I hope you didn’t drop a volume of Supreme Court Reports on your toes when you read that.
It came as a shock to me. I didn’t think I could feel this way again about someone.
I had to decide if I should keep quiet about it, just let it go, or tell you. Well, I’m telling you. And I am inviting you to write back and tell me to jump in that lake after all. I will respect that.
I have nothing against lakes per se, but here is my preference: I would like to continue our conversation. By phone, letter, pony express, whatever. I don’t want to stop talking with you.
May we?
There it is. As I write this, I’m wondering if I’ll actually put it in the mail. But I had to get my feelings down on paper.
Regardless of your decision, it was an honor to get to know you out here, to have the chance to spend some time with someone I deeply respect.
It was signed, simply, Jack.
Millie was glad she was sitting down. Glad she didn’t have a heavy volume in her hand to drop on her foot.
She felt her face heating up. She shivered, actually shivered, like a child watching a scary movie. She sat there for a long time.
Then she decided it was time to tell him what had happened to her. She took out several pieces of paper and her favorite fountain pen. And began to write.
4
The demons were active tonight.
They swirled around his head, like dancers of death, jabbing at him. Sam Levering even saw them in the swirls of his bourbon, in the way the light hit the ice. And sometimes he heard voices.
Images came at him, haphazard but horrid, from the past. He saw his son as a boy with flaxen hair and unlimited potential. He saw his own political career devastating his family. And worst of all, he saw himself not caring. Giving everything up to serve his unlimited ambitions and grasping dreams.
He kept the lights off at times like this. Normally his home was fully illumined, and people would be around. Servants. Friends. People to distract him. Even Anne, working her behind-the-scenes magic, would have been welcome.
But when the demons came he preferred to drink them away in the dark, here in the library. And no one else was home.
Had it all been worth it?
Levering forced himself to say yes. He had fought the good fight, for civil rights and the right to choose. For subsidies to help single mothers and laws to keep the wealthiest Americans from enjoying tax breaks while the poor couldn’t even get a decent minimum wage. And countless other fights. There had been heartbreaks and setbacks, to be sure. He had been bloodied, but remained unbowed.
Yes, it was worth it, he told himself again. But somewhere, a voice argued with him. It was not worth it, this voice said.
If he could have gone back in time, back to before his first elective office, back to a wife who loved him and a son who adored him, would he do it? Would he give up being just a few years from the presidency of the United States for that?
Senses and sounds from his memory. Smell of ocean. The three of them at the Pacific shore, a little place called Cambria, his wife had found it (she did things like that, and back then she could convince him to go). Tad only three and stark naked, ocean swirling around his feet as he giggled and jumped up and down. Sam with his milk skin (which would burn soon enough) and bathing suit, picking up his son and wading further out.
The smoothness of his son’s skin. The laughter. The little eyes widening as the waves came toward them, and Tad clinging tighter to Sam’s neck, the only one who could save him.
Levering drank quickly, the bourbon burning in his throat – the burning was the best part – and then up through his nose. And before he could remember anymore, the demon dance was interrupted by the phone. The direct line.
“Catch you at a bad time?” President Francis asked.
The worst. “No, Mr. President. Just enjoying a quiet evening at home.”
“Sorry to hear that, if you know what I mean.”
Levering could almost see him raising his eyebrows, Groucho Marx style.
“Reason I called,” Francis said. “You happy about Hollander?”
“Did you see the hearings?”
“Some.”
“What was your take?”
“Frankly, Sam, I got a little nervous. That stuff about being open to changing. What was that all about?”
Levering knocked back the rest of his booze. “Just horseradish to calm the conservatives. Being open to change means hey, I might even slide over to your side sometime. But she won’t slide.”
“You’re still sure about that?”
“John,” Levering said with mild reproof, “I’ve been in this game a long time.”
“All right,” the president said. “Just keep your eyes wide open. This is a delicate balance we got going here. I don’t want to lose the presidency over this.”
“That would be tragic, John.”
“I better keep my eye on you, too,” Francis said with a laugh.
You got that right, Levering thought.
After the call Sam Levering poured himself another drink, a stiff one, no ice. He killed it in less than a minute. He wanted sleep now, wanted the demons to quit for the night, and alcohol was the only way he knew to do that.
He was stumbling out of the library when he lost his balance. He fell, and as he did he reached out with his arms, flailing stupidly, grabbing for anything to prop him up. All he could reach were books, and they fell on top of him as he hit the carpet.
Cursing, he clambered to his feet and felt for the light switch. His vision was blurry, the room angling at strange degrees according to his pickled brain. He leaned over to the four volumes that had landed on him, cursing some more, and then he stopped cold.
One of the books was a crisp, black, leather-bound Bible. The one his son had sent to him years ago. He had not noticed it since. He’d just shoved it in the stacks and forgotten all about it.
Now it had jumped out at him, like an accusation.
He picked it up at once, ran his thumb over the leather cover, hefted it. It hefted back, the weight of its pages heavier than he remembered.
For a moment he thought he might cry.
Instead he grunted. Carrying this Tad-thing, he felt his way through the darkened house to the back door. He staggered outside into the stillness, down the steps, and onto the grass. He found the trash bin, opened the lid, dumped the Bible inside it.
Then he slammed the lid down with all his strength.
5
A little old woman who might have stepped out of a Frank Capra movie answered the door. “Hello, Millie,” Dorothy Bonassi said, as if eight years hadn’t passed since they’d seen each other. “Come in. Bill’s expecting you.”
The house was large, but not ostentatious. Books were everywhere. A grandfather clock tick-tocked in the large hall.
Dorothy Bonassi showed Millie through the kitchen and out the back door, which opened to a commodious verandah. It overlooked a green lawn, with a large dogwood in the middle.
At the bottom of the stairs, Millie saw a gardener fiddling with some dirt near the house. He wore a large sun hat and gloves, and worked a trowel like a pro.
Dorothy paused and shook her head. “Bill, did you forget she was coming?”
The gardener said in a familiar voice, “No, Mrs. Bonassi.” And then William T. Bonassi looked up from his garden and smiled. “Welcome, Millie. Nice to see you again.”
“I’ll just go and make some iced tea,” Dorothy said.
Bonassi took off his gardening gloves and offered his hand to Millie. His grip was firm and sure. Like the man himself, Millie thought. Here he was, eighty-nine years old, and looking as full of life as he did when he’d retired. She remembered his vibrancy from those days, his prodigious memory and his sense of humor.