Authors: Beth Gutcheon
The whole detour cost them a half hour.
The town glittered with new snow, and as she waited in the car, Laurie found herself envying the designer sunglasses worn by a mannequin in a window who was also decked out in a bright yellow ski outfit so sleek it looked like a wet suit. She thought of the thick, stiff clothes she and her brothers had first learned to ski in, of the hand-me-down wooden skis with bear-trap bindings, of the feel and smell of heavy wet wool that went with a day spent falling into snowdrifts. Her children were going to spend the day on the mountain with Billy; she and Hunt and Cinder were going to Walter Keely’s house to watch videotapes of some focus groups their pollster had conducted just before Christmas. Reactions to The Candidate.
This was a new development since the last time she had run, and she doubted very much she was going to like it. She wasn’t a woman who even liked to look in the mirror for more than the time it took to be sure she didn’t have spinach in her teeth.
They dropped the children and Billy at the slopes with a maxi-222
Five Fortunes / 223
mum of confusing instructions about money, watches, mittens, goggles, and where and when to meet for lunch. The twins were mad to go snowboarding; they had offered to teach Billy, and to Cinder’s dismay, he had accepted. Carlos was in charge of the older cohort. Anna wanted to go with the grown-ups but Walter had ve-toed this, so she got out of the car with the others, ostentatiously carrying a book.
Walter’s house was all stone and glass, and he had a huge fire and coffee waiting when they arrived.
“How were things in town?” he asked, pouring coffee.
“Jammed.”
Hands wrapped around warm mugs, they followed Walter into his screening room.
The house had been built by a movie actor who had looked like he would become a star but proved instead to be space debris. His celestial arc had intersected Walter’s entry into the real estate market, after which he dipped beneath the horizon and into erratic orbit, occasionally seen by the naked eye on the airwaves in Japan. Walter had left the actor’s fancy plush chairs and couches in place, but replaced the movie screen with a very large television. He had the first tape cued and ready.
“The groups were shown a video of your speech at Boise State in December. I thought you looked terrific that night, the talk went well, and the Q and A was especially good. Yes?”
Laurie nodded. She had revised the speech a couple of times since then, but it was a good event. The audience had been very warm and she felt she’d done well.
The tape began. On the large screen there was a wide, bare room with institutional tables and folding chairs set up in the middle, a floating island in cold space.
“This is the parish hall of the Methodist Church in Pocatello,” said Walter. “They’ve been told who you are, and shown the tape. This is a broad-spectrum group, men and women, young and old, working to middle class. This particular group is all white; in the next tape there’s a better ethnic mix.”
224 / Beth Gutcheon
They were watching some eighteen people drinking coffee and helping themselves to a pile of doughnuts on a platter that was going the rounds of the table. A bouncy young man named Brad from the pollster’s office was leading the group.
“Please feel free to be perfectly frank; we want your honest reactions. Any feelings about what you’ve seen?”
The group stared at him and chewed.
“I thought the speech was pretty good, myself. How about you?”
Gray-haired man in a flannel shirt: “I thought she talked awful fast.”
Brad: “Good. Thank you, that’s helpful. Other thoughts?”
Middle-aged man with thick glasses, wearing a ski sweater: “I thought she was impressive.”
Brad: “Impressive. Thank you, can you say more about that?”
Glasses: “She seemed intelligent. Decent. I believed what she said.”
Brad: “Good. Very helpful. Could we hear more about that? About what her message is?”
“She was stiff, though,” added Glasses.
There was a little silence. In the screening room, Laurie twitched uncomfortably. Walter smiled at her. Hunt was deeply absorbed in this new phenomenon.
Young woman with very short hair and a runny nose: “Change,”
she said. “And she talked about character.”
“
Yes!
” said Laurie to the young woman on the tape. She relaxed a little.
“Yes, well, I’d like to say something about that,” said a woman with short, permed gray hair. She had a firm little chin and a mouthful of doughnut.
Brad turned the group to her. “Yes, please.” His gesture said, You have the floor.
“I don’t think much of a person who goes out running around when she has five children and they just lost their father. I don’t think much of that character.” She quivered with emotion.
