Waking the Dead (47 page)

“That’s something one man can never do for another, Tony,” I said.

“Fielding,” said Caroline, in her older sister accent.

“Why didn’t you tell me before you wanted to blow this fucking election? I would have at least covered my ass.”

“What’s with this guy and all the excreta imagery?” I said to Caroline, putting my arm around her waist. (The truth was, I was wobbling and didn’t want it to show.)

Just then Dad appeared, standing at the far end of the hallway with his legs astride and his hands on his hips, an aging colossus. “Are you OK?” he said, his full dark voice floating down the hall like ectoplasm.

“I’m fine,” I said, breathing deeply, coming toward him. I could see him registering the disarray, the panic, the lack of direction, and even the slight blur of failure coming off me. He swallowed, looked me up and down, and then opened his arms to me. I strode toward him and accepted his embrace. His muscles tensed; like a high-school boy, he didn’t want me to feel any softness.

Caroline, Dad, Tony, and I walked into the living room. Isaac was on the sofa and as soon as he saw me he reached for the phone. He quickly punched up the number and said, “He’s here. I’ll talk to you later.” Then he hung up, crossed his legs, folded his arms over his chest. “Were you in some sort of automobile accident?” Isaac asked.

“No,” I said. “I’m fine.”

“You could have called,” he said.

“Yes, that’s right,” I said. “I could have done a lot of things.”

“Oh-oh,” my father said, softly, involuntarily. He could feel things falling apart; he couldn’t understand how I could talk to a man like Isaac in this way.

“Look,” I said, “if we’re going to talk, plan, then I have to get out of these clothes. I’ll be right back.’

Without waiting for an answer, I walked out of the living room and into the bedroom. I tore off my shirt. What I really wanted was a bath, but I couldn’t make them wait that long. I opened the closet. Juliet’s clothes were
not gone
, but it seemed there were fewer of them. They had been pushed to one side of the closet and I was certain if I had picked through them I would have discovered that some were missing. A shirt, a blouse, just enough to sustain the separation. And then a few days later, I would probably notice a few other things missing. And that’s how it would go, until she was entirely moved out.

I went back into the living room with a fresh shirt on. I was barefoot and I saw my feet had been stained by my thirty-six hours in damp maroon socks. Everyone was standing around like rejects from a wax museum. “OK, I’m back,” I said, rubbing my hands together. “Tell me what I’ve missed and men let’s get this rolling again.”

T
HE NEXT EVENING
at eight, ten hours before the polls opened, Bertelli and I met before something called the Greater Hyde Park Citizens’ Forum. The people managing my campaign and the folks running his had arranged for the mini-confrontation about a week before, when Bertelli’s campaign was really taking hold. We were still leading at that time and Tony and the others took a gamble; but now Bertelli had pulled even or perhaps was a bit ahead, so my staff was weak with relief that the meeting had been organized.

The meeting was originally scheduled to take place at Ida Noyes Hall, one of the University buildings. But as the evening approached there were indications of twice, even three times the turnout they’d been expecting, so near the last minute the meeting was moved to a defunct movie theater in the center of the district, a gaudy, naive place called the Damascus. Sarah and I had gone to see
The French Connection
the week before the Damascus became the ornate tax loss it was to remain.

I was driven over by Tony, with Caroline next to him in the front seat. I was wedged in back with Isaac on one side of me and my father on the other. My father sat bolt upright, with his hands folded on his lap; Isaac had his legs crossed and he held his chin in his hand, looking glumly out the window.

“What do you think, Isaac?” asked my father. “Should he come on strong or act like an incumbent?”

“A little of both, I’d say, Eddie,” answered Isaac, without looking around.

Dad shrugged and winked at me. “I see you’re in good hands,” he said.

“I’ll take the alley around,” Tony said. “That way we can slip in the back entrance.”

“Absolutely not,” said Isaac. He sounded weirdly languid, as if he’d taken sedatives. “This isn’t a stage show. We’ll walk in like everybody else.”

“I think it’s going to be a zoo, Isaac,” Tony said.

“I don’t understand you, Tony,” said Isaac. “Have you been organizing Fielding’s appearances so as to
minimize
contact between him and the voters? That’s a rather unique concept.”

“Tony’s been working very hard, Isaac,” said Caroline. “I don’t think he deserves that kind of remark.”

