Standing in the Rainbow (43 page)

About ten minutes into the trip home Betty Raye took her earrings off and reached for her purse. But it was not there. She realized she must have left it at the party, in the upstairs powder room.

She would not have returned to the Wheelers’ but her reading glasses were in the purse also and she needed them. The young state trooper who was filling in for Ralph Childress that night turned around and drove her back to the party. She slipped in and went upstairs and got her purse. As she was coming down the stairs, trying her best to be inconspicuous, she heard a woman’s laugh that was so infectious she had to look and see where it was coming from. The woman, who had just joined the party, standing in the middle of a large crowd of men, laughed again and was clearly enjoying a story that was being told. Betty Raye could not help but stop and stare for a moment until Martha Ross, a woman she had met earlier, walked up and said in a loud voice, “Why, Mrs. Sparks, we all thought you had left!”

Betty Raye whispered and tried to head for the door, hoping not to be noticed by anyone else. “I did but I had to come back; I forgot my purse.”

Martha followed her. “Oh, don’t you just
hate
when you do that, I do it all the time.” When Betty Raye reached the door, curiosity got the best of her and she said, “Mrs. Ross, who is that pretty lady over there?”

Mrs. Ross looked. “Why, that’s Vita Green. Don’t you know Vita?”

Betty Raye shook her head and Mrs. Ross looked at her in surprise. “She practically runs your husband’s arts program. I can’t believe you don’t know Vita.” She proceeded to grab Betty Raye by the arm and pull her across the foyer, calling out in an excited voice, “Vita! Look who I have here. . . . I can’t believe you haven’t met Mrs. Sparks yet.”

An entire room full of laughing and chatting people suddenly went as silent as if they had all been struck dumb. Even the ice in the glasses stopped rattling. The men in Vita’s group went visibly pale before her eyes.

Vita, who had her back turned to Betty Raye at the time, seemed to be the only person able to move and speak. She casually turned around, her expression unchanging, and with warmth and poise said, “Why no, Mrs. Sparks and I have somehow managed to miss one another until now.”

Vita smiled and extended her hand and in a pleasant voice added, “Hello. I’m so pleased to finally meet you at last.”

Betty Raye was dazzled by Vita’s large diamond spray pin and her beauty in general but did manage to offer a faint “How do you do.”

Vita smiled again. “It’s so lovely to meet you, Mrs. Sparks. I hope we’ll see each other again sometime.”

“Thank you,” said Betty Raye. As she made her way back out of the crowded room, Mrs. Ross, thinking she had just done a good deed, said, “That’s nice, I am glad I was able to introduce you two.”

As soon as Betty Raye got to the door and it closed behind her, an ice cube managed a weak little clink and gradually people began to move and within seconds, Vita, who had never blinked an eye, continued her conversation as if nothing momentous or so potentially dangerous as wife-meets-mistress had just happened.

On the drive back to the mansion Betty Raye thought about Mrs. Green. When they had met she had so gracefully and effortlessly moved her black cigarette holder from one hand to the other, with such elegance and style. She was like one of those movie stars that she and Anna Lee had seen at the Elmwood Theater. Betty Raye wondered if she should try to take up smoking. Vita, on the other hand, who had only seen Betty Raye in photographs, wondered how Hamm could have ever been attracted to this rather plain, nondescript person, a woman who, she was sure, was perfectly nice but had looked more like the help than a guest.

Hamm, who had been in another room at the time, had missed the entire event. Betty Raye had not said a word or seemed the least bit suspicious but Hamm was furious and promised Vita that it would not happen again. From that day forward, Betty Raye was never out of trooper Ralph Childress’s sight for a moment.