Five Fortunes / 225
Brad: “Thank you, any more to say on that subject?”
The one with the perm seemed to have clamped her mouth shut, afraid to be punished for saying something mean. But a fat young woman at the end of the table wearing a blue cardigan with little pearl buttons over a man’s T-shirt jumped into the silence: “I don’t know about character either. I mean, so she lost her husband and he was a politician. Does that make her one? I think she’s, you know—I think she thinks because we liked her husband we should vote for her. But what’s she ever done?”
The earnest short-haired woman spoke up warmly: “She’s served on the school board. She’s a district judge…”
Blue Sweater: “Yeah, but a judge, so what? She sits on a bench?
It’s not like she works, like a lawyer…”
Earnest Young Woman (hotly): “A judge
is
a…”
Brad: “Thank you. Interesting comment. How about the rest of you? Do you have a feeling that Judge Lopez is riding on her husband’s coattails?”
A heavy-set man in a brown parka spoke up. “I don’t think so at all. Her father was governor. She’s been in politics plenty. I think she’s entitled to do this if she wants to.”
Gray Perm: “You’d vote for a woman who would leave her children at home after their father died?”
Brown Parka: “I wouldn’t let that stop me. It would depend on whether I liked her message.”
Brad (smoothly): “And do you like her message?”
Brown Parka laughed. “I have to wait and see about that. I think Jim Turnbull’s done us a lot of good. I’d have to wait and see.” He wheeled around to speak to the woman with the perm. “But she’s got a right to try it if she wants to. Having children doesn’t seem like an obstacle to me. She knows her own business.”
The woman in the perm and the fat one at the end of the table looked cross and stared into space. There was another silence. Brad seemed temporarily boggled.
A woman of about fifty with long hair coiled around her head 226 / Beth Gutcheon
decided her moment had come. “I thought she was inspiring. You know my generation—I feel pretty cynical about politics. Vietnam, then Watergate—but I trusted her. I think she’s real. It’s a typical thing politicians say, but I
believe
she wants to run because she believes in service.”
Brad: “Thank you. Is that a message the rest of you heard?”
Gray Perm: “I heard Choice for women.”
Brad: “And is that something you like?”
The woman with the gray perm looked nervously at a thin watery-eyed man sitting beside her, presumably her husband. She took a breath. “Yes, I like that.” The thin man whipped his head around and stared at her. “And, I’m a Christian. I believe it’s up to the woman, that’s all right with me. But this is a woman who
chose
to have five children…”
Brad: “Yes, thank you. How about politics as service. Anyone else hear that message?”
There was some murmuring. The young woman with the short hair raised her hand high. About half the other people in the room raised hands, or nodded. Brad looked around waiting to see if someone else would volunteer.
Brad: “Okay. This is all very good. How about appearance, now.
Do any of you have feelings about the candidate’s appearance?”
There was another pause. The fat woman at the end asked, “You mean—whether she’s pretty?”
Brad: “If you think that’s important. Anything at all you’d like to say about whether the candidate’s appearance seems appropriate.
Or is there something that puts you off?”
The woman who’d first mentioned Choice said, “I thought she was fine. I liked it that she didn’t dress in a suit like a man.”
Blue Sweater: “I thought she looked like a schoolteacher.”
Brad: “Yes? And is that good or bad?”
The fat woman in the blue sweater shrugged. She didn’t seem to know. Her face had settled into a look of displeasure.
The man with thick glasses said, “She looks like her father.”
Five Fortunes / 227
Brad: “Thank you. Anyone else think she looks like her father?”
Many did. “And is that good?” Many heads nodded.
Brown Parka: “I don’t know. I didn’t live in Idaho then, but wasn’t he kind of a blowhard? Big God and Country guy?” Several people perked up and got ready for a lively deconstruction of Hunt Knox’s career, but Brad derailed them.
A young blond man who had a shopping bag on his lap said, “I didn’t like the way she talked.”
Brad: “I see. You don’t mean the message, but…”
Blond man: “Yeah. I didn’t mind what she said but the way she talks. It was, I don’t know, like…” He shrugged. “She has a conceited way of pronouncing things.”
