“Maybe, but don’t let him hear you say it again. Even if he’s up at Tristano he can hear that kind of stuff.”
“Are we going to Tristano?”
“I certainly hope so.”
“When?”
“Talk to your mother about it.”
“If we see my father up there we can ask him who my real father is.”
“I doubt he knows,” Roscoe said. “I doubt anybody knows.”
“People say I look like my father.”
“So does your bulldog.”
“I don’t have a bulldog.”
“No, but if you had one he’d look like your father. That’s how it goes.”
“How did my father die?”
“His heart left him. I think he gave it away.”
“To who?”
“To you.”
“I don’t understand, Roscoe.”
“That’s because you look like a bulldog.”
Beau Geste (3)
At Tivoli, Roscoe called Alex and gave him the news. Alex said that was fantastic and asked Roscoe to come to City Hall to talk.
“Your mother is preparing lunch,” Roscoe said. “I’ll be there in an hour.”
Gilby went elsewhere, and Roscoe sat in his usual chair in the east parlor and watched two of Veronica’s servants, Joseph the butler and Jennifer, a kitchen maid, set trays of food on the buffet in the dining room. Then Joseph came toward Roscoe with two glasses and a bottle of Mumms in a bucket of ice. Veronica came back with a box of Barracini chocolate creams, which she opened and set in front of Roscoe.
“Shall I open the champagne, Mrs. Fitzgibbon?”
“Please do, Joseph.” And the butler popped the cork and poured for two. Veronica closed the sliding doors to the dining room and sat across from Roscoe on the sofa.
“I got these chocolates for you in New York last week,” she said, putting a cream in his mouth and kissing him as he began to chew. She picked up her champagne.
“To your genius,” she said.
“I had great incentive,” he said.
They clinked and drank. She kicked off her shoes and tucked her legs under her, which put her knees on view like twin works of art. “Now tell me how you did it,” she said.
“I told them she was blackmailing you because Elisha raped her and fathered the boy, and that it was all true.”
“Roscoe, you didn’t say that. That’s horrible. You didn’t.”
“I did. I said he committed suicide to remove himself as the target of her blackmail, and that you understood why he did it.”
“God, Roscoe, what have you done? How could you say such awful things about us?”
“I also said it was all hypothetical and nobody would believe her rape story anyway, when and if her perjury and blackmail went public. I told Marcus we’d prosecute for blackmail if she didn’t end the custody fight.”
“Everybody will believe the rape story. It’ll be all over town.”
“I’m sure Marcus realizes by now I invented it.”
“But how could you say such a thing about Elisha?”
“He asked me to.”
“How did he ask you?”
“Little by little he’s been revealing what he did to protect you and Gilby. All our lives I could read what he was and wasn’t saying. Now I keep discovering what he did and didn’t do. Didn’t this story work? Isn’t she gone? Aren’t you and Gilby safe? And Alex?”
“I think we are. The family’s closer than ever. Alex is like a second father to Gilby since he came home from service. They go riding. He’s taking him to Army’s opening football game at West Point.”
“There you are. Elisha knew what he was doing.”
“You knew what you were doing. You’re the one who made it work.”
“I only did what he told me to do.”
“But rape, Roscoe, why rape? It’s the last thing Elisha would ever do. She never said he raped her.”
“I know that. Did she even say they’d been lovers?”
“That was her blackmail.”
“Was it?”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m not sure. I’m waiting for further word from Elisha.”
Beau Geste (4)
In the Mayor’s corner office at City Hall, seated in his highbacked leather armchair at his hand-carved oak desk, framed by the American and Albany flags, with the portrait of Pieter Schuyler, Albany’s first Mayor, looking down at him, Alex, in his tailor-made, pale-gray herringbone and repp tie, had become new, had traded his lowly infantryman’s status for that of commander of the city. He was on the telephone as Roscoe sat down across from him. He winked at Roscoe as he talked, and when he hung up he leaned across the desk to shake Roscoe’s hand.
“Congratulations, old fellow,” he said. “You did good.”
