Palace Council

by Stephen L Carter

  “Yes, Claire?”

  Her modulation never changed. “If I ever find you alone with my husband again, I’ll scratch your eyes out.”

  Driving alone back up to the Highlands, crowded by loneliness, Aurelia made a detour. Even in the darkness, she easily found the house on Winemack, on a grassy rise with a view over Crystal Lake to the Cape. She climbed out of the car as the first smattering of raindrops fell. The picket fence Oliver had described lay in ruins. The grass was at her knees. The house was shuttered, and, seen up close, the shutters themselves were cracked and beaten. There was trash in the yard. She tried to imagine the scene seventeen years ago, in the summer of 1952, cars rolling up the circular driveway to discharge the powerful men who constituted the original Palace Council. She wondered who else had attended the meeting besides the names she already knew. She wondered how they kept the meeting secret. There would have been bright lights, rich food, fine wine, maybe a bodyguard or two. Aurelia struggled to picture it all. But her imagination, usually so clever, could conjure nothing except the wreck that stood before her.

  Like the wreck of the Project they had conceived that night.

  The rain was coming down harder. As Aurelia climbed into the station wagon for the drive back to her empty bed in the empty house, Streisand sailed gracefully past on her bicycle, the red reflector on the rear fender circling and bobbing in the soggy mist before vanishing into the night.

  CHAPTER 51

  Dennison

  (I)

  SHE COULD NOT AVOID EDDIE FOREVER; nor he, her. On New Year’s Eve of 1969, they encountered each other for the first time since his return. The occasion was Byron Dennison’s regular party, held in the grand ballroom of Boston’s fanciest hotel. Among the well-to-do of the darker nation, the Congressman’s soirée was the place to be seen, if you could only wangle an invitation. Aurie had not attended since Kevin’s death, but this was evidently her year of returning to old haunts.

  She had no escort, but Bay had asked her to serve, in effect, as the evening’s hostess. Aurelia was more than willing. She had played this role several times already over the past few months, appearing on Bay’s arm at public occasions. Let people think what they wished. Byron Dennison was funny, and fun, and knew everybody. Aurelia no longer felt threatened by his attentions. In September, Bay had told her frankly what she had already guessed: he was not a man to love a woman. Nobody on the Hill cares, he explained with the patient glee of the much-amused man, but my constituents do.

  And so the Congressman gently encouraged the fiction that he was dating the widowed professor-turned-romance-novelist, and Aurelia allowed him to do so. She liked Bay, and, for the most part, trusted him. She wanted him to trust her, too. She was biding her time, and by New Year’s Eve decided she had bided long enough. Tonight, with the children up in Hanover visiting Mona and her kids, Aurelia would be staying in Boston. As a matter of fact, for the sake of convenience as well as the fiction, she would spend the night at Bay’s townhouse on Beacon Hill. That would be the time to ask what she needed to ask.

  The party was huge, and formal, and glittering. It was more integrated than Aurelia remembered from earlier years, but still identifiably black. The band played constantly, though never too loud. The room was bright and colorful. People blew on paper horns. Balloons and streamers were everywhere. Aurelia floated from one group to the next, shaking hands or hugging or kissing cheeks as the moment demanded. Sometimes Bay was with her. Sometimes she was alone. “It’s so wonderful to see you,” she murmured, over and over, sounding each time as if she really meant it. “The Congressman and I are so happy you could come.”

  Then she saw Eddie.

  He was seated near the dance floor, his bow tie already loosened, arguing heatedly with several other literary figures. Sitting beside him, her arm proprietarily on his shoulder, was a famous black radical, just recently out of prison, her Afro huge, her body angular and svelte, her fingertip caressing the back of Eddie’s neck. Aurie, drifting closer to the table, could not take her eyes off that finger. The gesture was maddeningly intimate. The way Eddie seemed unaffected suggested, however, that it was also nothing new, that the seduction had been accomplished long ago.

  This was just her way of letting the whole room know.

