Close Relations (29 page)

“I thought I was being charming.”

“You were. And to answer your question, tax law is much more fascinating than cat food. And frankly, it’s paradise compared to a political campaign. My God! Every time I go over to his headquarters, I’m stunned by some new irrationality.”

“You were expecting an exercise in Jeffersonian democracy?”

“Well, I was expecting something a little different from what I found. May I ask
you
something, Marcia?”

“Sure.”

“Doesn’t the boredom bother you? I spent a day traveling around with Sidney, running from place to place, hearing him mouth the same speech over and over again. It’s so prepackaged, so routinized.”

“Well, it may be boring to the press, because they have to hear the same thing over and over. The candidate can handle it better because his ego is fed by each new audience. But it’s not boring for me.” I stretched out my legs again, took a deep breath, and began a lengthy explanation of how I worked en route. “You see,” I concluded, “if Paterno’s gotten a last-minute invitation for a Hellenic Day festival, I can write a zingy speech on how terrific Greeks are while we’re riding out to Queens to mend fences or while he’s talking to a business group on diddling the capital budget. And if I’m not writing something, I listen to him. Try to figure out what lines get the best response, what lines bomb.”

David gazed at me as I spoke. His eyes, which should have been brown to match his outfit, were actually hazel, with dots of yellow and green and gray. They were his best feature. The rest of his face was filled up with an ordinary broad-bridged nose, a large mouth, and a determined-looking chin. He seemed to be about Philip’s age, forty, with a network of busy-looking lines around his eyes.

“Listen,” I said, “I really didn’t mean to make fun of your tax law. I don’t even know precisely what it is. What do you do?”

But he didn’t have a chance. I heard a shout of “Marcia!”

The three candidates stood outside the waiting room until Paterno, in an artful subway maneuver, elbowed Parker and Appel aside and stood framed in the doorway. “Let’s get going,” he called. “I want to get back to headquarters.”

I stood. David did also. I was about to shake his hand and tell him it had been nice meeting him but Paterno came over, clamped onto my arm, and said, “Come on! Let’s get out of here.” With his other hand he reached for an upstate staff member who was standing nearby and pulled us both toward the door.

“Bye,” I called to David.

Paterno’s car careened toward headquarters, barely slowing down when a hubcap flew off from the shock of a large pothole. I stared out the window, trying to figure out why my cousin had never mentioned David Hoffman to me before.

“Well, what do you think, Marcia?” Paterno demanded. “You haven’t said a word. Was I awful? If you think I was terrible, tell me.”

“You weren’t terrible.” I turned to him. He was wiping his television makeup off with a large white handkerchief.

“Well?”

“You were fine. You know that.”

“Really?”

“Yes. You were very specific, and you have to keep that up. Appel is coming across as superficial, and the more exposure he gets, the more evident that’s going to be. So what you’ve got to do is keep dazzling them with your knowledge, your expertise.”

“You’re right.” He paused. “What about Parker? Do you think he has a shot after tonight? I actually felt ashamed for him, he was such a fool.”

“Well, there are still two more debates. He could redeem himself a little. Or maybe there’s a big underground stupid vote. But the main thing is …”

“What?” Paterno demanded.

“If you or Appel aren’t seen as individuals, if you don’t make a strong and distinct impression, then people are going to go for Parker just because he’s a known quantity.”

“But he’s a fool.” Paterno looked peeved. His mouth pulled tight at the corners. “He honestly doesn’t comprehend what’s going on.”

“That may be, but he’s a familiar fool. Anyhow, if you keep up the level of tonight and come across as authoritative—and if Sidney keeps mouthing his slogans—then you have a real shot.”

“Just a shot?”

“You know the polls better than I do. Appel’s ahead.”

“I know, and it’s killing me. I’m the best man. No one can do the job I can.”

“I know that, Bill. But it’s not getting across the way it should.”

“Well, why the hell not? I’m pushing myself to the limit, risking a major coronary, running around the whole state tearing my guts out, eating hamburgers in airports—”

“You can’t expect me to be objective, Bill.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the support you were counting on has been going elsewhere. The advice you’ve been getting has been less than stellar. I think it’s been slick and shallow.” The upstate aide, a LoBello protégé, turned around from his seat next to the driver and glared at me. “And that kind of superficiality, well…” I let my voice trail off and then resumed. “Why bother going on? You know my prejudice. I can’t even swear to you that what I’m saying is the objective truth. My loyalty to Jerry may be getting in the way. But don’t forget, besides my loyalty to him, I have a very strong loyalty to you. I’ve always been straight with you, Bill. And I think you’ve got to consider making some changes.”

