Death of a Political Plant (5 page)

T
HE ODORS OF FRYING ONIONS
and draft beer, soaked into the walls and wood floor of Joe’s Raw Bar, went with college days. They awakened memories of the summer of 1975.

Jay had pleaded the need for a cup of coffee, and this nostalgic bar was on the way home. He slowly shook his head. “We really had something going.”

“For a few weeks we did,” amended Louise, stirring her cream soda with a straw.

“Six weeks.” Jay looked straight into her eyes. “Then came that son-of-a-gun Bill down from bloody Harvard.” He grinned, to take the sting out of the words.

“It happens, Jay. I fell in love with Bill. I’m sorry, but remember, you liked Bill. You even came to our wedding. You’ll like him when you meet him again.”

He reached a hand over to cover hers as a gesture of remorse. “I don’t know why I’m sounding like a vindictive spoilsport. But he sure grabbed you up in a hurry.” The pain in his eyes was unmistakable. “I turned my back one day, and you were gone.”

She realized how selfish it was to reminisce about those days. To her, it was romantic, but to Jay, it was painful. Back then, she had found him to be a man for all occasions: They went to foreign films and art events, explored Virginia waterfalls, and hiked the Shenandoah trail, Jay adroitly leading the way over rocks and ridges. She remembered best the simple walks along the C&O Canal at twilight and the canoe trips on the Potomac. Jay would beach the boat and hide their packed lunches so cleverly no animal could find them, while they skinny-dipped in the river.

Her face flushed at the memory. When she looked over at Jay, his pale eyes were shining with the same devotion that she had seen there twenty years ago. “Louise, we would have been great together. Maybe I would have done better if only you’d been with me.”

“Jay, we both know this is useless. Let’s just remember those lovely days, and not regret anything. You married, didn’t you? I thought I heard that.” She stopped, wishing she hadn’t brought up his marriage. Who knows what happened to it?

His eyes changed, grew wary. “I married a wonderful Woman named Lannie Gordon; she was in law school at
Georgetown. We settled in Sacramento after Lannie got a job out there. She was very successful—became the youngest partner in her law firm. Meantime, I got into investigative reporting at the Sacramento Union. Specialized in death row cases that were faulty and got a number of people freed, too. If anything in life was satisfying, that was.”

“Was?”

“Lannie had a baby, and that meant getting a house, and Lannie wanted a pretty fancy house. I sure wasn’t able to carry my part of the financial load on a reporter’s salary, so I ended up joining a PR firm to make some bucks.” He attempted a smile that was more of a grimace. “I became expert at writing speeches for candidates; I’d write speeches for anybody, as long as they were a paying client.”

“So you felt like a sellout.”

The faded eyes looked at her from underneath the unruly brows. “Yeah. I was no different from Lannie.” Then he frowned down at the bar-finish table top. “Even with those concessions, I haven’t made the marriage work; that left our daughter Melissa squarely in the middle.”

“And Lannie…”

“She’s a big-time lawyer now. She’s here in D.C., a top litigator and lobbyist for the tobacco industry.”

“I think I’ve seen her on television, speaking up for the tobacco companies. Shoulder-length red hair, very serious?”

“Yes, that’s Lannie. We divorced five years ago, and a year after that, she moved to Washington for this new job and took Melissa with her. Like a dope, I went along with the idea, and that caused all the trouble. Melissa was nine then, thirteen now. She and I missed each other so much that I went to court to change things, and I succeeded beyond my wildest hopes.
Lannie was upset, of course: She loves the girl just as much as I do. Melissa is wonderful and beautiful.”

He strained for an image special enough for his daughter. “Just about as beautiful as that first day of spring. Loves to read and write, loves animals. She has a canny nature, and I like that because she reminds me of me, but maybe that comes from her mother, too.”

“You were so idealistic. Was Lannie that way, too?”

He stared off into space, remembering. “Yes, like we all were in the seventies: idealistic, but with our old values undercut by the confusion of the sixties. She may still be idealistic way underneath; it was the job and the success that changed her. Maybe it’s because she grew up on that pathetic little farm in southern Indiana, with so little in the way of material advantages, that she needs them so much now. Once her career got going out in California, it was as if we were two of the earth’s plates that drifted apart.”

He shook his head. “The funny thing is, I still love her, and if she ever asked me to come back, I’d do it. But she’s heartbroken because of the judge’s decision: He gave me custody for all of the school year. What really wrenched her was that our daughter got on the stand and told the judge she prefers to live with me.”

“What a thing for a mother to hear!”

“I feel sorry for her, too, Louise, but what’s going to happen is for the best. In a week, Melissa drives back with me to California, and then will stay with her mother in Great Falls at Christmas and for three months during the summer.” His face clouded up again.

“Why are you concerned, Jay? It sounds like a great outcome for you.”

“It’s because my ex-wife’s so darned disappointed, Louise.
It’s as if I’ve snatched her soul away. She firmly believes Melissa is better off with her: She gave her the best of everything and even took her to Europe a couple of times. I think the girl makes Lannie feel like a better person. So now, I’m hoping she doesn’t do something desperate, like taking Melissa abroad to live. She has a house in Ireland, and God knows she has the money for the two of them to just emigrate.”

