The Chameleon (59 page)

“This isn't about bumper stickers, bake-offs, or the price of fish eggs. Let's not let the little things distract us. This is about the big issues. Big business, big economies, big decisions. No, Mrs. Harrison, it's not about the price of eggs—it's about winning a war, victory in Vietnam! It's about fueling a nation, knowing about the big cogs and wheels that turn this world. Big-boy battles. Congress is no dinner party, Mrs. Harrison; it's not about chicken and eggs, whichever came first.” He paused for a laugh. “I concede the kitchen to you, Mrs. Harrison. Leave Congress to me. In terms you can appreciate, Bill Strudel is as American as apple pie!”

Slim leaned in on Violet's right. “If he's so American, why is he wearing a Brioni suit? Hand-cut in Italy.”

“Whaddaya say!” Anita gave a whistle.

“Oh, yes. That's the kind Johnny used to wear.” Lana agreed.

After Anita rummaged for a scrap of paper and finally found the pencil stuck behind her ear, the note was written and passed up to Claire. Strudel was just concluding his opening speech.

“Quite a monologue,” Lana remarked during his applause. “Are Claire's lines as good?”

Anita nodded and swallowed a diarrhea pill. Where was Sara? Somewhere along, Strudel would introduce his wife and the five little Strudels. What was Claire going to do? Introduce the Aunties and Lana?

Strudel shook hands with his slim opponent like a welterweight in the ring and said into the stand-up mike, “You look terrific, Claire. Doesn't she, folks?”

“That was nice of him.” Wren beamed back.

“Condescending little twerp,” Slim said under her breath.

Claire stood elegantly poised, her hands straight by her side.

“Ladies and gentlemen, fellow registered voters of California, members of the free press, thank you for allowing me to join the best working political system in the world and to address you in the most democratic institution of its kind, the open town forum, in a public debate. I have traveled the world. I have seen up front and in person the other systems. After the war I served as an aide on the economic recovery mission in Europe and saw the darkness and destruction left by fascism and the strangling of free voices by a spreading communism, and let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, it is good to be an American. Democracy is a good thing. It is good to live in a place where education is free and excellent, where medical care is available and unsurpassed, where fresh food is plentiful and affordable. I beg to differ, Mr. Strudel, but the price of eggs
does
matter. A thriving nation needs nurturing. And food, affordable food at fair prices, is one of our unassailable rights, along with a free press, free to criticize us, free to throw those same eggs at us when our leaders lose sight of the small issues that drive this big, wonderful country to greatness. Men and women, women and men, gainfully employed, earning equally, raising their families, families of every kind. We can be an even greater America if we try.

“Mr. Strudel has graciously complimented me on looking nice. Thank you, Mr. Strudel, you look nice, too. We both wanted to appear presentable at a televised event in which we both seek to represent this important district made up of good men and women, people who have worked in this great country for fifty years, like my mother over there, never missing an opportunity to vote, and people who were naturalized yesterday and are voting in their first election, all of us good Americans. To speak to you tonight I chose to wear this nice suit sewn by the garment workers of America, under the union label. See? The American union workers have my vote of confidence. They have my business. Mr. Strudel complimented me tonight on my appearance. I compliment him on his. But it worries me that he wants to represent you wearing a suit made not in America but in Italy. I wholeheartedly endorse free trade, but I also wholeheartedly support the American worker. Little things do matter, Mr. Strudel. Like buying American suits. And knowing the price of eggs.”

Little bursts of applause punctuated Claire's speech, and as the debate rolled on, Claire picked up both momentum and the audience. She was winning over the television audience in even bigger numbers. She knew from all the Lefkowitz Talent Agency years the power of the impact and the rules of television. She knew her message was in how she looked as well as what she said. After all, it hadn't been so many years ago that Kennedy had won his televised debate against Nixon because he'd powdered down properly and had a tan.

So Claire stood before the voters with a softly powdered face, composed, her autumn brown hair swept off her fine features into a smoothly organized chignon. Her pale blue suit could have been one that Jackie Kennedy would have worn a few years back. Lefty's pearls graced her long neck and the cadence of her speech was unhurried midwestern with no trace of geography other than that unchartered place: well-bred, upper-crust America, the land of Grace Kelly, Katharine Hepburn, and, as the wider audience got used to listening to her soft, well-chosen words, Claire Harrison.

