Jane Smiley - Golden Age

Richie found the death of Vince Foster, whatever the circumstances, uniquely eerie because he had been driving through McLean the evening before the body was discovered. He had gone out of his way to drive past Uncle Arthur and Aunt Lillian’s old place, noticed that it was repainted and updated, and then started thinking about what Uncle Arthur might know about various things, and then he started wondering about his dad and Uncle Arthur, what sort of friends they had always been, and what did they know about one another that they would never reveal. The whole idea made him feel a little dizzy, so he pulled to the side of the road for a few minutes, admittedly not at Fort Marcy Park, where the body was found the next day, but near there — he would not have been an eyewitness to anything — but when the discovery of the body appeared in the papers, he found himself confusing the two mysteries and deciding that, no matter what, he would never live in McLean.

When Richie brought this up with his mom, she had said, “Your uncle Arthur is a tragic figure, but your father is not,” in her usual distracted voice. Was that Andy’s way of not taking sides? He knew that she considered him a tattletale, always had as long as he could remember, but he considered himself a genuinely confused person. The same thing was true in Congress — he was genuinely confused. It was not like the old days in Brooklyn, talking to this person and that person about the congressman and his associates and enemies; in New York, everyone had been blunt about their motives. In Washington, he had discovered, you never knew. There was one senator, and a famous one, who kept on his staff a certain chatty young woman who was from a certain state. Whenever the senator needed help from the equally famous but very different senator from that other state, he would send the young woman to “gossip him down,” which meant that she would get him in a good mood by talking about all of their mutual acquaintances, and not leave until she got a promise that he would help her boss on something or other. The entire building, all the buildings, the Capitol and the office buildings, buzzed with hidden agendas, and it took years to learn all the languages that were spoken. Some congressmen hated to be interrupted, for example — they saw it as a sign of disrespect. Others expected to be interrupted — if you didn’t interrupt, you weren’t paying attention (Congressman Scheuer had been like this). For just these reasons, Riley Calhoun was not a good staffer. She would argue vehemently about the greenhouse effect even with those who agreed with her — no one was ever as worried about the greenhouse effect as they should be (though now Riley said he was to call it “global warming”). Was insistence a Wisconsin trait? But Riley was a dynamite researcher, so Richie more or less paid her a legislative assistant’s salary to keep quiet and keep investigating. He also got himself on the Energy and Commerce Committee, and for that he had to thank her, since his real first choice had been Foreign Affairs, and if he were on that committee, he would have to have an opinion about Bosnia and Serbia right now. He was glad that he didn’t have to take responsibility for anything other than funding solar initiatives and counteracting the greenhouse effect.

His office had been running smoothly for almost a year. His “spokesmodel,” as she called herself, or “communications director,” named Geneva Nicoletti, was from Greenwich Village but dressed like she was from Cleveland, always wore a belt that showed off her narrow waist, and never stopped smiling. Richie liked both Riley and Geneva. They were in their twenties and seemed to accept the strange idea that he knew what he was talking about. Two people that he suspected knew that he did not know what he was talking about were Marion, his chief of staff, who had worked for Congressman Scheuer, and Lucille, his scheduler, who had been the congressman’s scheduler. She was black. She owned a house in D.C., and liked working for congressmen, though she’d been disappointed to move from Rayburn, where the congressman had his office (“I am the congressman!” thought Richie, every time Lucille referred to Congressman Scheuer as “the congressman”) to Cannon, much tighter quarters. Richie expected Lucille to take immediate advantage of the next congressional heart attack if that congressman happened to have an office in Rayburn. Italian, black, Native American, Hispanic (Marion’s assistant’s parents were from Cuba) — Richie privately thought of his staff as a Rainbow Coalition that legitimized his election every single day.

He had also found that he didn’t mind staying in Washington during the week and coming home on weekends. His apartment in Washington was a one-bedroom in the basement of a townhouse, with a futon, a TV, and a toaster oven, within biking distance of the Capitol building, and not only did he enjoy biking, but he wore a helmet and encouraged photographers from newspapers to take pictures of him standing beside his trusty Dahon. He was not, at forty-one, the youngest congressman, but he didn’t mind looking like he was. The apartment was bracingly basic, and the more basic it stayed, the more he didn’t have to share it with anyone or invite anyone over.

Another reason he didn’t mind staying in Washington and going back and forth on the train was that Ivy was ready to try for another, which was fine in theory, but Leo was ill-tempered, fast, strong, and dictatorial. Ivy said it was the Terrible Twos just lingering a little, even though a book she herself had edited about child-rearing techniques said that three (he was three years, seven months, now) was supposed to be an oasis of calm between two and four. Leo was how Richie remembered Michael being when they were children, and when the thought occurred to him that maybe Michael had, indeed, tried the pregnancy experiment some night when he was in Washington and Loretta was in California, it was so debilitating that he had to force it out of his mind. Leo was better with Allie than he was with either of his parents — she had a way of standing quietly when Leo was misbehaving, as if he had turned her to stone and he had to become good to give her life again. Richie had tried this himself, but Leo’s nervous system shot bolts of lightning into his own, and any quietness he managed felt and looked fake. As for running in the park, Leo still liked to do that — but he was better with Charlie, who sometimes came and walked with them (or circled them, running), than he was with Richie.

The reason Ivy and Loretta were not speaking for the third time in just over a year had nothing to do with the Clintons or the Serbs. The last time they had traveled to Eighty-fourth Street for dinner (and, yes, Ivy was already in a bad mood), Binky, who was sitting beside Leo in the highchair, held out her hand for the Barbie (her Barbie) that Leo had brought to the table. Binky said, “Please, Leo? Barbie doesn’t eat with us.” Leo had seemed to be giving her the Barbie, and so she had grasped it, but Leo had not been giving her the Barbie — when he pulled his hand away, it seemed to him that Binky was grabbing it, and he shouted “No!” at the top of his lungs, and then began pounding on the tray of his highchair and screaming “No! No! No!” his face turning red and his whole body contorted with rage.

It was Chance who calmed him down, by getting out of his seat and jumping around, making faces. The chicken stew was delicious, and it seemed as though everyone was going to forget about it, but then Loretta handed Ivy a child-raising book that promoted beating the child until he finally submitted to the proper authority for his own good, and as soon as Ivy saw what book it was, it was Ivy who said “Never again.” Never again dinner at Michael and Loretta’s, or even on the Upper East Side, never again Christmas. (She was Jewish! Didn’t they realize that this Christmas crap was offensive to her? She didn’t even know what day Christmas was!) She had afforded Loretta the benefit of the doubt for fifteen years now, and if she ever heard the words “Ronald Reagan” again, she would not be responsible for her actions. All in all, the chaos in Washington wasn’t as difficult as the chaos in Brooklyn — the moratorium on even mentioning Loretta’s name was only nine days old at this point, but since Ivy had been the one to make the first move the previous two times, Richie did not think this was going to end quickly.