Echo House

by Ward Just

  Alec stared out the window. Leila and an older man were leaning against a car, talking. Suddenly the man put his arm around her, holding her close. They stood like that a moment, Leila's head bent in an attitude of defeat. He was talking to her and she began to nod her head.

  "What's your connection to her?"

  "None of your damned business," Axel said. Then, "She's finished in New York. She made a mistake there, too, and then took up with the wrong man. Two mistakes. She's undisciplined."

  "Something you know about," Alec said.

  "A damn sight more than you," Axel said. "They don't forgive in New York. New York's tribal, it never changes. As long as you belong to the tribe you're at the top of the tree. You're there today and there tomorrow unless you go broke or go to jail. And your parents are there and your cousins and someone new comes to town and it takes a generation before their foot fits the slipper. The New York squires don't like Southerners, Westerners, or Jews. They particularly don't like Washingtonians, because we're the competition and anyone can play. Win an election, get nominated to a Cabinet post—and there you are; you're in the game. We don't care who you are or where you come from because we're a city in motion." He paused then and drew Alec's jacket more tightly around his shoulders. New York was a spoiled, conceited city run by gangsters and the plutocracy; and its offspring, Chicago and Los Angeles, were no better. Chicago was much worse. He said, "An outsider makes a mistake in New York and they cut his nuts off. That's what they did to Leila, because she threatened them and the cozy world they've made for themselves. So she doesn't belong there. She belongs in Washington. We don't practice nepotism, the bank vice presidency or the seat on the Stock Exchange or the partnership in the law firm. You can't hand down political power. If you're a senator or a Secretary of the Treasury you can't leave that to your son in your will. He has to make it on his own. And he will, if he's careful in his choice of friends."

  Alec remained silent, still watching Leila and the older man.

  "Now she's in Chicago, worst god damned place in the world. She's not patient. The derby hats are on their way out. There'll be a whole new generation of Helpfuls and they'll be comfortable with uncertainty. Instability, even. Leila can be one of them, but she won't be patient." Axel said softly, "You, too. It's important you make up your mind; you're graduating next year—"

  Leila and the older man had vanished and the street was empty. An empty beer bottle glittered in the light of a streetlamp.

  "—so you should think carefully about what you want. Washington's a meritocracy, but there's a paradox, for those of us who've lived in the village for a generation or more and whose families have achieved a certain standing. You begin as your father's son. That's your identity and you live with it. But in time, if you're successful, the world shifts its opinion and he becomes your father. And then, if things work out, in the eyes of the world you become your son's father."

  Alec waited for the payoff, the homily that would end the sermon. The men near the door walked through it, still discussing Leila. She would have to pay a penalty and he wondered what it would be and if she had the patience to wait them out in Chicago. Now the room was silent except for Axel's breathing. He took Alec's hand, rubbing his thumb along the boyish knuckles, pressing hard.

  "That's what worries me, you see. Do you think things will work out for me, son?"

  Downstairs Lloyd Fisher was nose to nose with the girl with the Renoir complexion. She was obviously tight, squinting as she listened to Lloyd, her bow lips parted in an itchy half-smile. She barked a laugh, tossing her head, moving in closer. Alec wondered what it was about politicians that attracted footloose women, first Leila, now this one. They seemed powerfully drawn to the disheveled old men who smelled of tobacco and whiskey; and perhaps it was not them but the milieu, the atmosphere of authority and brutality, the emotions that went with high drama. Lloyd introduced her as Flo, everyone's favorite, a girl with a noble ambition. One day she intended to occupy the White House and transform it utterly.

  "A jazz band every Friday night," Flo said. "Lester Lanin on Saturdays. Open house every Sunday with a beautiful buffet and bloody marys. Throw open the old mausoleum, let the air in, hear some laughter. Don't you love the idea? 'Course, first I have to marry the man who'll be President. But Dolley Madison did it. So can I."

  Alec began to laugh at her vision of the weekend White House.

