Shelley's Heart

by Charles McCarry

  15

  Late at night, after transcribing the notes of his meeting with Mallory, Macalaster worked on his column, a meditation on the subliminal aspects of the Hammett appointment. This caused him to think with great concentration about the radical he had known best, his late wife, and at one point, while composing a sentence about her that he later erased, he found himself weeping. Whether the tears were for Brook, or for Susan Grant, or for the waste of time and love and expectation in his own life, he did not know. Somehow the murder of Grant had given him the courage to think about his wife’s violent end. Brook, he knew, would have used the word “sick” to describe the way in which the assassination of a woman she regarded as a Nazi bitch had released his emotions about her own death.

  Macalaster wrote all this out in green luminescent letters. The computer screen, so like another consciousness in its eager response to every thought and word, had an almost hypnotic effect on him. It permitted him to talk about himself in perfect freedom and privacy. As he typed, he realized that he thought about Brook more lovingly now, and with less anger, than he ever had when she was alive. He was a man, after all, and it was her body that he remembered. He remembered it always as the body of a girl: long legs and long hair, a certain backward glance as she departed on the morning after the first night they went to bed together, a face animalized by sudden desire or wet with tears of sexual relief.

  Such memories would have infuriated the living woman by confirming all her worst suspicions about Macalaster’s real feelings toward her. He had never, as she had demanded, been able to love her mind as he loved her flesh; she had been right to accuse him on this score. One night, under the influence of gin, he had told her that he might have loved the mind she was born with had he ever known it, but by the time he met her she had joined the counterculture and swapped it for the model all the other girls were wearing that year. “You’re a bunch of Barbie dolls, changing ideas like you used to change her outfits, and you don’t even know it,” he had blurted. “You bastard! You pig!” she had cried. “But I’ll say this much,” Macalaster had continued in drunken tones. “If the mind God gave you was anything like your ass, I would have been crazy about it.” She came after him with the gin bottle and would have brained him if he had not defended himself. But moments later their death struggle turned into something else. For both of them, the physical aspect of their marriage had provided its only moments of happiness from their first night together right up to the end, twenty years later. Only in the unthinking moments of foreplay, coitus, and orgasm was Brook able to be what she really was, an American girl made for love, instead of the make-believe militant, half mad with anger because she did not really have anything to be angry about, into whom she tried to remake herself.

  Macalaster was startled out of this line of memory by the ringing of his doorbell and a loud pounding on his front door. Because he was slightly deaf as the result of explosions he had heard at close range in Vietnam, and because the room where he worked behind a closed door was at the top of the house, Manal had to come upstairs in her pajamas to tell him what was happening. Like every other gently reared young female in America, she had been warned since earliest childhood never to answer the door unless she knew who was outside it. It was two o’clock in the morning, and the noise had alarmed her. As Brook had trained her to do, she carried a portable telephone in her hand in case she needed to call the police.

  After running downstairs, Macalaster peered through the fisheye lens of the peephole in the front door and saw a fun-house version of Archimedes Hammett’s face. He opened the door.

  “I’m here to collect a favor,” Hammett said.

  Macalaster felt a rush of apprehension. Like so many others, he was bound to Hammett by a secret connection that placed him deeply in his debt. Neither of them had spoken about the matter for years, but Macalaster did not imagine that Hammett had come to his door in the small hours of the morning to ask for a trivial favor in return for having made him rich and famous.

  “Ask away,” Macalaster said.

  “I need somewhere safe to stay for the next few days,” Hammett said. “If I don’t have a place to disappear to during the hearings, I won’t have a moment’s peace. Will you put me up?”

  Macalaster was in no position to refuse. But he said, “Why here?”

  “Because you’re such a leper, Ross. No one would ever think of looking for me at your house.”

  During all this, the door stood open. Even though he wore a scarf and overcoat, Hammett was shivering. A weather front seemed to be moving through Washington. Trees bent in a brisk westerly wind; gusts of arctic air blew what remained of the inaugural snow.

