Close Relations (17 page)

“Nonsense, Marcia.” She tossed her head in an imperious gesture, the sort she used when dealing with the hyper-emotional and the silly. I will not deal with irrationality, her head announced. Behave! I settled back in my chair. “All right. Would Bill Paterno risk offending his supporters, his biggest contributors, by firing Jerry? Would he risk alienating the staff by bringing in Lyle LoBello? Would he risk alienating you?”

“Why not? I mean, he could hire someone else.”

“Marcia, think about it. One day he rents space for headquarters and the next morning fires his chief of staff. And by doing that, he mortally offends his writer. Would he risk that, leaving himself actually speechless at a time like this?”

“Yes. He absolutely would, if he thought it was part of the price to win. Anyhow, LoBello would get another writer for him in a minute. He wouldn’t know the difference.”

“Stop that,” Eileen snapped, shaking her pencil at me. “Modesty doesn’t become you. You know you’re the best there is. Now, let’s think. Analyze. Yes, Bill could conceivably find another speech writer, and for the next two months he’d go around sounding like an Alabama senator or a Cambridge don, and you know and I know how that would play in—wherever, Plattsburg. He needs you and he needs Jerry. Anyway, you know Bill. He’s very insecure. He needs people who have proved themselves, people who he can trust. He knows what a slippery fish LoBello is supposed to be. When push comes to shove, do you think he’d rely on someone like that?”

I found out later. Jerry pushed open my office door a few minutes before six thirty.

“Look, I want you to get your things together.” I’m sure my jaw dropped. I must have stared. But Jerry was ticking off a list in his mind and simply didn’t focus on me. He continued impersonally. “As of next Monday you’re off the city payroll and on the campaign payroll. You’ll be uptown at headquarters, and Bill expects—”

“Jerry?”

“What?”

“What happened?” His eyes had puffed from the effects of a hangover and fatigue and he squinted at me through two slits, not quite comprehending what I wanted from him. “What happened?” I repeated. “With Bill. You were in his office all day and—”

“Oh, that. I’ll tell you later.” He studied his watch as if just learning to tell time. Finally, he said, “If you can wait till seven thirty, we can go for dinner. Okay?”

“Jerry…”

“Not now, Marcia.” Under the fluorescent lights, his end-of-day stubble of beard shone gray, giving his face an ashen cast. With his color drained, bright eyes obscured, I felt I was seeing a Technicolor extravaganza that had inexplicably turned a bleak black and white.

“All right. I’ll leave you alone. But are you all right?”

“I’m fine. See you for dinner.”

“If you’re too tired …” He turned and left, not even bothering to mutter under his breath.

Later we shared a silent subway ride uptown. Jerry stared at an ad for suppositories, probably not even seeing it. I stared at him.

But when we came up to street level, he revived for a few minutes, recapturing a trace of his usual flash. Jerry seemed to thrive in midtown Manhattan. He’d nod benevolently at limousines idling in front of restaurants. He’d smile as a couple swathed in fur—like a pair of urbane foxes—glided by. He had self-confidence enough to feel such style was a mere matter of money; if he took a different job, made a hundred thousand or two a year, he could fit in. I don’t think he questioned his right to belong anywhere.

Of course I did. I never felt at ease in sleek Manhattan. My country was the outer boroughs, where ethnics huddled in tight little groups to insulate themselves from assimilation and rebuffs. Down at City Hall, working with my kind of people, I felt at ease. Sometimes I shone. Uptown, I always felt frumpy, out of place, but didn’t know how to remedy the situation. That night, I wore a blue dress and a beige raincoat. I had thought I looked all right. But we passed women who were so flawlessly groomed they made me look naked. They dressed every part of themselves; they wore textured stockings, armloads of bracelets, intricately knotted scarves, hats that were themselves accessorized with pins or plumes or nets.

Jerry exchanged the hand he had been holding for my elbow and guided me eastward on Fifty-eighth Street as I tried to make conversation. “Do you want French food? Because if you do, we’d be better off downtown. The prices around here are—”

“You know, the thing that first attracted me to you was that you were quiet. You didn’t blab all the time.”

We continued toward the river until Jerry discovered a restaurant whose facade unaccountably beckoned him. It was a tiny, seedy place, an Indian restaurant, with an almost palpable fog of garlic and curry hanging about. The maître d‘/owner/waiter sat us at an uncomfortably large square table covered with a blue vinyl cloth. Only one other table was occupied, by two Indian men, probably relatives of the owner commandeered to give the place the appearance of authenticity. They were neither drinking nor dining.

