Primary Colors (43 page)

"Henry, it's been a really shiny day," she said. "And just wait till you meet my mother."

Her mother was dressed like a Gypsy, or perhaps the "sale" rack at a secondhand folk costume store. She wore a high-necked, embroidered--red and black on white cotton--Russian-style narodniki blouse; a floor-length black Indian skirt with elaborate creweled flowers in horizontal bands, and a multicolored Andean (or perhaps African) bandanna, which covered her head. I thought for a moment that she might be a recent chemotherapy patient, but stray wisps of gray snuck out at her ears--this head covering was a fashion statement. She was wearing dangly Mexican silver and turquoise earrings. The immediate effect was ... too much.

She seemed to gasp as she opened the door to her apartment, as if to say: You actually brought him. "Ruth Green," she announced, sticking out a hand. "I am so pleased to meet you."

Her apartment was the museum of the Popular Front--bare, undistinguished Danish modern furniture overwhelmed by an international brigade of people's art: the Ben Shahn Sacco and Vanzetti poster, in which the Italian anarchists are made to seem simple, bemused immigrant workingmen; the famous Martha Graham photo, head down, fist at forehead, everything akimbo in glorious consternation; a Fasanella poster; Guatemalan wall hangings; Dagon sculpture. And enough plants to create a weather system. On her coffee table, placed with an almost grotesque lack of subtlety, was Plowing Our Field, Planting A Dream: Sermons by the Reverend Harvey Burton. "I've been so nervous about this," Ruth Green said. I could see Daisy in her, Daisy older, lonelier, slouched a bit; it was not an attractive thought. "I keep thinking about the Langston Hughes poem. You must know it." Incredibly, she began to recite:

"I know I am

The Negro Problem

Being wined and dined

Answering the usual questions

That come to white mind Which seeks demurely To probe in polite ways The why and wherewithal Of Darkness USA...

and then it goes on," she sputtered. "There are more lines, I don't remember all of it, but eventually the white host says, I'm so ashamed of being white.' And . . . I know I shouldn't, but I can't help feeling that way. I do, I do. This is such a racist country. We've been so ugly toward, ahh . . . each other. It's so difficult to break through the barriers and, you know, talk. I mean, I was such a devoted follower of your grandfather's. I can hardly believe you're, Daisy's . . . Which is why I've been so nervous." She stopped. Looked at me. Blinked. "I just wanted that out on the table. It's so awkward between the races most of the time, but I guess you two have dealt with that in your own way."

Yikes. Daisy rolled her eyes, then said with them: See, I told you so. I thought: I have stumbled into Negro Poetry Month. First Luther, now this; they were symmetrical. With Luther, the poetry had been a lovely, nostalgic breakthrough; this was quite the opposite.

"Can I get you something?" Ruth Green asked, calming a bit. She had worked hard on her opening statement, and was relieved that it was now over-and was quite oblivious to its impact on the company assembled. "Seltzer? A beer?"

"A beer," I said.

"I'll have one too," Daisy said, not having been asked-not having been looked at, so far as I could tell, by her mother.

"You know where they are," Ruth now said to her. "Why don't you get three."

As soon as Daisy walked out into the kitchen, Ruth turned to me: "Don't you think Daisy's underemployed? She's got a PhD in public policy. She did her thesis on structural flaws in the Canadian single-payer system. She should be doing serious policy work, don't you think? She should be at the Urban Institute or something. I don't like this political commercial business-negative advertising, always negative. How can you raise up the people, always being so negative?"

"She's very good at it, Mrs. Green," I said.

"Did she ever tell you I used to do population control work for the United Nations before I started teaching?"

Daisy was back with the beers, mortified. "Mom, policy-shmolicy," she said, too cheery, handing me a can of Bud Light. "You design these things, the politicians screw them up. Nothing ever really works." "Daisy! Really. You sound like a neocon. Henry, policy does matter, doesn't it? Tell her. Daisy, you couldn't bring glasses?"

I looked at Daisy. I started to say something, but she jumped in: "Of course policy matters, Mom. It's just not what I like to do. And I'll get the glasses."

