The Governor's Lady (41 page)

She called Wheeler. “We’re going,” she said.

“Good.”

“Where are you?”

She heard the caution in his voice when he said, “Still on that trip we talked about.”

“When will you be back?”

“Tonight. But I need a couple more days. Things are coming together.”

“Like what?”

He hesitated. “Not over the phone.”

“All right. I understand.”

“Just take care of Mickey. And yourself.”

“That’s exactly what I’m doing.”

TWENTY-THREE

A motorcade to the upstate: trooper escort front and rear, ambulance for Mickey and Estelle, Ezra driving Cooper’s car with Grace and Rick on board, two SUVs with the security detail and their assorted weaponry and gear, media people in cars and TV vans stringing along.

A trooper cruiser was waiting at the edge of the two-lane when the motorcade turned into the driveway. Two troopers got out and took off their broad-brimmed hats.

Long shadows from the brittle late-afternoon sun, bare-limbed oaks lining the driveway. Crunch of gravel. Home.

The ambulance backed up to the front steps, where Fate Wilmer waited.

Cooper climbed the steps and gave him a hug. “This is above and beyond the call,” she said.

“Nonsense. This is what friends do. Thanks for bringing Mickey home.”

The rear doors of the ambulance swung open, and the attendants
rolled the stretcher out, lifted it, started up the steps with Estelle snapping out directions.

Mickey’s eyes darted about from the blankets. She spotted Fate Wilmer. “What the hell are you doing here? Somebody sick?”

“Looking for somebody to swap lies with,” he said, taking her hand and climbing the steps beside the stretcher.

Mickey gave a long sigh. “I’ve got a few left in me. But let me tell you this, Fate Wilmer. If you expect me to swap lies without the benefit of whiskey and cigarettes, you can forget it.”

“I will prescribe both,” he said, “and personally see to it that they are administered on a regular basis.”

“This is Estelle Dubose,” Mickey said with a wave of her hand. “She’s incredibly bossy and has no respect for her elders. Other than that, she’ll do. She is taking tolerable care of me.”

“I bow to superior wisdom,” Wilmer said, shaking Estelle’s hand.

“Then we’ll get along just fine,” Estelle said.

The house was alive with activity: cleaning crew dusting, vacuuming, mopping, washing away months of neglect, people from the telephone company installing extra lines. Grace took over, transforming the big living room into an office.

A van pulled up in front and, to Cooper’s surprise, disgorged Mrs. Dinkins and her staff. “I had ’em transferred,” Grace said. “They’ll be housed at the prison facility down the road for as long as they’re needed here.”

The crew trooped in.

“Mrs. Dinkins is on duty,” Mrs. Dinkins said primly. She looked startled when Cooper hugged her.

They all worked through the shank of the afternoon, settling into the house while Mickey slept. Mrs. Dinkins served dinner under the blazing chandelier at the long table in the dining room. Conversation was desultory. They were all weary.

Fate Wilmer checked again on Mickey, then met Cooper in the
front hallway. “Dr. Cutter has me up to speed. We’ll make sure she has everything she needs.” He hesitated, then: “Don’t look at this as a vigil, Cooper.”

“I won’t,” she said. “It’s just where we need to be right now. That’s why we came.”

Mickey was propped in the big bed among a cloud of pillows. Her color was a bit better, her voice measured but serviceable, despite the trip from the capital. She had a softening about her now, Cooper noticed, a sense of waiting.

“Thank you,” Mickey said.

Cooper settled into a chair next to the bed. “You’re welcome. Can I get you anything? Newspaper, book, magazine, TV?”

Mickey closed her eyes. “I’m through with the howl of the world. I don’t want to hear about wars and rumors of wars, weepings and wailings, presidential campaigns, none of it.”

“All right.” Cooper smiled. “But aren’t you going to be bored without all of that?”

“Hell, I’ve got eternity to be bored. Let me take a little nap, then fetch me a cigarette and about an inch of whiskey in the bottom of a glass, one cube of ice, then leave me to wallow in my vices.”

Sometime in the early-morning hours, she woke with a start as headlights splashed across the wall next to her bed. Then voices downstairs.

Allison was in the entrance hall, duffel in hand, talking to a state trooper. “They didn’t want to let me in,” she said.

“Sorry, Governor,” the trooper said. “We didn’t recognize her at first.”

“It’s okay,” Cooper said, crossing the hall to Allison, taking the
duffel from her, setting it down, giving her a hug. “It’s all right now. I’ll take it from here.”

The trooper backed out, and they stood looking at each other.

“I’ve been worried sick about you,” Cooper said. “You don’t answer your phone. Is that the case with everybody who tries to call you, or just me?”

“Mother,” Allison said, “don’t fuss at me at two o’clock in the morning. I’m here. I want to go to bed.”

It was near noon before Allison appeared in sweatpants and hoodie—hair disheveled, eyes puffy from sleep. Cooper took her to the kitchen, where Mrs. Dinkins and her crew fussed over her, fixing eggs and French toast. Then they went up to see Mickey. Cooper was astonished to find her up and perched in a chair by the window, dressed in a lime-green pantsuit that hung loosely from her gauntness. Allison stared, shocked by Mickey’s withered appearance, then gave her a mute hug.

