In the Lake of the Woods (16 page)

"Not like that," Kathy said.

"Beg pardon?"

"John wants to do things. Accomplish things. That's the point of it."

Tony was still grinning at her. "Spectacular. Didn't I say that? And I appreciate the input, except in the real world you don't accomplish zip without winning. Losers just lose." He rearranged his weight on the sofa. For a few seconds he seemed to be considering a number of amusing options. "This whole game—politics—it's like hustling a woman. Same principle more or less."

Kathy rolled her eyes but said nothing.

"Wrap your mind around it," Tony said. "You're at a party, say. You spot this hot looker across the room, this real babe, so you wander over and start politicking. Nice firm handshake, look her in the eye. Talk about every damn thing under the sun. Talk about Aristotle and Gandhi, how these guys affected you on a deep personal level, how they changed your life forever. Tell about your merit badges, that terrible experience you had with polio, what a sensitive human being you are, and then after a while, real polite, you invite this broad to dinner. Blow a month's pay, shovel out the oysters and caviar. Pretty soon she starts to owe you. It's never said
like that, not direct, but this little pumpkin knows the rules, she knows how the deal works. Code of commerce, so to speak. Anyhow, the whole time you keep talking up your qualifications, how you're nuts about public TV, et cetera, ad shitum. The spiel's important, right? Wining and dining, all the courtship stuff, you got to do it. Because this girl's human just like you and me. She's got an ego. She's got her dignity. I mean, she's a living, breathing piece of ass and you got to respect that."

Tony's gaze slid along the floor toward Kathy.

"A metaphor," he said.

 

John Wade spent six years in the state senate. Tony ran the campaigns, which were slick and expensive, but the numbers increased nicely over the years, the margins almost tripling between 1976 and 1980.

Among his colleagues in the statehouse, John was regarded as a comer. He knew how to get along with people, how to twist arms without causing fractures. Compromise, he came to realize, was the motor that made government move, and while an idealist in many ways—a Humphrey progressive, a believer in the fundamental human equities—he found his greatest pleasure in the daily routine of legislative politics, the give and take, the maneuvering. Almost by instinct, he knew when to yield and what to require in return. He was smart and discreet. People liked him. Early on, with practice, he cultivated an aspect of shyness in his public demeanor, a boyish quality that inspired trust, and by the end of his first term, in 1980, this and numerous other virtues had been noted in important places. The papers rated him as one of the hot young stars; there was talk about a future at higher levels.
John's attitude toward all this was straightforward. He had humane instincts. He genuinely wanted to do good in the world. In certain private moments, without ever pondering it too deeply, he was struck by the dim notion of politics as a medium of apology, a way of salvaging something in himself and in the world.

Still, Tony Carbo was right. Politics was his profession, and there was nothing dishonorable about presenting himself as a winner. He wore expensive suits, watched his weight, nursed friendships where friendships mattered. Slender and sandy-haired, bony in the face, he photographed well, especially with Kathy at his side, and as a public figure he had the sort of presence that made people pay attention. On the dinner circuit he was modest and articulate, but it was never the sort of smoothness that could be mistaken for insincerity. This, too, was something he cultivated—sincerity. He worked on his posture, his gestures, his trademark style. Manipulation, that was still the fun of it.

 

The state senate ate up huge chunks of time, including weekends and most holidays, and as a consequence his life with Kathy sometimes suffered. They were happy, of course, but it was a happiness directed toward the future. They deferred things. Vacations and children and a house of their own. At night, sometimes, they would pore through a stack of travel brochures, making lists of resorts and fancy hotels, but in the end there was always the next campaign to pay for, the next election, and money was always a problem. They cut back on luxuries. They learned to be versatile with credit cards. In his off hours, and when the legislature was out of session, John supplemented his income with work for a St. Paul law firm,
and in the autumn of 1981 Kathy took a full-time job in the admissions office at the University of Minnesota, which helped cover the bills. But even then they felt some strain. At times it seemed as if they were making their way up a huge white mountain, always struggling, sometimes just hanging on, and for both of them the trick was to remain patient, to keep their eyes fixed on the summit where all the prizes were. They tried to be optimistic, but on occasion it was hard to keep believing. They didn't go out much. They didn't have real friends. They rarely found the energy to make love.

