The Governor's Lady
The Governor’s Lady
Also by Robert Inman
Captain Saturday
Dairy Queen Days
Old Dogs and Children
Home Fires Burning
The Christmas Bus
Coming Home
JOHN F. BLAIR,
P U B L I S H E R
1406 Plaza Drive
Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27103
Copyright © 2013 by Robert Inman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. For information, address John F. Blair, Publisher, Subsidiary Rights Department, 1406 Plaza Drive, Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27103.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Inman, Robert, 1943-
The Governor’s lady / By Robert Inman.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-89587-608-9 (alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-89587-609-6 (ebook) 1. Women governors—Fiction. 2. Women in politics—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3559.N449G68 2013
813’.54—dc23
2013009621
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Esther Newberg and Bill Phillips,
who believed from the beginning
And to the memory of
Robert B. “Bob” Ingram,
friend, mentor, and the best Southern political writer ever
“There is in every true woman’s heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up, and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.”
Washington Irving
C
ONTENTS
“For my funeral,” Mickey said, “I want a good band and an open bar.”
She was teetering on the edge of the hospital bed, feet dangling, struggling against a tangle of wires and tubes that tethered her to monitors and a rack of intravenous solutions.
“Mother, what in the hell are you doing?” Cooper threaded her way toward the bed through a forest of potted plants and cut-flower arrangements. She reached for Mickey, who jerked away.
“I gotta pee,” she said.
“No, you don’t gotta pee. You’ve got a catheter.”
Mickey looked down at the tube running from underneath her hospital gown to a bag hooked to the side of the bed. “Oh.”
Cooper took hold of her legs and lifted, swinging her back onto the bed, pulling sheet and blanket up to her chin. Mickey shivered and then collapsed against the pillow, eyes closed, mouth open, breath rattling.
“I’ll get the nurse,” Cooper said, reaching for the call button.
Mickey gripped her arm. “No. I’m all right.” She motioned weakly toward a bedside chair. “Sit. Just let me …”
Cooper moved an arrangement of flowers from the chair, set it on the floor, and pulled the chair closer to the bed. “How did you sleep?”
“I didn’t.”
“You should ask for something to help. Do you want me to talk to the nurses?”
“No.” She turned to Cooper, fixed her with a stare. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“The band and the bar.”
“Will you stop it about funerals?”
“It’s my funeral. I can have anything I want.” Mickey turned away again and lay there for a moment. Pale, shrunken face, gray flesh not much darker than the sheets and pillow. Machines clicked and whirred and beeped. Green spikes paraded across the heart monitor—every so often, a blip, something not right.
“Aren’t you going to thank me for coming all this way to see you?” Mickey asked. Her voice was a fraction of what it used to be, in the not-too-distant days when she could speak a word and all manner of folk would leap to do her bidding. Mickey had a big, horsey laugh and a way of saying things that defied contradiction. Cigarettes and scotch had turned the rowdy voice into a rasp. Little of the starch and gristle was left. Pickett had brought home the joke making the rounds in political circles: “Mickey Spainhour has a heart? For what?” As it turned out, she did. And it was failing.
“Big doings today,” Mickey croaked. “My dear daughter about to become governor of the goddamn state. Pomp and circumstance, people jumping through their butts and kissing yours.” Despite the much-diminished voice, the sarcasm remained. Mickey pursed her lips and scrunched her nose. “Why didn’t you invite me, Cooper?”
“You came anyway.”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
“Because I didn’t want to.”
Mickey had come by ambulance from the upstate the evening before—early enough to make sure the television and newspaper people would cover her arrival. Video on the local newscasts, photo on the front page of the
Capital Dispatch
this morning, Mickey on a stretcher being wheeled into the hospital, waving daintily at the press crowd.
“Damn right I came,” Mickey said. “I’m dying, and I wasn’t going to let the day pass without being close to the action. Now that I’m here, do you think you could make a place for me on the reviewing stand?”
Cooper shook her head and gave way for a moment to the old, wearying futility that was such a constant in her relationship with her mother. Mickey seemed to always know exactly what she wanted, and if she couldn’t get it by simply demanding, she just wore you down. The best defense, Cooper had learned, was to stay off her radar, stay away. For a long time now, Cooper had done that. She had intended to have it that way today—
her
day, inauguration day.
“I wouldn’t want you keeling over during my swearing-in,” she said after a moment.
“Or grabbing the microphone and making a speech of my own.”
“That especially. Tell me, Mother, how the hell did you manage it?”
“I called the Governor’s Office. They handled everything. It was the least they could do. Now, since I can’t go to your ceremony, let’s talk about mine. The funeral arrangements.”
“I am not going to talk about funerals.”
“The band … Southern rock, maybe.”
“What do you know about Southern rock?”
“I’ve got a Charlie Daniels CD. Pickett gave it to me for my birthday awhile ago.”
“Did he, now?”
“Yes, a good while ago. He doesn’t come to see me. Is that your doing?”
“Pickett’s a big boy,” Cooper said. “He does what he wants.” She knew it was a sore spot with Mickey, who had launched Pickett into statewide politics years ago and helped him climb—legislator, treasurer, lieutenant governor. But then Pickett had become his own man—two terms as governor and now a run for the presidency. Pickett Lanier didn’t need Mickey Spainhour anymore.
“He could have come to see the old lady in the hospital, instead of sending his wife.”
“Pickett’s not here,” Cooper said. “He’s flying in from somewhere. I’ve stopped trying to keep up. Iowa one minute, New Hampshire the next.”
“They’ve screwed up everything with all these damn primaries,” Mickey said. “The stupid things start in January and last eons. So here they are, a year until the first one, already out kissing ass. I liked it better when me and the boys got together in a hotel room and drank whiskey and smoked cigars and decided who to nominate.”
“Did you smoke cigars with the boys? Really?”
“I hope I make it to March,” Mickey said after a while. Cooper was staring at the window beyond the bed. The glass reflected the room’s dim lights, white bedding, machines, plants, and flowers. “I would hate to die in February. It’s a miserable goddamn month.”
Cooper got up, went to the window, pulled the curtains back. It was still dark—just the orange glow of the lights in the doctors’ parking lot below. And bitterly cold—the coldest day of the winter, the fellow on the radio had said while she was on the way to the hospital.
“Snow in the forecast,” she said. “Maybe by the end of the day.”
“If Pickett gets to be president, I want him to outlaw February.”
“I doubt he’ll waste a minute on February.”
“Huh!” Mickey snorted.
What this particular snort meant, Cooper didn’t know. Mickey used it often, and it generally suggested she was disgusted, frustrated,
or just being plain mean. Cooper had heard many of Mickey’s snorts in her lifetime.
“Have you seen the paper?”
“They won’t bring me a newspaper or anything else to read. They won’t let me have a telephone. They won’t let me watch television. All they bring are these damn flowers. They keep toting ’em in by the truckload. The place smells like a goddamn funeral parlor—which I suppose makes sense.”