The old man had looked up when the son entered the office.
Just ask him if he didn’t, the old man said.
Beverly Hills crude, the son said, and she married him.
Pick yourself up.
Brush yourself off.
I hadn’t eaten in twenty-eight hours, she would say to the desk.
Not that it mattered to the desk.
6
On the plane to Miami that morning she had experienced a brief panic, a sense of being stalled, becalmed, like the first few steps off a moving sidewalk. Off the campaign she would get no overnight numbers. Off the campaign she would get no spin, no counterspin, no rumors, no denials. The campaign would be en route to San Jose and her seat on the DC-9 would be empty and she was sitting by herself in this seat she had paid for herself on this Delta flight to Miami. The campaign would move on to Sacramento at noon and San Diego at one and back to Los Angeles at two and she would still be sitting in this seat she had paid for herself on this Delta flight to Miami.
This was just downtime, she told herself. This was just an overdue break. She had been pushing herself too hard, juggling too many balls, so immersed in the story she was blind to the story.
This could even be an alternate way into the story.
In the flush of this soothing interpretation she ordered a vodka and orange juice and fell asleep before it came. When she woke over what must have been Texas she could not at first remember why she was on this sedative but unfamiliar plane. RON Press Overnites at Hyatt Wilshire, the Los Angeles schedule had said, and the bus had finally arrived at the Hyatt Wilshire and the press arrangements had been made out of Chicago but her name was not on the list and there was no room.
Chicago fucked up, what else is new, the traveling press secretary had shrugged. So find somebody, double up, wheels up at six sharp.
She recalled a fatigue near vertigo. She recalled standing at the desk for what seemed a long time watching the apparently tireless children with whom she had crossed the country drift toward the bar and the elevator. She recalled picking up her bag and her computer case and walking out into the cold California night in her gabardine jacket and asking the doorman if he could get her a taxi to LAX. She had not called the desk until she had the boarding pass for Miami.
7
When she arrived at the house in Sweetwater at five-thirty that afternoon the screen door was unlatched and the television was on and her father was asleep in a chair, the remote clutched in his hand, a half-finished drink and a can of jalapeño bean dip at his elbow. She had never before seen this house but it was indistinguishable from the house in Hialeah and before that the unit in Opa-Locka and for that matter the place between Houston and NASA. They were just places he rented and they all looked alike. The house in Vegas had looked different. Her mother had still been living with him when they had the house in Vegas.
Pardon my using your time but I’ve been trying to call your mother and that asshole she lives with refuses to put her on the line.
She would deal with that later.
She had dealt with the plane and she would deal with that.
She sat on a stool at the counter that divided the living room from the kitchen and began reading the Miami Herald she had picked up at the airport, very methodically, every page in order, column one to column eight, never turning ahead to the break, only occasionally glancing at the television screen. The Knight-Ridder reporter who had been sitting next to her on the plane the day before appeared to have based his file entirely on the most-likely-voters story the wires had moved. California political insiders are predicting a dramatic last-minute shift in primary voting patterns here, his story began, misleadingly. An American hostage who had walked out of Lebanon via Damascus said at his press conference in Wiesbaden that during captivity he had lost faith not only in the teachings of his church but in God. Hostage Describes Test of Faith, the headline read, again misleadingly. She considered ways in which the headline could have been made accurate (Hostage Describes Loss of Faith? Hostage Fails Test of Faith?), then put down the Herald and studied her father. He had gotten old. She had called him at Christmas and she had talked to him from Laguna last week but she had not seen him and at some point in between he had gotten old.
She was going to have to tell him again about her mother.
Pardon my using your time but I’ve been trying to call your mother and that asshole she lives with refuses to put her on the line.
She had told him on the telephone from Laguna but it had not gotten through, she was going to have to tell him again, he would want to talk about it.
It occurred to her suddenly that this was why she was here.
She had arrived at LAX with every intention of returning to Washington and had heard herself asking instead for a flight to Miami.
She had asked for a flight to Miami because she was going to have to tell him again about her mother.
That her mother had died was not going to change the course of his days but it would be a subject, it was something they would need to get through.
They would not need to talk about Catherine. Or rather: he would ask how Catherine was and she would say fine and then he would ask if Catherine liked school and she would say yes.
She should call Catherine. She should let Catherine know where she was.
We had a real life and now we don’t and just because I’m your daughter I’m supposed to like it and I don’t.
She would call Catherine later. She would call Catherine the next day.
Her father snored, a ragged apnea snore, and the remote dropped from his hand. On the television screen the graphic Broward Closeup appeared, over film of what seemed to be a mosque in Pompano Beach. It developed that discussion of politics had been forbidden at this mosque because many of what the reporter called Pompano Muslims came from countries at war with one another. “In Broward County at least,” the reporter concluded, “Muslims who have known only war can now find peace.”
This too was misleading. It occurred to her that possibly what was misleading was the concept of “news” itself, a liberating thought. She picked up the remote and pressed the mute.
“Goddamn ragheads,” her father said, but did not open his eyes.
“Daddy,” she said tentatively.
“Goddamn ragheads deserve to get nuked.” He opened his eyes. “Kitty. Don’t. Jesus Christ. Don’t do that.”
“It’s not Kitty,” she said. “It’s her daughter. Your daughter.”