Her crime wouldn’t have been federal, but it sounded more ominous to slip the ‘federal’ in there.
Abby came in with a Starbucks (latte, I assumed) in one hand and a sheet of paper in the other.
‘You know that governor of ours who should be in prison but isn’t?’
Our esteemed governor — a fine representative of the opposition party — was being investigated for accepting bribes and helping condemn land that he and his close friends wanted to buy cheap as the basis for building an ultra-exclusive ‘village.’
She held the paper out and let it flutter to my desk.
After reading it, I said, ‘It’s got to be fun for him to accuse other people of committing felonies.’
‘He groped a friend of mine when we were in college.’
‘Governor Anal Retentive?’
‘He was dean of students then. After a football game we all ended up in this van going to a dinner at the president’s house. Shelly and I were on the student council so the president asked us to attend. Anyway, the van got overcrowded and Shelly had to sit on his lap. We only had to go about five or six blocks but he managed to cop several cheap feels.’
‘Why didn’t she say something?’
‘She wanted to but he could help her get financial aid for grad school.’
I grabbed my phone on the second ring. ‘You need to get out here.’ It was Ted.
‘Why is that?’
‘My dear wife has written something I think you should read before she presses “Send.”’
‘And what would that be, Ted?’
‘Her resignation. Can you believe it? She wants to resign.’
Katherine opened the door.
‘This is really bad, Dev. She really wants to resign.’
Emerald-green sweater, slimline jeans, Western boots. The attire of the fashionable coed. But a burned-out coed. The face was lined and the eyes dulled with exhaustion.
Nan walked up behind her and put her hands on Katherine’s shoulders. Between Joel and Nan, Katherine did have a pair of caring parents after all.
‘I thought you were going back upstairs for a nap.’
‘I’m too worried about Mom,’ Katherine said over her shoulder.
‘Well, you obviously didn’t sleep much last night so you need to at least lie down for a while. You look terrible, honey.’
Katherine put her hand over Nan’s. ‘She’s always flattering me like this, Dev.’
But with little-girl obedience, Katherine said goodbye to me, turned around and walked slowly over to the grand staircase to begin her ascent to her room upstairs.
‘I’ll be so damned glad when this is all over. This whole house has lost its mind. Everybody snapping at each other and Ted calling up people and screaming at them. You sure can’t count on him in a crisis.’ If her own sweater and jeans didn’t make her look like a coed, they certainly helped present her as an appealing middle-aged woman.
‘How serious is Jess about resigning?’
‘Serious, I think. I’ve begged her to stop watching TV and reading the news on her computer but she’s fixated. And none of it’s any good. The names they call her and the things they say about her.’
‘You sound as if you’ve been spending time on your own computer.’
‘I check it out every few hours but I don’t stay on long. I keep hoping to see people in her own party come to her defense. But since none of them are sure if the shooting thing is true or not, they won’t speak up. I think that hurts her more than anything.’
‘I don’t blame her. She has made a lot of supposed friends in Congress.’
‘“Supposed” is right. Well, come on. I may as well take you to her little office. I don’t think you’ve ever seen it, have you?’
‘You’re right, I haven’t. We usually meet in the living room or Ted’s den.’
‘It’s quite the place.’
Three steps into Jess’s office, I realized that Nan had been trying to prepare me for a time machine of Jess’s political career from her days as a college volunteer through her four terms as a state legislator to her two terms as a congresswoman. I’d always known that Jess had the true pol’s lust for being elected. But seeing an office that was a shrine of framed photographs, campaign posters, pennants, bumper stickers, newspaper editorials and so much more, I realized how much she was her career. Before any other role she may have fulfilled, her political role was the defining one.
And the same for Ted. There he was in half the photos. This was what united them. This career that they both fed; this political career that they both spent night and day nurturing and sustaining.
The largest photograph was of the two of them in evening clothes dancing through the night at some Washington ball. They were the center of attention, the floor to themselves as others in evening clothes stood aside watching and applauding them. How dreamlike that moment must have been for them. In this most exalted and important of cities, to be feted this way.
I went to the window and looked out at the rolling landscape of their estate. A man in a white T-shirt, jeans and a straw hat was astride a green John Deere riding mower. But the real show was a hawk soaring above the pine windbreak. For all their hunting ferocity there was a fragility in their flight that made them seem vulnerable. But I had to smile at my naiveté. I doubted that hawks seemed vulnerable in any way to their prey, which included pets as familiar as small dogs and puppies, small cats and kittens, plus rabbits and guinea pigs.
I glanced at the rest of the photographs. Joel standing with a heavyset young man, holding a rake. The man had an Old Testament beard. And there was a lone photo of Katherine when she was probably ten.
Then Jess was there. A Northwestern sweatshirt and slacks. And a lighted cigarette.
‘I see somebody called you.’
‘Do me a favor. Let’s just get rid of this resignation bullshit, all right?’
‘It’s not bullshit to me.’
‘I’m sure you realize that if you resign you’re admitting guilt.’
‘Right now I couldn’t care less. Believe it or not, Dev, I have some dignity left. The things they’re saying not just about me but also Ted—’
She went over and sat down in front of her Mac. The lid was down.
‘The election’s already over anyway. So what’s the point? Why not resign?’
‘Look around, Jess. You’ve built this grotto to you and Ted. This is your life here. Your entire life.’ I wanted to point out that she didn’t even have a photo of her daughter on the walls. ‘So you’re going to walk away from it all because you got set up?’
‘Yes, I got set up and nobody’s done a damned thing about it. Including you.’
‘I’m working on it as hard as I can. There are things I haven’t told you yet.’
‘Unless those things include the name of the person responsible for setting us up, I don’t want to hear them. Poor Ted is half insane.’
He’d cheated on her. He’d stolen her spotlight from time to time. And he’d even given her some of the worst political advice ever uttered by a so-called ‘expert.’ But none of this mattered because they were symbiotic.
‘You may as well go, Dev. I’ve made up my mind.’
‘What’s Ted saying about all this?’
‘He’s like you. He’s begging me to change my mind. He keeps thinking if he reminds me long enough about all the big parties people have in the winter months that I’ll weaken. But I won’t. There’s a time to fight and a time to retreat.’
‘Did you just make that up? He’s worried about the fucking parties?’
‘Wow. The f-word.’
‘Do me one favor then, Jess.’
‘Whenever you ask me that it’s always something I don’t want to do so I don’t know why you even bother asking.’