Decision (7 page)

He graduated third in his class—Moss Pomeroy was fifth—and went to New York, where his grades had brought him an invitation to join a prestigious firm that had many dealings with the government. One of its senior partners had been in the Cabinet, some of its juniors were “on the shuttle,” as they put it, commuting frequently to Washington to serve on temporary boards, commissions, congressional committee staffs, corporate law cases. Washington had always been a dream of his. He was not sure for quite a long time whether he wanted to use experience there as a springboard from which to go home and run for Congress, or concentrate on the type of pleading before the government that brought enormous fees from corporations and guaranteed a living both desirable and admirable in Main Line eyes.

Mary’s instincts and influence of course were all for the latter—understandably enough, given nature and background. She had been a little rich girl and she intended to remain one. That, he supposed, was the first start of the slow erosion, because his own ideas, conditioned by the compassion he got from his mother, and perhaps more than he knew by Erma Tillson and Civics I, moved increasingly in the direction of public service. He had no memories of great depression such as still haunted his parents’ generation, but taking care of people and making life better for the society as a whole seemed to him just common sense. Not only was it right in what he conceived to be the moral sense, it was right from the standpoint of keeping the democracy on an even keel. It was not on an even keel during his first years out of law school, and although the reasons were not economic at that time, they became increasingly so as he and the century grew older.

Five years after joining the firm in New York he was a hardworking, diligent and highly respected younger member who could ask for, and get, transfer to the Washington office. From then on his life became more and more involved with government. Inevitably in time he entered it, not via the congressional route that he had originally toyed with but through the administrative side, in which he felt he could perhaps contribute even more.

In a sense his decision to accept whatever opportunities might come his way in that area was a compromise with Mary. She had been vehement in her opposition to any thought of his running for Congress.

“I will
not
be a politician’s wife!” she announced, forgetting that all public service is inevitably political sooner or later. But the idea of holding high appointive office did not seem to bother her at all. It was respectable, and something the Stranahans and their friends could understand and appreciate.

He continued to handle corporate cases for a while longer but presently found himself leading a group of younger partners that began to agitate for a broader public service approach. On his tenth anniversary with the firm he found himself appointed head of a new public service division; and the process of transforming Taylor Barbour the likable farm boy from Salinas Valley into Taylor Barbour the increasingly prominent liberal lawyer was underway in earnest. It is a process that happens with Washington lawyers if they are shrewd enough to recognize, and properly make use of, the creators of reputation. Like so many successful careers in Washington, his was a combination of idealism, an eye for the main chance, and strong boosts from the capital’s liberal old-boy network. By the time he was thirty-five he was firmly set on the path that in eleven more years would bring him to the “special place” he had first become aware of in Erma Tillson’s class, thirty years before.

He had discovered in law school that he had a powerful grasp of his own language. He could both write and speak it with a touch that was always effective and sometimes mesmerizing. He began to contribute an occasional article to
Harper’s
and the
Atlantic Monthly
(the growth of violence, terrorism and irrational crime), the op-ed page of the
New York Times
(the need for judicial reform), the
New York Times,
the
Washington Inquirer,
the
Saturday Review, Newsweek, Foreign Affairs,
the like. Invitations to participate in an increasing number of seminars and public forums came his way, arranged by a steadily widening circle of influential friends. He was invited to serve on advisory committees of his political party. He began to work for causes dear to the hearts of those who can make or break. Anna Hastings of the
Washington Inquirer
and Katharine Graham of the
New York Times
invited him and Mary quite often to dinner. His name began to pop up with increasing frequency in columns, editorials, television commentaries. He was asked to appear, as “a rising young liberal Washington attorney,” on “Face the Nation,” and when that proved an easy success, on “Meet the Press.”

The old-boy network labored ceaselessly in his behalf. It took no more than a year or two until its members could congratulate themselves that they had made another good choice. Taylor Barbour was on his way.

He was already considered a highly successful lawyer and one of America’s leading liberals when, at thirty-eight, he received his first appointment in the executive branch of government, Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Office for Improvements in the Administration of Justice.

There had been many in this particular office, quite far down the ranks of the Department of Justice, who had not made much of it. By now, however, Tay was sophisticated enough to know that almost any sub-Cabinet office is what you make of it. His speeches and literary output doubled. He made a well-publicized call upon the then Chief Justice to discuss the administration of justice and what they could do—jointly, he gave the impression—to streamline it, speed it up and make it more efficient. The Chief was flattered by this dutiful attention from a man so much younger and already possessed of such an outstanding reputation. He promised to cooperate with Tay in every way he could.

It was Tay’s first direct contact with the Court, and although, in the way of Washington, nothing much came of it but paperwork, also—in the way of Washington—his personal reputation and public visibility were much enhanced. At the conclusion of their study he received a glowing letter of commendation and approval from the Chief. At Tay’s suggestion it was released to the media. The image grew.

And it was not an empty image, either, he could tell himself with justified satisfaction. He worked hard at his new assignment, spent many hours studying the administration of justice, traveled around the country to visit most of the major federal and state courts, offered recommendations that were practical, specific and, he felt, sound. If they did not do much to break the growing logjam of an increasingly litigious nation, that was not his fault. His work was diligent, thorough, constructive, farsighted. “Somebody else will have to follow through on it,” he told Moss when he was moved up two years later to be Solicitor General, “but at least I’ve laid a good foundation.” Later he was to perform equally diligent service, and gain further public acclaim, when as Secretary of Labor he was appointed vice-chairman of the President’s Special Commission on Crime and Violence. Unlike most of his politically cautious fellow members he came out strongly against the rising tide of vigilantism, which brought him much praise from major media and much bitter condemnation from his more worried countrymen. But he felt it must be said.

