Public Appearances
Part 2
The dais was raised six feet above the floor, a head table of more than twenty places. The over-starched tablecloths, crudely mended in a random design, hung down low in front so that the feet of the dignitaries would not be exposed to public scrutiny. The Governor's wife, taking her place, kept her knees pressed together anyway. Whenever she accompanied her husband on platforms, she had a feeling that people could see up her dress.
Each place at the head table was set with heavy white dishes and dented cutlery. On each dinner plate, under a napkin folded like a fan, was a program with her husband's likeness on the cover. It was his official portrait, for which he had worn an expression she found forbidding. Above his head, embossed in gold lettering, it said, "Favorite Son." Each time she ran across the phrase, she wondered how it made the Governor's brother, a periodontist, feel.
"Handsome program," the Governor's wife said, but her husband did not hear her. He was going over his notes. She turned to her other side and smiled at the Majority Leader of the State Senate, who smiled back and said something she could not hear.
The Senate Majority Leader was in love with her. The Governor's wife didn't realize this, and the Governor didn't, either. In fact, the Senator was hardly aware of it himself. He was, after all, a happily married man with four children. An able politician. A hard-working legislator. He had a law practice to maintain, in addition to his legislative duties and family obligations. His star, the state's major papers all predicted, was on the rise. But none of this precluded the Senate Majority Leader from being a bit in love with the Governor's wife. He had fallen in love with her, slowly and surely, over a period of years, over a series of daises and platforms and lecturns and podia. The Governor's wife had a fragile, wounded look which attracted the Senate Majority Leader powerfully. He had not declared himself; he never would. He genuinely cherished his own wife and family, the law, and his rising star. But the Senator could not keep his eyes off the Governor's wife. He had no appetite when she sat beside him at head tables. He witnessed her fear and bravery across oceans of smoke and sweaty faces and watered drinks, and he wished that he could adopt her.
Tonight he was seated especially close to her at the center of the over-subscribed banquet table. Although their elbows were only inches apart, an arrangement of red and white carnations with miniature silk flags sprouting from them like unseemly pistils made a barrier between them. The Senator leaned around the flowers.
"You look very beautiful," he said.
The Governor's wife, picking the pleats in her napkin, looked up with startled eyes.
"A lovely dress."
Her smile wavered with pleasure, surprise, and disapproval. "Thank you." It was the most personal thing she had ever said to him.
At her right, the Governor speared a fragment of canned pineapple from his fruit cup as he looked over his notes. His wife turned to him as if he had spoken to her. The Majority Leader, who was Master of Ceremonies for the evening, picked up his own notes. This was an important occasion for him, too, a good opportunity for exposure. He had no business thinking about the Governor's wife.
How thin she is, thought the wife of the Lieutenant Governor, leaning forward from her chair at the far end of the table. Cool and thin and above it all and that dress must have cost an arm and a leg. Some people have everything. And she promised herself then and there that she would be better at it, better at all of it, than this Governor's wife. Her own time was coming, her place in the middle. She noticed that the Governor had begun to eat and she picked up her spoon.
A sour cream coffee cake, the lady in purple said to herself. With apples and walnuts. Vinny can deliver it in his cab. There was a vacant place next to her at the table. No one was looking. She quickly exchanged her empty sherbet glass for the extra one and began to eat the fruit. Hundred dollars a plate, damned if she wasn't entitled. Anyway, at least she had a good table, a clear view of the Governor and all them. Thin as a rail, that wife of his . . . no wonder. Look how she picked at her food.
At the rear of the hall, the Governor's staff had gathered at the bar. They knew better than to eat--canned fruit, rubber chicken, chemical ice cream. Everything according to schedule so far. The Governor's press secretary relaxed, sipping his first Scotch of the evening. His suit rumpled and there were deep circles under his eyes. No one ever believed he was not yet forty: he was a veteran.
"Not a bad crowd," he said.
"Better than we thought, anyway," the speechwriter answered, taking a notebook from his pocket, pausing, then putting it back again.
"How many, you think?"
"Nine-fifty?" The speechwriter's guess was wary. Estimating crowds was not one of his talents.
"Close." The press secretary smiled enigmatically, trying to convince the junior assistants that he knew more than round figures.
"All the papers here?" the executive assistant asked.
"Every last one, the buggers."
"The networks?"
"Present and accounted for."
"Good. We've reeled 'em in. Now let's just hope the old man puts on a show."
"Don't worry, he will." Smiling again, the press secretary turned to the junior assistant assigned to the Governor's wife. "How is she, by the way?"
Kevin pushed his horn-rimmed glasses higher on the bridge of his patrician nose. "Seems fine."
"Knock wood."
At the note of derision in the older man's voice, Kevin turned and asked the bartender for a Coke. Then, noticing the press secretary's sardonic expression, he abruptly changed his order to a beer. An attitude of disrespect for the Governor's wife was something he took personally. Besides, he could not understand it. She was very kind to him, and he was proud that he could look after her. Several years earlier, however, while Kevin was still studying political science at Princeton, the Governor's wife had fled from the press corps. On two separate occasions. Her blatant panic had caused talk. The more experienced staff members had kept uneasy eyes on her ever since, regarding her as a problem which might crop up any second if they weren't on their toes.
