Waking the Dead (43 page)

I appeared at the Greens’ apartment about eight in the evening. Mrs. Davis let me in—she was wearing her fur coat and was on her way home. Her dark eyes threw off sparks of impatience like a tailpipe hitting the pavement at sixty. “They’re in there,” she said, “waiting for you.” She walked right past me and into the hall. She was limping; she had an Ace bandage around her ankle.

“What’s with Mrs. Davis?” I asked, walking into the dining room with my coat over my arm.The snowflakes were turning to little dots of water and then disappearing into the wool.

Isaac and Adele were at the dining room table. Places had been set and a platter of cold brisket was on display. All this was within the bounds of acceptable behavior but unfortunately they were not alone. Sitting next to Adele was Tony Dayton, with a thick computer printout next to his gold-trimmed plate, and sitting next to Isaac was Juliet, wearing a penitential black sweater and delicate ruby earrings (to say she wasn’t really
that
sorry).

“Trapped,” I said, trying to have it both ways by finishing with a smile.

“Sit down, Fielding, and eat,” said Adele. “Then we’ll talk.”

“Your best friends in the whole world are at this table,” said Isaac with a frown.

“Hello, Juliet,” I said. “They put an all-points bulletin out on you?”

“Hello, Fielding,” she said. “You look tired.”

“Tossing and turning.” A place had been set for me next to Juliet and I took it. No sense acting emotional about it.

“OK,” said Isaac, “whatever problems of adjustment you two have been having can be put aside for a while. You two have been a team and an effective one and this is not the time to potchky around with that.”

The others all had wine in their modern little goblets; mine had been filled with club soda. I took a sip; it was violently gaseous and salty. Like seawater after a nuclear war. “Are we really going to talk about this in front of Tony?”

“As if I didn’t already know,” he said, shaking his head. “What am I? Blind?”

“Oh God, I forgot to tell you, Isaac. Tony’s been doing a great job.”

“That you feel so divided from Tony is as good an indication as any how much trouble you’re in,” said Isaac. He raised his finger at me, but did not wag it. “How can we wage a successful campaign if you treat Tony as if he was an outsider?”

“Have I hurt your feelings, Tony?” I asked, smiling.

“Well,” he said, looking down, “it is like trying to win a horse race while your horse is reaching around trying to bite your foot.”

Isaac closed his eyes for a moment and touched the tablecloth with his open hand, looking for the strength of forbearance in the privacy of his own internal darkness, the feel of his own possessions.

“I doubt that’s what you really meant to say, Tony,” I said.

“You know what I mean,” he said.

“Yes, of course. Do I have to take a saliva test after the election?”

Juliet reached beneath the table and took my hand. I squeezed her fingers hard until she let go.

“I thought you said this thing was a walk,” I said to Isaac. “I thought I wouldn’t lose.”

“Are you really going to accuse me of making your mistakes?” Isaac said.

“So what does your latest informal poll tell you, Tony?” I asked.

“You’ve lost a tremendous amount of support,” he said. “Fifteen points, more or less. But now we’re hitting the bedrock of Democratic support and we seem to be holding. Bertelli’s people are going to have to find a way of breaking that last support barrier—and if they do, then they can have the election.”

“What are we talking about here?” I asked. “The people who vote Democratic no matter who’s running?”

“Party loyalists,”Tony said. “They’re called party loyalists and if I were you I’d speak about them with respect.”

Suddenly Isaac slammed his fist down onto the table. The china jumped. “What has been going on in this campaign?” he asked. “What has happened to our high hopes? Are we really going to lose a congressional seat to some nobody who runs a coffeehouse?”

“He isn’t beating us on issues, Isaac,” said Tony. “On issues we cream him every time. But he’s a very affable fellow and it comes across.”

Finally, Juliet spoke. I’d been waiting for this. “When he wants to be, Fielding can be the most charming man on earth.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said.

“Well, it’s true, Fielding. Maybe it goes against this—this self-image you have, of the rough guy from the poor family and all that— that
decoration
. But it’s true.”

“Why are you here, Juliet? How did they get you to do this?”

