Golden Age (13 page)

Michael called this “the machine at work,” but Richie had never enjoyed anything so much in his life.

—

ANDY DIDN
’
T KNOW
anyone as open and free with her opinions as Loretta. Just now, sitting across from her in the BG Restaurant on the seventh floor at Bergdorf’s, Loretta had remarked that, as much as she loved Ivy, she knew in her heart that Ivy was more loyal to Israel than to the United States. When Andy responded that never, ever had she heard Ivy or her entirely nonreligious parents say anything of the sort, Loretta shrugged, took a sip of her oolong tea and a bite of her scone (it was four in the afternoon, and they had spent the whole day shopping), and said, “Well, wait till push comes to shove. It’s inside all of them.” But the other side of this sort of statement was the reason they were there. Loretta had called her up two weeks before (apparently after having her hair done) and said, “Andy, I look like hell, and I need you.” For two weeks now, Loretta had been mining her for
the two types of ore everyone knew Andy could produce—fashion advice and AA advice, one for herself and the other for Michael.

Frank had said, “So which will be the more difficult task?” but Andy didn’t think like that—they asked, you answered, Fate unfolded.

Loretta was too short for the loose, boyish pastel suits they were featuring, but at least huge shoulder pads were out now. She looked reasonably good in shaped, not-quite-clingy dresses. She’d tried on the green sleeveless, which brought out her eyes; the black capped-sleeve; and a nice violet item with something unusual, an asymmetric hemline. She had good ankles and feet—they’d spent a fair amount of time in the shoe department. The nicest thing she’d bought was for parties: an elaborately embroidered, rather stiff, square-necked gold sheath with a smallish waist that stopped just above knee-length, expensive and flattering.

The most salient fact was that Binky would be in first grade in the fall; no doubt, over the last six years, many opportunities to conceive a fourth child had occurred and not been utilized, and so Loretta (thirty-eight?) must have accepted that that phase was over. And, of course, Michael had changed in the last year. In the same relentless way he had formerly pursued his selfish desires for sensation (speed, money, oblivion, independence), he now pursued the amazing new goal of family happiness. Andy and Frank were invited to their place on Madison and Eighty-fourth (two floors, four bedrooms) every other Sunday for Sunday supper—not a fake event. Loretta served (and cooked herself) prime rib, roast chicken, braised leeks, potatoes au gratin. Michael sat at the head of the table, Loretta stood at the foot of the table (she did the carving), and both of them pestered the life out of Chance, Tia, and Binky. Chance paid no attention, Tia enjoyed answering questions, and Binky was passively resistant. It was evident to Andy, and, she thought, to Loretta, that Michael was making up fatherhood out of whole cloth.

Now Loretta looked at the little pyramid of treats sitting on their table. Andy had eaten a single shortbread cookie and a strawberry dipped in dark chocolate. Loretta said, “What do you think of Weight Watchers?”

“Nothing,” said Andy.

“I want him to desire me.”

“Did he ever desire you?”

Loretta gave her tea a thoughtful stir, and said, “Not in particular.”

“What were the girls like that he desired?”

“Unfortunately, all types.”

“What did he marry in you?”

Loretta put her teacup down, gazed into Andy’s face, and tapped her spoon on the plate. At last, she said, “I’m thinking he married a known quantity. I’m thinking he didn’t have the patience to figure the other girls out, so he, well, he went for the easy option. I think he liked that I was definite and didn’t take any bullshit.” She stopped tapping. “And no one else was the only child of a hundred thousand acres.”

Andy admired her ruthlessness; maybe it was the ranching background. She nodded, then said, “Well, my guess is that your looks belong to you, then—you can get in shape if you want to, and why not? It’s very soothing to do it, especially when the kids are in school. As far as Michael is concerned, I think you should be specific about your requirements.”

“You mean, like, sex?”

“I mean that, whenever he’s indecisive, you decide. That could work for sex.”

Loretta licked her lips. She said, “Yes, that could.” She pushed away her plate and shifted in her chair. The waiter eased over with a smile and took away the pyramid of treats. Now, Andy knew, would come what Loretta would consider the twisting of the knife. Loretta licked her lips again and said, “Was he really a bad child? I don’t mean disobedient, I mean not nice.”

