Senator Read online

  Marry you, Jim? Don't ruin everything. I'd just be asking for trouble.

  Nonsense. You'd be asking for glory. Riches beyond the dreams of avarice. Great sex. And of course, my scintillating personality and Irish wit, twenty-four hours a day.

  Trouble, James O'Connor. Nothing but trouble.

  The band played "Sunrise, Sunset"; the rotating globe on the ceiling threw splashes of gold on the dancers; Liz was warm and luscious in my arms. In the middle of the floor my brother Danny nuzzled his bride as he balanced a glass of champagne behind her back. My father looked on from the head table, nodding benignly in time to the music. The world was filled with promise. Liz's reluctance only increased my resolve. I would conquer her; I would conquer the world.

  She said yes then... finally; she said yes now. "I suppose so," actually. Sighing, slumping down in bed, closing her eyes to block out the sight of me.

  "It's only for a couple of days," I said. "Till the initial excitement dies down. It'll die down a lot faster with you by my side."

  "Of course," she said to the pillow. "Just a couple of days."

  "Thank you, Liz. You've saved my life."

  "Turn out the light," she said.

  I got up from the bed and did as I was told. "Maybe I should sleep in the—"

  "Sleep wherever you like," she said. "You've been doing that all along. No reason to stop now."

  "Right." I went into the bathroom, sat on the toilet, and held my head in my hands. I was trembling. I felt as if I'd been beaten up. And yet she hadn't raised her voice to me, hadn't even seemed especially angry or surprised. We could've been discussing what to have for breakfast tomorrow morning. It was my own sense of guilt, I supposed. I was beating myself up. But still—

  I couldn't think about it. I had to get some sleep. Today had been bad, but tomorrow could only be worse. After a while I got up and brushed my teeth, then returned to the bedroom and changed into my pajamas in the darkness. Liz lay motionless in bed. I couldn't tell if she was asleep or just faking, unwilling to deal with me anymore.

  Finally I padded silently into Kathleen's room down the hall. She was lost under the covers somewhere, one arm thrust out into the night, as if reaching for help. Her cat, Angelica, was a dark blob at the foot of the bed. I went over, found the top of my daughter's head, and kissed it. She stirred and turned away from me, drawing back her arm. Don't need any help. I can do it myself. I smiled. Angelica sleepily changed positions to accommodate herself to the new state of affairs. I hesitated by the bed for a moment, wondering if I should get it over with now, then decided not to. I had used up all my courage for the night. I didn't even bother rehearsing what I would say; it would come out differently anyway. I considered going to the guest room or the couch downstairs in the living room, then walked back to my bedroom and lay down next to Liz. Was it penance, or did I really want to try to get things back to normal between us? I don't know; I was too tired to think straight.

  As soon as I closed my eyes, Amanda's corpse appeared, on the floor in her kitchen, staring past me at the ceiling. I have to sleep, I told myself, but I knew that even asleep I wasn't likely to forget that sight.

  And then I realized what had been odd about my conversation with Liz. She hadn't seemed interested at all in the topic of Amanda's death. Why hadn't she asked me, like Harold, if I had killed Amanda? Because she couldn't believe such a thing about me? Because my adultery was enough pain for her to deal with? Because my adultery had more to do with her? Or—

  I turned my head and stared at the back of the person who had slept beside me for so many years. What's going on in that inner-directed mind of yours? I wondered. But if she understood me too well, I was no longer sure I understood her at all.

  I did know this, though, from the hunch of the shoulders, or the tilt of the head, or some mysterious rearrangement of the molecules in the air around her: She was still awake, eyes staring into the darkness as she fumed or coped or plotted or despaired. In the old days I would have snuggled up close, rubbed her behind, nuzzled her neck. I would have murmured random reassurances in the hope that one would hit the mark. I wouldn't have left her alone until I had made things better.

  But now I could do none of that, and I was too tired even to try. Liz would have to fight her own battles in the darkness. My eyes closed once again, and the nightmares came, and they didn't leave until morning.

