Exiles in the Garden (4 page)

Alec nodded but did not reply. Of course he would have to postpone his trip and not make other plans. The old man slipped a little each day. Before too long, letting go, he would hear the voice of the long-nosed man and that would be it. The shoot was not important. They could get someone else to photograph. But he had been looking forward to it because of Annalise, a fair-haired friend of many years. Annalise was a burst of sunshine. At her insistence they usually gave him a bit part. Thanks to Annalise he had played various authority figures, an airline pilot, a doctor (twice), a lawyer, a sommelier. Alec had been looking forward to all of it, the shoot and the bit part and the promised rendezvous with Annalise, the actress playing the second lead, a middle-aged dancer whose life was in ruins. The part wasn't much but Annalise was glad for the work and looking forward to a week or more on the beach with Alec. Four or five times a year they got together at one place or another, usually abroad. Annalise had a careless attitude toward life and the farther she got from Los Angeles the more careless she was. The movie was being made in Morocco. Well, there was no help for it. He was all the old man had and no one should have to die among strangers. Alec watched the golfers motor off to the seventeenth tee, their laughter rising in the dusk. The political analyst was twirling her putter in her fingers, a gesture that reminded him somehow of Annalise.

When Alec turned back to the bed he saw the old man watching him.

Alec said, Are you cold? Do you want the extra blanket?

No blanket. He's dressed in white, you know. An ice cream suit. White coat, vest, trousers, shoes. He's standing in the doorway right now.

I'll tell him to go away.

He won't listen to you, Alec. He refuses to take instructions. He doesn't speak. He only listens. The old man took Alec's hand and smiled wolfishly, signaling a fresh thought. Did I tell you about Eliot's funeral? My goodness, the church was full. Full nave front to back. The p-prick was in the front pew with the children and grandchildren. Eliot's women were in the rear, all in a row like birds on a wire. One of them was a member of Congress when I knew her, a committee chairwoman. She had a most dubious voting record. Mrs. Danto. She was the one with the hat and the fur stole. She had the face of a gangster. What do you suppose Eliot saw in her? What was there about her except that she was for sale. Probably that excited him, negotiating the terms of the sale. Maybe it was a sale and lease-back arrangement such as's done with automobiles and real estate. Where
did
he find the time?

As you said, his evenings were free.

Did you go?

The funeral? No. I was out of town.

One of us should have been there.

I had a shoot, Alec said. Nantucket.

Is that where your movie star lives?

No. She lives in Los Angeles.

Pretty girl? his father asked.

Very pretty, Alec said. Not a girl.

What's her name?

Annalise, Alec said.

I never knew any movie stars when I started out. Or later on, except for the last few years, fund-raisers and the like. They're all over the place now. You can't go to a rally without seeing a movie star. Up close they look different. Personally, I always liked Gregory Peck. Sound fellow. Good Democrat. Is he still alive?

No, Alec said. He's gone.

Danto. Well, she's still alive, Mrs. Danto. And she was at the funeral.

Everyone says it was great.

Washington does very well with funerals, the old man said. The sense of occasion and so forth. Ceremony. Washington loves funerals and parades. He looked up suddenly and said, You make goddamned sure that p-prick doesn't come to my funeral, not that he would. His voice trailed away and when next he spoke it was barely a whisper. He said, I've forgotten your mother.

No, you haven't forgotten.

I've forgotten. She's disappeared. I can't remember what she looked like. I don't remember her name. She's gone, isn't she?

Yes, Alec said. Years ago.

She was a peach.

Yes, Alec said.

Wonderful company.

Yes, she was.

Wonderful campaigner, too.

Yes, Alec said.

But I've forgotten her name.

Margaret, Alec said.

That's right, Margaret. Everyone called her Mag. Her name was there all along. He paused a moment in deep thought. Remember that tough campaign, 1968? She must've made a hundred speeches. So damned nervous before the speeches that her hands shook. But she made them, sometimes two, three a day about what a wonderful state we lived in and how I could be counted on to keep it that way. She saved the Senate from that damned major, the alleged war hero. Got out the women's vote. Went all over the state in a bus. We did some things in that campaign that I'm not proud of.