“I am here because I want to be. I’ve seen you through all the steps you’ve had to take to get this far. It seems wasteful to just let you throw it away when you’re this close.”

“Even if you win, Fielding,” Adele said, “and I think you will, you’re not creating an impression on the people you need to impress if you’re going to continue with your career. I think we just need to focus our thinking. We’re all jittery with the election so close.” She took a deep breath and reached for the platter of brisket; it was brown, cold, an instant pathway to vegetarianism. “Why don’t we all have a bite to eat and then get down to cases? It’s brisket. Jeremy’s favorite.”

It was rare for them to mention Jeremy. He had escaped his parents’ plans for him and now here I was eating his dinner.

“I wonder if you would all excuse Fielding and me for a moment,” Isaac suddenly said. He took his napkin from his lap and rubbed his hands against it.

“That’ll be just fine,” said Adele. She had just served Isaac a slice of the brisket but she speared it again with the serving fork and put it back on the platter.

I leaned next to Juliet and whispered in her ear, even as she raised her shoulder and tried to protect herself from me. “I’d get out of here right now. Wherever you’ve been staying, whatever you’re doing—it’s got to be a better deal than you’ll get here. The ship is sinking.” And with that I stood up and followed Isaac out of the dining room.

We went across the corridor into his study. A small almost transparent fire was trembling in the hearth. The darkness that had settled into the corners of that room seemed heavy, like the darkness of another planet, a darkness that would take more than mere light to remove. Isaac switched on a lamp; it dropped a ring of light on the high polish of the table. I stood at the window and looked down at the view of streetlights and frozen lake. Though it had been only a few weeks, it seemed years before when I’d stood here with the governor and Isaac at my back. It was snowing then and it was snowing still. I wondered if on the South Side in my apartment the phone was ringing at this very instant. The thought went through me like a wheel of fire. I pressed my forehead against the window.

“Shall we get down to cases?” asked Isaac. He sat on the arm of one of his club chairs and crossed his legs at the ankle, folded his arms over his chest. He looked dapper, furious.

“I’m going to win the election, Isaac. Don’t worry.”

“Don’t worry? What right have you to tell me not to worry? You know very little about this process. You are a neophyte. But I thought you had the instinct. I actually thought you were ready to take this step. And now I see how wrong I was.”

“You’re only wrong if I lose. And we don’t know that I’m going to lose.”

Isaac shook his head. “You see how upset Adele is. I don’t like her to be upset. She is talking about Jeremy and she never does unless it’s in private or she isn’t paying attention. You don’t seem to realize that when you enter into the lives of other people, they count on you. There is an obligation. A moral obligation.”

“I think if Adele wants to talk about Jeremy it’s fine.”

“As you know, our son is a painful topic.”

“For God’s sake, why? He’s not a criminal. He’s not curled up in some room whispering into his own hand. All that’s wrong with him is he didn’t do exactly what you wanted him to. What’s the tragedy? Especially since you found someone else to fill that spot and you went right on.”

“And by that someone else, I assume you mean yourself.”

“Of course.”

“And do you feel you’ve been … victimized? In any way?”

“Not by you. No.”

“I didn’t come into your life,” said Isaac. “You came into mine. You had all of your appetites before I ever laid eyes on you. And when we met, you saw in me a vehicle that could carry you more or less in the direction you wanted to move. You used my counsel, my home, my connections. So please don’t suddenly pretend you were the victim of some diabolical plot on my part. What makes you so dangerous and so distasteful is how canny you are at imitating a gentleman.”

“I already said I didn’t feel victimized, Isaac. You’ve only been decent to me.”

“Decent. You don’t realize how goddamned lucky you were to have me. You think coming from a family like yours you had the slightest preparation for public life? We’re talking about the real world, the big table where the big decisions are made. Not $4.85 an hour and going to work with your little lunch pail. We are talking about decisions of global proportion.”

“Isaac, I want you to tell me something. What did you do for Governor Kinosis that he owed you such a huge favor?”

“Governor Kinosis is a frightened, sentimental Greek and you’d be surprised how little you have to do to make him feel in your debt.”

