New England White (30 page)

CHAPTER 32

DENNISON

(I)

T
HE FOLLOWING
M
ONDAY
, Julia and Lemaster drove up to New Hampshire to pick up Aaron at Exeter, where the fourteen-year-old was marvelously popular, perhaps because of his considerable charm, or perhaps because his father was president of a university where a not-inconsiderable number of the school’s graduates hoped to matriculate. They had decided to do it together, but conversation during the drive was more muted than usual. Preston had called the night before from Cambridge to announce that he would not be home for Christmas. He and his latest girlfriend were heading to Mexico. Julia was stunned. None of the children had ever missed Christmas. She pleaded. She argued. Preston was, as always, immovable. She decided to detour and see him, but Preston told her not to bother: they were leaving on the early flight.

Tonya Montez, chief local Sister Lady, liked to say that parenthood was the process of watching your children slowly lose interest in you. With her eldest, that process was already over.

They drove by his apartment anyway, just to be sure. There was no answer at the buzzer. “I suppose he already left,” said Lemaster.

“I suppose,” said Julia, worried, secretly, that Preston was ignoring them. She wished she knew why her firstborn so determinedly avoided his parents. If wishes were horses, Granny Vee used to say, then beggars would ride. Around Preston she always felt like a beggar.

Leaving Cambridge, they headed across the bridge into Boston and stopped at a row house in the endless maze of narrow, crooked historic streets of Beacon Hill. Parking is impossible but Lemaster eventually managed the miracle, squeezing the Mercedes into a spot that looked, at first glance, large enough to hold a child’s bicycle. He pumped his fist, because beating the odds was his hobby, and she kissed his cheek, because congratulating him was hers. The sky had the flat, hazy look that comes only from heavy smog or heavy weather. Their feet slid on the bumpy, cobbled sidewalk, the stones slippery because not every homeowner was equally diligent in clearing the seasonal mess. The houses were of stout brick, cramped and expensive. Few had lawns of any consequence. Windows opened directly into the street, like they did in many parts of Europe; walking past, you caught glimpses of neighbors sleeping, shaving, dressing, embracing, the full spectrum of activity among the newly wakened. Julia felt newly wakened herself. For the first time in years, she was taking risks. She would find Kellen’s evidence and save her daughter: unless, of course, her pride led to a fall, which she admitted was always possible.

The house was just like all the others, except that it sat on a corner lot and had slightly more than a postage stamp of a yard, guarded by a low wrought-iron fence in need of painting. Standing on the front step, they had an excellent view down the hill toward the Boston Common and the Public Garden. The brass knocker was an eagle, easily a hundred years old. A tall nurse of improbable beauty admitted them and whispered in a Haitian accent that Mr. Dennison was doing a little better today. Better than what? Julia wondered, but dared not ask. The nurse led them straight along the narrow hall to a chamber at the back of the house that could serve as dining room, parlor, or game room, because Bay Dennison, back in the day, had run a high-stakes poker game at which the powerful could do their dealing well beyond the scrutiny of the press; except, of course, for those members of the press who were invited to play.

The old man was in his wheelchair, wrapped to mid-chest in blankets, ignoring the view. He had lost weight to his several illnesses—his body was guilty of as many transgressions as the doctors chose to test for—but retained an insolent heft across the shoulders and a determined set to his jowly yellow jaw that reminded you of the power he had once wielded in American politics. Usually he would have a gofer present, but he fired them fast and, according to Lemaster, was between assistants just now. On the rolling table before him were scattered page proofs for the forthcoming third volume of his best-selling autobiography, and when they entered, he was hunched over, pencil in hand, furiously correcting the prose, obviously excited at the opportunity to spew more venom, although God alone knew who was left for him to skewer.

“With you in a minute,” he snapped without turning.

“Take your time, sir,” said Lemaster, and Julia glanced at her husband, who looked ready to stand and wait all day if commanded. He responded this way to nobody else. In fact, she had never heard him refer to another living soul as “sir.” She had never fathomed all the dimensions of her husband’s relationship with the man. But thirty-odd years ago, Representative Byron Dennison had started a far younger Lemaster on his path to professional glory, spotting the boundless potential in the summer intern, taking him beneath the same capacious wing that had launched so many other careers in the same generation of African America, opening doors, smoothing his path, and, as the years went by, making sure he stuck to it.

