Happy Endings

by Sally Quinn

  Just his saying that gave her chills. He had inadvertently told her by calling the President a patient. Or did he know what he was doing?

  “He’s got to make some kind of announcement.”

  “This is not my problem. I’m a doctor and a scientist, not a flack.”

  “Dammit, Michael. You can’t do this. It was your idea. You got the President into this mess. You suggested it at dinner in front of everyone, making it impossible for him not to do it. You must have considered the consequences of an unfortunate outcome. You can’t get away with this ‘What do you mean we, paleface?’ routine.”

  “Is this our first fight?”

  “Stop patronizing me.”

  “Look, Sadie. First of all, you’re jumping to conclusions. You don’t know anything. Second, assuming I did meet with the President, you have no idea what I said to him. Third, assuming I met with the President and that I briefed him on the results of the test, you can also assume that I would have discussed various options with him about how best to proceed. Beyond that, I have no role. Okay?”

  “Okay.” She was calmer now. “Then what can we do?”

  “What happens now is completely up to the President.”

  * * *

  “Sadie, it’s Jen.”

  “Hi. What’s up?”

  “Well, nothing, I’m just relieved to see that the President does not have AIDS. That was a weird thing, they did, though, waiting for over a week to announce the results of the test. I was beginning to wonder there for a while. I bet ole Manolas must have been sweating bullets. This is not your press secretary’s favorite scenario. Frankly, I was surprised that Freddy agreed to take that test. A little risky considering his rather checkered past. I must say, the announcement was a little tacky though. Kissing Blanche on the lips in front of the entire White House press corps. I’m surprised they didn’t have intercourse. It would have made a great photo.”

  “Oh Jenny, you’re terrible.”

  “By the way, how’s the good doctor?”

  “Who?”

  “Oh, please.”

  “Oh, Michael. You mean Michael Lanzer?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen him in a couple of months. Not since the disastrous seder.”

  “Trouble in paradise?”

  “There’s certainly no trouble. There’s nothing.”

  “So you haven’t converted yet.”

  “C’mon, Jen.”

  “Sorry. I really am sorry.”

  “Let’s change the subject. Tell me some gossip. There is absolutely nothing happening in this town. It’s boring, boring, boring. Totally dead.”

  “I do have one thing.”

  “Oh, great. I knew I could count on you. I used to be able to rely on Lorraine for gossip but she’s totally dried out. It’s all over for her. She’s finished. Tell me, what do you know?”

  “Allison is pregnant.”

  * * *

  She felt about the first anniversary of Rosey’s death the same way she had felt about Christmas. She just did not want to be in Washington.

  Everyone had offered. Invitations from people she didn’t even know had been pouring in. Come stay with us, get away from everything, don’t let yourself be alone.

  She had insisted that Annie Laurie and Outland go to Europe with friends. Spare them. She really didn’t want to be with her parents and certainly not with Rosey’s. What she wanted was to be somewhere she couldn’t be found, haunted, trailed, photographed, on display. She figured that if she had managed to carry on an affair for two years in the White House as First Lady without getting caught, then she could certainly find someplace to go on the anniversary of Rosey’s death without being found out. It was a challenge. One that she felt up to.

  The invitation came unexpectedly from Rosey’s dear friend Cotes Tennant, the former ambassador to England, who had a hunting preserve in Georgia, near the Florida border. He had thousands of acres with a small comfortable house in the midst of mossy glades and groves of live oaks. Near the swamps were a string of outer islands, miles of white sand dunes inhabited by wild horses. The house was staffed year-round by the offspring of family retainers who cooked and cleaned and were ready to care for guests who came down to shoot dove at a moment’s notice. There was an airstrip on the property, and Cotes offered his own Lear jet for the trip. He couldn’t be there but she was welcome to take anyone she wanted.

  It was perfect. She would take Willie and Monica and Jenny and go down for a long weekend. She would read, take canoe trips, jeep and pony rides, Willie would be in heaven and she would be in privacy. She accepted.