The Gordian knots in Anita's digestive tract actually started to untwist as the debate proceeded. It wasn't until Strudel did his “family finale” that she clenched again.

“My friends, I want you to see what America really stands for: the traditional family. And I'd like for you to meet mine. Would all you Strudels stand and come up here on the podium with your father? C'mon. My pretty wife, Susie; my sons Kevin, quarterback at UCLA, Peter, All-American at Miami, and John, high school soccer star…”

“Can you imagine what that poor woman's laundry hamper smells like when they're all home? All those jocks.” Slim whispered to Anita even as she politely applauded each child's athletic abilities.

Then she saw the look on Claire's face. Soccer. That had been the word that had done it. Six and soccer. Claire looked like she was going to cry. The long hours campaigning, sleepless weeks, Sara's absence—at this moment, it was all taking its toll on the candidate. Violet saw it coming, and had to restrain herself from rushing up to take her daughter in her arms. What was she doing up there? What was she trying to prove? Why didn't she just stop trying so hard?

“… my girls, Stacy and Jane. We're just that all-American family, I guess. Claire, I don't want to hog the spotlight. C'mon, introduce us to whomever.”

He turned toward Claire, who looked like a woman in line for the guillotine. The sorrow she felt daily for her son was heightened by standing in this high school, the place another reminder of Six's interrupted life. The silence in the auditorium was deafening. The tears she wouldn't release rolled down the Aunties’ cheeks instead. For one long moment she didn't want to he in the spotlight, but when she saw Sara walking toward her, holding little Violet in her arms, she lifted her chin in pride. The look was enough to turn the attention of the press and their pack of cameras on the heretofore unavailable daughter.

A panicked Anita pushed another pill under her tongue. It probably wasn't the right remedy, she mused, for a trailing candidate's cuckoo daughter to have a crack-up at the height of a televised debate. Christ, the girl had unbelievable timing.

Anita watched as Claire extended her hand to her daughter as if this were a rehearsed emotional moment. She wasn't sure why Sara was ascending the platform, and she waited as apprehensively as the rest of the audience. The story of Sara's little
Rear Window
pantomime raced through her mind. Sara, her wispy flower-child hair pulled back into a curly Alice in Wonderland nimbus, stood in the center of the stage beneath the mike the women's league mediator had used and introduced herself in a clear, unaffected voice. The voice, amplified, echoed through the expectant audience.

“My name is Sara Harrison, and I am one of Claire Harrison's children.” Her quiet introduction set off a craning of necks to see the mother's famous face in the offspring. Her next words captivated them completely. “My mother has so much love and energy to give that it has spilled over to nurture hundreds of others. I want you to meet some of my mother's other children.”

Anita was perched on the edge of her seat as the parade of young adults and teenagers began. No one, not even Claire Organ Harrison Duccio Lefkowitz, could possibly have produced this many illegitimate children. And such colorful ones.

“Hello. My name is Maria Fasano Perkins. I am one of Claire Harrison's children. After the war in Italy I was a frightened, starving orphan, alone. Claire was the one who brought me here to Eleanor House to feed me, teach me, and love me. Even after she found a permanent home for me with a good family in New Jersey, she helped me with homework and, later, with entrance into college. Today I am married, a mother of two”—she paused, looking directly into the blinding glare of the flashbulbs—”and I am a teacher in this high school.”

The Aunties waved to Maria with their dampened handkerchiefs as she beamed back and made way for the next clean-cut young person.

“Hello, my name is Tony Fuller.” He looked over his shoulder, shooting Claire a big toothy grin. “I was born in L.A. and left on nobody's doorstep. I was adopted by Eleanor House and Claire. Now I'm a sophomore at UCLA on the William Henry Harrison VI scholarship—that was Claire's son, who died too early—and”—there was pride in his voice—“I'm a big brother for two little fellas at Eleanor House.”

Claire opened her arms to give him a hug.

