Her Infinite Variety (15 page)

"Of course, I realize it's a matter of degree. But catering to mass tastes can turn a paper into a rag almost before you know it. And Tony's isn't the only one in Tyler Publications that's in danger of that. Not by a long shot!"

Tony let himself go now. Perhaps he thought that her widening attack must bring his father to his side. "I suppose we must thank our lucky stars that we have the wisdom of Mrs. Hoyt between us and disaster!" At this he threw down his napkin. "I don't want any dessert, Dad. I'm going back to the office."

Eric gazed after the retreating back of his son and shook his head. "You did all that on purpose, didn't you, Clara?"

"Of course, I did. I'm tired of pussyfooting around Tony. I wanted you to see how much he hates me."

"Oh, hate, come now, Clara."

"I use the word precisely. He's determined to destroy any influence I may have in your business. I have always told you I'd be square with you. So now I'm telling you there's no way Tony and I can work together."

"You mean I'm going to have to choose between you?"

"You're certainly going to have to choose which one you listen to."

"I can't listen to both?"

"I doubt if that will work, but we'll see. What I suggest is that you deed Tony's magazine to him and detach it from Tyler Publications. That should make him happy, if anything will. Let him go his own way and see where he comes out. I'm only afraid he'll do too well."

Eric smiled, but she could see it cost him an effort. The luncheon had not been an easy time for him. "I guess the only way I'm going to achieve peace of mind is doing what Doctor Clara orders."

"And you'll find that your peace of mind is all that Doctor Clara is really working for."

T
HE NEXT TWO YEARS
in the history of Tyler Publications were known as the dawn of Clara Hoyt's reign. That she was the governing force behind all the papers and periodicals was taken for granted by all but the most important editors who knew that Eric, like Louis XIV, would refuse to sign one out of ten propositions put before him to show who was still boss. And in addition, Eric, who always knew perfectly well what was going on in his business, kept a watchful eye on his partner-mistress, though he basically approved of her determined aligning of his little empire behind the liberal elements of the Democratic Party. It was certainly a change from his old policy of diversification, but that was a game he had played for years, and he was willing now to be dealt a fresh hand. There was something attractive, if still short of inspiring to him, in Clara's energy and idealism. It was fun to watch her at work, and he was getting a little old to initiate the changes himself.

Clara, of course, was conscious of his detachment and at times tried to arouse his greater enthusiasm.

"But, my dear," he remonstrated with only mild sarcasm, "you know I sympathize with your assembling of us into an army for the rights of man. But can't you see—even if you don't agree—that I might occasionally regret the old days when I had a chance to read and edit opposing opinions?"

"But, Eric, that was so passive! You were like a god on Parnassus looking down on babbling fools."

"I confess to a partiality for Justice Holmes's definition of free speech: the right of a fool to drool. But don't even liberals today still believe that truth may emerge from the clash of opinions?"

"From the clash of
intellectual
opinions, yes. But you don't get at the truth by supporting fascist or communist sheets."

"What
you
call fascist or communist. And what are you yourself, my dear, but a propagandist?"

"Everybody's that to some extent, of course. At any rate, you needn't accuse me of suppressing free speech. All those rags that you've disposed of are doing as well or better than they did under the Tyler banner. They didn't really need you."

"Did I ever suggest that
anyone
really needed me?"

"I do, anyway. Even if you think I'm a perfect ninny."

"I think
that?
"

"Well, don't you? Basically?"

"Why do you think I pay for your programs?"

"For laughs."

She always knew how to end an argument on a light note. His heart sometimes seemed to skip a beat when he realized how indispensable she was becoming to him. The freshness and light and humor that she brought to the office, always breaking off into a peal of laughter just as a discussion among the editors was verging on the sharp or even the acerb, the way she managed to meld her seriousness with her innate reasonableness, brought a pleasure into his daily work he had hardly dreamed of before. And the way she stripped herself of all the paraphernalia of her office leadership at night, the way she turned herself into a sort of geisha if he was amorous or a chatty drinking companion if he was not, made him wonder what he had done to deserve her.