  The date of Rosey’s death was July 3, her birthday.

  The papers and magazines were already in a feeding frenzy about it. She would tell nobody about Georgia. She would drive out of her house several days before the anniversary, hiding on the floor of the car. She would send Willie and Monica out in another car and have Jenny meet them at some private isolated airport in southern Maryland. From there they would fly directly to Georgia and Beau Rivage. Afterward, she would drive up to Savannah and spend a few days with her parents. She was extremely pleased with her plan.

  She was certainly not expecting Michael’s call.

  “How are you?” His voice sounded formal.

  “Fine.” She tried to sound nonchalant.

  “I’m calling because it’s two weeks away from your birthday and the first anniversary of your husband’s death.”

  “Oh? I guess I must have forgotten.”

  “I’d forgotten, too.”

  “What?” She was confused.

  “How much I miss you when I don’t talk to you.”

  “Do you just refrain from calling me for months at a time so you can get to say things like that?”

  She was hurt that he never called, that he hadn’t talked to her since she’d called about Freddy. She just wasn’t in the mood for playful sparring.

  “I’m calling you now, Sadie.”

  “I’m supposed to keel over with excitement?”

  She hadn’t meant to sound so defensive but she was depressed and she wanted him to know how she felt. She didn’t feel like playing it cool. Her life was not a game and if that’s what he wanted he could look somewhere else. She was a human being with feelings and pain and he didn’t seem to be aware of that, or if he was he didn’t give a damn.

  He ignored her remark.

  “We have a custom. It’s called Yahrzeit. It means a year’s time. The year after someone has died. The bereaved spend that day with people they love. And who love them.”

  “That’s exactly what I plan to do, thank you. I’m spending that day with Willie and Monica and Jenny. We’re going away someplace where nobody will find us.”

  “I’d like to spend that day with you, too.”

  “You’d what?”

  “I want to be with you. I’ll go wherever it is you’re going. I’ll meet you there. It’s important to me, Sadie.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I… I care about you.”

  She was so overwhelmed that she couldn’t reply. It seemed that he was trying to tell her that he loved her. Why was she enraged at him?

  “Jesus Christ, Michael! We haven’t spoken in almost two months. And it was almost two months before that. And then it was I who called you. What the hell do you think you’re doing now? You call up two weeks before my birthday and the anniversary of Rosey’s death and insinuate yourself into my life as though you had some claim on me. It’s so arrogant I can’t even believe it. What do you think I’m doing with my life here anyway? Do you think I’m just sitting here day after day waiting for you to call? Then when you do I’ll just leap with joy and rearrange all of my plans for you? Is this your way of showing me how much you care about me? Well, forget it. Is this what you call a friendship? Because if it is it’s the damnedest friendship I’ve ever seen. Friends are people who care about each other, who are always there for you
when you need them. You don’t fit that description. I offered you my friendship and I’ve given it wholeheartedly. I’ve been supportive of you and your work. You may have noticed that this has not exactly been the easiest year of my life. In fact, there aren’t too many people who’ve been through what I’ve been through. I can use all the help I can get. I must have been demented to think that you were going to be my friend. You must have thought so, too. You’ll just have to forgive me my delusions. I’ve not been myself lately. But I’ll get over it. I promise you. Now I have a suggestion for you. The weekend of my birthday and the Yahrzeit, or whatever you call it, is also the Fourth of July weekend. It just happens to be one of the few holidays that Jews and gentiles celebrate alike. I happen to know something about this one. I suggest that you and your family go watch fireworks and eat hot dogs together. Hebrew National makes very good kosher hot dogs, I’m told. And while you’re at it why don’t you take one of those firecrackers and shove it.”

  When she had finished speaking she slumped with exhaustion. She had been standing up, holding the phone in her hand, pacing back and forth in her upstairs study as though she were on drugs. Now she had no energy at all.