"So you sell soap."

"Let it go, Mont."

"Did Daisy ever tell you about her father, may he rest in peace?" Ruth asked, turning to me again, as Daisy returned to the kitchen. She had her daughter's eyes. Or rather, her eyes were shaped like Daisy's. She didn't have Daisy's eyes. Daisy saw everything, and always understood what she was seeing. It was disconcerting--looking into Daisy's eyes and seeing them blind.

"He was a union official," I said.

"An organizer," Ruth said reverently, glaring reproachfully toward the kitchen, as if Daisy hadn't explained her father well enough. She stood up, went over to the plain maple sideboard, opened the top drawer and came out with a picture of Daisy's father. He had a mustache, wire-rimmed glasses and a sly, knowing smile: he had seen everything, too. "This was Max," Ruth said. "Max did the toughest work, organizing textile factories down South. He was beaten, badly beaten, once in Greenville. He had his heart attack in High Point, North Carolina." I nodded, trying to communicate that Daisy had told me all this, though Ruth didn't appear to notice. "Anyway, he always said the reason organizing had gotten so hard toward the end was television. Marx, he said, didn't know from opiates. And here's Max Green's daughter, doing television."

"And not even public television," Daisy said, returning. She had been here before, obviously.

"Go ahead, make jokes," Ruth Green said, suddenly morose. "But you could be doing something for the people."

"Mom, what's for dinner?" Daisy asked, clearly hoping to move things along.

"Boneless chicken breasts," Ruth said. "It's in the refrigerator. There's also some fresh broccoli. Daisy, could you be a darling girl and fix it up for us? You're so much better than I am at that sort of thing. Henry and I will set the table. And could you cook up some rice?"

More symmetry: Daisy came after me that night in the hotel the same way I'd come after her on kilt-night. There was an edge of desperation to it, an edge of--please, please disregard what just happened, I can make you very happy. But she was trying too hard; we were all arms and elbows; at one point, she bit my earlobe and I said "Ouch!"

"So," I asked afterward, "what are the structural flaws in the Canadian single-payer system?"

"Oh God," she said. "I know you know I'm not her. I know that. But you see pieces of her in me--like, maybe, the fact that I'm saying this right now She would be doing this. She would have bit your ear too hard. Shit, shit, shit, Henry." She pounded the pillow, sat bolt upright, zipped her mouth shut and threw away the key. "Mmmpf, mmmpf, mmmmpf," she said.

I reached down, over the side of the bed, and came back with the key. I turned it in her left dimple and unzipped her mouth. "I'm sorry," she said. "Really, really sorry."

"Don't worry about it." I said, but she could tell: I had been freaked by her mother.

"Henry, I'll make you a deal: If we turn out to be, like, together--I mean, for a while--" she said. "If it'll make you feel any more comfortable, I will kill my mother. Literally. I'll do it with my own hands."

"If you really want to hurt her," I said, "maybe you should hire a couple of proletarians to do the job."

"They could tie her to a chair first, and make her watch hours upon hours of negative spots," Daisy said. "And then force her to actually cook fucking dinner for them. And then they could strangle her while reciting Langston Hughes."

She was up on one elbow, playing with my hair. I was staring at the ceiling. "Henry, why are we here?" she asked. "Why aren't we at your apartment?"

"I don't know," I said. "I have the feeling it's not my apartment anymore. I'm not the guy who used to live there. Or maybe it's what Luther said: body man's got to stay close to the body. Or maybe, it's just that Mrs. Flores doesn't do room service."

"Henry, do not buy that servant shit," she said. "It's race stuff. It's Luther fucking with you."

"I don't know," I said. "Jack grabbed the cell phone out of my hand today during the Rucker business-and Rucker, he acted like I was lower than dirt. Luther's got me noticing that stuff now."

"That makes them assholes," she said. "It doesn't make you a servant. Henry, you can't let this stuff get to you."

But she knew it was getting to me. All of it.

There still was a presidential campaign going on, though it had surprisingly little to do with Jack Stanton. Our Rucker Ruckus/Stanton Standoff (as the Sunday News inevitably put it) was news in New York, but made barely a ripple in the rest of the country.

