The Prodigal Daughter (54 page)

5:30: drop by
reception of Associated General Contractors. 7:00: cocktail party at French
Embassy. 8:00: dinner with Donald Graham of the Washington Post. I 1 -00: phone
Richard at the Denver Baron.”

As a senator,
Florentyna was able to reduce her trips to Illinois to ev
,_
~ry
other weekend. On every other Friday, she would catch the U.S.

Air
flight to Providence, where she would be met by Richard on his way up from New
York.
They would then drive out on Route 6 to the Cape, which gave them a chance to
catch up with each other’s week.

Richard and
Florentyna spent their free weekends on Cape Cod, which had become their family
home since Kate’s death, Richard having given tile Red House to William and
Joanna.

On Saturday
mornings, they would lounge around reading newspapers and magazines. Richard
might play the cello while Florentyna would look over the paperwork she had
brought with her from Washington. When weather permitted they played golf in
the afternoon and, whatever the weather, backgammon in the evening. Florentyna
always ended the evening owing Richard a couple of hundred dollars, which he
said he would donate to the Republican Party if she ever honored her gambling
debts. Floreirtyna always queried the value of giving to the Massachusetts
Republican Party, but Richard pointed out that he also supported a Republican
governor and senator in New York.

Patriotically,
Joanna gave birth to a son on February 22, and they chnstened him Richard.
Suddenly Florentyna was a grandmother People magazine stopped describing her as
the most elegant lady in Washington and started calling her the best-looking
grandmother in America.

This caused a
flurry of letters of protest including hundreds of photographs of other
glamorous grannies for the editor to consider, which only made Florentyna even
more popular.

The rumors that
she would be a strong contender for the Vice Presidency in 1988 started in July
when the Small Business Association made her Illinoisan of the year and a
Newsweek poll voted her Woman of the Year.

Whenever she was
questioned on the subject she reminded her inquirers that she had been in the
Senate for less than a year and that her first priority was to represent her
state in Congress, although she noted that she was being invited to the White
House more and more often for sessions with the President. It was the first
time that being the one woman in the majority party was turning out to be an
advantage.

Florentyn
,i
learned of Bob Buchanan’s death when she asked why the
flag on the Russell Building was at half mast. The funeral was on the Wednesday
when she was due to offer an amendment to the Public Health Service Act in the
Senate and
address
a seminar on defense at the Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars. She canceled one, postponed the other
and flew to Nashville, Tennessee.

Both of the
state’s senators and its seven remaining congressmen wvre present. Florentyna
stood next to her House colleagues in silent tribute.

As they waited
to go into the Lutheran chapel, one of them told her that Bob had had five sons
and one daughter. Gerald, the youngest, had been killed in Vietnam. She thanked
God that Richard had been too old and William too young to be sent to that
pointless war.

Steven, the
eldest son, led the Buchanan ‘family into the chapel. Tall and thin, with a
warm, open face, he could only have been the son of Bob, and when Florentyna
spoke to him after the service he revealed the same southern charm and straight
approach that had endeared his father to her.

Florentyna was
delighted when she learned that Steven was going to run for his father’s seat
in the upcoming special election.

“It will give me
someone new to quarrel with,” she said, smiling.

“He greatly
admired you,” said Steven, Florentyna was not prepared to see her photograph
all over the major newspapers the next morning being described as a gallant
lady. Janet placed a New York Times editorial on top of her press clippings for
her to read:

Representative
Buchanan had not been well known to the citizens of New York, but it was a
comment on his service in Congress that Senator Kane flew to Tennessee to
attend his funeral. It is the sort of gesture that is rarely seen in politics
today and is just another reason why Senator Kane is one of the inost respected
legislators in either house.

Florentyna was
rapidly becoming the most sought-after politician in Washington. Even the
President admitted that the demands on her time weren’t running far short of
his. But among the invitations that came that year, there was one she accepted
with considerable pride. Harvard invited her to run for election to the Board
of Overseers in the spring and to address the Graduation Day ceremony that
June. Even Richard put a note in his diary to keep the day free.

Florentyna
looked up the list of those who had preceded her in this honor-from George
Marshall outlining the plan to reconstruct postwar Europe to Alexander
Solzhenitsyn describing the West as decadent and lacking in spiritual values.

Florentyna spent
many hours preparing her Harvard address, aware that the media traditionally
gave the speech considerable coverage. She practiced paragraphs daily in front
of the mirror, in the bathtub, even on the golf course with Richard. She wrote
the complete text herself-in long hand-but accepted numerous amendments from
Janet, Richard and Edward on its content.

The day before
she was due to deliver the speech, Florentyna had a telephone call from
Sotheby’s.
,She
listened to the head of the department
and agreed to his suggestion. When they had settled on a maximum price, he said
he would let her know the outcome immediately after the auction.

Florentyna felt
the timing could not have been better. She flew up to Boston that night, to be
met at Logan Airport by an enthusiastic young undergraduatc who drove her into
Cambridge and dropped her off at the Faculty Club. President Bok greeted her in
the foyer and congratulated her on her election to the board, and then
introduced her to the other overseers, who numbered among the thirty, two Nobel
Prize winners, one for literature and one for science; two ex-cabinet
secretaries; an army genet-at; a judge; an oil tycoon and two other university
presidents. Florentyna sat through the meeting amused by how courteous the
overseers all were to one another and she could not help but contrast their
approach with that of a House committee.

The guest room
they put at her disposal brought back memories of Florentyna’s student days and
she even had to phone Richard from the corridor. He was in Albany dealing with
some tax problems caused by Jack Kemp, the new Republican govemor of New York
State.