  Aurelia downed her pink gin fizz and went to the bar for another. Why had the grapevine not informed her that Eddie was seeing someone? Did people think her so fragile? Or was it that they did not think she would care? Either way, she decided after all not to confront him. Eddie did not want to talk to her, and she understood his reasons. Aurelia had just started to back away when Bay materialized at her shoulder. “Go ahead,” he whispered. “Faint heart never won fair gentleman.”

  “I’m not trying to win him.” She inclined her head. “Besides, he’s spoken for.”

  But Byron Dennison would never have risen so high had he not been deaf to the word “no.” He lifted her hand, kissed it grandly, then linked her arm through his own. He strolled easily toward Eddie’s table.

  At their approach, everybody glanced up.

  Eddie’s eyes widened. The others leaped to their feet, all but the girlfriend, who ostentatiously took her time, smoothing her gown as she rose.

  “Hi,” said Aurelia, forgetting her script. She spoke only to Eddie.

  “Hi,” he said back.

  The girlfriend linked her arm through Eddie’s. Smiling savagely, she reached out her free hand to shake. Bay Dennison grabbed the hand and gave a political pump, telling the woman how glad he was that she was out of prison, how the dignity with which she had borne her suffering was an inspiration to them all, his blather filling the air as he managed, without ever quite seeming to try, to bear her off toward the other end of the room, where there was somebody she really just had to meet.

  He winked at Aurie over his shoulder.

  “How have you been?” she asked Eddie.

  “Good. Good. You? Oh, and the novel was wonderful, by the way. Thanks for sending it.”

  “Thank you.”

  “The kids—”

  “They’re thriving.”

  He dipped his head. “I’m sorry about not calling. There are good reasons.”

  Anyone with the last name Garland could handle that one half asleep. Aurelia stood taller, tilted her head back just so, flashed a practiced smile. “Oh, dear. It has been a long time, hasn’t it? I’m sorry. I’ve been so busy, I don’t think I noticed.”

  “Stop it, Aurie.”

  “Stop what, Eddie, dear?”

  “Look. You don’t have to put on an act for me, okay? I understand why you’re doing it, but you don’t have to. I want to talk to you, Aurie.”

  “About what?”

  “About what’s been going on.” A quick glance for curious ears. They stood near the bar but in a crowd. “And also about why I—”

  Aurelia lifted a hand, covered his mouth. Gently. “I’m so sorry, Eddie, dear. It’s wonderful to see you, but I really need to get back to the Congressman. Your girlfriend is simply lovely, and poor Bay always did have an eye for the ladies.”

  She left him, hoping to have been overheard.

  (II)

  “ARE YOU GOING to marry him or not?” asked Bay in the limousine.

  Aurelia was dozing against the agreeable leather. It was almost four in the morning. She could not remember when she had last been so tired. Her shoes were off, because her feet were killing her. She had danced half the night with Bay, and the rest of the night with a dozen other men, none of them Eddie.

  “Marry who?” she said, probably still vamping a bit.

  “Your Eddie.”

  “I told you, Bay. He’s spoken for.”

  “He’s about as spoken for as you are.” He patted her on the shoulder. “Eddie’s staying at the Copley. Just in case you’re interested.”

  “I’m not, Bay. Please leave it alone.”

  They drove in silence. At the house, he made her sit in the kitchen while he warmed a
little milk. She protested that she did not need any, she was practically keeling over already. But Bay insisted that it would help her sleep.

  It did. She put her elbow on the counter, rested her chin on her hand, and closed her eyes.

  “Aurie?” he asked, softly.

  “Hmmm?”

  “What is it you want to ask me?”

  She sat up, blinking. “What did you say?”

  He smiled. “I’m an old politico, sweetie. I can always tell. Fun though I am, you’re not here for the parties. You want something. Might as well tell me what it is.”

  “Oh. Yes. Right.”

  “Well?”

  Keeping her eyes open was a strain. “A year ago. You told me about how I’m raising the Garland heir. And how I should marry Eddie and—and be happy. Remember?”

  “Rings a faint bell.” But his smile never wavered.

  “You said you were sending me a message.” She yawned. “I want to know who sent it.”

  “Oh, goodness, Aurie. That was so long ago.” A guffaw. He slapped his cheek comically. “You can’t expect me to recall a detail like that.”

  “Bay, come on.”

