Inez remembered:
The green lawn around the ambassador’s bungalow at Puncak, the gardenia hedges.
The faded chintz slipcovers in the bungalow at Puncak, the English primroses, the tangles of bamboo and orchids in the ravine.
The mists blowing in at Puncak.
Standing with Jack Lovett on the green lawn at Puncak with the mists blowing in over the cracked concrete of the empty swimming pool, over the ravine, over the tangles of bamboo and orchids, over the English primroses.
Standing with Jack Lovett.
Inez remembered that.
Inez also remembered that the only person killed when the grenade exploded in the embassy commissary was an Indonesian driver from the motor pool. The news had come in on the radio at Puncak while Inez and Jack Lovett sat in the dark on the porch waiting for word that it was safe to take the children back down to Jakarta. There had been fireflies, Inez remembered, and a whine of mosquitoes. Jessie and Adlai were inside the bungalow trying to get Singapore television and Janet was inside the bungalow trying to teach the houseman how to make coconut milk punches. The telephones were out. The radio transmission was mainly static. According to the radio other Indonesian and American personnel had sustained minor injuries but the area around the embassy was secure. The ambassador was interviewed and expressed his conviction that the bombing of the embassy commissary was an isolated incident and did not reflect the mood of the country. Harry was interviewed and expressed his conviction that this isolated incident reflected only the normal turbulence of a nascent democracy.
Jack Lovett had switched off the radio.
For a while there had been only the whining of the mosquitoes.
Jack Lovett’s arm was thrown over the back of his chair and in the light that came from inside the bungalow Inez could see the fine light hair on the back of his wrist. The hair was neither blond nor gray but was lighter than Jack Lovett’s skin. “You don’t understand him,” Inez said finally.
“Oh yes I do,” Jack Lovett said. “He’s a congressman.”
Inez said nothing.
The hair on the back of Jack Lovett’s wrist was translucent, almost transparent, no color at all.
“Which means he’s a radio actor,” Jack Lovett said. “A civilian.”
Inez could hear Janet talking to the houseman inside the bungalow. “I said coconut milk,” Janet kept saying. “Not goat milk. I think you thought I said goat milk. I think you misunderstood.”
Inez did not move.
“Who is Frances,” Jack Lovett said.
Inez did not answer immediately. Inez had accepted early on exactly what Billy Dillon had told her: girls like Frances came with the life. Frances came with the life the way fundraisers came with the life. Sometimes fundraisers were large and in a hotel and sometimes fundraisers were small and at someone’s house and sometimes the appeal was specific and sometimes the appeal was general but they were all the same. There was always the momentary drop in the noise level when Harry came in and there were always the young men who talked to Inez as a way of ingratiating themselves with Harry and there were always these very pretty women of a type who were excited by public life. There was always a Frances Landau or a Connie Willis. Frances Landau was a rich girl and Connie Willis was a singer but they were just alike. They listened to Harry the same way. They had the same way of deprecating their own claims to be heard.
It’s just a means to an end, Frances said about her money.
I just do two lines of coke and scream, Connie said about her singing.
If there were neither a Frances nor a Connie there would be a Meredith or a Brooke or a Binky or a Lacey. Inez considered trying to explain this to Jack Lovett but decided against it. She knew about certain things that came with her life and Jack Lovett knew about certain things that came with his life and none of these things had any application to this moment on this porch. Jack Lovett reached for his seersucker jacket and put it on and Inez watched him. She could hear Janet telling Jessie and Adlai about the goat milk in the coconut milk punches. “It’s part of the exaggerated politeness these people have,” Janet said. “They’ll never admit they didn’t understand you. That would imply you didn’t speak clearly, a no-no.”
“Either that or he didn’t have any coconut milk,” Jack Lovett said.
Frances did not have any application to this moment on this porch and neither did Janet.
Inez closed her eyes.
“We should go back down,” she said finally. “I think we should go back down.”
“I bet you think that would be the ‘correct thing,’ ” Jack Lovett said. “Don’t you. Miss Manners.”
Inez sat perfectly still. Through the open door she could see Janet coming toward the porch.
Jack Lovett stood up. “We’ve still got it,” he said. “Don’t we.”
“Got what,” Janet said as she came outside.
“Nothing,” Inez said.
“Plenty of nothing,” Jack Lovett said.
Janet looked from Jack Lovett to Inez.
Inez thought that Janet would tell her story about the coconut milk punches but Janet did not. “Don’t you dare run off together and leave me in Jakarta with Frances,” Janet said.
That was 1969. Inez Victor saw Jack Lovett only twice again between 1969 and 1975, once at a large party in Washington and once at Cissy Christian’s funeral in Honolulu. For some months after the evening on the porch of the bungalow at Puncak it had seemed to Inez that she might actually leave Harry Victor, might at least separate herself from him in a provisional way — rent a small studio, say, or make a discreet point of not going down to Washington, and of being at Amagansett when he was in New York — and for a while she did, but only between campaigns.
Surely you remember Inez Victor campaigning.
Inez Victor smiling at a lunch counter in Manchester, New Hampshire, her fork poised over a plate of scrambled eggs and toast.
Inez Victor smiling at the dedication of a community center in Madison, Wisconsin, her eyes tearing in the bright sun because it had been decided that she looked insufficiently congenial in sunglasses.
Inez Victor speaking her famous Spanish at a street festival in East Harlem. Buenos días, Inez Victor said on this and other such occasions. Yo estoy muy contenta a estar aquí hoy con mi esposo. In twenty-eight states and at least four languages Inez Victor said that she was very happy to be here today with her husband. In twenty-eight states she also said, usually in English but in Spanish for La Opinión in Los Angeles and for La Prensa in Miami, that the period during which she and her husband were separated had been an important time of renewal and rededication for each of them (vida nueva, she said for La Opinión, which was not quite right but since the reporter was only humoring Inez by conducting the interview in Spanish he got the drift) and had left their marriage stronger than ever. Oh shit, Inez, Jack Lovett said to Inez Victor in Wahiawa on the thirtieth of March, 1975. Harry Victor’s wife.
3
AERIALISTS know that to look down is to fall.
Writers know it too.
Look down and that prolonged spell of suspended judgment in which a novel is written snaps, and recovery requires that we practice magic. We keep our attention fixed on the wire, plan long walks, solitary evenings, measured drinks at sundown and careful meals at careful hours. We avoid addressing the thing directly during the less propitious times of day. We straighten our offices, arrange and rearrange certain objects, talismans, props. Here are a few of the props I have rearranged this morning.