No Safe Place (53 page)

“So reform is in our interest,” Kerry interjected.

“So,” Mason continued, impervious, “we need every senator on our side of the aisle, and we’d still lose in the House. Then I’m the guy who got fucked twice—not bright enough to turn down the money, not strong enough to fix things.”

“Dick,” Kerry said in a low voice, “this isn’t just about you.”

Mason stopped smiling. “True. It’s the Kilcannon-Palmer Bill we’re talking about.”

“And either way,” Kerry snapped, “you lose. That’s all that
matters, isn’t it.” He felt a hopeless anger wash over him. “You figure I’m running the next time out, and that you’ve got enough money to squash me like a bug. So campaign reform’s my little gimmick to choke off all the cash and steal your place in history.”

Mason’s face became opaque, a mask. “The thought never occurred to me, Kerry. But clearly it’s occurred to you.”

Kerry stared at him. “Do you ever feel like a pygmy, Dick? With every minute we spend together, I feel myself getting shorter.”

Mason returned his stare, then shrugged. “See me as you like, Kerry. I don’t think people out there care enough to justify the risk. And I’ve never thought leadership meant lost causes and self-inflicted wounds.” For an instant, his eyes grew hard, and then he smiled again. “That’s really more your department, I think.”

Kerry simply looked at him, the slightest smile of his own appearing in his eyes. “If that’s what you believe, Dick, I don’t mind.” He stood. “Please give my love to Jeannie, by the way.”

Mason stood, shaking his hand. “Always,” he answered lightly. “And to Meg. When next you see her.”

Finishing his account, Kerry poured another glass of wine.

They sat together, evening shadows filling the apartment. There was little Lara needed to say. Both of them understood the implications: campaign reform was dead this session, and in the perverse synergy between Mason and Kerry, the Vice President had drawn him that much closer to running.

“Remember what you said,” he asked her, “about an escape?” At first, Lara was surprised, and then she realized that he, like she, must feel time closing in on them. “I remember,” she answered softly.

Lara sat on the beach, leaning back against Kerry’s chest, and watched the sun, descending, burnish the ebbing waters.

They had been on Martha’s Vineyard for a day. “Here,” she said to Kerry, “I feel we’re a couple.”

For four days they could live without worry: the house, off Dogfish Bar, was at the end of a dirt road near Gay Head, so quiet that few people knew how to find it. Unconstrained as they were by apartment walls, the need to hide, their time took on a careless quality: that morning they had stood in water swelling to their waists, feeling the light breeze on their faces, the warming sun. Kerry looked young, contented, filled with life.

“I’ve discovered something,” she had told him. “You’re a nature sensualist. Cities have been bad for you.”

Hands shoved in the pockets of his windbreaker, Kerry laughed, savoring the scent of seawater, the bracing cool of the Atlantic. “I’m a Lara sensualist,” he answered. “I’m only tolerating this.”

Lightly, she had splashed his face with water. “If you want me,” she announced, “I want lobster. On the beach.”

He wiped the water from his eyes. “You mean there’s takeout?”

They spent the rest of the day as they pleased: A climb in the foothills above Menemsha, ending in a panoramic view of the sound, speckled with white sails, the Elizabeth Islands green patches in the spreading blue. Then a walk in the town itself, a fishing village where, in sunglasses, Kerry seemed to go unrecognized. Finally, the purchase of two lobsters. “A down payment,” Kerry said, as he put them in the refrigerator.

Holding hands, they walked to the bedroom.

From the windows, no one could see them. They lay naked in the sunlight, unhurried, touching as they looked into each other’s faces. She traced the scar on his shoulder with her fingertips, then the thin line of hair running between his breastbone to his waist. But it was his eyes that had always drawn her; a deep blue-green, they gazed at her, a window to his emotions.

I’m in love with you,
she thought with sadness.
I’ll never love anyone this much again.

The sudden certainty, held at bay for months, was like a catch in her throat. His eyes were intent now, questioning. “What is it?” he asked.

“De nada,”
Lara murmured. The words he had used the afternoon Lara had met him, two years before.

Two years, and now you’re so much a part of me I don’t want to let you go.

He kissed her throat. “Oh,” he murmured. “It’s hardly nothing.”

