Miranda's War

by Foster, Howard;

She looked at him so uneasily that he walked over to the big leaded windows and stared out at the coach house.

  “I hate this life too. I never should have run. I’m not a politician.”

  He turned around and went to his closet for his olive drab suit, the one that contrasted with his fair coloring and added a necessary decade to his appearance, according to his ex-consultants.

  “There is no instant way out of this,” he said. “I’m not going to come home today and be able to tell you we reached a deal. And what if I do tomorrow or next week? I’m still the candidate. I’ve got to finish the campaign.”

  When Stephen finally was brought to the Governor’s office, through basement tunnels and service elevators, aides were scattered around his desk, apparently dealing with something more important. It was ten minutes before they were dispatched, and Samuelson gave him a momentary signal that he was aware of his presence. He picked up the phone, uttered a few words, put it down and made a note on one of his pads.

  “So, Stephen, I could ask you how things are going, but I know how things are going. It must be rough.”

  “It’s an adventure, Governor. Each day is different.”

  “I ran for office as an independent, so I know how that is.”

  “I’m basically doing the same thing.”

  “No, you’re running as a protest candidate.”

  “Call it what you want. I’m running to protest, to get relief for my constituency, on a single issue. You did it, saying the parties had failed us, that only an independent could get things done. It worked.”

  “Except that I cast my net wide.”

  “We’re just another constituency you need to deal with. An independent administration should be able to do that. I mean if you’re really independent.”

  The Governor was intrigued and didn’t interject with an idiom or wise aside for the first time since the political struggle had begun.

  “Go on,” he said with a nod.

  “Get rid of this mindset of us as the enemy.”

  “My friend, you and your mentor are my most aggrieved constituents. Why didn’t you come to me with a peace offering before the bond boycott?”

  “You didn’t make us an offer. How long do you think we’re going to wait? Miranda is very motivated.”

  The Governor stepped out of his chair and asked Stephen to join him for coffee in a “more conversational, less stiff” place. He opened a side door, painted so inconspicuously in the color of the wall that Stephen had not even noticed it, and they went down a narrow hallway.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  “He’s offering to create a board to basically tell the towns what they can and cannot do,” Stephen told Alicia the next morning. “He spent fifteen minutes explaining to me how it would work, and the bottom line is, it does almost nothing to help us.”

  She looked out the kitchen window at the security guard Stephen had hired and the coach house, now vacated by tenants fleeing all the attention.

  “God, I hate this! I hate you for having done this to us.”

  “So how can I say yes to that?”

  “You can’t.”

  “Thank you.”

  She turned around and faced him.

  “It’s basic game theory, right? If he won’t give you anything better now, then you need to keep up the boycott.”

  He hugged her and then stepped back.

  “I don’t know if it’s that easy. So many things can go wrong. The party guys are flying up from Washington today to pressure me to drop out. He probably knows that. Miranda can say I’m selling out on Save Our Towns.

  “What are you going to say to her?”

  “Does it matter? Hasn’t she hacked into my servers at the campaign office? She knows everything. And if she’s not clear about something, she’ll find an expert to tell her what she needs to know so she sounds like she knows.”

  “She won’t let you sell out.”

  “If she thinks I did, she’ll try and ruin me.”

  “Then you need to bring her in the loop somehow.”

  “I’m afraid of her, of what she is capable of. And so is Samuelson. And so is her husband, and her colleagues in Lincoln. The more they see of her, the less they want her to be in charge.”

  “Do the people, our people, want to keep up the boycott?”

  “I think so. It’s private. Nobody’s names are out there in public.”

  “Then you’ve got to own it. Forget about the election. Win this and we’ll all be proud of what you’ve done, your father included. You can go right ahead and drop out of the election as soon as it’s done.”

  He hugged her passionately.

  “I can live with that—easily.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Miranda looked at Tony as she approached his office admiring the authoritative aura that surrounded him, the way his associates listened to him with that mix of fear and inquisitiveness and how nobody interrupted his directions. He was, as always, beautifully tailored, and his purple tie, which might look foppish on a lesser man, simply added a layer of modernity to his persona. He waved her in.

  “I’m very busy, but not too busy to see you,” he said and gave her a kiss on the cheek. He closed the door, and they engaged in some banter about the $14.5 million Pierce House contract, which was finally signed after the appraisal had come in at $13.2 million and Tony agreed to an essentially unenforceable limit of twenty cars per day. Miranda had won “concert and special events” waivers from the limit, which the Commission was free to issue whenever it wanted.

  “What brings you here today? You’re not on my schedule.”

  “I had it out with Archer. My marriage is over.”

  “Sit down, you’re upset.”

  She felt an empathy that no other man had ever shown her. He listened to every word, studied her body language and thought before he responded.

  “Are you sure? Couples have fights.”

  “It‘s been over since I became Chairman. Everything I’ve done violates his code. I’m an embarrassment.”

  “You’re Chairman of the Commission, for God’s sake.”

