The Chameleon (65 page)

Inebriated not by the medley of fine California Sonoma wines served at dinner but by the rich-bodied presence of his two dinner companions, Grant was well mellowed. If only, the Washington hostess in Claire mused to herself as she watched him, more people understood the power of the place card. She cleared her throat as Grant stood to his full height of over six feet. Would he toast her and take the house back? In front of all these people?

Sensing nervousness on the part of her normally composed mother, Sara patted Billy on the behind and shooed him up to stand beside his grandmother.

“Go to Grand Claire, Billy. Go on!”

Claire showered him with hugs, to the delight of her guests, and then lifted him up in her arms. Anita, on her feet and right behind her, quickly removed the champagne glass from Claire's hand in case
Newsview
and the
New York Times
took advantage of this photo opportunity. No sense seeing the candidate from California with a drink in her hand, even if it was made from grapes from her own state.

The beautiful woman with the high cheekbones, flawless complexion, and lithe figure didn't resemble an ordinary grandmother any more man the prim Pam Harriman looked like one of the great courtesans of history or Jackie O. with her feathery voice and wide saucer eyes brought to mind a public relations wizard who knew better than Madison Avenue how to guard a legend and keep it alive. Then Claire's gaze fell upon the unimposing woman who had saved her in person and time and time again with her written words, Anne Morrow Lindbergh. She may have faded from the public eye, but Claire would never forget the way her heroine's words helped her to live through her grief over Six.

What did these women all have in common? Why were they all sisters to Claire under the skin? The answer would be written in their biographies. These were women, like it or not, who had the boldness to reinvent themselves, time and time again, in order to survive, protecting themselves and their children. They had done it by shedding an old life to pick up a new one when the promise of the old had been shattered.

Claire scanned the tent full of so many faces that mattered to her and others to whom she mattered not at all. She spoke slowly, Billy in her arms, Anita's mechanically prepped microphone at her freshly lipsticked mouth.

“Being half a century old is very heady stuff, let me tell you. It makes you reflect on where you have been and, furthermore, where you are going. I am a very blessed woman. I have family, my mother, my auntie, my two generations of children.” Her broad smile was directed at Sara. “And a talented husband who puts up with me.

“I have decided the Senate is a good forum from which I can be an effective thorn in the side of people who feel that issues pertaining to children and sexism and racism matter less than other issues. I see none bigger. When as a young bride I sat at the feet of Eleanor Roosevelt, I would listen to her tell us that if we were all equally fighting World War Two for peace in the world, we had better make sure we had jobs and equality at home. Being a woman and a new homeowner”—Claire's eyes twinkled—“I think I will spend a few more years tidying up some of the mess in our House on the Hill. Grant, I hope I have your support.” She reached out her arm. But how was he going to react?

At the other end of the table, Jackie applauded with her large hands and pointed them in Grant's direction. Her full lips were a breath away from Grant's earlobe as she stood to salute Claire. “I think that's your cue, Grant.” When she said his name, it sounded like an enchantress's invitation. Her voice was accompanied by the tinkling sound of her wind-chime earrings. “Nothing makes a strong man look even more important than when he is helping a good woman, Graaant. Incidentally, I'd like to be a quiet helper in Claire's campaign. Would that be all right?” Jackie's beguiling magic, the Sonoma wine, and the womanly beauty radiating from Claire tonight suddenly made Charity Foxley a forgotten hiccup.

Grant moved proudly to Claire's side to validate his gift of a home to her. After everything she had done for him tonight, he felt proud and manly being able to add something as simple as a house to her gift list. He stood there handsome in his custom-cut tuxedo, his windburned face in masculine contrast to Claire's pale beauty. Even he noticed how her differences complemented him. He effused to the hushed crowd, “I can only regret that journalist's ethics keep me from putting my talented wife on the cover of all my periodicals. As you know, a good-looking woman on the cover always sells.

“I give you, esteemed ladies and gentlemen”—Grant lifted his glass, prodding Anita to shrug—it was okay for a newspaperman to be photographed with a drink in his hand; they were supposed to be boozy anyhow—“the next senator from California, Claire Harrison, my wife.”

