Authors: Beth Gutcheon
“I thought of reminding him that we once sat in against the war together.”
“Are you two going to tell me what you’re talking about?” Lynn asked.
Laurie and Walter looked at each other.
“No,” said Walter, “we’re not.”
“Okay, fine. No problem. Just what a press secretary likes, to be the last to know.”
“Next week,” Laurie promised.
“Fine. No problem.” Lynn crossed her arms and stared out the window. They rode in silence, replaying in their minds every minute of the lunch.
“I thought the…”
“When Boy Barnett…”
Laurie and Walter had both erupted at once.
“Go ahead.”
“Boy Barnett was trying to gore your ox.”
“I know. Did he?”
“I don’t think so.”
“And what about…”
“Yes. Well. That was a moment, wasn’t it? As if I couldn’t see what was on the table.”
Laurie had looked across the table at Mike Ross and their eyes had locked. She couldn’t interpret his expression.
Something had happened as the group was taking its leave that she couldn’t bear to point out to Walter. There had been bowing, waves exchanged by some of the party, but more formal leave-taking
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between others. It seemed pretty clear that the one-on-one good-byes would be among the ranking figures. Laurie shook hands with the editor in chief, with Chip Barnett, and with the managing editor.
But when she turned to Michael, hand outstretched, he had just that moment asked a question of Dan Popkey and turned his back to her.
“All it would take is one call to a reporter,” Laurie said at last.
“I know,” said Walter. “Don’t think about it.”
S
unday morning, the Lewiston paper went for the straight Republican ticket. But the Idaho
Courier
endorsed the Republican for president, an independent for Congress, and Laura Knox Lopez for U.S. Senate.
386
I
t was Sunday night supper, the first meal of the new week at The Cloisters. Carter and Jill had been on the phone to Amy in Boise and missed the gong. Everyone else was already seated in the dining room when they came in and they had to find seats at separate tables.
A Fitness Professional, apple-cheeked and curly-haired, tinkled her little bell for their attention. She asked Rae to begin the introductions.
“My name is Rae Strouse, I’m from San Francisco, and this is my twenty-third visit.”
“My name is Eloise Strouse, and I’m here with my stepmother.”
“My name is Bonnie Gray, I’m from Colorado, and I raise goats.”
“My name is Carter Bond, and I’m here to get in shape for my wedding.”
“Carter, show us your ring!” called Jill from across the room and, vamping, Carter did so. It was the size of a chandelier.
Everyone who had been to The Cloisters before cheered and clapped, and everyone who was new wondered why the hell she had come, and remembered, too late, how much she had hated the first day of camp.
“Can I have Terri again for my personal trainer?” Carter asked Sandra as they went over her schedule.
“Terri’s gone on to The Canyon Ranch. I’ve given you Suzanne.
I don’t think you met her last time; she was on maternity leave.”
387
388 / Beth Gutcheon
As she was leaving to go to Dancercise, Carter said, “I didn’t see Carol Haines last night. Is she here?”
“She’s coming today. She was delayed because her mother passed away last week.”
“My girlfriend was just here and she said
don’t miss
the Natural Menopause lady,” said Glenna Leisure to Eloise as they chugged along on the Moderate Mountain hike on Tuesday morning. Natural Menopause was one of the evening program choices. Eloise had been planning to skip it, hoping to suggest she was too young to be interested.
“Why?”
“She tells you about this sex lubricant stuff that’s exactly like your own…you know. She lets you try a sample on your hand, and Trudy says it is
too weird
. She was going straight out to get a case.”
“What is it?”
“Astrolube? Aquaglide? You get it at the drugstore. And she tells you about these little weights like lead tampons, they’re sort of pel-vicfloor dumbbells, that you can exercise your insides with…for secks-u-al pleasure, but also so you don’t end up in Depends…”
Eloise was agog. Glenna rattled right on.
“I have no idea how you know what size you need…”
Most of Tuesday passed in a haze for Jill, she was so excited about the election. Carol Haines had arrived at lunchtime. She wept when she first saw Rae, but made it clear that beyond that, she didn’t want to talk about Rusty. She set straight to work polling the group and arranging to have supper served in Saguaro for all who were interested in watching the returns on TV.
