Authors: Beth Gutcheon
The baritone announcer was booming again that Lloyd Prince was going to protect
your
Idaho. As the canoe swung, the camera just caught sight of a wheelchair standing on a dock in the distance.
Lynn snapped off the set.
“Well, that doesn’t scare me much,” said Laurie.
“It doesn’t? I think it should. He’s spending like a maniac. It’s saturation bombing.”
“We’re going to have to triple our media buys in the next three weeks,” Walter said.
“Are the positives ready?”
“Two are. We’re working on the last one. We’ll keep the ‘Lopez Can Beat Turnbull’ one running all this week.”
“Can we afford it?”
“We need to show well in Washington, no question.”
Amy was in her apartment, packing. She and Laurie were leaving for the District in the morning for a major fund-raising dinner. Even more important, they had meetings set up with eight different PACs.
Laurie’s showing in the polls had been strong in March but her lead was slipping badly now that Lloyd Prince had started heaving money at the TV screen. PACs didn’t like to give money to losing causes, no matter how attractive the candidate.
Amy was glad to be going with Laurie for a couple of reasons.
She was still better at raising money than Laurie was. Also, Jill was coming down from New York to join them. Amy would be overjoyed to see her, in the first place, and in the second place, it wouldn’t be a bad thing at all to put some distance between her and Walter. She’d begun
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to be afraid that someone—worst of all Walter—would notice her infatuation. She hadn’t felt like such a fool since she was in ninth grade and everyone knew she “liked” Johnny Kalmbach.
Amy knew it was some sort of hallucination, like her nicotine deprivation crush on the Volvo mechanic, and she wished it would go the hell away. In fact, it was ridiculous. She’d been ripped from her identity as a happy wife, dislocated and disoriented, and like everyone in the campaign she’d forgotten what it was like to get a full night’s sleep. Complete explanation. Sailors on night watch took manatees for mermaids. Amy wasn’t used to working closely with a man who was not her husband. Walter was famous as an intensity junkie, a sort of political buccaneer. He might as well fly a skull and crossbones; he was no kind of man for a hearth and kinder type like her. And yet he made her laugh, and she kept thinking about those big knobby wrists and that silly Adam’s apple. There was one thing that wasn’t silly; the more she thought about Noah, the more she thought you were doomed if you married a man who hated his mother. Walter seemed to really, truly, like women.
That was what she was thinking when the doorbell rang. When she opened the door and found Walter standing there, she thought for a moment she was having an out-of-body experience.
“I brought your ticket,” he said. “Sheila Detweiler said you had left it.”
“I could have picked it up in the morning” was all she could manage. Her voice sounded absurd to her.
“I know, but you have no idea what self-restraint it’s taken me to stay away from this door this long,” said Walter.
“Really?”
“Really. May I come in?”
And that was all that was said between them until about an hour later, when they lay in the wreck of the bedclothes, with their own clothes all over the apartment.
“Do you do this often?” Amy finally asked. Her head was on Walter’s smooth, bare chest. She had already decided she didn’t care what the answer was.
316 / Beth Gutcheon
“Not nearly as often as people would have you think. Do you?”
“What?”
“Do this often.”
Amy laughed. “I don’t even know what ‘this’ is,” she said.
“Don’t even think about it,” said Walter. “Neither one of us will know until the campaign is over.”
C
arter was trying to get Flora to eat her supper, but Flora was experimenting with a spirited improvisation of that favorite of parenthood, the Terrible Twos.
This is very healthy, Carter chanted to herself. This is a really good sign, that she feels secure enough to do this. “This” was hurling her spinach tortellini overhand at the glass door out to the terrace one little dumpling at a time, and watching the birds jump when they heard the thuds. There were cheese-sauce splats all over the glass panels, and Carter was trying to do deep-breathing exercises as she stooped to clean up the floor. She had no idea what to do about this behavior. She had exhausted reasonable discourse. Swearing like a drill sergeant was what came to mind, but she was pretty sure that wasn’t right. If she could get the kids next door to baby-sit for an hour after she had the little monster in bed, she was going straight to Borders Books for whatever had taken the place of Dr. Spock.