  “All he sees is how I got it, and now Save Our Towns. It’s one controversy after another.”

  “Has he ever said he was proud of you?”

  “Of course not. He didn’t come to the town meeting.”

  “That’s treason, not even going.”

  “He said it was a glorified power trip.”

  “Get yourself a good lawyer and end it. You get half?”

  “Of the marital assets. But he had his trust before we were married.”

  “But all the income from it?”

  “Millions and millions more he’s secreted away in the Cayman Islands.”

  “You’ve got proof?”

  “I’m very good with my computer.”

  He laughed and grabbed her hand.

  “I feel like we’re kindred spirits. We make things happen.”

  “What am I going to do after the divorce? I’m Mrs. Archer Dalton to my colleagues. He gave me cred, the name, the money, the house.”

  “Power is a very complex thing. Nobody can give it to anyone. It’s all about perception. You won power because Lincoln thinks you can take it where it needs to go. Archer doesn’t like where you’re taking things, and he wants a divorce. When Lincoln finds out, it won’t want you to lead it anymore. You lose power. It’s inevitable.”

  “My colleagues on the Commission don’t want any more confrontation. I can feel it the second I see them. All they want is to finish the sale of the Pierce, and maybe, maybe consider buying up some land on Route 2 to stop the Target store. That’s it. I’m just supposed to sit there like a sphinx after that.”

  “This old-money world you married into,” and he paused. “How do I put this? It’s very alluring, and I was taken in at the beginning too when I went into business on my own, but at its core, it’s dead, a carcass lying on the side of the road on a lovely bluff overlooking the ocean.
”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Figure out how to profit from what you’ve got, get it and move on.”

  “I’m not in this for the money, Tony. I just love it. I love outsmarting people, beating them at their own game. I get a thrill. The win at town meeting was a sugar high. I loved it, and I need a new one.”

  “Then do something with it while you have it. Experience the thrill of making your own fortune.”

  He grabbed her right hand with both of his and stared into her eyes.

  “This will never come again. We can do so much together.”

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Archer arrived at 5:45 that evening, parked in the barn, came in the back door, looked over the mail on the kitchen table and went to his study. Miranda was seated at his desk for the first and only time.

  “What are you doing in here, Hutch?”

  “I’m invading your space.”

  “Is this some sort of game? Do you have one of your digital cameras trained on me?”

  “You don’t want me here, do you?”

  “No, please get out of my chair.”

  “Can I? Can I just get up and walk out of here? I’m an elected official in this town. My handiwork is all over the house and outside.”

  “You can get up and go back to your study. I’m not throwing you out of the house or Lincoln.”

  “I can’t live my life in my study. You can’t live in yours. You go to M.I.T. every day. You take the boys to school. You have a life outside of this room.”

  “And so do you.”

  “My study has no walls. It’s where I live, where I think, where I interact with my colleagues. You want to take it away from me.”

  “You didn’t live in that study until recently.”

  “I was suffocating. I love what I’m doing too much to stop and go back.”

  “You have impulse control disorder, Hutch, and manic depression. You are not suited to hold a position of power. And we reached our understanding about all of this six months before we got married. And I accepted who you are, because I loved you more than anyone else in the world. And you loved me, as much as you were able to, or at least pretended to, and it worked well for twelve years.”

  “I know, love, and then I just got bored with my life. You gave me everything you promised. We’re in the Social Register. We have the house, the life, the clubs and all the entrée that gives one, but I can’t live like this for the rest of my days. I want to do something great, to be Napoleon, MacArthur, Patton. And this slow-money quiet world needs to be kicked in the teeth.”

  “It’s not possible, Hutch. We both know this is a manic episode gone out of control, and you need to switch your medication. Or something else.”

  “It’s not. This is who I am. I need to act boldly. I’ve never felt surer about anything.”

  “You can stop if you have to. And you have to.”

  “We can’t undo Longwood, or what I said at town meeting. I am who I am.”

  “Then get a lawyer,” he said, and this time the tears were his.

  “Let’s have dinner and we’ll tell them,” she said. “We’re having lobsters. It’s their favorite. It won’t be so bad. And once we get it over with, the tension will ease up.”

  He didn’t answer her directly but tacitly let her take the family where she wanted. He’d done it hundreds of times since they had met. And he knew if she thought it was right, it was so.

  Later that night after the announcement had been made and things had settled down, she wrote her resignation letter to Bayard Cahill, Chairman of the Board of Selectmen.

  Dear Mr. Cahill:

  When the town meeting gave me its vote of confidence just two months ago, I took that to mean we were simpatico. But what I’ve learned from your wary glances as a spectator at my Commission and everyone’s pathological aversion to confrontation is that Lincoln wants to be invisible more than anything else. Defeat is preferable to protest, and protest and this town just don’t mix.

