Five Fortunes (25 page)

“And did he tell you what he hoped I would do?”

“All he said was that the foundation is doing the public good works. He didn’t want any Albert Strouse Memorial hospital wings.

Though you’re free to build some, if you want to. He just hoped you would have a whale of a good time.”

“Honey,” said Rae, “just watch my smoke.”

Yo, Auntie Carter!
(Jill typed into her computer).

Laurie did it! She’s in! Mom is PSYCHED…. Me too! Que pasa
avec toi?

XXX

J.

P.S. The reason you can’t see me is I have lost another EIGHT

pounds. You?

T
he news that Laura Knox Lopez had declared herself a candidate for United States Senate was getting a big play in the national media. Was this another Year of the Woman? People invoked the career of Lindy Boggs, who had served in the House with such distinction after
her
congressman husband was lost in a plane crash. There was a joyful rehashing of Senator Turnbull’s un-reconstructed views on such totems as affirmative action and the environment, of his maddening sexism, and especially of his behavior during the savage confirmation hearings of Ella Steptoe. That still enraged women of both parties, even years after the fact, the
Times
reported.

Jill and Amy had done a war dance of joy around the breakfast table when they’d opened the paper.

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Five Fortunes / 191

“What’s this?” Noah said, looking up in surprise from his soft-boiled egg and his
Wall Street Journal
.

“Our friend! We told you! We made her run for the Senate!” Amy handed him the paper, and put her hand up for Jill to slap. Noah skimmed the article.

“Oh god,” he said wearily.

“What? Isn’t it great?”

“Look at Carlos, Mom. He really does look just like his father.”

Jill was leaning over the paper, studying a picture of Laurie going into church on the arm of her eighteen-year-old son.

“You must be kidding,” said Noah.

“What do you mean?”

“Jimbo Turnbull is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.”

“I’m aware of that,” said Amy.

“We’re in the deepest budget doo-doo of the century, and that meatball in the White House was smoking catnip during Econ.#1 or something. There’s not a chance in hell he can cut the deficit without stalling the economy. We are never going to get this under control without Jimbo Turnbull. You have no idea.”

Amy stared at him, and then said, “Exactly when did
you
become the policy wonk?”

“What do you mean?”

“What do
you
mean I have no idea? I read the papers too, you know.”

Noah put down his paper and looked at his wife. Amy was wearing her sweat clothes and no makeup, having just finished following her Step Class video in their bedroom. His daughter was wearing huge floppy clothes in about thirty layers, but this was because Sherpa chic was her idea of what to wear on the street. Their wide-set hazel eyes, so alike, with their long thick lashes, stared back at him.

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s just an expression.”

“What is?”

“‘You have no idea.’ I’m sorry I said it.”

“You know what?” Amy finally said. “You have been trying to provoke me for months. I don’t know why and I don’t care, but I do have

192 / Beth Gutcheon

an idea. I am going to support Laura Lopez any way I can, and I hope that doesn’t present a problem.”

“I don’t see why it should, as long as we don’t talk about it,” said Noah. “I don’t really think a bunch of amateurs are going to scare Jim Turnbull much.” He brushed imaginary toast crumbs from his lap as he stood. “I’ll be home at the normal hour.” He left the kitchen.

There was a long silence during which Amy didn’t move. Jill gnawed uncomfortably on a piece of dry toast.

Going down in the elevator, Jill’s thoughts were jumbled. To avoid thinking about her father’s bad humor, she was composing a mental telegram to Laurie saying, Remember, You Are Only a Woman.

Outside, she wrestled with the zipper of her parka as the December wind struck her face. Christmas was coming. It smelled like snow.

She wished they were going skiing, but they were going to Mexico instead because warm weather was better for Daddy’s heart. Before the Christmas break she had two ten-page papers to write, and she was worried about her father. He had angina, which he refused to talk about but which she’d looked up at the college library. She thought worry was changing his personality. She wondered if it was only health, or was he worried about money? Why else would you pick a fight with your beloved wife over a budget in Washington that you couldn’t do anything about anyway?

