The Governor's Lady (34 page)

She was in the den having a glass of wine, watching the early-evening local news. Pickett was away, the National Governors’ Conference. He was
the chairman. He would be home tomorrow, and next week he would make his announcement. Plato would leak a hint with Pickett’s blessing. Big crowd, some national press people. And then it would start for real.

On the newscast, videotape of a press conference, the commissioner of agriculture. Something about milk prices. There on the front row was Wheeler Kincaid, glowering under unruly eyebrows, asking an impertinent question. She didn’t pay any attention to Kincaid’s question, or the commissioner’s flustered answer. She didn’t care. But the sight of Kincaid startled her. She didn’t know why until she realized the scene was taking her back to that day at the League of Women Voters meeting, the brassy, braying woman at the back of the room.

She thought about it, wrestled with it, long into the night.

The next evening, she met Pickett at the door. “We’ve got to talk.”

When she had him to herself, he said, head down, “Honey, I’m truly sorry about …” He waved his hand in the general direction of the presidency. “I really screwed up. I didn’t want to worry you with it until I thought it through, but that’s no excuse. We should have thought it through together.” He paused. “We haven’t done enough of that lately.” He reached for her hand. “I am really, really sorry. It won’t happen again. From now on, you’re in on everything.”

She made him wait for a noncommittal minute before she said, “Would you like to make it up to me?”

“Tell me how.”

“I want to run for governor.”

Before he could catch himself, he laughed. Then he sobered. He took a long time before he answered. “Cooper, honey, that’s about the most … unlikely thing I’ve ever heard come out of your mouth. There’s not even the remotest chance you’ll run for governor. I can’t imagine why you’d even want to.”

“Don’t you want to know why I want to?”

“Okay, why?”

“I want to help you, Pickett. You talk about holding your home base. Who else could you trust? For damn sure, not Woodrow.”

“Cooper, it’s not possible. You can’t win. So let’s put the idea aside and get on with reality.”

So that was that. Until two weeks later. He took her out to dinner, a private room in a small Italian restaurant, a favorite place from the time Pickett had gone to the State Senate years ago. Candlelight, expensive wine. They stayed away from politics, talked about the kids—Allison, finished with college and going on to art school, Carter at the university, custom-tailored double major in political and computer sciences. Where had all the time gone? They held hands across the table. With the wine glowing in her, Cooper felt herself let go, reaching back.

And then Pickett said, “Woodrow’s not gonna run.”

It took a minute to bring herself back from the glow, to focus on what he had said. “I don’t believe it. You talked to him?”

“Yes. His wife is sick, he’s distracted, his campaign operation is floundering. He wants to run for another term as lieutenant governor. Cheaper, less work. He’ll win it without breaking a sweat.”

She stared at him hard. Pulled her hand away. “What have you done, Pickett?”

“We had a talk. We came to an accommodation. My folks will raise the money he needs and provide the muscle. He might not even have to leave home.”

“You bought him off.”

“No,” he said emphatically. “I gave him a way to do what he really wants to do.”

She pondered it, knowing he had more. “What’s the rest?”

“I want you to run.”

She was speechless, her brain hitting a wall.

“We’ve done some polling. You’ve got good name recognition—your
father, me, all that. And God help me, you’ve hit enough hot buttons over the past few years that you have a solid approval rating. You’ll face a couple of other fairly substantial candidates, but they can’t raise the money. We’ve got a lot of it tied up, and we’ve got the machinery. Cooper, with Woodrow out of the way, you can win. And this is the clincher: Woodrow will endorse you.”

“What about the risk, Pickett? If we fail …”

“What about the reward? If we pull it off, imagine the effect. Nationally.”

“So this is about your presidential thing.”

He shook his head. “This is about us, Cooper. It’s something we can do together. We haven’t had anything like that in way too long.”

She sat back in her chair, folded her napkin, placed it beside her plate. “This is too much.”

“You said you wanted to run. Okay, you can run. You can win. I can help. We can do it.”

“I need to go home. I’ve got to think.”

“Sure,” he said. “I know this is a lot. Give it a couple of days. But we’ve got to start the ball rolling. I announce the end of next week. You announce—if you decide to go through with it—a week after that. So we’ve got to have an answer in the next couple of days.”

He reached for her hand again, but she stood, backing away.

“All right. But until then, don’t mention it to me again. I mean it.”

He held up his hands in mock surrender. “The ball’s in your court.”

She awoke thinking of Jesse. She dreamed sometimes about him, but never about what happened in Vietnam. She could not bear the thought of him in agony, scared, alone, dying. She supposed that part
was locked away so far back in her mind that it wasn’t accessible even to dreams. No, she thought of his slow, sad smile; the way he read to her, eyes rolling when he happened upon a word especially delicious; his quiet, stubborn insistence on being himself; the way he gave himself to her in times and places and ways when she really needed him.