“I told you not to worry.”
“You certainly did. What was your argument?”
Art Foley, Alex’s secretary, came into the office with the afternoon mail and set it in front of the Mayor.
“This isn’t the place to talk,” Roscoe said when Foley went out.
“All right,” said Alex. “We’ll go for a walk. But I have news. The Supreme Court just ruled that state troopers can’t be present at the polling places. Too much intimidation of the voters.”
“Another battle won,” said Roscoe. “What’s next in the campaign?”
“A radio speech tomorrow night,” said Alex, “right after Jay Farley. He’s harping on whores and immorality.”
“That’s last week’s news.”
“His new line is, let’s clean up the city for the returning soldier boys, give them a pure town to come home to.”
“It really is an excellent idea,” Roscoe said.
“What?”
“Cleaning up the town. Give the whores a vacation till after election, and padlock the whorehouses.”
“Didn’t the whorehouses close after the raid?”
“Does a whore ever really close her legs?”
“What about the Governor padlocking the Notchery? It looks like we’re taking dictation from him and Jay Farley.”
“Politically motivated is our line on the Notchery and on Farley’s view of it. We can’t let the Republicans take the moral high ground. We must protect our soldier boys and young people against goatish lust and illicit smut. We raid the after-hours strip clubs, Mother’s, the Blue Jay Bar, we nail Broadway Books for pushing pornographers like Henry Miller, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and those dirty Cuban comic books, then we sweep the newsstands and confiscate every girlie magazine that shows more titty than is absolutely necessary in a virtuous society.”
“That’s a freedom-of-speech issue. How do we get away with it?”
“We don’t indict anybody, and after the election things go back to normal. Meantime, it takes people’s minds off Jay Farley.”
“I saw Patsy this morning and he didn’t mention you had this in mind,” Alex said.
“He hasn’t heard it yet. I just invented the idea.”
“Well, then, fine, fine,” Alex said with a smile, “very fine. How will Bindy take it?”
“Bindy can’t object. He’s got a consorting charge hanging over him. We’ll organize it all with Burkey and Donnelly.” Melvin Burke had been named acting police chief after O.B.’s death, and District Attorney Phil Donnelly would prosecute. “We’ll make the raids tomorrow afternoon, in time for you to talk about it on the radio.”
“Sex on the radio?”
“It’s an idea whose time has come. We’ll call it something else.”
“Shouldn’t we let Patsy know the plan?”
“He’ll be thrilled. We’ll tell him after we take our walk.”
They left City Hall and walked along Eagle Street, past the Court of Appeals and the County Courthouse and up Elk Street with its old townhouses, once the city’s elite Quality Row, sometimes compared in elegance to Gramercy Park. The Governor’s Mansion had been at number 13 Elk in the
last century. Now the whole street was aging with scant grace, two nightclubs on the block and one handsome building defaced with a kitschy black-and-white Art Deco façade. What would Henry James say?
On the street Alex revealed Patsy’s news. The state Party leaders were thinking Alex might make a good run for governor in 1946: a decorated combat veteran with a Yale degree, an upstater who could speak well and think on his feet, a good-looking young fellow with a million-dollar smile. What else do you want in a governor? Well, will he get any votes? Oh, he will. And now Patsy has another reason to escalate this year’s totals: shove these numbers up your nose, Governor, and look how they love our boy Alex.
“I know Patsy would like a landslide,” Roscoe said. “I have it on our agenda. How do you feel about a run for governor?”
“I think I like it. Shouldn’t I?”
“Don’t get used to it. They don’t nominate upstaters. But we can try again to be the exception. You remember 1932?”
“I’ve been thinking about it all morning.”
“Six more delegates, your father might’ve been governor.”
“Maybe history will repeat.”
“And maybe they’d offer you lieutenant governor.”
“I wouldn’t take it.”
“Don’t say that. You can’t know where it might lead. Your father took it out of duty. He never even wanted to be governor. If he’d really fought for it in his heart, he might’ve got it. And he’d have been a memorable governor. He did as well with the number-two job as anybody ever does.”