Paterno nodded. At headquarters, he sloughed off LoBello’s pat on the back and retired to his own office. The upstate aide snarled at me and pulled LoBello off for a private conference. I adjourned to my own office to rewrite a speech on the right of public employees to strike and decided I didn’t care what they did. I sighed, wondering what my cousin Barbara had told David Hoffman about me. I changed my typewriter ribbon. Then I shrugged, sighed again, and got up. But as I waited for the elevator, Lyle LoBello sidled up beside me, pushing me as if we were on a rush-hour subway car together.

“You fucker,” he hissed. “I’m going to get you for this.”

“Go away, Lyle.”

The night had become sticky. The air was so thick and stagnant it was almost viscous. And it was hot, like a foretaste of August. I caught an air-conditioned Fifth Avenue bus and worried my way downtown in a finger-numbing chill.

Maybe my fears and sadness were due to some tediously predictable mid-life crisis, the sort that every thirty-five-year-old who reads magazines is susceptible to. Maybe it was some primeval need burgeoning within, forcing me to nest and breed, making me smile at David Hoffman. By Fourteenth Street I thought about Jerry. If he would just come home and shepherd me into bed, I wouldn’t spend another moment feeling fearful or sad or the least bit vulnerable.

Back at the apartment, I undressed and lay across the bed musing about him, like a mortal waiting for Zeus to transmogrify into a cloud and come down for a visit. But after a half hour I grew restless. I showered and put on one of Jerry’s pajama tops. I looked around the bedroom for some useful employment: washing out pantyhose, trimming toenails, reading the sonnets I had written in tenth grade—with titles like “Silence” and “Song of Seymour”—which were in a shoe box on the top shelf of my closet.

Instead, I called my cousin. “Hi, Barbara.”

“Marcia! How are you? Feeling better? Did Jerry get back yet?”

“He’s still upstate, but I’m okay. Am I calling too late?”

“No. Philip’s in the library working on a law-review article and I was just reading in bed.” The library was in their house. “Now tell me, have you heard from Jerry? Has he called?”

“No. Not a word.”

“Are you upset, Marcia? Talk to me. You know it makes me crazy when you pull your uncommunicative act, especially on the phone. Anyway, you need to get things off your chest.”

“I met your friend,” I said softly.

“Who? What friend?”

“Don’t ‘who’ me, Barbara. The cat-food king.”

“David? You met David! Oh, I was hoping you would.”

“How come you never mentioned him to me?”

“Because I knew you’d go out of your way to avoid him.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“It is not. Every time I mention introducing you to one of Philip’s friends, you look at me as though I’ve done something disgusting, like throwing up at a formal dinner. Do you think I’d be crazy enough to say, ‘Marcia, there’s a nice lawyer I want you to meet; he’s highly eligible—and Jewish’? You’d never speak to me again.”

“Come on, Barb. Isn’t it that you were afraid how I’d behave with one of Philip’s fancy lawyer friends, that I’d pull down my panties on the first date or do something to besmirch the family name?”

“You are so impossible that I’m not even going to dignify that with a denial.”

“Oh, all right. Anyhow, why is he hanging around Appel?”

“Well, David’s genuinely interested in politics and this is a wonderful chance to see things up close. And …” Barbara paused, then shifted her voice to a confidential pitch. “Promise you won’t tell anyone?”

“I promise.”

“Well, he’s been spending so much time with Sidney Appel, keeping an eye on things, because his father and his other aunt are terrified that Appel is going to fritter away Aunt Marjorie’s—Mrs. Appel’s—entire legacy or trust fund or whatever. They wanted David to take a leave of absence from his law firm to really watch things, but David said absolutely not. He cannot abide his uncle. Can you keep a secret?”

“What?”

“Appel’s a real adulterer. With teenage girls!”

“I’ve heard.”

“You’ve heard? Really?”

“Sure.”

“Well, not only does he run around, but Marjorie Appel knows all about it.”

