The Three-Day Affair

by Michael Kardos

  When he left, I opened the Princeton Alumni Weekly to the half-page article about Nolan and sat down at the table with it.

  Since college graduation, the Alumni Weekly appeared in my mailbox with surprising regularity given the number of times I moved from apartment to apartment. Sometimes I’d flip through the magazine and read about a famous alumnus or a winning sports team. And I’d always look at the “Class Notes” section for my year. When I first graduated, I’d read about students enrolled in law school, medical school. I’d read about weddings. So many weddings. Sometimes there’d be a photograph of the happy couple surrounded by fifteen or twenty other alumni in their suits and dresses.

  Soon after came the babies, and with them the clichés—“bundles of joy,” “prayers answered,” “little miracles”—along with interchangeable, fat-cheeked photos.

  And then, life’s housekeeping apparently over with, my classmates got down to the serious business of achieving. They became partners at law firms, consulting firms, investment firms. They became venture capitalists. They traveled to countries I’d never heard of to stamp out diseases. They climbed unclimbable summits, swam unswimmable rivers. They produced Hollywood movies and published novels and, like Nolan, created important organizations.

  The article about Nolan focused on the nonprofit organization he’d founded. It summed up what I already knew. The year after graduation, he interned for a Missouri congressman in Washington, DC. While there, he started up Students for Peace.

  The organization pays for children aged ten to eighteen to attend weekend-long events centered on the idea of peace—among individuals and among nations. Students attend workshops, debate ethical issues, and interact with politicians, ethicists, and other leaders, culminating in a hands-on project promoting peace. In its first year, guests included author Kurt Vonnegut, former president Jimmy Carter, and the director of Princeton University’s Center for Human Values, Janet Vogel.

  When asked about his organization, Albright stated, “We tend to think of children as insular and self-centered. But I’m always amazed, talking with them, how concerned they are with their community, their world. Our organization is designed to empower these kids, to let them know that they have every right to care about peace even though they aren’t of voting age.”

  Albright founded Students for Peace in 1995 while working as a congressional intern in Washington, DC. The organization is currently based in Albright’s hometown of Stokesville, Missouri. Tax-deductible donations can be sent to . . .

  I set down the magazine and scrolled the document titled Albright on the Issues. It ran sixty-four single-spaced pages. World peace wasn’t on the agenda. This was a state election, and the concerns were domestic: economic development, education, infrastructure, health care.

  I was willing to help sell the product of Nolan Albright to whoever wanted to buy it, but I’d never written a press release in my life. I began to fantasize about Cynthia, the real PR pro, trading in her pumps for cowboy boots and coming out here to work with me on the campaign. Our romance blooming under the wide Missouri sky.

  And then I began to read.

  Those yard signs were becoming the bane of the campaign, and their continued absence made them seem all the more critical. None of us knew for certain whether or not Nolan was going to win. The incumbent was retiring at the end of the term, and our opponent, like Nolan, had never run for office before. Ed Cassidy was twice Nolan’s age. He owned several mammoth car dealerships across the state, and back in September he was running a couple of percentage points ahead of Nolan in the polls. But polling wasn’t especially precise in a district-wide election. Our real barometers were our guts and our ears.

  We believed we had a shot, but Cassidy’s smiling face seemed to be everywhere—his signs were in storefronts and at major intersections, and of course large banners stood in the parking lots of his dealerships. Driving around the district, it would’ve been easy to conclude that Nolan simply didn’t exist.

  And so when one cool morning a dusty diesel truck bearing the name “Show-Me Sign Company” finally clanked into the Albrights’ driveway, Molly’s approving bark spoke for all of us. Over the next couple of days, I learned the roads of northwest Missouri. For me these were the best days of the campaign, driving alone under deep blue skies into small towns, along rivers, and through field after field of spent corn. Sometimes I’d drive into a neighborhood to deliver a half-dozen signs. Other times I’d travel fifteen or twenty miles on remote roads to drop off a single sign that hardly anyone would ever see.