Power

A
FTER
B
ETTY
R
AYE
and Vita had the near miss Cecil said to Hamm, “It’s your life, honey, but you are not being very considerate of your wife and that’s all I’m going to say.” But Wendell Hewitt, the attorney general of the state, was worried about Hamm getting hurt politically. Wendell knew how fast that could happen firsthand. He had been caught with a blonde and ruined his own chances at being governor. But most of all, Wendell and Rodney had been used to being his only advisers and they resented Vita’s influence over him. They tried to warn him how dangerous the situation was. But Vita never worried about what anybody said as far as Hamm was concerned. She knew she was the one he ran to when he was happy, sad, or scared or needed advice. She accepted who he was without question or judgment and he knew it. The night he gave his speech in front of seven thousand people at the state Democratic convention, he came back to her exhilarated, his eyes shining. He always ran a temperature about three degrees higher than most people but tonight he was burning up. “I tell you, Vita, that feeling, knowing all those people are listening to you and you can tell them anything, it scares the hell out of me how easily people are led.” He looked at her, his eyes still glowing. “You know, sometimes I get so tired of having to fight Earl Finley and the rest of them for every little thing, running myself in the ground trying to push stuff through. I started asking myself why. Why was I doing it? What for? But tonight when I got up there in front of all those people, I knew that was the thing I’d been chasing after.” He got up and paced the room. “I wish I could describe what it feels like to have thousands of people listening to your every word, how easy it is to please them, to get that applause and to hear them out there screaming for you. It’s like being in control of one big ocean and you can calm it down or make it roar. God, Vita, it’s not even people anymore, it’s one big
thing
you want to control and once you’ve had a taste of it, you’re hooked. It’s like if you don’t have it you will die, do you know what I mean? Somebody’s handed you the baton and you can lead this rich, powerful orchestra. Does that make sense to you? I mean after that, leading a five-piece band means nothing, not after you’ve led that orchestra, thousands of people all playing the song just like you want them to.”

Vita smiled at him and he stopped. “I’ve had too much to drink, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. You don’t ever have to hold back or be afraid to tell me anything, don’t you know that? The more you tell me, the more I understand you. I love you, I’m on your side—remember that.”

He sat down. “You must think I’m an idiot but I can’t talk to the boys; hell, they wouldn’t understand. You’re the only person I can trust. Betty Raye’s not interested in politics—the whole thing scares her. Oh, she tries but all she ever really wanted was a quiet, simple life and look what I drug her into. I try to leave her out of it as much as I can. She was put on display as a kid and she just hates it, me being governor.

“But God help me, Vita—I love it.”

On the other hand, Betty Raye was counting the days when they would be out of the governor’s mansion at last and into a real home they did not have to share with a hundred people. As per Hamm’s instructions, Rodney had driven her past a brand-new red-brick house in a nice subdivision outside of town. And later when she walked into the governor’s office Hamm did not look up but said, “Well, is that what you had in mind?”

“Oh, Hamm, it’s more than I could have ever hoped for.”

Having been a used-car salesman, Rodney was able to figure out how to make deals in different ways and made an under-the-table, verbal agreement with a real estate agent to hold the house until Hamm left office.

Betty Raye would not miss being first lady but she would miss a few of the staff. Cecil, of course, and over the years she had grown quite fond of Alberta Peets, the ice-pick murderess, who besides cooking had helped her with the boys and was a great baby-sitter. When she said for them to go to bed, they did. They minded her much better than they ever had their mother or father.

But other than that she could hardly wait to pack up and get out of the governor’s mansion for good.

Hamm tried to resign himself to the fact that he was going out of office but as the May primaries grew closer and closer, the more anxious and restless he became. While Betty Raye and Cecil shopped for furniture and dishes and silverware for the new house, Hamm complained and bellyached to anyone who would listen about the fact that a governor could not succeed himself for a third consecutive term. He even ranted and raved to a group of unsuspecting visiting Girl Scout leaders from Joplin.

“If I hadn’t had to fight Earl Finley and the damn Republicans I might have done it but two terms is not enough time to get anything nailed down. I need at least four more years to finish what I started and now Earl is gonna bring in that idiot Carnie Boofer and wreck it all. . . .”

Betty Raye and Cecil were busy looking for rugs and drapes to match, but as the days went by Hamm became more irritable and could not sleep. The guys tried to cheer him up. Nothing seemed to work. Finally, one day Rodney said, “You need to get out of here for a while.” So Wendell, Rodney, and Seymour drove him down to the secret boathouse and took
The Betty Raye
out for a cruise.