  We pay huge taxes to the state while it closes in on us, as if we are not entitled to the same rights of equal protection that exist for everyone else. Our children attend the best schools, where they learn to despise us for being overprivileged. We convince ourselves that we’re progressives, and that makes it OK. But our world is shrinking, and we’ll actually have to make some noise and see our names in the news if we’re actually going to do anything about it. You just feel too much guilt about who we are to stop the decline.

  This is nothing less than a culture of suicide, and I want nothing to do with it. I resign from the Conservation Commission.

  Sincerely,

  Miranda (Mrs. Archer) Dalton

  She saved it but did not send it.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Stephen heard from several sources that the bond boycott was working its will. The state agencies had quietly raised the interest rates on six new bond issues in the last two days by five hundred basis points. The Governor called again and summoned Stephen, again, to the side entrance and the maze of private passageways to his office.

  The two faced each other across the Governor’s desk. No private chat in easy chairs this time. The governor opened with a threat: did Stephen want the boycott to be investigated by the House Finance Committee?

  “I see that it’s costing you money, more money each day.”

  “That’s not what I asked, Stephen. I can ask the Chairmen of six committees to launch investigations.”

  “I thought you were an independent.”

  “They don’t like what you’re doing either, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “Actually I haven’t. They’re pretending not to care. All the reporting I read says this is about my ego and me. I want to save the rich. I’m destroying my party. One columnist compares me to Nixon and another one to John Adams. I rather enjoy the moment.”

  He hoped the Governor would believe that, but he knew him too well.

  “I’m prepared to make you an offer. I’m betting your people are getting nervous. I think they might be willing to live with some section 8 housing in their towns as a price to pay for snob zoning.”

  “How many units?”

  “Fifty.”

  “You’re not getting it. Why should we have section 8 people living in Sherborn?”

  “Because it brings you in touch with the real world.”

  “What do you think my constituents do all day, play golf in restricted country clubs?”

  The Governor shrugged his shoulders and made a snide expression.

  “We work. Ninety-eight percent of men under sixty-five work full-time; 37% of women work. We work long hours. We run businesses and foundations and teach at Harvard and M.I.T. The average home is worth under a million, and 64% have mortgages. I could go on and on. I’ve been listening to these people’s problems for six months. For what it’s worth, my family’s fortune is gone. My father burned through the last of it. I have a mortgage and was renting out my coach house until my tenants left after I won the primary. They didn’t feel safe there, and I don’t blame them. The longer this goes on, the more threatened we feel, the more it’s clear to us that there is a plot against our towns. It seems like Miranda was right.”

  “You know, that’s the first time you’ve ever spoken with an ounce of passion. You’ve always been as bland as me.”

  “How much time have you spent in our towns?”

  “Not much.”

  “And how much time have these committee Chairmen spent in our towns?”

  “You know the answer. It’s raw dislike. OK, here’s my deal. I’ll agree to a transfer tax on homes over $1 million. All of that money gets spent on housing subsidies. Some of it might end up in your towns. But I want Miranda to agree to this deal too. She needs to meet us in here by the end of the week and agree.”

  “And what do we get?”

  “You get your local zoning protected by the new law.”

  “For how long?”r />
  “It’s permanent.”

  “Laws can be changed.”

  “You and Miranda started this war. It’s like the weapons of mass destruction we never found in Iraq. Now you suffer the blowback. The political winds blow in every direction. What if some legislator from somewhere wants to do something on affordable housing five years from now? I won’t be here. I can’t tell you what will happen. It might be even worse for you and your people.”

  An hour later Stephen was at Miranda’s house, pounding the brass pineapple doorknocker after having been unable to reach her by phone. He’d never been to her home before, and she’d never been to his. He wandered the pristine grounds and flower-beds to the barn. The door was closed, no cars inside. He estimated the property to be over two acres, worth $2.75 million and having an annual tax bill of $42,000. It wasn’t one of the premier estates in Lincoln, but was well above average and maintained impeccably. Her touch was everywhere, from the gravel driveway, difficult to maintain in winter and a status symbol, to the hunter green trim on the house and the pieces of modern art placed just so around the grounds. They would be out of place in Sherborn, but in Lincoln’s academic haut monde, modernism coexisted with the classics.

  Giving up, he drove down winding Bedford Road to the Town Hall, did not see her green Range Rover, and then went on to the stores. Everyone he encountered recognized him; some had words of encouragement. He texted Miranda from the French restaurant, the very table where they had first met: “I am in Lincoln and need to see you. Will not leave.” Twenty minutes later, as he was about to drive back to her house, she texted: “Why?”

  “Now I’m at your house,” he responded.

  She drove back with the two boys at 3:45, keeping him waiting nearly two hours. He stared at them, the elder one the image of his father, with his high forehead and ginger hair, and the younger one a hybrid.

  “Boys, I’m Stephen Rokeby. Your mother has worked with me on my campaign.”

  “You won the primary, thanks to my mom,” said Cody.

  “She’s a master strategist, which is why I’m here.”

  “Cody is reading Montesquieu, and Asa has a fairly decent short story going. Care to read it?” she asked.