“Eddie, what are you talking about?”
“The testament your husband was looking for. I think Perry—”
“I’m not going to listen to this. I don’t know what’s the matter with you. I think you’ve had too much to drink.”
“I don’t drink any more, Aurie.”
“Well, maybe you should. Stop, Eddie, okay? Stop trying to involve me in—whatever you’re doing. I’ve worked hard on my marriage, and I’m not going to let you wreck it. Marry Torie. Marry Cynda. Marry somebody. But leave us alone.”
She swept back into the parlor.
Eddie, following at a distance, found himself beside Margot Frost. He had no idea what to say. He did not believe for an instant that she was having an affair with Perry Mount. If she was sneaking off to meet him, the reason could only be, as he had intimated to Aurelia, that they were co-conspirators.
“Nice speech,” he finally said.
“Yes,” she agreed somberly, keen eyes still moving over the room, perhaps wondering in whose pocket additional contributions might be found. Was it really possible that this ambitious woman had a connection to a man like George Collier? Eddie saw no way to put the question.
“It’s good to see you,” he said.
“You, too.”
Margot never looked up.
CHAPTER 35
A Conversation Is Postponed
(I)
AND YET Aurelia was not nearly as confident as she pretended. True, Eddie had never been the same since the Kennedy assassination. He had soured on politics and largely soured on America. He saw conspiracies everywhere. But even a paranoid could, at times, be right; and, of course, Aurie possessed facts that Eddie did not.
In particular, facts about Kevin.
She threaded back through the throng, smiling and hugging and kissing as needed, searching for her husband. She saw Gary chatting with the deputy mayor. Margot was deep in conversation with a Democratic ward boss, who kept nodding his head to whatever Mrs. Frost was saying. The impromptu piano recital had ended. Lanning Frost was standing near the bar, sipping club soda. A florid balding man was berating the Senator about the campus “free speech” movement. Lanning nodded importantly. “Well, naturally, none of us really want our once-proud universities run by the kind of situation where anybody reaches the level of controversy we need to attain,” he announced.
The crowd cheered.
Aurelia grabbed her pastor by the arm, but he had no idea where Kevin was. She asked Chamonix Bing, lately divorced, who was very giggly, on the arm of a stranger. Chammie shrugged, evidently on her way out. Aurie asked one of Kevin’s banking friends. He looked annoyed, pointed vaguely, went back to flattering the Senator. She finally found her husband behind the closed door of their bedroom, where he sat on a chair with his face in his hands. Kevin looked up at her approach. He was not crying, as she had feared. Nor was he drinking. He was exhausted.
“Honey?”
“I can’t do it, Aurie,” he said, holding her hands. She sat on the arm of the chair, bewildered. “I’m not Burton. I’m not Matty. I’m just Kevin. I can’t do it.”
“What is it, honey? What’s wrong?” Cooing all the right things even as a sick tendril of dread began to rise. She stroked his neck. “What can’t you do?”
“They’re asking too much now. Oh, honey.” Drawing her closer, he laid his face in her lap. “I’m so sorry. I should have listened to you. You were right. I was wrong.”
“About what?”
“It’s out of control, like I told you, and, well—since Dad died? It’s getting worse. The whole Council is scared.” He sighed and sat up straighter, although his eyes were wide and, unless she was mistaken, frightened. “After the party. We’ll talk tonight.”
“Whatever you say, honey.”
“You deserve to know. You need to know.”
“Kevin, darling, whatever it is—”
He kissed her hands, then stood up. Shakily. “I have to go back out there, honey.”
“Not with that tie, you don’t,” she said, and straightened it for him.
“Thank you, Aurie.”
“I’m here for you,” she said, and kissed him.
Then he was out the door and into the laughing throng, and it was Aurelia’s turn to sit, and cover her face, and wonder what had happened. The years since Matty died had brought them so close together. Kevin had never been anything but affectionate and gentle and loving, and Aurelia had been everything for him that she could. He had held the firm together when people guessed he would not, he had taken her on vacations, he had rolled around with the children on the lawn, and he had never, ever sat in a chair and told her that “they” were asking too much of him, that he could no longer do—well, whatever he was doing.