Unlike most of them, Lemaster never forgot.

“Not much time left,” the old man countered, scribbling hard with the red pencil. Peeking over his shoulder, Julia saw that he was now chasing the ghosts of his former friends in the civil-rights movement. Just what the country needed.

“You’ll outlive us all, Mr. Dennison,” said her husband.

“Only if you’re all planning to go in the next six months.”

“You should try to think positive.”

“Give me a reason.” He turned a page and returned to his agonistic scribbling. “Anyway, thinking positive didn’t help Zant, did it? Poor bastard. I thought they were all through lynching our people down your way.”

Lemaster smiled behind his mentor’s back. “I brought Julia.”

The head came up, the chair made a circle, and a welcoming smile spread over the ravaged gray face, flesh hanging in loose folds as if ready to peel. One of the eyes was faded and wheeling, but the other was bright and sharp as ever. “So you did. Not that you ever deserved her. She’s too good for you, Little Master”—which was what Dennison always used to call him, and therefore still did. But Lemaster loved him, and they all knew it. In two months it would be time for the old man’s birthday party, still a raucous affair attended by hundreds of movers and shakers, an event Lemaster had never missed, and nowadays helped organize. “How about you, Julia? Had your fifteen allotted affairs yet? Because you should be looking for somebody better, gorgeous creature that you are. If I were married to Little Master here, I’d have left him years ago. I don’t know how you put up with him. You’re a saint. A martyr. They’ll give you a statue. Listen, you can have mine. They’re unveiling my bust up at the Capitol. Stupid-ass amateur idea. I’m not going. They said, It’s a short walk. I said, Do I look to you like I can walk? Amateurs.”

“It’s good to see you, too, Bay,” she said, smiling back, because he never expected any response to his bombast, and he had commanded her, years ago, to use his nickname, one of his many tricks to keep Lemaster in his place. He tried to keep all his protégés in their places; what made Lemaster different was his willingness to stay there, a trait Julia admired in him, even though she could not quite say why.

“How’s your mother?”

“Thriving.”

“Still in France? Robbing the cradle?” Because Mona lived near Toulouse with an Englishman called Hap, twenty years her junior—short, said Mona, for
happiness.

“She says she’s not coming back until we’re a democracy again.”

Bay Dennison never precisely laughed: more a bray of delight, amused and condescending, as if he alone saw the world authentic and whole. “That’ll be the day.” Another guffaw. “So, any new books on the way?” He waved at the sheets on his rolling table. “I have to judge the competition.”

Julia shook her head. Mona had not published a volume in over a decade, although her furious essays still found an audience in the more marginal publications of righteously hating left anger. “You’ll have the stores all to yourself, Bay.”

“I dated her once. Maybe twice. You were just a little girl.” The good eye lapped at her as a younger man’s might. According to Lemaster, the worst of his tumors was behind the bad one. “Did she ever tell you?”

“Yes, Bay. You told me, too.”

“We went to the White House. LBJ was President. Danced all night. Lyndon danced with her, too. Wouldn’t let her go. And poor Lady Bird leaned over to me and said, ‘I don’t mind him dancing, but why does he have to slobber all over her?’” Dennison laughed, so his guests laughed, too. The story had appeared in the second volume of his memoirs. Most historians and Johnson insiders thought it no truer than the rest of Bay’s angrily exaggerated memories, many of which led to furious denials. But he wisely protected himself from liability by defaming only the dead. “I liked LBJ. People hated him for Vietnam, but he was the best of them all. Did the Civil Rights Act. Great Society. Voting Rights Act. Knew how to sit in a back room and drink whiskey and make deals. If you shook his hand, he’d keep his word. That’s what matters, Julia. Keeping your word.” A sly glance at Little Master, as if expecting an argument.

“I agree,” said Lemaster, right on cue.

