Death of a Political Plant (2 page)

T
HE BRAT WAS HEADED STRAIGHT
for her prize stand of toad lilies.

Only a little surprised at her hostility toward her cousin’s innocent child, Louise knew her irritation lay with the child’s parents. Their lax supervision during a five-day visit with the Eldridges had resulted in golden-haired three-year-old Sally ravaging her gardens, one by one. Toddler feet stomping on plants that were babies themselves. Pudgy hands snapping
off precious flowers like a plant ogre and stuffing them in her mouth. And the crowning blow: the pulling to bits of the five precious blooms of Louise’s French tree peony—that otherwise would have bestowed its effulgent beauty upon the world for a week or more.

Now, she wasn’t about to sacrifice her purple-spotted toad lilies to this toddler tornado, certainly not seconds before these houseguests went back to where they came from!

“Sally,” cried Louise, “
not
in there.” She paused for a half second to allow her cousin to control her own child. The mother wasn’t paying attention. The child veered away from the toad lilies and took rapid baby steps across prostrate campanula and epimedium and hurled her little body toward a thicket of wickedly thorned mahonia—taller than she was, likely to tear skin or eyes.

Louise lunged forward, reached her in three steps, and scooped her up in her arms. Her cousin had finally noticed and yelped, “Oh, thank God you saw her!” Louise looked down at the blond, doll-like cherub in her arms. Happy to be saved? No way. Tears were forming in the combative blue eyes: Sally was building up for a good howl.

She stepped carefully out of her garden and handed the child over to the mother, just as the explosion of tears and rage gushed forth.

Having done his part packing the bags, the husband stood casually by with hands in the pockets of his chinos. He nodded toward the mahonia. “I can see why Sally wanted to touch them, Louise—those plants are beautiful, with those glossy leaves and bunches of big blue berries.”

“Yes, but notice the vicious thorns,” she said through tight lips. “It pays to train children to stay out of gardens. They can be deadly.” The parents seemed to think that because Louise
had gardens in a woods, they were fair game for stepping on and tasting. Besides, weren’t they all relatives here?

Her cousin deposited the girl in the car without mussing her bandbox-fresh traveling outfit, then turned and smiled as she looked at a perspiring Louise in her many-pocketed shorts, boots, and grimy T-shirt. She elaborately embraced her, and for some reason Louise was reminded of The
Godfather
. “Louise, I love your house, and its little addition, and all the beautiful flowers. Especially now that you have become a TV garden lady, I know gardening comes first with you and always will.”

Louise wiped sweat from her brow with the back of a hand. “Actually, my family comes first.” Why would she argue with this least-favorite cousin? But why not? “My family definitely comes first, then gardens.”

The two of them kissed insincerely, and her guests climbed into their car, Louise peeked into the backseat, where the strapped-in three-year-old was still whimpering from not getting her way. Seeing Louise, she turned her face away, scorning Louise’s good-bye wave. Her cousin powered her car window down at the last moment and said, mysteriously, “And sorry about the mattress.”

With a little pang of worry for Sally’s future, Louise returned up the mossy flagstone path to her modern one-story house in the woods, the gray timbers of the pergola above the path and the glint of sun on the floor-to-ceiling glass windows giving her a sense she was entering a very special house.

Alone, and blissfully without company for the first time in eight weeks.

Inside and outside, it was time for damage control. It would take a while to erase signs of this particular visit, With big plastic bag in hand, she swept up left-behind toys, toilet articles, and a couple of paperbacks. She put the bag on the
shelf of a tiny hall closet that her husband Bill facetiously nicknamed “the morgue,” because it had smelled so rotten from the stale air from under their slab house when they moved in. She’d blocked the smell out by covering cracks with duct tape; later, he plastered it up for her. She would send on her cousin’s possessions when she had a spare moment.

Armed with her special carpet spotter and a spray bottle of vinegar solution, she scrubbed away spots and stains left in the wake of the three visitors. Next came stripping the beds and taking down the crib. Standing over the baby bed, she realized with distaste what her cousin meant: Sally’s parents, optimists, apparently, hadn’t bothered with night diapering on that last night. Giving a good sniff, she decided to pitch the crib mattress and get a new one. She heaved it out of the bed and carried it out to the garbage area, which was tucked discreetly behind a row of hollies. Then, she administered the coup de grace, a squirting of air freshener through the entire house.

Her mouth set in a grim line as she next attacked the patio garden. Plants near the edge, delicate corydalis, lamium, miniature mat daisies, and a maidenhair fern, had taken a bad beating from little footsteps. Some were kaput for the season, while others looked as if they would recover.

Except for the tree peony. The loss of those translucent, six-inch-wide yellow repeat blossoms nearly made her cry. It was the second day of the visit, after Louise had made repeated discreet entreaties about keeping Sally out of the gardens. Her guard was down, as she prepared a special company lunch in the kitchen. When she came outside with laden tray, the child had picked the golden petals off, one by one. “Oh, so sorry,” said the inattentive parents.

Not quite so destructive was the child’s desperate leap into her neighbor Mary Mougey’s fishpond, where Louise had
taken the restless child as a late afternoon diversion. Sally had jumped instantly in with the prize Kohako koi, throwing the fish into a frenzy, and destroying a couple of water lily blossoms in the process. The child had surfaced like a little Venus out of the sea, spluttering but happy at wringing a little more excitement out of the boring world.

