The question seemed to answer itself in the silence that followed as Hillary Constable crossed over to the desk and removed a black date book from the middle drawer.
“This is his calendar. I took it from his study downstairs.” She opened to a place already marked by a ribbon. “That next week, the week after he was killed, like almost every week, was filled up with appointments, places he had to go, speeches he had to give; but then all of them were crossed out, all except one, an appointment he had for the next morning with Quentin Burdick of the New York Times. Why did Burdick want to see him? And why did Robert cancel everything else? Was it because he knew what Burdick was going to ask him, and that it was a story that, once it was published, was going to change everything?”
Chapter Five
Robert Constable had made a mockery of his marriage by frequent acts of infidelity; Bobby Hart had never once betrayed his wife. He was young and good-looking and, if that were not enough, a United States senator who was not only widely respected but, in the phrase so often used, destined for higher things. In a city in which power, and not money, was the leading aphrodisiac, Bobby Hart did not lack for opportunities, and, except perhaps in the minds of rigid moralists, would not have lacked excuse.
Bobby Hart had been in love with Laura from the first moment he saw her. She had been too shy to trust her instincts and a little too scared of what she felt to come quite as quickly to the same conclusion. It was only later, after they were married, after the collapse, that Bobby fully realized how fragile, how vulnerable, she had always been. Beautiful in a way that at times seemed almost otherworldly, she moved entirely in her own orbit, indifferent to what others might think, or what others might say, interested only in what she knew and loved, which was Bobby Hart and Bobby Hart alone. She would have lived a life of perfect bliss if they could have lived, just the two of them, a life of solitude, but she had tried instead to live the life her husband thought important. She had helped in his first campaign for Congress; appeared smiling at his side in front of crowds that terrified her, and, acting with a bravery that passed unnoticed, even gave short speeches of her own.
Then they moved to Washington and she discovered that she was not just expected to share her husband with the world, but that they were not to have in any real sense any life at all. Other people seemed to thrive on it, the constant movement, the constant rush, the endless gossip, the endless rumors, the belief that Washington was the center of the universe, the only place that mattered, a place where everyone was always busy, where everything, even the smallest detail, was important, a place where everyone was always certain what was going to happen next, and where everyone almost always was wrong. It was a madhouse, a charnel house of incoherent voices, and after a while all she could hear inside her head was the constant, crazy noise, and she knew, deep down inside her, that if she did not leave she would quickly lose her mind. Had she been less unworldly and more experienced she might have decided she was the only sane one there, and become ironic.
No one had seen the inner turmoil beneath the smiling surface of Laura’s gentle, lovely face; no one had known how much effort it had taken just to keep herself together, to show the world what the world wanted, and expected, to see. She began to make excuses, invent reasons why Bobby should go to some event alone; and when, rebelling against what she thought her own failings, she forced herself to go, she would sometimes fall into sudden silences or suddenly start chattering aimlessly about something that had nothing to do with the conversation. She was slipping away, but it was gradual, like a slowly changing mood, the way boredom takes the place of excitement when the novelty wears off. Bobby had not understood that the endless whirl of official gatherings and Georgetown parties had lost their freshness and become a tired routine-until the night she told him with a lonely smile that she had to go away.
“I can’t live here, I just can’t-I’ve tried. I’d do anything for you, Bobby, but I can’t do this. I have to go home, our home, Bobby; the one we bought together, where we said we’d always live. I’m not leaving you; I don’t want you to leave me. I’ll be there, at home, waiting every night.”
It was only then that he realized what he had done to her, and from that day forward his ambition lived, so to speak, on borrowed time. He promised himself, and he promised her, that as soon as he finished the more important things he had started, he would quit the Senate, resign his seat, and come home to Santa Barbara. This was what he thought he owed her, and it was what he wanted for himself. He was still in love with her-he would always be in love with her-and he could not stand the thought that, for however short time, they would live apart.
Laura moved back to Santa Barbara and Bobby started spending weekends there as often as he could, and then, two years later, at almost the same time, Bobby said it was time to quit and Laura told him that instead of that she wanted a second chance. She insisted she was stronger, that she had now quite recovered, and that she loved him too much to let him stop what he was doing because of her. And so she came back to Washington, and Bobby for his part made sure that things were different. They rarely went to Georgetown parties and they seldom saw anyone who was not an old friend. They spent a lot of time with Charlie Finnegan and, when she was not at home in Ann Arbor where she had her medical practice, his wife, Clare.
Bobby did everything he could to protect her. He almost never told her what he learned on the Senate Intelligence Committee, no matter how angry and depressed he might have become listening to more tales of wanton violence and every form of evil. He tried always to be cheerful and eager, as if the only thing he had had on his mind all day was getting home to her. But Laura had acquired an almost mathematically precise ability, a kind of calculus of false exuberance, to measure the degree of his well-intentioned duplicity. She knew what he was doing and loved him even more because of it.
Their life settled into a comfortable routine. And if it was not everything she had wanted, it was good enough. She knew for certain that she would rather live with him in the apartment they had taken in Washington’s northwest corner, she would rather live with him anywhere, than live anywhere else, even Santa Barbara, without him. Sometimes, if he was traveling overseas, or had to give a speech somewhere out of town, she would fly back to California where he would join her on the weekend. The week the president died, when all of Washington gathered for the funeral, Bobby told her no one would notice if she was not there.