Oh, well. There was no choice really, the notion that she could call him back later really wasn’t a good one. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll take it next door.”
“Yes, Miss.”
Today was Tuesday, the second of October. Evelyn’s first date with Robert had been on Friday, the tenth of August, which meant they’d been seeing one another nearly two months now, and it was probably Evelyn’s irritation with the review and the never-to-be-completed letter that made her reflect now that Robert was taking his own sweet time about getting anywhere with her. Normally she was perfectly content that he didn’t seem to be in any hurry, that though the good night kisses had grown more protracted over the last two months they hadn’t led anywhere, but today she was prepared to be grouchy and short-tempered over everything. Damn that review!
She picked up the phone and said hello and heard the click as the maid hung up in some other room of the house.
“Evelyn? You sound grumpy.”
“I am grumpy,” she said. “I just saw The New York Times book review of Bradford’s new book.”
“The Times? In today’s paper?”
“No, next Sunday.”
“Next Sunday! This is only Tuesday.”
“They print a week early,” she explained. “Publishers get them the Monday before. Howard’s here, he brought three copies with him. He’s in with Bradford now, assuring him it isn’t really that bad.”
“Is it?”
“It’s awful,” she said. “It’s a really stinking review, full of snide comments and unfair parallels. He objects to Bradford concentrating mostly on what Congress was doing instead of what the White House was doing, when for Heaven’s sake Bradford was in Congress then, not the White House! He isn’t writing a history of America, he’s writing his own memoirs!”
“You sound to me like you’re really peeved.”
“You should see the Letter To The Editor I’m writing.”
“Is that wise? From a granddaughter of the author?”
“Oh, I won’t send it, I never do. But I’ve got to do something to let off steam.”
“How about taking me to dinner? I’m done for the day, I could be there by six. We’ll take the kid along and go to Rochetti’s and let her wrap herself in spaghetti.”
That was a favorite treat of Dinah’s, who had a total crush on Robert and an endless passion for spaghetti. Evelyn had been tentative about bringing Robert and Dinah together, mostly because she didn’t want Robert to think a child was being flung at him to play surrogate father to, but Robert had suggested it himself, saying that Dinah would feel a lot easier in her mind if she knew who the man was that her mother kept going out with, and it had worked very well the four or five times they’d all had dinner together.
But Evelyn said, “You have a ten o’clock tomorrow morning. You can’t drive all that way.”
“Why not? I’ll get there by six, we’ll have dinner, bring Dinah home by eight, eight-thirty, go out somewhere ourselves for a while, I’ll drop you off at midnight, be home before two, I’ll have a full seven hours sleep.”
“With four hours of driving.”
“You know I could drive forever, I love to drive.”
“I know that’s what you say. You just want to come down because you think I feel bad about the review.”
“Well, don’t you?”
“Not that bad. I’ll write my Letter To The Editor, and that’ll be the end of it.”
“Anyway, what do you think I was calling for? I had this in mind all along.”
“Liar. You never come down on a Wednesday, not during school. You were just calling to talk.”
“Prove it. I’ll be there at six.”
“I don’t want you to come,” she insisted.
“Now who’s a liar? I have to hang up now, if I’m going to get there by six.”
“Robert.”
“What?”
She very nearly said I love you. It was what she wanted to say, it was what expressed the tenderness and the gratitude she was feeling toward him right now. But it wasn’t possible. He hadn’t said anything of the sort to her, and the rules were that the woman couldn’t say it first, not without scaring the man away forever. So there was a little silence, and then she said, “... You’re very nice.”
He laughed, pleasurably. “See you at six,” he said.
iii
Howard came out first, and Evelyn was waiting for him in the hall. She had gone back to her letter, but not successfully, it had all sounded too juvenile and foolish when she’d tried to write more of it after talking with Robert. But she was still angry, and she said, “Are you going to write a Letter To The Editor?”
“The worst thing we could do,” he said. “Did you talk to him again about that title?”
He meant The Final Glory, the title Bradford had dropped so unexpectedly into the middle of that interview with George back in August. Howard had spent most of the month of September trying to get Bradford to explain what he’d meant by that, what The Final Glory would contain, but he’d been just as obstinate with Howard as he’d been with George, so finally two weeks ago Howard had asked Evelyn to take a stab at prying the information out of him.
It was more than simple curiosity on Howard’s part. Random House, in its ads for Bradford’s books, always listed all the titles in the seven-volume memoirs, those completed and those projected. Now Bradford was insisting that this new title be inserted between The Servant of the Nation and Toward Tomorrow, and he wouldn’t tell anyone what the book was supposed to be about.
“Well, he finally said something,” Evelyn said now. “Not much, I’m afraid.”
“I’ll take crumbs,” Howard said. “Quick, he’ll be out in a minute.”
“He said, ‘Well, it would mean I’m going to do something, wouldn’t it? And I have to keep my options open beforehand, that’s why I don’t want to say anything about it.’”
“That’s what he said?” Howard scratched a knuckle against his jaw, thinking about it. “That means he hasn’t made up his mind yet. There’s something he might do, but he isn’t sure yet whether he will or not.”
“Oh, no, I don’t think so. Bradford’s going to do something, for sure, or he wouldn’t say a word, he wouldn’t mention the title at all, not in public. I think he’s just got a decision to make about which something it is, there are two or maybe three different things he might do and he doesn’t know yet for sure which one to pick.”
“Could be,” Howard said, as Bradford appeared at the other end of the hall. Under his breath, Howard said, “Keep at him.”
“All right.”
Howard turned and said to Bradford, “I was just telling Evelyn, actually he’s given us plenty of quotes, if we want to use them.”
“We don’t,” Bradford said.
“I know we don’t. The point I’m trying to make is that the review isn’t as bad as it looks right off the bat. His tone is unfortunate, but that’s Rutherford. There’s nothing to be done about the way the man sounds. But what he’s saying, once you get past the tone, is mostly complimentary.”
“What he’s saying,” Bradford said, “is that nobody gives a damn about yesterday’s heroes. What he’s saying is that I’m an obsolete politician, I’ve run my last race, I’m out to pasture, all I am now is bedside reading. And he’s right.”