Ten North Frederick (35 page)

“Of course. Well, Edith's a fine, healthy woman.”

“Yes.”

“Edith isn't a semi or any kind of an invalid.”

“No.”

“Do you get what I'm driving at?”

Joe smiled. “Possibly.”

“It'd be nice to have another Joseph B. Chapin in public life.”

Joe smiled again. “Well, you might talk to my son when he gets old enough.”

“I'll talk to him when the time comes, but I'd like to put the bee in your bonnet too.”

“I'm afraid not, Mike. Nobody knows me.”

“And nobody knows anything against you. Seriously, the party's always desperate for the better-type young man. If fellows like you took a more active interest, politics wouldn't have such a bad reputation.”

“Thank you, Mike, but I'm a lawyer.”

“I never heard of that being a hindrance, not in politics. Invite me over to your house some evening when Edith can be present and I'll tell you a few things about politics that you may not realize.”

“You don't think
Edith
would want me to go into politics. Why, Edith is one of the shyest girls I've ever known.”

“Well, I didn't say I was going to ask Edith to run for anything. I'd just like you and Edith to know that politics can be the most respectable thing in the world. Don't forget, Joe, the men we all look up to the most—Washington, Lincoln, Teddy—they were politicians, and damn good politicians.”

“Mike, you're too persuasive already.”

“Just promise me you'll speak to Edith, just tell her what I've told you. Now I've got to go and play some politics. Help a man get a pension that he's entitled to, but on account of some red tape he's on the verge of starvation. That's politics, too, Joe. A lot of it is helping people get what they're entitled to. Billy English can tell you some of the things we politicians do that you never hear about.”

“Mike, you're a scoundrel and I've listened to too much already. Give my kindest regards to Peg.”

“Thank you, Joe, and the same to Edith and Joe Junior and
Ann
,” said Mike. “I'll never call her Nancy again.”

When Joe came home that same evening Edith was at his desk in the den, writing letters. “I don't think I'll ever catch up on my correspondence, and yet before we were married I didn't write six letters a year. By the way, who do you think sent me the biggest bouquet of flowers today?”

“I don't know, dear. Who?”

“The Slatterys. Mr. and Mrs. Michael J. Slattery. Michael James Slattery. No message, just the card. I looked under the envelope and the card is from Bailey's. What ever possessed them to send me flowers?”

“Well, they've always been friendly. I've known both of them all my life, and Mike was in my class at law school. We used to see each other there, and ride home on the train together at Christmas time.”

“Oh, I know them, I know them, but they don't know me well enough to send me flowers. To tell the truth, I can't stand her. That round pretty face and those clothes. I've never seen her in the same thing twice—not that I ever see her much. But she always looks new and
painted
.”

“Painted? Peg Slattery?”

“I don't mean like a bad woman, but cheap.
New
. And there must be at least six dollars' worth of roses. Now I'll have to write to her, and I don't want to write to her. I have no idea what to say to her. And what on earth does she want? Her oldest child is in Miss Holton's and I think she goes to dancing school. What else does she want?”

“They're Irish, and the Irish are very kind people. Generous. And you've just had a baby.”

“I hope I don't have to keep track of all their babies. They have three girls and I think another child on the way. Oh, she wants something, of that you may be sure.”

“Well, let's wait and see what it is,” said Joe.

The invitation Mike Slattery sought was not forthcoming, and he did not press the point, either of the invitation or of Joe's more active participation in politics. In time, but not immediately, Peg received a note from Edith Chapin:

Dear Peg:

I would like to offer my belated thanks for the beautiful flowers you sent when our son was born. They were exquisite.

I hope this finds you and your family all well.

Sincerely,

Edith S. Chapin

(Mrs. Joseph B. Chapin)

Peg Slattery read the note aloud to Mike, a custom they both followed even to household bills. “When did I send exquisite flowers to Madam Chapin?”

“I forgot to tell you. When you went to Scranton for Sheila's First Communion?”

“Yes?”

