The Governor's Lady (2 page)

The room held a riot of them, a cloying profusion, sickly sweet smell, explosion of color and greenery. Cooper plucked an envelope from the arrangement she had moved to the floor beside her chair. A typed greeting: “ ‘Best wishes for a speedy recovery,’ ” she read aloud. “ ‘Woodrow.’ ”

“Of course,” Mickey said. “I get a card every few days from Woodrow.”

Cooper remembered the first time Woodrow Bannister had come to the house, thirty years ago. She was home for spring break during her junior year in college. He was finishing a term as president of the student body. Someone had told Woodrow that if he wanted to get a start in state politics, he needed to be scrutinized and vetted by Mickey Spainhour. Cooper had answered the door and chatted with him in the front hall before Mickey came downstairs. She found Woodrow’s earnestness both amusing and attractive. The attraction seemed to be mutual. He called later, and one thing led to another. In other circumstances, she might have been Woodrow’s wife, following him up the political food chain.

“If you won’t attend to the details of my funeral, Woodrow will,” Mickey said. “He’ll see to it that the legislature, a great number of whose sonsabitches owe their political careers to me, will meet in special session and pass a resolution authorizing my lying in state in the rotunda of the Capitol.” She paused, laboring for breath. “Then a mile-long procession, lots of limos, a church ceremony, and a eulogy by the governor.”

“Which one?”

“You.”

“Then I don’t think you want a eulogy by the governor.”

“Because you might tell the truth?”

“All right, Mother, you win. We’re talking about funerals.”

“I’m not trying to win anything.”

“It’s one of your favorite things. Winning.”

“I’ve done my share.”

“Not lately.”

Mickey pursed her lips. “I still matter, you know.”

“Do you?”

“Damn right. I still get a constant parade of fawning assholes at the house, especially since word got out I’m about to kick the bucket. They hold my hand and kiss the hem of my garment and hang on every word of my political wisdom. And they hope that when I’m gone, I won’t leave a black book lying around with their dirty little secrets in it.”

Cooper doubted Mickey drew anything resembling a constant parade, assholes or otherwise. The word she got, mostly from Pickett, was that Mickey spent a good deal of time alone in her upstairs bedroom, the air thick with the smell of her cigarettes, listening to the ragged sound of her fading heart. She had once been powerfully influential, a woman who pulled strings and maneuvered and strategized, for which people who held public office in the state were quick to give her credit. But over the past several years, she had backed a string of candidates who crashed and burned, some spectacularly. Pickett was her last big success. She had lost the golden touch and was old news. This business now, this descending on the capital, crashing the party—well, Cooper imagined, there might be a good deal of desperation in it.
For God’s sake, somebody take notice before it’s too late
.

Mickey pushed back the covers. “I have damn well got to go to the bathroom.”

“Catheter, remember?”

“Number two.”

Cooper reached for the call button. “I’ll get help.”

“I don’t need help.”

“Yes, you do, and I’m not it.”

“Afraid you’ll dump me on my ass?”

The door swung open, and a nurse marched in, a young black woman: broad face, close-cropped hair peeking from under her cap, trim in a white uniform that drooped from the night shift. Nameplate: ESTELLE DUBOSE, R.N. Her quick eyes took in the room as she closed the door behind her. “Good morning.”

“My mother seems determined to go to the bathroom.”

“Number two,” Mickey said. “Or maybe it’s just a ruse to help me escape. Either way, my daughter the governor-to-be is just useless.”

Nurse Dubose cut a quick glance at Cooper, looking for some sign of how things were in here. Cooper rolled her eyes. Dubose nodded.

“Honey,” she said to Mickey, “let’s get your rear end to the potty.”

It took awhile, what with all the wires and tubes, but Dubose worked sure-handedly. She soon had Mickey slippered and headed toward the bathroom, an arm around her waist, the other guiding the IV rack.

“Take your time,” she told Mickey. “Let me do the work. Don’t get rowdy. You’re not exactly jet-propelled this morning.”

Mickey looked at Dubose. “Let me guess. You don’t take crap off of anybody.”

“Not here,” Dubose said. “Here, I’m the boss.” She kept Mickey moving, inches at a time, while Cooper stood back, seeing how small and frail her mother was, a shadow of the old Mickey, someone who might drift away if not held firmly.

“Do you take any crap at home?” Mickey asked.

“Not lately. Had a husband, but he was a silly man and not much for work. I ran him off.”

“Good for you.”

Dubose got Mickey settled in the bathroom and left her there, the door open a few inches.

“Is she okay?” Cooper asked.

“As long as she doesn’t do anything but her business, she’ll be fine.”

“She said she didn’t sleep last night,” Cooper said.

“Every time I checked on her, she was fine. Must have slept more than she thought.”

“Has she been giving you a hard time?” Cooper wondered how much she should tell Nurse Estelle Dubose:
My mother will charm your pants off one minute, take your head off the next. Give her a couple of days and she’ll be running the place, making everybody jump. Just wait
.

“Nothing I can’t handle,” Dubose said, hands on hips. “How about you, Miz Lanier? You’ll be governor in a few hours. How are you doing with that?”

Cooper smiled. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

“Do you need anything?” Cooper asked when Mickey was settled again in the bed, tubes and wires reconnected, Dubose off down the hallway with a cart full of flowers and plants Cooper had told her to share with other patients.

“Cigarettes,” Mickey said.

“Don’t start with the cigarettes.”

“All right, if you’re not going to humor a dying old lady, I’ll bribe somebody to bring me some.”