  “When do you want to move in?”

  “Now. I’ve checked out of the hotel.”

  “All right.”

  “Super,” Hammett said.

  Macalaster blinked; he had before never heard the man use a word like “super.” Hammett made a gesture to someone inside a Volvo station wagon that was parked at the curb with its motor idling. Two women dressed in ankle-length calico dresses and hiking boots got out of the car and started unloading picnic coolers and the cardboard boxes of files, notes, and books without which Hammett never traveled. One was blond, thin and willowy, with enormous blue eyes, like a Vogue model. She wore no coat and her thin skirt blew around her long and unusually beautiful legs. Despite the weather, they were bare.

  Macalaster said, “The skinny one is going to catch pneumonia.”

  “Not her,” Hammett said. “She’s absolutely impervious to cold.”

  The other one, who was almost as dark as Manal, was rawboned and as tall and broad-shouldered as a good-sized man, but she was bundled up in a puffy down parka. She caught Macalaster staring at her friend’s legs and sneered in feminist disgust.

  Macalaster waved to her cheerily. To Hammett he said, “Are the Bulimia sisters staying too?”

  “No. Slim and Sturdi just drove my stuff down from Connecticut.”

  “ ‘Slim and Sturdy’? They let you get away with calling them those sexist names?”

  “I didn’t make them up. Slim is the real name of the one with blond hair. Sturdi likewise—it’s short for Sturdevant, her chattel name. She was a great athlete in college. Almost made the Olympics.”

  “As what? A weight lifter?”

  “As a matter of fact, she does work out. But her event was the heptathlon. Do they put the shot?”

  “She goes by her, uh, chattel name?”

  “She did until she changed it to Eve a couple of years ago. Slim is also surnamed Eve.”

  “I see,” said Macalaster with a tight-lipped smile. If his wife were still alive, no doubt she would now be legally known as Brook Eve. Among militant feminists the surname Eve had lately come into fashion as an alternative to what they termed the “chattel names” that had been imposed on them by the males who had impregnated their female ancestors. In emulation of Malcolm X, who had exhorted blacks to rid themselves of slave names half a century before, the originators of this fashion argued that every surname was a reminder of bondage because every daughter was named for and by her mother’s rapist. “She” had been considered as an alternative appellation, but it was rejected because it contained the name of the enemy—”he”—hidden within it. Finally they settled on the simple and beautiful alternative “Eve,” which was a sign of female infinity because it was spelled the same forward and backward. Equally important, it was the name assigned by genetic researchers to the single primal female from whom, as the scientific examination of the DNA of the placenta had established, all women, but no men, were descended. Every woman now alive, every woman who had ever lived, carried the genetic code of this single first female who was, in effect, the mother of humanity. In the beginning and ever after, Life was Woman—or as Slim and Sturdi spelled the word, Womon. But no man’s body could ever possibly contain the code of Eve, because no man could produce a placenta.

  Macalaster said, “What do Eve a
nd Eve do when they’re not handling baggage?”

  “They’re lawyers specializing in environmental issues, animal rights, and so on—from a feminist orientation, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  Hammett made it clear by a change of expression that this subject was exhausted. His eyes and mind were already elsewhere. His attention had been captured by a movement behind Macalaster inside the house, and he smiled and gazed upward at someone on the staircase. Macalaster followed his glance. Manal stood on the landing with the phone in her hand.

  Macalaster said, “Archimedes is going to stay with us for a few days, Manal. Until the hearings are over.”

  “We’ll have to keep my being here a secret,” Hammett said, “or you’ll have a media circus on the front lawn, so don’t tell anyone I’m here, okay?”

  Manal nodded in her silent way. Hammett nodded in return and kept on smiling as if he had many fond memories of their earlier times together. Calling up the stairway to the child, he said gaily, “I hope we can have one of those sessions of yours quite soon.”

