Bingo (36 page)

“Very funny. I think I’d feel better if you let me have it.”

“I can’t do that. I’m not saying it’s right what you did. It isn’t. And I hope to heaven my sister and her big-nosed sidekick Orrie never find out. But right or wrong, it makes sense to me. You’ve known each other since you were kids. You liked each other. You
and Jackson used to play baseball and tennis together from sunup to sundown from kindergarten through college. I thought you’d catch fire then but no, he wanted the other one. Nice girl but I’ve always felt you and Jackson have more in common than Jack and Regina.”

“I don’t think men marry women, at least when they’re young, on the basis of commonality.”

“You know what Cora used to say, ‘Men fall in love with their eyes, and women with their ears.’ And, honey, Regina is a knock-out. You’re good-looking but she’s a magazine type.”

“Kept her looks too.”

“Too much makeup—but yes. I expect Jackson’s flopped in that hospital bed with deep thoughts. I don’t envy him.” She put down her wire clippers, next to the strippers. “Would you marry him if he got a divorce?”

“He never would.”

“That’s not the question. Would you?”

I’d never thought about it. Not once. Which says something about my ability to push back certain emotions.

“I guess I believe that Jack belongs to her no matter what I feel for him—so, no, I don’t think I would marry him.”

We didn’t say anything else until I finished the room. “Mom, can we eat? I’ll do the trim after supper.”

We ate. She told me that she’d been talking to Mr. Pierre about learning hairstyling. She’d like to make a little money. I’d heard this before. Right now, apart from social security, her small savings, and what I contributed, Mother’s income came from babysitting. She got a lot of business because she was great with kids.

“Now I’ve got something to tell you.”

“Yes?” I dug into my grits, my second helping.

“Ed Tutweiler Walters and I are going to live together.”

I paused, stared at my grits, and put down my spoon. “What are you saying?”

“You heard me.”

“My God. Mom, you barely know him!”

“That’s why we’re living together. We’ll be living in sin.” She beamed.

“He hardly talks.”

“That’s the way he is. He has a good sense of humor.”

“He’s going to need it,” I blurted out.

“You’re a fine one to talk. After what you’ve just gone and done.”

“Oh, I don’t care about the living in sin part—I think—maybe, well, I don’t know.”

“You don’t like him?”

“No, no, I do like him. I wish I knew him better.”

“You’ll have that opportunity.”

“What about Wheezie?”

Goodyear stirred on the floor.

“I don’t know. I have to think of some way to break it to her. I’ve talked to Mr. Pierre. We thought maybe we could ease her into it tomorrow at the Curl ’n Twirl. It’s harder for her to throw a major hissy if people are around.”

“Don’t hold your breath.”

“If I bring her here she’ll destroy the house. If I go over to hers she’ll yank the phone cords out of the wall and pull the drapes down. You know how she gets.”

“Maybe if Orrie’s there it’ll help.”

“We thought of that.” She placed a crisp wing on my plate. “He can’t take your father’s place.”

“I know. I’m a little shocked, that’s all. I think when it has time to settle in I’ll be happy for you.” I took a bite. “Mom, does this mean I won’t see you so much?”

“Sometimes you act as though that would be a bonus.”

I didn’t respond.

After a few minutes she spoke. “Maybe you won’t see me quite as much because I’ll be going places with Ed.”

“Are you doing this because of social security?”

“Partly, and partly because when I was young people got
married. You courted and you got married and that was that. I think the freedom people have today is better. You don’t really know someone until you live with him. I don’t care what anyone says, I’m living with him and I have no intention of going down the aisle. Maybe later, if it doesn’t mess up money, yes—but not now. No one’s telling me what to do or how to do it. It’s my life.”

I ate some more and thought about what she’d said. “Mom, good luck.”

“You too.”

“Why me?”

“Because you’ve lost your baby—the paper—and you’ve lost a romance even if it was ill-advised, and you’re going to feel blue for a while.”

After dinner and a dessert of white cake with vanilla and bitter chocolate icing, Mother’s special recipe, I started the woodwork. I should have waited until the walls were completely dry but I’m a careful painter and I wanted to get the job done. I’d get the other rooms another time but she did need her living room. Maybe Ed could paint the other rooms. He began to seem like a good idea.

She showed me Peepbean’s work on her coffee table. It did look like marble. I was amazed that Peepbean was that accomplished a craftsman.

At eleven I decided to bag it. I was tired and I started to make mistakes. I cleaned the brushes, cleared up my mess.

I kissed Mom at the door on the way out. “Thanks for supper.”

“I’ll call you when we’re all at the shop.”

“Okay. I’ll come over.” I waited a second. “Mom, thank you for being understanding. I thought you’d rip me up one side and down the other.”

“I’m not giving you a good-conduct medal, Nickel, but these things happen. You’re in the prime of life. I don’t expect you to live like a nun.”

“None of this and none of that.”

She smiled. “You know right from wrong but, well, you made a mistake.”

“I thought you’d blow up because of my natural mother. I mean, didn’t she fool around with a married man and get caught?”

Mother stiffened slightly. “You aren’t at all like her, and times are different now.”

“I hope so. But when I see some of the shit that comes over the AP wire, I wonder.”

“Thank you for being understanding about Ed.”

“It’s a surprise, but you shouldn’t be alone. I always thought there’d be another man in your life but it took a long, long time. Think it will take me that long?”

“Don’t be thinking about time. When it’s right, it’s right.”

I kissed her again and left. Maybe Mother was growing up too. Maybe you never stop. If this had happened to me ten years ago I think she would have killed me. Or maybe I was off base. I could misjudge Mother but I think we do that to the people closest to us. We expect more from them and we’re harder on them when they disappoint us. It isn’t fair, but that’s the way it is. I was grateful she didn’t disappoint me tonight and I hoped I hadn’t disappointed her too much by my escapade with Jackson.

