George Higgins - A change of gravity

"Either of those sounds about right to me," Mercy said. "Why don't you decide?"

Emily had to squirm to deal with the suspense.

"Okay, I will," Hilliard said. "But it's going to be hard and take me awhile. You know how I hate to punish people. At least let me finish my dinner here, 'fore this excellent fish gets all cold."

"Okay," Mercy said, returning to her dinner, "I may even finish my own.

We've both been so busy here Emmy's really the only one who's had time enough to eat and had all her dinner. She's waiting on us for dessert.

Which of course I'm assuming you agree there'll only be three of those at the table tonight."

Timmy sank down still lower in his chair and looked morose. He sneaked glances at his father and looked like he might cry.

"Oh, that goes without saying," Hilliard said.

"Unless, of course," Mercy said, 'when you and I finish up here and I ask Emmy to help me take the dishes to the sink, it should turn out there were four clean plates to pick up, instead of only three and one still with food on it."

"You mean then I might not have to do it?" Hilliard said. "Not punish anybody? Well, that certainly would be better, lots more pleasant, if there were four clean plates. But there'd have to be an apology, too.

I think. Two apologies in fact. One to you, for being naughty, and one to Emmy, for being rude. Then I'd probably go along."

Timmy hesitated. He frowned deeply. Emily's face now displayed immense sympathy and hope. She urged him with her eyes. Timmy looked at her. Then he looked at his father. "I'm sorry," he said.

"Oh, not to me," Hilliard said. "You committed your offenses against your mother and sister. You have to make your apologies to them. And then you have to eat your fish."

Timmy told his mother he was sorry, and obviously meant it. She smiled at him and tousled his hair. He told his sister he was sorry, less sincerely. She showed she felt much better by sticking out her tongue at him. "Emmy," Hilliard said, 'don't think you need to start now."

Emmy looked flustered and cast her eyes down. Timmy picked up his fork and began to eat his dinner. "I still hate fish, though," he said, thoughtfully. At first Mercy tried hard not to laugh, but Hilliard didn't and so she gave in.

"Let it then be spread upon the record of this House," Hilliard said in a deep voice, 'that again-honorable Timothy Hilliard still hates fish."

Timmy laughed a little and Emily giggled too. Donna's eyelids began to droop.

"As I was saying," Hilliard said, "Amby should have a back-breaking mortgage to go with his school loans, just like everyone else. He should have worries. He looks and acts like he goes to bed at night and sleeps like a regular lamb. It's time he took on some adult obligations and responsibilities, keep him tossin' and turnin' all night like the rest of the grown-ups.

"I like the guy. I'd hate to see him just drift into one of those second-banana lives so many bright young guys settle for. Amby's got way too much on the ball. You see it happening around you all the time. They get involved in politics, not running for office, just helping out, but the stuff that they're doing's worthwhile. At first it's all right; it's perfectly fine. They meet some new people a lot like themselves and they have a good time. They get something done that they feel good about, and they manage to keep their perspective.

"But then the first thing you know, it starts to happen to them. You can see it happening, watch it right in front of you. They gradually start sliding into this sort of hip indolence. Get hooked on inside stuff; always in the know about what's going on before the dumb outside world gets a clue.

"They overlook the fact that all they ever are's privileged spectators.

All they've really got's their own personal knothole. The reason that they always know exactly what's going on is they spend all their time at the fence, lookin' through that damn knothole. They begin to think it's a big deal: they can look through the fence and watch this whole game that almost everybody else only hears about on the radio, TV, or read about the next day in the paper. Not too many people have this kind of access; it must be a distinction, something special. They think it must mean they're pretty special. They start to act like jerks, swagger a little, feel good.

"They're partly right. The access, the entry, your own parking place:

It's fun and it does mean something. It just isn't what they think it means. The reason there's the high board-fence around the game they're watching is the opposite of what they think it is. It's there to hide it. It's not there to keep the crowd out; it's there to keep the players in. The people without knotholes don't want 'em. They're the ones who put up the fence. They don't want to see the game. They think it's disgusting. If they had their way, they'd ban it like they do cockfights and bullfights and the dogfights in pits, and bear-baiting. Put in a king and then ignore him; that's what they'd choose to do, if you let 'em.

"Young guys don't seem to understand that. That once they settle for their knothole, that's all they'll ever have and that's all they'll ever be. Up against the fence all day, following a game that only matters to the players, watching a circus you gotta be in for it to count. Always at the carnival, best seats in the house, but all they're ever doin's lots of heavy lookin'-on.

"I delegate enough of my authority, give Amby enough responsibility, so that what his job amounts to is surrogate for me. An alter ego who works here while I'm on Beacon Hill. For a guy who's twenty-five, never ran for anything himself, most likely never will; knows he's better backstage than he could ever be out front: that's not bad at all. Very good, in fact. But it's not a career, or shouldn't be, for him. He's totally dependent on me. I lose, drop dead, or decide to be a judge? Amby's out of a job. But it'll become a career for him, though, by default, if he doesn't make a change pretty soon."

After nine, when she had put the kids to bed and he had read the stories, they picked it up again in the living room. "The years're going by," Hilliard said. "He keeps it up long enough and some morning he wakes up and it's his forty-seventh birthday, and he says to himself "Hey, I'm getting' old here, just like everyone else always does, the ones that didn't die. What the hell've I become?"

"He'll know the answer. He wont like it: Not very much. Just another political hack, gotten as far as he's ever going to, just waitin' the string to run out.

"No, it's time he made plans to become an adult. Maybe about time even that he started giving some thought to getting' married, setting up a home and family."

"With Sunny Keller?" Mercy said. Her tone was not as innocent of judgment as she would have liked if she had to speak at all and could not for once keep her mouth shut. Mercy had never wholly approved of the cottage arrangement at Swift's Beach. It bothered her, and Dan didn't make it any easier.

From the outset of it back in 1962, Dan while willing to concede that his approach to the landlady had been 'a little underhanded' thinking each time he did so that it was a lucky thing for him Mercy didn't know about the deals made, actions taken and understandings acquiesced in during his average week on Beacon Hill had dismissed her objections, saying it wasn't their job to elevate Sunny's or Merrion's morals.

Mercy took a sterner view. She said they were 'deceiving' the woman who owned the house at the beach by encouraging her to think that they were renting it by themselves and the kids for the month, and that Amby and Sunny were merely friends who were guests, or related by blood to one or the other of them.

Nor was that the only thing that bothered her. Regardless of what Dan said about it, Mercy believed that good Catholics did not countenance or condone fornication, 'especially by renting the place we know he's going to be using to shack up. And that's what it is: shacking up."