“I’m so relieved the Pierces are here to put everything straight.” Isaac sighed. He began swatting the end of his nose with his fingertip, rapidly, back and forth, like a boxer working out on a punching bag.

“Who do you figure comes to a meeting like this?” asked my father. None of us knew whom he was asking and so no one answered. “Isaac,” he then added.

Isaac stopped swatting the end of his nose and now was stroking it, as if to revive it after the punishment it had endured. “Who?” he asked. “Well, our people who’ve worked in the campaign. And precinct captains who’ll be getting the vote out. And poll watchers. And press, of course. And the membership of the Hyde Park Forum. They’ve got five hundred members on paper.”

“But what I’m asking,” said Dad, “is, you know, what about just regular rank-and-file
people?
I’m getting the feeling there’s a large uncommitted vote out there.”

“Where?” asked Isaac, suddenly turning his head with a kind of birdlike quickness. His eyes caught the light of a passing car.

“In the district,” said my father. “People, just people.“

“I mean, where did you get the feeling there was a large uncommitted vote? Do you have some information the rest of us lack?”

There was silence in the car. Caroline slipped off her shoe and scratched the bottom of her foot—her most timeworn nervous habit.

Finally Dad touched my arm. “Don’t you think there’s a lot of undecided voters out there, Fielding?”

I didn’t answer. I was suddenly and awfully aware of something inside me. It felt as if my fear were patrolling my body, looking to grab at the lever controlling my nerves. And now it was getting close, closer; now it found it at last and had its hand upon it. I started to tremble.

“Don’t you, Fielding?” asked Dad again. There was a burr of discouragement in his voice.

“Yes, I guess so,” I said.

“That is just completely contrary to what we already know,” said Isaac. If he’d taken a drug it was wearing off; his voice was sharp again. “I’d say there was at most ten percent undecided now.”

“Does that mean we win or lose?” asked Caroline.

“It means we win, unless Fielding loses all ten percent.”

Dad looked away. He blinked rapidly and folded his arms over his chest. I could feel him retreating into himself; his heavy feelings scraped like enormous pieces of furniture.

“I look at it like this,” I said. “Every vote is essentially undecided until it’s cast. I don’t take anything for granted and I don’t give anything up.”

“The homos will never vote for you,” said Tony, with a laugh.

“Perhaps they will,” I said. “I hope so. I think I deserve their support.”

My father smiled and nodded his head, very pleased with me, as if I’d said something that might make its way into some future biography. My knee knocked into his and he glanced down; I was shaking. He pursed his lips; he judged people as if he were a samurai when they betrayed weakness, not knowing how often his own showed through.

“I’m up for this, Dad,” I said, pressing down on my legs to calm them down. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Tony turned the corner and started applying the brakes. We were there. I kept my eyes closed. It had crossed my mind a thousand times during the day that Sarah might very well be in the audience tonight and now that we were here I was all but certain of it.

“I know,” he said, in as intimate a voice as he could manage. “You always come through when the chips are down.”

We walked into the old theater. There was no time to look, no time to remember. Isaac was at my side, Tony was behind me. The Hyde Park Forum people had set up a literature table, selling pamphlets which were transcripts of the various debates they had sponsored. Isaac had me by the elbow, guiding me toward a side entrance to the auditorium, as if I were a blind virtuoso. Falling in with us was Henry Shamansky. He was with his wife, a dark-haired woman with a raspberry mouth and a pixie haircut. “Give ’em hell, Fielding,” he said, balling his hand into a fist and grimacing, showing his square, nicotine-tinted teeth. Then came Sonny Marchi, the governor’s son-in-law, who’d been using my campaign as a part of his never-ending pretense of having something to do. He looked certifiable tonight: his hair was slicked back; he smelled of coconut-scented hair conditioner, and the lapels of his plaid sports jacket were festooned with my campaign buttons. “Good to see you, good to see you,” Isaac chanted to Sonny, meaning, I guess, that Isaac took Marchi’s presence as symbolic of the governor’s surviving good wishes.

We walked through the lobby, into the theater itself, and down a side aisle toward the steps to the stage. The red velvet curtains from the old movie days still hung, still somber with dust, still gathered up by gaudy sashes that looked like swatches of Turkish pantaloons. The seats were just about filled. I noticed in the front row Adele sitting with Lucille Jackson. Lucille had Adele’s attention like a moth on a pin; I could just about see the color draining out of Adele’s face as Lucille jabbed her broad ebony finger toward the faint cleft in Adele’s chin. There were three small wooden tables set up on the stage, each with a glass and a pitcher of water on it.