“It’s the strangest day here,” Amy said to Jill on the phone from Boise. “There’s nothing to do. We voted this morning, and now we’re just wandering around.”
“Where’s Laurie?”
“She’s here in the hotel holed up with her kids.”
“And how does it feel?”
Five Fortunes / 389
“Our last poll showed us in a dead heat. Turnbull’s showed him still a point ahead. Walter’s people are doing exit polls. Have you seen Solange?”
“She’s gone.”
“Why?”
“No one will say. Mom, why don’t you come tomorrow? Both of you? Can’t you?”
“Is there room?”
“I think so; I’ll ask.”
Laurie was as nervous as a panther. The campaign had taken a hotel suite for her and the children. Billy and Cinder were next door, and Hunt couldn’t stay away, though he was sleeping at Bliss’s house.
The twins were watching videos in the second bedroom. Walter kept calling.
“Our exit polls show better Hispanic turnout than ever before.
This is Amy’s doing, of course.”
Fifteen minutes later he called again. “I’ve heard from Moscow and Lewiston. The women are turning out. It looks strong.”
“How about the Panhandle?”
“We’ve got some problems there.”
“Some problems means the tank.”
“It’s Prince’s stronghold. He’s hurting Turnbull worse, but he’s hurting us too.”
Laurie couldn’t stand it anymore so she and Cinder and Anna went out for a run.
In the wet, gray, November street, people cheered Laurie when she approached. A young man on a bicycle raised his hand as he rode toward her and they slapped palms as they passed each other.
“Is this a victory lap?” she asked Cinder. “Or are they saying ‘Nice try’?”
By four o’clock in the afternoon she was bathed and dressed in the clothes she would wear for the last event of the campaign, whatever that turned out to be. Anna and Cara were squabbling over barrettes. The twins were overdosing on
Toy Story
. The clock seemed to be
390 / Beth Gutcheon
going backward and the polls wouldn’t close in California for another five hours.
The President had won. Laurie knew that when he took Florida, although it wasn’t official yet. That was good for him and probably bad for her. There
were
people who only went to the polls to vote for President. She gave up and went down to Walter’s room, where there were four TV sets tuned to different networks. CNN reeled deliriously back and forth between election reporting and disaster coverage of a hurricane in Florida.
“Come on,” said Carter to the TV for the fifteenth time. “Who cares about California, what’s happening in Idaho?”
“In Idaho,” said the announcer as the map behind him tumbled and clicked and suddenly the state of Idaho turned red, “we are getting word of an upset. Laurie Lopez, running against incumbent Jimbo Turnbull, has come from behind in the polls in the last two weeks to a race that right now is looking like a dead heat. A local station declared the incumbent, Senator Turnbull, the winner an hour ago. But they have just reversed themselves. Let’s go to Boise.”
The scene switched to a hotel room hung with tricolor banners and filled with riotous supporters. A reporter in a perky pink blazer said, “Thank you, Bill. An hour ago one of our local stations declared that Jimbo Turnbull
had
won reelection. But our own exit polls show the two candidates very, very close, and as we speak, we’re giving the edge to the challenger, Laura Lopez. As you know, Bill, Judge Lopez has been very much in the news this month ever since she shot an intruder in her bedroom. In case your viewers don’t know the story—”
“I’m sorry, Cindy, sorry…” said the famous announcer, and the viewers were returned to the national studio where some news was breaking about a tight race for governor in Washington State.
“I’ve just thought of what’s wrong with this,” said Rae.
“What?”
“This is no time to be on the wagon. I could use a great big piña colada right now. And make it snappy.”
Five Fortunes / 391
There was no more news of Idaho for what seemed like an eternity.
The ladies who had eaten in the dining room began to wander in to see what was going on. There were cheers and groans as results were announced around the country. There was another disaster report from Jacksonville, now flooded after the hurricane. Families were leaving their houses in rowboats launched from second-story windows.
The famous announcer was burbling on about what it meant to the President to have won Ohio when he interrupted himself.
