Protect and Defend (57 page)

All at once, Kerry felt the weight of his decision, the warmth of Clayton’s loyalty. “You already have,” he assured his friend. “Don’t think I won’t consider it.”

Clayton fell quiet. “While you’re doing that,” he said at length, “consider Lara.”

“O
NLY YOU
can stop this,” Sarah said.

In the cramped confines of his office, she faced Martin and Margaret Tierney; though the USF campus was tree-lined and commodious, to Sarah the room at night felt like a prison, allowing the tension between them no release.

“By not appealing?” Tierney asked quietly.

“Yes. In thirty-six hours, the stay will expire.” Sarah kept her own voice low. “You’ve been true to your beliefs, Martin. But that’s not been enough.”

Behind his bare wooden desk, Martin Tierney steepled his fingers; sitting next to Sarah, Margaret Tierney stared at the tile floor. Such close proximity felt uncomfortable to Sarah, but all other choices—the Tierneys’ home; Sarah’s apartment; the offices of Kenyon & Walker—were patrolled by the media and demonstrators from the Christian Commitment. Caroline’s ruling, Sarah reflected, seemed to have unleashed forces which had overwhelmed them all.

“It’s not that simple,” Tierney told her. “Even if we withdraw, the Justice Department will petition the Supreme Court. This is an act of Congress, and it’s the government’s duty to defend it—no matter what
this
President may want.”

Sarah glanced at Margaret Tierney, who now watched her husband with pained intensity. “There’s another way to end it,” Sarah ventured. “However hard that might be.”

Tierney’s spectral eyes fixed her with a bleak stare. “Consent to an abortion?”

“Yes. That should moot the case—there’d be nothing for the government to stop, even if it were willing to risk an adverse ruling.” Sarah turned to Margaret Tierney. “This already has marked your daughter for life. Now she’s caught in
the middle of a Supreme Court nomination. Either
she’ll
be the reason Caroline Masters withdraws, or the President will decide to fight—in which case all hell breaks loose.”

“What happens to the President,” Tierney interrupted sharply, “
or
Judge Masters, is no concern of ours.”

Margaret Tierney still gazed at her husband in what Sarah hoped was a silent plea. “But Mary Ann is,” Sarah countered. “If you don’t stop them, she’ll never get her life back. She’ll be like Patty Hearst by a multiple of ten: in twenty years, some rag will put her on the cover with a caption like ‘The Girl Who Changed Supreme Court History—Where Is She Now?’”

Sarah paused, looking from husband to wife. “Where she is now,” she finished, “is waiting. For me to come back to my apartment, where
she
now lives. For you to say that you love her, and forgive her, and hope for
her
forgiveness. And that you’ll allow her to protect herself as she thinks best.”

At this, Margaret Tierney turned from her husband to Sarah, her voice tremulous. “How
is
she?”

Sarah searched for the most honest answer. “Scared,” she said. “Damaged. Hoping against hope you’ll change your mind.

“Part of her still thinks about how all of you were before the pregnancy, and wishes she could go back. Sometimes she wakes up, she says, and she’s that girl again. And then she remembers she can
never
go back.” Sarah softened her voice. “I know you love her. But do you have any idea how much you’ve hurt her?”

“Oh, a little,” Margaret answered with quiet sadness. “We’re the parents who denied her birth control, and I’m the mother who never spoke to her about sex. Which, unfortunately, isn’t true …”

Surprised, Sarah stifled a question.

“Yes,” Margaret told her. “I told her much, much more than ‘just say no.’ I suppose, perhaps understandably, that she wishes to forget that. And who would believe a mother who wants to pass on the curse of her own infertility?” She quickly closed her eyes, as though clearing them of tears. “We’re the adults, and she’s the child. Who I love, and hurt for, more than you— or Judge Masters—will ever know.”

Heartsick and confused, Sarah recalled the different versions of a family which sometimes divided her from her parents—
the events, so vivid to one, which another recalled quite differently. But here she foresaw something more fateful: the possible disintegration of this family and, perhaps, this marriage. “If you love her,” she urged Margaret, “you’ll need to let that transcend your own beliefs. All it takes is one of you to consent, and the other to forgive.”

