The Senator's Children Read online

  Once inside, Danielle went into the restroom, found an open stall, closed the door behind her, spit the pill into the toilet, and flushed.

  They found their seats—fifth row center. Ten minutes more. It was strange to have Betsy—to have anyone—sitting beside her. She preferred to see plays alone; it was one of her greatest pleasures. She didn’t like sharing this experience, not even with people she loved, even though that was one of the main points of theater. Once the lights went down, she liked to imagine that she was alone. Everything around her would fade away; so would she. It’s the strangest, most wonderful thing in the world, she thought—human beings on a stage, acting out a drama made of words written by another human being, so that other human beings can witness—pay to witness—a dramatic journey that causes them to feel things they might not otherwise, or to feel more deeply what they already feel.

  This, she would miss. David, of course, and Betsy. But more than anything but them, she would miss this. If there is an afterlife, she thought, let there be theater. Let there be Nick, please. And theater. All the world’s a stage, as Shakespeare put it, so maybe being dead meant that you spent eternity as a ghost, watching an infinite number of human dramas play out.

  She felt Betsy’s hand on hers on the armrest between them, and this surprised her—that she was alive, that her daughter was with her. She looked at their hands touching and decided that hands were miracles. She held Betsy’s tightly. They had become closer in the two months Danielle had been sick, but they had been growing closer even before that, especially with David away in DC during the week—and increasingly on weekends—for the past seven years, from the time Betsy was ten, and now gone even more, and farther away, with the presidential campaign.

  The lights in the theater flickered. That thrill never got old for Danielle.

  “Don’t tell your father,” she said.

  “Don’t tell him what?”

  “What my oncologist said.”

  “Mom, I don’t like secrets.”

  “I’ll tell him after Iowa, promise.”

  “The doctor didn’t say it’s worse, just not better.”

  “Not better is worse.”

  “I know you didn’t swallow your pill, by the way.”

  Danielle laughed. “You’re very annoying.”

  “It’s only codeine.”

  “Those pills make me drowsy, and I want to enjoy this play—this matters to me.”

  “Well, you matter to me,” Betsy said.

  “You’re very sweet,” Danielle said.

  “Okay, but I still want you to take a pill.”

  “Sweetheart, please.”

  “I’ll leave.”

  “What happened to the old Betsy?”

  “The fat one.”

  “You were never fat.”

  “The chunky one.”

  “Sweetheart.”

  “The one who used to be afraid of you.”

  “You were never afraid of me,” Danielle said. She stared at Betsy, and saw that she was serious. “Well, that makes me feel awful.” She took out the pill bottle, shook out a pill, put it into her mouth, waited for it to soften on her tongue, and then swallowed it.

  They sat there quietly for a minute.

  “Betsy,” Danielle said, “I’m sorry you were afraid of me.”

  “I’m not anymore.”

  “I’m sorry you ever were,” Danielle said. “You shouldn’t be afraid of your mother.”

  “It’s okay now,” Betsy said.

  The lights flickered again, and then the theater went dark.

  “I’m still not lying to Dad,” Betsy whispered.

  “We’ll talk about that later,” Danielle said.

  High above the stage an imitation Kandinsky revolved; it was painted on both sides. One side was wild and brightly colored; the other side was colder, more geometric. The painting kept revolving, and then it stopped: the geometric painting faced the audience.

  Then a middle-aged couple ran onto the stage wearing silk robes, and the woman, played by Stockard Channing, said to her husband, “Tell them!”

  DECEMBER 1991

  Two hundred people waited for David in the gymnasium, and he was already twenty minutes late. Tim was obsessed with staying on schedule, but the truth was David wasn’t in the mood to stump. He went to bed with the stump speech in his head, he woke hearing it, and in between he dreamed about it. It had become so rote that the only way for him to feel the stump, and he needed to, was to go off script. Winging it came with risks and rewards, but fuck it. He made a sudden detour off the path to the high school’s entrance and headed for the football field, where the team was practicing.

