We woke up late in the morning. Esther seemed uncomfortable about what had happened, but I made no mention of it. I know she was grateful to me.
On Monday we were back at work. Paul said that we seemed content. We almost were. We went back to the routine that protected us from ourselves.
As soon as I could slip away from Esther I went to see Olivia. Our agreement was working well for both of us. I had her at my disposal whenever I wanted and she had stopped worrying about how expensive the stores on Fifth and Madison Avenues were.
“So you and Esther are married…I would have liked to be at your wedding.”
“I wouldn’t have minded, but Esther was in charge of the guest list.”
“And you forgot about me.”
“Well, she just wanted our closest friends there, darling, and you are not on that list, or at least not on Esther’s.”
“Do you plan to have children?”
Olivia’s question disconcerted me. I’d never considered the possibility of having children. Why would I? I didn’t see the point, but I realized that I had never spoken with Esther on the subject. I didn’t know whether she wanted to be a mother or didn’t bother herself with such concerns.
“That’s none of your business.”
“To be honest, I can’t imagine you changing diapers.”
“I can’t imagine you doing it either.”
“I’ll have children one day. You can’t go through life without them.”
“Well, don’t count on me,” I warned her.
“No, I’m not counting on you. You’re the last man I’d choose to be the father of my children.”
If there was one thing I liked about Olivia, it was her honesty. She didn’t pretend to be something she wasn’t or to feel something she didn’t.
“I have a surprise for you,” I told her, changing the subject. “A Spanish cava company wants to promote themselves in the U.S., and Esther and Paul want to use you for the commercial.”
“Cava? What’s that?”
“It’s like champagne. A sparkling wine, but made in Spain.”
“It sounds good.”
“The best thing is that it was Esther who thought of using you. She says you’re very professional. You won’t be the main part, but you’ll be a bubble girl. Maybe the principal one.”
“And who’s going to be the star?” she asked grumpily.
“Esther and Paul want to use a famous actress.”
“I won’t be anyone until I get a part in Hollywood,” she complained.
“It’s not easy, sweetheart, but I’m working on it. I thought you’d like to be in another commercial. Anyway, we’ll pay you well.”
Olivia had a lot to offer. Not only was she good in bed, but I could talk to her. She had studied art at New York University and her friends included painters, writers, actors, sculptors, artists…None of them had made it and they all had insecurities, like she did.
Olivia was prepared to do anything necessary to become an actress. The first time she went to bed with a guy out of self-interest the bed had belonged to a producer of Broadway musicals. She left that bed with a small part in a musical whose run didn’t last long.
But Olivia was determined and had accepted the reality that if she wanted to succeed, she had to pay a price, given that the heads of the film studios were overwhelmed with aspiring actresses. If she couldn’t convince them with her talent, she would try to make her mark between the sheets as a first step toward winning the role that would make her a star. But her ambition was greater than her talent. Paul Hard had made this clear to me when I asked him to help me find her a decent part in a film. “She’s a pretty girl, but she’s lacking something. Don’t ask me what. I don’t think she’ll get any further than a bit part,” Paul had assured me.
Even so, she didn’t give in, and I knew that if she was sleeping with me it wasn’t so much so that I would pay her bills—anyone would do for that—but because she thought I could open doors for her.
I got back to the apartment late and I was worried that Esther might ask me why. But she didn’t. She was working in her office, absorbed in the cava campaign.
“Oh, you’re home. There’s some salad and turkey in the refrigerator if you’re hungry.”
Either she didn’t care where I might have been or she simply preferred to avoid the bitter aftertaste of a fight. It had always been like that between us. Not a complaint, nor a sign of curiosity as to where I had been.
It was around that time that Grandpa James died. Esther had told me about a month earlier that my grandfather had been admitted to the Mayo Clinic and that we should go and see him. I didn’t ask her who had told her; there was no need, it would have been Jaime. It was also he who called her again to tell her that my grandfather had died. She insisted that we should offer our condolences to Grandma Dorothy, Aunt Emma, and Jaime. But I refused and I asked her not to reach out to them either.
“But you can’t be unmoved by your grandfather’s death. He always loved you,” said Esther.
“He threw me out, remember?”
“Well, you weren’t exactly behaving well at that moment either…Please, Thomas, don’t be bitter. Your grandfather always considered you his grandson.”
“You said it. He considered me his grandson, but I wasn’t. Esther, don’t ask me to be an imposter. I’m not going to be one, even for you,” I said firmly.
She bit her lower lip and looked at me sadly, as she usually did when she didn’t know how to reply to me.
“At least let me talk to them. Don’t tell me not to.”
I conceded. I didn’t want to play the villain in front of her.
What neither of us imagined was that a few months later, Grandma Dorothy and Aunt Emma would be killed in a car accident.
Aunt Emma had brought my grandmother to live with her. One weekend they were in the car on their way to Newport and had a head-on collision with another car. Both lost their lives.
Esther cried when we found out. Her tears irritated me. Why should she shed them for two women she’d seen only half a dozen times in her entire life?
