“This is ridiculous.” Forrester made a quick glance at the ceiling, as if he had just lost patience with the encounter. But he’d blinked and we both knew it.
“I want you to announce that this will be your last term.” I looked out the window. The little statue was still smiling at me. I must be doing well.
“I will do no such thing.”
I slowly turned back to him. “Are you sure, senator? Do you really want to fight this out? Do you want to see the crowds turning against you? Do you want to read the antagonistic editorials? Face the hostile reporters?”
“Stanley Morton would never treat me like that!”
“How much of his company do you own? And picture the campaign. It won’t be like last time. Maybe there will be scandals. This pedestal you’ve got yourself on will be real easy to knock over. Do you think your precious president or anyone else will care what you think when they see your whole state turning against you? Just imagine what it will feel like when everyone around you is watching you fall and laughing at you behind your back, or maybe to your face. And now you’re an old man, too, and you’re tired. Do you have the stomach for this fight, senator?” The words were flowing out of me-I didn’t even need to think, they just came.
I gave him plenty of time to answer. He didn’t, so I did.
“I didn’t think so.”
Fred was looking straight ahead, not at either of us, just waiting. Forrester had lost focus, too.
“You’re as evil as your father,” he said.
“I am my father’s son.”
There was a sound, between a gasp and a sigh. I looked back and saw Katie standing in the open doorway. She was staring at me, her mouth open in shock at the words my mouth had just spoken.
“We’re done here,” I said to her. “Fetch Eric.”
She collected herself. “They just went to see the Rolls Royce. They’ll be a few minutes.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “I’ll wait outside with you.”
I didn’t look back into the room. She moved aside to let me pass and followed me out onto the terrace. Gladys was seated on a bench near the doors.
“He can’t mean that” came from the library.
Fred’s voice rumbled, “He means what he says, Bob.”
“This is outrageous. Of course I won’t step down.” But he knew what the future would be and that he would surrender rather than face that humiliation, and in his voice I could hear the splintering and cracking of his soul. It brought a swift image of Harry Bright, alone at his podium.
Katie was close enough for just me to hear her. “What…?” It was a continuation of her sigh. She was trembling, also, not from the cold, and there was fear in her eyes, of me.
“We’ll talk later.”
We stood and waited. The earth turned and I was its axis. If I had lifted my hand I could have commanded the stars to blacken or the land to be moved, but I chose not to. It was enough to have extinguished this one star.
Fred approached. “We will discuss this tomorrow,” he said. “I would suggest doing it this evening, but your state of mind would make it a waste of time.”
“I’ll call you,” I said.
“You are very effective in tearing down,” he said, his own state of mind not very steady. “You should try building up for once.”
“I’ll do what I want.”
He paid his respects to Gladys and left. Katie was stranded beside me-Gladys had heard all and there was no possibility of even a stilted and formal conversation. I doubted they’d been having more than that anyway.
The hostess stood and went. Katie gave her a tight nod and smile, which were not answered.
The chatter and merriment of Eric and his damsels was carnival music on a battlefield. They came down a path through the gardens, one of them on each of his arms. I would have Katie pick one for him. It was time for Eric to settle down and get married. Whichever of the two was the grandfather’s favorite.
Eric saw us watching.
“Don’t you have anything else to talk about?” he asked, bright as a star himself, and one of the girls giggled.
“No.”
“I’ll get a ride home later. You don’t have to wait.”
“We need to go.”
“Is Fred still here?”
“He’s already left.”
He understood. The girls did, too. They disengaged and tittered and grinned, but they understood that there was enmity, and a barrier had been erected. Eric said his good-nights and the three of us walked around the house, not even through it, to our car.
Despite the cool parting, Eric was enthralled. We let him jabber in the back seat.
“Genevieve is leaving for Washington in two weeks. She’s going to intern with her grandfather. Madeleine’s going back to Paris to graduate school.”
So perhaps Genevieve would be the one. Neither Katie nor I felt like talking.
And when we were home, about the last thing I wanted was to watch myself and Bill Idiot Sandoff, four feet high. But Eric was bouncing off the walls, and Katie was curious, so off we trooped for the viewing of the interview.
My thoughts had petrified. That moment of Katie’s gasp and the senator’s hatred was unmovable, and I couldn’t reach any other moment.
Eric diddled with the technology and I had a brief hope that the attempt had failed. But no, the brain that knew little of life knew much of video recording. There was a flash and a frozen image. My stomach turned.
“There you are!” Katie said. For her, this was comforting, this vision of her and my glory, and her tension from the evening dissipated into the humming air.
“I’ll find the start,” Eric said. As he searched for the beginning, split-second contortions battered the screen, rapid frozen images of my face smiling and shredded. I closed my eyes. This was my outside showing the fragmented reality of my inside, and I couldn’t watch.
“There.” Now it was Bill who was frozen, mouth gaping. Eric settled back into his chair and pushed the button. “Here we go!”
The mouth moved and words came out, but the static inside my head was too loud. Broken questions and disjointed answers crumbled into heaps of words and there was no place for my ears to put any more.
I tried to concentrate. He was talking about someone. “… we found a warm and open man, comfortable with his power and wealth. But there is no mistaking that he recognizes the responsibility that he has inherited along with his riches. He has moved decisively to right what he considers the wrongs of his father. Now he is the silent center of the political hurricane that is sweeping through the highest levels of state government. While investigators are only beginning to unravel millions of dollars of illegal bribes and fixed bids, and three very high profile murders, Channel Six’s exclusive interview sheds some light on Jason Boyer.”
Not Jason Boyer. Someone else. Someone responsible. Comfortable with power and wealth.
There is nothing silent in my center! I can’t do it anymore. I can’t play this game.
The Jason in front of me smiled. He was comfortable. He was responsible. It wasn’t me. It isn’t me! Look at him, at the truth of him. Arrogant, lying-more than any of the rivals he is casting down to set himself up higher. Ruthless. I know him. There is no center at all. Everything in me rose up against being that person.
The four-foot head continued. “Will you be meeting with Senator Forrester again?”
“Yes, actually. Katie and I will be visiting with him this evening, at his request. I hope we can have some reasoned discussion. The last thing we need just now is hot tempers and baseless accusations.”
It had ended. Katie squeezed my hand and put a little kiss on my cheek.
“I am so proud to be married to that man,” she said.
She hadn’t forgotten what she had seen at the Forresters’. The interview had put it in context for her, though, as a use of power rather than a clash of personalities. She was comfortable with that.
Eric said, “You should run against Forrester. You’d kill him. What did you talk about, anyway?”
