The Governor's Lady (33 page)

She was careful. She spoke up when she thought something was important—prenatal care, backlogs in an underfunded court system, a controversy at the university over a student fee increase to expand the football stadium. But she didn’t blindside Pickett. She was careful to let him know when she was ready to say something, and if he convinced her it would cause problems for him, she usually backed off. There were a few times when she didn’t, and a few times when Pickett sent Plato to argue with her.

“All right,” she finally told Pickett. “I have things I care about. Some of them, I hope you care about. So don’t tell me what I can’t say, tell me what I
can
say that will help you.”

To his credit, he did, and to her credit, she chose her audiences and her words carefully. It all seemed to come to an accommodation of sorts. But the whole business left a growing wariness on both their parts, and for Cooper, more of that creeping sense of loss, disappointment, loneliness. Again, politics as thief.

It was the third winter of Pickett’s second term.

They drove to the upstate on a Sunday afternoon, just the two of them, Pickett joking about how rusty he was behind the wheel. An unmarked state trooper car behind them bore a couple of men from the security detail, keeping an unobtrusive distance. Pickett had surprised her that morning as they dressed for church. Some farmland he wanted her to look at, a place for a getaway. The thought of it—the echoes of the rambling little log house in the woods where they had started—lifted her spirits.

The hundred acres they trudged—Pickett with a plat map, both of them in jeans and parkas and hiking boots—touched that deep place
in her that yearned for refuge. The tract was part woods—tall, thick-chested hardwoods, bare now in January, and a copse of pines covering a rise on which they could build a house, log and stone, where they could have a comforting fire on a day like this, and a screened porch with an overhead fan, and wicker furniture for June days when they could sit for hours with books, surrounded by the smell of earth and blessed quiet, underscored by the gentle whoosh of the fan and whatever nature had in mind. And best of all, the bold little creek coursing through the property, skirting the rise of pines, could be dammed and made into a pond. A place to lose herself, or better, to rediscover herself.

Pickett sat on the creek bank, watching as she walked its edge. Then, stepping carefully, bare stone by stone, she stood in midstream, listening to the rush and burble of the water.

“So?” Pickett called, breaking the silence.

“Buy it,” she said.

“All or part?”

“The whole thing. If you don’t buy it right now, I’ll leave you and take up with whoever owns it.”

“He’s the local probate judge. Family made a lot of money in the fifties running juke joints. He’s broke. Drank up all the profits. He wouldn’t be a good investment.”

“I’ll go to work and support him.”

“Doing what?”

“I might open a juke joint.”

He pretended to think about it. “All right, you win.”

So they stopped at the sagging white frame house where the probate judge lived with his shopworn wife and a pack of hunting dogs that seemed to have the run of the place. The judge served some fairly decent scotch while Pickett wrote a check for five thousand dollars to put a hold on the land and promised the rest by wire transfer the next day. The judge held the check, studied it, licked his lips. Then he placed
it in the insistent outstretched hand of his wife. They all finished their scotch, and Pickett and Cooper took their leave.

“I’m putting the deed in your name,” he said as he started the car. “It seems to be your kind of place.” He leaned across the seat and kissed her. “Happy Valentine’s Day. Or whatever. I love you.”

They stopped at a Burger King, and one of the security men brought them hamburgers and milk shakes. They ate in the car, unnoticed, and then she settled in her seat as Pickett drove toward home.

Home?
she thought just before drifting off to sleep. No, the place where they lived now, the white-columned mansion on the tree-lined street across town from the Capitol, was not home. Just a residence, and one she would happily escape before long. But on this chill afternoon, perched on a rock in the middle of a bold stream, she had found what she imagined might become home.

She awoke when the tires crunched on gravel, and she knew instantly and exactly where they were. She turned with a jerk to him, eyes wide. “Pickett, dammit!”

He shrugged. “I just thought … We’re in the area. She’s been feeling poorly. Virus, I think the doctor said.”

“Shit.”

“Cooper, come on. She’s your mother. Just for a minute.”

And then they pulled up in front of the house, the security car swinging in behind. Pickett gave a tap on the horn, and Mickey’s housekeeper was at the front door, beckoning them in.

Mickey was propped queenlike in the vast sea of the four-poster bed against a mound of pillows, a clutter of orange plastic prescription bottles and a box of tissues on the bedside table, the lamp turned low to make the light flattering. A cigarette was in her hand, from which she took a long drag before stubbing it in an ashtray and peering at Cooper through the curling smoke.

Pickett held back, taking up a post by the door while Cooper stood
at the foot of the bed, waving away the smoke while she and Mickey stared at each other.

“ ‘Hello’ would be all right for starters,” Mickey said in her dry, feathery voice.

“Pickett says you’ve been sick.”

A flutter of Mickey’s hand. “Well, I’m not ready to check out yet.” She plucked a tissue from the box and dabbed her nose. “I’m feeling better already, just knowing you’re here.”

“Bullshit,” Cooper said.

“Now, now,” Mickey clucked, “let’s not have any tacky language, Cooper. It’s unbecoming.”

“I learned at the feet of the master,” Cooper said.

