Senator Love (5 page)

"Getting reelected," Monte said without
hesitation.

"And after? There are only two terms."

"In the last two years of his last term, he will stand
for assuring his place in history. He will graduate from politician to
statesman."

It did not offend her. She had expected the answers. It was
no different in her father's time. Except that he had finally risen above it,
chosen crucifixion and martyrdom to political expediency, thrown in his lot
with the anti-Vietnam war movement at the worst possible political time. It had
defeated him as a politician, but he had regained himself as a man, although he
had, despite the doctor's report, died of a broken heart. She had been quite
young, but old enough to understand, and it had validated her respect for him,
and his memory continued to enrich her life and give her the assurances she
needed to fight her own daily battle for moral rectitude.

The waiter brought their sole, which was soft and tasty,
and they washed it down with cold white wine. Throughout the dinner they continued
to caress lower extremities.

It was only later, after he had followed her home in his
car and they had made love in her wide queen-size bed and she had discovered
that he was, indeed, soft and furry all over and quite cuddly, effective and
endearing as a lover, that she broached the question that had probably nagged
at her all evening.

"Why aren't you outraged?"

"About what?" he asked.

"About selling a straw man to the public for
President."

"That's the best kind. No baggage. We can fill him
with the right kind of straw. Make him salable. Package him to attract the
widest possible segments. The campaign is won on simplistic symbol-mongering
and television-picture opportunities."

"But what does that say about us? I shake my head in
understanding. Not outrage, understanding. Are we such jaded, cynical and
corrupt people that we acquiesce and go along? Know it's wrong, but go
along?"

She wrapped her arms around him and fingered her way across
his wide expanse of hairy softness. As she had suspected, he felt comfortable,
warm, his body a kind of metaphor for generosity. She felt comfortable and
secure and she could barely summon up a sliver of outrage.

"We're part of it," she whispered.

"Part of what?"

"The corruption," she sighed. "Of misplaced
priorities and injustice."

"All that?" he muttered.

"I can't let it go," she said. "Those old
bones were once a person. And that person has as much right to justice as
anyone."

"You lost me," he whispered.

She was silent for a while, wondering if he was awaiting
further comment or just drifting off into sleep. She said nothing, feeling the
first faint signs of the return of her outrage. Then she heard his light snore
of deep slumber.

THE GENTLY rolling green hills of the Virginia countryside
were capped with mist as the rain continued to fall, steady and relentless. She
felt no sense of gloom nor did she long for the sun. It was, after all, a
spring rain carrying with it the hopeful promise of fecundity and flowers.

Driving alone had never seemed therapeutic. But it did
today. The grey mistiness gave her a sense of sweet isolation, as if she were
gliding through a bank of soft clouds. She allowed the car more speed than was
legal, finding comfort in the smooth movement and the reassuring sights of the
swiftly passing dark green fields, the sturdy houses nestled in their stands of
shade trees and the shiny hides of huddling cows.

SHE HAD acted out of compulsion, a reaction to the
frustration of her expectations. It had been one of those deliciously
languorous awakenings, a menu of tiny preludes, the extended hugging and
cuddling foreplay induced by rainy days and the prospect of hours of exquisite
leisure.

Their erotic needs satiated, she went downstairs to make
one of those after-play Hollywood breakfasts, bubbling bull's-eye eggs and
bacon, toasted bagels, assorted cheeses and coffee. She brought in the
plastic-wrapped
Washington Post
and
New York Times
and set the
table in the breakfast alcove with the yellow patterned dishes that her mother
always used for special breakfasts.

Her inheritance of the family house had seemed a headache
at first, and she had rented it out for two years after their deaths. Mother
had followed father by little more than a year, a kind of poetic justice. All
her mother's life she had stuck by the Senator, had followed, albeit kicking
and screaming but, in the end, obediently.

Now the house had become her anchor, an oasis, a validation
of her roots, an envelope of memories. An only child, she had treated the house
as a sibling, a fact that had not occurred to her until she had lived away from
it for a while.

It was not without its ghosts, defined not as white-sheeted
visitors from the spirit world, but invisible puppet strings of parental
attachment that were irrevocably stapled to her, to be tugged at and
manipulated as the occasion arose.

Often, in the throes of some sexual acrobatics, she would
find herself rationalizing the act, even as it were occurring, to counter her
mother's disapproval. A practicing Catholic who reveled in verbalizing a catalogue
of sinful don'ts, her mother in afterlife seemed far more tolerating than
forbidding, although Fiona was not indifferent to the pull of the strings. By
explaining these perceived sins to her mother, Fiona felt that she somehow had
mitigated part of the guilt.

Indeed, just moments before she had begun this breakfast
preparation, she had explained to her why she was on her hands and knees on the
edge of the bed being done by this man resembling a bear, rearing and roaring
on hind legs.