“Not yet,” Isaac said, tugging at my elbow.

I stopped, nodded. I didn’t want to be the first one up on the stage any more than Isaac wanted me to. And despite the speed of my devolution from young politician to dog howling at the moon, I felt a spasm of true surprise that I would have even considered taking my seat before Bertelli and the moderator. I had always assumed I had an innate sense of the best light in which to put myself, and any fool knew it would make me look eager and ineffectual to be sitting at my desk like a schoolboy waiting for the others. Isaac held on to my elbow and was saying something to me and I was standing there with one foot up on the stairs leading to the stage, and it must have seemed we were engaged in one of those quick, canny chats, one of those instant Yaltas, in which the powerful divide the spoils of the world.

A few moments later, Dr. Paul Brewer, who taught political science at the University and who had been named moderator for the evening, came down the center aisle. He was a small, stooped man, with shaggy brown hair and heavy spectacles. He wore a three-piece tweed suit and a spotted bow tie, and as he came toward the stage his large head bobbed up and down as if one of his legs were six inches shorter than the other. He bounced up to the stage and took his place at the middle table, setting his briefcase down next to his chair with a thud that was somehow as commanding as a judge’s rap of the gavel.

Moments after that, Bertelli appeared on the opposite side of me theater. He was with a towering, slender black man with a small pointy goatee, à la Eric McDonald. The aide was holding a legal pad and was speaking with obvious animation. Bertelli walked with his small hands folded over his enormous taut belly. His eyes were hooded. He wore a voluminous brown corduroy jacket and a white turtleneck sweater.

Bertelli took the stage. He strolled over to Brewer and the two men shook hands. Then Bertelli shaded his eyes against the white footlights and looked out into the audience. When he found whoever he was looking for he smiled and made one of those annoying peppy pointing gestures, like a has-been in a Las Vegas floorshow. There was no need to give him the stage by himself and so I made it up the steps and walked over to Brewer.

“Hello, Dr. Brewer,” I said, stepping around Bertelli, ignoring him, “I don’t know if you remember, but I audited your class on constitutional crises six years ago, when I was in law school.”

“Of course I remember you, Mr. Pierce,” he said. His eyes were vague; he glanced down as if embarrassed.

“Well, Fielding,” said Bertelli, clapping his hand on my shoulder. The velvet glove of fat-boy conviviality barely covered the iron fist of his animosity toward me. Since Bertelli had no record to attack I hadn’t really spent much time on him during the campaign. When the audience was right for it, I attacked the Republicans, but Bertelli couldn’t have taken that very hard. He wasn’t much of a Republican— on his third marriage, with all those years squeezing out espresso to Sunday morning bohemians. He had bumbled into this race with some idea of himself as a token candidate whose main function was to keep the hinges of democracy oiled by making it a two-man race. But he had had luck and talent and, despite its seeming at first that my nomination was tantamount to an official appointment to the office, I had run a shitty enough campaign to make my defeat very possible. Now with just hours to go I could tell by the weight of Bertelli’s hand on me that he wanted to win at least as much as I did. Perhaps more.

I took my seat, Bertelli took his. He poured water into his glass and drank it. The lights in the auditorium dimmed; the audience, the voters, the world, sank back into the shadows.

“Good evening, voters,” said Dr. Brewer, folding his hands, “and welcome to this special, oh, I suppose …
town meeting
organized by the Greater Hyde Park Citizens’ Forum. We have with us tonight the Democratic and Republican candidates for tomorrow’s special congressional election. Both candidates have generously agreed to make this a freewheeling evening and to give us all an opportunity to ask whatever questions we wish to and to discover for ourselves what the real differences are behind the various slogans and speeches …” Dr. Brewer went on and the sound of his voice brought me back to law school, when I was all appetite with little on my plate and what was placed before me I could devour in two bites. I had spoken to Sarah about Brewer’s class in constitutional crises; his name had passed between us and now he was here and this commonplace thought made me want to cover my face with my trembling hands. I was drifting— no, I was launched and I was sailing away, I was far off at sea, just about to dip over the hump on the horizon. I heard Brewer’s voice but it was distant and empty and it was all I could do to keep my seat. The part of me that had kept me going was suddenly missing and in the inner space it had once occupied now rushed a torrent of sorrow.