Galveston (22 page)

Often Pete came, talking incessantly, making suggestions, commenting on his reception of the evening. Charles would be nodding, looking to me for encouragement. “I tell you, Claire,” Pete must have said a hundred times that summer and fall, “we're gonna give that Fuller a run for his money, you bet'cha life. Must have been three hundred people at the park tonight, cheerin' and carryin' on like you never seen. Don't you believe we haven't got those scoundrels at the Wharf Company shakin' in their boots—”

Still, the fact Fuller would be hard to beat couldn't be denied. He'd pleased a lot of people in Galveston during his career. He praised the existing wharf facilities, and it was easy enough to say to the people that Houston would never have a prayer of coming up to our standards as a port. “A major port fifty miles from the Gulf of Mexico? Preposterous!” That was what he said one night at some dinner where he spoke, after first reminding those attending that Charles's election would most assuredly mean an increase in city taxes. His words about the port were recorded next day in the
News
as part of the context of a scathing editorial which also noted Fuller would be saying that when the port of Galveston consisted of nothing but boarded-up wharves and empty docks.

Once Pete followed up on Porter Jackson's suggestion—the night of Charles's speech—that we have a telephone installed at our house. He had one in his, and he wanted to stay in constant contact with Charles throughout the campaign. I listened intently to Charles's reaction. “I won't have my home turned into a campaign headquarters,” he said. “It's bad enough the office is in a state of disruption all the time.”

“All right, boy, whatever you say.”

Even without the phone, however, our home would never be quite the hideaway of solace it had been before the campaign began. There had been handbills printed up, and as they were so shorthanded down at Charles's office I was chosen to solicit the help of neighborhood boys to place them at as many locations throughout the city as possible. The copy on the handbills was thought up by Isobel Carter, and she made the original for duplicating. They were about fifteen by twenty inches in size, with a large picture of Charles in the center. At the top they read, “Save Galveston,” then below the picture, “Vote for Charles Becker on March sixth.”

Rubin went with Charles to his first campaign speech toward the end of June, and from that time on was as engrossed in the campaign as any of us. He attended as many rallies as he could, and his name appeared one day in the
News
as being a Charles Becker supporter. How could any of us have known of the consequences that benign piece of news would bring?

Throughout the summer Janet kept to herself, just why I had no time to ponder. Since she'd returned from Virginia in early May I hadn't had a decent conversation with her, save the night Charles and I both went over to her house briefly to offer our condolences about her father. She appeared saddened, yet resigned to his death, and I felt this was probably because she was with him during his illness and could see that he was suffering.

I do remember walking by her house once or twice and seeing the shutters drawn, and I would recall then how many years the thought of her lying in Rubin's arms had tormented me before the day, which now seemed years ago instead of months, when I'd learned the truth about Janet and Rubin. Since then I'd often thought how queer, how very, very queer they were, and my attraction for Rubin had steadily dulled. At times it seemed almost laughable to remember how much he once reminded me of Damon.

Then one day everything went into reverse. There was to be a small surprise gathering to celebrate Faye's birthday in a couple of days. (“Nothin' too elaborate,” Pete had told me. “Lord knows we got enough to do without havin' birthday parties. Just the same, she's put up with campaign talk till it runs out her ears, and I feel I owe her this.”) And as Charles had the rig down at the office that day I'd walked to Schott's Drug Store to buy Faye a bottle of Essence of Sweet Orchids perfume. It was her scent—the one she used so generously—and I had heard her remark one day she was almost at the bottom of a bottle. It wasn't much of a birthday gift, but what could one give a person who already had everything? While there, I noticed a display of Huyler's Bon-Bons, and in a fit of nostalgia over the fact Teddy Marlowe had often gifted Ruth with the candies the summer she visited so long ago, I bought a box for Faye.

I was walking back when I saw Janet at the edge of her front verandah. How pale and wan she looked as she clutched the banister and made her way slowly, carefully down the twelve stairs … almost as if she were ill, I thought. Then, perhaps because I'd been reminiscing about Ruth just moments earlier, something she'd said once struck me again. “Receding,” she had called Janet, a person with a “faraway” look. I caught my breath as the obvious reason for her withdrawal over the past few months dawned on me. Janet was dying.

I continued to gaze at her until she'd reached the front walk and looked up. “Oh, hello,” she called, “I was just on my way to see you, didn't know you were gone.”

“Are you all right?” I asked quickly.

“Yes, I think so … for now,” she said, walking toward me, the edge of her lips curved into a tentative smile.

I invited her in for tea then, and as she followed me through my gate and up the front stairs, each step seemed to bring forward another clue looming at the back of my memory—simple instincts felt not only by Ruth and by me, but voiced by Janet herself. She couldn't feature growing old, she'd remarked once, long ago. And the photograph of Anna McBride I'd seen so many years ago in Charles's old office: a woman from whose face I tried to discern the subtle shadow of early death. Now the resemblance between that face and the face of Janet Garret glared at me, and Ruth's word repeated itself again and again: receding, receding … yes! Receding into darkness and oblivion …

Had Rubin felt it too, and reasoned that if Janet were to be taken from him early, surely he could grant her the kindness of standing by her for as long as she lived?

We were inside the house now, and I could hear her skirt rustling behind me as I swung open the kitchen door. It was almost too much … realizing in one instant the tragic predicament of Janet Garret, then, with scarcely a chance to come to grips with the certain knowledge, to be placed in the uncomfortable situation of entertaining her at my kitchen table.

I put the kettle on as she eased down into a chair. She pulled out a hanky and wiped her forehead. “It's still awfully hot, isn't it?” she said. “I know this year I'll be especially thankful for the cooler months ahead.”

“If you'd rather drink something cold, I can get—”

“No, no. Odd, isn't it, but hot tea has a steadying effect on me, even in the heat.”