"It's only fancy fucking, Mom. Doesn't He want us to
go to the limits of our potential, soul and body?" Surely she understood
the soul part.

She had smiled to herself, just as she did in the
recollection, and had looked out through the kitchen window. The rain had dyed the
lawn and trees a dark green and the grey sky was seamless. The table set, she
turned back to the burners on the wooden work island. On the far side of the
kitchen was a butcher block counter on which was a telephone. A button was lit.
He was making a call. The light disappeared quickly and he was downstairs fully
dressed.

"I can't stay," he had told her, distracted.

"Problems?"

"Afraid so," he grunted. His gaze had taken in
the table setting, the bubbling eggs, the toasting bagels. She moved toward him
and kissed the bouquet of black curly hair in the V of his unbuttoned shirt.

"It's the weekend," she said foolishly, echoing a
hundred complaints from other weekends when she had been the spoiler and others
were on the receiving end.

"There are no weekends in politics," he had
sighed, another recycling of her excuses. Duty decrees. She knew the drill.

He was transformed, no longer the horny bear. His mind was
elsewhere, wrestling with the problem that had intruded.

"You shouldn't have called," she had rebuked,
watching him wolf down her carefully prepared breakfast with little relish.

"Hell," he said. "I bought us the
night."

He had finished his coffee standing, then put the cup on
the table. For a moment, it crossed her mind that he might be one of those people
who, once satiated and empty of desire, needed to rush away from the scene of
their sexual enterprise. She had encountered men like that on occasion and had
had episodes of such emotions herself.

"Hope your day is awful," she had called after
him. He had wrapped her in his bear hug and they had lingered for a long
moment. No, she had decided, he truly wanted to stay and she could feel the
tension calling him away.

When he'd gone, she had stared at the table until her eggs
had grown too cold to eat. Nor could she concentrate on the newspapers. She
truly deserved this day of leisure, loving and release. She had reserved it in
her mind. Indeed, last night and throughout the early morning, her body had
seemed to demand it and acted accordingly, allowing her a feast of orgasms.
Still, she knew that her appetite craved more. From self-pity, it was a tiny
step to injustice.

From there it was a circuitous but logical path to arrive
at the injustices that had to do with the circumstances surrounding the
investigation of the old bones of the young girl.

It helped for her thoughts to sail back to this gritty
reality of shop talk. For a detective, the puzzle was always in play in the
subconscious. Little effort was required to bring it back to the surface and it
came roaring back with all the force of the repressed anger that the eggplant's
attitude had spawned. His priorities were misplaced. Time was not the issue.

It was, she decided, unjust to ignore the girl's remains
and all that they implied. It was a travesty, an outrage. It deserved more than
short shrift. It demanded her attention.

"It's my own time," she had said aloud, as if the
eggplant was standing at her shoulder.

She fished a name out of her notebook, Emma Taylor, Fredericksburg, Virginia. It took a half-hour to find the right Taylor, mother of Betty.
The long silence after the question told her the truth of it. Had she been too
callous in the asking? she wondered.

"Did you have a daughter named Betty?" was the
way she phrased it. It was too late to recall the tone.

"Ah
have
a daughter named Betty," the
woman said, in a soft, polite, deep Virginia twang, yet offering a dash of
indignance to mask the sudden pain of it. Fiona noted the not-so-subtle change
of past to present tense.

Fiona identified herself, then tried to soften the blow
somewhat, although she knew it was too late.

"We have some new facts..." she began, then
waited, listening to the woman's breathing at the other end of the line. She
imagined she could hear her pumping heart.

"Ah'll nevah undastand wah she just upped and
disappeared into thin ayah."

The voice and inflection suggested the usual southern
clichés. All the predictable images surfaced of a small-town woman holding onto
appearances at all costs, playing for approval of the local ladies from the
bridge club.

"You heard from Betta?" the woman asked suddenly,
hope ascending in her voice.

"Not exactly," Fiona said, lying.

"Ah'd appreciate ya tellin me if ya do," the
woman said politely. There was a long pause. "Ah'll nevah undastand,"
she sighed. "Somethin up thayah in Washinton jes turned her head in the
wrong direction."

"I'd like to come out and see you, Mrs. Taylor,"
Fiona said.

"Ah would welcome that," the woman said.
"Deed ah would." Another pause. "Not a day goes bah when ah don
hope."

There was no point in a direct response. Instead Fiona got
directions and hung up. She lingered for a long moment. Perhaps it had not been
a good idea, after all. And yet something in the woman's voice, the inflection,
not the words, troubled her. It was a trade-off, she decided. She detested
playing the messenger of death. The fact that she would do so off-duty and
unpartnered made it even more offensive. It was also too late for that. Her
curiosity was too aroused to turn back. For a detective such an attitude was
like raw meat thrown to a starving lion.