  Tim followed. “Senator,” he said, but David didn’t respond. “Senator, come on.”

  “Just a few minutes.”

  “We’re late.”

  “Just a few.”

  “It’s starting to snow.”

  “So what?”

  “David, come on,” he said, but David removed his jacket and handed it to Tim.

  He walked across the football field and joined the huddle. The players stared at him. “Hey, hey, hey,” the coach said.

  “Mind if I take a few snaps?”

  “This is a closed practice.”

  “My name’s David Christie.”

  He recognized David then and shook his hand. “Mike Leader,” he said.

  “Great name for a football coach.”

  “Or a president.”

  “You’re not thinking about running, are you?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “My son used to play football back in Pennsylvania.”

  “You sure you want to play in those shoes?”

  “They’re the only shoes I have.”

  The coach told the receivers to line up, but no one moved. “Come on!” he said, and blew the whistle hanging from a rope around his neck.

  The first kid ran a skinny post, the kind of route over the middle that gets you a concussion, and David hit him easy. The second kid ran a post pattern twenty yards downfield, and David’s pass was a step behind him, but the kid reached back for the ball and made David look good. The third kid ran a flare, and David pumped, and the kid turned it into a wheel up the sideline, and David hit him in stride. The fourth kid, tall and skinny, all legs, a body better suited for basketball, turned on the burners, a go pattern, nothing but speed, and David threw as far as he could—forty yards, not bad. The kid had to slow down to catch the ball, but not too much, and then he high-stepped into the end zone and spiked the ball, and the other boys clapped, and the coach said, “You busy on Saturday?”

  David’s shoulder was sore, he’d have to ice it, but the receivers kept running their routes and he kept throwing. A few dying quails—there was a joke somewhere in there about the vice president, he thought—but mostly strikes. It was snowing harder and David’s socks were soaked and his shirt had come undone, its tail flapping behind him, but he didn’t care. Then he noticed that Tim—ever-resourceful Tim—had brought out the press. They shot video of David.

  When his shoulder was near dead, he packed a snowball and threw it at Tim—right in the back. Then he went after the press. They hid behind their cameras and packed their own snowballs and threw them at David, and it was six against one, but David held his own, and this too was caught on video.

  Before David gave his stump speech inside the high school, Tim told him, “That was great. You looked athletic, spontaneous, a guy unafraid to ruin his loafers.” But David thought, I was just throwing a football like I used to with Nick on cold, snowy Pennsylvania Saturdays before games.

  That night, back at the Hotel Fort Des Moines, when he was in his room, finally alone, the phone rang.

  “I was wondering when you were going to call,” David said, before he knew who it was.

  It was Betsy calling to wish him a happy birthday. He’d forgotten, but pretended otherwise.

  “How was your day?” she said.

  “Go
od day,” David said. “Played some football. Had a snowball fight.”

  “Don’t have too much fun without us.”

  “I miss you guys.”

  “How much longer do we have to do this?”

  “Not a day longer than we have to.”

  “Mom’s sleeping, but she said happy birthday.”

  “Tell her I love her, okay?”

  “Who’s there with you?”

  “That’s just the TV.”

  “Go to sleep.”

  “You’re the boss.”

  “Good night,” she said. “I love you.”

  “I love you too,” David said.

  *

  Her mother was too sick from chemotherapy to travel to New Hampshire for the debate. She told Betsy that she should go, but Betsy didn’t want to leave her mother alone. Her father said he would miss them, and it would help just to know they were watching at home.

  They sat on the couch together, her mother under a wool blanket Betsy had covered her with, and watched the debate on TV. Her father against Bill Clinton, Paul Tsongas, Jerry Brown, and Lee Kirkwood. Betsy was nervous, but her mother didn’t seem to be; maybe the cancer treatments didn’t allow her to be anything but tired.