  Manal looked puzzled by his choice of words.

  “Like we had the other night, with the words spelled out,” Hammett said.

  “Oh. A séance.”

  Manal smiled noncommittally, then walked away in the direction of her bedroom. Macalaster looked at Hammett with curiosity. For the first time in all the years he had known him, the other man seemed to feel that he had to explain himself. “I thought it was great fun, talking to the departed,” Hammett said.

  Then he winked. Winked. Long afterward, this was what Macalaster would remember.

  1

  Norman Carlisle Blackstone, Esq., was a detail man, a slow worker, a careful thinker, a painstaking briefer. These qualities had won him respect and large fees on Wall Street, where he had spent many years managing the estates and trusts of the old rich and preserving the new rich from indictment.

  However, ponderous deliberation was not a quality that President Bedford Forrest Lockwood greatly admired. He himself lacked it almost entirely. He had completed forward passes, shot baskets, won the presidency, on pure instinct. As long as he was himself and delivered the goods, positive things happened. On the morning after his encounter with Hammett, Lockwood could not bear the thought of hearing Blackstone’s report on the legal aspects of the impeachment process. “Just get the essentials and boil ‘em down for me,” he said to Julian.

  “I think that would be a mistake,” Julian said. “Carlisle may be a pain in the neck sometimes, but he has a fine legal mind.”

  “Goddamnit, Julian, I haven’t got the time, I haven’t got the patience.”

  “Mr. President, you’re a lawyer; I’m not. I think you should be the one to listen to the details.”

  Lockwood had gone to law school for the credential but had never practiced and had no great interest in the subtleties of the law.

  Julian said, “He’s on his way down the hall right now.”

  “Damn!” Lockwood said. But he wasn’t truly displeased; if Blackstone bored him nearly to tears, he also amused him to the same result because he was such a wonderful example of his type. Lockwood liked his people eccentric but pigeonholed.

  “Old Spats reminds me of the story about the Boston hotel clerk and Daniel Webster,” he said. “Every morning around five, the clerk would be sweeping up the lobby and Daniel Webster would roll in after a night of revelry. After about a week of this, the clerk can stand it no more. He says, ‘Senator, can I ask you a question?’ Webster says, ‘Fire when ready.’ Clerk says, ‘We’re both freeborn one hundred percent Americans. Every morning of my life I get up at four, fix breakfast for my dear old sickly mama, get to work fifteen minutes early and stay fifteen minutes late, then go home and cook the supper. I make two dollars a week sweeping floors and taking guff from anyone who feels like giving it to me. I’ve never once laid a lascivious hand on a woman, never taken a drop of liquor, never smoked, never cussed. The only enjoyment I have is getting up at five-thirty on Sundays to pump the organ down at the Congregational Church, coffee and doughnuts afterward.’ In his booming voice, Webster says, ‘A worthy life! But what’s the question?’ Clerk says, ‘I’m ready to ask it. You stay out all night, come in at dawn every blessed morning reekin’ of cigar smoke, whiskey, and perfume, then you sleep all day and go out again when the sun goes down.’ Webster says, ‘All correct. What’s the question?’ Clerk says, ‘Here’s the question. Given the way we both serve the Lord and our fellow man, how come you’re a United States senator, rich and famous, and I’m just a two-dollar-a-week hotel clerk that’s never even had a piece of tail?’ And old Daniel Webster replies, ‘The trouble with you, young fella, is you’re no damn good when you do get up.’ ”

  When Blackstone came into the Oval Office gripping his briefing book, he found Lockwood and Julian guffawing and wiping their eyes. He had overheard the last line, and there was little doubt in his mind that the joke was on him. Nevertheless, he admired the President’s astonishing aplomb. Nothing, not even the prospect of impeachment and disgrace, could prevent this noble savage from making jokes. Some might have thought Lockwood’s behavior common, even vulgar, but Blackstone saw it as a sign of unconquerable vitality. He had worked it out in his mind that the secret of Lockwood’s greatness—and in Blackstone’s opinion he had to be considered a great man—was that he was ordinary, but ordinary in a magnified, peculiarly American way, like Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman, so that people saw themselves in him.