“And a woman of property at last,” Pam whispered loudly into her Governor's ear.

The Senate race was a shoo-in. California loved Claire for her high-level Washington access and voted her in by a wide majority. She could pass job bills and highway budgets and build new schools and raise teacher salaries—and did. Since the working girl in her never forgot about weekly wages, she rewarded California coastal cities with naval bases and landlocked towns with air force sites.

As a representative, she had stood at Coretta King's shoulder as she muscled in segregation reforms. Now, as a senator in the Ford administration, Claire increased her zeal. She followed Coretta's lead in ensuring that Dr. King's initiatives be continued through equalizing education and creating job opportunities rather than merely erecting statues and issuing plaques. As Claire played the Washington game by following the rules and adding a little finesse, her influence became increasingly powerful.

And, while never a love match, her relationship with Grant gradually developed into one of mutual respect, one based on domestic courtesy and civilized consideration. He highlighted passages in his papers for her in yellow marker that he knew she would find interesting, and with her knack for mimicry, she repeated for him the floor speeches of his least favorite senators with all the humor and drama of Lucy and Lana. After some minor household reforms, Fenwick Grant became the ideal husband for Claire, the politician. This marriage made her feel grounded and attached to something solid; if passion wasn't part of the equation, still it all added up to a mature complement of progress and power. After all, Grant loved the scent of power. And Claire now wore it behind her ears, on her wrists, and at her pulse points.

When spring returned to HurryUp after the long winter of 1975, with its jonquils, dogwood, and forsythia and Easter egg-colored blooms limning the newly landscaped Pie, Claire pushed her other business to one side and recommitted herself to bringing her son home finally, now that she had a place of her own to gather all her loved ones in. It had been over a year and a half since she'd won her Senate seat, and it gnawed at her like an old wound in her heart that Six lay in a long, anonymous row with Ophelia's ancestors, whom he had never known, in a rectangular plot behind a house in which only Ophelia lived and which she had reliably heard was never visited by Harry, not even to lay flowers across his grave. She was denied visitation under the legal document she had been forced to sign in Italy, and Ophelia held her to every word of its terms. After all, Six's grave was on her property, and Ophelia had threatened to shoot if the “murderess” stepped a foot onto her soil.

Whether it was the passage of time or the fact that she was now a U.S. Senator who was married to a media mogul able to protect her from the kind of damage Ophelia had heaped upon her before, or whether it was because she had proselytized Ophelia's henchman into her loyal press secretary, or merely the fact that she was over half a century old, Claire felt she was of a mind and age to confront Ophelia.

Claire commissioned a sculptor who worked in marble, whose chiseled work encircled the rotunda of the Senate Building, his latest piece a marble bust of Robert Kennedy, which he had sculpted from photographs and memories. She put Sara in charge of the likeness, and her daughter thanked her for her confidence.

Then she attempted Six's exhumation. There was no dealing with Ophelia. She wouldn't keep her lawyers’ appointments or come to the phone, and she lied to her fellow members at the Tuxedo Club that grave robbers had tried to desecrate her family's remains. She even hired private security police for her ancestors’ bones. Claire finally realized that the only way to kill an old witch was to drop a house on her. And in her case, probably the House
and
the Senate.

Age hadn't softened Ophelia's hardness. Her nasty disposition and prejudices only magnified with the accumulation of years. Sara still dutifully visited her grand-mere with her children, but they always cried before the visits and complained to Claire about stomachaches before and nightmares later. Fit as a fiddle, Ophelia still enjoyed a strict daily regimen of diet and exercise, walking briskly around the grounds of Charlotte Hall and nourishing herself with its home-grown vegetables and their supernatural vitamins. She had taken to keeping bees on the grounds to harvest her own honey and in the winter months retired to her “cottage” in Hobe Sound, adding grapefruits from her grove to her menu.

She still kept her sharp wits about her, and her mean streak focused principally on “Senator Strumpet,” as she referred to Claire. Even the formidable Edward Bennett Williams, who had advised feisty presidents and defended mobsters, found Ophelia “terrorizing.”