Maybe Eddie was right. Not all of it—she refused to believe that Kevin was involved in anything sleazy—but, plainly, her husband was in over his head.
I’m not Burton. I’m not Matty.
Burton being Burton Mount—Perry’s father.
Maybe Kevin only meant he could no longer run the firm. Fine. Sell Garland & Son to the highest bidder. They had money enough. He could retire young, and they could relax for the rest of their lives.
But Eddie had asked about a connection among her husband, Perry Mount, and Phil Castle. So maybe Kevin had not been talking about business after all. Maybe he had been talking about the papers she found in his safe eight years ago. Shaking the throne. All of that.
She would find out. Tonight, when the party was over, she would listen patiently to whatever Kevin had to say, and together, as a husband and wife should, they would figure out what to do next.
(II)
EDDIE SAW KEVIN in the hallway leading from the bedroom, and knew that he had to leave before Aurelia came out. She was right, of course. He should marry somebody. She would never leave Kevin. But Eddie, at heart a romantic, did not believe in marrying for any reason but love, and, so far, he had not managed to love anybody else.
Not that he had tried all that hard.
And he doubted that he would be able to try, in any serious way, until he found his sister.
The crowd was thinning. The security guards were unlimbering. Eddie realized that he had waited too long to depart, and now would have to wait longer, because Senator Frost and his wife were waving and handshaking their way out of the room. Kevin escorted them into the hall. Eddie looked toward the alcove, but Aurelia had not emerged. He sensed that something important had happened. He took a step toward the bedroom, then laughed at himself. He could not speak to her there. He noticed that Kevin had not returned. Of course not. He had to walk his guests all the way to their limousine.
Only a couple of dozen people remained. The caterers looked exhausted. Somebody asked for Eddie’s autograph. Somebody else asked him about the war. Here was the best evidence that the party was truly over: people other than Senator Frost could now be noticed.
Wandering into the study, he noticed the winking light on the multi-line phone. Aurelia must be on a call. He wondered if it could be related to—
Chammie Bing was suddenly beside him. “Are you here by yourself?”
“What?”
“Because, you know, if you don’t have plans, maybe we could have dinner or something.”
“Well—”
“We could go anyplace you want. Do whatever you want.” She was so ingenuous in her insinuation that he fought not to chuckle. Chammie might be single again, but she had been married to a friend of his.
“Actually, I do have plans,” he said gently, and they both knew he was lying.
Chammie’s face fell. She opened her mouth to answer, and what came out was a tremendous thunderclap. The apartment shook. People screamed, including Aurelia, who came racing from her bedroom, shoes off, hair undone. She went to the window looking down on Edgecombe Avenue. They all did. The smoke obscured the view. Gary had materialized from somewhere. He was tugging at Eddie’s arm and yelling in his ear. The
hallway was chaos. The elevators were useless. The stairwell was packed, but they fought their way down. Edgecombe Avenue was swirling bedlam. The Senator’s car was a ball of flame. It took hours to sort things out, but by evening everybody in America knew that Lanning Frost had survived an attempt on his life, the blast killing two people: the driver, who was holding the door of the limousine open, and the individual who was standing between the Senator and the car, a Negro businessman named Kevin Garland.
Jewel Agony took the credit.
PART IV
Ithaca/Saigon
1965–1968
CHAPTER 36
Reconsideration
(I)
AURELIA SAT with her arms circling her knees and her feet in the surf. The incoming tide tickled frothily over her thighs, then withdrew. She wore dark glasses and a floppy straw hat against the August sunshine, and an appropriately modest swimsuit against the stares and occasional advances of men who spotted her alone on the sand. Not that she was really alone. Behind her, Zora and Locke were building impressive sand castles with Mona Veazie’s twins, Julia and Jay, named for the psychologist Julian Jaynes, one of Mona’s heroes. It was the high season along the New England shore, and the beach was crowded. Taking the house in Maine for the month had been Mona’s idea. She had gushed about how much fun they would all have. Aurelia understood. Mona wanted her old friend out of Mount Vernon, and as far from Harlem as possible. She would have proposed France, or Japan, if either one of them spoke French, or Japanese. Maybe next year.
