The Immigrant’s Daughter

by Howard Fast

  “That’s a joke,” Barbara said, pulling back. “You’re not telling me that you’re in love with me. We’re not kids, Alex. I hardly know you, so I’ll put it down as a conversation piece.”

  “Good heavens, it threw you.”

  “No, it didn’t throw me. It’s too damn important, and too damn casual at the same time. I don’t appreciate a throwaway line like that. I’ve had too much joy and too much agony from men I loved. I know that a long time ago I love you was a game kids played. As I said, we’re not kids.”

  “You’re angry.”

  “No. It’s just that after Boyd died, I gave up. I met no one I cared to spend a long evening with, much less be with. I said, All right, Barbara. You’ve had a great full basket of life, and now you can sit back and find whatever sustenance you can in being an old woman.”

  “You’re not an old woman!”

  “No. I had dinner with a man who was my opponent, and I felt like a young woman, damn it.”

  Holt reached across the table and took her hand. “What are you trying to say to me, Barbara?”

  “I’m not sure I know. It’s complicated. Suppose I win?”

  “Then you win. Suppose I win?”

  “All right. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. But I’m going to win.”

  “You want it so damn badly. Why? How does it fit in with everything I know about Barbara Lavette? You think you’re going to play a part in stopping war. That’s a delusion, Barbara. You’ll stop nothing and you’ll break your heart. ERA — another delusion. All your dreams, all your tilts at all the windmills of misery and injustice — nothing, Barbara. It’s hopeless. They’ll laugh at you. They’ll tie you up in rules and procedures. They’ll feed you frustration every day of your life, because that’s the nature of the beast. I know. I’m one of them. I’ve had four years of it, and if you’re in it for the honors and the perks, which are more than you ever dreamed of — well, if that’s the way you’re in it, and that’s the way I’m in it, you can take it. Otherwise, they’ll flay you alive. They’ll block you and isolate you, and nothing will change.”

  Barbara was silent for a few moments, and then she asked softly, “Is that why you’re in it, Alex? For the honors and the perks?”

  “Do you want me to lie to you, Barbara?”

  “No, Alex, I never want you to lie to me. And you know what — suppose we put a freeze on anything political? We’ve each of us found someone we can talk to, and that’s rare enough.”

  After dinner, they walked to Green Street, slowly, in tribute to Barbara’s high heels. It was a fine, cool evening, no fog for a change and just a taste of the sea in the air. At the door to her house, Barbara asked, “Do you want to come in for a nightcap, Alex?”

  “If I did, it would be hard to leave, and you don’t want that, do you?”

  “Not tonight, no.”

  He moved to embrace her, and Barbara didn’t resist. It was good to have a man’s strong arms around her, to feel his lips on hers.

  Tony Moretti pulled himself out of his stretch Cadillac and lumbered into the Barbara Lavette campaign headquarters and eased his bulk carefully into the folding chair in front of her desk. “It’s not easy,” he said to Barbara. “I never calculated how many pounds of pasta and how many quarts of good red California Zinfandel brought me to this pass, but maybe it’s worth it. You got time for a small lecture?”

  “I always have time for anything you want to tell me, Tony.”

  “Nice. You’re the nicest lady I know. You won’t hate me if I jump on you.”

  “Only a little,” smiling.

  “All right, a little. We got a word here in San Francisco — gunsel. It’s local slang, or was in my time. I don’t know where it comes from. Hammett used it in one of his books, and then people back east and writers in Hollywood decided it was a local name for a hit man and they began to use it for that. But gunsel doesn’t mean that at all, and some people think it’s a gutter word for gay, but that’s not it either. There’s a certain kind of man who would eat — no, that’s not something I can say to a lady.”

  “Tony,” Barbara said, “I know what a gunsel is. I Was born and brought up in shouting distance of the old Coast, and I know what you’re going to tell me.”

  “All right, here in a local Mexican place you can have dinner with him — not in the Fairmont!”

  She had never heard that hard, sharp edge in his voice before, a memory of the Tony Moretti who had ruled a political world that was no more.