  Chapter 5

  I got up before Liz, but after Kathleen. The Globe was on the kitchen table, along with a carton of orange juice; Kathleen wasn't good about putting things away. I poured myself some juice, put the carton away, and sat down to study the coverage; it was reasonably fair, considering that the Globe hated me. Finally I went back upstairs to find Kathleen.

  She was in her room, her back to me, sitting in front of her computer. It was Saturday, no school, yet here she was, at seven-thirty in the morning, already at work. Just the way I had been. And yet nothing like the way I had been. "Good morning, angel princess," I said.

  "Good morning, snookie-wookums," she replied without turning to look at me. She had grown out of pet names a long time ago, so she had decided to give as well as she got.

  "Can I come in?" I asked.

  "Sure."

  I entered her room. It was a mess. Einstein looked down at me from above Kathleen's bed; next to him was some dreamy-eyed pop star whose name I could never seem to remember. There were several red-white-and-blue "Senator O'Connor" bumper stickers plastered on the walls and the furniture, and more clothes than I could imagine one person ever wearing piled on the floor and spilling out of the closet. From all that, she had chosen to wear a Harvard sweatshirt and faded jeans with the knees worn away. I kissed the top of her head and looked over her shoulder at the computer screen. On it an abstract gray seahorse tail spiraled inward while layers of brown and black waves swirled around it. "That's gorgeous," I said. "Did you draw that?"

  "It's a Mandelbrot set," she said, as if that made everything clear.

  "Oh," I said. I sat on the edge of her bed. Angelica was still curled up at the foot of the bed; Angelica was getting old. Kathleen, we've got to talk. No. I couldn't do it. "So, um, what's a Mandelbrot set?"

  Kathleen swiveled in her chair and looked at me. She was always very patient with my ignorance. "It's a collection of complex numbers. They form all sorts of spectacular patterns. I've got a program that generates them. It's got to do with fractals."

  "Oh," I said. She was wearing her hair in a ponytail. She had her mother's blond hair and good looks, except for my strong chin, which seemed to make her face a little too broad. She was starting to worry about whether she was pretty; I wanted to tell her that she needn't bother, that the boys were undoubtedly lusting after her already, but why should she believe her father?

  The silence became uncomfortable. "Do you know about fractals?" Kathleen asked finally.

  I shook my head.

  "Do you want to learn?"

  "Sure." Better than talking about adultery and murder. Probably she was thinking the same thing. She kept things in, like her mother—like me, in a way. I could hear the phone start ringing in my office downstairs. I ignored it.

  "Um, think of the coastline of Massachusetts," she said. "From outer space it looks pretty much like the maps—you know, just a few wiggles. Well, the closer in you get, the more detail you see, right? Someone walking along Cape Cod will notice little, I don't know, inlets and stuff that the mapmakers ignore. And an ant crawling along the beach will pick up even more detail. So the ant's estimate of how long the coastline is will be a lot larger than that of someone looking at it from outer space, right?"

  "Right." Her eyes sparkled when she talked about stuff like this.

  "So it's basically meaningless to talk about how long the Massachusetts coastline is, right?"

  "Well, I guess. So what's a fractal?"

  "A fractal is a measure of how irregular something is. How complex it is. How rough around the edges. And the Mandelbrot set s
hows what happens when you focus in on the irregularity. No matter how close you look at things, there's always more complexity. This could be, like, an ant's-eye view of things," she said, gesturing at the computer screen. "We could step back and get a person's-eye view, or we could zoom in and get, you know, a molecule's-eye view. If molecules had eyes." She started to giggle, suddenly self-conscious.

  "And it would always be different," I said.

  "Uh-huh. Except it's always there. You just can't see it if you're back too far."

  I shook my head in wonder. "How come I don't know any of this stuff?"

  "They hadn't thought it up when you were in school," she pointed out.

  "Back in the Dark Ages."

  "The sixties," she whispered, making the decade sound distant and mysterious.

