George Higgins - A change of gravity

Things were unquestionably good. The black '65 Ford Falcon convertible with the red vinyl interior was hocked, but still nearly brand-new.

Mercy's Country Squire wagon was only four years old. The pale-blue three-bedroom half-brick raised-ranch house, two-car garage under, where he lived with his family on the north slope of Ridge Street in Holyoke, was a better one than his parents owned. There was no primary opponent in sight and the few Republicans in the district the southeastern part of Holyoke, Canterbury, Hampton Pond, parts of Cumberland and Hampton Falls as usual were snarling at each other. His grip on the middle rungs of the House leadership ladder was secure enough to permit a swift lunge in the next term for the chairmanship of Ways and Means. "Too good," he thought. "Must be time to fuck something up."

Over dinner of fried filet of sole with Mercy and their three young children, Hilliard tried out his decision to address the subject when he and Merrion had their customary week-ending meeting at the office the next morning. "Do something about it. Get it over with once and for all."

"Suspense getting to you?" she said. Marcia Hackett Hilliard had natural ash-blonde hair and blue eyes spaced wide apart, and she was a cheerful person. Even when she was obviously getting angry she looked like she still might laugh instead. She knew this and regretted it.

She didn't like fights 'unlike my dear husband, who goes around looking for them." She was convinced that she had more of them than she would have had if people believed her when she said she was getting mad.

Timmy Hilliard, who was five, thrust out his lower lip and used his fork to push his fish around his plate. Mercy, not looking at him but at her husband, put her right hand out and took hold of Timmy's wrist.

"But I don't like fish," he said, whining, trying to pull away. "You know I don't like fish."

"Tough darts, kid," his mother said. "I'm talking to your father.

That's what the meal is tonight. Either you eat it or you go hungry."

"Oh, partly the suspense, yeah," Dan Hilliard said. "Not wanting him to stew about it until Labor Day and then decide some crisp cool morning couple months before election he can't stay another year, doing what he's been doing since he was a teenager he's got to do something grown-up. So then he tells me, and what shape am I in? No election fight, no, but I'll still have my hands full, back in session after the summer. All kinds of things I want to do there, but now I am distracted.

"Suddenly I'll now also have to do something for Amby, right off. And it'll really have to be good, owing the guy like I do. While I'm making plans at the same time to find somebody else to put in his place and then get him or her trained while of course the new person trains me. Everybody who's good will've already signed up to run somebody else's operation. I'll have to settle for whoever's left.

"I'll be standing there sucking my thumb, marking time getting acquainted. Before I can even think about actually revving up what Amby and I've been planning to do since last Memorial Day. And anything that Amby'd like will've been filled since July Fourth, or promised anyway, people lining up support for the election. No, the time's come to deal with it; the time to do it is now."

Timmy's sister Emily, nearly seven, ostentatiously used both hands, fork and spoon at the same time, to eat all of her fish, her mixed peas and carrots and her mashed potatoes too. The baby, Donna, eighteen months, sat in her high-chair with a small bowl of dry miniature shredded-wheat biscuits in front of her, staring vacantly at an invisible point midway between her father's left shoulder and the top of her brother's chair. Timmy sat far back in it, his shoulders hunched, and scowled at Emily, angry at himself now for giving her the brown-nosing opportunity she was exploiting. "You're gonna be hungry later on, Tim," Dan Hilliard said.

'1 ate all my fish, daddy," Emily said.

"I know you did, sweetie," he said.

Timmy stuck out his tongue and said: "Poop."

"I mean it, Tim, really," Hilliard said. "You know we both want you to be healthy and strong."

Timmy shook his head. "Don't care," he said. "Don't like fish. Don't care."

"Future office-holder," Mercy said. "Got the hang of it already.

Rather be mad and go hungry 'n eat something he didn't think of to ask for."

Her husband laughed. "Uh uh," he said, 'not quite right. Future office-seeker."

"You're sure that's where Amby is now," Mercy said. "At the point where he has to move on?"

"Reasonably sure, yeah," he said. "And absolutely sure that if he isn't at that point yet, I am. It's what I think he oughta be doing.

Getting started on making a life in the real world for himself. He's a talented lad. He works hard. He should have a good life. He should have a nice family, like I've got. Good wife, like mine; a few kids, even though they don't always eat what their pretty mother works so hard to make for dinner every night so they'll be healthy, grow up to be big and strong."

Timmy reset his scowl and hugged himself. "Don't like fish," he said.

Then he thought about it further and decided to speak louder. "Hate fish. Wanna leave the table."

"Why, Timmy," Mercy said, 'that's an excellent idea. You get out of your chair right this very minute and march yourself straight upstairs to your room. And get undressed and put your pajamas on and get into bed, and you know what you will've done then?"

"No," Timmy said. Emily smirked delightedly. Donna gazed into space.

Now and then she patted her right hand on the tray of her highchair.

"You will've put yourself to bed without any supper," Mercy said.

"You'll've saved me and Daddy all the trouble of punishing you, which we really don't like to do. Only you don't behave.

But this time even though you're making us angry, acting like a perfect little wretch, you're also saving us the worry about what we're going to have to do with you. You've decided what the penalty should be for being a little stinker at the dinner table."

"No," Timmy said. "Not gonna do that." Emily giggled a little.

"In fact," Hilliard said, you' ll punished yourself more, I think, harder, than your mother and I were thinking would probably be enough to teach you a lesson we think you need to learn. What did you have in mind, Mercy, to make Tim see the error of his ways?"

"Well," Mercy said, 'to tell you the truth, I hadn't decided. I was wavering between using the pliers to pull out his toenails and setting his hair on fire."

Emily giggled exuberantly. "You shut up, Emmy," Timmy said.

"You know, Timmy," Hilliard said, 'until you just made things worse by talking like that to your sister, I was about to say I thought what your mother just said sounded a little severe. But now you've made me unsure." He sighed. "I guess I really don't know what to do to you."

Timmy looked apprehensive.

The transition from the stage of Timmy's disobedience to imminence of his actual punishment made Emily uneasy. She became solemn, pursing her lips as she began to pity Timmy. Donna began to shake her head slowly back and forth but her pupils remained fixed on the same point in space.

"How about," Mercy said, 'how about we tell him that he has to do what he said he was going to do, put himself to bed without any supper. I thought that was pretty good. But so he doesn't get the idea he's going to be the one from now on who decides what it's going to cost him to misbehave, we also yank his TV privileges for, oh say, about two weeks?"

Emily looked both absorbed and horrified.

"Too much, I would say, to do both," Hilliard said. "But it wouldn't be enough if we just did one of them. What I would say I'm probably leaning to right now would be either no TV for a full month or else your no-TV-for-two-weeks plus no allowance, either."