  "Politics is sexy, don't you agree? All that fear and trembling. All that pressure and frustration and not knowing what's going to happen tomorrow. The entire world crowded into that one small district, Washington. But of course you know that. You live there."

  Alec said, "It's boring, Flo. Boring beyond words."

  "It won't be when I get there. Trouble is, I need a candidate and I haven't found him. It's only a matter of time and some chemistry. And luck. The boys I know hate government. They think it's an old man's sport, like golf. But golf's got a lot to recommend it when you know how to play." With that, she gave a little military salute and walked off.

  Lloyd thoughtfully sipped his drink as he watched her go. "She's a character. Fun-loving I suppose you'd call her. She's got a big heart. Her father's a lawyer in Oak Park and her name isn't Flo. That's what everyone calls her because she wants so badly to be First Lady of the United States. She's smart about politics."

  "You could have fooled me," Axel said.

  "Likes to conceal it. Flo says things go easier that way, as opposed to Leila Berggren, who's indiscreet. Who can't keep her mouth shut and makes enemies she doesn't need because she's got a fresh mouth she can't keep shut. Flo knows you need friends." Then Lloyd turned to Alec and said how glad he was to see him again; the last time was at Echo House years ago. He had heard wonderful things. Of course he'd head back to Washington when he finished college.

  "No," Alec said.

  Lloyd brightened. Alec should think about law school then. Law, along with automobiles and steel, was the great growth industry of the United States. To be a lawyer now was like being a religious in the Middle Ages; it opened any door.

  "I've thought about it," Alec said, the words escaping before he knew they were there. Lloyd looked at him approvingly and said that when he had his law degree he should come to Chicago because it had a livelier atmosphere than Washington. It was welcoming to outsiders. Ask Leila Berggren, who had had her fill of New York and Washington and now loved Chicago.

  "I didn't know anything about law school," Axel said. "I never heard you mention law school. Where did you get that idea? It's a crazy idea. Is it Sylvia's idea?"

  "It's been decided," Alec said. "I decided tonight because Chicago's so attractive and livelier than Washington."

  "I don't know why anyone would want to work in Chicago, but I'll call Dick Daley—"

  "Dick's a friend of mine, Axel," Lloyd said.

  "It'll be a few years," Alec said.

  "I'll be here," Lloyd said.

  "Sometimes these things decide themselves, don't they?" Alec said.

  "Deed they do," Lloyd said.

  Axel said, "It's stupid."

  "I'll call," Alec said. "That's a promise."

  "I like enthusiasm," Lloyd said. "That's why I like Leila, her enthusiasm. And you'll like her too, once you get to know her."

  They watched Axel march back up the stairs.

  Lloyd said, "Where are you going?"

  "To wish Adlai a good night," Axel said. "Because he's entitled to one."

  PART II

  5. Camelot

  BY THE AUTUMN of 1962 Washington was no longer just another glum city of government, like Albany or Sacramento. Instead, it was fabulous—though not yet fabulous on the scale Constance had envisioned, maritime Venice at the end of the fifteenth century or brainy Vienna on the eve of World War One. Any nation's golden age was most vivid at the moment of irreversible political decline, and in late 1962 Washington was at its most muscular and confident. The Russians had been humiliated in Cuba, and the young Presi
dent was now seen not as a novice out of his depth but as a statesman of charm, subtlety, integrity, and tact. In private moments he spoke alarmingly of a long twilight struggle with the Bolsheviks; but that was seen not as evidence of pessimism or exhaustion but of an attractive worldliness, a newly mature American statecraft on the model of Whitehall or the Quai d'Orsay. Certainly there was no evidence of decline; quite the reverse. In such fine weather no one would think to listen for the scrape of the keel on the shoals.