  I laughed. And my heart ached, thinking about what I had missed of my daughter's life while I fought my battles down in Washington. We fell silent again, and I knew it was time. "You read the newspaper this morning," I said.

  She nodded. The sparkle went out of her eyes.

  "I have to talk to you about what happened. It'll be in the news a lot, and people will be saying things, and—"

  "I know that, Daddy," she said. "It's okay." She was blushing.

  "Well, I want you to understand that I won't hide anything from you. I know this affects you, and your feelings are important to me."

  "It's okay," she repeated. Her hands clasped and unclasped in her lap. She didn't want to talk about it, but if she didn't, she'd brood about it and gnaw at it, and eventually it would become worse than it really was—if that were possible.

  "Do you want to ask me anything? I know this is awkward for both of us, but it's important."

  She shook her head. "It's—" she started to say, and then stopped. She knew that it wasn't okay. She turned and looked at the seahorse tail on her screen. "You were having an affair with her, right?"

  I took a breath. "Yes," I said.

  "Did you use a condom?"

  That hadn't come up in my mental rehearsals. "Huh?"

  "They hadn't thought up AIDS in the sixties either," she said.

  "Right," I whispered. And my heart ached once again. The world was a terrifying place, and my daughter was just starting to venture out into it. Crime and pestilence threatened on all sides. Toxic waste lay buried beneath us; acid rain fell on top of us. Boys were beginning to compete with computers in her thoughts, but boys were hairy and wild and dangerous, and maybe it would be safer just to stare at the pretty patterns on her screen. I wanted to embrace her, to tell her I would protect her from everything, but how could I? I was part of the danger. "I didn't use a condom," I said. "I'm sorry."

  "Don't apologize," she responded reflexively. She hated it when I apologized.

  "I'm sure there isn't a problem," I said.

  "Why?"

  "Because—because I knew her."

  "How do you know you knew her?"

  I spread my hands helplessly. It was an excellent question. One I had asked myself. "She was a good person, Kathleen. I wouldn't have gotten involved with someone who wasn't a good person."

  "It's okay," she said, retreating.

  "Your mother and I—"

  "Don't worry about that. I understand about that."

  Did she? Then she understood more than I did—which was not impossible. Certainly she wanted Liz and me to work out our problems. The three of us had posed for a family photograph in the summer—Harold thought it would be good to use in some direct-mail pieces—and afterward Kathleen was full of sly comments: "Boy, I sure enjoyed being together with both of you. Isn't it great that we look like a family?" But she never confronted us directly about how it was all affecting her. And clearly she didn't want to talk about it now.

  "I love you, Kathleen," I said. "I know this must hurt you, but I don't want to hurt you anymore. Please let me know if I do. Okay?"

  "Sure, Daddy."

  I got up and kissed her. "There'll be a press conference here later on," I said. "I hope that won't—"

  "No problem"

  "Thanks, dumpling."

  She smiled. "You're welcome, pudding."

  I was on my way out of the room when she called after me. "Daddy?"

  "Yes?"

  "I'm sorry she died, Daddy."

  And then she turned back to her computer.

  * * *

  I went downstairs once again. I made myself a cup of instant coffee, grabbed a couple of semistale doughnuts out of the bread box, then went into my office and shut the door. It was time to go to work.

  I was glad I didn't have to campaign; it would have been hell out there. But the alternative wasn't likely to be much better. Nothing to be done about it, though. The damage had to be contained.

  But there was something I had to do even before that. I drank some of the coffee and called my brother.

  His wife, Melissa, answered. "Hi, Lissa," I said. "It's Jim."

  "Oh. Jim. Hi. Um—"

  "I'm sorry to bother you so early, but I've got to talk to Danny."

  "Danny? Well, he's asleep, Jim. He's been really sick lately, he hasn't been out of bed in two three days, and I don't want to bother him if I don't have to. It's the flu, you know. He keeps picking it up from the kids. He doesn't take good care of himself, and he comes down with something, and then he's like blaming the world. It seems like he's out of work half the time lately, and I don't know—"

  "Okay, Lissa. I understand." She sounded half hysterical; living with Danny would do that to a person. "Tell him when he wakes up that he's got to call me. It's very important. All right?"