Carter had been out of the office all day. Romie said Flora had been as happy as a lark; she had been to the playground, and had a good nap, and watched Mr. Rogers. But the minute Carter arrived to pick her up, she’d started howling, and she’d been behaving like a candidate for the Foundling Home ever since.
Carter sat down beside the baby and took her spoon from her.
“No!” Flora said.
“Yes,” said Carter. She filled the spoon with peas and held it to Flora’s lips. Flora stared at her.
317
318 / Beth Gutcheon
“If you can’t eat like a big girl by yourself, you’ll have to be fed like a baby. Come on. One bite for Romie.”
There was a long eyeball-to-eyeball negotiation before Flora caved.
She ate peas for Romie.
“That’s a good girl. You wouldn’t want Romie to be sad you wouldn’t eat for her. Now one for Jerry.”
Lips locked together. The doorbell rang.
“See? That’s probably Jerry right now. I bet he heard you wouldn’t eat any peas for him and he came to show you his crocodile tears.”
The doorbell rang again, aggressively long this time.
“Yes, boohoo, big crocodile tears. Here, take this and
eat
.”
Carter gave Flora the spoon and jogged for the door. She was beginning to understand those rants about the spiritual trials of motherhood that had filled the hip women’s novels and magazines and so bored her when she was a young lawyer.
On her doorstep stood two large white men in black shoes. In her driveway, blocking her own car, should she wish to make a dash for freedom, sat a late-model American sedan with some government insignia painted on the door; at her angle, she couldn’t see the agency.
“Is Mr. Bond here?” It was the taller one, who had little triangular patches of bristle on his neck where he’d missed shaving. Why did the feds always look so much like heavily armed insurance salesmen?
The other one was wearing some repellent brand of drugstore co-logne.
“There is no Mr. Bond.”
“We’re looking for Carter Bond,” he said with irritation.
“I’m Carter Bond.”
The one with the bearded neck looked at her as if it were her fault that he had begun by making himself look foolish. He stepped into the house.
“Mind if we have a look?”
“Could I see some identification, please?” she asked. The first one stepped past her and walked into the living room, saying, “Mind if we look around?”
The second one produced a thing like a vinyl billfold. He flipped it open to show her a badge and a photo ID under plastic, and stepped
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past her, following his partner. The first one had paced forcefully into the kitchen where, at the sight of him, Flora gave a panicked scream and began to cry. Carter ran.
It took Carter a good several minutes to quiet Flora again. Meanwhile the men had marched into her office. The first one had pressed something on her computer keyboard, causing the screen saver to disappear and the screen to exhibit Carter’s check register.
“Do you guys have a warrant?”
“For what?”
“I’m trying to feed my daughter here, who are you and what do you want?”
“You invited us in,” said the one with the neck.
“I most certainly did not!”
“I asked if we could come in, and you didn’t say no,” he said.
“I’m saying no now,” she said. Growing frightened, Flora was clinging to her. Carter could feel the spoon, still clutched in the baby’s fist and covered with pea mash, wiping the back of her neck.
“This is your daughter?” the second one said. He was staring at the two of them, as if he were about to say something funny.
“What exactly do you want? And could I see your ID, please?”
Carter said to the first one. He had taken a textbook on Constitutional Law from a high shelf and was leafing through it.
“You studied law?”
“What the
hell
do you want?” Carter asked, louder. Flora was whimpering.
The first one closed the law book and turned to study her. He seemed pleased that he had her thoroughly angry and Carter was furious that she had let herself be caught so completely with her pants down.
The first one drew a paper from his inside pocket and slapped it onto the desk.
“You filed a lien in the state of Nevada on the property of William Bender?”
“Yes.”
“And you knew perfectly well that Mr. Bender owed the United 320 / Beth Gutcheon
States government the value of the property in taxes. You are hereby charged with conspiracy to defraud the government…”
“That’s ridiculous!”