For now, Maine would have to do.
Aurelia heard her son’s voice, youthful and commanding, and marveled at the boy’s resilience. Locke was all of seven years old, and having the time of his life. Zora, at nine, was more reserved. She tended to model herself on her mother, and knew better than her brother that Aurelia’s efforts to be bright and cheery for the sake of her children were just that—efforts. Aurie wiggled her toes, fascinated by the eddies. She did it again. She was thirty-nine, and a widow, and had no idea what to do next.
Mona’s son, Jay, was arguing. Only five, but already as feisty as any Veazie. Locke loved giving orders, a trait inherited from his father. Jay was resisting the older boy. Any minute the two boys would be scuffling. Mona, supervising, would let them wrestle. At that age, she said, it does them good. Let them get all their male aggressions out when it doesn’t make any difference. Julia would be giggling with delight: she loved to watch the boys being boys. But not Zora. If a fight broke out, Zora would come over and sit beside her mother. Aurelia would slip an arm around her daughter and listen as the odd, observant child explained some theory about why the big waves came in bunches, or why the gulls cocked their heads to the side before diving. Since his father’s death, Locke had become stubborn, wanting things more and more his own way. Whereas all the contemplative Zora ever really wanted was to talk.
Aurelia was sleepy, but if she closed her eyes, she would see Kevin promising they would talk later. Then she would feel the blast and smell the smoke.
Kevin’s fortune, inherited from his father, was mostly in trust for the children. Aurelia had received enough to be comfortable, and she had no complaint.
She missed him.
“You don’t get to say what to do,” Jay warned.
“This is the right way,” Locke insisted.
Little Julia shrieked.
Aurelia lifted her foot from the water, watched the rivulets run off, then dipped again. Water was so peaceful. The antidote to everything. The Bible said we began as dust and would return to dust, but Aurelia thought we came from the water and would eventually go back. Even the dust was eventually washed into the sea. She kicked, made little waves, wondered how many years it would take for the moist earth to rot her husband’s ornate mahogany casket, eventually drawing his physical substance into the ground, and onward to an underground tributary feeding some surface creek, then dumping him into a river, and finally back to the ocean.
The funeral, at Saint Philip’s, had been fit for a king. Politicians black and white had vied to speak. After consulting with Kevin’s cousin Oliver and a few other senior Harlemites—and Mona, too—Aurie had given pride of place to Lanning Frost, whose life, intentionally or not, her husband had saved. Another eulogist had been Dick Nixon, who had missed Matty’s funeral and wanted to avoid repeating his mistake. Although the press had no sure idea who Kevin Garland was, or had been, reporters flooded the church, fascinated by the spectacle of the two men considered most likely to face off in the 1968 presidential election speaking at the funeral of the same Negro. The family banned cameras. A few enterprising photographers snuck in, and were surprised when private security guards ushered them, filmless, back out.
White security guards, the reporters complained to their editors. Hired for the occasion, and lots of them.
On the street afterward, Eddie had waited as one of perhaps a hundred people wanting to whisper their condolences to the widow. Aurelia had stood there in her mourning black, holding the hands of the bewildered children, her family’s rituals of grief, like all America’s in the mid-sixties, dictated by Jacqueline Kennedy. There were no public displays, tears least of all. Oliver stood nearby, and people whispered to him, too. As a matter of fact, their whispers to Oliver were often more detailed than their whispers to the widow, as if he was now the man in charge.
Aurelia was unoffended.