She had tried to understand how it must have been for him at the Big House. He had lost his mother in early boyhood, and then in precious ways had lost his father to Mickey just at the cusp of adolescence, when surely he needed Cleve most. The clash of wills with Mickey must have been inevitable, no matter the added flash point of Cleve’s burgeoning political career and Mickey’s hand in it. As she thought about their relationship, she came to the notion that Jesse might have needed her as much as she needed him. She adored and idolized him, thought him the most special person in her life, and he had needed that. It was something she held on to fiercely, something she also needed.

She thought about that incredible ride in Cleve’s car in the fullness of July, heard the crackle of the bag of sunflower seeds, felt the hot breath of wind at the window, smelled his joint, heard the horns of the other cars honking as they led the parade down the two-lane, Jesse softly humming Fats Domino. She dwelt on that, not on what came after the ride. Another person—Mickey?—might say that Jesse used her that day. But that wasn’t it at all. They were allies, compatriots in crime. It was a spectacularly audacious thing they did, something no one could ever take from either. If only they could have ridden forever.

Then she thought about Miami, all those McGovern kids in the park, hopelessly giddy with themselves and their ideas. Jesse’s people, her people. She had been a part of him that day. And there were other times since then when she had taken heart from Jesse. Defied people and convention. Insisted on her own-ness. She had not done it enough in these later years, but she still knew how.

She lay there for a long time in bed thinking about him. Pickett had risen early, slipped out of the room, fled the house for his world. She summoned Jesse in the quiet and held on to him.

And then she thought,
I have never really shared him with anybody. But there is someone
…

She waited for Carter on the steps of the classroom building. It was chilly, a brisk wind tingling her face. She had on jeans and a parka, the same as when she and Pickett had tramped the woods.

He was almost down the steps before he saw her, and then his face lit in grinning surprise. “Mom!” He grabbed her in a hug, pulling her tight against him. “What are you doing here?”

“I was in the neighborhood, just thought I’d say hello. Are you free for lunch?”

“Sure!” He fished out his cell phone. “Let me make a call.”

She waited while he finished, hung up, stuffed the phone back in his jacket pocket with a sheepish grin.

“Girl,” she said.

At lunch in an off-campus diner, he told her. A basketball player. He was getting a ribbing about that from friends, dating a jock. Nothing real serious, he said, but she was nice. Not too tall—a guard, not a center.

“Just be sure you always treat her like a lady,” Cooper said.

“I know how to do that. I’ve had a good example.”

He went on about classes, social life, an internship he was doing in the Dean’s Office. He was taking some marketing courses, studying why people made the choices they did, how to get them to make the choices you wanted. Like Pickett. She watched, smiled, listened. He was animated, gregarious, open. She always knew exactly what was on Carter’s mind.

Finally, he said, “I’m sorry. I’m yakking on about me. What about you?”

She hesitated. “I’m okay. I came today because I wanted to see you, see how you’re doing. You haven’t been home in several weeks. But I also wanted to tell you about somebody.”

His eyes went wide.

“Oh, no.” She laughed, realizing how it sounded. “I’m not fooling around.”

“Oh,” he said. “Good.”

She sobered. “I need to tell you about your uncle Jesse.”

“He was killed in Vietnam.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know much about him.”

“You should.” She smiled. “You look a great deal like him. And you would have liked him.”

She talked for a half-hour, telling him all she knew and remembered. He listened attentively, nodding occasionally. She tried to bring Jesse to life for him, knowing she could never do it justice but needing Carter to understand as much as possible. Needing, herself, to share this.

“Why now, Mom?” he asked when she finished.

“I’m not exactly sure,” she said. “But it seems to have something to do with a decision I’ve got to make.”

He gave her a puzzled look.

“Have you talked to Dad about his plans?”

“Briefly. We talked about me maybe working in the campaign.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. You’ve got school.”

“Just for a semester, a bit longer if he catches on. Then back to school.” He held up his hands with a smile. “I mean it.” Then he leaned toward her. “But what’s this decision you’ve got to make?”

She told him.

He listened wide-eyed. Then, softly: “Good gosh. Are you gonna do it?”

“I don’t know. It was my idea a couple of weeks ago, and Dad dismissed it. But now, with Woodrow out, he’s asking
me
.”

He picked up his iced tea glass, twirled it in his hands, ran his finger up and down against the beads of moisture. “Have you talked to Allison?”

“You first. If either of you says I shouldn’t, I won’t.”

He set the glass down and looked hard at her, then smiled his lovely smile again. “It’s crazy,” he said softly, “but if you did it, Uncle Jesse would bust a gut.”

She returned the smile. “Maybe that’s why I’ve been thinking about him so much the last couple of days. But Jesse … That alone isn’t enough of a reason.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Uncle Jesse’s not here anymore. But if you do it for yourself—not Dad or anybody else, just yourself—that will be.”