As she rounded the corner onto Park Avenue South heading toward the subway, hurrying to get out of the wind, a dark figure suddenly stepped into her path, and she nearly screamed.

“Good morning,” said the figure. A tall black man, filthy anorak.

She ducked her head in what was supposed to pass for a civilized nod. She hurried past him and crossed the street, although it meant she was no longer protected by the lee of the building. Calm down, you dumb shit, she said to herself. Calm down. This is the world, this is not your dreams. Every single man on the street is not planning to attack you.

She glanced back across the street, half ashamed of herself, and hoping the man had not taken her fear as rudeness. She saw he was
Five Fortunes / 193

wearing a grimy sweater, not an anorak as she’d first thought. No help against this wind. And she saw he had a paperback book sticking out of his pocket.

It was MacDuff, the homeless man from the soup kitchen. He was standing around on a freezing December morning outside her apartment building. He didn’t seem to be coming or going. He seemed to be where he meant to be. She was terrified.

T
he first week of the surveillance, Carter took the night shift and Leesa took noon to eight. The Association couldn’t afford round the clock, and they figured even drug dealers had to sleep sometime. Leesa used a ratty-looking van with windows painted black; inside she had seven or eight changes of clothes and a dozen hats and wigs. Every time she stepped out of the van she looked like a different person. She kept the van on side streets and waited for her phone to ring.

Her first call came from a woman on the north side of the block.

A holder, a boy of about fourteen, had just put his stash into an overflowing trash bin outside her window. It was in a white paper bag from a doughnut shop. Leesa was able to drive past and pluck the bag without ever getting out of the car. She parked a block away and walked back to watch the panic on the kid’s face when he came back at a jog, having been beeped by his dealer, and found the bag gone.

They were not all so easy. Twice the holder came back before she could collect, and once the car described by the watcher was gone when she got there. Working in daylight was tricky, but there was euphoria when, by the end of the week, she had scored eight times.

You could feel things changing on the street, even the first week, Shanti reported with excitement. Word was spreading among the members of the Association that the plan was working. More people signed up to be on watch, and more people joined to stump up their share of the money. One dealer beat up his holder in broad daylight and they were both arrested. The holder was let go, but the dealer was

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Five Fortunes / 195

carrying crack vials, wads of cash, and an unregistered pistol. Immediately the Association started a letter-writing campaign demanding that the District Attorney’s office take the case seriously. To their surprise, in the second week they got a respectful reply.

“So we’ll see,” Shanti said. Carter could hear that she was full of righteous pride.

Carter, on the night shift, used the Brown Bomber; she kept a collection of hats and jackets in the backseat. Because it was dark, and the dealers had a tendency to shoot out the streetlights, she was protected by the same cover that covered them, and had less need to disguise herself. But by the second week, word was out. Holders were not going far from their stashes, and they were not leaving them unwatched. The police seemed to take an interest; black and whites cruised the streets more frequently. Dealers who had always worked the park were moving into side streets, requiring mobiliza-tion of new watchers. Shanti was ready for them.

T
he day Laurie’s candidacy was announced, Walter was due at his mother’s house to have dinner and talk about Albie’s letter. He arrived carrying the
New York Times
, the
Wall St.

Journal
, the
Washington Post
, and the
San Jose Mercury News
.

“I figured you’d have seen the
Chronicle
,” he said.

“Well, indeed I did, and I tried to talk to the candidate, but her line was tied up all day, so I talked to everybody else. Let me see.

Are there pictures?”

Walter had led the way into the library. Rae looked at his tall, slightly stoop-shouldered frame and thought how exactly like his father he carried himself. He had his father’s strong nose and deep-set, almost yellow, eyes. His thick ash-blond hair was from her side of the family. Walter’s father had been almost bald when he died, and Walter was older now than his father had ever been.

Walter settled Rae in her favorite chair and lit the fire James had laid. Then he handed her the papers in turn, opened to the coverage of Laurie’s announcement, and watched as his mother quickly read each piece.