I didn't know that, Alec said.

Not proud at all. But they had to be done. The son of a bitch was a menace.

No, I mean about mother and her nerves. You said her hands shook.

They did. She didn't like crowds. She never got over it. But she
pitched in.
Mag had grit. She did what had to be done, God bless her. Even so, we damn near lost.

Alec said, Tell me more about the '68 campaign.

I don't want to talk about it. I'm tired.

I can make you a drink. I think you could use one.

I'm boring you, am I?

Not yet, Alec said.

Is it dark yet?

Almost dark.

I'll have that drink, then. Make it a double.

Alec poured a thimble of Scotch into a glass, filled the glass with ice and soda water, and handed it to his father.

Alec said, Tell me about the campaign.

You were no damned help, his father said.

I wasn't running, Alec said.

Forget it, his father said. He rattled the ice in his glass. Your mother wasn't involved in what we had to do. She never knew about it. But the son of a bitch was a menace.

Yes, you said that.

He didn't know anything outside his own experience. Worse, he distrusted everything outside his own experience. With a trembling hand the old man brought the glass to his mouth and took a sip of whiskey. We tapped his telephone, for one thing. And for another—

Alec laughed. And they called you one of the consciences of the Senate. I forget who the others were.

Don't say that, his father said.

I was making a joke, Alec said.

It's not a joke. Not a
joke.
There were some ballot irregularities also.

He was an awful son of a bitch. I think you're forgiven.

You're good to say so, Alec. I didn't like doing it. The phone taps were indispensable. We learned our major was taking money from people he shouldn't've been taking money from. Out-of-state money. Chicago money. Mrs. Danto was the bag lady. That gets out, the damage is done, adieu Hero Major. All the Silver Stars in the army can't rescue you when you're down in the Chicago slime with Mrs. Danto.

But you had to do it, Alec said.

Yes, we did. Democracy. Sometimes you have to nudge it along.

I never heard that story, Alec said.

We leaked it to a friendly newspaper. Told them to chase the money. Told them where to look. Told them who to look for. Those were the days when newspaper publishers had some guts. Convictions. Publishers believed absolutely in the people's right to know what they thought and that was why they owned the paper, for crissakes. So they wrote two stories, short on fact, long on innuendo. The stories weren't meant for civilians. I mean the general public. They were meant for the two dozen guys who knew how to read between the lines. Later on, the story behind the story got around. It always does. Mrs. Danto told Eliot Bergruen during one of their pillow evenings. Caused quite a strain for a while, not forever. We were all grown-ups. But the word got out on the other side of the aisle and eventually on my side of the aisle and for a time I was in the doghouse. But nobody could prove anything. No witnesses came forward. And the major was fighting an indictment. The boys on the paper held up their end of the bargain, First Amendment blah blah blah, sanctity of secret sources, et cetera. So eventually the story went away. Always does. Deprive the plant of oxygen and the plant dies. Margaret never knew, though. I made sure. We try to keep these things in-house.

Jesus, Alec said.

There was a comic aftermath, the old man said. Mrs. Danto was in the House for thirty years. She's been in tough shape for a while. Dr. Alzheimer has paid her a visit. So a few years ago her grandchildren had the bright idea of commissioning a biography. They're proud of their granny, served in Congress all those years. They thought of her as a role model for ambitious young women and they thought also that a biography might, you know, help her out of the fog. So they found a historian who was happy to take on the task and then—he began to laugh, a kind of strangled cackle—made the mistake of sending a news release to the papers. The piece wasn't read by everyone but it was read by someone, because in due course a man came to see the grandchildren and offered to finance the project himself because he was such an admirer of Congresswoman Danto, but in order to do so he had to have access to the archive, all the private papers of granny. Every scrap of paper they had. Naturally the grandkids thought that was great. Told him where the papers were housed. And the very next day a fire-of-suspicious-origin incinerated everything. No paper, no biography. A few weeks later the kids received sizable checks from an insurance company they never heard of. So sorry for your loss.

Jesus, Alec said.