Still Byron Dennison addressed himself only to Julia. “Know what the problem is nowadays? We haven’t had a real drinker in the White House since Nixon. Don’t know how they get anything done without the stuff. No wonder they’re all at each other’s throats. Too much tee-totaling down in Washington, if you want my opinion.”

“You could be right.” We visit the dying to seek their permission to go on living, Granny Vee used to say. Maybe that explains why we agree with whatever they tell us.

“I liked Nixon, too. He’d do you a deal. Just lock up the silver and keep your hands on the table.”

“So you keep telling me, Bay.”

“Sit in my lap.”

“I can’t. I have to watch my blood pressure.” Dennison laughed, the sound spluttery and wet, and Julia, smiling to make sure he knew her mood was gay, voiced the question his earlier comment had sparked. “Did you know him, Bay? Kellen Zant?”

He slapped the table in mirth. “Everybody knew that old faker.”

“Faker?”

“Mau-Maued everybody into hiring him. Made a fortune off of being the official, true-blue, certified Negro economist.” The good eye swiveled her way. Lemaster stood mute, a spectator at the play. “I liked him. Yeah, he was a faker. But he was my kind of faker.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Sure you do. Zant would call up some corporation and say, ‘How come you don’t have any black consultants?’ Then he’d threaten to go on television and make a stink about how they didn’t have any. And guess what? They’d hire him.”

Despite her husband’s presence and her respect for the old man, Julia could not keep a certain stiffness from her voice. “He was good at what he did. Those models to calculate the proper valuation of options—”

More laughter. Like most men accustomed to power, Byron Dennison valued his own opinions above other people’s facts. “He
was
good at what he did. And what he did best was making money for Kellen Zant. I know he
said
he was doing it for his client. I know he
said
he was doing it for the people. But he was
really
doing it for Kellen Zant.”

“I’m just saying—”

“You don’t have to defend your boyfriends to me, Julia. I told you I liked him.”

Cheeks flaming, Julia tried to answer, but the old man grabbed her wrist, stopped laughing, and tugged her close to whisper in her ear.

“Trust your husband,” he murmured, dying breath hot and moist.

“I try,” Julia said, very surprised, as Lemaster busied himself examining his mentor’s ego wall.

The grip was iron. “Try harder. It matters.”

After that came the part of the visit Julia hated. After ritual hugs, and ritual drinks, and ritual questions about the children, she was politely but firmly banished from the house. Bay Dennison studied his protégé’s face and told Julia to return in an hour. Knowing this moment would come, she had worn loose pants and sneakers. And, after an autumn spent far too close to Cookie’s, she could use the exercise. So she left the two men alone. This was their element, scheming together. Bay Dennison had been for many years supreme leader of the Empyreals, and Lemaster, through the two decades she had known him, had never made a major decision without consulting his mentor first. The Empyreals might be a good distance from the top of the heap, but the connection still mattered, and her husband nurtured it.

She wondered what decision he was making now.

Julia stopped in a deli for a bottle of water, and then walked through the Public Garden, finding it surprisingly crowded. There was old snow on the ground, but the temperature was in the forties, perfect walking weather. She stayed on the main paths, crossing each bridge several times, striding hard past the statues and monuments, because she was working out, not sightseeing, working hard because she was out of shape. The third time Julia passed the greening statue of the abolitionist Wendell Phillips, Mary Mallard was sitting on the bench, smiling at her.

“I’m full of surprises,” the writer said.

(II)

M
ARY HAD HER SNEAKERS ON TOO
, so they walked together. She lit a cigarette, but Julia made her put it out.

“You’ve changed,” said Mary, adjusting her scarf.

“I certainly hope so.”

“I like you this way. You have your shit together. You make eye contact. You’re confident. You even walk differently.”

Julia had to laugh. “All that in a few weeks.” Then: “What are you doing here, Mary? You obviously followed me.”

“From Elm Harbor? That would take some fancy driving, not to be seen.”

“All right, you’re a fancy driver.”

They were passing the swan boats, stacked and covered for the season. On the shore, a bevy of children played an intricate game of freeze tag, watched over by nuns. “I’m here because you need help, Julia. You can’t do this alone.”