Later, she lay in his arms. Would a life for them be possible, she found herself wondering, if Kerry never went beyond the Senate?

“Penny for your thoughts,” Kerry said.

Gazing at the ceiling, Lara shook her head. “I seem to have lost control of them.”

“Why? And over what?”

“Give me time,” she answered. “To sort things out.”

Kerry did not press her. He had the grace of silence, Lara thought, another gift she valued. But it was more than that, now. Kerry simply knew her.

“I’m hungry,” Lara said after a while. “I think
that’s
what it was.”

Together, they planned dinner, then went to gather driftwood on the beach.

It was a mile of white sand and half-buried rocks, stretching toward the final red-clay promontory on which the Gay Head lighthouse stood, a distant spike against the blue of early evening. They found a spot free of rocks and scooped an indentation with their hands, then started a fire with the
help of matchsticks and dried sea grass. Within moments, they were
sipping chardonnay from paper cups as they waited for the lobster pot to boil.

Tender, the lobsters tasted of lemon Kerry had squeezed, the drawn butter Lara had melted in a pan. They sat back in the sand, drinking wine, pleased with their achievements. “Not bad,” Kerry said, “for a couple of urbanites.”

At dusk, they watched the sun backlight a thin line of clouds, the sky fade to cobalt. Things seemed so much clearer, Lara thought, when she slowed down, altering the pace and rhythm of her life. And then a truth about her relationship to Kerry struck her so hard that, to her surprise, she spoke it aloud. “Something’s changed for me,” she told him.

“What is it?”

She shook her head. “It’s hard to explain, Kerry. But all my life I’ve been afraid of being like my mother was with my father—lost to herself. Even after he took off with someone else, she loved him so much that she kept his picture in a drawer, just to look at.

“I never told her that I knew. But I promised myself I’d never be like her. That I’d have my own life, some irreducible self that belonged to no one but me.

“I’ve lived that way, until now. No one would ever make me forget who I was.” Pausing, Lara realized that it was better like this—talking to the water instead of facing him—and made herself go on. “When we started, no matter how strongly I felt about you, I knew we had our limits. I wasn’t going to be a political wife, or someone like my mother. The rest of my life, my career, went on as it had. And I tried to believe that, when we ended, the core I’d kept would help me face that.”

“And now?”

“I know I’ve been lying to myself.” The sting of tears caught her by surprise. “It’s too good being with you like this.
You’re
too good, and I’m having a hard time with that.”

His arms tightened around her. Silent, they watched the sun vanish. A night wind, stirring to life, cooled their skin.

“Lara,” he said at last, “I never thought you wanted more than what we have. But if you ever do …”

“I’ll tell you. For now, I just need to be quiet with this.”

For a long time, she was.

The night closed around them. Burrowing against him, Lara gazed at the star-streaked sky, brighter for the absence of a city, listened to the deep spill of the ocean, the crackle of red, dying embers. “I’d like you to tell me something,” she said finally. “
Are
you running for President?”

Behind her, she felt Kerry shift his weight, his chin resting lightly on the crown of her head. “It’s too soon, Lara.”

“You’ll
know
soon—after the off-year elections. Either the President and Dick repair the damage, or the party stays in the minority.” Tilting her head, she gazed up at the stars. “I think it will. And so do you. That’s part of why we came here now, isn’t it?”

His silence, Lara thought sadly, was a tacit acknowledgment that what she’d said was true. “I look at Mason,” he said at last, “and I think of all I’d do if I were in his place. But even if the President and Dick are the last passengers on the
Titanic
, the cost of running is so high.” His voice dropped into a lower register—pensive, thoughtful. “And then there’s this endless cycle of myth-making and myth-destroying. It’s the one thing Jamie escaped.”

“Because he’s forever a myth?” she asked.

“Yes. God, how people still love him for dying young.”

Quiet, Lara listened to a surf she could no longer see, felt again her fear of losing him; the fear of standing in his way; the sense that fate and circumstances were slowly, sinuously, drawing Kerry toward the race. “Are you afraid of that?” she asked. “Dying like Jamie, because some sick person wants to join his name to yours?”

For a moment he said nothing, and then he leaned his face next to hers. “Never more than now,” he answered.