  “Why?” she demanded angrily.

  “Because people saw you and they saw who sat at the table with you, and if you sit a table with someone in the Fairmont, it speaks to the whole city.”

  Controlling herself, she said softly, “Tony, it’s not earthshaking for a Democrat and a Republican to dine together, even if they’re both running for the same office. Why are you so upset?”

  “Because that son of a bitch is going to put a knife into you. He’s a damn gunsel!”

  “Tony, you’re in my place!”

  “All right. I said what I have to say, and if I hurt you, I’m sorry. I’m also licking my lips, because you’re going to win this one and we’re both going to prove to these young smartass new-breed politicians, who don’t have the patience to wait for me to die, that maybe Moretti knows something they don’t.”

  The following Wednesday underlined his words. The Los Angeles Morning World ran a two-column head on page one: UPSET IN BAY AREA.

  The story went on to say that the most interesting post-Watergate turnaround was taking place in the Forty-eighth Congressional District, “where the Democrats gave the designation to a political neophyte and maverick, Barbara Lavette, sending her out into a solid, traditional Republican stronghold like a lamb to slaughter. But Miss Lavette refused to be slaughtered. She attacked on the issues with a fury that left incumbent Alexander Holt dazed and frustrated. One week ago, our telephone poll in the 48th showed Miss Lavette to have increased her position from 29 percent the week before to 37 percent, while Mr. Holt’s lead had dwindled from 61 percent to 52 percent. Our latest poll shows Miss Lavette and Mr. Holt running neck and neck, each with 42 percent of the vote, leaving 16 percent undecided.

  “In our initial decision to poll the 48th Congressional District, we looked upon it as a sort of weathervane, pointing to the effect of Watergate and Mr. Ford’s subsequent stewardship on a local Republican district. But we are told by leaders in both parties that the 48th can no longer be so regarded. Miss Lavette has apparently introduced a unique quality.”

  Barbara knew, as did many of those working in the campaign with her, that she had changed. She had the ability to look at herself and, at least to some degree, recognize what was happening to her. For the first weeks of the campaign, she had hardly spoken to Mort Gilpin, the fund-raiser Freddie had hired. Now she sat down with him for a full review of the financial end of being a candidate. He and Freddie met with her one morning at the Green Street house, and over rolls and coffee discussed money. Barbara knew what was happening to her: she had to win now. It was no longer a good fight to win; she had to win.

  Gilpin was increasingly impressed with Barbara, but he also felt that he was doing a good job, and he pointed out that they had raised more money than most of the congressional candidates in California.

  “I know that,” Barbara said. “You’ve worked wonders, Mort — and I’m still afraid that the whole thing will slip away.”

  “Why?”

  “Carla was talking to one of Holt’s workers. The people working with him are worried sick about the polls. But he isn’t.”

  “So he’s confident. That doesn’t mean a damn thing, Miss Lavette, believe me. The odds in the city are even now. A dollar brings you a dollar that you’ll win.”

  “Mort, we haven’t had a network commercial yet.”

  Freddie, listening to all this, put in, “They cost a bundle, and they don’t make that much difference. The independents cover
the same area.”

  “But at prime time, they’re watching the networks,” Barbara said.

  “I’ll try, but, Miss Lavette, I think I’ve squeezed the stone dry. But I’ll try. I’ll try.”

  Freddie went home early that night, apologizing to Barbara for taking a night off so close to the wire. “We’re having dinner with Mom,” he told her. “I’ve hardly seen her since we started. I had to —”

  “Freddie, it’s all right.”

  “But why on earth didn’t you ask Barbara to come?” Eloise wanted to know.

  “Because she wouldn’t come.”

  May Ling and Freddie were at the table with Eloise and Adam, Freddie’s stepfather, and Adam’s sister, Sally, and Sally’s husband, Joe. They all laid claim to Barbara.

  “I don’t believe she wouldn’t come.”

  Eloise was closest to her, and Eloise said simply that Barbara had changed. People don’t stay the same.