Louise went in the house, for she had more important things to do than sorrow over a picked bush, or destroyed water lilies. Slumping onto the couch, she tried to relax and clear her mind. She and Bill had been flooded with company all summer, including visits from both sets of parents. With her full-time job, the pressure was beginning to tell. It wasn’t like the old days of just a year or so ago, when one of her main purposes in life as a foreign-service wife was to play the part of the gracious hostess. Now, she was wife, mom,
and
TV host. Where was she supposed to find time to nurture houseguests and handle toddler versions of Dennis the Menace?

Trying to find a cheery side, she realized she and Bill had a window of opportunity. For the next week, they would be alone. Then came the next onslaught of company. She frowned. That company was an unknown: they had invited themselves, and as usual, she had been too polite to say no. “Damn it, Louise,” she reproached herself, “you could have wiggled out of that one.”

And yet they might prove interesting: three vigorous women from the National Perennial Plant Society, whom she had met just once. They were coming to the Washington Hilton for their yearly convention and were valuable contacts; while in town, they would be part of a gardening show for WTBA-TV, Louise’s public broadcasting station sponsor.

Touchingly enough, the P.P.S. was adding to the luster of Louise’s new career, which was very young and needed as
much luster as it could gather. The Perennial Plant Society was making her its “Plant Person of the Year” for her series of environmentally sound garden shows.

But at least she could look forward to privacy during the coming week. She had a slow work schedule at Channel Five, and that meant time for her and Bill to be alone together, and to wallow in the news, specifically, national presidential election coverage.

She leaned back in the cushions and lifted up a long, bare leg: It had several dirt swipes, for she had worked in her sloppy bog garden while her company packed. She raised an arm and smelled her armpit. The “Plant Person of the Year” sorely needed a bath, for normal life, such as it was, resumed tonight. She and Bill were going to dress up for a fund-raiser in the East Building of the National Gallery. It was organized by Mary Mougey, her neighbor. At five hundred dollars a head, they would feast on shrimp and oysters, pates and roast beef, raising funds for starving, fly-ridden people in African countries torn by civil war.

She went into the master bathroom, flipping on the radio as she assembled shampoo, conditioner, glycerin soap, facial cleanser, and a fluffy ball of apricot-colored nylon netting—her “exfoliating sponge.” She noted ruefully it was made out of the same material that household expert Heloise recommended for scrubbing pans clean.

She was just in time for some breaking news. The newscaster was about as excited as National Public Radio newscasters ever got. He reported that a spokesman for President Fairchild’s opponent, Congressman Lloyd Goodrich, had leveled still another charge at the sitting President: that not only had Fairchild participated in the assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam back in 1963, but that he was
involved in the murder of an army clerk handling records in Saigon, this in an effort to keep Fairchild’s complicity out of his army file.

Louise uttered an audible groan. The President, as checkered a person as he might be, was her supporter. After the murder at Louise’s TV station and her subsequent exposure of the murderer, Fairchild had appointed her to the National Environmental Commission.

She flipped the bathwater on and the radio off. Fairchild was honest, while Goodrich’s campaign was so far below the belt it made her sick. And yet it was working: Fairchild, who had been twenty points ahead, was now almost even in the polls. This latest disclosure had to be the most harmful. What could be worse than an accusation of murder? As she peeled off her sweaty clothes, she reflected that Goodrich’s people had better have proof this time. That was the worry: The newscaster said the Goodrich campaign had the goods in “black and white,” whatever that meant.

She stepped in and slid herself down into the relaxing hot water that slapped gently against her body. What was black and white anymore in this world? Except that gardens were wonderful, and she loved Bill and the girls? But in reverse order, of course.

T
HE RED-AND-BLUE PADDLES ON
Calder’s giant mobile swung slowly over the crowd. Louise, standing with her husband on the mezzanine of the East Building, felt as if she could reach over and almost touch one as it passed. The movement overhead gave her a mild sense of vertigo that substituted just fine for the fact that she declined to drink the champagne being served rapid-fire to glittering guests by tuxedoed waiters and waitresses.

They had just arrived, and immediately took in the scene: upper-crust Washingtonians clustered around the hors d’oeuvres table, like vultures before roadkill, as fresh batches of lobster and shrimp were brought out. Once fortified with goodies on small plates, people hovered around in constellation groups, of which the “suns” were celebrities: congressmen, movers and shakers and, she noticed, the President’s chief of staff, Tom Paschen. Not a big man, but handsome in a way, with a thin, brooding face. Paschen was a man whom she barely knew, but with whom Bill had once worked.

The vivacious hostess was in full swing. Blond and petite, Mary Mougey was elegant in a scarlet gown, and encircled by her own constellation of what Louise supposed were the biggest donors. The champagne and predinner snacks, which would precede a silent art auction of donated art items, would loosen purse strings and result in more big checks being pressed into Mary’s hand. Big donors and small donors alike would be co-opted by her intrepid friend before the party was over.

Before Louise knew it, Mary had spotted her and broken away from her group and hurried over. “Bill. Louise. Hello,” she said breathlessly; her eyes sparkled with party excitement. She put a hand on Louise’s arm and in a low voice said, “My dear, you look absolutely ravishing,” and gave her a broad wink. “I just have a moment: I
so
appreciate you babysitting our fish while we’re gone to the Caribbean. Remember, they like carbohydrates
and
protein, so I’ll bring you over a container of earthworms to feed them each afternoon.” Her pretty blue eyes looked concerned, as if talking about children who would be in Louise’s care: “Please don’t forget to chop them up a little; our babies aren’t big enough to eat them whole.”