Close Relations (22 page)

Suddenly I heard a tiny voice. “Hello.” Heart banging, mouth dry, I froze. The ultimate irony, to be killed in the hallway of the house my family had tried to save me from. “Marcia?” The voice was thin and distant but finally recognizable. I rushed and fumbled to open the rest of the locks. “In the bedroom.”

I threw my handbag and key ring on the floor and dashed inside, prepared to leap onto the bed and do anything I could to enchant Jerry sufficiently to make him announce that this would always be my home. “Jerry!” I shouted, rushing in.

“Muscle spasm,” he barked. “I called headquarters from Buffalo and then here from LaGuardia, but you weren’t in. Joe Cole had to drive out to the airport. He got me upstairs and waited for the doctor. Where the hell were you?”

“At my Aunt Estelle’s.”

“Jesus!” Jerry cried out in pain. He tried to move, to ease himself, but he could only wince. “I’m a goddamn mess.”

I waited for his agony to subside. “Jerry …”

“Wait a second.” It took several, but finally he spoke. “How are you? You look tired.” He spent a moment settling into a comfortable position. His body relaxed. “Your family work you over again?”

“A little.”

“Figures. Come here. Give me a kiss, but do it lightly. No pressure on the back. I have to stay flat with a pillow under my legs for a minimum of four or five days, and the doctor says I can only get up once a day, to take a crap. I’ll have to pee into a bottle or jar or something. Is that okay? It’s up to you. Otherwise, I’ll have to go to the hospital. My mother offered to take me in, but she’s crippled with her arthritis, and my sister has the five kids. So it’s your decision.” He exhaled and smiled. “How’d you like that for a greeting?”

“I think I’ll go back to my Aunt Estelle’s.”

“That bad? Well, come on now. Bend down and kiss me hello.”

I knelt down on one knee, like Al Jolson about to deliver a mammoth “Mammy.” I was afraid of falling over, of putting too much weight on him, of collapsing and immobilizing him for life. I brushed my lips against his.

“More,” he ordered. “Come on. Open your mouth and close your eyes.” We kissed such a prolonged, warm kiss that I nearly fell onto the floor with exhausted contentment. “I wish we could do more,” he whispered. “Maybe by tomorrow we’ll figure something out.” I took his hand and planted small kisses on the pads of each finger. “Marcia, listen to me. I know you’re going full steam with the campaign, and if you want me to check into a hospital, I will. No problem. No guilt trips.”

“This is your home.”

“You’re great, sweetheart. A real trouper. Come on. One more kiss before lights out.”

L
yle LoBello wore a musk cologne to the meeting, and the entire staff seemed dazed by its heaviness. People slumped in folding chairs with half-closed eyes. Not a single person moaned in dismay as Paterno’s daily schedule was read.

“Any new business before I go on?” LoBello demanded. He took off his suit jacket and rolled up his shirt sleeves, displaying both sides of each impressive forearm: the solid upper and the bulging veins and muscles of the lower. “Any new business?” Most of the women and two of the men stared at his arms.

Before the campaign, when Jerry had run staff meetings, he had been stared at too. But people had noticed more than one part of him, more than arms, voice, cleft chin. Eyes glistened at his charm, jaws drooped at his entire countenance, toes curled with each movement of his body, and minds leaped with excitement over his ideas. Jerry was more than just a sum of parts.

LoBello sat on the edge of his desk, his hand resting on his powerful thigh. “Come on, people. Now is the time to speak up.” The key members of Paterno’s campaign staff—about twelve of us—remained silent. We had not meshed. Half of us were from Paterno’s City Hall staff, but the others were strangers, LoBello’s hired guns, people who knew the rest of New York State the way we knew New York City.

“All right,” LoBello continued, loosening his tie and opening his top collar button. “Let me make my announcements, and then we can all get to work. First and foremost, you probably know by now that our friend and colleague, Jerry Morrissey, injured his back upstate—working for the cause—and he’ll be out of commission for a while. Anyhow, we all hope he gets better fast. Would you give him our regards, Marcia?” I nodded. “Marcia?”

“All right.”

“Good. For those of you who are new, Marcia and Jerry are—um, close personal friends. Am I right, Marcia?” He stood and strolled toward my chair. The odor of his cologne was so powerful and animal that for a second I forgot not merely who Jerry was but who Lyle was also. But then he spoke again. “Marcia? Huh?”