  “She’s speaking tomorrow,” Freddie said, “to a meeting of most of the primary and secondary school teachers in the district. It was a damn hard thing to put together, and Mort Gil-pin and I have been working on it for weeks. Why Aunt Barbara wanted it, I don’t know, because it won’t change enough votes to make up for the time. We may get five hundred teachers, and at least four hundred and ninety would have voted for Aunt Barbara anyway. Right now, you ask me, she’s sitting at her desk there in the shopping center, working over her notes for tomorrow. She’s become totally obsessive about this election.”

  “I don’t think it’s obsessive,” May Ling said. “That’s a lousy thing to say.”

  “I’m not putting her down. I’m trying to explain what’s happening to her.”

  “It’s perfectly normal,” Joe said. “She’s always been a trifle obsessive. There’s nothing wrong with being a bit obsessive.”

  “It’s not obsession. It’s something else,” Eloise said. She knew something about deep wounds. “She’s trying to heal herself.” Eloise knew about healing, “It’s not easy.”

  Her husband looked at her curiously. After Joshua’s suicide, he had come to realize that he had been married more than thirty years to a woman who at times was a total stranger to him.

  Freddie shrugged. “Maybe. There’s also a thing called candidatitus. It’s a mental condition that grips a candidate. The win or lose factor becomes the driving force —”

  “You’re so damn glib,” May Ling said testily. “You have an answer for everything.”

  “I’m only trying to explain.”

  “Something that you don’t have enough sensitivity to understand.”

  “Stop it!” Sally said sharply. “You’re both acting like a couple of kids.”

  “I wonder,” Adam said. “What is this thing with Alexander Holt? I saw an item in the Chronicle about her being seen dining at the Fairmont with Holt.”

  “I never thought I’d see the day when we’d be gossiping about Barbara,” Eloise said.

  “Come on,” Freddie put in, “he’s not the devil. He’s a pretty decent guy.”

  “Not according to Tony Moretti,” May Ling said.

  “Well, he stopped by at the store one evening and Barbara met him and they struck it off. It’s no sin.”

  Later, at their home that night, Freddie said to May Ling, “What’s gotten into you? You’ve been snapping at me all evening.”

  “Carla.”

  “Carla what? What are you talking about?”

  “Carla’s gotten into me, Carla, Carla, Carla.”

  “You’ll never believe that I love you, will you?”

  “How can I? You’re a damn jack rabbit. You always have been.”

  “That’s rotten. That’s the rottenest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  “I feel rotten,” May Ling said. “I feel very rotten.”

  At the Jack London Intermediate School, about three hundred and fifty teachers had assembled to hear Barbara speak. She spoke simply and directly. In part, she said, “I began life as a rich girl, perhaps in our Western terms as the epitome of a rich girl. My mother was Jean Seldon, of the banking house, and my father was Dan Lavette, one of the largest ship operators on the West Coast. My first face-to-face confrontation with injustice came during the great longshore strike of the nineteen thirties. I was involved, first as a volunteer in the soup kitchen and then as a sort of untrained paramedic. It taught me lessons in injustice and it taught me a great deal about the gulf between the rich and the poor. After that, I was a foreign correspondent, first for a New York magazine and afterward for the Chronicle, and my sense of injustice was fueled. I’ve lived my life in a world torn by senseless war and unnecessary suffering. Other people, perhaps more fortunate, have lived in this same world and managed to be untouched or at least only slightly touched by the same events that made my life an agony. I am being very frank with you. Perhaps I can do only a little, but it is my wonderful opportunity and may well be my last.”

  “It was absolutely the damnedest thing,” Mort Gilpin told Freddie the following day. He had gone with Barbara and had taken up a collection afterward, expecting perhaps a hundred dollars, a token tribute to Barbara if she carried it off nicely. “No, sir, Frederick. Eight hundred and twenty-two dollars from some three hundred and fifty underpaid teachers. I never heard a politician put himself forward the way she does. She doesn’t talk politics at all; she talks like a preacher for some kind of religion that nobody’s thought of yet.”

  “Aunt Barbara’s a sort of Episcopalian,” Freddie said, grinning. “They thought of that a long time ago. You falling in love with her, Morty?”