  The wise, experienced eyes measured her. He folded his arms and, for a moment, reminded her of Matty. “You know, Aurie, not everything that happens that’s good can happen in the sunlight. Some things can only happen in the shadow. Sometimes, to make progress, we have to do things we can’t talk about. The fact that we can’t talk about them doesn’t prove they’re evil.”

  “It increases the chances, though.” Aurelia climbed to her feet, swayed, managed to stay upright. “If you stay down in the shadows? If you never come up in the sun, where people can see you? It’s easy to think you’re superior to everybody else. It’s easy to think you’re doing good. But unless you interact with people who can tell you you’re wrong—”

  She stopped. She was drunk and tired and achy, and she had lost the thread. Probably she had intended to make some point about violence, but she could not remember. Besides, he might be telling the truth. Maybe he really was the messenger, and nothing more.

  “I’m worn out,” she said, dragging toward the stairs. “I’m going to bed.”

  “Don’t let the tosies bite,” he called after her. He laughed. “Or however it goes.”

  (III)

  SHE WOKE FIVE HOURS LATER. She knew the time because the bedside clock told her, but also because she never slept more than five hours, even when, as now, indecently hung over. She sat up too fast, and the bright sunshine bounding from morning snow sparkled painfully. She moaned, and lay down again. Gingerly. She shut her eyes, rubbed her forehead, kicked off the blankets. She was drenched with sweat. Bad dreams. She opened her eyes again. Slowly. The guest suite was in the back of the second floor, with a view out over the tiny backyard and into a small street, with more town homes across the way. Bay had the bedroom in the front, looking down toward the Public Garden and the Common.

  The two of them were alone in the house.

  That was the point of the fiction, of course, to be alone with no staff to whisper that all was not as it seemed.

  She sat up. Her head protested and so did her stomach, but there was a remedy she had learned from Kevin, and if Bay had ginger root and Tabasco sauce in his kitchen, she could probably mix a glass. She used the bathroom, washed her face, put on her bathrobe and slippers. In the mirror she looked old. Eddie had looked so young. But he was not raising any children. He was running around with sexy assistants and glamorous radicals.

  “Stop,” she said.

  Aurelia stepped into the hall, and immediately heard the angry buzz of a chainsaw, even if it was really Bay Dennison snoring grotesquely. The door to the master suite was open. Aurie tiptoed over, peeked inside. The curtains were drawn. The Congressman was a huddled mass beneath the blankets. Why was the door open? Probably because, in his exhaustion, he had forgotten she was here. Bay had been, if anything, even drunker than she.

  He would likely sleep for a while.

  She pulled the door closed, then padded downstairs. She found everything she needed in the kitchen, and fried her throat with Kevin’s concoction, but now she was wide awake. She brewed coffee, toasted an English muffin, retrieved the morning paper from the front step, settled at the kitchen counter, reading the news.

  Pretending to read the news.

  She waited. No sign of Bay. Neither the sound of the door opening nor the smells of fresh coffee and a toasted muffin had stirred him. She snuck back up the stairs, opened his door a crack.

  The chainsaw ran on unimpeded.

  Now or never.

  In addition to the kitchen, the first floor held a dining room, a parlor, and a powder room. Down the stairs was the basement, where the Congressman hosted his poker games and maintained a windowless office.

  Chased by the admonishing voices of the nuns of her youth, Aurelia descended the stairs. For cover she carried the newspaper. She could always say that the light was too bright upstairs after last night’s revelry, and she went to the basement to read in the cool darkness.

  Not that he would believe her.

  The door to the study also stood open, as if he did not care who entered. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe there was nothing incriminating.

  With a last glance over her shoulder, she switched on the fluorescent lights. Like the rest of the house, the study was obsessively neat. Reports here. Books there. Papers neatly filed. Desktop clear except for telephone and memo pad. Depressed by the order, Aurelia was careless. She yanked open drawers, rifled file cabinets, pummeled closets. She did not know what she was looking for. That nothing was locked up strongly suggested that she would not find it.

  She almost didn’t.

  But there was one gem, a brief note jotted on the small pad beside the telephone, a busy but organized man’s reminder to himself. A reminder he either forgot or in the end did not need, because it remained where presumably he had written it.