"It's strange," Kathy said one evening. "Back in college, we'd just screw and screw, a couple of rabbits. Now it feels sort of—" She bit down as if to check herself. "I don't know. Sometimes it feels like I'm living with this
door.
I keep trying to get in, I keep pushing, but the damn thing's stuck shut and I just can't budge it."

"I'm not a door," John said. "And I'm not stuck."

"It feels that way."

"Then I'm sorry. We'll fix it."

She looked straight at him. Maybe it was the light, he thought, but her eyes had a strange silvery cast.

"John, listen. I don't know if anything's really sacred to you. Final and sacred."

"Us," he said. "Your tongue, my mouth. No one else's. Forever."

"You aren't keeping anything from me?"

"That's ridiculous."

"Is it?"

"Yes," he said. "Totally."

She glanced away for a second, then sighed and looked back at him. "Except you wouldn't ever tell, would you?
I mean, if there
were
secrets, you wouldn't ever let on?"

John took her in his arms. He feigned a teasing laugh, a clear conscience. He was terrified of losing her, and always had been, but he did not say that.

"Nonsense," he said. "I love you, Kath. We're aces."

 

"You
are
clean?" Tony Carbo said.

"I am."

"No ghosts?"

"None."

"But like if there's something in your closet, some deep dark shit with little girls ..."

"Nothing."

"For sure?"

John smiled and said, "Positive."

"Well, let's hope so," Tony said, "because you damn well better be. There's any snot up your nose, somebody'll dig it out and squish the stuff right up against your forehead. Sooner or later, man, it's bound to happen. That means for sure. Small-time politics, you can hide the boogers. Not in the big leagues."

"I understand."

"So you're safe?"

John looked away for a moment. A red ditch flashed across his field of vision.

"Right," he said. "Safe."

Tony nodded and picked up a notepad. "What about religion? You've got religion, I hope to Christ."

"I'll find it."

"Lutheran."

"Fine with me."

"Terrific. Church once a week, ten o'clock sharp." Tony
flicked his eyebrows. "I got this feeling we're gonna have a god-fearing Lutheran for lieutenant governor."

 

Again, John Wade won big, by more than 60,000 votes, then spent the next four years cutting ribbons. Predictably, the lieutenant governorship was a do-nothing job, worse than tedious, but from the beginning he viewed it as little more than a stop along the way. He ran errands, paid attention to his party work, kept his face in the papers. If a Kiwanis club up in Duluth needed a luncheon speaker, he'd make the drive and tell a few jokes over chicken fricassee and give off a winner's golden glow. Already he had his sights locked on the U.S. Senate. The future seemed sweet; he could smell it. In July of 1982 Kathy told him she was pregnant.

 

In bed that night John held her close. They were young, he told her. Plenty of time. They were near the top of that mountain they'd been climbing, almost there, one last push and then they'd rustle up a whole houseful of kids.

In the morning John made a phone call.

Forms were signed.

A freckled young doctor explained things, then sent them out to the waiting room. Kathy paged through magazines while John tried to concentrate on a framed print of grazing cattle.

When the nurse called her, Kathy smoothed out her skirt and stood up.

"Well," she said. "Keep an eye on my purse."

John watched a swinging door compress the air behind her. And then for an indeterminate period of time he sat appraising the grazing cattle. Curiously, he felt the beginnings of sorrow, which perplexed him, and it required effort to direct
his thoughts elsewhere. A few phone calls, maybe. Check in with Tony. He looked around for a telephone, half rising, but then some strange force seemed to press him back into the chair. The room wasn't quite solid. Very wobbly, it seemed. And suddenly, as though caught in a box of mirrors, John looked up to see his own image reflected on the clinic's walls and ceiling. Fun-house reflections: deformations and odd angles. He saw a little boy doing magic. He saw a college spy, madly in love. He saw a soldier and a husband and a seeker of public office. He saw himself from inside out and upside down, the organic chemistry, the twisted chromosomes, and for a second it occurred to him that his own stability was at issue.