  "All right, Jim, but—"

  "You have the number of my car phone, right?"

  "Um, sure, yes, we've got it. Jim?"

  "Yes?"

  "I'm so sorry about what happened yesterday."

  "Thanks, Lissa."

  "Is everything going to be all right, do you think? You know, with the election and—and everything."

  "Oh, sure, I can take care of that," I said lightly. "But have Danny call me as soon as possible."

  Danny, I thought after I hung up. What have you done to me now?

  And then I turned my attention back to politics.

  A raft of messages had come in on my private line. I played them back, meanwhile making a list of the people to be called. It was important to get to them before they had a chance to panic—before the rumors could start, before momentum could shift. "Everything is under control," the senator's call would tell them. This is just a minor pothole on the highway to victory. The confident sound of my voice would counteract the raising of the anchorman's eyebrow, the gloating of the Democrats, the mention of the word "Chappaquiddick" in the Globe's op-ed columns, and everything would be back on track once again.

  And so I made the calls, and I picked up the lying where I had left off the night before. My strategy was simple and intuitive; I scarcely had to think it through. Admit the stupidity. Gloss over the possibility of an affair; certainly gloss over the murder. Emphasize Liz. "I could kick myself," I told them, one after another. "I've been around long enough to know that the appearance of impropriety matters as much as the impropriety itself. But it honestly never occurred to me. I mean, I know she was good-looking, but she was a reporter, for God's sake. I was stupid to go to her apartment, but I'm not stupid enough to have an affair with a reporter. Incidentally, Liz is behind me a hundred percent on this. After all, having Amanda Taylor write the book was Liz's idea in the first place."

  It worked, as lying often does. People were pleased and relieved to hear from me, and their dismay and anger and fear couldn't withstand my blarney for long. Lying is necessary for politicians, and finally it becomes easy.

  And here is the central question: Does the politician come to believe his lies? Or—worse, perhaps—does he lose all sense of what is true and what is false? Are the categories simply irrelevant to the words he utters?

  I am trying to tell the truth here. If
I don't tell it here, where will I tell it?

  Kevin was the first of my staff to arrive at the house. He looked even more lugubrious than usual. He showed up early for a reason, it turned out. "Senator," he said, "I feel terrible about yesterday."

  "That makes two of us, at least, Kevin."

  "The thing is," he went on, "about the time of death. It was in the paper, you know."

  The time of death. Yes, I knew about the time of death. "What about it, Kevin?"

  "Well, I was thinking... Cavanaugh's gonna make a big deal about this unless you've got a good alibi. So I was thinking I could vouch for you if you wanted. Say I drove you from the meeting yesterday afternoon. You know, if you thought it would help."

  He wouldn't meet my eyes. I expected him to start pulling at his collar and scuffing his shoes on the floor. Did he, too, think I was guilty? Obviously I had misled him last night, making him think I was going home when, in fact, I was heading off to this blond woman's apartment. How deeply was his faith in me shaken? Not enough to make him turn his back on me at any rate. Would any of the rest of them do what Kevin was offering to do?

  I patted him on the shoulder. "Thanks, Kevin. It's all right, though. We'll get through this."

  "It's just that the Democrats are jumping all over you," he said. "They make it sound—"

  "Don't worry about the Democrats. We're still gonna whip 'em."

  Kevin grinned. "I know we are, Senator. I know we are."

  The rest of them arrived one by one after Kevin, and it began to feel like business as usual. If Harold still thought I had murdered Amanda, if Marge was still planning to murder me, you couldn't detect it from the brisk professionalism with which they did their jobs.

  Roger showed up around noontime. He was wearing white shoes, plaid pants, and a jersey that stretched over his bulging middle. "I got a call from Tobin," he informed me. "They want to see you again."

  "Why am I not surprised? They have anything new?"