Primary Colors (3 page)

"Putting it together," he said. "But you know--Washington. They ain't coming along until you show what you can do--"

"Then they'll be pantin' after us like pigs in heat. But let 'em know we know that."

"I hear you," Sporken said. "And, Governor, I think you're doin' just great. They're not gonna know what hit 'ens."

"See you in DC," Stanton said. "You comin', Henry?"

Coming?

"Look," he said, "We'll talk on the plane. Wait a minute." He dashed into the bathroom. He came out with a bunch of toiletries provided by the hotel. Shampoo. Toothbrush. Comb. "What else you need?" he said.

"I've got classes tomorrow," I said.

"Call in sick--it's summer school," he said. "The kids won't mind." The jockey was standing next to him now, with the garment bag. "Oh, Henry," he said. "This is my uncle Charlie. You coming?"

He was asleep as soon as we got on the plane. It was a noisy little prop job; any conversation would have been strained, difficult. I tried with Uncle Charlie: "You're the Medal of Honor winner?"

"He say that?"

I nodded.

"Whatever he says," Charlie laughed. "He's the master." "Are you related to his mom or dad?"

"His dad died."

I knew that. "Did you know him well?"

"Nobody knew him well enough."

It was very late. The plane tracked low over the northeast corridor, between a cottony layer of clouds and an electric map, traces of light, towns and strip malls, country roads. It was like a toy, a model railroad; not quite real. This was all very strange, to say the least. I closed my eyes. I must have slept.

She was standing there, alone in the dark, on the tarmac at Manchester. It was a soft, heavy night, too cloudy for a moon, or perhaps too late. The terminal lights were dim, opalescent in the mist; there was a slight neon buzzing. A minivan stood just beyond the chain-link fence, engine idling, headlights rehearsing a smoky vaudeville of moths and mosquitoes. There was nothing else. We staggered down the stairs; him last.

"Susan Stanton," she said, shaking my hand.

"Henry Burton," I said.

"I know, I met you twenty-five years ago. At your grandfather's, in Oak Bluffs. You were running around in wet underpants. Just out of the sprinkler, I think. Very cute." She rattled this off crisply, an ironic commentary on Susan Stantonhood. I was charmed. Then, without the irony: "Your grandfather was a great man."

Only if you didn't know him, but I just said, "Thank you."

"Jack Stanton could also be a great man," she said, without turning to her husband, "if he weren't such a faithless, thoughtless, disorganized, undisciplined shit."

The governor was off to my side, back a little. I didn't want to look too hard, so I couldn't see the expression on his face. It was, undoubtedly, the furrowed brow, pouty-mouthed, elementary-school-penitent look. He reached out an arm to her, which she swatted away with a file folder.

"First impressions, asshole," she said. "These people don't know you. They don't even know you by reputation. They have United States senators courting them. They are waiting to be swept off their feet by Orlando Ozio, who is the governor of a real state."

"They may be waiting a while for--"

"They don't know that," she snapped. "They don't know shit. The Democratic town leader of Portsmouth only knows that he was supposed to have an after-dinner drink with the governor of a state whose capital he learned in third grade and promptly forgot and never had cause to think about from that day to this, and you never showed. Oh, he was wowed by the missus. Never met a woman so interested in fly-fishing before! Jack, do you realize how incredibly, indescribably, skull-crushingly boring fly-fishing is? Do you realize I've now committed to doing this--this thing with him? I will fly-fish, with him, because of you. You asshole. You cannot do this to me. You can't. We've only been at this a month, and already you're flicking up in your old fucked-up way. The only shot--the only shot--we have here is perfection. You cannot blow off party leaders. I am not going to let you embarrass--"

I was aware then of a subtle softening of the air. It was eerie, vaguely narcotic. He was . . . whistling. The song was--it was on the tip of my tongue, from before my time--syrupy, mainstream, late-fifties pop.

"Jack," she said sharply, then less so: "Jack--you asshole." And now he was singing:

"Primrose lane Life's a holiday on
Primrose lane

When I'm walking down that

Primrose lane W-i-i-i-th you."