  Eisenhower's Babbitts had been expelled and discredited, even Nixon gone for good, disappeared somewhere in the California wasteland. Suddenly every Democrat wanted to be in Washington, indisputably the epicenter of American life. Civic-minded industrialists, university professors, foundation executives, writers, provincial politicians, lawyers beyond count, settled in sociable Georgetown or Cleveland Park as the American émigrés to Paris forty years before gathered in the quarters of the Left Bank, charmed by the natives, avid to absorb the culture. They arrived in station wagons from Cambridge or Ann Arbor with their wives and children, settling in as if they never intended to leave—a logical assumption, since there was every prospect of a sixteen- or twenty-four-year dynasty, so long as they did their work with competence and élan, and learned the language of government, indeed married the language of government to the language of the boardroom, the courtroom, the faculty lounge, and the newsroom. They thought of themselves as the permanent civil service that would supervise the long twilight struggle. There came to be a kind of syncopation to the capital, jazz rhythms to the press conferences and glittering White House evenings, as the big cats pranced and prowled and did their business, and then went reluctantly home.

  Echo House had been refreshed as well. A coat of paint and a landscapist's attentions gave the back yard the look of a country estate. The English garden so despised by the old senator was gone, replaced by Kentucky bluegrass. The croquet court had not been used in many years, yet it was in place, the court carefully graded and shaded by trees and beautifully groomed, white wickets and stakes placed just so, a little bit of pretty East Anglia in Rock Creek Park. Axel's neighborhood was changed, old people dying and moving to smaller quarters. Harriet Bilbauer, ninety-two and a widow for thirty years, moved to a suite in the Shoreham after selling her house to a young senator from the West. George Steppe's son sold his father's place for an unbelievable six-figure sum and retired at once to Cape Cod. The new owners were a journalist and his wife, friends of the First Lady. Many of the new people were alarmingly young. Baby carriages sprouted on the sidewalks, as often as not wheeled by nannies in crisp white uniforms. On warm nights Axel could hear the commotion of cocktail parties in nearby gardens, a lively atmosphere on the staid old street. He always received invitations but went only occasionally because he did not like to stand for long periods, and there were so many unfamiliar faces. Always the host and hostess were solicitous, taking him around to meet everyone. Guests were introduced by name and tide. It was surprising how many of them worked for newspapers or magazines, and how au courant they seemed, and how eager for information. They were attractive people but aggressive. They seemed to think he knew everything and what he didn't know he could find out. Axel had an idea they kept files on people; in any case they were vacuum cleaners of information. He rarely saw friends of his own generation at these gatherings, and so much the better.

  Axel enjoyed reporting back, Margaret Mead returning from a summer in Samoa. He always saved an especially presumptuous item for Ed Peralta, Harold Grendall, and André Przyborski at Wednesday lunch. Do you know what one of the Hoovers asked me? It's outrageous. He asked me if I would confirm that Jackie had a bidet at their place in Virginia. An anecdote for his magazine, he said. The editor's personal request. I told him I wouldn't discuss the First Lady's plumbing, for God's sake.

  Nothing's out of bounds for them. Nothing's private.

  Still, it was valuable, meeting the younger crowd.

  They were the future of the government, even the journalists.

  Axel was always happy to return to Echo House, the first-floor lights ablaze and welcoming in contrast to the dark neighborhood. Washington had become an early-to-bed-and-early-to-rise community, evidence of vigor in the conduct of the nation's business. The old mansion gave him comfort, the somber Soldiers Cemetery across the street with its many Civil War dead lent it an air of purpose. A stand of startling magnolias concealed the porte-cochère as a sextet of giant elms concealed the magnolias. Tucked off to one side was a Prussian blue gazebo and inside the gazebo a bronze bust of a glowering Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany's greatest soul forever bolted to an iron plinth, according to instructions contained in the last will and testament of the old senator—who, failing to control the sprawl of the English garden, would at least have the last word on the occupant of the gazebo. It was shaded by a thick-waisted beech. A heavy wrought-iron fence protected the property from the street, but that did not discourage tourists from stopping and peering through the bars, admiring the gazebo and the landscaping and wondering at the identity of the owner, obviously a Washington grandee. That was the way they lived, protected from things, their doors always closed to outsiders. Probably his face would be familiar, one of Washington's unelected elite; and if you asked him a question he'd turn a deaf ear or have you arrested or run out of town. But he had done very well for himself in the capital. Politics paid well, no question. Moreover—who wanted to live in a country where you couldn't fix a traffic ticket?