Of course, he had set her up very well. She had a brownstone of her own now, lavishly decorated, and a villa in Sands Point on Long Island. He appeared at all her parties and was treated by her guests as the host. They were asked out as a couple, and he had given up attending even family dinners in the company of his wife. It seemed that everyone had accepted their liaison. Everyone but his son.

He did much thinking about his relationship with Tony. The latter had enjoyed being made sole proprietor of his magazine, whose conservative slant he had intensified and whose circulation he had increased, and Eric had advanced him additional funds pretty much as he asked, but the young man's resentment at being excluded from the management of Tyler Publications had been bitter, and, like most children, his sense of justified anger at a parent whose primary function in a son's eyes was to applaud and support him, had crippled all his efforts to flatter and appease his father. A surly Tony, with narrowed eyes and tightened lips, was not attractive, and Eric, always on the alert to view things objectively, wondered if a good part of the favor that Tony had built up in his father's heart had not been the result of a paternal desire to have a favorite child, a son and heir on whose shoulders the tired and philosophical aging emperor could lean. Might he not have been admiring the picture of his own admiration and doting?

Ah, yes, but there was something else, too. He could hardly be blind to the fact that it was Clara who had caused the rift between him and Tony, and caused it, as she had freely admitted, deliberately. Clara who, to continue his Roman metaphor, like a vestal virgin who had taken her god to bed and now, to avert the penalty of her idolatry, had to become a goddess to rule her god! It was all very well for her to insist, as she always did, that everything she undertook was in his best interest, but it was she and she alone who decided what that best interest was.

***

Everything, however, remained in a kind of easy balance between them until the episode of the unobtained nomination for the Senate seat. Clara had been successful in persuading him to make substantial contributions to the Democratic Party, and it had naturally followed that they were seated at fund-raising dinners and political social gatherings with the elected great. Eric enjoyed this, for the observer and editor in him was always at home in circles where power was exercised and discussed, but he received a shock when he read in a newspaper column that he was among those being considered as a candidate for the seat of a U.S. senator who had just announced his forthcoming retirement. When he asked Clara what it was all about, she replied:

"It's about what you've just asked. Or the fact that you
have
just asked. I planted the item to see how you'd react. To feel you out."

"Couldn't you have just asked me?"

"I wanted you to see it first in cold, hard print. How does it sound? The Honorable Eric Tyler.
Senator
Eric Tyler."

"It sounds unlikely. What makes you think I could pull it off? Even assuming I wanted it."

"Well, you have the looks for a senator. And much more than the brains for one. And you speak well. And you have the right friends and the right money and a press of your own."

"And you, of course. To move mountains."

"Oh, this wouldn't be my thing. I'd have to be kept rather in the background. Voters are less strict about women like me than they used to be, but there's still a lot of prejudice around. You might even have to bring Lucile forward a bit more. Don't worry; it would only be a formal reconciliation. Lucile would love to be a senator's wife and give brilliant political parties in Washington."

"Stop! How you go on! Whom have you talked to about this?"

"Only a few. But real biggies. And I'm getting some green lights."

"Without even knowing if I was interested?"

"Oh, Eric, don't take that tone, please!" Her voice pleaded now—pleaded as he had not heard her do before. "I want you to think very long and hard about this. It's really the watershed in your career. The last real chance, as I see it, to put in some kind of memorable form all the different facets of your remarkable life and thought."

"Clara, Clara, where are you going—?"

"Oh, listen to me!" she interrupted excitedly. "You've done all sorts of things in your career, but there's always been a greatest common denominator to them: your habit of looking on."

"Say it. I'm a voyeur."

"I'd rather put it that you see yourself as a kind of silent umpire. But here's a chance to get into the real game."

"From you, dear! A cliché!"