After a time, the wind cooled.

In the warmth of the beach house, they made love again. They fell asleep to the sound of the ocean, the breeze coming through the window screens, the smell of salt.

The next morning, on the radio, Kerry heard the first warning of the hurricane.

Listening, Kerry looked out the window. In blue jeans and a Stanford sweatshirt, Lara sat on the deck, drinking coffee and
watching the ocean sparkle with morning sunlight. For a moment, he did not wish to tell her.

When he walked outside, she took a deep breath of ocean air, shivering with pleasure. “I love this,” she announced.

He put both hands on her shoulders. “We may have to leave,” he told her. “There’s a hurricane on its way. It was supposed to hit the Carolinas. But now it’s veered.”

She looked up at him awhile. Finally, she asked, “How long do we have?”

Gently, Kerry rubbed her shoulders. “Three days, they think.”

“That feels good,” Lara murmured. She leaned back, looking up at him. “Do you have to decide now? If this hurricane veered once, maybe it can veer again.”

Kerry smiled. “Tomorrow morning,” he said, “I’ll turn on the radio again.”

“Good. Do you think you could keep on rubbing? Maybe a little higher.”

But she seemed pensive after that. It was only when he brought her a second cup of coffee that she said, “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

Her tone was serious, soft-spoken. He sat beside her on the deck, cross-legged, his own cup of coffee a centrifuge of warmth in his hands. “What is it?”

“I’ve had a feeler from NBC. Believe it or not, they may want me to do television.”

“Oh, I believe it. How do
you
feel?”

“Ambivalent. I did a little of that in college, so it’s not completely bizarre.” She sipped her coffee. “On one side, there’s not the depth of print reporting. On the other is what they may be prepared to offer.”

She did not look at him, and her tone of reticence, unusual for Lara, unsettled him. “A lot more money?” he asked.

Lara nodded, still gazing at the water. “There’s that,” she answered, and then turned to him. “They’d send me overseas, Kerry. If that’s what I prefer.”

It startled him. “Do you?” he asked.

She paused, a troubled look in her eyes, as if she felt the shadow in his soul. “I would,” she said quietly, “except for you. I’ve been telling myself how stupid that is.”

Kerry looked down.
Be fair,
he admonished himself.
Be her
friend.
“I know,” he said at last, “that you’ve always wondered if this job’s right for you. I’ve known since the first time we really talked.”

He felt her hand, gently touching his arm. “And that was two years ago, Kerry. How much more political intrigue can I cover?” Her tone was soft. “The real irony is, if you ran for President, the
Times
would probably ask me to cover
you
. And I couldn’t.”

Looking up at her, he tried to smile. “Then I’ve lost my reason to run.”

Lara gazed into her coffee cup. “I didn’t look for this. But we knew that sometime …” She shook her head. “I don’t expect you to do anything about this. I don’t even want you to. But our careers are getting all tangled up with
us
.”

Kerry took a deep breath. “I can’t tell you what to do, Lara. All I know is how good you’d be. If it’s what you want.”

Slowly, she intertwined her fingers with Kerry’s.

For the rest of the day, they did not talk about it. But to Kerry, their lovemaking had a desperate quality.

The next morning, the hurricane was one day closer, and every plane, every ferry to the mainland, was booked.

Lara phoned her office. Then, knowing that Kerry had to call Meg, she walked the beach alone.

Illicit lovers, she thought sadly, develop a strange tact; she would never make Kerry lie in front of her. Upon her return, he said, “It’s done. I’m staying here a little longer, trapped in my solitary retreat.”

She took his hand. “Then you should make the most of it.”

Afterward, they spent their time preparing for what would come. Lara drove to the Chilmark General Store for flashlight batteries, canned goods, candles, and bottled water; Kerry moved the furniture to the center of the room. Returning, Lara saw this and, for a time, felt irrationally cheerful. “It’s an adventure,” she said. “Like camping out.”

Kerry grinned at her. “Oh, yeah. And I’m an Eagle Scout. Did you bring your cell phone, by the way?”

Outside, the winds had risen, and then the rain began.

For another day, the storm closed in on them.

There was no one on the beach now, no boats on the water. The sky, close and dark, seemed to merge with the ocean.