“No you won’t. The hospital people wouldn’t dare, and I’m going to make sure you don’t have visitors sneaking in contraband. If I have to, I’ll put a state trooper at the door.”

Cooper gathered up coat and purse.

“When will you be back?” Mickey asked, sounding petulant.

“I don’t know. I’m busy, you’ll recall. This new job and all.”

And then something changed in Mickey’s face, just a hint of softness, lines and angles easing. It surprised Cooper, because she could not remember many times in her life when Mickey was in the least bit soft. She had been mostly hard as nails, the woman everyone called “the Dragon Lady.” There was once—when Cleve, her father, died. Mickey had imploded then, had stunned Cooper with her sudden raw, helpless vulnerability. But that was with Cleve. With Cooper, it had been mostly hardness. In the last few years, as Mickey slowly declined, Cooper wondered at times if she ever regretted the way it had been between them—the lifetime of conflict, hurts, disappointments, estrangements. Did she ever feel a sense of loss the way Cooper did? Was she ever sorry it had been that way? Cooper saw no evidence of it. In the recent past, she had kept Mickey at arm’s length, avoiding any chance of reconciling. But now, here, this strange glimmer of softness. Was she simply afraid of death? Or was there something else?

“Are you ready?” Mickey asked after a moment.

“For what, the job?”

“For all the shit that goes with it, Cooper. Are you ready for people lying to you, manipulating you, pushing you into corners? Because I’ll guarantee they’ll do it. When you least expect it.”

Cooper took a deep breath. “I did this on my own, Mother. Pickett and his people made it possible, but
I
made it happen. And if I could do that, I can do the rest.”

“Be careful who you trust.” Then Mickey broke the gaze, looked down at her hands. “But you don’t need my advice.”

“No,” Cooper said, but with no bitterness in it. She told herself she was beyond bitterness, had been for a good while.

“You froze me out.”

“Mother,” she said with a sigh, “I’ve spent a lifetime doing what other
people wanted—you, then Pickett. But not this time.” She turned to go. “I’ll tell the hospital to turn on the TV.”

She was almost at the door when Mickey said, “You’re not ever going to forgive me, are you.” It was a statement, not a question.

Cooper turned back and took a long look at Mickey—shrunken, frail, failing, swallowed by sheet and blanket, tethered to technology. For an instant, she wanted to go to her mother, touch her hand or cheek. But she hesitated just long enough to think,
Forgive? There is so much
.

So instead she said, “I wouldn’t have any idea where to start.”

The Executive Mansion was an aging beast of a place—two stories of white-painted brick, columns sheltering the front portico, sweeping curve of driveway passing under a porte-cochere on one side, all of it hunkered behind a tall wrought-iron fence, an imposing gate, and a guardhouse manned by at least two state troopers. Part public building, part home, part fortress, the house was more than a hundred years old, a victim of long neglect, presentable enough on the outside, sagging within. Over the years, it had received just enough maintenance to keep it from falling in on itself. A fair number of first ladies had argued with their husbands over the need for renovations, but no governor had shown enough backbone to spend a good chunk of the state’s money on his own dwelling. The mansion had been Cooper’s home for a good part of her life, beginning with the eight years of her youth when her father, Cleve Spainhour, was governor. Mickey had never bothered Cleve with anything as mundane as renovations. Mickey had her mind on other things. And then there had been the eight years of Pickett’s two terms, during which he shrank from the notion of fixing more than was desperately needed. Now, four more years, and things might be different. The issue was hers to decide.

This morning brought barely controlled chaos outside the front fence. The street was clogged with TV satellite trucks, parked end to end out in the middle to keep their sky-probing metal dishes from tangling with the oaks on either side. Street and sidewalk were crowded with people—reporters, technicians, photographers—stumbling about among a sea of equipment and cables, hopping from foot to foot and flapping arms in an attempt to keep the cold at bay, dodging the army of local police and state troopers who wandered about, watching everything. Floodlights, harsh in the predawn, bathed the front of the mansion. Having nothing better to do at the moment, the encamped herd was repeating the story from the early television shows: the state’s first woman governor was taking office; the outgoing governor, her husband, was making waves as a contender for his party’s presidential nomination. Pickett Lanier had a long way to go, but today was a boost to his profile.

Say what you want about Pickett
, Cooper thought with satisfaction,
this is my day
.

Somebody spotted them—Cooper’s dark blue Ford, an identical car following with two men from the security detail inside—and started a stampede toward the gate as it swung open. The small army of state troopers there stepped aside to let the car through and then formed a barrier to keep the press people out. Cooper heard the shouted questions as the car moved through the frenzy of noise. A television cameraman, jostled from behind, went down hard on the pavement, twisting his body to protect the camera as the gate slid toward him. The troopers stopped it and helped him up. Cooper’s driver pulled under the porte-cochere, jumped out, and opened the door for her. The crowd outside the gate started moving away. Then came more shouts and another rush as a white van with STATE DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS on the side pulled up to the gate. The house staff peered horrified out the windows as the reporters flung questions at them.

Cooper wondered what on earth they thought the house staff could add to the story:
What are you fixing for breakfast? Are the sheets clean?

She waited inside while the staff piled out of the van—the house manager, Mrs. Dinkins; two cooks; three maids; and two men whose duties seemed to be lifting and toting for the others. When the weather warmed, they would be joined by three groundskeepers. All were state prison inmates, most of them murderers serving life sentences. Many murderers, she had learned, having done their one foul deed and settled into incarceration, were a good deal safer to be around than thieves, who never got out of the habit and would steal you blind.