He leaned forward, elbows on the table, intent on his story. “Right after the judge’s decree in February, which takes effect next Friday, I flew here to D.C. to check things out. I was afraid Lannie might take off with our daughter then. I felt terrible spying on her, but I had to. Then, I came across a story that I first got wind of last fall in California. Got a deal going to stay in Washington, and I’ve been, well, working here ever since. And keeping an eye on Melissa, unbeknownst to my ex.”

He shook his head, as if he had dwelled enough on the matter, and then looked at the clock on the greasy tan wall. “Louise, it’s after six: Are you sure we aren’t running overtime?”

She had called Bill from her office at Channel Five, telling him she was bringing Jay home. He sounded a little put out, but he remembered Jay. She told him they were going out to get coffee first. “We’d better go, so I can dream up something for supper.”

Jay slid out of the booth, protesting. “Louise, I don’t need care and feeding—just a room where I can stay out of sight.”

“You’re having dinner with us, don’t be silly. Bill will be glad to see you again.”

As they walked to the door, Jay looked around the bar. He said, “This place is just like our old college hangouts in Georgetown.”

She smiled up at him. “That’s why I brought you here.”

He followed her the eight miles home on the crowded highway in a dull-colored old Ford that looked like it wouldn’t pass the emissions test. But Louise could figure it out: Her old flame was going incognito, and that included his car.

Of course, her seven-year-old Honda wagon, which smelled of all her garden acquisitions, from plants to peat to manure, wasn’t much better.

B
ILL
E
LDRIDGE RARELY HAD OC
casion to feel jealous regarding his wife. True, men always admired her. Even Tom Paschen, the other night, had expressed his appreciation of Louise, in his twisted, misogynist way. But this was usually a source of pride for him, to know he had such a willowy, attractive, and charming wife. But Jay McCormick was something else. Bill had hurried home from work and changed into his most youthful sports
clothes when he heard Louise was bringing the guy home. For dinner, or maybe it was more than dinner: What did she say,
to stay awhile?

Then they hadn’t rolled in until after seven o’clock, reasonable in view of the heavy traffic across Fairfax County at that time. But they were laughing and chatting together in that damnably annoying, intimate way that they had been when he first met the two of them at Georgetown. And Louise, in the clothes she had worn on location, looked especially romantic: white frilly blouse and flowing mauve skirt, her long brown hair bundled up in an old-fashioned style with a ribbon, no less.

He smoothed back his barely thinning blond hair, and realized he didn’t have the moxie he had back then. He had seen Louise that day twenty-one years ago in Washington and got carried away by a combination of lust and good judgment. He’d decided right then he would marry this luscious creature. And just by being his easy self, though a little more rooted than the mercurial Jay McCormick, and full of talk about his sexy new job with State, he had won the lady.

Louise had given their guest a tour of the house and he commented on how much he liked the antique furniture. He had smoothed the wood of the pine dining room table with knowledgeable, sensuous fingers and told Louise how he himself made furniture in his workshop. Louise was impressed. It figured: Bill himself hardly knew how to handle a handsaw.

Now, Jay sat across from him with a Scotch and water and looked, if anything, like a better bet than twenty years before. He had a lot going for him. He had a certain quiet poise. He also was five years younger than Bill, the same age as Louise. He was still good-humored and witty. And, most important,
he had suffered: Louise liked to crawl right under the skin of suffering people in order to share their misery.

Jay had a track record for saving people. That always appealed to Louise, who liked nothing better than to save people herself. The two of them were like a couple of Don Quixotes.

But the man certainly was desultory-looking: For some reason, he had slept in his car last night. Despite this, he still had that careless Irish attractiveness and graceful way of handling his body.

Suddenly Bill became aware that he had been carefully watching Louise watch Jay while he ran his paranoid scenarios over in his mind. He took a large sip of his Wellers on the rocks and pulled himself together. Jealousy was profitless, he’d always read, and after a couple of moments indulging in it, he knew it was true. The fact was, he liked Jay McCormick.

Louise had been giving their guest a rundown on the Eldridge family’s recent moves, and how they came to buy this, their first house.

“There’s lots more I want to hear about,” said Jay. “How’s your job, Bill? Do you think you’ll stay stateside, or are there more foreign assignments ahead?”

“That’s still up in the air,” he replied. “It’s more complicated now, with Janie still to finish high school. And Louise, of course: Kind of hard to say to Louise, ‘Give up your job.’ So we have lots of decisions to make.” That was enough to tell him about the family. He said, “Now, Jay, maybe I missed this: What are you doing in Washington?”

Their guest, who was slowly nursing his drink, put it down on a nearby table, careful to see it rested straight on its coaster. He folded his hands loosely across his chest. “Bill, I’m writing. But I’ve told Louise next to nothing about what I’m
writing, and that’s what I want to tell you, if I can prevail that much on your friendship.”

“Sure, but what’s this about being in some kind of hot water?”

Jay frowned and was silent, probably surprised that Louise had filled Bill in so thoroughly in the few minutes they had alone since the two had reached the house. Then the man appeared to make a conscious decision to relax, bringing a leg up and crossing it over the other, resting his arms against the sofa cushions. “I have a story to finish, Bill, and I want to do it here, out of sight of everybody, not back in Sacramento, because when it’s finished, I can pick up my daughter and we’ll return home together.” He grinned at Louise. “It will be in a new car I plan to pick up here, by the way, not that junker I’m using right now.”