“Excuse me—” He listened to his earphone. “Excuse me, we have another result, from that very close Senate race in Idaho. As of now, we are showing that the challenger, Judge Laura Lopez, has beaten Jimbo Turnbull.”
There were yells of joy. Carol and Rae were in each other’s arms.
Eloise and Glenna were wildly clapping, and Carter and Jill were giving loud high fives. When they could stand to turn their attention back to the set, they were back at Laurie’s campaign ballroom. Perky Cindy was saying, “It now appears that the station had misread its polling data. We are showing that Laurie Lopez has won by a comfortable margin, and in some areas, by quite a wide margin.”
“Have we heard anything from Senator Turnbull, Cindy?”
“No, not yet, Bill. Although, I am hearing now, I am hearing now, that all three networks are now forecasting Judge Lopez as the winner. As I was saying—”
“Thank you, Cindy, I’m sorry to interrupt, but we’re going to switch now to Senator Turnbull’s headquarters. Are you there, Ted?”
Ted was. On the podium behind him, Jimbo Turnbull, a fixture in the Capitol for over thirty years, was standing with his young wife and his pretty eighteen-year-old daughter. There were many people in rows behind him too, and tears could be seen as he lifted his hands in the two-fisted cheer with which he’d greeted well-wishers for so long. His wife and daughter were openly crying, and chanting began among his workers. He opened his palms to signal for quiet.
“I want to thank, I want to thank you all…. You know how much you’ve done, and I think you know how much we appreciate it.
392 / Beth Gutcheon
This isn’t the way we wanted it to end. But we fought hard, and we did the best we could. I want to say thank you, to all of you, and to my family”—here the camera went in close on the daughter, her eyes and nose red from crying—“for all you’ve done. You all go on home and rest up for the next fight. I’m looking forward to a rest myself, and to my first hunting season in Idaho in a long, long time.”
There was sniffling behind him.
“And I want to say to my opponent, the new senator from the great state of Idaho”—here he appeared to be surprised by tears himself and the camera zoomed in tight on
him—
“I want to say, Sissy, we’ve come a long way from the great, gray, green, greasy Limpopo River. You did good, little girl. Get out there and give ’em hell.”
He turned abruptly and walked off the platform, leaving his family to trot and trail after him.
“I didn’t get all of that, Ted,” said the famous announcer. “Did you? What was he saying about that…about that river?”
“From what I understand, Bill, it’s from a children’s story…it’s from a children’s story that Senator Turnbull used to read to the Knox children…”
“Rudyard Kipling, I’m told now,” said the famous announcer.
“Thank you, Ted. We’re going now to Judge Lopez’s headquarters, where we understand she’s ready to make a statement.”
The camera switched back to the earlier ballroom, now a scene of pandemonium. The campaign kids were out of their minds with joy. The air was full of confetti, and Cindy in her perky blazer had one finger in her ear while the other hand clutched the microphone.
She was yelling something into it, but it couldn’t be heard above the din.
The platform was crammed with staffers and family and friends.
Laurie, flanked by Hunt and Carlos, walked to the microphone. The rest of her children and Cinder’s filled in on either side, looking toward the cameras and bumping into each other. Amy and Walter, Bliss and Billy and Lynn, were ringed around her.
In New York City, sitting alone before the TV in the den, thinking about Jill and wondering if she was watching this too, Noah Burrows suddenly learned the thing he had been trying to discover for months:
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he found out where his wife was. Behind the candidate there was just a glimpse of her, wearing a dress he’d never seen before and a look of elation he’d never seen either. All these months, wondering if she were angry, lonely, who she was with, he had never come anywhere close to imagining this.
In the ballroom in Boise, Laurie held up her fists in a victory sign, and her smile was so bright and broad it seemed to glow. The cheers came in waves. She held out her hands for quiet and the roar dropped slightly. She adjusted the microphone, turned to her father, and the cheers broke out again. Three times she tried to begin her thank-yous, and three times she couldn’t be heard above the joyous roar. She gave in to it and raised her fists in salute again, and the cheering crested higher. Laurie’s smile was enormous.
H
as anyone ever actually
killed
a Fitness Professional?”
asked Margaret. She was a willowy blond from Duluth on her first visit to The Cloisters.