“I happened to meet Joe Chapin on Main Street and we had a chat and I got an inspiration. It wasn't an inspiration, meaning the first time I ever thought of it. I've been thinking of it for quite a while. But while I was talking to him I planted the bee in his bonnet about him getting into politics. And what a lucky coincidence! Because it came out in the conversation that his grandfather and namesake, Joseph B. Chapin, was once the lieutenant governor. Did you know that?”

“How would I know that?”

“Well, I didn't know it either, and it makes it so much easier. I told him the party needs young men like him, and if ever I spoke a true word in the form of flattery, that was it. A good old name, plenty of money that wasn't stolen, at least stolen outright, and a handsome fellow with a good education. Married. Two young children. Protestant, but not an A.P.A. No scandals anywhere in the family.”

“Edith's father liked the bottle.”

“But was he ever in trouble? No.”

“Joe's mother. A long, long time ago she got in some mix-up on Christiana Street when they used to have all those saloons there. Mom told me about it. Charlotte Chapin was—oh, dear, now—there was something about a man lifting up her skirts and—the Chapins had a coachman—he horsewhipped the man that got fresh with Charlotte.”

“I never heard
any
of this,” said Mike. “It sounds crazy.”

“It isn't, I can assure you. I haven't got it right because it's so long since I thought about it. But I'm pretty sure the coachman beat up the man . . .”

“Did the man climb in her carriage and get fresh?”

“No. She was walking.”

“Oh, come on now, Peg. Charlotte Chapin would never walk through that section.”

“Ah, she never did again, but this one time she was walking—”

“Accompanied by the coachman with a whip, of course,” said Mike.

“Never mind the sarcasm,” said Peg Slattery. “It all happened just about the way I'm telling it. And
after
that, shortly after that, Charlotte Chapin took to her bed and stayed there the rest of her life. Or at least hardly ever left the Frederick Street house.”

“It couldn't have been much if I never even heard of the incident,” said Mike.

“Maybe not, but I'd find out who the man was that the coachman beat up.”

“Yes. This was what, about thirty years ago?”

“I couldn't say. But around that,” said Peg. “So you sent some
exquisite
flowers to Edith Chapin—Mrs.
Joseph B
., that is, just in case I might get her mixed up with the old lady who's dead. You're going to get at Joe through her, is that it?”

“More or less.”

“It won't be hard.”

“You think not? What makes you think so? According to Joe, she'd have a horror of public life.”

“Proving that Joe knows his wife no better than many husbands know their wives. I don't say Edith's a suffragette or one of those kind of women, but if she'd been pretty she'd make a good Dolly Madison. She has two children, four years apart, so it doesn't look to me like she's out to increase the population. And her house doesn't take much to run it—time, I mean. Harry and Marian run that house to perfection or Old Lady Chapin would have sacked them long ago. Edith isn't interested in clothes. She dresses like someone that got her clothes at Cohen's–North Main. She doesn't do much church work or charity. I'd say Edith Chapin would relish being the wife of—what? You wouldn't start him as an assemblyman.”

“At first, I wouldn't run him for anything. Just get him acquainted around among the boys. Then later spring him on the public, and if they took to him, fine. He's not going to cost anybody anything—”

“Far from it.”

“And you know he's so gosh-darn respectable. And I
like
Joe.”

“Well, why shouldn't you? I do too. He's never done anything, good or bad, that I can see. Everything he is or has, he inherited. His good looks, his money, his name. The one thing he didn't inherit I consider a handicap, but maybe that's because I can hardly look at her, she's that ugly.”

“Oh, you and Edith could never be friends in a thousand years,” said Mike, amiably.

Peg looked at him straight. “Hmm,” she said.

“What do you mean,
hmm?
”

“Never you mind, Mr. Michael James Slattery. I see through you,” said Peg.

“I never said you didn't,” said Mike. He kissed her on the cheek and she pretended to suffer the kiss.

“She'd be no fun that way,” said Peg.

He laughed, and she pushed him. “Go 'way from me,” she said.