  “You’re really hurt, aren’t you?”

  He seemed surprised.

  “Oh Michael. What do you think, for God’s sake?”

  “I’m sorry, Sadie. I am so sorry. I apologize. I had no idea. I couldn’t imagine that someone like you could be hurt by someone like me. I never thought that you would care about something like that. I didn’t know. I didn’t understand.”

  “I guess there’s just a lot about each other we don’t understand, isn’t there?”

  * * *

  So. Michael was coming to Beau Rivage. He had sent flowers the day after their conversation. He had been truly bewildered by her outburst. She had called to thank him and he had asked again to be with her on Yahrzeit.

  She couldn’t resist. She had told him yes. The plan was that he would fly to Jacksonville the morning of her birthday, drive an hour to Beau Rivage, spend the day, and then drive back to Jacksonville. He would spend the night there and take the early flight out the next morning. She would drive to Savannah to visit her parents for a few days. What he didn’t know was that she was going to persuade him to stay overnight at Beau Rivage and drive back with her to Savannah. He would put up a fight. But he was feeling so guilty about hurting her that she felt sure she could convince him to go to the moon with her.

  She wanted him to meet her parents. She had met his. She wanted him to know more about her. She hadn’t decided yet when she was going to tell him about Savannah.

  When she told Jenny that Michael was coming, Jenny just rolled her eyes. Sadie knew that Jenny was dying to meet him so she got no opposition there.

  Now that Michael was coming she was ecstatic. He must know how much she needed him. He had pulled her out of a depression and sent her soaring with one phone call. He was the only person capable of doing that. He seemed to have some sort of magic hold over her. She reveled in it and resented it all at once.

  * * *

  Beau Rivage. She hadn’t been there since before Rosey was President. Cotes had more or less given them the key when Rosey sent him off to London to be ambassador. For lots of reasons they had never had a chance to use it. It was almost a second home to her. When she and Rosey were first courting in Richmond they would all go down to Beau Rivage for weekends. Pretty drunken weekends, too. Her first years there were mostly remembered in a haze of alcohol. Not that she could hold booze at all. Her idea of drinking in those days was disgusting things like Grasshoppers, silly crème de menthe frappés, anything that would hide the taste and make her look sophisticated—usually make her throw up, too.

  They had left Washington several days before her birthday, before the reporters started gathering outside her house. She had worried that it might be too unbearably hot and humid in Georgia, but the air was, though Southern summer sultry, actually quite dry for that time of year.

  Driving up the three-mile dirt road, through the slash pines, past the kennels and stables, by the old slave quarters, and on to the house she felt a sense of freedom she hadn’t had since Rosey became Vice President. The simple graveyard was still there, the inviting circle of boxwood and bricks. What she loved about it was its informality, its simplicity. This was not some white-columned, antebellum mansion. Beau Rivage was designed to be a shooting preserve for the Tennants, never a permanent residence.

  It was situated high up on a bluff overlooking the St. Mary’s River, a river that was pitch black, and often called the Black River by the locals. The river wound out of the Okeefenokee Swamp and eventually ended up in the ocean. But at Clarks Bluff, where the house was perched, it was still deep in swampland.

  The house itself was small, an unassuming one-story building of old weathered cypress. Pale pink shutters were a welcoming touch. It was diminished in size even more by the surrounding giant live oak trees, which hung with pale gray Spanish moss, the color of the facade. It was almost indistinguishable from its surroundings, like a desert creature that blends into the landscape. Overgrown camellia bushes, holly trees, and mistletoe clumped around the outside gave one the sense that the house had been there forever. The tiny palmetto trees gave the illusion of being in the tropics.

  Inside was a large comfortable room dominated by a huge fireplace made with river stones and an enormous picture window overlooking the live oak and the river below. Overstuffed furniture was slipcovered in faded bird chintz. Worn oriental rugs covered the floors, and Audubon and Currier and Ives prints hung on the walls.

