The Governor's Lady (32 page)

Things grew even more complicated when Pickett became governor. He was gone a great deal, and that left a void that was much more than an empty seat at the dinner table. The children reacted differently. Allison became withdrawn and sullen. Carter loved the electricity of it. For Cooper, there were more demands, more responsibilities. She was a conduit to power, and people pressed in from all sides. She knew they would, if given the chance, pull and tug and maneuver and use, serving their own interests. She craved genuineness in people and knew there were many out there who, like her college friends, were good and true. But it was increasingly hard to find them. Eventually, surrounded as she was by the pullers and tuggers and users, it became virtually impossible. In time, she realized she had no close friends.

She put up defenses—tripwires, listening posts. She became less trusting of everything and everyone, and that became even more evidence of what was missing and unfinished in loving Pickett.

She saw how it happened in other marriages: love undercut by mistrust, mistrust leavened by love. A delicate balancing act that somehow kept men and women together despite betrayals, infidelities, wounds, neglect. Hearing a woman say of her humiliation, “I should have killed him,” she would think,
Then why didn’t you?
But she knew why. It was a sort of loving
in spite of
, but at a great price.

She thought it might have been easier, the giving up, if Pickett were, like so many political men, a philanderer—power and testosterone in league, one kind of conquest fueling the other. Winning political office seemed to give many the illusion of being able to live on the edge. Pickett, on the other hand, was one of those who, having won a prize, was
fearful it might be taken away, and that made her reasonably confident he wouldn’t run the risk of screwing around.

Instead, in his hunger for control, he created the self-illusion that he truly could bring order to things, minimize uncertainty and surprise. He couldn’t, of course, and when things seemed to get out of hand, he railed against chance and circumstance.

She watched, aching over the changes in him. She helped him when she could without letting it take over their lives completely. She cared for Allison and Carter and waited for the day, however distant, when it might all be over. Then they would see what leftovers they could find from their beginning. She would see if anything was left of the man with the guitar.

So this life they had now started back with the State Senate, and that had started with Mickey. It was near the top of her litany of grievances against her mother. Mickey hadn’t created him—Pickett was the one who made the choices—but her hands had been all over it all along. And whatever chance for peace they might have once had, well, that was long gone. Cooper kept Mickey at a distance. That was barren, wretched territory she vowed not to visit again. Ever.

NINETEEN

Then there was the League of Women Voters—a small, close-knit, vociferously activist group that Pickett referred to as “amateur do-gooders.” But that didn’t stop him from cozying up to them when it suited his purposes. The state chapter had been in business since shortly after the national organization was founded in 1920. Over the years, it had advocated for things like civil and voter rights, clean water and air, and public education. When the members had thrown their weight behind Cleve Spainhour’s free textbook effort, they contributed toward pushing it through the legislature. It helped that some of the league’s members were married to legislators and lobbyists. As Cooper had heard Mickey say, “Lots of politics gets done in bedrooms.”

The state chapter invited Cooper to speak at its annual convention in the capital. She would normally have run the invitation by Pickett, but he was in Japan on an industry recruiting trip. She accepted, and after he returned, she never brought it up.

It was a fairly bland, safe, familiar speech, mostly about the growing involvement of women in government. The ladies of the league listened politely and gave her a nice round of applause at the end. And then the president asked if she would take a few questions. She could have begged off, pleading another appointment, but she really didn’t need to be anywhere else at the moment, so she said yes.

“I’ll start things off,” the president said. “What do you think about what the legislature is doing to our public education system?”

That was a hot topic across the state. The legislature, in a frenzy of budget cutting to offset cuts in the state income tax, was siphoning off money from the public schools to fund thinly disguised pork-barrel projects it had slipped into the budget bill. Pickett supported the tax cuts—“Who doesn’t like a tax cut?”—and was taking a wait-and-see attitude toward the spending side.

The question hung in the air. Cooper’s heart went to her throat.
I shouldn’t have done this
. But then she thought,
What the hell
.

“I feel the members of the legislature should be ashamed of themselves, stealing from our kids and teachers so they can pay for things like a new agricultural exhibit hall in Vincent County and a donation to the Elks Lodge in Canesboro. Do they really think those kinds of things are more important than giving kids a decent chance to make something of themselves? I hope not.”

Dead silence prevailed for a moment, but then came a burst of enthusiastic applause.

“So,” the president said, “what do you think we”—she placed a hand on Cooper’s elbow—“should do about it?”

“Raise hell,” Cooper said. “Tell it like it is.”

Then she thought,
I believe I just kicked over a shit can
.

More questions rapid-fire on everything from the environment to dental hygiene programs. Cooper parried as best she could, trying to stay away from anything else controversial. It went on for ten minutes,
and then she cut a glance at the president, who stepped forward and said, “All right, time for just one more.”