“I’m sorry, Lyle. I wasn’t paying attention. What did you say?” Since he had begun working on the campaign, I found myself resisting his authority in the most adolescent ways possible. I’d yawn while he spoke, declare in front of Paterno that an idea LoBello had just presented was unworkable and amateurish. Every time Lyle remonstrated with me, I’d threaten to quit. After witnessing one of these skirmishes, Paterno had muttered that I seemed a little “testy,” but he did not seem interested in refereeing any conflict between LoBello and me.

“Forget it,” LoBello said, trying to unclench his teeth enough to appear casual. He reacted to my challenges in different ways. Sometimes he’d ignore them. Several times he hissed “bitch” at me, and once he screamed at me to shut up. In a crowded elevator he stood behind me and pressed against me, rubbing his pelvis up and down, whispering, “You need to get laid, baby. Look at how tight you are.”

He strolled to the front of the room. “All right, everybody. Let’s get down to serious business: Sidney Appel.”

I peered at my watch. It was a few minutes after eleven, and I had promised Jerry I’d be home by noon to empty his urine jar and give him lunch.

“Are you interested in this campaign, Ms. Green?” LoBello called out.

I continued to study my watch. Jerry had protested, of course, telling me I needn’t miss work, especially during a campaign, but he also managed to grit his teeth with pain once and to turn white as he reached across the bed for the metropolitan section of the
Times,
so I knew he wanted me with him.

“All right,” LoBello said. “Where was I?”

“You were going to say something about Sidney Appel,” Eileen said. Her voice was slow and patient, like a teacher helping a slow but hard-working student. “Remember, Lyle?”

“Thank you, Eileen.” But he glanced at me as he spoke, as though suspecting we had plotted to undermine and emasculate him. “Okay, let’s get going. Sidney Appel is going to be a problem. No two ways about it. Now you may be wondering why I’m talking to you guys about Appel now. I mean, it’s before the weekend, Bill’s upstate, what can happen, right? Well, what I’m going to say will explain it all.”

A huge sigh followed LoBello’s sentence, a sigh of ennui so explosive that it commanded the attention of the entire staff. It had come from Joe Cole, Paterno’s minority affairs expert, one of Jerry’s oldest cronies.

“Anything wrong, Joe?” LoBello asked. He sensed insurrection. His voice was tight trying to transform his anger into nonchalance for the benefit of his upstate audience.

“Come on, man,” Joe urged in a slow, impatient ghetto voice. “It’s almost eleven fucking thirty.” Joe usually wore Brooks Brothers tones in the office, but he donned an uptown cadence when he wanted to intimidate whites. “I got things to do.”

“All right,” LoBello said, almost apologetically. Then he became brusque. “We’re all busy, you know. Now, Sidney Appel. Sidney Appel is going to declare his candidacy on Monday. Try to comprehend the importance of that. That’s a week before we thought he’d be ready.” He peered at me and said, “Our Sullivan County intelligence was faulty.” Then he cleared his throat. “Okay, how are we going to counter him? How are we going to direct our energies?”

“I’m going,” I announced, standing up.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Marcia?”

“I’m going to work at home. I have too much to do and I need quiet.” I left, my exit embellished by LoBello’s speechless rage and calls of “bye” and “see you Monday” and “best to Jerry” from Joe and Eileen and the rest of the City Hall contingent.

“I give it seven on a scale of ten,” said Jerry, rating the insurrection. Lying flat on his back, addressing the ceiling, he applauded Joe’s sigh, smiled at the unexpected backup from a snide Eileen, but was irate that no one had challenged LoBello’s remark that the intelligence on the Appel campaign was faulty. “You realize that that was a direct criticism of me, that he’s saying I didn’t do my job, that son-of-a-bitch muscle-bound jerk.”

“No one was taking him very seriously. Now, can we please talk about what’s happening to you? You just can’t pretend—”

“Enough. It’s not necessary. Listen to me for a minute, Marcia. I told Bill that Appel would be announcing before May first. I couldn’t say when because before I could get any more information, he sent me up to goddamn Buffalo. But my source was good.”

“Who was it?”

“Appel’s wife’s best friend.”

“A woman?”

“Sure. She hangs out at this bar in Monticello. The county chairman introduced me to her. Her husband’s a big real-estate guy up there and a buddy of Appel’s.”

“Doesn’t he mind that she hangs around in a bar?”