Forget I said anything. I think about that campaign a lot. I must have a bad conscience. I can live with the bad conscience, though. What I couldn't live with was that son of a bitch in the Senate. You have to have loyalty to the institution or everything just goes to hell. That was the rule back then and we all lived by it. I don't know that conscience is negotiable currency in politics despite what you hear. Personally I don't think conscience stands a chance in the world as we know it. The world we live in. When you come down to it conscience is a utopian vision. It has no place in the Senate. Well, of course it has a place, but that place is not at the top table. The old man took a sip of whiskey, his eyes fastened on some distant object. He looked as if he were listening to an unremarkable speech on the Senate floor. He said at last, I'm tired, Alec. I've talked too much. I'm talked out. I'll rest awhile.

It's all right, Alec said. I've got to be going.

Going where?

Home, he said.

Are you still living in that little house?

I'm still there. It suits me.

Don't go just yet. Please stay. I want you to tell me a story. What do you remember most fondly? Something out of the ordinary. Not one of your damned shoots. Not the movie star. Something unexpected. Tell me something I can actually believe. Something about early days in Washington, when you were young. Something about private life. Something refreshing about the way we lived back then. Or the way you lived. I know the way I lived. Your life has always been a mystery to me, Alec. Not an unpleasant mystery but a mystery nonetheless. I've never cared for mysteries or riddles. They interfere with the legislative process. Isn't the point always to get things done? Have something to show for your day? I care even less for irony, the refuge of scoundrels who need an excuse for their refusal to act. To put a marker down. To bring things to a conclusion. So talk all you want. I'll be listening carefully even though I may close my eyes. Cheat on me and I'll know it from your tone of voice.

Speak up so I can hear, his father added, and with an unsteady hand he raised his glass, rattling the ice cubes.

More ice, please.

A
LEC WAS SILENT
a minute or more, allowing his memory to drift backward to a vanished civilization as mysterious as Phoenicia. His memories of it were scattered and not entirely reliable. What did he remember most fondly? Alec supposed it was his rose garden. In that soft southern climate anything that germinated would grow but roses grew wonderfully. They had no natural enemies except blight, old age, and insects. When Lucia first arrived in the capital from Zurich she noticed gardens full of roses and longed for a garden of her own. She believed, incorrectly, that Washington was a city of gardeners. She did come to understand eventually that Washington was a city of lookers at gardens, quite another thing surely.

Lucia found the people hospitable but their argot irritated her. Washingtonians liked to refer to
this town,
often with a roll of the eyeballs, as in, We do things a certain way in
this town. This town,
the odds are always six to five against. Lucia thought the city blanched, an overcooked vegetable. In high summer Washington was a metropolis of civic torpor, heavy velvety heat that clung to your skin like a cape. The tour buses moved in slow motion and when they halted at the Treasury or the Lincoln Memorial their passengers seemed to ooze from the interior, a slow-flowing damp-shirted civilian tide unaware that they were visiting a ghost town. Statecraft came to a standstill in the killing summer heat. The government evacuated to the Virginia horse country or the Eastern Shore or New England in the way that Madrid emptied into San Sebastian or the hill towns of Andalusia and Paris to Brittany or the Cote d'Azur. August was a lost month. Even the newspapers operated with skeleton staffs. Still, those workers who remained were careful to wear suits and ties and the women dresses. The government had its formal aspect.

After a furious courtship Alec and Lucia found a small row house on a quiet street in Georgetown, the historic district, well away from the commotion of the Federal Triangle. A family-owned dry cleaner occupied one corner, a one-room market the corner opposite. At any time of day a housekeeper could be seen carrying an armload of clothes to or from the dry cleaner. At two in the afternoon the brick sidewalks echoed from the high heels of well-dressed women returning from lunch or an appointment at the hairdresser, and a few hours later the faintly hilarious voices of the Bridge Bunch, a dozen women who had been gathering at Mrs. Wheatley's house since the early days of the Truman administration, second and third Tuesdays of every month except August, when Mrs. Wheatley and her staff motored to an oceanside cottage at Newport. Alec's mother was one of the regulars. There were not so many men on the street during the day, save for the esthete Ronald diAntonio who liked to walk his Afghan hound at four, and Admiral Honeycutt who took a brisk constitutional at five. They rarely met, and when they did the greeting was cool.