Only one thing galled him as he ascended the public ladder toward what he continued to hope would eventually be appointment to the Court, and that was Mary’s apparent growing disaffection and dissatisfaction with their life in Washington. The political melting pot throws together the multimillionairess who has come to the capital to trade her lavish parties for the chance to call the mighty by their first names and the wife of the truck driver from New Jersey who by some fluke happens to get himself elected to the House of Representatives. It blends them into a fascinating and amicable mélange of backgrounds and interests.

The charm of this escaped Mary. She had been reared to associate with a certain class of people and that was really all she wanted to do. She was, he realized, a genuine snob; and in the extremely democratic society of the capital, where office and rank, not an individual’s background, wealth or even manners, determine whatever snobbism exists, she was never entirely at ease. She was one of the few people he had ever known who did not find Washington fascinating. At the same time she had a loud and frequently expressed horror of “going back to California and just being a farmer’s wife.” Going back to California was of course the last thing he himself intended to do, but it had inspired quite a few dramatic scenes in recent years.

The only thing that would make her really happy, he felt, would be for him to join a top law firm in Philadelphia, buy a house on the Main Line and sink slowly into affluent desuetude as the years passed profitably, and lifelessly, by.

This was not for him; yet he could not really conceive that this alone was enough to bring about the slowly growing separation he had sensed, fought against, and ultimately found too strong to overcome. There must be something more to it; and being an honest, generous and compassionate man who often blamed himself for others’ errors, he felt that it must be something in him that was lacking. They had been married six years when they were finally blessed with one child, Jane, on whom he gradually came to focus much of his time and emotion; Mary announced firmly that she was having no more. He had balked but she had been adamant. After a time he had come to accept it and had hoped that by giving Janie the best possible home and trying always to keep them a close-knit and love-surrounded family unit, he could both protect his daughter and strengthen his marriage. Because he was also a man of great tenacity and determination and because Janie obviously grew to love him considerably more than she did her increasingly cold and absentminded mother, which did not help, he had been able to pretend to himself for far longer than most that something less than half a loaf could be made to seem better than none. In the last few years the pretense had become increasingly thin.

Mary did her duty socially, entertained for him, smiled and bowed and flattered the people she thought would advance his career, and he could not fault her on that. But she made it increasingly clear that she did it not really for him but simply because that was what girls from her background were trained to do. Her private comments on his growing success and rising reputation became increasingly sharp and destructive. She did not seem to approve of ambition, and she apparently realized that he had far more than most people, observing no more than his pleasant smile, steady calm and quietly decisive manner, perceived.

It was only after he became Solicitor General, however, that she began to be really outspoken about this. He had long ago ceased to discuss his duties or his dreams with her, but with the shrewdness of the disgruntled (and, in fairness, the unhappy, because he thought sometimes—and tried not to think it—that she must be very unhappy) she knew where his ambitions lay.

“You want to be on the Court,” she said flatly after his first day of arguing the government’s cases before it. “You’re positively glowing. I’ve never seen you so excited. Did they make you an honorary member?”

“I don’t think anybody but you would know I’m excited,” he said with the calm that seemed increasingly to annoy her. “And if I ever make it, it won’t be honorary. I’ll be there.”

“I can’t think of anything more boring. Those dowdy old men and their dowdy old wives! But I suppose you’d love it.”

“I don’t think you can call Sue-Ann Pomeroy dowdy,” he said mildly. “She has enough glamour for—”

“For all of us? Yes, I know you like Sue-Ann, you always have. And she likes you, too. I wonder if you think Moss is fooled?”

“There’s nothing for Moss to be fooled about!” he said sharply, provoked into the sort of retort he felt she was looking for, nowadays. “You know Moss and I
and
Sue-Ann are the best of friends, always have been, and always will be.”

“I’m surprised it’s even a threesome,” she remarked as she hurried into her jewelry (they were on their way to dinner at the gracious old Spanish Embassy on Fifteenth Street Northwest, their fourth black-tie affair in that one typical week). “The way you and Moss worship each other.”

“We don’t ‘worship each other,’” he said, putting on studs and cufflinks, keeping his voice low-keyed and matter-of-fact. “Next to my brother Carl and my brother-in-law Johnny, I expect he is my best friend, but we don’t worship each other. We know each other’s faults too well for that.”

“You tell him things you’d never tell me!”

He gave her a level look.

“I often get the distinct feeling that you don’t want me to tell you anything. So why shouldn’t I tell Moss?”

“But I’m your
wife!”
she said, angrily, and as he saw it, completely irrationally.

“Really?” he said in a cold tone that only she ever heard, and that only lately. “I didn’t know.”

“Well, why
don’t
you know!” she demanded, her voice suddenly ragged between held-back tears and growing anger. “I’ve done my best to be a good wife to you, all these boring years in this boring town with all its boring parvenus from all over America! And all the time I’ve hated it! Hated it, hated it, hated it!”

“And hated me too, I guess,” he said, staring at her with a thoughtful reasonableness he knew must anger her still further, but he couldn’t help it; he
was
thoughtful and he
was
reasonable. “I’m sorry I’ve been such poor company for you, all this time.”

“Well,” she said, turning back to her dressing table, adjusting her hair, voice returned abruptly to normal, “you weren’t once, I guess I have that to be thankful for. We had a few good years.”

“Oh, don’t sound so damned elegiac all of a sudden!” he said, suddenly angered himself now. “Why haven’t we got good years now? Whose fault is that, tell me? Not mine, I assure you, not mine! I do
my
best!
I
try.”

“Noble you,” she said, no longer tearful, no longer sounding even angry. “And I suppose I don’t?”