He had a slight, reedy tenor voice with a touch of sandpaper to it; not quite professional quality, but there was a musical intelligence behind it--a humility. He knew not to reach for too much, he toyed with his limitations. It was lovely and utterly insidious. It made her anger seem--transparent, unsubtle, the stunt it was. He was saying: I know your game, too.

Susan turned and began walking toward the minivan. He came up behind her, put his arms around her, snuggling her neck, cupping her breasts. They stood there silently for a moment, swaying slightly to the song he was no longer singing.

"So Henry and I were at this great, great reading program in Harlem today," he was saying as we drove along, crowded together in the minivan--Stanton and the driver up front, me, Susan, Uncle Charlie in the middle, the trooper and a couple of boxes of groceries, mostly munchies it appeared, in the back. "You should have seen those people."

"Was it one of yours or one of mine?" Susan asked him.

"Well, let me think," he said. "The librarian was--well, she was kind of inspirational. It was--"

"Henry," she cut him off. "He'll never tell the truth. You settle it. Here's the deal: Stanton and I have this argument about social programs. He's a sucker for inspirational leaders. He figures you can parse genius, analyze it, break it down and teach others how to do it. My feeling is: Gimme a break. Only God can snake a tree. You can't teach inspiration. What you do is come up with a curriculum. Somethin
g s
imple, direct. Something you don't need Mother Teresa to make happen--and that's what you replicate."

"But you can't sell anything if the teacher is a dud," he said. "You've gotta figure out a way to make great teachers. If you can really liberate them, reward them for creativity, they'll make their own programs. Henry, you ever see a curriculum inspire wonder? This is an argument I always win."

"Henry," she interrupted, "tell us about the librarian. Kind ofinspirational, the governor said?"

"Well, she was . . ." They were, I knew, listening very closely now It was showtime. "She was a pretty typical library bureaucrat." "Hah!" Susan Stanton snorted.

"But it didn't matter--she didn't have to be very good--because they wanted it so bad," I continued. Having allowed her the battle, I wasn't about to take sides in the war. "See, your argument is moot when the hunger is there. If everyone wanted to read, or whatever, as much as those folks did today, social policy would be a walk in the park. But you both know that's not where the problem is. It's creating the hunger for nutritious things when all they know is junk food." "And that's where inspiration comes in," Stanton said.

"Watch out," she said. "He's going to do his Lee Strasberg number on you now."

"Tell me I'm wrong," he said. "They should teach teachers, psychologists, social workers--all the people who do community stuff--like they teach actors, make them aware of their bodies, how to project, how to emote."

"We already have a nation of bad actors," she said.

Okay. It was a set piece, and kind of goofy at that. But it was about policy, not politics--not tactics, not gossip. They cared about it. They went on--not like principals--but like staffers, or perhaps academics. (Susan did teach law at the state university, when she wasn't helping her husband run the state.) They could cite case studies. He had a good one: a professor at the University of Tennessee or someplace had tried the Stella Adler method on half the fourth-grade teachers in Kingsport or somewhere and left the other half as a control group--and found significant improvement in reading scores among the students in the emoted-upon sample. Very goofy, and winning.

And I'd made it through. It was clear that . . . something had just transpired. And I was now part of it, a co-conspirator. I wasn't sure yet that these were people to be trusted. But they were up to something fascinating; their canvas was larger than the tiny brushwork I'd learned in the House. They had a sense of inevitability about them, a sense of entitlement. They didn't flaunt it--it was almost casual; indeed, they were less vain than most politicians. They didn't require any of the usual empty ceremonies of deference and pomposity; they didn't need the reassurance. Their calm, absolutely certain sense of destiny represented a level of audacity well beyond the imaginings of the bulked-up student-body presidents cluttering the Congress. Their ambition was for something beyond public office. It was too breathtaking to be discussed openly; the scope of the project was simply assumed. It was colossal. I found it nervous-making, over the top--and exhilarating. I had grown up in a politics of logic, compromise, and detail. I was ready for a ride.