  “Come on in, Carlisle,” said Lockwood, as if surprised but delighted to see Blackstone. “Join the group. We’ve been talking about American history.”

  Stooped and intense, peering through his pince-nez, wearing one of his Edwardian costumes with watch fob and stickpin, Blackstone tried to enter into what seemed to be the manly spirit of the occasion. “I guess some parts of it have been pretty funny,” he said.

  “It’s a laugh a minute,” Lockwood said.

  Many things about working in the White House had surprised Blackstone, but nothing more than the condition of ignorance in which high policy was made and executed. He soon realized that the President and his aides lived out their fifteen-hour days in fifteen-minute segments, getting through one appointment after another just for the sake of doing so, and forgetting what had happened as soon as one encounter ended and another began. There was no time to think, much less reflect on the lessons of history. Decisions were made on the spur of the moment, with no regard for causes or consequences. Since boyhood Blackstone had believed that the world would be saved when at last it was ruled by wisdom. How, then, in the highest councils of the greatest nation on earth, could there be no philosophical basis for policy, no inventory of national interests, no scholarship? Had this always been so in America? He suspected that the answer was yes.

  Amiably, but hoping to set a serious tone, Blackstone said, “You’ve been very busy, sir—”

  “Yep, sure have been,” said Lockwood, cutting off the rest of a pleasantry for which he had no use. “But the best is yet to come. Now, Counselor, sit ye down and tell me everything you know about impeachment. Or”—he winked—”haven’t you done your homework?”

  Smiling stiffly, Blackstone abstained from mentioning that he had not been home for a week and had the worst case of eyestrain of his lifetime. He knew better than anyone that he bored the President; he did not want to do so now, at least not unduly.

  Lockwood saw that he had given offense. “Hell, Carlisle,” he said in a more kindly tone, “I only ask because I’ve had complaints about your leaving the lights on all night. That’s a violation of my national energy policy.”

  Blackstone relaxed a little. Lockwood said, “What have you got for me?”

  “I have the constitutional briefing you requested,” Blackstone said. He cleared his throat. “But I also have some substantive information.”

  “About what?”

  “About the likely authenticity
of Mallory’s data on the election.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Lockwood said. “Let me guess. You’ve proved his case for him.”

  “Perhaps you’d rather just read my report,” Blackstone said, offering a sheaf of documents.

  Lockwood waved them away. “No. I’m all ears, Spats. Go.”

  Blackstone said, “I asked our pollster to check a scientifically selected sample of the polling records in the suspect precincts in Michigan, New York, and California, matching these against the result of exit polls taken among voters who had just cast their ballots.” He paused, as if reluctant to go on without permission.

  “And?” Lockwood said.

  “And the exit polls do not match the actual results in any case. In all but a few instances, a majority of people in those precincts told the poll takers they had voted for one of your opponents. But according to the final results you won the actual vote.”

  “ ‘One of my opponents’?” Lockwood pounced on the phrase. “What are you trying to tell me, Carlisle?”

  “There were more than two candidates for President on the ballot in all three states,” Blackstone replied. “If votes were, indeed, stolen, it does not follow that all were stolen from Mallory.”

  “They could have been stolen from any of the three.”

  “Or from all three.”

  “Does that mean what I think it means?”

  “It means that Mallory may be able to demonstrate that you were not elected. But unless he can trace every stolen vote, he will find it difficult to prove in a court of law that he, himself, was elected.”

  “And you think that’s to our advantage?”

  “It is always advantageous to be able to raise doubts about the legitimacy of your adversary’s case.”

  “Not if everybody loses,” Lockwood said. “What I want to do is win. Remember that. Next subject.”