Joe Chapin's political career could have ended with a word from Peg Slattery. If she had expressed an instinctive dislike of Joe, Mike Slattery would have said no more about Joe to her or anyone else. If she had wanted to punish Joe for Edith's shortcomings, Mike would have so punished him. Mike in the first instance would have been relying, as he usually did, on Peg's sound reactions to candidates. In the second instance he would have been no more than a loyal husband. But Peg, an equally loyal wife, was deeply and intensely interested in her husband's business, which was politics, and she was above personal pettiness when it might affect that business. For her there was only one man in the world, and if other men were hurt or honored in the process of her man's advancement, she was more than willing to dole out the honors and inflict the injuries. By the way that older men were coming to rely more and more on Mike's judgment and delegate authority and responsibility, a duller woman than Peg could have told that Mike was already accepted as a senior member of the gang. His religious affiliation would keep him from the highest public honors—Governor of the Commonwealth, President of the United States—but the compensation there was that governors and presidents get defeated and the mark of defeat is upon them, while politicians are often at their most powerful after a defeat. When a candidate has taken a licking the party needs the professionals like Mike, the full-time noncandidates, to reorganize for the next campaign. It is a simple enough rule, and it explains the mystery that sometimes baffles the public (and defeated candidates): why, after a defeat, are the same old politicians still eating the big meals and smoking the expensive cigars? Peg knew the answer to the mystery; the best answer was her man, who was a full-time politician who would be eating the big meals and smoking the big cigars (although he personally did not smoke) no matter how many times Woodrow Wilson got elected president.

Mike had laughingly turned down opportunities to become chief burgess of Gibbsville, county clerk, sheriff, register of wills, and other offices that were as high as some men could aspire. Mike, when asked to run for such offices, would always reply that his committee work was more important, which indeed it was. It was more important to the party, and it was much more important to Michael James Slattery, who did not want to be marked with an early defeat for a minor office. In the beginning, as soon as he got out of law school, Mike did work that demanded the qualifications of a moderately industrious office boy, not a man with a law degree. But he soon proved his ability and his dependability: a couple of times he was given sums of money to hand over to ward leaders. It was only a venial political sin to pocket some of that money on its way from the committee to the ward leader: but when Mike was given $
400
to deliver to a ward captain, the ward captain received $
400
, not $
375
. There would have been no comment and no disillusionment if Mike had paid himself a $
25
delivery fee, but he early showed that he was not a $
25
man. The $
25
men are indispensable, but they invariably remain $
25
men, and it is worth a great deal to a political organization to find out who among their younger workers are above nervous larceny. The wiser old politicians were also pleased to note that Mike was not in any great hurry to go into the street-paving business or make premature demands for his share of legitimate county legal fees. The paving business and the receiverships came later, along with Mike's partnership in an insurance firm and directorships on the boards of farseeing corporations. In the beginning Mike was content to wear out a lot of shoe leather and pay for it himself while building up what eventually became a personal organization without its becoming publicly identified as the Slattery gang.

In his entire career Mike was never once indicted. No ambitious district attorney could ever have shown that Mike had handed a man two dollars for his vote. Mike did not even buy the barrel of beer for a volunteer fire company. The beer got there, and it was well understood that Mike had seen to its arrival, but he was careful to mask his connection with it. And of course it is not illegal for a citizen to slake the thirst of a group of unpaid smoke eaters; nor is it illegal for a public-spirited citizen to provide the ice cream and pretzels for a Lutheran Sunday School picnic; nor is it illegal for the wife of some such citizen to make an appearance at the African M. E. Church for the funeral of a popular waiter, and if she happens to be accompanied by her husband and is the only white woman present, she and her husband may be kindly remembered by the members of the congregation. (That particular funeral took place in
1915
, and Mike might have attended it without political intent, since he was genuinely fond of Clarence Whitehall. Twenty years later the Slatterys' attendance at a
1915
funeral was recalled by several important Negroes who were being invited to forsake the Republican party for the greener pastures of the New Deal.)