“No kidding. And she’s paying for his campaign anyway? Lovely. Your pal David sounds like he comes from a terrific family.”

“In fact, the Hoffmans are a fine old German-Jewish family.”

“Right. Did he go to prep school, like Philip?”

“I’m not sure. But he went to Harvard, undergraduate and law school. Is that good enough?”

“For my mother.”

Barbara’s voice grew smooth and teasing. “You liked him, didn’t you, Mar?”

“He wasn’t bad. But I’m warning you, Barbara, please don’t try to push this. I’m still in the same place. Half the bed is mine, the other half is Jerry’s.”

“Who’s talking about beds?”

“David Hoffman is a nice guy and that’s that. Okay?”

“Sure. Honestly, the only reason I mentioned you to him at all is that he doesn’t know anyone in politics and if he ran into you, it would be a nice experience. I mean, meeting someone intelligent, fun. He’s spending a lot more time with his uncle than he wants to, and it’s only because his family is absolutely desperate.”

“They just don’t want Auntie Appel hitting them up for another few million. Your friend is probably protecting his own inheritance.”

“Marcia, that may be true, but that doesn’t take away from David as a person. He’s a marvelous man. Warm, sensitive, cultured.”

“Is he married?”

“He was. He’s divorced.”

“What went wrong?”

“Nothing. Don’t be so suspicious. It just wasn’t meant to be. He and his wife—his ex-wife—grew up together, had the same background, the same tastes …”

“Cat food?”

“Stop it. Everything seemed sweet and nice and right at the beginning, but then they discovered one thing: they were miserably unhappy. So they were divorced, but very amicably. She’s remarried and lives in Connecticut with the children.”

“How many children did they have before they figured out they were miserably unhappy?”

“Three. And I think it’s very unfair of you to be so sarcastic. He’s a good friend of ours. I’m not saying you have to love him or even like him, but you could at least be polite.”

“I was. I even bordered on charming. You wouldn’t have believed it was me talking. Ask him.”

“I will.” Soon afterward, she wished me good night. I imagined her running down a flight of curving stairs, dashing into the library, and announcing to Philip, “Marcia met David!” Or she may have just called her mother and said, “Guess what? It worked!”

Ascribing such manipulativeness to Barbara may be unfair, but I was never completely sure of her. I always needed her more than I wanted to and trusted her less than perhaps I should. She was, after all, a relation.

Other than my lawyer, who had to drag the facts from me, she was the only person I told about finding Barry getting his licks from Noreen. I confided in her the history of my cold, dead marriage, warmed only by the heat of sex. I said to Barbara, Swear to me you’ll never tell anyone, and she said, Of course, of course. And yet it seemed, once the first shock had worn away, my Aunt Estelle was a little too sanguine over my ditching a future doctor and my mother’s reflexive disappointment at my failure was too muted.

Sometimes I felt that Barbara was simply a modern-dress version of my Aunt Estelle. Wasn’t it wonderful to have a happy husband! And children! The light of your years. And the joys of creating a gracious home, to spend a long afternoon stalking the perfect guest towel.

But Barbara didn’t take her mother seriously at all. She’d chuckle, “That woman’s pretensions are boundless. Boundless. She goes around telling people about my staff of servants. Can you believe that?” The Drexlers had a cook, a houseman, a couple of maids, a gardener, and a laundress. “And she actually says things like ‘sorbet’ for ‘sherbet.’ She’ll say, ‘What lovely blackberry sorbet.’ I can’t even look at Philip when she does that because we’ll both start laughing.”

Barbara seemed to be her own woman. She followed her own interests, not her mother’s. She went to the ballet, theater, concerts, lectures. She planted prizewinning azaleas. She read fiction in the south of France, poetry on the window seat of her boudoir. She knew enough about politics to hold her own with me in conversation, and she was astute enough not to fall into the shallow cynicism outsiders often do. She was a pillar of the Embroiderers’ Guild, a fellow of the John Donne Society.

And she had done exactly what she was supposed to do.

By those same standards, I had screwed up unforgivably.

But she shared her French antique canopied bed with a bald and nasal Philip. I had Jerry. And that night, he came home.

I heard him as he came in but pretended to be sleeping. I stirred a little as he sat on the edge of the bed, letting a feigned dream sigh escape.