"She looks good," the Governor's personal secretary said with a grimace of envy. "Nice dress." Her own dress, a plain navy knit, had been pulling across her hips since seven-thirty that morning. She had never made it back to her apartment to change. Retyping his damn note cards. She wondered if she had time, now, to dash to the ladies room and put on some make-up before the speeches got underway. Probably. On the other hand, another vodka might put more color in her face.
The press secretary was staring at her speculatively. "I don't know . . . ," he said.
"Whaddya mean?"
"The dress."
"Hers? It's beautiful . . . what's wrong with it?"
"Maybe a little too . . . rich."
"Shit, she's the Governor's wife! If I were the Governor's wife, I'd sure as hell wear rich clothes. I'd buy out Saks."
The press secretary laughed. "Then you wouldn't be his wife for long, sweetheart."
"Christ, they're serving slower than usual tonight. . . ." The Governor's secretary was still squinting at the wheat-colored blur beside her boss on the dais. Everything must look different from up there, she thought.
"Time flies when you're having--."
"Think dinner's slow, wait 'til the speeches start," the press secretary said, aiming a razor-sharp grin at the speechwriter.
Up on the platform, the Governor's wife abandoned her modest pretenses of eating. She had an irrepressible dread of being kissed, questioned, or photographed with her mouth full. To her left, the Majority Leader jotted a note on the back of his placecard. To her right, the Governor studied his speech. The Governor's wife gazed out over the huge hall and smiled vaguely toward the bandstand, where an awkward transition from "Yankee Doodle Dandy" to "Happy Days Are Here Again" was in progress. She could hardly wait for "Goodnight, Ladies."
"Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Other Distinguished Guests
The Majority Leader's vibrant voice competed confidently with the clatter of coffee cups and dessert plates. The Governor's wife looked down. A block of red, white, and blue ice cream was melting to a lavender pool before her. She pushed the dish aside and sipped her coffee.
"Should I start with a joke, do you think?" her husband whispered.
"He has done right by us and he has done us proud . . . we have given him our votes and our trust, and he has given us his all . . . we have--."
"A joke, yes. They always like it when you start with a joke."
"How about the preacher and the farmer--that one?"
"Oh, that's a wonderful story."
"Some of them have heard it before . . . listen, do I look all right?"
"So we come here tonight, my friends, to say thank-you, Governor . . . we come here to say well-done, Governor . . . we come here, in short, to--."
"You look wonderful. Just straighten your tie a bit."
"Ladies and Gentlemen, it is my honor and my privilege to present to you our distinguished Governor, our dear friend and our favorite son, The Honorable--."
The crowd, bellowing and stamping and clapping, lumbered to its feet like a bull. Smiling, the Governor began to move toward the podium. Then, pausing, a look of boyish embarrassment on his face, he leaned down to kiss his wife. The roaring and stamping intensified. The Governor's wife smiled shyly and applauded her husband along with the others.
"My friends--."
For a moment, the public address system emitted a piercing whine. Without missing a beat, the Governor adjusted his tone and the angle of the microphone to a perfect balance.
"A few minutes ago, my lovely wife suggested to me that I begin by telling you a joke--a joke that is a particular favorite of hers. . . ."
The Governor's wife lowered her gaze to her lap, where her right hand, naked without the opal ring her parents had given her for her twenty-first birthday, lay on a silk field of winter wheat. Her fingers looked bluish, slightly swollen with too much handling.
"But then, I said to myself--and those of you who know me know how rarely I disregard my wife's advice--but I thought, no . . . this is no time for a joke."
The folds of her skirt fell gently open as she sat. The Governor's wife could see the tiny hand-sewn seam where the scorched silk had been cut from her once-perfect dress. Nobody else would notice, it was true. But she knew: there was no longer an allowance in the skirt for gypsy magic, for dream-dancing. The dress was not like new anymore. The fullness of luxury had been trimmed from it.
". . . no jokes tonight, my friends, for this is to me a solemn occasion. . . . Yes, we have a victory to celebrate . . . and yes, we have another campaign ahead . . . but in this interlude between them, we face. . . ."
The Governor's wife circled her coffee cup with her hands, warming them briefly. From the corner of his eye, the Senate Majority Leader observed the gesture and wondered how her fingers would feel against his cheek. He thought about walking around the State Capitol at night in the snow with the Governor's wife. He would offer her his gloves, and when she refused them, he would pull her hands into his overcoat pockets. Then she wouldn't be the Governor's wife anymore.
"Now, I don't think I'm an alarmist . . . and I hope I am not a pessimist . . . but I must tell the people of this great State that I am very deeply concerned. For we see all around us the--."