  “If she were twenty years younger — sure. Why not?”

  “You’d answer to me.”

  “Enough bullshit. We need ideas, Frederick, not bullshit. Where does the money come from? You know, your father’s maybe the richest man in California. And she’s his sister, right?”

  “Wrong. They don’t appreciate each other, to put it in its mildest form. Also, legally, he’s not my father. Adam Levy adopted me. He’s my father, period.”

  “O.K. I just thought it worth mentioning.”

  “What do we need for the commercials she wants?”

  “We can get thirty seconds for fifteen thousand — maybe. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “What time?”

  “Eight-thirty. That’s almost prime time. They consider it prime time.”

  “That’s a damn stiff price for thirty seconds.”

  “I’m not sure of prices. We don’t want network exposure. We want it on the network channel but as a local segment. Miss Lavette’s right. Today, TV is the absolute determining factor. And I’ve plucked my chickens.”

  “Then find more chickens.”

  “Freddie,” Gilpin said softly, “suppose I go to your father — you don’t even know about it.”

  “I’d kick your ass across the bridge. I told you he’s not my father.”

  “What burns your ass if I talk to the man? Maybe he’s not your father; he’s her brother.”

  “No!”

  “What do I do — print the money?”

  “You tell her she can’t have it. She’s my aunt, and she is like no one I’ve ever known. But right now, she’s a little crazy.”

  “Because she has to win? Can’t you understand that? She has to win.”

  “Suddenly, you’re a damn psychologist.”

  “I’m a fund-raiser, Freddie. I’m a political fund-raiser, and I’m a damn good one. I went into this because I read her books when I was twelve years old. I learned about war from her, and I learned something about living and dying, and I learned something about women.”

  “That’s enough.”

  “What’s enough?”

  “The hell with it. Do anything you want to do.”

  Gilpin decided to do it. There were all sorts of families, and the condition was more or less generic in the human race. A family this ridden with money, guilt, love and hatred was not entirely unfamiliar to him,
but having been San Francisco born and bred, he had come to regard the Seldons and the Lavettes as a New Yorker might regard the Harrimans and the Rockefellers, except that here big money was more recent than in the East, and here there was an ethnic jigsaw puzzle and a tangled history that was difficult if not impossible to follow. Nevertheless, he went to the seat of the mighty, which in this case was a thirty-six-story tower of glass and steel and concrete, a piece of arrogant insanity in a city that had once before half perished in an earthquake and that was now and forever perched on top of that same uneasy continental flaw. The elevator marked EXECUTIVE OFFICES took him to the thirty-fifth floor, where he emerged into a severely formal foyer, decorated in a style that was a cross between a British ducal establishment and a proper millionaire’s den. The walls were oak, the floors pegged walnut, the carpets expensive Persian, the furniture English-club style, soft leather, and on the paneled walls, oversized nonobjective modern paintings.

  At the reception desk, a young man in his thirties, wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a properly stolid look on his handsome face, asked what he could do for the gentleman who faced him.

  “I’d like to see Mr. Lavette.”

  “And you are?”

  “Mort Gilpin.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’m afraid you can’t see Mr. Lavette. No one does without an appointment.”

  “I understand that. I’m a fund-raiser, engaged by Mr. Lavette’s son to raise money for Mr. Lavette’s sister’s congressional campaign. His sister’s name is Barbara Lavette.” Gilpin took out his card. “Here’s my card. The telephone number on there is a storefront at Sunnyside, which Miss Lavette uses as her campaign headquarters. If you wish to verify my identity, you can call this number and talk to Miss Lavette or her nephew Frederick. No tricks. Everything aboveboard. Suppose you send some kind of word to Mr. Lavette, and if he won’t see me, I leave. O.K.?”

  The good-looking young man picked up his desk phone and said, “Willie, step out here for a moment.” The raised arm revealed a bulge. When Willie came through the door, thirtyish and also good-looking, his jacket bulged slightly, too. Gilpin had not realized how nervous the seats of the mighty were.