  Ask her about E. If worried, reassure. No details. Keep vague. Want her curious not frightened. Reassure. Make her see no danger. Keep her looking. Not for P. For J. Get her to talk to E.

  Aurelia looked up at the drop ceiling, but heard no footsteps. She dropped her gaze to the note once more. Its meaning was plain. Byron Dennison, one of the most powerful members of the House of Representatives, had spoken to someone on this telephone, and that someone had given him what amounted to orders. He was supposed to reassure her, to find a way to get her back together with Eddie, presumably with an eye toward discovering whatever he was looking for. They wanted Aurie to keep looking. Presumably they wanted Eddie to do the same.

  To keep looking.

  Not for P. For J.

  Whether “P” stood for “Perry” or “the Project,” the idea was to keep them focused on J instead.

  Whoever they were, they wanted Eddie and Aurelia to find Junie for them.

  Junie.

  She was back at the beginning.

  CHAPTER 52

  Reintegration

  (I)

  WHEN EDDIE ENCOUNTERED AURELIA on New Year’s Eve of 1969, he had been back for nine months. He had touched down at Dulles Airport in March of 1969, just before his forty-second birthday, two months after the inauguration of Richard Nixon, and of a new era in politics. The American voter, as he tended to do every couple of decades, had suffered a melodramatic change of mind. Martin Luther King was dead. Robert Kennedy was dead. Campuses trembled. Cities burned. The Great Society promoted by Lyndon Johnson had turned to ashes—in Saigon, said some, or in the angry flames licking through the nation’s cities. White America fled to the suburbs. After its heavy defeat in the Civil War, the apologists for the Confederacy had proclaimed that the South would rise again, and so it had, a century later, electing conservatives nationwide on a tidal wave of snickers and code words and hints. Or so Eddie proclaimed in a Rolling Stone interview published a couple of weeks before he set foot on American soil.

  Nobody was sure
what to make of him. He had been such a moderate soul, mistrusted by the left, tolerated by the right, beloved by no one other than a few literary critics. But the stuff he had written from abroad seemed so angry—particularly that Report from Military Headquarters, the book Megan Hadley would later praise at dinner with Aurelia. There was talk, once again, of clawing back some of Eddie’s many awards. It was one thing to be antiwar, another to seem so—well—anti-America.

  At Dulles he went through customs, and Mindy, back for another stint as his assistant, met him at the barrier with a perky smile and a banner that read WELCOME HOME, which she had trouble opening. In the interim she had done a little magazine writing. As for Eddie, after the events in Hong Kong, he had visited another writer he knew in India, probably overstaying his welcome, and had spent time in Kampala, lecturing at Makerere University, known at this time as the Harvard of Africa. Then it was on to Oxford for his visiting appointment, during which he had spent a lot of time deciding what to do next. Rushing back to an America he no longer understood was not high on his list of choices.

  Mindy was accompanied by a neatly dressed young man of their nation, a Morehouse graduate named Zach who turned out to be her fiancé. Zach was a law student. He carried Eddie’s bags. They had borrowed somebody’s station wagon. Zach drove. Eddie sat beside him. From the back, Mindy prattled on about the wonderful offers that were waiting.

  “So I hear,” said Eddie.

  “You’re on all the shelves,” she breathed. “In the front of the store.”

  Eddie nodded. He could not keep up with the changes. He had returned to a strange land in which white schoolchildren suddenly read books by Negro authors. The canon had been exploded, Invisible Man had replaced Silas Marner, and two novels by Edward T. Wesley made the high-school reading lists regularly. All across America, students wrote college-entrance essays on science as metaphor in Field’s Unified Theory, or the social inversions in Netherwhite. His publisher was ecstatic. The public-school curriculum, his editor explained, was where the money was. The trick now was to build on the momentum. Eddie had promised a novel about a Negro in Hong Kong—a black man, as everybody said nowadays—and his editor, Stock, was the portrait of long-suffering eagerness. The new novel, she said, would be an enormous success. Fans were waiting. It had been five years since Pale Imitation. Kasten, his agent, demanded and received a ridiculous advance.