“I really didn’t like her hair,” said a sparrowlike woman who hadn’t spoken before.
Brad: “Thank you. Can you say more about that?”
Sparrow: “There was that piece that would fall in her face, and she pushed it back. That bothered me…”
Walter stopped the tape. “From here it pretty much unravels into a referendum on hair spray. There’s more constructive Appearance stuff on the next tape, but let’s stop here and see how we’re doing.
Laurie?”
Laurie was sitting still with her arms crossed over her stomach.
She didn’t say anything. Cinder watched her.
“I think that’s amazing,” Hunt said. “Isn’t that amazing? You can’t go out and meet all the people the way you used to, but you can find out what they’re thinking like you never could before…” Laurie turned to look at him. He’d heard himself called a blowhard, and all he thought was, Isn’t this interesting?
“I feel sick,” she said.
Walter was expecting this. “Do you need something? Alka-Seltzer?
Pepto-Bismol?”
“I don’t know. My stomach hurts. That woman with the frizzy hair, and the fat one—they
hated
me.” Hunt turned to look at her.
“Laurie. You can’t take it like that. It’s a game, you know that. It’s just a game. The more information you have, the better you’ll play.”
228 / Beth Gutcheon
“I know but…finding out what people really think of you? And finding out you’re pouring your guts out and they’re thinking about your
hair
?”
“Or not thinking at all,” said Walter. “You have to see that. There are people who have no idea what a judge is, and yet they’re going to vote. And when they do, you want them to have heard one simple thing about you that’s true. Two at the most.”
“I have to talk as if they’re third-graders, and they’re judging
me
?”
“Yes. Of course.” Hunt and Walter both looked at her.
“Can I get you more coffee?” Walter asked Laurie. She nodded.
Hunt got up and paced around. He couldn’t wait for the next tape.
What idiotic thing would people say next?
“I feel like the only person in the whole room who really got it was the one who talked about trust,” said Laurie.
“And Watergate? She doesn’t count,” said Hunt. “You’ve got her before you’re out of the gate, she’s your core group. The campaign is about the undecideds. The guy in the brown parka. The little woman who didn’t like your hair.”
“Oh god,” said Laurie.
“You didn’t think you were just going to preach to the choir, did you?”
Laurie didn’t answer. Of course, she rather had. She pictured audiences who agreed with her and trusted her.
“Laurie,” said Cinder. “It’s not you they’re talking about.” Walter had come back in with the coffeepot and sugar and milk on a tray.
“Of course it is.”
“It’s an image. They don’t know you. I know you. I’m right here with you. They’re looking at a thing on the screen. They’re going to see all kinds of things that aren’t there because of who they are, not who you are. You have to make a separation in your head. The thing on the screen will run for office. You’ll always be safe at home with people who know you.”
“Could you do that?” Laurie asked.
Cinder laughed. “Of course not. I’d be awful at it. But I believe
Five Fortunes / 229
you can.” The two looked at each other, and much passed between them without words.
“Well,” said Hunt. “Are we ready for the next one?” Clearly
he
was.
“Oh, sure,” said Laurie after a while. “Bring ’em on.”
Walter popped the next tape in and said, “This group is in Idaho Falls. It’s a little younger, a little more urban.” He pushed the Play button.
E
loise Strouse Threadgill was late for lunch. She had slept late, and then the phone had rung as she was halfway out the door, and then the pool man had stopped her to talk about why there were so many mice getting sucked into the filtering system.
He had about six little waterlogged bodies laid out on a paper towel, with their tiny pink hands all pitifully curled. They were tiny, the size of her thumb tip. Eloise thought they were voles, not mice, but whatever. It certainly didn’t matter to the pool, or to the voles.
“I’m so sorry,” she said as she slipped into the booth at the restaurant.
“That’s all right, I went ahead,” said Carol Haines. Eloise saw that there were two chopped salads and a glass of wine and a Perrier on the table, and Carol was halfway through the Perrier. Eloise took a grateful sip of her wine.
“Have you been waiting long?”
“No, traffic on Santa Monica was brutal. I just got here myself.