Usually the boat was where he loosened up and forgot about everything and enjoyed himself but not today. He did nothing but sit and stare at the water and try to think of what he could do. He turned to Wendell, who had his feet propped up on the side, drinking beer. “If we were to call the legislature into special session, what do you think our chances are of getting an amendment added to the constitution?”

Wendell knew what he was up to. “Hamm, there’s no way in hell they are going to let you succeed yourself; it’s a state law.”

“But laws have been changed, haven’t they?”

“Yeah, but you ain’t gonna change this one. The Republicans won’t vote for it and Earl is determined to bring in Carnie Boofer, so why don’t you just relax and take it easy for the next four years. Then all you have to do is come back in and clean up the mess old Boofer makes. In the meantime, just sit on your boat, take a few trips, and enjoy yourself, boy.”

Hamm had been offered jobs through Vita’s friends but nothing that excited him. The next time he was at her apartment they sat on the couch and he tried to tell her what he was feeling. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the offers, Vita, I do. I don’t know how I’ll be able to stand just being a nobody again. I’m gonna miss being out of that limelight now that I’m used to it.”

“But, darling, you can run again in sixty-eight . . . it’s only four years.”

He looked at her almost desperately. “Vita, I don’t think I can wait that long. I don’t know how to explain it but it seems like I’ve been freezing all my life and it’s the only place I feel warm, really warm. The thing is, once it gets ahold of you, you can’t let go even if you wanted to. It’s too late. Once you’ve been up there, there’s nowhere else to go but down. That’s where you live, the only place you feel alive, and you’ve got to fight to hold on. And what if I can’t get back in? What if Carnie Boofer messes up so bad that the next time they elect a Republican? People forget about you once you’re out of power. The truth is, Vita . . . I’m scared to let go.”

A Drowning Man Is a Dangerous Man

H
AMM WAS BACK
in Jefferson City, sitting in his office having a few drinks with the guys, when Hamm Jr. ran in and asked for more quarters to put in the pinball machine in the basement and ran back out. When he left Hamm asked Wendell, “What’s the age limit on running for governor?”

“Why?”

“If Hamm Junior was old enough, I’d run him.”

Wendell grinned. “Damn, boy, next you’ll be trying to run your wife.”

Seymour Gravel said, “Yeah, Hamm, or how about your dog. He’s pretty smart, a hell of a lot smarter than Carnie Boofer.”

“But then who ain’t?” Rodney added.

They all laughed except Hamm, who sat with a glazed expression, staring into space. Then he looked at Wendell. “Why not?”

“Why not what?”

“Run my wife.”

“Oh, hell, Hamm, I was just kidding.”

“Is there a law against it?”

“No, but you can’t do that.”

“Why not? Tell me one good reason. It would be almost the same as voting for me, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, but nobody is gonna vote for a woman even if she is your wife.”

“Why not?”

Now Seymour asked Wendell: “Yeah, why not?”

An hour later, after going back and forth in a heated debate over why not, Hamm said, “Excuse me a minute, will you, boys?” and went in the other room to make a call.

Vita had invited people over for dinner and they were still in the living room having after-dinner drinks but her maid Bridget came in and said, “Mrs. Green, the archbishop is on the phone and said he needs to speak to you right away.” Vita excused herself and took Hamm’s call in her bedroom. When she heard what he was thinking she threw her head back and laughed with delight at his crazy idea. But he was more excited and enthusiastic about this than he had been about anything lately and was talking a mile a minute.

“Listen, Vita, it would be the same thing as me buying a house and putting it in somebody else’s name. Wouldn’t it? It would still be mine. I’d still be the governor . . . it would just be in a different name, that’s all. . . . So what do you think?”

She was still laughing so hard she could not answer.

“I’m not joking, I’m serious.”

“I know you are, Hamm.”

“What do you think?”

“Well,” she said, “it’s a completely insane idea . . . but it would almost be worth it just to see the look on Earl’s face when you announced it.” She wiped the tears from her eyes. “Oh God, you’ve made me laugh so hard I’ve ruined my makeup.”