Margaret’s lips parted. “Beliefs are hard,” she said at last. “Betraying them is worse. I don’t want that for Mary Ann.”

The telephone on Tierney’s desk rang.

It made Sarah start, breaking her silent connection with Margaret Tierney. Irresolute, Tierney stared at the blinking light. Then, with palpable reluctance, he answered.

“Yes?”

Listening, he seemed to sag. “I’m sorry,” he finally said, “I can’t talk to you right now. We’re meeting with Ms. Dash.”

Through the telephone, Sarah heard a voice rise in alarm, tinny and indecipherable. Gripping the phone to his ear, Tierney listened for some moments, in obvious distress.

At length, he interrupted. “Barry,” he said tightly, “I will have to call you back.”

In the moment which followed, Tierney’s face was blank. “Yes,” he promised. “Soon.”

Without awaiting an answer, he put down the phone.

Margaret Tierney watched her husband, tension creasing her forehead. “They’ll never let you alone,” Sarah told them. “Not until your family’s destroyed. Unless one of you puts an end to this.”

There was silence, and then it was Martin Tierney who answered. “An end to our grandson, you mean. Of all the actors in this miserable drama, we’re the only ones who are trying to save them both.” He shook his head, as though to clear it. “We need to be alone, Sarah.”

In mute appeal, Sarah turned to Margaret Tierney.

For an instant, the pain etched in her face gave Sarah hope, and then she turned away. “Please,” she murmured.

Without speaking, Sarah left.

L
YING IN BED
, Kerry heard the sound of water running in the bathroom, Lara showering. From his television, Caroline Masters gazed back at him.

The Christian Commitment had used selected photographs from the hearing, transmuted into a grainy black-and-white to make Caroline look imperious and remote. The text for the thirty-second spot was blunt:

“
Ninety percent of Americans
,” the woman’s voice said, “
oppose the barbaric procedure called ‘partial birth abortion.’

“This
woman supports it
.

“
Call President Kilcannon and tell him that a judge who favors infanticide is unfit to be Chief Justice of our highest court
.”

The Commitment, Kerry realized, must have cut the ad before the ruling became public—no doubt because of a leak from the court itself. Now they meant to ensure that he abandon Caroline Masters: according to Clayton, the spot was running hourly on NBC—Lara’s employer—and the three major cable news networks.

Fretful, Kerry snatched his bedside phone and hit the “re-dial” button. Three rings were followed by Allie Palmer, reciting the message which tonight Kerry had learned by heart.

“
This is the Palmer residence …
”

When the message ended, Kerry said simply: “Chad, it’s Kerry again. You know the number. Call me no matter how late.”

When Kerry hung up, the picture had changed.

A live broadcast on CNN showed a candlelight vigil at the Lincoln Memorial. The camera focused on a handmade sign:
LINCOLN FREED THE SLAVES—NOW FREE THE UNBORN
. In a haunting, near-religious tableau, the demonstrators huddled like communicants before the monument: a grave and massive Lincoln, lit a yellow-bronze, seated behind white pillars.

Kerry’s enemies would leave nothing to chance, he knew. And they would use any weapon they uncovered.

He had not picked this battle; it was the last he would have chosen—and the worst, Clayton insisted—on which to stake his presidency. That had been the focus of today’s tense and sometimes testy meetings: Kerry as President. Yet now, alone, he thought of those other people about whom, except for Lara, he had spoken of as chess pieces: Caroline Masters, who as a judge had chosen to face an issue which might shatter her ambitions. Her daughter, whose life as a result might be cruelly altered. Chad Palmer, who out of honor and self-interest had conspired to prevent this, and now risked enraging those set on besting Kerry. And Lara, whom Kerry feared losing more than he feared defeat.

But there were others, as well. Mary Ann Tierney, whom Caroline Masters had saved—at least for a time—from what Kerry believed was a grievous wrong. The nameless girls, all too real to Kerry, who were lost, abused, mistreated. He had been marked from childhood by the shock of seeing his mother’s bloody and broken nose, hearing her cries from the bedroom; as terrible as that had been for him, Kerry knew that it was essential to the man he had become. For he could never be like Macdonald Gage, who believed that his own good fortune was a reflection of virtue, which others could emulate if they wished.