Roscoe was feeling something new in his throat, a rising gorge that might choke him, resistance to doing this thing again. He couldn’t put Alex through it, couldn’t watch it; the incumbent would be very tough to unseat next year. Food for powder, Alex, food for powder. They walked across the park behind the old Albany Academy toward the Capitol, and Roscoe felt the long line of governors hovering over their lives: Cleveland at the top of the Capitol steps watching the torchlight parade (Lyman his grand marshal) coming up State Street, lighting his road to the White House in triumph over a paternity scandal: “Ma, Ma, where’s Pa?”; and Teddy Roosevelt racing a newspaperman up the Capitol’s seventy-seven front steps, ready to give an exclusive interview if he loses, which he won’t, for the press is the enemy; and our old pal Al Smith in wing collar and cutaway, standing for his 1928 portrait of a presidential loser; and FDR entering the Executive Chamber, held at the armpit by an aide, rotating his dead legs in braces in a simulated walk to the desk where he will sit in judgment on Jimmy Walker, the trial that will destroy Tammany; our delightful incumbent Governor trying now to do the same to the Albany Democrats; and, of course, Governor Elisha Fitzgibbon delivering his State of the State message to a joint session of the legislature: “My fellow New Yorkers—I wonder do you kitty? Do you cut pips?”
These images were neither nostalgic nor cautionary, but Roscoe thought they might be trying to reveal that everything familiar was illusory and to be avoided, and that only the mysteries in Eli’s double-talk and ambiguous death were worth pursuing: Eli feeding Roscoe ammunition for the battle against oblivion. This is not the end, Eli was saying. An imaginative man will find a way around the impossible. After all, Roscoe, you are now the courtroom hero, the inventor of yesterday and tomorrow, the Prophet of Fraudulence, and what obstruction could possibly stand in your way?
They stood in the shadow of the Capitol, the fortress of the enemy. Roscoe could not foresee when the Party would again have an ally in the Executive Chamber. It depressed him to think of waging futile battles to win it back. When should an old soldier call it a day? Shouldn’t you quit a winner, Ros? And so he told Alex about Gilby’s court case.
“You actually used the word ‘rape’?”
“Better than ‘incest,’” Roscoe said. “This way it’s an instant of sexual wildness, not a family vice.”
Alex tightened his face, his eyes narrowed, his lips flattened. His resemblance to Gilby was as obvious as his anger.
“You had no right to talk of rape,” Alex said. “You should’ve checked with me. Goddamn it, Roscoe, this disgraces my father, makes him an animal. And it humiliates me. God knows what it might do to Gilby.”
“It was a distraction for Pamela’s lawyer. The blood test destroyed their case, and our threat of prosecution guarantees she won’t come back.”
“It was lousy. It stinks.”
“Try to remember why your father killed himself.”
“I’ve never understood it.”
“He did it for the family.”
“You say that, but I never bought it.”
“He did it for the Party, for you.”
“For me?”
“The scandal could’ve erupted in the middle of your campaign. But he eliminated that possibility by eliminating himself.”
“You’re reading too much into it.”
“I think not. He not only got rid of her blackmail, he proclaimed himself Gilby’s father. He knew his blood was the same as Gilby’s—type AB. We found his blood test with papers he left on his desk before he killed himself. Why leave a blood test there that night? His last chance to let us know about the paternity, to admit it to anybody who could read. He knew what the church and the public would say about it and he didn’t want anyone else blamed.”
Alex said nothing. He had probably not known his father’s blood type. Why would he? Roscoe hadn’t known it either. Elisha hadn’t left any blood test with his papers. Roscoe created the test for the court hearing, also created AB as Elisha’s type because of its compatibility with Gilby. And Alex.
At the mention of the blood type, anger instantly left Alex’s eyes, replaced with a new vigilance. He stared at Roscoe with uneasy respect, with awareness, perhaps, that this new fact had a future, and that Roscoe had found a way to say to him what had never been said, never could be said.