Mickey shrugged, then turned a smile on Pickett. “Pickett, honey …”

She motioned him forward, and he crossed to the bed, gave her a gentle hug and a peck on the cheek. He stood for a moment holding her hands before he let go of one of them and turned to Cooper.

“I, ah … There’s something we need to talk about.”

They all just looked at each other.

Finally, Mickey said, “I don’t know what the hell this is, but it’s beginning to smell a little grim. For God’s sake, either sit down or crawl into bed with me. And take off your friggin’ coats.”

They sat, waited for Pickett, who was fumbling in his jacket pocket.
Buying time
, Cooper thought. It was an old trick. Whenever he wasn’t quite ready to say whatever he was going to say, he fumbled.

Finally, he tossed the jacket aside and looked at the two of them, back and forth.

“All right, Pickett,” Mickey said, “get on with it. What’s on your agenda?”

“I’m thinking about running for president.”

Silence, broken eventually by Mickey. “Bully for you, Pickett. You might even win.” More silence. She looked at Cooper. “So, how long have the two of you been cooking this up?”

Cooper turned a withering glance on Pickett. “I never heard a goddamn word about it until just now.”

Mickey’s eyebrows went up, but she didn’t say anything.

“Pickett,” Cooper said, anger building, “did you have a revelation just now when we were tramping in the woods? Did God whisper in your ear, ‘Go forth, Pickett Lanier, and lead my people’?”

Pickett scrunched up his face. “Well, I’ve been thinking.”

“For how long?”

He shrugged. “Awhile. Actually, a pretty good while.”

Mickey plucked a tissue from the box and blew her nose loudly. Then: “Okay, Pickett. If you’ve been cogitating over this, you’ve obviously given some thought to the messy details. Mostly, that you’ll have to raise a helluva lot of money. Have you figured out how you’ll do that?”

“Jake says—”

“You mean,” Cooper broke in, “that you’ve been talking with Jake Harbin, and I’m just now hearing about this?”

“Honey, I just thought, before I went very far with it—”

“Pickett,” she said, “you aren’t
thinking
about running for president, you’re
running
. So just go ahead and cut to the chase and admit it. Am I right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, shit.”

She stood, turned away from them, looked out the window toward where the pond was, there in the darkness. Cleve’s pond. Only he’d never known it, never stopped long enough to get it built and sit in a boat with cane pole in hand and let the day become what it would. There was, for Cleve and Pickett, for their breed, always the next thing and the next thing. So all of today’s hiking and buying land and talking about a getaway was a farce.
Hell, he wants to get away to the fucking White House
.

And then it was like she wasn’t even there. She stared through the
window while Pickett and Mickey talked. His strategy: announce soon, start working the early primary states. The primaries were a good way off, but a couple of senators were in the race already, people with national exposure, and more coming. He would start from way back but would work his ass off. An early primary win, or a close finish, and things would begin to fall into place.

Mickey eventually came back to the money. “The instant you announce, you’re a lame duck, Pickett. You’ve got to get the early money here at home, and who the hell is going to shell out for somebody who can’t do ’em any good anymore? And after that, you’ve got Woodrow. He’ll be the next governor, and you know what that means. He’ll kick your ass every chance he gets.”

“I haven’t figured that part out,” Pickett admitted.

Cooper turned from the window. “Well, while the two of you plan for the inaugural, I’m going home.” She started for the door.

“Give me just a few minutes,” Pickett said.

“Take all the time you want,” Cooper tossed over her shoulder.

She took her time getting downstairs, thinking,
This is the very last time I’ll be in this goddamn place
. She got in the dark blue Ford and drove away, leaving Pickett to ride home with the security detail.

They mostly avoided each other for several days. Allison and Carter, antennas always out, felt the chill.

“Mom, what’s going on?” Allison asked.

“Have you talked to your father?”

“Oh, yeah, something’s going on, all right. When you start calling him ‘your father,’ you’re pissed. So what are you pissed about?”

“
Dad
is running for president.”

Allison shrugged. “So what? He’s always running for something. I’m
going to school in Atlanta, and all I want is to get the hell out of here and live my own life for a change. I’m damn sure not gonna stand on some platform with a shit-eating grin on my face while Dad campaigns.”

“So he hasn’t said anything to you about it?”

“We don’t talk much.”

“No,” Cooper said, “you don’t.”

“How long have you and he been plotting this?”

“For Dad, apparently several months. I heard about it Sunday.”

Allison wrinkled her nose. “So that’s why you’re pissed. Well, get over it, Mom. Dad’s always done what he wanted. The rest of us, we’re bit players, always have been. But I’m not gonna be anymore. You can make up your own mind.”

Carter bustled in from college just after Allison left.

“I saw Allison downstairs,” he said. “She told me what’s going on.” He sat beside her on the loveseat in her office, took her hand. “Dad should’ve told you. A long time ago. He does that a lot. Keeps things close to his vest. But he shouldn’t ever do that to you.”

She touched his cheek. “Honey, I’m okay. I’ll get over it. It was a shock, but it’ll pass. I’ll go along, like I always do.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t.”

“Aren’t you excited? A presidential campaign? You love politics. I’m sure he’ll want to involve you.”

He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “Right now, that’s the last thing on my mind.” He stood. “I’ve got to go.”

“Where?”

“To raise hell with Dad.”