But for Andy, no knife could be twisted that she herself had not already twisted many times. She said, “To be honest, Loretta, only Richie knows the answer to that question.”

“Richie seems so slick, especially now. I get the feeling he would read all my unconscious facial expressions and tell me exactly what I wanted to hear. At least Michael’s brutally honest.”

Andy decided that Michael and Loretta must have had an argument in the last twenty-four hours. She said, “And you like that.”

Loretta nodded, but said, “I don’t
like
it. I appreciate its benefits.”

Now Andy regarded her daughter-in-law for a long moment. She
had never seen her with a bruise or a black eye, and in all the tattling he had done, Richie had never reported that Michael hit a girl (though there was a suspicious incident from that period when they were both at Cornell, where Michael ended up in the infirmary with a slash on his arm or leg, after which Richie fled Ithaca and ended up at Rutgers; Andy had been so happy to have him around that she had, mistakenly perhaps, overlooked the details). She hazarded only, “Michael has always had a bit of a temper.” Then, “And he’s a foot taller than you.”

“I’m quicker,” said Loretta, and Andy saw that, though this might be a possibility that she herself was only thinking of now, Loretta had reckoned with it for a long time—her matter-of-fact tone told Andy that she had strategies in place. She said, hesitantly, “I don’t know that you can rely on that.”

Then Loretta said the reassuring thing—“I haven’t had to so far”—and Andy found herself taking a deep breath. Had she really gone for so long without asking herself what Michael was capable of? But maybe that was what mothers were supposed to do. The conversation couldn’t go on after that; they both put their handbags on the table, and Andy said, “Shall we?” and Loretta said, “I really like what we’ve chosen. You’re parked in that garage on Fifty-eighth Street, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but you don’t have to walk me over there. It’s only a block.” And then, she had to admit, she fled.

—

THE POLLS LOOKED GOOD:
Kevin Moore still had a problem with name recognition. Richie suspected that the problem was the “Kevin.” Once you thought “Kevin,” whatever came next fell away, whereas “Richard” was like “Mister”—it pointed at whatever followed. And “Rick” hardly existed at all. Even so, in the weeks before the convention at Madison Square Garden, the smart commentators predicted disaster for the Democrats. Clinton and Gore were marginally okay (in fact, whenever Clinton started talking, his poll numbers went up word by word, only to drop after he fell silent) but Hillary was a worry. Operation Rescue threatened to make a fuss about abortion; the Women’s Action Coalition threatened to make a bigger fuss about choice.

When Richie looked around the convention hall the first night, though, he knew everything would be fine. It was filled, not with regular, cynical, bored functionaries, but with women, blacks, Hispanics, people in wheelchairs and with canes—all sorts of people who never thought they would see the day they could cast their vote and nominate the next president. The enthusiasm told Richie (and Congressman Scheuer told him, too) that almost everyone in the Garden, shouting, screaming, laughing, waving posters, was experiencing him- or herself, at last and maybe for the first time, as a power broker. Congressman Scheuer said that it was a fine way to go out and a fine way to come in. And he clapped Richie on the shoulder as if he were dubbing him with a sword.

As a delegate, Richie’s job was to applaud, cheer, give information, and be a helpful public servant. He handed out a few “We Love Cuomo” signs so the New York delegation could cheer Cuomo’s nominating speech. He stood respectfully during the movie about the governor, whistled and shouted when the governor came onto the podium, made sure to stand up straight when the TV cameras turned toward him. And then he actually listened to the speech and was affected by it—“Nearly a whole generation surrendered in despair….They are
our
children.” Richie could not help thinking of Leo. “This is more than a recession! Our economy has been weakened fundamentally by twelve years of conservative Republican supply-side policies.” Of course, Richie could not fail to hear, in a corner of his brain, Michael laughing about outsourcing jobs, and Loretta saying, in her self-righteous way, “They don’t have any
right
to those jobs!” and then Ivy saying, “She doesn’t have any
right
to that ranch,” but only to him, in bed, after Michael and Loretta had gone home. “In no time at all, we have gone from the greatest seller nation, the greatest lender nation, the greatest creditor nation, to today, the world’s largest buyer, the world’s largest borrower, the world’s largest debtor nation.
That
is Republican supply-side.”

