drunk?”
“Last week, he banged his forehead coming into the kitchen, like he’d misjudged the width of the doorway. But it’s more that he’s not in the best mood. He’s not mean, but he’s discouraged. Don’t repeat any of this to Arthur, obviously.”
“What, you mean while we’re making sweet love?”
“Charlie never plays squash in the morning anymore, he never takes Ella to school,” I said. “I don’t know if it’s because he’s hungover or just—I don’t know.”
“Have you asked him about it?”
“I tell him to go easy, but I wouldn’t say he listens.”
“Well, I’ll watch for anything unusual when we’re at Maj and Pee-Paw’s on Saturday.” Jadey made a face. “Although I guess these aren’t normal circumstances with the brouhaha in Indianapolis—if this reassures you at all, Arthur was in the foulest humor when he got home last night.”
“Charlie’s grilling steaks for dinner as we speak,” I said. “Would you eat Blackwell meat right now?”
She nodded. “It wasn’t Blackwell. More people would have gotten sick by now, and you can bet we’ve got guys talking to every ER in the region. The poor people at that sports banquet, huh?” We both were quiet, surrounded by the country club’s smooth green grass, a spring breeze rising and carrying with it the smell of soil. Jadey said, “That’s the problem with being married to them. We’re forced to see how the sausage gets made.”
AT DINNER, I
did manage to eat the steak, though I wouldn’t have said I enjoyed it. Without consulting Charlie, I fixed Ella a peanut-butter sandwich instead—it would have made me far tenser for her to consume Blackwell meat than for me to—and Charlie either didn’t notice or chose not to comment. After dinner, Ella took a bath and I washed her hair, a request I was sadly aware that she’d stop making of me in the near future, and then I climbed into bed with her and read aloud from
for me, this was the sweetest part of every day. Before I turned out the light, Ella summoned Charlie—she shrieked, “Daddy! Daddy, it’s time for me to be tucked in!”—and he came as called. About half the time, he’d rile her up more than settle her down, tickling her, dancing, making such outrageous noises or faces that she’d be squealing and jumping on the mattress, but on this night, he was so subdued that she whispered after he’d left, “Is Daddy mad at me?”
I ran my hand over her hair, smoothing it out against the pillowcase. Ella had a ridiculously girlish bedroom, all pink and white (we’d let her pick it out), and she had a double bed, which seemed indulgent for a third-grader, but it was actually the bed I’d had before I married Charlie. “Daddy’s not mad,” I said. The phone rang then, and I heard Charlie answer it.
“Can I rent
this weekend?” Ella asked.
“You can rent
when you’re in seventh grade.”
“Mommy, it’s not really dirty just because that’s what it’s called.”
I leaned in and kissed her forehead. “Time to go to sleep, sweetheart.”
WHEN I ENTERED
the den, I was startled to find Hank Ucker sitting in an armchair, watching the ball game with Charlie. Without standing, Hank bowed in his seat. “The maternal glow positively emanates from you, Alice,” he said. “You call to mind a Renaissance Madonna.”
“I see her more like the trampy singer Madonna,” Charlie said, and grinned. “Come here, baby.” When I stood beside him, he affectionately patted my rear.
“Hank, I didn’t realize we’d have the pleasure of your company tonight,” I said. “May I offer you something to eat or drink?” It was almost nine o’clock, so I wondered how long he planned to stay. As far as I knew, Hank still lived in Madison. Though I hadn’t seen him for a few years, I’d heard he’d left his position as chief of staff for the minority leader of the Wisconsin State Senate to help run the U.S. Senate campaign of a Republican from Fond du Lac, a man who initially hadn’t seemed to have much of a shot but in recent weeks had pulled ahead of the incumbent in several polls.
“A glass of ice water would be superb,” Hank said.
Charlie, who was drinking whiskey, chuckled. “Still living life in the fast lane, I see.”
Hank smiled his slow, untrustworthy smile. “As ever.”
I slipped away to the kitchen, filled a glass for Hank, and when I returned to the den, they were talking about Sharon Olson, the incumbent against whom Hank’s candidate was running. “A shame that had to come out about her taste for men of the Negro persuasion,” Charlie said, grinning. Hank’s candidate’s polling numbers had no doubt been bolstered by the recent revelation—this did not seem revelatory to me, but
was the word the local news programs used—that Olson, who was a white Democrat, had had a brief and childless first marriage to a black man in the late sixties. Olson was now remarried to a white lawyer with whom she had two teenage sons and a daughter, and I didn’t see how her earlier marriage had much bearing on anything (the first husband had long since moved to Seattle, where he, too, was an attorney), but a series of ads was
