand that, no one can.”

“But I’ll tell you what is rational. Time. I’m thirty. I still have a few more years to come to grips with my fears. But you don’t have that luxury anymore, not if you want children.”

“I’m not even sure I would ever want to marry again.”

She set her wineglass on the coffee table and leaned forward toward me. “Well, let’s hope you don’t want marriage because … what was your husband’s name?”

“Barry. You know that.”

“His last name.”

“Plotnick.”

“That alone is grounds for divorce in some states. But understand one thing. You will never be Marcia Green Plotnick Green Morrissey”

“You sound very positive.”

“I am. Even if some inexplicable transformation occurred and Jerry decided a wife was a brilliant idea, he’d wind up with some soft-spoken, sincere little thing with red hair and thick ankles.”

“My ankles aren’t thin.”

“But they’re not thick, Marcia. Nowhere near thick enough.” She lifted her glass. “Keep your job.”

N
o one was nice to me in June except my family. More precisely, my cousin Barbara was the only one who seemed to care that I was sad and frightened. Everyone else was too busy.

Paterno, to start with, was in a foul mood. The success of Sidney Appel’s ads enraged him, so he’d bluster at me. “Did you see his ad last night on Channel Four? Did you, Marcia?” His small fist crashed down on his desk. “What the hell does it mean? It was crazy! Stupid!”

Appel was running hundreds of thousands of dollars of ads, all with his logo: an apple which would split in two. Each half apple would serve as a screen for filmed vignettes of New York life. And a deep Jehovah voiceover would intone, “Sidney Appel knows the State of New York.” Or the state of New York. By the middle of the month, Paterno could get cranky simply by passing a fruit stand.

“It’s nuts,” he’d sputter. “They take out the pits and put in movies of Niagara Falls and kids playing basketball. Does he think anyone’s going to vote for that tazia?” But there was a tight edge to his voice when he spoke to me that had never been there before. I was his liaison with his advertising agency. I was his writer. I should have thought to do a split-screen presentation on an artichoke heart. When I handed him a new speech, he did not say thank you.

Three weeks after his television ads began, Appel’s recognition factor soared from a pathetic 2.5 percent to 23 percent. It continued rising, as did Paterno’s, but in a far more dazzling fashion. On the subways, I began to notice Appel’s little elf face more and more; it was superimposed on a Red Delicious which in turn rested on the white background of a campaign button: the button was pinned on a surprisingly large number of lapels.

“And don’t give me another one of those damn artsy speeches about New York intelligentsia,” Paterno snorted at me. “No one cares about intelligentsia. No one can even pronounce it.”

Ms. Green,
a memo would begin.
Mr. LoBello has requested you pay further attention to developing new situations that have intense visual appeal and asks that you convey such information to his assistant, Ms. Kimmy Danoff
As the flow of contributions began to slow, Lyle began demanding I dream up gimmicks that would get Paterno free television time on the news. But Lyle would not deal with me directly, even in writing, so I sent a short memo to Ms. Danoff suggesting Paterno stand on the banks of the polluted East River holding a dead flounder.

Ms. Green: Mr. LoBello suggests that, unfortunately, there is little time for levity in a primary campaign.

“Why go out of your way to antagonize him?” Eileen asked. “Never mind. Don’t even bother answering. I don’t have time to listen.” Nor to look. I sat opposite her desk while she whizzed through piles of yellow papers, not even glancing at me. “I’m no longer a human being,” she muttered, her pale hair askew, falling out of the barrettes that held it. She clutched a lawbook, leafed through it, leaned back on her chair, and closed her eyes. “It’s never been this hideous,” she added.