The Senator's Wife (18 page)

It was something—Meri was so close she could hear him now—about rolling with the punches.

What punches?

“It's no one's fault, of course,” he said. “Or it's both of our faults.” He gestured with his drink. “But it's a disaster for me with this book. The timing couldn't have been worse. It's due at the end of the summer, and of course the baby's coming at the beginning.”

The woman started to ask him some question about his progress, but Meri was turning away, moving back toward the other room. She could feel her throat tightening. She willed her face to be normal.

In the opposite parlor, she stood silently, her back to the noisy room, facing out the dean's windows toward the white wooden chapel across the street, gleaming in the spotlights trained on it. Its steeple pierced the black sky. She was telling herself that this was not news, that she'd known that Nathan felt this way. He'd as much as said this very thing to her, and she'd as much as said it to others—that it was bad timing. For him. For her too. Maybe she had actually said this
exact
thing.

Why shouldn't he be allowed to say it? Why shouldn't he be allowed to speak to a friend about his reluctance, his ambivalence?

He should, she thought.

But another, more lost part of her was thinking,
He shouldn't. He just shouldn't.

O
CCASIONALLY
, mostly in the evenings when she was making dinner, Meri had heard a noise from the other side of the wall, from Delia's life now that she was back—the sound of something dropped on the floor. The running of water, and then the little
thump!
in the pipes that happened when the water was turned off. The almost inaudible murmur of a radio voice, inhumanly steady.

Tonight as she was standing at the sink, she was startled to immobility for a moment by the faint sound of a deep voice, a male voice, talking, and then, a few seconds later, the softer female response. These were the first voices that she'd ever heard from that side of the wall, Delia had been so solitary when she was home.

It had to be Tom Naughton—Delia had said he was coming “for a quick visit,” and she'd invited them for drinks the next night to meet him. Meri had somehow assumed—hadn't Delia even suggested it?—that Tom wouldn't arrive until then. But here he was, apparently.

The voices alternated lazily, almost inaudibly, on the other side of the wall, and Meri turned the radio on—doom and gloom from NPR—so she couldn't hear them. As she moved around the kitchen getting supper ready, it dawned on her that their own lives, hers and Nathan's, must always have been audible to Delia in her kitchen at this same dim, distanced level.

When Nathan came home, she turned the radio off before she kissed him, before she held her finger to his lips. Before she said, “Shhh. Listen.” They stood there in a loose embrace, Nathan frowning in concentration, and then they could just hear a man's laugh.

“That's your senator, I'm pretty sure,” Meri said. “Tom Naughton, in the flesh at last.”

Throughout the meal they continued to hear from time to time a voice, a laugh on the other side of the wall.

“You know what it means that we hear them as much as we do?” Meri said. They were doing the dishes. She was drying. Because she was pregnant, she always got to dry. Nathan was the one washing, the one bent uncomfortably over the low sink.

“I'm afraid I do.” He looked up at her sideways and made a face.

“It means she's had the odd earful ever since we moved in.”

“It means that, unbeknownst to us, we've been leading a rather public life, wouldn't you say?”

“One little old lady is hardly the public.” He handed her a dripping plate. “But maybe we should learn to live our life more quietly anyway. It'd be a good exercise for us to learn restraint.”

“Never my forte,” she said as she wiped the plate.

“Do tell.”

“Hey!” She swatted him with her damp towel.

He smiled up at her from under the thatch of hair hanging over his forehead. “Mine either, I know.”

They began to speculate about what Delia might have had to listen to, calling up the possibilities as they remembered them. The one or two loud arguments they'd had. The night Meri came down to the kitchen in despair about something or other and wept loudly until Nathan came down too, to talk to her, to bring her back to bed.

“But that was really late. Delia was probably in bed already.”

“Sound asleep, we can hope.”

Both of them were quiet at their tasks for a moment. Then Meri said, “You know, actually, I think she might have been gone then. She was gone for a lot of all of this, when you think about it. I think she was in Paris then.”

They remembered the night they'd put on music, loud, and danced barefoot in the living room until they were both damp with sweat. It was before they knew Meri was pregnant, when there were still unpacked boxes in the living room—boxes they moved around, incorporating them into the dance. That one Delia had definitely heard.