  If nobody was home, I’d leave the sign on the front stoop. But as often as not, somebody would be there to thank me, maybe offer a glass of water or cup of coffee. We might chat for a minute. And talking with them in their front yards and their kitchens, catching a glimpse of their landlocked lives, for the first time I found myself believing that there were other places to live out one’s life besides a city.

  I wouldn’t act on that belief for several more years—not until the shooting that drove me out of New York. But rural Missouri gave me the first inkling that there were ways to be content without having to become the white hot center of everything.

  A few days before the election, campaign headquarters started receiving calls that yard signs were vanishing in the night. To retaliate, I showed up at the house that night carrying two “Vote Cassidy” signs that I’d daringly swiped from the lot of one of Cassidy’s own car dealerships. I’d done it as a prank—to lighten the mood, I guess—but Nolan wasn’t amused.

  He took me aside. “Elections can be brutal, but there are rules.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Fair enough.”

  “I want us running a clean campaign, is all.”

  “Understood.”

  He sighed. “You’ve been a tremendous help to me, Will. I can’t thank you enough.”

  Later, after everyone else had left for the night and Nolan’s parents had gone to bed, Nolan and I poured tumblers of Scotch and sat down on the living room sofa. Molly immediately jumped up between us and rested her snout on Nolan’s leg.

  “As a kid,” Nolan said, “I remember sitting right here, in this room, watching Ronald Reagan bait the Soviet Union on TV. I’m sure you remember all that ‘Evil Empire,’ ‘Star Wars’ end-of-the-world bullshit.”

  I did, vaguely. At the time, I was more interested in Star Wars the movie.

  He sipped his drink in thought. “I was ten years old, but I knew trash talking when I heard it. And Reagan was the most reckless trash talker I’d ever heard, because thousands of nuclear warheads were pointed at him. And at me—and my friends and my parents. Though my parents didn’t seem to think much about it one way or the other. I could see it for what it was, though—­reckless and stupid. As far as I was concerned, he was going to cause the end of the world.” The dog’s stomach gurgled. “So that’s when I decided to write him a letter.”

  “Who? Reagan?”

  “Of course. And not some childish, emotional plea, either, but a reasoned argument for using the office of the president to end the risk of nuclear war.”

  He was looking at the dog, not me. The story seemed to embarrass him, and I wondered why, until I remembered the fan letter I’d written at about the same age to the actress Carrie Fisher. I’d slid the letter into an envelope I’d made out of aluminum foil so it would stand out. I’m not asking you to marry me, I’d written. But I know we’d be friends.

  “So what’d you say in the letter?”

  “I said that name-calling only increased the likelihood of a brawl. Basic school-yard diplomacy.” He looked up at me. “People were people, I figured. How different could it possibly be between leaders of nations?” He shook his head.

  “I take it you never heard back.”

  “Two weeks,” he said. “It came quickly, I’ll give him that. I remember coming home from school and seeing it on the ki
tchen table. Nobody else was home. It was a thin envelope. But it didn’t need to be thick. All it needed to say—and I was sure that it would—was that Reagan had seen the error of his ways.” He finished his drink in one long swallow, set the tumbler on the coffee table, and looked at me again. “Two sentences. I’ll never forget them.” His eyes widened. “Hold that thought—I still have it.”

  He was off the sofa and down the hallway toward his bedroom. While waiting, I gave the dog a good scratching behind the ear, earning a thankful groan.

  Nolan returned from his bedroom with the envelope, now faded from time. He opened it and removed the single page, folded in thirds, and handed it to me. I unfolded it. The letter was typed on stationery with the presidential seal.

  October 12, 1982

  To my friend Nolan Albright,

  Your thought-provoking letter leaves me heartened. It is because of young Americans like yourself, concerned with the important issues of the day, that I feel optimistic about our nation’s future.