Richie had met the governor several times, and, like everyone, found him attractive, but now he felt the man’s words engraving themselves into his brain—words that he would use in his own campaign against Kevin. “This time we cannot afford to fail to deliver the message…The ship is headed toward the rocks!” And then he made a joke about the invisible hand of the market that everyone
cheered, and Richie learned from him the whole time. “Prayer is always a good idea!” Only Richie laughed at that, since he had never prayed in his life. Richie had to admire the man’s flurry of great lines—“Bush said, ‘We have the will, but not the wallet!’ ” and he followed that with a reminder of the savings-and-loan bailout—“All of a sudden, the heavens opened and out of the blue, billions of dollars appeared, not for children, not for jobs, not for drug treatment or the ill or for health care, but hundreds of millions of dollars to bail out failed savings and loans.” Richie stopped gaping and glanced around. The cameras were on Cuomo, not him, but he did not want to look stupid, though in fact he felt stupid: he had agreed to run for Congress, and just now he realized that he was not prepared, in spite of all of his years of working for the congressman and watching him decide this and decide that, vote on this, vote on that, give this quote and that quote. He felt a trembling in the back of his neck, because he was not a deep thinker, an A student, a well-trained military man, or even a lawyer. He was in the right place at the right time with the right look and the right vocal timbre and the right connections. The congressman had often said, over the years, that Richie had a “knack for this stuff,” and maybe he did, because more often than not he could talk someone into something, but just at this moment, when he was watching the governor roll to a climax, he felt like he knew less and less, right down to nothing. The governor finished his speech to rousing applause; Richie yelled, clapped, whistled. A young woman from the office grabbed his hand, and the congressman gave him the thumbs-up. He was being taken upon the flood into the Congress, too young, too green, too stupid, but of course he would not stop it.

—

JANET KNEW
, rationally, that if she’d had
Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems
when Emily was a baby, Emily would be a different person, but even so, and even though she’d read the book three times and nearly memorized it, putting the method into practice scared her. It seemed like a test, but not, say, a math test—rather, a driving test, dangerous and demanding. But Jared, who was hard to annoy, was almost annoyed because Jonah, nine months old, was still waking up to nurse at 2:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m., and lately he was brighter—more interested in people and toys, and crawling all over the place—so it
was harder to put him down at night. The whole time he was nursing before bed, his eyes would roll toward whatever sound he heard, whatever else might be happening. He was a curious boy, active. Jared said getting him to sleep through the night was now or never, and Janet didn’t disagree with him. But.

The moment she knew they were committed was when, after she nursed him on the couch (instead of his bedroom), she sat him up and kissed him a few times (instead of easing him, sleeping, into his crib), then took him over to Jared, who was watching TV, and to Emily, who was reading
The Chronicle of the Horse
, for a good-night kiss. They were kind and supportive, as if Jonah were heading out into the wilderness with a secret message that he had to deliver to rebel forces all by himself. Then she carried him upstairs and into his room, laid him down, kissed him good night, covered him, and walked out without thinking about whether he might grab the top railing of the crib and launch himself, or whether she should have solved his sleep problems months ago.

The crying started after about a minute, first whimpers of disbelief, then shouts and wails. At three minutes, she went in, gave him a kiss, noted that he was still lying down, and walked out. After another five minutes, she did this again. The technique prescribed that she should then wait ten minutes, but she could only manage eight. She went in. Jonah stared up at her, his mouth open in horror, the whimpers ululating into shouts. He held out his arms. Janet spoke much more firmly and cheerily than she felt. “Good night, sweetie! Time to go to sleep.” She patted his forehead, let her hand linger there; he was a beautiful child, with large, bright eyes, thick hair, and full lips. Then she turned and walked out, closing the door. Three minutes after that, the crying stopped abruptly, and she tiptoed down the stairs, exhausted. Jared’s show was still on, Emily was still reading
The Chronicle
. Twenty minutes seemed like two hours.