A big, horse-faced woman with a loudspeaker voice at the back of the room (who reminded Cooper somewhat of Mickey): “Why don’t you run for governor?”

Cooper laughed. “I think one politician in the family is quite enough.”

“Put your money where your mouth is,” the woman shot back. “You come here talking about how more women need to get involved in politics and government. Well, walk the walk, honey.”

A ripple of nervous laughter passed through the room, and then the president put an end to the questions. Cooper escaped to the hallway and the security man waiting outside—waiting with Wheeler Kincaid.

“Oh, my God,” Cooper said softly.

“A helluva speech,” Kincaid said, and that was when he took her aside and told her about the naked parties at the lake house.

Before they parted, Cooper pointed in the general direction of the meeting room. “Are you …?”

“I’m a reporter,” Kincaid said, and left.

She went to the Capitol to tell Pickett about the young personal assistant, but she didn’t say a word about the League of Women Voters. Pickett found out when he opened the
Dispatch
the next morning at the dining-room table and read Kincaid’s story. His cry of rage brought Mrs. Dinkins and several of the house staff running, but before they could ask what was wrong, he was taking the stairs two at a time toward their bedroom.

Cooper was pulling on her slip when he thundered, “What in the holy name of shit are you trying to do to me?”

She hesitated a moment, hiding behind the silk, then pulled it down to see him standing in the doorway bug-eyed, face flaming, waving the paper so wildly that pieces of it were beginning to shred and fly off.

She tried to play it lightly. “Kincaid must have been wearing an invisibility cloak. Maybe he knows Harry Potter.”

Pickett was having none of it. He threw the paper aside and took a step into the room. “How could you do something like that? And why?”

“I didn’t mention your name, Pickett. I just said what I thought. I might not have said it if I’d known Wheeler Kincaid was lurking in a corner.” She paused, feeling her spine tighten. “Then again, I might have.”

“Well,” he yelled, “you can’t do that!”

“The hell I can’t!”

“Do you for a nanosecond realize what you’ve done? Do you know who stuck that thing in the budget about the cow barn in Vincent County? Figgy Watson. The goddamn speaker of the House. Do you know why he put it in there? Because his cousin Eddie is chairman of the county commission, and when Cousin Eddie’s construction company gets the contract to build the cow barn, he’ll stick some money in Figgy’s pocket. And the Elks Lodge? That’s the work of the goddamn chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Look, dammit, I am trying to squeeze a budget through the legislature, pay for some things
I
want to do, and here you come cutting the legs out from under me.”

“Pickett,” she said, struck suddenly by the gravity of it, “I didn’t know what—”

“No, you didn’t. You don’t know. So stay the hell out of my business, Cooper. Now, I’m going to the Capitol and see what, if anything, I can salvage from this bomb you’ve set off.” He threw up his hands—“Shit!”—and bolted off down the hall.

At midmorning, when Cooper was still shaken, the strangest thing happened. Mickey called. “Attagirl,” she said, and hung up.

As it turned out, things weren’t quite as bad as either of them feared. Pickett wheeled and dealed and kissed fanny and smoothed feathers and spread
mea culpa
s and money on the aggrieved legislators. At the same time, the League of Women Voters was, as Cooper had advised, raising hell. The members descended en masse on the Capitol, buttonholed legislators, made ferocious pronouncements, and sparked a public outcry. Legislators felt heat from back home, and with the league’s members stalking the halls, there was no place to hide. They, and Pickett, quietly went about restoring most of the education money. Figgy got his cow barn and some money for an unneeded building at his local trade school. Cousin Eddie would be busy for a couple of years. The chairman of the Finance Committee was able to double the Elks Lodge appropriation for what was vaguely referred to as a “pilot educational project.” Just about everybody got a little something.

The legislative session was supposed to end at midnight, but the two chambers stopped the clock and wrangled some more. At three in the morning, the budget passed. Pickett monitored things from his office, conjuring up last-minute deals to grease the skids, then stayed on until dawn, drinking scotch with Figgy and his crowd. He stumbled in just before first light, a bit drunk, totally exhausted. When he climbed into bed, they both lay there a long time, listening, waiting.

Finally, she said, “I’m sorry I made things hard for you.”

“Oh, what the hell. Working with that bunch of idiots is hard even when they’re not pissed off.” He fell silent for a moment. “Cooper, this is like that condom thing when you were student newspaper editor. If Mickey hadn’t put a leash on you, Cleve would never have gotten the free textbook business passed.”

“You knew about that? About mother?”

“Everybody knew.”

“What did you think about it, at the time?”

“I admired your spunk. You were always willing to swim upstream. I was disappointed you backed down. But that was then. This is now.”