The man turned and looked with interest at her computer screen and, insolently, pushed the scroll button. The screen changed, and there were her check entries for Visa, MasterCard, the dry cleaner, and the housekeeper. She could have spit nails. With the baby in her arms, she couldn’t even assume a stance that would cause him a moment’s hesitation.
With a reach of her hand, she turned off the computer’s monitor.
“Oh,” said the tall agent. “You have something to hide?”
“I just think you should show me
your
checkbook first.”
“You say this is your daughter?” asked the second agent for the second time.
“That’s enough,” said Carter. “Out.”
They looked at each other and made no move to go.
“Out!” she said louder. The baby was now sobbing.
“OUT! NOW!” she yelled. It took her another five minutes to actually clear them out of the house, and as she watched them smile at each other as they got into the car she wished she could aim one clean punch at either one of them. Clearly, they felt they had done a fine evening’s work.
“What?” Flora asked her over and over as Carter tried to calm her.
“Nothing, baby, it’s nothing.”
“Why?”
“Nothing bad is going to happen.”
Flora was not willing to let go of Carter for an hour after that. It took her forever to fall asleep, and in the middle of the night, she woke Carter with a screaming nightmare.
J
ill was waiting in the hotel room in Washington when Amy checked in. Amy didn’t even stop to take off her coat; she dropped her bags and swept her daughter into her arms, so happy to be close to her again that she smiled until her cheeks ached. She finally stepped back to look at Jill, and all she could do was shake her head.
“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” she finally managed. “Have you been waiting a long time?”
“No. How is Laurie?”
“Holding steady, but boy, it’s hard. The more I see what it takes, the more I wonder how anybody does it…. Oh, honeybunch, I am glad to see you!” Amy started to cry.
“Don’t start that, you promised.”
“I know I did, but I can’t help it. You look so beautiful, and I abandoned you, and I’ve missed you. Tell me everything,” Amy said, thinking of Walter and hoping it didn’t show.
“I have something to tell you you’re not going to like.”
“What?”
“Well, first, take a good look. I’m fine, all right?”
“Should I sit down?”
“Yes.” Amy sat down on the bed with her coat on, and Jill told her about MacDuff. As the story unfolded, Amy grew still, and when Jill described the attack, she had both hands over her mouth.
“Oh god.”
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“No, Mom. It’s all right.”
“How could it be?”
“Everything I had done to try to protect myself failed, and then I was saved because of one tiny thing I did months ago, some mystery I’ll never understand.”
Amy was beginning to recover from her panic. She couldn’t take her eyes from Jill’s face. Jill looked so calm. So free of fear.
“Maybe I should have left town years ago,” said Amy. “What’s happened to him? The hero?”
“One of Dad’s wicked Republican friends owns midtown. He gave him a job. Dad’s got him doing the rounds of fancy doctors, trying to fix him.”
“So Noah knows this whole story?”
“Not about the ball of light. But I went home for a week or two right after the attack. I was afraid I was going to need another stretch in the hat factory.”
“And Noah took care of you?”
“He came home early every night. He sat with me in the study, and made me eat, if you can believe it. We talked. One night I made him watch
Clueless
.”
“My god.”
“I know. The next night, he made me watch
High Society
. He’s different,” Jill said. “It’s really shaken him up. I don’t think he knew that you could leave.”
There was a silence.
“Show me what you’re going to wear to the dinner,” Amy said.
She stood up and went to the closet. “Jill! You brought this?”
She came out with a long soft dress of black wool crepe.
“Do you mind?”
“But does it fit you?”
“Not the way it fits you. But without the belt, it’s okay.”
Amy stood looking at her daughter. Size twelve, maybe ten. She looked like a different person. Amy wondered what she’d think of Walter.
Five Fortunes / 323
In the middle of the afternoon, Laurie arrived. It was amazing to Jill to see her surrounded by handlers, dressed in a suit with big shoulders. Laurie cut through the chaos in the room to give Jill a hug.
“Thank you for being here, little one. We’ve been missing you.”
“Do you need to be reminded you are Only a Woman?”