  Every room was inviting. Every room had a place to flop down. There was nothing you could not put your feet on. It was heavenly for a man. It was attractive and cozy for a woman. It felt like home. It was also, if she saw it through Michael’s eyes, what one might call throwaway goyish chic.

  The staff had been there forever, certainly as long as she could remember. Pearl, the cook, fixed the best oyster stew she had ever tasted, black-eyed peas, shrimp, quail with stewed tomatoes, and grits with lots of gravy. They were warm and hospitable and she and Jenny were soon settled in their rooms and into their shorts and T-shirts.

  Sadie had brought a pile of novels, as she had done when she went to La Samanna, but she found she was having trouble concentrating, anticipating Michael’s arrival.

  She was up by six, glancing at the clock every fifteen minutes or so. He was taking the 9:00 A.M. flight, the earliest flight out of Washington to Jacksonville, so he wouldn’t be getting there until lunchtime. She spent the morning playing with Willie in the little plastic baby pool they had brought, squirting him with a hose. He really was the most delectable child. She couldn’t stop hugging and kissing him. By the time Michael was expected to arrive she was drenched and had to go change her clothes. From one pair of rolled-up khakis and a blue work shirt to another.

  She was nervous about seeing him. Nervous about seeing him in another beach environment, nervous about spending time alone with him, nervous about having Willie get to know him, nervous about Jenny. She wanted Jenny’s approval, her blessing. If Jenny liked Michael, felt he was right for her, then somehow the Jewish thing wouldn’t seem like such an obstacle. Not to mention the married thing. She felt like a young girl about to introduce her would-be fiancé to her father for the first time.

  Finally she heard his car in the drive.

  She took a deep breath, ran a brush through her hair, checked her lipstick, and walked outside to greet him.

  * * *

  The ancient little wooden ChrisCraft puttered slowly through the swampy river. It passed under streams of hanging moss, palm trees, vines, and through marsh grass so high you couldn’t see anything beyond. There wasn’t a noise to be heard except the hum of the engine, the buzz of an occasional bumblebee, the crickets chirping, and an occasional whoosh, which sounded ominously like an alligator sliding into the water from the muddy banks.

  Sadie a
nd Michael sat together on the front seat of the boat eating fried chicken and bread-and-butter sandwiches while Jed, the burly caretaker of Beau Rivage, sat in the back, steering. It was after three and the sun was still hot, but they had avoided the scorching midday heat. Happily the air was still unseasonably dry and the sky was clear. It was a perfect Georgia summer day, and Sadie felt a million miles away from everywhere.

  And once again, she had outsmarted her beleaguered Secret Service agents, sneaking down to the boat soon after Michael arrived without anyone seeing them.

  Jed was taking them to Cumberland Island. It was about two hours down the river past the sleepy town of St. Mary’s, where the river widened and opened up to the savannahs and the sea. It was just a short ride across to Cumberland Island. One of the magical Sea Islands, it had miles of white rolling deserted dunes, forests of mossy live oaks, and enchanted wild ponies.

  Jed knew a secret dock with a small boathouse where he kept an old beat-up pickup truck. He would stay there and fish and drink beer and gossip with his pals while Sadie and Michael went exploring.

  They had been completely silent in the boat. Sadie hadn’t wanted to talk at all. She was content just to be near him. It all seemed so silent and mysterious, like heading into the tunnel of love.

  When they got to the island Jed lifted a small cooler from the boat, took out a couple of beers for himself and put it into the back of the pickup. He gave Michael the keys, pointed them in the right direction, and they were off.

  Michael gunned the motor and began speeding down the beach as though they were in a movie car chase scene, bouncing up and down the dunes. Sadie held on to the handle for dear life, both of them laughing and giggling, exhilarated at their sense of freedom.

  They drove for miles, occasionally looking across the seat at each other in happy disbelief at their good fortune. They were completely alone, alone really for the first time. The notion was intoxicating.