She begged me to call Jaime to express our sympathies and to stand by his side at the funerals. I refused once again.
“Esther, I love you. But I beg you, do not force me to do things I don’t want to do. You shouldn’t care about the Spencer family, they aren’t even friends of yours. You can’t be devastated by what’s happened.”
“What about Jaime? Imagine how your brother must be feeling! You’re practically all alone now. Now all you have left is each other.”
“I’ve always been alone and it hasn’t been easy. He’ll have to learn.”
“But—”
“Don’t insist. We are not going to the funerals. You can send a card.”
“I’ll call Jaime. It’s the very least I can do.”
8
Did I mention that Ralph Morgan had made a place for himself in our lives?
The candidate for Congress gave us more work than we’d expected. This didn’t come as a surprise to me, since running a politician’s campaign is like being married to him, but it was a revelation for Esther.
Nicholas Carter, Morgan’s campaign chief, would call several times a day requesting or demanding this or that. He wanted everything then and there, without delay.
He was trying to get Morgan’s campaign off to a strong start and had spent weeks organizing it down to the smallest detail.
The starting pistol would be fired in the Bronx—a controversial decision, to say the least. But Carter assured everyone that it was a case of starting where nobody else did to win over the common people.
“The black and Hispanic votes are decisive. We need to get these votes right from the beginning. What do you think Ralph has been doing all these years, going over there to offer them free legal advice?” he explained to me and Paul. Esther was standing her ground and didn’t want to know anything about the political strategy they were coming up with for
Morgan.
“But New York is a complex city. Even in this district…There are the white yuppies, people with money. And then there are the middle classes…If they see him as the black and Hispanic candidate, he’ll lose other voters,” Paul asserted.
“What do you think, Thomas?” asked Ralph Morgan.
“What Nicholas is suggesting is risky,” I replied, “but in doing it you’ll catch the attention of the media and you’ll gain some voters anxious for someone to pay attention to them. But Paul is right too.”
“Don’t play it safe, Thomas! Tell me what you would do,” Ralph insisted.
“I’d find a balance, two parallel campaigns. And I would use Constance and Ellen. They’ll get you a lot of votes from the self-righteous middle class.”
“Constance prefers that we leave her out of all this,” Ralph commented. “It’s not that she doesn’t want to help, but she doesn’t want to be on the front line and she really doesn’t want to subject our daughter to the public eye.”
“Well, in this country you don’t win elections if you don’t show off your family. And your family will do a very good job of convincing people that you’re worth voting for. Constance is attractive, emanates sincerity, and is the epitome of an American middle-class woman.”
“Well, you mean a white American middle-class woman,” Paul specified.
“Yes, but she’s an exemplary woman, dedicated to her sick daughter. This will touch the hearts of all women, white, black, or any other race,” I stated frankly.
“All right, in addition to the event in the Bronx, we’ll organize some alternative gathering in Manhattan,” Carter agreed. “I don’t know, perhaps we could arrange a meeting between the Morgans and other families with sick children. It would be something moving. Ralph, you could promise them that if you win the election, you’ll be the voice in Congress for the families who feel they need better support systems to care for a sick child. That would be good.”
We did it. Yes. We did it. In spite of Esther’s protests and reluctance, I became deeply involved in Morgan’s campaigns. Not officially, no, but in practice. Paul and I enjoyed this job more than selling cava to middle-class Americans who could afford to pay twenty dollars a bottle.
The Bronx event was a success. Nicholas Carter hired various unknown musical groups, kids eager for their big break. They entertained the attendees until the moment Ralph Morgan took the stage. Esther hadn’t wanted to come with us, but Paul and I didn’t want to miss the first act in the staging of this ambitious lawyer’s electoral career.
Ralph was attractive and women liked him, but he wasn’t handsome enough to irritate men. Of average height, with brown eyes and hair, he had an athletic physique and was like the boyfriend all mothers dreamed of for their daughters. Furthermore, he had a great talent for communication and he got along well with people. The others didn’t see it, but it seemed to me that there was a certain falseness behind the open smile and the good manners. He was too close a match with the stereotype of the good middle-class boy who had studied hard to become a lawyer and was willing to sacrifice himself for the powerless, going to the Bronx and Harlem each week, as he always did, to offer free legal counsel. Too good to be true.
“There are good people in the world,” Esther said when I expressed my skepticism.
“He’s too perfect,” I replied.
In spite of her doubts, Constance had eventually agreed to come to the Bronx to support her husband, but she had refused to bring little Ellen.
Nicholas Carter had sensibly decided that she would sit among the public.
Carter had written an excellent speech for Ralph. Exactly the kind of speech that the people in that neighborhood, which struck such fear into white people, wanted to hear. He promised to fight so that many of the undocumented immigrants could gain legal status. He defended the need, too, for high-quality schools in those neighborhoods, which had been “left in God’s hands.” He promised them that, if he were elected to Congress, he would look out for them, their children, and the elderly. That he wouldn’t mislead them; although he couldn’t promise them that he would succeed, he would at least fight for them once he reached the Capitol.