“OK, then. Surprise me.”

“It is not any one particular thing. He considers me an intellectual. It bolsters his confidence to think he and I are friends. From time to time, I write something for him, or look over some papers. Kinosis is a man of tremendous drive but he is very insecure and he takes my goodwill as a benediction.”

“Yes. Well, this is the impression you gave me.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“The problem is I no longer believe it. He doesn’t give you a congressman because he’s impressed with your letter to the editor of the
New Republic
. There’s something more.”

Isaac took a deep breath. He went to the little rosewood bar and poured himself a drink from one of the decanters. Isaac was a ridiculous drinker; I doubt he even knew what he was pouring into his glass. There were just times when his own sense of himself and the choreography of the moment told him he ought to have a drink in hand. He took a sip. I glanced at the decanter but didn’t make a move.

“I have helped the governor with his investments and I’ve given him legal advice.”

“What kind of legal advice, Isaac?”

“I resent—”

“Yes. I know. And I’m sorry. But I really do have to know.”

Isaac finished his drink and placed the glass down on the table, glancing at it with what looked like disappointment, as if the liquor had betrayed him by not setting him at his ease. “He had some investments that could have been construed as a conflict of interests.”

“Were they?”

“Technically speaking, yes.”

“How bad was it?”

“He had a thirty percent share of a company that was getting state contracts.” Isaac shrugged, smiled. “The idiot owned a chicken farm that was supplying chickens to the state prison. All very low level. But lucrative, of course.”

“Well, what did you do for him?”

“A little of this, a little of that. You know.” He was talking to me as if everything was going back to normal. He was summing it up, putting it into perspective; presumably this was something we would laugh about.

“I’ve got to go now, Isaac,” I said.

“Go where?” His voice rose in anger and surprise. “Where do you think you’re going? This is absolutely indefensible.”

“I just have to go. If I told you the reason you’d be even more upset.”

“I leveled with you, Fielding.”

“You didn’t tell me
anything
.”

“Come. We’ll go to the dining room. We’ll have dinner. There’s still ample time to put this back together.”

“I can’t do that, Isaac. I don’t want it back together. Not the way it was.”

“Pardon my gross insensitivity,” he said, placing his hand over his heart, his voice rising beneath the swell of sarcasm, “but I’d be less than candid if I didn’t tell you I have no idea what you’re talking about. What are you? Finding yourself?”

“Yes,” I said.

“We have three days before the voting begins, Fielding. Three days.”

“I can’t. Right now, the campaign would run better without me.”

“What is happening to you?”

“I am involved in something, Isaac. I’ve collided—I don’t know what to call it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Ever since I stood in this room and you and Kinosis asked me to run, something has been rising up. I see it, it’s here.”

“You’ve collapsed under the pressure, Fielding.”

“That could be it. I don’t know.”

“What are you doing? Where are you going?”

“I’m going to find Sarah.”

“Sarah? Sarah who?”

“Sarah Williams.”

“You’re going to visit her grave? Can’t it wait?”

“No. Not her grave. That’s not her in that tomb. They buried someone else, a Chilean woman. Someone Sarah helped get out of Chile. It was her in the car when the bomb exploded. She was wearing Sarah’s clothing. Little shreds of it survived. I don’t know. I’m thinking back.”

“Fielding,” he said, moving toward me.

“Wait. Listen to me. It wasn’t Sarah. But they let us all believe that. They probably thought it would be good for Americans to think those bastards killed an American girl. They thought if it was only Latin Americans, no one would care.”

“Why are you saying any of this? What’s happened to you?”

“My mind is filled with white light, Isaac. Can you understand that?”

“I understand that you’re in a great deal of trouble.” He came next to me and took my arm. “I just want you to hold on for a couple of days, Fielding. After that, you’ll have a complete rest. Please, you’re like a son to me. You know that. I wouldn’t be saying this if it wasn’t for your own good.”

I put my arms around Isaac and held him close. “I love you, Isaac,” I murmured into his ear. I could feel him trying to pull away from me and I held him tighter still. “I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me.”