  Her father mentioned them in his opening statement—that they were unable to be there with him, but he wanted them to know that he was thinking about them. For a moment, when her father looked into the camera and said these words, Betsy thought: My father might actually become president of the United States. And he would be a good one. She was biased, she knew, and all her father had done was mention her and her mother, but she was proud of him.

  Early in the debate, Tom Brokaw, the moderator, asked Governor Kirkwood if he was surprised by David Christie’s rise in the polls in Iowa and if anything less than a double-digit victory in his home state would be considered a defeat.

  “It’s my home, but Senator Christie seems to think it’s his. He’s spending more time in Iowa than in Washington. Last time I checked, he still has a job there. My job is in Iowa; Senator Christie’s job is running for president. He’s a good politician, but make no mistake, he’s a politician. He knows how to use certain events to his advantage. It’s fortunate that he knows CPR, but that doesn’t qualify him to be president of the United States. His entire political career has been based not on substance but on luck, to be perfectly honest. Eventually the voters of Iowa will see the truth and Senator Christie’s luck will run out.”

  Brokaw said, “Senator Christie—your response.”

  “I’d prefer not to,” her father said—very Bartleby of him, Betsy thought. “I concede my time to Governor Kirkwood so that he can explain how a boy having a seizure and almost dying is lucky.”

  “That’s just like the senator to put words in my mouth,” Kirkwood said. “You see, even now he’s trying to use that incident—that unfortunate incident—and of course everyone is relieved that the boy is all right. I know CPR too, but I’m not using it as the center of my campaign. I’m still waiting for some substance from Senator Christie. In the short term he might get a bump from circumstances—from the media focusing on things unrelated to policy, things that cast Senator Christie in a sympathetic light—but where’s the substance?”

  “Senator Christie,” Brokaw said.

  “Thank you, Tom, but again, I concede my time back to Governor Kirkwood. I’d like to hear more about the circumstances he’s referring to that make me more sympathetic. I’m not sure if he’s talking about my son’s death or my wife’s illness or some other piece of good luck I’ve had.”

  Perhaps trying to channel Reagan, Kirkwood smiled, shook his head, and said, “There you go again—putting words in my mouth and trying to use something that—Let me say that everyone wishes Senator Christie’s wife a full recovery, of course we do. But listen, I didn’t bring anyone’s family into this. I’m simply asking for an ounce of substance from his campaign. This is the senator’s opportunity to tell us what he’s running on other than his nice smile.”

  Brokaw turned to her father, who crossed his hands on the lectern and stared into the camera. It seemed to Betsy that her father was looking directly at her and her mother. They waited, along with everyone at the debate and everyone else watching on TV.

  “Once again, I’d prefer not to respond,” he said. “Governor Kirkwood is doing a fine job, without any help from me, shoving his foot very deeply into his own mouth.”

  The audience applauded, but her father’s expression didn’t change. He didn’t appear angry, just strong. It was as if someone had punched him in the face, Betsy thought, and he’d hit back hard while seeming to turn the other cheek.

  Ten days before Christmas and, just like that, her father was the front-runner—not just in Iowa but for the Democratic nomination.

  *

  They weren’t a family big on surprises, but Betsy felt badly for her father, alone in Iowa the week before Christmas. When she and her mother showed up at his hotel room, he was so surprised that he didn’t seem happy—not happy enough, Betsy thought—to see them. He couldn’t stand still; he kept walking to the window, to the bathroom, to the closet. He asked twice how the flight was; he kept saying how surprised he was.

  Her mother joked that maybe he wanted them to go home, and he said it was just that he was worried about her traveling so soon after a round of chemo. “I felt much worse a few days ago, believe me,” she said, “but I’m better today.”

  He finally hugged her, then Betsy, and then the phone rang. Four rings, a brief pause, four more rings, another pause, four more rings.

  “Your people need you,” her mother said.

  Her father sighed before answering the phone, a sound that struck Betsy as one of frustration or exhaustion or leave me alone already.