“My God, Claire. I think I've met the devil and she's your former mother-in-law. I swear she was going to spit up green bile while we were having tea. I went to mass as soon as I got outta there.”

“Well, what's your best legal advice on this?” Senator Harrison asked.

“Hire a hit man and I'll defend you.” He was joking, of course, but he also was telling her that legally pursuing this thing was out of the question. Clout was what was required.

“What's the most important thing to her? Cut her off from it and she'll come around.”

What was important enough for Ophelia to fear losing? What was worth a trade of buried bones to her, bones that were like the Holy Grail to Claire?

Ophelia had stocks and bonds and houses and Harry and Minnie and their adopted child, William Henry Harrison the Sixth. Number Six. Again. Claire had heard from Williams what he had unearthed through the legal grapevine: Ophelia Harrison had purchased this child just to hurt Claire. But Claire suspected it was really a clinical effort to give the Harrisons a direct male heir, a hysterical attempt to entice Harrison back. Claire despised her for using her son's name in an unconscionable game of one-upmanship.

When Ophelia had learned from Tom that Six was really the child of Harrison and Claire, she had become demonic, allowing her darker side to rule both her left and right hands.

Tom was CEO of Harrison, Harrison and Pettibone, the commodities exchange that Harrison had relinquished per his divorce agreement The youthful CEO wanted stock and voting control as a reward for the long hours he put in; although Harry was the firm's chairman and president, he held these titles in name only, spending more time on the links than in the office. Yet it was not Tom's work ethic that allowed him to prevail in his fight for control. Instead, he won through social blackmail, threatening to go public to the papers with the ugly facts of Ophelia's former husband's and former daughter-in-law's affair. It was a sordid enough scandal to excise Ophelia from her social circles in Tuxedo Park, New York, Hobe Sound, and Newport. And to remove her from the best chair in all her clubs where she sat on the membership committees, Brahmin-style, deciding who was good enough to join and who wasn't. But Ophelia couldn't stand to have any mud smeared on her own hem. She'd lose her finger-pointing status. According to Williams, Tom had emerged with basically sixty percent of the company, all to preserve Ophelia's pristine reputation.

Surely Claire could get the silly woman, who had swapped a company for her unsullied name, to return her child's remains under the same conditions. And so the deal had been worked out. She left only the final details to her lawyers.

Claire had thought about the war of the two Mrs. Harrisons for some time before she had acted on it. She would use her connections and even the foot trail of Tom to trade Six for Ophelia's social standing. At first, she hated the thought of undermining an old lady. But then she reasoned that age was relative, and, besides, Ophelia was no lady.

Claire herself flew up to New York to retrieve Six. She borrowed the Harrimans’ plane so she could ride back with the coffin. Her heart was weighted in anticipation of the sad journey she was finally taking and at the same time exhilarated that she would finally be bringing him home. Forever.

If heavenly spirits and souls could be comforted by down-to-earth displays of loving remembrance, Claire would tend to it. In her own mind's eye, Six was the beautiful seraphim, eternally an adolescent angel dwelling in the room in the clouds she and Lorenza had long ago decorated for him with all his favorite things. But somehow she needed to have his earthly remains at rest in the garden of tranquillity she had created for him in the Pie. Where she could tend to the flowers on his grave of velvety green grass and have a place to pray, keeping him remembered by his family.

It stung her to the core that she had never seen him again or been allowed to say words over his little body since that day of Duccio's memorial-service circus. Now he would be buried in the Pie in which Auntie Wren already lay and where places were reserved for Slim, Violet, and even Claire herself. Death was part of the circle of life as much as birth and should be planned for, she had reasoned in her increasingly pragmatic way.

She had tried to stifle any desire to confront Ophelia on her own turf. The prearranged plan was for Claire to collect her son's remains from Charlotte Hall's private burial plot and leave. Ophelia had promised to absent herself from the property or, if indisposed, to stay inside the house. What was the point of meeting again?