When it was Eddie’s turn, he murmured the right things, but added that they needed to talk, as soon as possible. He lingered, imploring her with his eyes. He continued to clasp her hand. Eddie said they should get together. Aurelia said nothing. He said please. She sensed a stir along the line of mourners. People would be telling stories tonight all over the darker nation. At the funeral, of all times: couldn’t the two of them even wait? Aurelia felt Oliver preparing to intervene. She stared at her former beau. Most of her was offended, and wanted never to see him again. But another part wanted to grab Eddie and her children and run off to—
Well, that was the problem. There was nowhere to run. Aurelia was now, forever, the Mrs. Kevin Garland.
“Thank you for coming,” she said. “It means a lot to all of us.”
She dropped his hand and turned to the next in line.
(II)
OF COURSE they had eventually had their conversation. They met for lunch on a pleasant June afternoon, in the Oak Room at the Plaza, where Eddie was staying for a few days while in New York doing publicity. His fifth novel, Pale Imitation, had just won him his second National Book Award. He was not yet forty. His sales remained durable if undramatic, but the cognoscenti knew him, and his essays were published everywhere.
This time, Eddie behaved better.
When Aurelia swept into the room, more glamorous than any of the wealthier women present, he stood and clasped her hand and did not hug her. He did all the talking to the waiter, as a gentleman was supposed to. He renewed his condolences, asked after the children, then asked after her.
She muttered something inane about taking things one day at a time.
As it happened, Eddie’s father had died of cancer the month after Kevin’s murder. Aurelia had sent flowers, and now offered her own condolences. A part of her cringed, because she had not even known Wesley Senior was ill. She did not know whose job it might have been to tell her.
Talk turned to other things. The children liked Mount Vernon, but memories were everywhere. They could not stay in the house. Mona wanted her to apply for an open position as an instructor at Cornell, where one of Mona’s many old flames now ran the English department.
“I wouldn’t think you’d have to work,” said Eddie, the first faux pas of an otherwise impressive performance. “Kevin must have left you well provided for.”
“Kevin provided just fine,” she agreed. And this was the simple truth. In addition to insurance and investments, Kevin had left her his quarter interest in Garland & Son. A Wall Street giant was negotiating to acquire the firm for a tidy sum. �
�But I want to work, Eddie. Not writing gossip. A real job.”
“In Ithaca?” he asked, as if she was going to Jupiter.
“That’s where Cornell is.”
“It’s so far.” From me, he meant.
“I haven’t decided yet. They might not hire me even if I apply.”
“Then they’d be out of their minds,” Eddie said warmly, and, for a moment, they looked at each other the old way; then dropped their eyes.
It was Aurelia who finally centered the conversation.
“Eddie, listen for a minute. Will you listen? What you mentioned that day—the day Kevin—the day he died—this theory of yours. No, no, don’t say anything. I want you to understand. You’ve been a wonderful friend for a long time, and I hope you always will be. But I will not discuss my husband with you. Not his business affairs, not anything about him. Not now. Not ever. Whatever you’re thinking about, worrying about, wondering about, don’t ask me. I don’t want to know. My job is to make the best life I can for my children, not to investigate the past. Will you make me that promise?”
Probably he nodded. Possibly she imagined it. Certainly he did not argue.
Out on the street, she lit a cigarette to cover the trembling in her hands. Burning bridges is difficult, especially when you have no idea where you are heading. But sometimes only the fire moves us forward.
“Eddie,” she said.
“Yes, Aurie.”
“There’s one more thing.” She glanced at him, then glanced away, because those beautiful eyes were too imploring. She was going to wound him. She did not intend to pretend to enjoy it. “Eddie. Dear, dear Eddie. I’m not the old Aurie any more. You have to understand that.”
“I’m not the old Eddie, either.” And this was true. He had given up alcohol the day he learned of his father’s illness. Since then he had become sturdier—less impulsive, more reflective—in short, a grown-up.
“What I’m saying is—Eddie, I’m Mrs. Kevin Garland. I have certain responsibilities now.”
“I would imagine so.”
Palace Council Page 28