“What a lovely surprise,” Mickey said softly. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Me, too,” Allison said, her voice breaking.

“Now, sit down, the two of you. I’ve got something to say. Allison, I don’t want you and your mother to make the mistake she and I did.” Mickey waited.

Allison shifted uncomfortably and finally asked, “What mistake?”

“Wasting a lifetime being at odds.” She fixed Cooper with a stare. “We both did that, didn’t we.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes,” Cooper said. “We both did.”

Mickey turned again to Allison. “I suspect the hardest relationship in the world is mother-daughter. I know it was in my case. My mother was a mousy little thing who let people—especially my father—run all over her. I hated that, and there were times I hated
her
because of it. I never made an honest effort to understand why she was that way, and by the time I began to suspect I should, it was too late.”

After a long silence, Mickey spoke again. “Your mother and I are trying to correct our mistake. Someday, if she wants, she can talk to you about what’s gone on between us over the years. But I hope what’s important—to you and her—is what’s going on between us now. And even more important is what goes on between the two of you. Don’t—either of you—waste your lives being pissed off. Whatever hurts or disappointments or resentments you’re carrying, let ’em go.”

Late in the afternoon, the light beginning to fade, she and Allison went for a walk—across the broad pasture behind the house, over the knoll, and down to the pond and Cleve’s grave. They stood beside it, looking out over the water, gray beneath the overcast, surface rippled by a brisk wind. The temperature had dropped as the day waned. They were bundled in parkas, boots, thick gloves, and toboggans. Scatterings of snow were still under the thickest trees, but the snowstorm seemed light years past. So much had happened, so much loomed.

There was a small bench a few feet from the grave marker. Cooper sat, pulling the parka close around her.

“I wish you had known him,” she said. “He was as good a man as you’d ever find.”

“We’ve never talked much about him.”

“He was away a great deal, working. When he was here, we went fishing. I wish we had more of those times. But he did the best he could, I think. He tried to protect me from politics, from people prying, taking advantage.”

“It’s a fishbowl,” Allison said.

“If you let them, people will make you think you don’t belong to yourself. People who pull and tug, people who want things, need things, have their hands out and their arms around your shoulders.”

Allison stamped her feet and moved a few steps from the water’s edge. She knelt, picked up a pebble, tossed it with a
plunk
into the pond.

“Daddy used to say he’d rather be a farmer,” Cooper said. “After his second term, he came back here, said he wanted to build his fishpond, ride his tractor, drink whiskey with Dr. Wilmer. But then he decided to run for the Senate.”

“Why?”

“I blamed Mother. She was the power behind the throne, everyone said. But it wasn’t true. It was Daddy’s decision, and he let me know that.”

“But he didn’t run after all.”

“He did, but he died before the election. And just before he died, he said to me, ‘We are the sum of our regrets.’ And I thought,
How incredibly sad
.”

Allison moved to the bench and sat. Cooper shifted to make room.

“How do you keep from ending like that?” Allison asked.

“Make sure there are things that outweigh your regrets.”

They were quiet for a while, snuggling against each other for warmth.

Allison said, “I’ve been thinking about what Grandmother said, about us being pissed off.”

Cooper smiled. “She does have an earthy way of putting things.”

“I’m not pissed off. I’m just … disappointed. Scared, too. I’ve thought about how we’ve lived, the fishbowl. I think you were trying to protect me like your daddy did for you.” Allison laughed. “I remember how you went ballistic when that woman broke Ginger.”

It had happened not long after Pickett’s first term began. A busload of legislative wives touring the mansion. She spotted a woman heading back to the bus holding Ginger, her ancient porcelain-headed doll, passed along to Allison, obviously snatched from Allison’s upstairs bedroom. Cooper yelled, the woman dropped Ginger, her head broke.
Allison was inconsolable. Cooper, despite Pickett’s howls of protest, banned tourists from any but the most public downstairs rooms, and allowed them there only one day a week. She mended Ginger as best she could, but the incident left something irreparable in Allison.

Cooper said, “I’m afraid I didn’t do a good-enough job.”

“What else could you have done?”

“Put my foot down more. Said, ‘No, we won’t live like this, in a fishbowl.’”

“But Dad …”

“I always went along. Too much, too often.”

Allison pulled away from her. “Until now.”

Cooper gave her a close look.

“Carter said Dad never meant for you to really do the job.”

“Honey, it’s not anything you should concern yourself—”

“Don’t patronize me, Mother.”

“I’m not. I’m just trying to sort through things with Dad, with you and me.”

“What he did was dishonest.”

“And what about what I did, telling you that when Dad’s term was up, it would all be over, and we’d be normal for a change? At the time, I meant it.”

“But things changed,” Allison said.

“Do you think I went back on my word?”

“Yes. And I resent the hell out of that. But I’ve had time to think about it, and Carter’s helped. When we were growing up, you got us through it in different ways. Carter loves the fishbowl. I don’t. But now, we’re both grown, and we have to deal with ourselves and everything else the way it is, and let you be you. Like you and Grandmother are doing.”