  Sincerely,

  Ronald Reagan

  I handed it back to Nolan.

  “At least it’s personalized,” I said. “And nice enough.”

  “Heartened?” He glared at the letter as if he’d received it only minutes before instead of fourteen years ago. “He was heartened by my letter? Hell, he missed the whole fucking point.”

  “It probably wasn’t Reagan who wrote it, anyway.”

  “Yeah. Tell that to the kid who’s lying in bed every night, scared shitless, sure the world’s going to explode before he’s even kissed a girl. This letter only made things worse.” He refolded the letter. “That’s when I made a deal with myself. Two promises, for when I became an adult. Number one, I’d make sure that no kid went through what I went through. And number two, I’d help kids make a difference, so they wouldn’t have to lie in bed at night feeling powerless. In return for those promises, I’d stop worrying about the state of the world until I turned eighteen, when I’d be old enough to be taken seriously. That was the deal I struck, the promise to myself that saved my life. And it’s the promise I’m keeping today.”

  He looked at his watch, then down at the carpet, then back at me and grimaced. I didn’t want him feeling uncomfortable—his story had moved me deeply, and I nearly confessed my short-lived Carrie Fisher crush.

  “When you write your presidential memoirs,” I told him finally, “be sure to include this chapter.”

  Nolan slid the letter back into its envelope. He looked at me and smiled politely. “Let’s just win this one first.”

  The evening before the election, Evan and Jeffrey flew into town to show their support. When they arrived at Nolan’s house, we said quick hellos and put them to work on the phones. But work got interrupted when Luke, a senior at Northwest Missouri State and one of Nolan’s most dedicated volunteers, came into the house in tears.

  “He ran right in front of my truck . . . ,” he was saying to anyone who’d listen. “. . . It was so dark . . . I didn’t see . . .”

  Molly.

  Mercifully, it’d been quick. By the time we made it outside and down the long driveway to the road, the dog was already lifeless. I hadn’t ever seen a dead dog before. Its tongue really did hang out. We stood over it—Nolan, Luke, myself, and a few of the morbidly curious among the volunteers—not knowing what to do. A minute later, Nolan’s parents followed us outside with a flashlight.

  “Maybe I should go home,” Luke said.

  Nolan’s mother nodded, her eyes wet. She was shivering. “Maybe you should.”

  “Mom . . . ,” Nolan began.

  His father shut off the flashlight. “Come with me, son,” he said to Luke, and led him away from the street, toward the shed. They returned with a wheelbarrow.

  Late that night, after the volunteers had all gone home and Evan and Jeffrey had left for their motel, Nolan and I took care of some sad business at the edge of the backyard and the corn crop.

  The weather had been mild lately, and the ground gave easily. I’d thought we might put the dog into a box first, some makeshift coffin. Instead, without ceremony Nolan lifted the dog out of the wheelbarrow and set it down in the hole. He must have noticed my expression, because he said, “It’ll decompose faster this way.” He scooped up some dirt and let it fall onto the dog in the hole, then offered me the shovel in exchange for the flashlight.

  “I’d rather not,” I said. “I know it’s just a dog, but . . . I’d just rather not.”

  “I understand. It’s morbid. I don’t like doing it, either. Though I guess it’s better to be the one with the shovel than the one in the hole.” He added more dirt to the grave until there was a small mound, which he patted down with the back of the shovel.

  “Please tell me,” he said, as we walked back toward the shed with the shovel and wheelbarrow, “that this is not an omen.”

  I stopped walking. “Nolan, this is not an omen. This was an accident.”

  “I just really want to win this, you know? It’s probably a couple of years too early for me to be running. I know I don’t quite have the experience yet, or the name recognition. Or the money.” He glanced back toward the house. “But I really want to win this one. For her, you know what I mean?”

  “Of course I do.” I felt as if I needed to say more. “Look, you’ve worked your ass off and run a good, honest campaign. You’re going to be a great politician. The best kind, because you actually give a shit.”