They believed him. People got to their feet, interrupting him with their applause. Some women wept.
“He’s an ace, you’ve got to admit it,” Paul whispered.
“Yes, he is. But he’s lying. He can’t achieve any of what he’s promised.”
“He hasn’t promised anything. Carter has taken great care to ensure that he only says that he will try to change things, nothing more.”
At the end of his speech Morgan paused while he tried to spot Constance, as if he didn’t know where she was. A spotlight followed his gaze until it settled on his wife. She couldn’t hide her surprise, her discomfort at being the center of attention.
“I want to thank my wife. Without her I wouldn’t be here. She has always helped me. She’s been helping me since the day we met in college and she continues to every day by encouraging me to believe in myself, in my dream of changing the status quo and making our beloved country even greater and fairer.
“Constance is a selfless mother who is sacrificing her own time and energy so I can commit myself to politics with the knowledge that our darling daughter doesn’t lack what’s most important, her mother’s love. Without Constance’s generosity, I wouldn’t be here today. Thank you, darling, for your bottomless support, for your love, for your loyalty. Thank you.”
The people got to their feet, applauding enthusiastically while the beam of the spotlight remained fixed on Constance, who seemed stunned. She stood up and looked around, overwhelmed by the show of enthusiasm. The spotlight suddenly moved away and back to the stage, where Ralph was drying his tears.
“What an actor!” Paul whispered in my ear.
I admired Ralph for his mastery of the act. I knew that Carter had prepared this part of the rally in minute detail.
When the event was finished we met them at their campaign headquarters.
Ralph was excited. He was on an adrenaline high. Carter was sure that he’d win Harlem and the Bronx.
Constance didn’t join us. She had gone home. It didn’t seem to me like she had enjoyed the event. I guessed that she would refuse to take part in the campaign in the future.
“Now we have to conquer white Manhattan,” said Carter. “The meeting with the families of sick children is in three days. In the meantime we’ve gotten a few requests for interviews here. You’ll do all of them, Ralph. We can’t reject a single one. The people need to get to know you.”
“Has Constance agreed to this?” I asked.
“To what? She knows she has to help, that Ralph needs her,” responded Carter.
“Sure, but something tells me she wasn’t comfortable tonight. She looked like she wanted to hightail it out of there. You should prepare her for what’s coming,” I insisted.
“She’ll help me, there’s no doubt about it, Thomas,” Ralph replied. “She knows that I’m gambling my future on these elections. She doesn’t have a choice.” His tone of voice hinted at some kind of tension.
“Of course. But perhaps Thomas is right and we ought to try to work with her,” Carter appealed.
“You have to find someone she can confide in. I don’t think she likes you much, Carter,” I said, tossing out this assertion with nothing whatsoever to support it.
Ralph and Carter looked at each other. I was right. Constance must blame the campaign chief for directing her husband toward a life she didn’t want.
“Perhaps you could take on that role. She likes you,” said Carter.
“Me? Impossible. Esther doesn’t want the agency to get involved in anything beyond ensuring that the balloons stay up and the spotlights shine. Furthermore, I don’t know Constance; I wouldn’t know where to start,” I said, hoping the others would try to convince me of the opposite.
“I’m sure you’re the right person,” Carter replied. “The day we were a
ll in your office she mentioned to me that you seemed like a guy we could trust. These things happen. You click with a stranger without knowing why and the stranger ends up having more sway over you than people you’ve known your whole life,” Carter concluded. He had already decided that I would take care of Constance, with whom it was increasingly clear he didn’t get along well.
“I’ll have to talk to Esther about it first,” I objected, so that they didn’t think that I was too eager for the role.
“I’ll ask her,” said Ralph.
“You? I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Carter commented.
“Yes, it is; it’ll be harder for her to say no to me,” insisted Ralph.
I wasn’t surprised that he wanted to be the one to deal with Esther. He liked her. He liked my wife in the same way I liked his. He didn’t acknowledge it—probably not even to himself—but that was the truth. I wasn’t so cynical, or at least I didn’t fool myself. I was already savoring the possibility of having an affair with Constance.
Paul told me later why Morgan’s wife hated Carter. It seems that the three of them had not only met in college but had been very close friends until Constance got pregnant and Ralph asked for Carter’s advice. He advised him that it would be best if she terminated the pregnancy, that he couldn’t chain himself to her for the rest of his life just because of a moment of passion in the backseat of a car.
Ralph had hesitated. In reality he would have liked to follow Carter’s advice, and he asked Constance to consider the possibility of an abortion. She refused, and he didn’t dare break up with her. He was about to finish school and, thanks to his excellent academic record, he had a job waiting for him in a senator’s office. He himself dreamed of getting into politics one day and he knew that any hiccups in his life would become common knowledge sooner or later. If Constance didn’t end the pregnancy, the child would become his sword of Damocles, hanging over his head for the rest of his life. He married her. But though she had won the battle, Constance never forgave Carter for the advice he had given Ralph.