And so we arrived at a condominium complex on the outskirts of Manchester, one of those nondescript pre-postmodern erections, the residential equivalent of a convenience store. It was now about 4:00 A
. M
. There were predawn stirrings, early workers starting their cars. "This is it?" Stanton asked, clearly displeased. "Tell me again, why not a hotel?"

"Money, convenience," said Mitch, the driver. "You can keep clothes here. We can store stuff. We have some privacy."

"I don't give a shit about privacy," Stanton said. "You can't get known in private. I'm here to get known."

He was up the stairs, inside, rousting about, a big man in a small, grim place. There was a Xerox machine in the living room. There were stacks of leaflets, bumper stickers, stick-ons. "This looks like the end of a campaign more than the beginning," he said.

Susan took my arm, nudged me toward the kitchen. Uncle Charlie brushed past with the bags. The governor was circling the TV now He clicked it on and got snow "What th--" He switched channels. More snow. Then a local station, a rerun of Car 54, Where Are You? Then more snow. "Mitch! Goddamrnit, Mitch! No cable? You gotta be kidding, man. You can't run for president of the United fucking
States without CNN! Mitch, what was in your head? I'm outta here--This is the worst, two-bit, candy-assed goddamn . . . Hey?' Mrs. Stanton had in one swift, fluid motion reached into her bag, pulled out a set of keys and whipped them--hard--at her husband's head. "Darling," she said, "it's four in the morning. This is not how you want to be introduced to the neighbors."

His reaction was curious. He wasn't angry. "Yeah, well, we're outta here tomorrow," he said, rubbing his cheek. "This place smells like we lost."

I felt faint, woolly-edged, buzzy. It was all just--it was just nuts. But I was there, deep into this thing already, totally sucked in. And she was moving me, pushing me gently, both hands on my back, through the swinging door, into the kitchen. "Tea?" she asked.

The kitchen was white, fluorescent. She pulled two mugs. They were white too. Then, abruptly: "You up for this?"

"For what?"

"Take care of him."

There was no way I could answer that question. But, finally: a job description.

"We're going to win, y'know"

I could have asked, How do you know? It would have been an interesting thing to hear. I wonder about it now, what she would have said. But I was already, by mutual assumption, sort of on staff, and so I merely grunted, "Uh-huh."

She opened a cupboard. It was spiritually bare; instant coffee, a box of White Rose teabags, Fig Newtons. No one lived there. "You take anything?" she asked. "Honey?"

She opened the fridge. It was bottom-heavy. An almost empty top few shelves: a jar of honey, a pint of milk. Down below, maybe fifty Cokes and Diet Cokes, a few stray sixpacks of V-8, ginger ale. The depressing sterility of it made Stanton's pique seem almost visionary. This was a place to work, not sleep.

Susan Stanton didn't seem to notice. She snagged the honey, poured the tea and sat down across from me. She kicked off her shoes, low-heeled pumps. And then, once again, abruptly: "So why did you quit Larkin?"

There was no way to fudge this, not with her. But there were layers of reasons. "It wasn't him," I said.

"He's good--good instincts, usually right, I think," she said. "But too cool, maybe. Does he ever blink? I mean, literally?" She was laughing. It was a nice deep chuckle. "I've never seen him blink. He's got that steady gaze."

"Like a rock."

"Like a lizard," she whooped.

"Yeah," I agreed. "After a while it was all the same. He taught me a lot, but he never surprised me. Not much inspiration there. And it got old, roping the strays."

"Without hope of winning."

"No, it was worse. We always won. It was winning and then not winning. We'd win--and, you know, it was always a hundred tiny deals, things we'd give, and I was always looking for that one vote, the guy who wasn't one of the professional heroes--you know, the smug brothers, the ones who get elected, always from elite districts, because they're 'courageous'--but I was always hoping that one of the sheep would step up and do it for history. Without asking for a lulu--" "Lulu?"