The
Mercury News
carried the same smiling picture of Laurie surrounded by her children that the
Chronicle
had run; that must have been the one sent out with the press release. The
Times
ran a picture of Laurie in black, head bowed, walking up the steps of a church on the way to her husband’s funeral. She was on the arm of her son Carlos, who
did
look just like his father. The
Washington Post
ran the funeral

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Five Fortunes / 197

picture and also a picture of Laurie, age about six, in a dress with a bow sash, shaking hands with President Truman. Governor Hunt Knox, dark-haired and bulky in a double-breasted suit, stood, smiling, beside her.

The Washington paper reported the reactions to the news at the Capitol. Democrats were pleased. Senator Turnbull’s office declined to comment.

Rae laid aside the last paper. “Of course, I don’t want to miss a thing. Can I stuff envelopes? I could go door to door, and talk peoples’ ears off?”

Walter smiled. “I have big plans for you in this race, Mother, and I may send you door to door. But the first thing we need to do is raise money.”

“Why don’t I just give her some? I’ve got quite a bit.”

“That’s true, you do.”

“How much would she like? Why don’t I give her a hundred thousand?”

Walter roared with laughter. “Because I don’t want to visit you in jail. You can’t give more than a thousand dollars, it’s against the law.”

“Oh!” Rae was quite indignant.

“Excuse me, can I get you something to drink?” James had appeared at Rae’s elbow.

“I think I’ll have a negroni.”

“Can you make a negroni, James?” Walter asked.

“Certainly,” James said proudly.

“No, why don’t we have champagne?” said Rae. “It’s a great day.”

“That’s a fine idea. But wait a minute, James, as a man about to become a citizen, can you explain campaign contribution laws to my mother?”

“Certainly,” said James again. “You may contribute one thousand dollars per candidate. You may give up to twenty thousand dollars to a national party committee or five thousand dollars each to any other political committees. But you may not give more than a total of twenty-five thousand dollars in one year.”

“Thank you,” said Walter.

“You’re welcome.”

198 / Beth Gutcheon

“Well, at least,” said Rae, “I can give Laurie a thousand now and then another thousand in January.”

“No,” said James. “The thousand-dollar limit is per election, not per calendar year. You may give another thousand for the general election, if she wins her primary.” He went out to find champagne.

“I’m going to love having James for a brother-in-law,” said Walter.

“Yes, I think he’ll be a great addition.”

James returned with a bottle and two champagne flutes on a tray.

He opened the bottle expertly. He poured the wine and left the bottle behind him as he went out.

“To Laurie,” said Rae. Walter echoed this, smiling, as they clinked glasses. “And confusion to the enemy,” she added.

They sat quietly. “Mother, what exactly is going to happen after the adoption? Are they going to stay on? Are they going to call you

‘Mother’? How do you picture it?”

“This has been worrying Bert a good deal, I must say. He expects they’ll start putting something in my food, so I’ll go quietly mad, but I’ve pointed out that I’m worth much more to them sane and alive than in any other condition.”

“Have you discussed it with them?”

“Not very much. Doreen says how grateful they are and I say not a bit, don’t mention it…I thought I’d wait till you got back, and we’d think it through.”

“They probably will want their own house and all that. I would.

I
do
. But it ought to be made clear. Is she to be your daughter in name only, to satisfy the law? Or what?”

“I don’t see that it can be in name only. If I adopt her, I adopt her.

But it isn’t like bringing home a baby. I was thinking what we really ought to do is ask
them
.”

“Aren’t you smart,” said Walter. It had been fretting him that he was going to have to work it all out, the way he planned a campaign.

“Maybe now would be a good time.” She rang the little handbell that stood on the table beside her chair, and James appeared.

“James, could you and Doreen join us for a few minutes? Would it be convenient?”

Five Fortunes / 199

“Of course.” In a minute or two he was back with Doreen, who blushed and apologized.