The rest of the country was madly in love with Freddy Picker. It was a sudden, hectic infatuation. He would appear on the covers of Time ("Picker Fever"), Newsweek ("Make Room for Freddy") and People ("Pickermania!") that week. He would be interviewed, by Lesley Stahl, on 60 Minutes that Sunday night; it had already been taped, Picker and Lesley walking the grounds of his environmentally correct Florida plantation. He was wearing a denim work shirt, overalls, high riding boots and a camouflage cap. "You're a hunter, Governor Picker?" she had asked.

"Not for sport." He smiled. "For food. I can rustle you up some Picker-shot quail for dinner, if you want to stick around."

He was, as Daisy had sensed, very good. He moved, ever so easily, away from Lawrence Harris's more extreme positions-no more talk of a Virgin Uses fee or a fifty-cent tax on anything. "Everybody knows we got to do something," he said on his first Larry King show. "But it'd be sort of foolish for me to stand up here now, in the middle of a campaign, and say just exactly what it is we're gonna do, Larry. To close the deficit we need to raise some money." He casually turned away from King and addressed the camera. "Senator Harris figured there were ways we could do it that would also protect the environment. I think that's a pretty damn good idea. But we've got to wait until this country elects a president and he sits down with the folks in Congress and works out the precise details."

"You're saying Harris was wrong to be specific?"

Picker laughed. "Awww, c'mon now, Larry. That's not worthy of ya'. You're tryin' to play gotcha. The folks know what I'm sayin'. Next topic."

We still didn't know all that much about him. The first profiles were flattering, of course. He had been a businessman before becoming governor, had moved his family's Pensacola-based oil equipment supply company into oil lease speculation, and traded brilliantly-catching the wave just before the first Arab oil embargo, then leaving the business to his younger brother, Arnie, in order to dabble in politics. He appeared to have a great sense of timing. He launched himself into the 1974 gubernatorial campaign as a Democrat against the exhausted, befuddled incumbent. He campaigned in a leisure suit, with a broom-the broom, the leisure suit, the sideburns, the hawklike nose and eyes, the big smile made him immediately popular with political cartoonists, and soon the public. His marriage, in midcampaign, to Antonia Reyes Cardinale, the daughter of a wealthy Cuban furniture dealer (and a Nicaraguan heiress), helped with the normally Republican Latino vote. He won election easily. A big future was predicted. It was one of those victories that the Washington political columnists, always in the hunt for new talent, picked up on immediately. A charismatic big-state governor is always worth checking out. Libby's research turned up a ripple of speculative columns about Picker soon after he took office. He did not discourage the speculation. He said, "Being president might be a fun thing to do-they need some sweeping out up in Washington, too." But he never really acted on it. He never really acted on much of anything as governor-there were no great Picker initiatives, no great Picker scandals, no great Picker tax increases or tax cuts. Things seemed to run pretty smoothly. He was well liked. Two sons were born. There was anothe
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ipple, smaller, speculating that he might make a good vice presidential candidate in 1976--but Jimmy Carter's surge pretty much put an end to that; a Georgia-Florida ticket would never fly. He endorsed Carter. "Hell, we practically grew up in the same neighborhood," he said. And then: Nothing. Until the strange press conference in March of 1978, an event that had clearly been planned as the announcement of his reelection campaign. There were photos of Picker, black hair parted in the middle and curling down over his collar, looking anguished; his wife, an exquisite woman, dark hair pulled back in a bun, standing just behind him to the right, holding one of their sons in her arms--and tears in her eyes. After the famous line "I was gonna announce for reelection, but I changed my mind," he had added: "I guess I'm just not cut out for this work. You want a more patient man than me. I hope you'll indulge me a little by not asking too many more questions about it."

There was a headline over an analysis piece in The Miami Herald several days later that pretty much summed up the local press reaction to Picker's retirement: HE jusr GOT BORED. There was no speculation about personal problems or marital difficulties. And by the time the divorce was announced, six months after he left office, Freddy Picker was no longer news.