T
HE SENATOR
himself opened the door and announced to them that they must be Nathan and Meri. His voice was strangely light for a man his size, Meri thought, light and dry, a little parched-sounding. He was taller than Nathan, though slightly stooped. He had a strong nose, a little flattened at the bridge—it had been broken at some time in his life. Meri liked that. His mouth was small and amused, almost smirky, his hair was as white as Delia's. He had tangled white eyebrows over deep-set pale eyes—grayish, greenish. He was wearing a suit and tie, a very expensive suit and tie. Meri felt both dazzled by the warmth he brought to simply saying hello—he gripped her hand in both of his when he greeted her, he stared deeply into her eyes—and embarrassed for her frumpy self. She was back to one of her uniforms: the corduroy maternity pants and a big wool sweater of Nathan's.

Tom Naughton turned to Nathan and gripped his hand in the same way. Nathan said, “I would have known you anywhere, sir.”

She might not have, Meri thought, though he did look like the man in the Watergate photo, only older, thinner, a little frailer, maybe. But she would have known he was someone important no matter what—he had that air.

“Don't you
sir
me,” he said, smiling. “It's Tom. Tom to both of you.”

He led them down the hall and took their coats, headed back to the closet with them; unlike Delia, who just let you drop them on the little striped couch.

And here she came, out from the kitchen, carrying her tray. “Come in! Come into my parlor,” she cried, and they obediently followed her into the living room. She was wearing a red dress with a fitted top and a loose skirt that swirled around her as she moved. She set the tray down on the low, square coffee table, and stood up to kiss Meri's cheek. Meri felt enveloped by the rush of perfume. Delia stepped up to Nathan and kissed him too.

Then Tom was back. Nathan began talking to him about some paper or editorial of his that he'd read recently.

“Sit, sit,” Delia commanded, and when Meri obeyed but not the talking men, she touched Tom's elbow. “Darling, make your admirer sit down and have a drink.”

Nathan turned to her, grinning his wolfish grin. “More than an admirer.” He turned back to Tom. “I'm a fan, I'm afraid.”

“Nothing to be
afraid
of,” Delia said. “In the old days, Tom loved anyone as long as he was registered to vote. But now he's going to be your servant. You'll do the drinks, dear?”

She turned to Meri. “What will you have? We have to work fast. I've wedged you in, I'm afraid. It's why I asked you to come a little early. My younger son arrives, with his
entire family,
” she exaggerated this, waving her hand dramatically in the air, “at about seven. A Christmas visit. A
week
's Christmas visit.” She raised her eyebrows. “So I'm so glad you were able to make it.”

While Tom went back to the kitchen to get their drinks—scotch for Nathan, sparkling water for Meri—Delia passed around the little dishes of nuts and olives she'd brought out. She was talking about the son who was about to visit—where he lived, how long it had been since she'd seen him, the ages of his children.

Nathan asked what he did.

She smiled. “Oh, he's kind of a dropout, I think you'd say. He builds sailboats—beautiful, old-fashioned, handmade, wooden boats. One at a time. Much in demand, and very costly, but it's so labor intensive that there's no money in it at all for him.” She was flushed, Meri noted, and she seemed wound up. But she looked prettier—less severe, less grand—than Meri had seen her look before. “His wife teaches high school, and I suspect makes twice what he does. But he is, I would say, our sweetest child. Don't you agree, Tom?” she said to her husband as he came back with the drinks. “Is Brad not the sweetest of our children?”

Tom turned to his wife. Meri watched his expression shift, his face open, warmly. His eyes, which had seemed cool and keenly observant earlier, did something when they looked at Delia that she'd read of but never seen: they
lit up.
“Whatever you say. I defer to you,” he said.

“Oh, who on earth wants to be deferred to?” Delia said, looking over at Meri and Nathan, inviting them in. “I want you at least to
seem
to consider this question. And
then,
of course, I want you to defer to me.” She smiled up at him, the dazzling smile that lifted Delia's face into agelessness from time to time.

