Well, she hadn’t included horse fucking anywhere in her list of liberal sins so I guess that put us ahead of the game.
When my cell phone toned I was glad to see the name Sarah Conrad on the caller ID. My twenty-two-year-old daughter was a senior at Smith. She planned to work for my firm over the summer as she had the last two summers. Then she wasn’t sure what she was going to do. Right now she had a live-in boyfriend, Robert, who was an intern at a local hospital.
‘Hi, honey.’
‘Hi, Dad.’ But it wasn’t the usual happy ‘Hi, Dad.’ This one was serious. ‘You busy?’
‘You all right?’
‘Dad, Mom has third-stage breast cancer.’ Now I could tell she’d been crying.
Norman Mailer once wrote that the most powerful word in the world was cancer. He knew what he was talking about. I had a dozen thoughts and no thoughts at all. I had to say something, but what? ‘When did you find out?’
‘About twenty minutes ago. Andy called me from the hospital. She’s there having more tests. Since he’s a doctor there he can get her through pretty fast. He said she should be home in two hours.’
Dr Andy Connelly was the man Erin had left me for. I was long past blaming her; the fact that I was gone sometimes for three weeks running hadn’t exactly been conducive to a good marriage. She warned me about it the last four or five years we were together. Her resentment, her anger, her loneliness. She was raising Sarah alone, she said. She was tired of going to movies and concerts and dinners alone, she said. She wanted me back, she said. And then one day she didn’t. She came into our bedroom as I was packing and she told me about Andy and how she’d fallen in love with him and how she was sorry and how I could see Sarah just about whenever I wanted. And how she had instructed her lawyer to ask for very little. Then she said she was sorry again and left the room. She wasn’t waiting for me by the front door as usual with a hug and kiss. I have virtually no memory of the next thirty-six hours. Maybe an alien swooped down and picked me up and took me to the planet Evunom. Shock. I couldn’t form coherent thoughts.
I was having the same trouble now.
‘Andy said he’d like you to call her. She wants to talk to you.’
I didn’t say it out loud but I thought how awkward he must have felt passing along that message. I’d met him three or four times over the years. We’d been painfully cordial with each other but when it came to real conversation we both floundered. I’d liked him more than I’d intended to. Sarah had convinced me over the years that he was a great stepfather and had made her mother very, very happy. Something I’d been too selfish to do, even though I’d always known that I’d never love anyone else the way I loved Erin.
‘You’ll have to give me her number, honey.’
‘I’ve got it here. You ready?’
I wrote it down. ‘Tell Robert I want him to take you out for a very good dinner tonight and get you drunk.’
Her laughter was frail but real. ‘He’s second shift at the hospital. That means if he does take me out it’ll have to be after ten o’clock. The new head doc has it in for interns. He hasn’t given Robert the day shift in three months. Only his pets get them.’ Then: ‘I’m scared, Dad. Robert’s still here so he walked me through everything as well as he could without seeing a specific diagnosis. He told me how staging people can be deceptive. How it’s not always as bad as it sounds.’
‘You don’t believe him?’
‘He loves me, Dad. He loves Mom, too. He wants to make us feel better. I just hope he’s not keeping anything back.’ Then: ‘Oh, there’s somebody at the door. Can I call you a little bit later? I know none of us go to Mass anymore but say some prayers for Mom, will you?’
‘I sure will, honey.’ invasive non-invasive ductal carcinoma lobular phyllodes tumor angiosarcoma
These were just a few of the words I encountered over the next hour as I battled my way through at least twenty different websites dealing with breast cancer. An alien language, to be sure. One would give me a modicum of hope, the next would dash it. They were all dealing with the same facts, or so it seemed to my ignorant eye, so it was the writing that made the difference. I opted for the more reassuring assessments, though none were really all that hopeful anyway.
It was close to noon. I managed to get out of the building without anybody seeing me. I found a tavern six blocks away that offered the balm of beer and microwave pizza. You couldn’t go wrong with that combination.
Kathy and Lucy were looking at a computer screen together when I walked past the conference room. Kathy glanced up and said, ‘Dev, I’ve got some news for you.’
I walked in and helped myself to a cup of coffee while they finished up looking at some new demographic breakdowns on Ward’s base. Apparently they were still worried that more than six percent of union voters would end up in Burkhart’s column even though Burkhart was actively anti-union. The American tradition — voting against your own interests.
I sat at the conference table trying not to think about Erin. Work was my only hope. Work would keep me sane.
They finished in a few minutes.
Kathy got some coffee for herself and sat across the table from me. Lucy closed up the laptop and took it with her after waving goodbye to us.
‘The Porsche was registered to a Pellucidar Corporation. I typed in the name on Google and got nothing. Then I tried Bing. No luck there, either. I found it ten minutes later. All that was listed was the name and the explanation that Pellucidar was in the business of selling audio equipment for stage shows and outdoor concerts. None of the names of the company’s officers was familiar to me.’
‘It could be a dummy corporation. You know, a cover for somebody who doesn’t want to be known.’
‘Burkhart?’
‘Maybe. I’ll call my home office. We’ve got an intern there from Northwestern who’s really good at penetrating all these corporate names. Second year in law school and she’s already a wizard.’
‘Both CBS and NBC will be at the news conference. Their reporters have been spotted outside headquarters here.’
‘Figures.’
‘And our favorite not-news network is already asking, “What did Congressman Ward know and when did he know it?”’
‘That doesn’t make any sense. But it doesn’t have to. All that matters is the implication. He’s somehow involved in the murder according to them.’
She consulted her delicate wristwatch on her delicate wrist. ‘I need to go help Lucy set everything up for the press conference. You’ve got my cell number if you need me.’
‘Thanks, I appreciate it.’
‘If David should happen to call in-’
‘I’ll see that you get to talk to him.’
I called my Chicago office. Howard Steinberg who runs the office when I’m gone got me up to date on all the good and bad news. The two main parties were about evenly balanced. No big surprises, either. We were still ahead where we planned to be ahead and still behind where we’d been from the start. But it was a tricky cycle this time and not even the best of polls could track the vagaries of public opinion very well.
I was forcing my way through some new internals, still deliberately not thinking about Erin, when my office phone buzzed. The receptionist downstairs said, ‘There’s a young woman calling for you, Mr Conrad. All she said was that her name is Jenny.’
‘Oh, right. Put her through, please.’
When Jenny came on she said, ‘Have you had lunch yet?’
‘Actually, I have had lunch. Why?’
‘I just wanted to talk to you. Could you stand just watching me eat?’
‘As long as you use the right fork for the salad.’
‘I know you think that’s funny but my father is big on that stuff.’
‘Not your mom?’
‘She just does what my dad tells her. Makes life easier for her, I guess. The only time they disagree is about me. My dad would already have me on death row if my mom hadn’t stopped him.’
‘Is that what you want to talk about?’