“How the hell should I know? Maybe he’s glad to be rid of her. She’s a real hard drinker. But she is a lot of fun, and I guess she keeps Appel’s wife amused with her stories about the men she scores with. Anyhow, I bought her a few rounds and it turns out she’s one of these smart alcoholics. You know, half whacko, never sober, but doesn’t miss a move. Well, turns out she hates Appel, thinks he’s the meanest son-of-a-bitch on wheels. Anyway, she knows that Appel’s been cheating for years and using her friend’s inheritance not just to bankroll his own projects but to buy trinkets for his little cuties. He seems to like high school girls who like sports cars. He never touches anyone over seventeen. So just to even the score for Mrs. Appel, she’s reporting everything she can find out.”

“Does Mrs. Appel know she’s talking to you?”

“No. Of course not.”

“So theoretically she—”

“Marcia, you know there’s nothing theoretical about a Democratic primary.”

“Did she make a play for you?” I was standing next to the bed and leaned over to gaze directly at him. “How come she was so willing to confide in you? I mean, you were a near stranger, a man—”

“Stop it,” he said sharply. I averted my head. “Marcia, it was the kind of knee-jerk flirtation that type goes through whenever she meets someone new, just to keep in practice.” I glanced back in time to see him passing his tongue over his lips.

Jerry lived in a tempting world, a universe of candy and cookies and ice cream, and although he seemed content with the sweets he got from me, he could, at any time, grab an extra little yummy without a thought: a bite from a rum-soaked bonbon in the Catskills. Every once in a while, I’d suspect he took such a nibble, but then I’d shrug off my suspicions. I had no proof, no clue, not even a hint. It could be my own fears projected onto him. Besides, what could I do about it? So much sex was offered to Jerry that he could—at least theoretically—take on a woman with no more thought than he would give to accept a stick of gum. Tasty. Thank you.

Naturally, sex was available to me too. There was always a Jack to play to my Jill, at least for a night. But the men I met were interested in mere coupling, a woman to provide the requisite friction. I knew from experience how tempting it would seem and how trivial or how humiliating it could be.

But with Jerry, the ladies wanted more than mere sex. They wanted to play and please. They wanted to poke their fingertips into the cleft in his chin and giggle. They wanted to feel his heat and see how much hair he had on his chest. They wanted to chat. They would present themselves forward or backward or upside down to get his attention. For a wink they would iron his shirts. For a smile and an afterwork hug, they would schlepp his groceries a mile. They might kill for a serious conversation.

He reached for my hand. “I hate to tell you this.”

“What?”

“The jar is full. It got boring here alone so I spent the whole morning peeing.”

“That’s okay.” I lifted the jar, recently for mayonnaise, and took it into the bathroom. I emptied it and then stood still, a little uncertain about how to handle the problem of jar, hands, and lunch.

Jerry called, “Bring the jar here, then go back and wash your hands.”

I did and then returned to the side of the bed. “You’re a born executive, Jerry.” I brushed the hair off his forehead. “Want lunch?”

“Sure. It’ll be the high point of my day. What’s on the menu?”

“Anything. I have to run out to the store, so I can get whatever you want. And don’t worry, I still remember how to cook.”

“Anything?”

“Well, I’m not going to make beef Wellington.”

“What’s that?” he asked suspiciously.

“Never mind. What do you want?”

“Scrambled eggs and sausages.”

“For lunch?”

“Okay. Peanut butter and jelly.”

“Don’t you want something more interesting? A salade niçoise? A nice roast beef sandwich?”

“Marcia, what do you want to make me for lunch?”

“A fines herbes omelet?”

“I can just hear your little domesticated motor humming.”

“Then you’re hallucinating. Listen, how about some cheese and pâté and I’ll get a French bread and some wine. Red or white?”

“Red. And I want you back soon.” I leaned over and kissed his mouth. “Before my jar fills up again.”

I dashed down the stairs and outside, clutching my keys and money in my fist, and strode over to Sixth Avenue with the anticipation and enthusiasm of a Washington hostess about to fete a British duke. “That brie is overripe,” I accused one shopkeeper. I rejected another’s selection of wine as uninspired. I wound up in a cold tiled store where the Greenwich Village rich shop and bought two pâtés—coarse and fine—two rich cream-logged cheeses from France, and a pale, thin blond one from Denmark. I picked out a long elegant French bread.