The Prodigal Daughter (42 page)

Congresswoman
Kane flew into Washington in early January. She had sent Janet Brown on to the
capital in December to head up her congressional staff, and when Florentyna
joined her, everything seemed to be organized, down to the George Novak Suite
at the Washington Baron. Janet had made herself indispensable during the last
months and Florentyna was well prepared when the first session of the 94th
Congress was ready to open.

Janet had
allocated the $227,270 a year each House member was permitted for the staffing
of an office. She chose carefully from the many applicants, keeping the
emphasis on competence whatever a person’s age.

She had appointed
a personal secretary for Florentyna named Louise Drummond, a legislative
assistant, a press secretary, four legislative correspondents to research
issues as well as to handle mail, two secretaries and a receptionist. In
addition, Florentyna had left three staff workers in her district office under
a capable Polish field representative.

Florentyna had
been assigned rooms on the seventh floor of the Longworth Building, the oldest
and middle of the three House buildings. Janet told her that her office had been
occupied in the past by Lyndon Johnson, John Lindsay and Pete McCloskey. “‘Hear
no evil, see no evil, speak no evil,”
‘ she
commented.
Florentyna’s office suite was only two hundred yards from the Capitol and she
could always go directly to the chamber on the little subway if the weather was
inclement or if she wished to avoid the ubiquitous herded groups of Washington
sightseers.

Florentyna’s
personal office was a modest-sized room already cluttered with massive brown
congressional furniture, a wooden desk, a large brown leather sofa, several
dark, uncomfortable chairs and two glass-fronted cabinets. From the way the
office had been left, it was easy to believe that the previous occupant had
been male.

Florentyna
quickly filled the bookcases with her copies of the U.S. Code, the Rules of the
House, the Hurd Annotated Illinois Revised Statutes and Carl Sandburg’s
three-volume biography of Lincoln, one of her favorite works despite his party.
She then hung some water colors of her own choice on the drab cream walls in an
effort to cover the nail holes left by the previous tenant. On her desk she
placed a family photograph taken outside her first store in San Francisco and
when she discovered that each member of Congress was entitled to plants from
the Botanic Gardens, she instructed Janet to claim their maximum allotment as
well as arranging for fresh flowers on her desk every Monday.

Florentyna
disliked the way most of her colleagues filled their reception areas with
self-laudatory memorabilia. She asked Janet to decorate the front office in a
way that was both welcoming and dignified; under no circumstance were there to
be any portraits of her on view. She reluctantly agreed to place the flag of
Illinois and the United States flag behind her desk.

On the afternoon
before Congress convened, Florentyna held a reception for her family and
campaign workers. Richard and Kate flew down with the children and Edward
accompanied Florentyna’s mother and Father O’Reilly from Chicago. Florentyna
had sent out nearly one hundred invitations to friends and supporters all over
the country and to her surprise more than seventy people turned up.

During the
celebration she took Edward aside and invited him to join the board of the
Baron Group; full of champagne, he accepted and then forgot about the offer
until he received a letter from Richard confin-ning the appointment and adding
that it would be valuable for Florentyna to have two boardroom views to con,
,ider
while she concentrated on her political career.

When Richard and
Florentyna climbed into yet another Baron king-size bed the night of the
reception, he told her once again how proud he was of her achievement.

“I couldn’t have
done it without your support, Mr. Kane.”

“‘Mere was no
suggestion that I supported you, Jessie, though I reluctantly admit to gaining
considerable pleasure from your victory. Now I must catch up with the Group’s
European forecasts before I switch off the light on my side of the bed.”

“I do wish you
would slow down a bit, Richard.”

“I can’t, my
darling. Neither of us can. That’s why we’re so good for each other.”

“Am I good for
you?” asked Florentyna.

“In
a word, no.
If I could have it all back, I would have married Maisie and saved the money on
several pairs of gloves.”

“Good God, I
wonder what Maisie is up to nowadays.”

“Still
in Bloomingdale’s.
Having given up any hope of catching me, she married a traveling salesman, so I
suppose I’m stuck with you. Now can I get down to reading this report?”

She took the
report out of his hand and dropped it on the floor.

“No,
dariing.”

When the first
session of the 94th Congress opened, Speaker Carl Albert, dressed somberly in a
dark suit, took his place on the podium and banged his gavel as he gazed down
into the semicircle of members seated in their green leather chairs. Florentyna
turned in her seat and smiled up at Richard and her family, who had been
allocated places in the gallery above. When she looked around the chamber at
her colleagues, she couldn’t help thinking that they were the worst-dressed
group of people she had ever seen in her life. Her bright-red wool suit, in the
latest midi fashion, made her conspicuous by exception.

The Speaker
asked the House chaplain, the Reverend Edward Latch, to pronounce the benediction.
This was followed by an opening speech by the leaders of both parties and an
address by the Speaker. Mr. Albert reminded all the congressmen that they
should keep their speeches brief and to refrain from making too much noise in
the chamber while others were on the podium. He then adjourned the session and
everyone broke to attend some of the dozens of receptions given on the opening
day.

“
is
that all you have to do, Mummy?” asked Annabel.

Florentyna
laughed. “No, darling, that’s just the opening session. 17he real work starts
tomorrow.”

Even Florentyna
was surprised the next morning. Her mail contained one hundred and sixty-one
items, including out-of date Chicago papers, six “Dear Colleague” letters, from
congressmen she had yet to meet, fourteen invitations to trade association
receptions, seven letters from special-interest groups, several invitations to
address meetings-some out of Chicago and Washington-three dozen letters from
constituents, two requests to be placed on her mailing list, fifteen r6surn6s
from hopeful job-seekers and a note from Carl Albert to say that she had been
placed on the Appropriations and Small Business committees.