Nor could Caroline Masters.

She had proven that—in her rulings in favor of the brutalized prisoner, and now with Mary Ann Tierney. The Supreme Court Kerry meant to leave behind would know that law without compassion was a shortcut to injustice. For this, he could not have chosen better than Caroline; if he chose to fight, that would be why.

Kerry knew himself; he would not be President without that. He was as capable of ruthlessness and unsentimentality as Gage. But Kerry needed a larger cause than power; the belief that he was bettering the future of those who relied on him, and of a country he deeply loved, whose ideals had
helped raise Kerry himself, the son of immigrants, to become its leader. Armed with
that
, he acknowledged with withering honesty, there might be little he would not do to make Caroline Masters the next Chief Justice.

Before him, candles flickered around the monument, the electronic image of a reality less than a mile away. If he went to the window, Kerry could almost see it. Instead he watched the screen, and wondered what his course would be.

By tomorrow morning, he would know, and so would the country.

As Kerry reflected, the bathroom door opened.

The shadow of a woman crossed the room, pausing by the screen, her nude body illuminated by its light. She registered the candlelit images, then turned to him.

“On?” she asked lightly. “Or off?”

In the darkness, Kerry smiled. “Off.”

Lara walked to the bed, pulling down the cool sheet, sliding close to him so that her nipples grazed his chest and the slim line of her body touched his.

Kerry closed his eyes. Until the night they had become lovers, so surprising and yet, it now seemed, so inevitable, he had forgotten that it was possible to love someone so much that it frightened him. This was different from loving a child, surely, but the feelings must be akin—to place this much at risk, to lose control, so that the life of another was essential to your own. In childhood, Kerry had learned the pain of loving; it had hurt to love his mother yet be unable to protect her. But it was that vulnerability, the melding of his emotions with those of someone else, which had made him who he was, so different from his cool and self-protective brother. And it was Lara who had taught him that he, not Jamie, was—after all— the fortunate one.

Softly, she kissed his neck, the wisp of her breath warm on his skin. “What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Right now? Just be with you.”

Her laugh was knowing. “Unless Chad calls.”

“Timing,” he answered, “is everything.”

With his free arm, he swept aside the covers, leaving them exposed.

Gently, he kissed her and then, lips parted, again. His
mouth, sliding to her throat, began a leisurely progress down her neck, her nipples, her stomach …

“I’m sorry, Chad,” he heard her whisper. “He’s busy.”

Afterward they lay in the dark, warm and damp, Lara’s body flung carelessly across his. They had not spoken in some minutes.

“What
will
you do?” Lara asked.

“I don’t know yet.” He gazed at the ceiling, pensive. “A lot depends on Chad.”

For a time, Lara was quiet. “And on me?” she finally asked.

It was this conversation which, though necessary, Kerry dreaded. That her secret could destroy his public career stirred in Lara both worry and resentment, a volatile mix which—in the crucible of his presidency—Kerry feared could put an end to them. Silent, he pondered the complexity of love, in which selflessness was inseparable from selfishness. He feared for Lara, and feared losing her.

“The last time we discussed this,” he told her, “we were walking toward the Lincoln Memorial. As I recall, it didn’t go very well.”

“What you mean,” she answered with a trace of humor, “is that I acted like a bitch.”

“That’s not how I remember it. I do remember you saying to leave all that behind us—for good. And, about Masters, to do what I damn well pleased.”

Her tone retained its irony. “And that wasn’t clear enough?”

Still gazing upward, Kerry expelled a breath. “Since then, Caroline’s changed the equation. Now she rises or falls on abortion …”

“So tonight you have a vision. I’m on the
Today Show
, discussing my Vera Wang bridal gown. Jealous of my youth and beauty, Katie Couric asks if I aborted the President’s child when he was a married senator and I was covering him for the
Times
. And the best I can say—at least truthfully—is,
‘Kerry didn’t want me to.’
”

There was no avoiding this. “If not Katie,” Kerry answered, “someone. They got damned close to it during the campaign. And Gage and the Christian Commitment play to win.”

“A
triple
play, actually. They get Masters, you,
and the
‘liberal media.’ Through me.”