I did know right from wrong, dammit, but those Ten Commandments are sure easier to read off the page than to practice. Back then when people got married their life span was about twenty-five years. Until death us do part came swiftly. Now we live into our eighties and nineties and often in good health. I meet more people in one year than my grandmother met in her lifetime. Some of those people are sexually attractive. I’m not saying that the Ten Commandments are out of date but I do think it was easier to keep them for those Hebrews out there in the desert in the backward dark abyss of Time. Then I wondered about the difference between Christians and Jews. What is a Christian but a Jew with a life insurance policy.

M
y editorial on the private life of public figures jolted the town. I came out strongly for full disclosure of all aspects of a candidate’s life including his or her sexual life, but my reasoning was not exactly what most people’s reasoning was, even if they came to the same decision. I said that politicians today were little more than another form of entertainer. Hell, they had face lifts, hair jobs, dye jobs, and makeup jobs, and of course blow jobs. They studied with media consultants, wardrobe consultants, and probably even psychic consultants. They were just another group of suntanned bullshitters, less concerned with serving their constituency than with landing a bit part on
Dynasty
. If politicians wanted to act like movie stars, then we, the public, had a right to treat them like movie stars. Their private lives were now fodder for the public they so desperately sought to dazzle. The presidential race evolved into a pretty-boy contest. I myself would rather see George Shultz as a candidate than one of the glamour boys. As for liberals, Alan Cranston was still in there fighting but he, too, was not another pretty face.

The phones jangled off the hook. Some Runnys laughed; some were furious; some agreed with me; others wanted to know why Charles would allow sexual innuendo in the paper. Innuendo. How polite of them. I laid it on the line.

Wasn’t it boiling down to sex anyway? Sex is used to sell cars, underarm deodorants, breakfast cereal, and now, politicians. And sex was destroying Gary Hart. We sat around the AP wire machine
like kids under a Christmas tree. The lady’s name, Donna Rice, was revealed. No one even pretended that she was part of the campaign team. When Hart issued a statement saying he was wronged by the press, he sang in every key but the right one. If the man had had any guts he would have looked America squarely in the eye and said, “Yes, I slept with her and it was great.” If he had guts and was a gentleman he could have said, “I love her. I know this will cause distress for my family but I love her nonetheless.” Even wispy Edward VIII had courage at his Waterloo. But maybe Gary Hart was a cold, calculating man. Maybe he didn’t love her. Maybe he figured, as many people do, that he could eat his cake and have it too. He’d been married very young. I can’t imagine being married as many years as Senator Hart, but putting that difference aside, it’s better to come clean. Maybe the American public wouldn’t vote into office a man who admitted he loved a woman who was not his wife but I think they might respect him for admitting it.

My own feeling was that there probably wasn’t a representative or senator who has remained faithful to his wife unless someone’s been feeding him saltpeter. There’s something askew about a nation that expects its public servants to have better morals than the rest of us. Maybe the public doesn’t expect its elected officials to have better morals but merely to be more clever in the deception. Curious.

While the Gary Hart scandal bubbled over, the PTL mess sank to name-calling. By the time Jim Bakker’s enemies were finished with him, it sounded as though the guy went on one big fuckathon. I couldn’t tell if the other TV preachers were jealous or genuinely concerned about the state of his soul. It wouldn’t be his soul that I’d be concerned about.

Rarely has the AP wire provided me with so many belly laughs in a short space of time. Even Charles, grim and grave today, had to laugh at some of it.

Roger came over and told us a sick joke that was making the rounds of the Square. Nixon, Teddy Kennedy, and Hart were in a
boat at sea. The boat began sinking and Nixon said, “This boat is going down. We’ve got to save the women and children.” Kennedy replied, “Fuck the women and children,” and Hart quipped, “Is there time?” Roger thought it was pretty funny. I can’t say that I did, but it was an object lesson in how swiftly people can savage the fallen.

Michelle asked me if I thought a gay person could run for President.

“We’ve had gay Presidents,” I said, “but they lied, and also it was a long time ago.”

“They say that J. Edgar Hoover was gay.”

“Who wants to claim him,” I shot back.

“I don’t see that sexual behavior affects a person’s ability to be President.”

“Doesn’t.”

“So, what’s the issue?”

“Were you a Girl Scout?”

“Yes.” A puzzled expression came over Michelle’s face.

“Do you remember the fire ceremony we’d have when we’d go on our campouts?”

She laughed. “I haven’t thought of that since I was a kid. Sure, I remember. There were four little fires and a big bonfire in the middle. We started out in darkness and then a Brownie would light the fire of friendship and each fire would be lit sequentially with lots of mumbo jumbo until the big fire was set off.” She stopped. “What’s that got to do with running for President?”

“As you got older, didn’t you think the fire ceremony was pretty corny?”

“Sure.”

“Same difference. You want to laugh but if you do the others will get mad at you. A man who runs for President is like a Girl Scout going around the nation setting off these fires—with a solemn face, I might add. What would happen if one of them said, ‘This is horseshit’? Not only would the less imaginative campers get mad, so would the camp counselors who put together this
incendiary theater for the kids. So every guy out there running has to pretend that he loves his wife, is faithful to her, loves his kids, and is just an all-around family guy with a golden retriever and a big mortgage. Family guys don’t run for President, but hey, why mess up the act?”

“You ever think about running for office?”

“I think about running from it.”

“You know everybody. You care about Runnymede. I think you’d be good.”

“Michelle, you’re a fountain of compliments and I appreciate it but we’re back to your question on the local level. Is this town going to elect the Good Gay Girl Scout to public office?”