The Immigrant’s Daughter (20 page)

They had a small black and white set at the storefront, and Carla set it up on the other table and moved the rabbit ears until the reception was fairly clear, if not perfect. She got it in place and tuned in a few minutes before the station break. When the commercial began, Alexander Holt was photographed sitting behind his desk, an American flag to his right, a wall of books behind him. Barbara guessed that the commercial had been made at his law office in San Francisco. He wore a tweed jacket, light shirt and striped tie, and as he began to speak, he had the comfortable smile of a person completely at his ease.

“My friends,” he began, “I'm no stranger to those of you who live in the Forty-eighth Congressional District. You know my past. The lady who is my opponent is very charming and very persuasive, but what of her past? What do you know about it? They say the child is the father of the man. Then the past is the father of the present. Let me tell you about the past of Barbara Lavette. In nineteen thirty-four a great longshore strike was directed against the shipping of her stepfather. Barbara Lavette was neck-deep in that strike — on the side of the strikers. After that, she turned up in France, where she involved herself in the Spanish Civil War, on the side of the Communists. Her lover was killed there, but this did not deter Miss Lavette, who went on to carry papers from the Communist Party of France into Germany. When she returned to America, she set up an organization whose purpose, ostensibly, was to buy medical supplies for the Spanish anti-Franco survivors. When a committee of Congress, investigating subversive activities in America, reasonably enough, asked her to name the people who gave money to support her organization, she refused and was cited for contempt of Congress. She was subsequently tried and sent to prison for six months. So we have a dossier for one Barbara Lavette. In recent years, we have tended to regard the behavior of those who resisted congressional committees inquiring into subversive activities as heroic. I do not regard it as such. Aside from her contempt of the same Congress she aspires to be elected to, Barbara Lavette has done nothing illegal. Fortunately, she lives in a free country. At the same time, when she presents herself as a candidate, voters have a right to know who they vote for.”

He finished. The signature was a plea for a vote for Alexander Holt. He finished, and there was a stunned silence around the table. Barbara tried to remember all the words he had spoken. Ice inside her heart, and a quiet, cold voice that said to her, Here you do not cry. All of these people have given their heart to you, and you will show them how to receive this with grace and courage.

But she was bereft of courage and grace; like so much else in her life, this was an effort thrown away and useless — all for nothing.

“That lousy bastard,” Freddie said.

“It isn't true!” Gilpin shouted. “We got that bastard on the biggest libel suit of the century.”

Freddie stared at him.

“Is it?”

“It's true and it isn't true,” Barbara said, fighting to control her voice. “Everything he mentioned happened, and he turned it on its head.” She closed her eyes and shook her head hopelessly.

“Do you know why she went into Hitler Germany?” May Ling demanded shrilly. “To see if there was any resistance left — any organization left to fight for freedom.”

“Easy, easy,” Freddie said.

Carla was weeping. The telephone rang, and Carol Eberhardt ran to answer it, thankful to be delivered from the circle of sick faces. “It's Mr. Moretti,” she called out to Barbara. The others became silent, watching Barbara as she picked up the telephone.

“You saw it, of course?” Moretti said.

“Yes.”

“How are you?”

“All right.”

“I want to talk to you.”

She didn't want to talk to anyone; still, she couldn't say no to the old man. “I'll be home by nine,” she said.

She was putting on her coat.

“We have to talk about this,” Freddie said. “We have to do something.”

“There's nothing to talk about and nothing to do. Let go of it, Freddie.”

“Shall I drive you home?”

“No, I'm all right.”

Moretti was waiting for her when she got to Green Street, his black car parked in front of her house. He went inside after her and dropped into the one large chair in the parlor.

“Tired?” Barbara asked him.

“After seventy, you're tired. When you're as fat as I am, you're always tired. You look all right. I was worried.”

“I'm all right. It's almost a relief.”

“You think it's over?”

“Yes.”

“Wrong,” Moretti said. “It's not over until the last vote is counted.”

Barbara shrugged.

“The man's a whore,” Moretti growled. “But don't think the whole world was listening, not even in the Forty-eighth. Jimmy Carter's speaking and so is Ford. It's a presidential year. So just don't be so sure the game's up.” He hugged her as he was ready to leave. “You're a fine woman, Barbara, a fine woman. An honor to work with you.” The smell of him, the mixed odor of aftershave lotion and cigars, lingered after he left. Her father had smoked cigars, and she couldn't help smiling at the thought of what Big Dan Lavette's reaction to Alexander Holt would have been.

She felt a deep sense of relief. She was sensitive enough, tuned outward sufficiently, to accept the fact that it was over. Regardless of what Moretti said, it was over. A miracle might happen, except that miracles did not happen, and now what she wanted was a hot bath, perfume and a large, soft robe, a glass of brandy and a good book.

The telephone began to ring.

Her first thought was to let it ring. Right now, she wanted to talk to no one, but when she considered that it would likely be a worried Sam or Freddie, she picked it up. The voice at the other end said, “Please don't hang up, Barbara.”

“Oh?”— taken aback for just a moment. “And why not, Alex?”

“Because you have to understand.”

“But I do. Completely.”

“No, no, you don't understand. In your eyes, I'm a bastard. But just let me say this, Barbara. If I lose tomorrow, I'm nothing. I was nothing until I became a congressman. I'd be nothing again. I'm not like you. You're Barbara Lavette. You're a famous writer. You have people who love you and admire you. I have nothing. Nothing! I can't face losing the only thing in the world that made people respect me. I can't go back to the law firm and have them despise me. I can't face my kids. I can't face the world. It's all I've got. Can't you understand that?”