“I’ll be with
you for the lunch,” he promised. “By the way, I see tomorrow’s speech was
worthy of a mention by Dan Rather on the CBS news tonight. It had better be
good if you hope to keep n ie from watching the Yankees on channel eleven.”

“Just see you
are in your place on time, Mr. Kane.”

“Just you make
sure it’s as good as your speech to the Vietnam Veterans of America, because
I’m traveling a long way to hear you, Senator.”

“How could I
have fallen in love with you, Mr. Kane?”

“It was, if I
remember rightly, ‘Adopt an Immigrant Year,’ and we Bostonians were exhibiting
our usual social consciousness. “

“Why did it
continue after the end of the year?”

“I decided it
was my duty to spend the rest of my life with you.

“Good decision,
Mr. Kane.”

“I wish I were
with you now, Jessie.”

“You wouldn’t if
you could see the room they’ve given me. I have only a single bed, so you would
be spending the night on the floor. Be on time tomorrow, because I want you to
hear this speech.”

“I will. But I
must say it’s taking you a long time to convert me into a Democrat.”

“I’ll try again
tomorrow. Good night, Mr. Kane.”

Richard was
awakened the next morning by the telephone at the Albany Baron.

He assumed it
would be Florentyna on the line with some senatorial comment, but it turned out
to be New York Air to say there would be no flights out of Albany that day
because of a one-day job action by maintenance workers that was affecting every
airline.

“Christ,” said
Richard, uncharacteristically,
then
jumped into a cold
shower, where he exercised some other new words in his vocabulary. Once he was
dry, he tried to get dressed while dialine the front desk. He dropped the phone
and had to start again.

I want a rental
car at the front entrance immediately,” he
said,
dropfxA the phone again and finished dressing. He then called HarvArd, but they
had no idea where Senator Kane was at that particular moment. He left a message
explaining what had happened, ran downstairs, skipped breakfast and picked up
the keys to a Ford Executive. Richard was held up in the rush-hour ttaffic and
it took him another thirty minutes to find Route 90 East. He checked his watch:
he would only have to do a steady sixty if he was going to be in Cambridge in
time for the speech at two o’clock.

He knew how much
this one meant to Florentyna and he was determined not to be late.

The last few
days had been a nightmare: the theft in Cleveland, the kitchen walkout in San
Francisco, the seizing of the hotel in Cape Town, tax problems over his
mother’s estateall happening while the price of gold was collapsing because of
the civil war in South Africa. Richard tried to put all these problems out of
his mind. Florentyna could always tell when he was tired or overanxious and he
did not want her to be worrying about situations he knew he could remedy eventually.
Richard wound the car window down to let in some fresh air.

The rest of the
weekend he was going to do nothing but steep and play the cello; it would be
the first break they had both had for over a month.

No children:
William would be in Boston with his own
family,
and
Annabel in Mexico-leaving nothing more strenuous to consider than a round of
golf for two whole days. He wished he didn’t feel so tired. “Damn,” he said out
loud. He’d forgotten the roses-he had planned to send them to Florentyna from
the airport.

Florent
,vna
was given two messages just before lunch. The man from
Sotheby’s phoned to say that she had been successful in her bid, and a college
porter delivered Richard’s news. She was delighted by the first and
disappointed by the second, although she smiled at the thought that Richard
would be worrying about the roses. Thanks to
Sotheby’s,
she now had something for him he had wanted all his life.

Florentyna had
spent the morning in the formal graduation proceedings at the Tercentenary Theater.
The sight of all three networks setting up their cameras on the lawn for the
afternoon ceremony had made her feet even more nervous and she hoped no one had
noticed that she had eaten almost nothing at lunch.

At one
forty-five, the overseers left for the yard, where alumni reunion classes had
already gathered. She thought back, to her own years...

Bella...
Wendy... Scott... Edward... and now she had returned, as Edward had predicted,
as Senator Kane. She took her seat on the platform outside the Tercentenary
Theater next to President Horner of Radcliffe and looked down at the card on
the other chair beside her,
It
read, “Mr. Richard
Kane-husband of Senator Kane.” She smiled at how much that would annoy, him,
and scribbled underneath, “
What
took you so long’?”
She must remember to leave the card on the mantelpiece. Florentyna knew that if
Richard arrived after the ceremony had begun he would have to find a seat on
the lawn. The announcement of elections, conferring ol honorary degrees and
reports of gifts received by the university were followed by an address from
President Bok. Florentyna listened as he introduced her. She searched the rows
of audience in front of her as far as she could see but was still unable to
spot Richard.

“President
Homer, distinguished visitors, ladies and gentlemen. It is a great honor for me
today to present one of Radcliffe’s most distinguished alumnae, a woman who has
captured the imagination of the American people.

Indeed, I know
many of us believe that Radcliffe will one day have two presidents.” Seventeen
fliousand guests burst into spontaneous applause.

“Ladies
and gentlemen, Senator Florentyria Kane.”

Florentyna’s
throat went (try when she rose from her seat. She checked tier notes as the
great television lights were switched on, momentarily blinding her, so that she
could see nothing but a blur of faces. She prayed Richard’s was among them.

“President Bok,
President Homer. I stand before you more nervous now than I was when I first
came to Radcliffe thirtythree years ago and couldn’t find the dining room for
two days because I was too frightened to ask anyone.” The laughter eased
Florentyna’s tension. “Now I see seated in front of me men and women and if I
recall correctly from my Radcliffe rule book, men may only enter the bedrooms
between the hours of three and five P.m. and must at all times keep both feet
on the ground. If the rule still exists today, I am bound to ask how the poor
things ever get any sleep.”