The mail looked
manageable compared with the ceaseless telephone demands for everything from
Florentyna’s official photograph to press interviews.

The Washington
reporters from the Chicago papers called regularly and Florentyna was also
contacted by the local Washington press, who were always intrigued by new
female additions to Congress, especially those who did not resemble a
heavyweight boxer. Florentyna quickly learned the names she should know,
including Maxine Cheshire and Betty Beale, David Broder and Joe Alsop. Before
the end of March she had been the subject of a front-page “Style” interview in
the Post and had appeared in Washingtonian Magazine’s “New Stars on the Hill.”
She turned down continual invitations to appear on “Panorama” and began to
question where the proper balance lay between gaining visibility, which would
be of use in influencing issues, and losing all her free time to the media.

During those
first weeks, Florentyna seemed to do nothing except run very fast trying to
remain on the same spot. She considered herself fortunate to be the Illinois
delegation’s choice for a vacancy on the powerful Appropriations Committee, the
first freshman in years to be so honored, but discovered nothing had been left
to chance when she opened a scrawled note from Mayor Daley which simply read,
“You owe me one.”

Florentyna found
her new world fascinating, but it felt rather like being back at school as she
searched the corridors for committee rooms, sprinted to the subway to the
Capitol to record her vote, met with lobbyists, studied briefing books and
signed dozens of letters. The idea of getting a signature machine grew
increasingly appealing.

An elderly
Democratic colleague from Chicago advised her on the wisdom of sending out a
constituent newsletter to her 180,000 households every two months. “Remember,
my dear,” he added, “it may appear as though you are doing nothing more than
papering the Ninth District, but there are only three ways of assuring your
re-election: the frank, the frank and the frank.”

He also advised
Florentyna to assign two of her district staffers to clip every article from
the local newspapers that referred to a constituent.

Voters began
receiving congratulations on their weddings, births, community achievementsand
even ba,
;ketball
victories now that eighteen-year-olds
had the vote. Florentyna always added a personal word or two in Polish where
appropriate, thankful that her mother had not always obeyt-d her father’s every
word.

With the help of
Janet, who was always in the office before her and still there when she left,
Florentyna slowly got on top of the paper work, and by the July 4 recess she
was almost in control. She had not yet spoken on the floor and had said very
little in any committee hearings. Sandra Read, a House colleague from New York,
had advised her to spend the first six months listening, the second six months
thinking and the third six months speaking occasionally.

“What about the
fourth six months?” asked
Florentyna.

“You’ll be
campaigning for re-election,”
came
the reply.

On weekends she
would regale Richard with stories of the bureaucratic waste of the taxpayers’ money
and the lunatic way America’s democratic system was conducted.

“I thought you
had been elected to change all that,” he said, looking down at his wife, who
was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of him, clutching her knees.

“It will take
twenty years to change anything. Are you aware that committees make decisions
involving millions of dollars but half the members haven’t the slightest idea
what they’re voting on and the other half don’t even attend but vote by proxy.”

“Then you will
have to become chairman of a committee, and see to it that your members do
their homework and attend hearings.”

.11 can’t.

“What do you
mean, you can’t?” asked Richard, finally folding his morning newspaper.

“You can only
become the chairman of a committee by seniority, so it’s irrelevant when you
reach the peak of your mental prowess. If there is someone who has been on the
committee longer than you, he automatically gets the job. At this moment, of
twenty-two standing committees, there are three committee chairmen in their
seventies, thirteen in their sixties, which leaves only six under sixty. I’ve
worked out that I will become chairman of the Appropriations Committee on my
sixty-eighth birthday, having served twenty-eight years in the House. That is
if I win the thirteen elections in between, because if you lose one, you start
over. It’s taken me only a few weeks to work out why so many southern states
elect freshmen to Congress who are under thirty. If we ran the Bar-on Group the
way Congress is run, we’d have been bankrupt long ago.”

Florentyna was
slowly coming to accept the fact that it would take years to reach the top of
the political tree, and the truth was that the climb consisted of a long, hard
grind, known as “serving your time.”

“Go along and
get along,” was the way her committee chairman put it. She decided that if it
was going to be any different for her, she would have to turn the disadvantage
of tieing a freshman into the advantage of being a woman.

It happened in a
way she could never have planned. She did not speak on the House floor for the
first six months, although she had sat in her seat for hours watching how the
debates were conducted and learning from those who used their limited speaking
time with skill. When a distinguished Republican, Robert C. L. Buchanan,
announced he would be proposing an anti-abortion amendment to the Defense
Appropriations bill, Florentyna felt the time had come to deliver her maiden
speech.

She wrote a
letter to the chairman and asked for permission to speak against the motion. He
sent back a courteous reply, reminding her she would be allowed only five
minutes and wishing her luck.

Buchanan spoke
with great emotion to a silent chamber and used his five minutes with the skill
of a professional House man. Florentyna thought him the worst sort of
backwoodsman and as he spoke added some notes to her carefully prepared speech.
When Buchanan sat down, Sandra Read was recognized and she made a powerful case
against the amendment although she was regularly interrupted by noisy comments
from the floor. A third speaker added nothing to the debate, simply reiterating
the words of Robert
Buchanan,
to be sure his views
were on the record and in his local newspaper. Speaker Albert then recognized
the distinguished gentlewoman from Illinois. Florentyna rose with some
trepidation and made her way to the speaking rostrum in the well of the House,
trying to keep her hands from trembling too noticeably.