Jerry didn’t even smile at the waiter. He was not looking for votes that night. “Johnnie Walker red, straight up,” he said.

“You want?” the waiter asked me.

“Nothing, thank you.”

“Good,” said Jerry. “You wouldn’t want to become an alcoholic.”

“Your fight isn’t with me, Jerry.”

“‘Your fight isn’t with me,’ “he mimicked. “All right, all right,” he added. “Just leave me alone.”

“You were the one who asked me out to dinner.”

“Everyone makes mistakes.”

I turned away from him and watched the waiter, who was standing behind a small bar, pouring scotch as though it were his own blood he was donating. He brought it to the table and Jerry drained it and demanded another before he spoke.

“Sorry if I was a little rough.”

“It’s okay.”

“I’m out of sorts.”

“I know. You should be. Do you want to talk now?”

“I’m campaign manager,” he said.

“Jerry! That’s wonderful. I mean, that’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” He didn’t reply, but ran his finger hard along the tablecloth, making deep x’s. “Okay. Listen, Jerry, let’s just have a quiet dinner and we’ll talk later.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. We had a few words at the beginning that must have lasted about two, three hours. Then, when the dust settled, he said I was campaign manager, and so we spent the rest of the afternoon mapping strategy. We’re opening headquarters next Monday, and about half the City Hall staff will go up there. Then—”

“What about Lyle LoBello?”

“Lyle LoBello. Well, Bill told me not to worry, that he couldn’t rely on Lyle because he’s still in mourning for his dear buddy, Jim Gresham. Crazed with grief, old Lyle is. And according to Bill, anyone that emotional isn’t much good to us. Of course, there’s no reason why we can’t avail ourselves of Lyle’s upstate expertise those times that he can manage to stop crying. But—”

“You want curry?” the waiter demanded.

Jerry began to wave him away, but I asked, “What kind do you have?”

“Good curry.”

“What sort? Chicken?” The waiter shook his head. I requested shrimp or lamb, but the waiter said no and intoned: veg-e-table. “I don’t care for vegetable,” I said.

“Jesus, Marcia, would you take the goddamn vegetable thing and be done with it? It all tastes the same.” The waiter nodded, apparently agreeing with Jerry, and trotted into the kitchen. “Where was I?” Jerry demanded.

“You were saying how Bill might use Lyle on an occasional basis.”

“Well, read between the lines.”

“I’m not quite sure what you mean.”

“Really? You, the great intellectual, don’t know what a simple guy like me means? I should be flattered. I’m so subtle that the resident thinker can’t follow my line of reasoning. Jesus, this is an important moment in our lives.”

“It may be,” I said softly.

“Don’t threaten me, Marcia.”

There followed about ten minutes of silence. The waiter deposited two bowls on the table. I put a small mound of curry on the side of my plate, then dumped a glob of gelatinous rice into the middle. Jerry waved aside my offer of help and ordered another drink.

The food was vile, sharp, just on the edge of rancidity. I considered getting up and leaving but realized I had no place to go. The waiter sneezed, covering his mouth with his hand. I watched him for a while, but he did not go to the bathroom to wash it off. I decided not to order dessert. I turned back to the table and looked at Jerry’s hand on his glass, his index finger rising and falling, teasing the little beads of moisture. If I left, he might decide all of a sudden that he needed solace, and then where would he find it? All over. Anywhere.

“Jerry, please talk to me. I’m sorry if I pushed too hard. But you need someone to talk to, someone you can trust.”

“Can I trust you? Completely?”

“How can you even ask that?”

“If I asked you to do something, would you go along with whatever I asked, on faith?”

“What do you mean?”

“See? You start drawing up amendments before I even start. If you were on my side completely—”

“Jerry, what do you want from me?” He didn’t answer. “Jerry, please. Don’t you think I’d do anything …?”

“Sure. Sure I do. Anyway, I’ll tell you what’s happening. I’m campaign manager.” I nodded. “Bill says he’s behind me one hundred percent. But that’s crap.” He held up a hand as I was about to protest. “I know that’s crap because he’s sending me out of town.”

“What?”