One by one, dozens of grown children joined them, including the now-grown Korean children who'd actually lived with her in the early days at Charlotte Hall as well as teenagers recently arrived from Vietnam and some bom here who had just fallen through the cracks of New York or Chicago welfare systems. They all warmly referred to the candidate as “Claire.” Even the most cynical reporter in the room—even Anita—could feel the mood lift as real people, speaking from the heart, acknowledged Claire as a woman who mattered. A world-changing mother, untraditional to be sure, but someone who had zeroed in on an enormous problem and then taken a stand to fix it. The twenty or so of “Claire's children” who stood on the stage were only representatives of countless kids across the country who'd been helped through Claire's unselfish efforts. While Bill Strudel was father to the same five freckled faces whose teeth were fixed by the same rigorous orthodontist, Claire was “mother” to thousands of children from all over the world and had maternally helped tend to their universal growing pains. She was a woman to be reckoned with. The American viewers at home started to wonder why the press had shown them only the woman's warts—they all had those—and had left out her goodness. And judging from the looks of these young adults, she had done her part efficiently and well— not a bad sort to have in Congress.

Fenwick Grant watched the debate, which on the East Coast aired late in the evening, from his Washington
Herald
office. He viewed it on the customized three-screen television panel built into the burled-oak bookcases that housed his year-by-year bound copies of
U.S. Week
and a couple of Pulitzer Prizes. It was ten o'clock at night inside the Beltway, and his offices were relatively quiet. It was the time of his day he liked best. Reflection time. As he was married to his newspaper and no one else, he was, at this hour and still at work, cheating only on his mistresses.

For most of the debate he watched out of the corner of his eye, a scotch at his elbow, his Gucci loafers propped on the aircraft-carrier-sized desk that filled his enormous office, reading tomorrow's editorial on Vietnam. Bea, his longtime secretary, glanced up occasionally to see how Mrs. Harrison was doing, salting her seasoned political observations with a female's response to Claire's clothes.

“She reminds me of Jackie Kennedy before she married that Greek. She wears blue well.” Bea handed him a batch of letters to the editor and a copy of tomorrow morning's
London Times.

They both stopped working for a moment to hear Bill Strudel's sanctimonious windup in which he denigrated Claire as a lousy mother.

“Uh-oh. He's moving in for the kill. It's all over now.” He could smell defeat with his unerring political nose, even through a television screen airing a California debate on a one-hour delay.

“I hate to look. It's like watching a car wreck.”

“Shards of glass and twisted metal. The price of politics.”

They both went back to more pressing matters, but pricked up their trained ears when Sara's polite voice rang out with the soon-to-be-famous words.

“I am one of Claire Harrison's children.” It was said in such a way that both hard-boiled news junkies respectively put down their Dictaphone and pen.

“We have a history-making handkerchief moment here.”

“A captioned picture at the very least.” Grant hit a button that would alert the presses to a change in format.

“Oh, look at that dear Italian girl and the way she's looking at Claire. And Claire, why, she looks so proud of her. Like a real mother.”

Moved to the point of distraction, Bea took a swig of her boss's scotch. She pointed to Claire on the screen. She looked so sincerely proud, her head tilted off to one side, the half-smile quivering on her lips, a hint of real tears clouding her lovely eyes.

“Oh, it's so wonderful.” Bea patted her own tear away with Grant's linen coaster. As far as he could remember, she hadn't shed a tear since her dog Mamie had died in ’59.

“I smell victory.”

“She'd have my vote.”

“Looks like she'll be coming to town, eh?”

Bea picked up her pad. “What kind of flowers shall I send?”

“Victory flowers. A dozen roses. No. Two dozen.”

“What kind?”

“Red ones. The All-American rose.”

“And the card?”

“ ‘Congrats on going from party girl to the Democratic Parry's best girl. Yours, Grant.’”

The move to Washington was swift. The rented house on Alamedo Drive was substituted for an efficiency apartment off Wilshire Boulevard to keep her California residency in order and a two-bedroom apartment in the Watergate complex to run a smooth daily life in Washington.

Grant was a frequent visitor to Claire's apartment and an escort to National Gallery dinners, the opera, and small insider suppers in Georgetown, where he maintained a weathered Federal period four-story brick house. Lately, the congress-woman from California had been invited to the more private weekend gatherings at HurryUp, his horse farm in Virginia, but so far the lady had declined.