“Yes, for me, too,” I said, and wondered then if she knew the full truth of the seriousness of her condition. Perhaps a doctor would withhold that sort of information as long as possible.

It was a while before I spoke again, and she was silent as I groped for something to say. “We've been so caught up in the campaign, I've hardly seen you lately,” I said finally, trying to keep from staring at the grayish pools underneath her eyes.

“I haven't been feeling very well,” she said.

Just then the teakettle began to sing, startling me so I almost leaped up from my chair. “Ready!” I said, too abruptly, and rose to fill the cups. Making conversation was easier with my back to her, so I continued, “Have you seen a doctor?”

“Oh yes,” she said, then paused. “You see, Rubin and I are expecting a child.”

I pivoted around and stared at her, unable to speak. She was quite mad, I thought at first, and not to be taken seriously. How best to talk to someone who is mad? I studied her eyes. What was their expression? Defiance, yes, decidedly. Was it possible I'd been the object of a cruel joke? Was Rubin even now sitting over there laughing, waiting for Janet to return and give him my reaction to her story? I measured my words ever so carefully when finally I spoke. “My dear, how nice. When?”

“February, March. Doctor says first babies sometimes tarry. I've felt so wretched. But, except for a little dizziness, I am getting a little better now; after the first four months, I suppose one becomes accustomed.”

“How wonderful, a baby brother or sister for Serena.”

“Yes. She is most delighted, I assure you. I want to share the experience with her, want her to love the baby when it comes. It's a very hard thing for some children to get used to a new arrival—all depends upon how the child is prepared, don't you think?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I must get back. I promised Serena a trip down to the beach this afternoon.”

I saw her out, watched her go down the porch steps and across the yard, knowing she had undone me and that someday I would get her back. Best now to shove it from my mind; concentrate on the election.

I walked back into the kitchen and passed by the current
News
Charles had left on the counter. I envisioned a new headline on the front page: “Priest and Wife Conspire to Drive Friend Insane.” How hysterical. I began to laugh, and I laughed and laughed until tears ran down my face.

Chapter
5

It was the strategy of the “Charles Becker for Mayor” campaign that voters should be made aware of the candidate and his platform quite early, then later allowed to watch current events in the city while savoring the image put forth by him. Therefore, after better than two months of heavy speaking engagements, the thrust toward victory would be laid aside to cool—while the Galveston weather did the same. Then with the opening of the new year—election year—campaigning would again become vigorous and hold with the pattern until election day.

As the month of September rolled around I was thankful to see the change in schedule coming, for the pace of the summer had begun catching up with Charles. He looked drawn and tired, and confessed to missing acutely the time he was accustomed to spending at practicing law. “Confound it, Claire,” he told me one day, “Pete keeps delegating legal cases that would normally come to me out to others because my time has been consumed with this thing. I told him yesterday if I didn't begin handling my share of the cases, I would likely forget what I know about the law. Then if we lose the election, I'd be in fine straits.”

“You've said it yourself, one must work a good deal harder when approaching the voters with a totally new concept in city government. Besides, you're not going to lose.”

“Don't count on victory. It looks good, but it also looks highly favorable for Fuller. He's done his share of campaigning, I can assure you, and our spies report his turnouts are every bit as good as ours, sometimes better.”

“What do you mean, spies?” I asked him.

“People we send to watch his speeches and gather what he's talking about so we'll know how to counteract.”

“I see. And does Fuller send people to watch you?”

“Of course, Claire. Don't be naïve. Politics is cutthroat at any level.”

“Do you think Fuller would have launched his campaign so early if it hadn't been for you?”

“I doubt it. The other two contenders—Smith and Doaks—don't pose any threat. It's essentially between us.”

“That's life, isn't it?” I said. “Political race, war, whatever, it always comes down to one-to-one in the end, doesn't it?”

“My, you're philosophical today. What's that thing you're knitting?”

“A blanket for Ruth's baby James. The boy's been in the world almost two weeks, and I've known he was coming for months. I've never had time till now to make anything to send to him.”

“Ah, yes, and I've hardly had time to think of him at all. You know, Pete told me something the other day that really surprised me. His boy Teddy—you know, Teddy will be coming into the firm before long—wrote letters to Ruth for a couple of years after she went home that summer. I never knew that, did you?”

“She never mentioned anything about it to me. I shouldn't wonder, though. Teddy was quite taken with Ruth, but for some reason she just didn't cotton to him in like fashion. I would have been happy for them to have gotten together … in fact, at the time it seemed incredibly important … but one person's attraction for another—or lack of it—is one of the world's great wonders.”

“Yes. That's quite true.”

Just then I heard a knocking at the back door. At first I thought someone was playing tricks, for when I opened the door no one was there. Then Rubin walked up from the side of the back porch. “I was just admiring your yard, Claire, and thinking how I regret seeing the time of year come that will kill the grass and flowers. The church grounds look so pretty still … Charles home?”

He had not looked directly at me while speaking, though of course this came as no surprise. I felt it likely his reference to the beauty of our yard was but an excuse for having something to look at while he spoke to me. I had said nothing to him since learning from Janet they were expecting a baby. Any remark I might have made would have sounded foolish, and he would have seen straight through it.

“Yes, in the parlor. Come in.”

He followed me through the hall and into the parlor, and I had an urge to stop walking and turn around suddenly, to see if he was watching me.

“Rubin, my good man, come in. My first afternoon off,” said Charles. “I'm relaxing and being waited upon. Sit down.”

Now, in the dim afternoon light of the parlor I could see something was troubling Rubin.

“Everything going all right? Onward to victory, and so forth?” He made a fist with his right hand, a hearty gesture that would have suited him on other days, yet today looked unnatural.