They were
flirting
with each other, Meri thought.

“Well, he is. You know he is,” Tom said. He turned to Meri and Nathan. “Have you met any of the children? Which is what we still call them, though they are all older than you by some years.”

Meri shook her head.

“No. Well.” He sat down. “In a nutshell, then, Nancy is formidable and fearsomely well organized. Fearsomely.” He pretended to shudder. “Evan is easy, I would say. And funny. And Brad is, always has been, the gentle one. The good one. Which is sometimes a burden, I'm sure. The sweetest, yes.”

Delia thanked him.

Meri watched them as the conversation began, and meandered. They talked about Clinton, and Tom said that once he got this Whitewater thing off his back he was going to do interesting things.

“Now that's worrisome,” Delia said. She made a face. “A president who does interesting things.”

Nathan and Meri laughed, and Tom's face lifted in a wry smile. But he went on. He said, “If there's anyone who can pull the Democrats back to a path less . . . driven by political correctness, I think it might be him. And that's what we're going to need to get anything done around here.” He shook his head. He smiled again, that small, charming smile. “And he's a political animal. He really lights up a room. That helps.”

Meri thought this must have been true of Tom too, when he was in politics.

“A bit of an animal generally, maybe,” Nathan said. When Tom looked up, a question on his face, Nathan said, “The Gennifer Flowers thing.”

“Which, by the way, he handled well,” Tom said. “Though he could have pushed that public-private distinction harder. It'd be a gift to the political life of this country if that line got more clearly drawn.” He swirled his drink, and sipped. “Still, it's clear he enjoys women. But I don't think it'll hurt him. It's pretty much a Washington disease, I'm afraid I must say. People are used to it.”

Meri had been looking at Delia, and now she noted a shift in her expression.

“Do you remember when everyone thought Bush had a mistress too?” Tom asked. “But she was rumored to be someone wealthy and WASPy, of course.” He set his glass down. “The problem here is the goddam Democrats, who sleep
down,
you see. They love that white trash.” He barked, a short laugh. “And white trash loves publicity, so the Democrats are the ones who get into all the trouble. As opposed to the Republicans. They sleep
up.
” He gestured. “Up, where all is Episcopalian and quiet as death itself, and no one ever has to hear a thing about it.”

“Surely that's not the only problem,” Delia said. Her smile seemed tight to Meri.

Tom looked at his wife, his jokiness abruptly vanished. “No,” he said. “No, of course it's not. But it's the political part of the problem anyway, Dee.”

A little later, Meri mentioned the photograph she'd found of Tom at work, the Watergate photo. They talked about the Senate hearings, about that period of time generally. About where they were, what they were doing then.

Tom shook his head. “My God, what a terrific cast of characters they were,” he said.

“
My
favorite of the entire group was Martha Mitchell,” Delia announced. “Old Martha, who critiqued the whole thing from home by the telephone. Do you remember? She'd call someone up and announce one loony event after another with her big wide mouth. Remember, Tom, when she said she'd been kidnapped by the FBI? And it was
true
?”

Tom was watching her, smiling.

Delia turned to Nathan and Meri, her face open in delight. “They were
all true,
all these things that people assumed were dipsomaniacal.”

“Yes,” Meri said. “And they named a psychiatric liability after her. The Mitchell effect.”

“Meri,” Nathan said, shaking his head. “A ‘psychiatric liability’? ‘The Mitchell effect’? Please.”

“I will explain the Mitchell effect, and why it's called a psychiatric liability.” Meri curtsied her upper body to him, to the room. “It's more or less when a shrink makes the assumption that a statement which is true, but strange and unverifiable—when he assumes that it emerges from mental illness. Like, ta da! the FBI drugging you and kidnapping you:
Oh, you must be a paranoid schizophrenic!
”

“Poor Martha,” Tom said. He stood up, holding his empty glass, and offered to get another round of drinks. Only Nathan said yes, and they went together to the kitchen this time. As she and Delia started to talk about what her other children were doing for Christmas this year, Meri could hear their voices, back and forth.

When they came out, Nathan was talking about his students, their romantic passion for the sixties, or for what they imagined the sixties to have been.