“I can understand it, Alex,” Barbara said without anger. “But that doesn't make you less loathsome in my eyes. I can be provoked at myself for not sensing it sooner, but as for you — yes, I do understand. You did what you had to do. Everyone does, I suppose.”

“Damn it, you can't feel that way. You don't understand —”

This time she hung up, put down the telephone, stared at it for a long moment and then went upstairs to draw her bath.

The following day, the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of 1976, the returns in the Forty-eighth were very close. Alexander Holt won by 872 votes. Freddie and Mort Gil-pin wanted a recount, but Barbara refused. A lot of tears were shed that night in the storefront at the Sunnyside Shopping Plaza, but Barbara's were not among them. She was dry-eyed.

Six

S
he was so relieved. That was the astonishing part of it, that relief enveloped her like a benediction. Thank God, thank God, thank God — but why? This is what she tried so desperately to understand, something she had put such a price on, and now worthless. It filled her with guilt. People were plying her with sympathy and understanding, and this brought on additional guilt. They were so sincerely sorry and she was so sincerely delighted. For more than two long months, she had been a ravenous, pitiless beast. Yes, pitiless, she said to herself. You, Barbara Lavette, savage with that disease called candidatitus. It couldn't happen to decent, knowledgeable Barbara Lavette; and then it had happened, and she had let it happen and had taken refuge finally in the indecency of Alexander Holt's performance; and now she could look at herself and ask herself whether she wouldn't have done the same thing — had she had the kind of dossier on Holt that Holt had on her. She tried to convince herself that if she had done the same thing, she would at least have been truthful; she would not have twisted and slanted the facts as Holt had.

But what did Alexander Holt believe, if indeed he had any beliefs beyond self-preservation? He was fighting for his life. Think of it, she told herself — the key to existence there in Washington in a hall where several hundred representatives of the people watched the world go spinning down to an atomic holocaust — and did nothing because there was absolutely nothing that they could do beyond the posturing and pretending that took up their endless hours of debate. You didn't have to believe or dream or hope; you only had to get the votes and magic would commence. All kinds of magic. Importance. Desirability. Youth! In addition to everything else, it was a fountain of youth, because so much of youth is the ecstasy of being desired by others, and down there in Washington, where all aspects of government had turned into a lobby, to be desired and wined and dined by others was the name of the game. But wisdom sucked out of the marrow of defeat and humiliation is no halo. Barbara was not proud.

Tony Moretti sent her a great bouquet, and the note that accompanied the flowers said: “For a gallant lady, as gentle as she is lovely.” This brought tears, and Barbara wept over the note and the knowledge that Tony Moretti was dying of cancer. It was only after Election Day that she learned this. Al Ruddy told her, “He's got six months, maybe a year. And when he goes, there's no more like him. The damn computers have taken over.” Moretti reminded her of her father. You had to have someone in your life who would at least touch off a memory of Father or Mother. If Dan Lavette were alive, he would have been eighty-seven, and Barbara could close her eyes and see him, smell the odor of cigar smoke around him. He could have been alive. There are people who live to see eighty-seven years, but there are people of eighty-seven years who are poor suffering imitations of life. Would she want Dan Lavette that way? Or was it that the proud die young? Boyd was young. A hundred planned specifics of what they intended to do in the years left to them had been worked out, all the journeys and strange places. It would have been the best of times.

Sam took her to dinner. He wanted to be festive, to drive away her sorrows.

“But, dear Sam, I am not in pain, I don't weep, and I've adjusted very nicely to losing the election.”

He took her to Fleur de Lys on Sutter Street and, with what Barbara felt was excessive sophistication, ordered canard aux figues and urged her to have the same. For the wine, he ordered a Pinot Blanc, an imported white Burgundy with a château label. The head waiter took his order but glanced at Barbara rather oddly. She shook her head just the slightest bit.

Sam sighed. “Yes, I know, Mother, I've violated the code. I've ordered a French wine.”

“That's silly, Sam. There's no code to violate. It's just that Emile knows me. Most French restaurants sneer at our wines. He doesn't. He carries a full line of our wine. You know, Eloise and I lunch here whenever she's in town — or almost so.”

“Our wine! Good heavens, Mother, I'm not wedded to Hi-gate.”

“Of course not. It was silly of me even to mention it.”

“You're not pleased with me,” Sam said. “You're not pleased with me at all. You don't like Mary Lou and you've decided that she's an anti-Semite.”

“No—”

“Mother, you're not Jewish, yet you're more sensitive than any Jew I know — and I know a lot of Jews. This is not the nineteen thirties, when you met my father. This is nineteen seventy-six.”

“Yes, I've been given to understand that.” In spite of herself, her voice had become flat and cold, causing Sam to protest that he loved her and that the last thing he wanted to do was to make her unhappy.

“Forgive me,” he begged her.

She smiled, kissed the tips of her fingers and pressed them to the back of her son's hand. “You couldn't do anything that would require forgiveness.”

“How little you know me.”

“Or vice versa, and I think it's time we both knew each other better. Alexander Holt accused me of being a Communist tool and courier.”

“It was a damn lie.”

“Somewhat, but not entirely. I never told you about my time in France — except that I met your father there.”

“No, but I think there's a great deal you never told me.”

The food came, the wine was poured. She wasn't hungry. She felt that she was on the edge of something important to both of them. “I was in my middle twenties,” she said. “I went to France without finishing college, to Paris, the old Paris before World War Two, and there I fell in love with a French journalist whose name was Marcel Duboise. We lived together. And then he was given an assignment in Spain, to cover the Spanish Civil War for his newspaper. He was badly wounded in Spain, and later he died in a hospital in Toulouse. Yes, of his wounds. They amputated his leg, but it was too late. There were no antibiotics then.''