"There you go again. The editor. The eternal editor. Puck crying, 'Lord, what fools these mortals be!' Well, I want you to be a mortal for once."

"Before mortality gets me?"

"Now who's spouting clichés?"

One of the factors that in the end persuaded him to have a run at becoming a tangible part of Clara's vision was that her project seemed no part of any ambition for herself. He had been more concerned than he cared to admit about how others might view the growing role that she played in his life. It was not altogether pleasant, despite his inward claim of being a priest of the life of reason, to suspect that he was known in his own enterprises as "Mr. Hoyt." But if Clara was actually prepared to take a kind of
Back Street
position in his life, if she was willing to dim the brightness of her own status to thrust him into the forefront of national affairs, did he not owe some sacrifice on his part in recognition of her disinterestedness?

No sooner had he given indication to the party bosses of his willingness than he was signed up for speeches at every sort of event, from college graduations to business award dinners. The speeches he did not mind so much, as he spoke easily and knew how to evoke laughter and had plenty of help in their preparation, but he felt stifled and frustrated by the continuous handshaking and buttonholing that went on in crowded hotel lobbies, the eternal chat, the stale jokes, the scarcely veiled threats that accompanied bids for support, the factitious and noisy pose of good fellowship. And Clara, who had spoken so bravely of her own partial withdrawal from the scene, seemed more than ever in her element, brilliantly dominating groups of Democratic henchmen, smiling, nodding, giving to their wives the gingerly offered cheek to kiss that was acceptable from all well-made-up ladies. It was still, apparently, very much her business.

And then there came an incident that made him wonder if the watershed in his life, to which Clara had made reference, had not divided the river of his soul into a hundred meandering minor rivulets splashing down to nowhere. Lucile, his wife, called on him in his office, serene, poised and as sexless as a handsome marble statue. She seemed quaintly proud of herself for the oddity, or perhaps the temerity, of treading on these premises for the first time.

"Well!" she began, with a trill of laughter, perhaps not totally devoid of nervousness. "I don't know which is stranger: my being here at all or the visit I received yesterday that prompted it. For your Mrs. Hoyt called on me at home—oh, yes she did, bold as brass. If you had told me the day before that in a matter of twenty-four hours I'd not only be receiving your lady friend but actually offering her a cup of tea and then a cocktail, I'd have said you were stark staring mad!"

"There aren't many doors that Clara can't pry open."

"Pry open? She just walks in! Before I could catch my breath I found myself listening to her, entranced. For she was already in the process of convincing me that the Senate would be the best possible thing not only for you but for me and the children, in fact, for all of us!"

"Would you really like that Washington life, Lucile? It can be a worse rat race than New York."

"Well, you know, I think I would! Mrs. Hoyt persuaded me that it would be a new existence, a challenge. Perhaps just what we both need at our age, Eric!"

"So she got you on her bandwagon. And Lisa and Tony too? Clara is prodigious."

"I think she must be. And do you know something else? She may be the woman you've been waiting for all your life. The woman who can make something of you at last. God knows, I failed!"

"But you never tried, Lucile. Maybe that's why I married you."

"Bosh. You married me because you thought I was the only woman who wasn't trying to marry you. And you were wrong, as young men always are. Anyway, we can start the new regime of playing happy home by your taking me out to a very good lunch."

Eric did this, but he was not pleased at this new turn of events in his hunt for office. It put a kind of cap on the disillusionment that accompanied his final realization that what he had regarded as the cherished jewel of his life, his independence to express his ideas and opinions, had not been simply temporarily curtailed, but removed altogether and perhaps permanently. Every speech that he gave was now carefully vetted by party hacks and often by Clara herself, and he saw that he was committing himself for the future as well as today. It was all very well for her to be lightheartedly funny about it, even witty, even sympathetically rueful, but the fact remained that his eyes, which he had liked to think of as raised to the heavens, were now fixed on the ground to avoid treading on a million sensitive toes. What permanent good could come of
that?