“Bringing in rape just sealed the bargain,” Roscoe said, “and turned it into classic melodrama. One shot and the poor soul fattens. Wouldn’t you prefer a drunken family member forcing himself on a female rather than an incestuous intrigue that carries on for months, as Pamela said it had?”
“Pamela said that?”
“She did.”
“The woman is evil.”
“It’s pitiful she has such a need for it.”
“She doesn’t deserve any of your compassion,” Alex said.
“She’s not getting much. We defeated her with Elisha’s help. She’s no longer a factor, but the war goes on.”
“What war?”
“The war between love and death.”
“Whose love and death?”
“Good question,” Roscoe said.
Roscoe sat up when the balloon burst, but of course there was no balloon. He had been visiting the Museum of Forgotten Sounds and on the wall he found a sign: “Call me and I will come to free you.” He did not know who might be the “I” of the statement. He went on to listen to the triangle the junkman jangled, the pumper’s bells when the horses came out the firehouse door, the sound of Owen Ward’s ice pick when Owen stuck it into a cake of ice, the Jewish peddler’s voice chanting pineapples for sale, “Pineys, pineys, the things with the shtickies on them.” Roscoe heard the women in black dresses and black head-kerchiefs speaking a foreign tongue as they cut dandelions from the field and dropped them into a cloth sack. He heard the bolt action of an ’03, the bell of the horse car entering the Lumber District, St. Joseph’s church bell on the morning of his father’s funeral, the bell on Judge Brady’s cow, the scissors sharpener’s emery wheel grinding the butcher knife. The sounds seemed to imply trauma. A voice from the gramophone asked, “In what year did compassion win the election?” As he left the museum, the female usher told him, “Call me and I will come to free you.”
Cal Kendrick, second-generation caretaker at Tristano, piled up three tiers of logs to start a major fire burning in the great fireplace of the Trophy House after he heard from Veronica that visitors
would be coming for a short stay. The house was Tristano’s original building, built in 1873 by Lyman Fitzgibbon.
Cal’s father, Zachary, an Adirondack guide, had been hired by Lyman as Tristano’s first resident outdoorsman. The main lodge and the Swiss Cottage, where the family stayed, had both been closed since late September, and Cal and his wife, Belle, were shuttering all secondary buildings when Veronica called and said to keep the Trophy House open. So Cal started the fire at dawn to banish the deep chill and bake heat into the fieldstone walls, which would hold the heat long after the fire faded. Belle dressed all six beds in the three bedrooms with extra blankets, flannel sheets, and hot-water jars for cold feet. More than thirty years ago Roscoe and Veronica discovered, in all of those beds, varying intensities of what they considered love, as well as the thrilling dimensions of most of each other’s bodies—discovery that went just so far and no farther. Roscoe did not expect any of the beds to be put to comparable use tonight, yet it was Veronica’s decision to stay here, and not in the lodge, so there was no reason to abandon all hope, ye who enter.
“I want to see the mink family and I want to see the ghosts,” Gilby said.
They were in Veronica’s 1942 Buick station wagon, Roscoe driving, the back of the wagon piled with suitcases, an ice chest with sandwiches and Tru-Ade for Gilby, plus four bottles of Margaux from the Tivoli wine cellar. When they stopped at Chestertown for coffee, Roscoe said he’d have to call Alex in the morning to find out how the press received his ungodly sex speech; but Veronica said, No, don’t call. No? No. And Roscoe: All right, why? And she: Don’t change the subject, we’re supposed to have a good time without politics, this is a family visit, this is Tristano time, isn’t it? It certainly is, said Roscoe.
And Gilby asked, “Will we see the ghosts tonight?”
“My definitive and absolutely final answer to your question,” Roscoe said, “is maybe.”
“You said we would.”
“I said it and I stand by it. But you don’t think I know exactly when ghosts come and go, do you, Gil? There’s nothing to stop them from ramming around the house at sunset, or dawn, or high noon, or not at all. Nobody knows the timetables of ghosts.”
Roscoe Page 29