  Betsy could hear only her father’s side of the conversation.

  “That’s not going to work . . . I’m afraid not . . . I know, but we can’t do that . . . I understand, but . . . I have to go . . . I have to go now . . . That’s correct . . . Absolutely not . . . Listen, I have to go.”

  As soon as he hung up the phone, he wanted to go; he rushed them out of the room before they even knew where they were going. “Hurry,” he said, “before anyone else calls looking for me.”

  They went out to dinner, just the three of them—not counting the bodyguard who sat at the bar sipping soda. They went to a dark, gloomy Des Moines seafood restaurant with ships’ wheels and oars decorating the walls. Her mother, for the first time in weeks, had an appetite. She ate jumbo shrimp with a side of buttery asparagus, and even ordered rice pudding for dessert—though Betsy had to help her finish that. Her father was the one who didn’t eat much. He ate only a few shrimp—he had ordered the same as her mother—and didn’t touch his asparagus. He excused himself twice—his stomach was upset, he said—and Betsy wondered if it was the stress of the campaign.

  During the walk back to the hotel, it was sleeting. Her father put his arm around her mother’s waist. When she slipped, he held her up but fell himself. He sat on the sidewalk laughing, and Betsy thought: There you are, there’s Dad.

  When they got back to the room, her father had an idea. “Let’s fly home together in the morning.”

  “I thought we’d stay here with you for a few days,” her mother said.

  “I’m sick of Iowa,” he said.

  “We just got here,” Betsy said.

  “I know,” her father said, “but I just want to be home.”

  Betsy slept on a couch in the suite, and when the phone rang late in the night, her parents asleep in bed, she was the one who answered it.

  “Hello?” she said. “Who’s there?”

  But no one was there—well, someone was there, but whoever it was said nothing.

  *

  Home, David and Danielle were the old David and Danielle. Or seemed to be, to Betsy. One day they all spent the entire day in their pajamas. No one said a word about Iowa. No one watched the news or read the paper o
r answered the phone. They made pancakes for breakfast and grilled cheese for lunch and ordered in for dinner and played board games and watched It’s a Wonderful Life, which was on all day. Sometimes they’d begin at the end of the movie, then watch the beginning, and end somewhere in the middle. Later, they’d begin in the middle and end somewhere near the beginning. The ending was happy if they ended at the end, but sad if they ended somewhere else, like when George’s father dies or when George comes home one night, snaps at his kids, then jumps off a bridge.

  They were so happy to be home together that they forgot to get a tree. Betsy was the one who remembered on Christmas Eve. Her mother would have been fine picking up any old tree somewhere in South Philly, she said, but her father insisted that they cut down their own, just like every year.

  They drove to the Christmas tree farm they’d been going to for years. The man who owned the farm shook her father’s hand and said, “Senator, nice to see you.”

  “I’m still Dave to you.”

  “Soon I’ll have to call you Mr. President.”

  “Now that I’d let you call me.”

  As they walked away toward the trees, her mother said, “Dave?”

  “Who’s Dave?” her father said.

  “Apparently, you are.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You just told the owner to call you Dave.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Betsy,” her mother said.

  “You said Dave,” Betsy said.

  “I did not.”

  “You absolutely did,” Betsy said.

  “You’re messing with me.”

  “You’ve never been a Dave,” her mother said.

  “And I’m still not.”

  “You’re the one who said it,” Betsy said.

  “Well, whoever Dave is,” her father said, “I left him back in Iowa.”

  They walked up and down rows of trees looking for the best one left. They knew it when they saw it—a tall, fat tree with one small bald patch they could hide against the wall. Betsy and her mother held the tree while her father lay on the ground and worked the saw through the base of the trunk. It was slow going, back and forth with the blade, and Betsy could see her father’s breath, and then she felt the weight of the tree and had to brace herself to steady it. Her mother liked to think she was stronger than she was. The tree almost fell on her. Betsy’s father dropped the saw and jumped up to help.