SHE ROLLED the car through a long curving exit from the
main highway and found herself on the outskirts of Fredericksburg, a fair-sized
town, yet light-years away from the Washington metropolis. Following the
precise directions the woman had given her, she traversed the main arteries of
the town and drove through what passed for suburbs, noting large houses
surrounded by big lawns.

She had no preconceived notions of the kind of place in
which Mrs. Taylor lived. No hint was given, except that the neighborhood where
Betty's remains had been found had been very upscale, which suggested that she
might have been used to such an environment. But that theory quickly dissolved.
The neighborhood in which Fiona finally arrived was a sleepy southern ghetto,
neat, look-alike small houses, each fronted by a miniscule patch of lawn.

No way of telling race, Dr. Benton had told her, as she
pressed the old-fashioned door bell and listened to the now unfamiliar ring. A
light-skinned Negress came to the door, tall, dignified and stately. Her voice
was instantly recognizable.

"Miz FitzGeral," Mrs. Taylor said, leading her
through a small hallway to a neat, well-cared-for living room. The houses of
black people were familiar to Fiona, and, aside from the tension of her
mission, she did not feel uncomfortable or out of place.

"Ah've made some coffee," Mrs. Taylor said. She
was gone a moment, returning with two cups, a pot of coffee and a plate of
chocolate-chip cookies. Because she moved with such self-absorbed intensity,
Fiona was able to observe her without fear of being considered impolite. The
woman's complexion was golden and seemed to glow from within. Not a wrinkle
disturbed the symmetry. Chronologically she would be nearing 50, but there was
no way of telling from her features. Her well-proportioned figure had
thickened, but it was clear that in her youth she had been a knockout.

Mrs. Taylor poured the coffee with a sense of solemnity in
the ritual and handed it to Fiona with a thin smile. Her eyes, Fiona noted now,
were a startling bluish grey like her own, her greying hair naturally wavy.
Only a somewhat larger flair to the nostril testified to the Negroid genetic
share. It was then that Fiona had realized why she had made the mistake of
picturing Mrs. Taylor differently. Her voice and inflection revealed only the
slightest clue to her blackness. Outside of this environment she might have
easily passed for white, but it was quite clear which side she had chosen, and
she was obviously proud of her choice.

As she sipped the coffee, Fiona's gaze swept the room,
arrested finally by the obvious. Betty Taylor's picture in full color.
Undoubtedly a clone of her mother in her youth, a grey-eyed, golden beauty. She
noted that the flare in the nostrils was less pronounced. Except for its
environment, the woman in the photo might have had a great deal of trouble
passing for black.

"That's Betta," Mrs. Taylor said. From where she
sat she could reach the picture. She took the frame, studied the picture for a
moment, then held it up for Fiona to get a closer look, although she would not
release it from her own hands.

"She certainly was a beauty," Fiona said, once
again regretting the tense. But a picture of the old bones had flashed in her
mind. It was all she could do to keep her tears from coming.

"A dozen yeahs now," Mrs. Taylor said. "Mah
husban's gone now. Owah son is up in New Yoke. A lawyah." She looked at
the picture. "Betta was always a rebel. We had no choice but to let huh go
to Washinton. To huh that was the big city." Her gaze drifted toward the
window. "Ah knew she was too pretty to go so young. Much too pretty.
Sometimes that is a cross to bear, Miz FitzGeral." Fiona's eyes, tearing
now, drifted toward the window which revealed nothing but a seamless grey slab.
Finally, under control again, she turned back to Mrs. Taylor. "But even a
pretty bird must flah on her own. There was no way to keep huh in a cage. There
was no stoppin huh."

Fiona saw the onslaught of memories invading the woman,
reviving the pain of the old grief. Fiona had been through similar situations
many times before. It had never been easy and only a great effort of will kept
her emotions in check. Her experience had also taught her that the woman was
deliberately postponing the inevitable revelation on the theory that any new
information would be the awful truth.

It was, in a way, a
danse macabre,
a kind of game.
Postponing the revelation also gave Fiona an opportunity to learn more before
the curtain came down irrevocably.

"What did she do there? In Washington?" Fiona
asked.

Mrs. Taylor, cooperating in the silent conspiracy, nodded,
continuing.

"Worked for this committee in the Congress of the United States. Loved huh job. She wrote often. Called once a week. And then..." Mrs.
Taylor's grey-blue eyes misted, but she was a woman who obviously considered
control a virtue and she quickly recovered. "Later we blamed ourselves foh
the estrangement between Betta and mah late husban and myself."

There was a long pause through which Fiona remained silent.
She was certain that the woman sensed her daughter's death, had sensed it for
years. Still she held back her own question. Now she was remembering, holding
back the flood of emotion, like the Dutch boy with his finger in the dike.
Fiona knew she would be more forthcoming in this state than later, when the
dike burst.