“Sending me up to Sullivan County. I’ll explain some other time. You know at the beginning of a campaign—Christ, in any part of a campaign—you need a warm body here, running things. But he’s telling me he needs me more in the boonies. That’s the essence of crap. He claims it’ll just be for a few days, that Eileen Gerrity can run things till I get back, but you know and I know that’s bullshit. He’d never trust a woman in that role.” I hadn’t known that. It was interesting. “You know what he’s going to do? He’s going to bring in LoBello. He’ll talk him into accepting some temporary half-assed title until he can figure out how to handle me, but he’ll give LoBello the reins. He’s screwing me, Marcia. He’s giving me the biggest screwing of my life, and I can’t do anything about it. ‘Morrissey,’ he says, ‘you’re my man. You’re campaign manager.’ And he’s right. I’m his man. I’m forty-fucking-seven years old and he’s sending me out of town like a kid to camp. What the hell am I going to do?”

I didn’t know. His hands were trembling slightly, as though the ground was vibrating under his feet. “Jerry, are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Can I do anything?”

“No. Just let me be.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Go. Go up to Sullivan County.”

I paid the bill and we left the restaurant.

Sullivan County is in the Catskill Mountains. It is sometimes referred to as the borscht belt. Sometimes as Solomon County. Its big industry is tourism, and many of its residents work at the hotels. Others raise chickens. It is, on balance, a nice place to visit.

And that, as he later explained, was why Jerry was going there. Not for a vacation, of course. But the rumors were traveling fast down the Quickway to the city: Sidney Appel, the nouveau premier hotelier of Sullivan County, was making gubernatorial noises.

The next day I heard the details from Joe Cole, Paterno’s coordinator of minority affairs. Joe had gone to Paterno and Jerry with a riddle: What does it mean when a rich white businessman shows up at the Abyssinian Baptist Church on West 138th Street on a Sunday morning?

It meant, Jerry had told him, that the aforementioned businessman is running for something. But governor? Sidney Appel?

He knew about Appel, of course. Everyone in New York politics did. He was a tiny man, Bronx-born, who looked like a bulbous-nosed elf. He had parlayed a chunk of his wife’s hefty inheritance from her father’s cat-food business into even bigger money by opening a health-oriented hotel built mainly from pine logs and spit. He called it the “Family Farm,” using a smiling chicken as his logo and advertising “Clean Air Like Grandma Used to Make.” For some reason, people found that appealing, and Family Farms were banged together in the Adirondacks, the Poconos, and the not-too-depressed areas of the Appalachians.

He made millions charging deluxe prices for vegetable cutlets, bunk beds, and several miles of overworked hiking trails. He pitched to parents: “When was the last time you saw your child climb a tree?” His ad pictured a small, brown-haired, genderless child embracing a huge but safe-looking oak. “We’re people people!” another ad announced, and its picture was a campfire surrounded by weenie roasters of every race and creed, all smiling beatifically, looking like shills from the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

But despite the red bandanna he always wore around his neck, Sidney Appel retained the heart of a city boy. He loved the Democratic party more than the 4-H Club. Instead of collecting rifles, he bought politicians. Not an unheard-of hobby, certainly not an impractical one. But why would the hunter choose to become the animal he preyed upon?

“He thinks he can be governor?” I had asked Joe Cole.

“Sure. He has the money.” For a black man, Joe Cole had an unusually Semitic face: an opulent hooked nose and a big chin that called out to be rubbed in deep thought. Maybe we were distant cousins. “Listen, Marcia, he’ll go out and do some token fund-raising to conform to the law, but he could take five million out of his pockets—or his wife’s pocketbook—and not feel the difference.”

“But, Joe: governor? What experience does he have?”

Cole cleared his throat and orated in a forced basso: “What New York needs, ladies and gentlemen, is a businessman! We need a governor who knows what it means to meet a payroll, who has
never
had an unbalanced budget, who—”

“Come on. What kind of organization does he have? What kind of support?”

“Money, honey. He can buy all the support he needs. Ask your boyfriend.”

But my boyfriend was not in shape to give an advanced civics lesson. That night, riding downtown after work, I asked him if he thought Joe Cole was right about Appel. “Well,” he began, “I’ve known Joe for years and his instincts—” Jerry’s voice broke then, as if cut by the recollection of Paterno’s perfidy. His normal, consuming interest in anything political had been replaced by something else. Maybe fury. Maybe horror at finding himself in the midst of a maneuver he had not manufactured. We sat and swayed silently on the subway.