At supper that night he tried to describe the experience to Kathy. Except it was hopeless. He couldn't find the words. Kathy's eyes went skipping across the surfaces of things.

At one point he suggested taking a drive.

"Drive?" she said.

"If you're up to it."

Kathy regarded him without expression. Her hair was blond and curly, thinning slightly, the corners of her eyes worn by their years together.

"All right," he said, "no drive."

They sat in silence. It was mid-July, warm and humid, and for a long while there was only the sound of knives and forks.

"Kath," he finally said. Then he stopped and said, "We did the right thing."

"Did we?"

"Yes. Bad timing."

"Timing," she said.

"Next year we can always ... You all right?"

She blinked and looked down at the table. "Am I all right?
Am I? God, I don't even know. What
is
all right?" She pushed her plate away. "A goddamn baby. It's all I wanted."

"I know that."

"What else did I ever ask for?"

"Nothing."

"Tell me. What else?"

"Nothing," he said.

They watched TV for an hour.

Afterward, Kathy did some ironing, then carried a book back to the bedroom.

John waited until well after midnight before turning off the television. He undressed, took a Seconal, lay down on the couch. The apartment was mil of odd noises. He loved her. More than anything. Drifting, feeling the drug, he closed his eyes and gave himself over to the mirrors in his head. He was awed and a little frightened by all the angles at play.

 

They never talked about it. Not directly, not obliquely. On those occasions when it rose up in their minds, or when they felt its presence between them, they would carefully funnel the conversation toward safer topics. They would speak in code or simply go quiet and wait for the mood to change. But for both of them, in different ways, there was now an enduring chill in their lives. Some nights Kathy would wake up crying. "So terrible," she'd say, and John would take her in his arms, doing what he could, and then for a long while they would lie silently in the dark and take guesses at each other's thoughts. They were not ashamed. They knew all the wonderful reasons. They knew it was an accident of nature. They knew that biology should not dictate, that their lives were already far too complicated, that they were not yet prepared for the responsibilities and burdens. They understood
all this. But lying there in the dark, they also understood that they had sacrificed some essential part of themselves for the possibilities of an ambiguous future. It was the guilt of a bad wager. They understood this, too, and they felt the consequences.

 

On January 18, 1986, in a Hilton ballroom six blocks from Karra's Studio of Magic, John Wade announced his candidacy for the United States Senate. Kathy was there, and Tony Carbo, and a happy-looking assembly of dignitaries in pinstripes and starched blue shirts. There was enthusiasm and good humor. John had the streamlined look of a winner. There was still a primary to get through, which could be tricky, but the polls had him fifteen points up on an old war-horse named Ed Durkee, his closest rival. Not a lock, but close enough. For well over a year Tony had been fitting the pieces together, and in the ballroom that morning it was evident that his labors had paid off. People were smiling. The troops were in line, the appropriate blessings had been secured.

John kept his speech short. He talked about fresh air and fresh starts.

When it was over, the three of them took a cab across town to an expensive restaurant near the capitol. John and Kathy ordered salads and vodka tonics, Tony had the pot roast special with a pair of bourbons. When the drinks came, Tony stood and raised his glass. He wore his green corduroy suit, freshly dry-cleaned, tight at the shoulders. "To freshman senators," he said. "Fresh air and fresh starts. Fresh new blood."

"Amen," said Kathy, and laughed.

Beneath the table, she put a hand on John's knee. The restaurant was full of the usual noontime pack of watchful
lobbyists and string-pullers. The background music was from Broadway.

"So I guess we're off," Kathy said. "The press conference, it went all right?"

Tony chuckled. "Pretty all right. Four TV crews, half the
Star-Trib
's
newsroom. Couldn't do better for Mr. Goulet."

"Who?"

"Camelot. You're listening to him." He sighed and cupped his hands at his belly. "Mister Who. Just proves you got to stay fresh."