  On an overcast Saturday afternoon in late November 1962, the iron gate stood ajar. A dusty MG swung in from the street, hesitated a moment, then wound up the driveway past Goethe's bust and the grove of elms, and stopped under the porte-cochere. The car's top was down, though the day was chilly and threatening rain. Sylvia Walren Behl Borowy did not open the car door but sat relaxed at the wheel, finishing her cigarette, listening to the radio. She undid her scarf and shook her head, running her fingers through her hair, all the while glaring at the miniature stone lions that sat either side of the front door. Nothing had changed, not one single thing, except that the lions had acquired a greenish tint.

  She had been in Washington only twice in the last decade and was there now only to discuss personal business with her son. She had not seen him since the summer, when he came to New York for a lawyers' conference. He lived in Chicago but was in Washington on business, staying at Echo House. Dirty business, no doubt, business manipulating the government in some unwholesome way. And what better theater of operations? She was not surprised that Echo House looked exactly as she remembered it, impregnable as a fortress and as hostile. The cemetery across the street, the gate, Goethe, the beech tree, the lions, the godawful Teutonic pretentiousness of it. Living at Echo House was like living in the Reichstag. The place gave her the creeps, as she had complained more than once, not that anyone ever listened. Listening was not one of the things they were good at in Washington. Sylvia pitched her cigarette over the windshield, watching it fall and die in a shower of sparks; and then she noticed the iron weather vane atop the gazebo.

  Alec watched her from the vestibule window, seeing her eyes narrow and her lips move, her face a catalogue of torts. She looked windblown but generally composed, despite the scowl. He was amused that she had taken the antique MG, a roadster suitable for a coed; but he had to admit she almost looked like one, in her scarf and sweater and short hair, her cheeks bright from the wind. It was either the wind or anger at being at Echo House once again. She was staring at the weather vane as though it were a swastika; and now she lit another cigarette, still declining to open the door of the car. He heard music then, something classical. She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel and smiled suddenly, her smile brilliant and without guile or affectation. La Bohème, no doubt. La Bohème, certainly. Alec wondered where her own barricades were now.

  When they embraced, she had tears in her eyes. The music, she explained. It always gets to me. I try not to let it and then I say, Why not
? Where's the harm? If you don't cry, you can't live.

  He said, "You've cut your hair."

  She daubed at her eyes and said, "Like it?"

  "It's different," he said. The haircut reminded him of Leila Berggren's, but that was a thought that would go unsaid.

  "You should let yours grow, Alec. You look like a Marine. But of course Kennedy wears his short, too. Is it a fashion statement or a political statement, or what?"

  "Semper fi," Alec said.

  "Honestly," she said.

  "Does Willy like it?" Willy Borowy was her husband.

  "Says he does," she said.

  "That's what counts."

  She looked at him and nodded; time for that later.

  Alec opened the car door and offered his hand, but Sylvia was looking elsewhere, over his shoulder in the direction of the gazebo.

  "What's that?" she asked.

  "What's what?"

  "That thing on top of the gazebo. That installation that looks like a human head surrounded by barbed wire. It wasn't there in my time."

  "His weather vane," Alec said. "Someone gave it to him. It's German. It's supposed to be a grasshopper."

  "God, yes. It's German, all right. It's straight from Buchenwald."

  "It's from a castle on the Rhine," Alec said.

  She snorted, not unkindly. "Your father never needed a weather vane to tell him which way the wind was blowing."

  "I think he likes the way it looks," Alec said.

  "I'll bet he does," she said.

  "Sylvia," he said. "Lay off." Then, "How was your trip?"

  "Lay off what?" Innocently. "It struck me as the slightest bit odd, an iron grasshopper on top of the gazebo, but now that you tell me it's from a schloss on the Rhine, I understand perfectly. Ghastly, the trip."