  He nodded. “All right. I’m convinced.” We returned to the house.

  Twenty hours later, we crowded into the lounge at the Regency Hotel in Stokesville. Under a ceiling of helium balloons, about fifty of us—volunteers, family, friends, and media—watched the TV over the bar, waiting for the returns to come in. Nolan’s mother buzzed around the room in a purple dress, thanking every­one and expressing confidence that the state of Missouri had chosen wisely. She looked better than I’d seen her since my arrival. Nolan’s father was being quieter, sipping his whiskey and studying the television.

  Nolan had written his acceptance speech, and in my shirt pocket was a list of people he wanted to be sure to thank. Beer and wine flowed freely. On the bar were trays of food—deli sandwiches, a cheese platter, plenty of desserts—and coffee. We were hunkering down for a long night.

  We needn’t have been. The polls closed at seven. At seven thirty, the stunningly pretty newscaster said: And in the Twelfth District, Ed Cassidy successfully jumps into state politics with an easy victory over his young rival, Nolan Albright.

  She flashed her perfect white teeth.

  CHAPTER 13

  “So do you remember how the night ended?” Jeffrey asked me now.

  I remembered Mrs. Albright kissing her son on the cheek and, thoroughly deflated, going off to bed. Mr. Albright walking over to his son, shaking his hand, and frowning.

  “You lost,” he said, “but I suppose you did the best you could.”

  “I don’t know,” Nolan replied. “I thought I did.”

  His father went in the direction his mother had gone, and then others left, too, and then a handful of us headed up to our defeated candidate’s suite to watch the TV news and finish off whatever wine hadn’t already been consumed. Our numbers dwindled. Nolan clicked off the TV.

  I have nothing, he said, the melodrama of the inebriated. It’s all over for me.

  “Sure, I remember,” I said to Jeffrey now. “Nolan got drunk and kicked us out of his hotel suite.”

  I didn’t see him until the following morning. Jeffrey, Evan, and I were having breakfast at the hotel restaurant around eight o’clock when the elevator doors opened and out he came, looking uncharacteristically disheveled. No morning run. He came over and took the fourth seat. He picked up the menu and looked at it, though there was no need. Nolan always ate a bowl of oatmeal with a banana for breakfast.

 
The waitress came over. “Pancakes,” he said. “And a cheese omelet. And a Coke.”

  “How’re you holding up?” I asked, when the waitress had gone away.

  “My head is killing me.”

  When the food came, he didn’t touch any of it. Just stirred the eggs around in his plate, sipped the Coke, then stood up and shook each of our hands. “I’m sorry, but I really need to get the hell out of here.” He dropped some bills on the table and left, and I didn’t see him again until the following spring, when we all met up for golf in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. By then he was back to his old self, and thoroughly optimistic about the next election two years hence—an election he’d go on to win decisively, and without my help.

  “You’re leaving out something important,” Jeffrey said, “after he locked himself in his hotel suite.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He called my house.”

  This didn’t make sense. “In California?”

  “Of course.”

  “But you were with us in Missouri.”

  The look he gave me said, No shit.

  “He told her he loved her, Will. Three in the morning, and he wakes her out of a dead sleep and says he loves her.”

  “No.”

  “He told her he’s always loved her.”

  “Jesus—when did she tell you about it?”

  “When I came home. I’m about to go to bed after a full day of travel, and Sara mentions it like it’s no big deal. Did you know that Nolan Albright called me late last night? As if I could possibly know. I almost threw up, hearing about it.”

  “What did she say to him?”

  “She told him to go to bed. I told her she should’ve told him to fuck off, but apparently she felt sorry for him because of how badly he’d gotten whipped in the election.” He looked out into the hallway, as if Nolan might’ve been standing there, listening this whole time. He lowered his voice. “You don’t do that, Will. You don’t phone your friend’s wife like that. Not after—”