She watched her husband with studied absorption, her eyes solemn, her lips slightly parted. She noticed, once again, that he was looking especially well this evening. Klieg lights: they were already collecting footage for the next campaign . . . ten- and twenty- and thirty-second daubs of her husband, from which they would fashion pointillist portraits of him for mass viewing. The klieg lights shone on his head, making a halo of his near-perfect hair. His face was suffused with the rich coloration of health, the clarity of intelligence. The Governor's wife watched him, her expression almost rapt. She could feel the intensity of the crowd's assent in the air and in the marrow of her bones. He still amazed her.
In the back of the hall, the Governor's aides stood in a restless cluster by the door. The press secretary held a stop-watch in one hand, a drink in the other.
"The old man's really on tonight," the executive assistant muttered from one side of his mouth.
"You think everybody can hear all right?"
"We can, can't we?"
"Yeah. . . ."
"Damn, that's a great dress!" The Governor's personal secretary sighed. The two men looked at her as if she had mouthed an obscenity, and she grinned at them sourly. "I've heard the speech before," she said.
"And so I come before you tonight . . . not jubilant in victory . . . not swollen with success . . . but not weighed down, either, by the responsibility with which you have entrusted me. . . . I am full of optimism, my friends . . . inspired by your--."
Really knows how to reach in and pull it out of them, the Senate Majority Leader thought. He wasn't jealous, only eager to learn. Watching the subtle gestures of the Governor's hands, he denied himself a glance at the small, attentive woman above whose head the Governor addressed his following.
"I was telling my wife on our way down here this evening. . . ."
Under the table her chilled fingers probed the invisible repair in her dress, pressing the seam as if it were a wound, deliberately seeking to confirm its existence. Though she realized her husband was talking about her, the substance made little difference. Nothing he said would ever be quite like new again. But he needed her. Her hand stopped moving across her mended lap and lay still.
"And I am going to tell you, my friends, exactly what I told her, for this is what I truly--."
The lady in the purple dress looked longingly at the plate of pastries in the center of the table. No one had even touched them, the plate was too far to reach without standing up. They always put the best things in the middle, she thought, where you couldn't get your hands on them.
"He's getting ready to wind 'er up," the press secretary murmured, looking approvingly at the stopwatch. "Right on schedule."
That dress is no color at all, the Lieutenant Governor's wife thought. Cost a fortune, though. When her day came, hers and Bernie's, she'd wear red. Red would stand out in a crowd.
"And I promise you. . . ."
Lost, the Senate Majority Leader thought. She looks absolutely lost. His hands rested, helpless, on the edge of the table.
Gathering speed and scattering power like sparks, the Governor raised his hands and his voice together, sending them out to meet the crowd more than halfway. Flashbulbs popped in a vehement, almost steady string of explosions. The Governor's wife saw red, a shower of red blotting out the room and the ocean of hands and mouths. She was lost.
"And I promise you. . . ."
She swallowed hard, a foretaste of disaster on her tongue. It always came at such moments: she would hear the crack of a single shot, see her husband fall. Red would bloom on his shirt-front, a bouquet of blood-roses clutched to his chest, pearl studs glistening among them like dewdrops. His eyes, full of promise still, would struggle to stay open, to find her. Wide and blue with the true believer's sudden disbelief, her husband's mortally wounded eyes. He needed her, beside him. But she wouldn't be able to find her way to him. She would be long lost. No help at all.
"The day will come. . . ."
The Governor's wife shut her eyes. Above her the familiar voice, amplified, rose unharmed, stronger than ever. The hot white lights beat down on her face as she opened her eyes again and gazed up into the aura of promise surrounding her husband's near-perfect hair.
He possessed magical powers. She knew about magic. She understood it was that he was giving them, and why. They needed him. Their need was one of those things she had come to accept. And she understood that her premonition of mayhem was simply another of those false directions in which she constantly seemed to be getting lost. She steadied her sight, now, in her husband's direction.
". . . moving forward . . . together . . . toward tomorrow."
Twelve hundred people--she no longer questioned the figure--jumped to their feet with one deafening roar, a sound that seemed to swell, threatening to burst the hall like a huge balloon. Beneath her, the platform bucked and swayed with the pounding.
The Governor bowed his head under the barrage of adulation, a half-smile on his face. As the ovation mounted, he remained perfectly still, almost as if he were resting. Then he turned to his left and held out a hand to his wife, pulling her in to join him inside the circle of blinding light.
As she was captured in a dozen camera lenses, the Governor's wife felt something leave her, something she realized she simply could not hold onto anymore. Magic . . . she could no longer keep a place for it. It was, like mayhem, a belief she could no longer afford to indulge.
As the band struck up "Goodnight, Ladies," and the cameras clicked, the Governor's wife was presented with a spray of deep red roses. Carefully, she held the flowers so that they concealed the flaw in her dress.
While the photographers were still shooting, the Governor leaned toward his wife, bringing his lips close to her cheek.
"How was I, do you think?" he whispered.
"Perfect," she said. "Just perfect."