Go Ask Fannie, page 10
An uncomfortable silence filled the room, punctuated only by the clearing of throats. Her heart was racing. In the back of the room, a reporter scribbled furiously.
Murray was going to kill her.
She looked at the group before her. They were expecting something. An apology? Well, she wasn’t going to apologize for her views.
What she did apologize for was swearing. “Maybe I got a little too emotional. Maybe we can move on to another topic.”
There was shuffling, more throat-clearing. Nobody had another question. She took another sip of coffee.
“Well then,” she said brightly.
As she collected her notes, she turned to a somber-looking Martin, who handed her purse to her. The group began to disperse but several people came forward, including the man who had stuck up for her.
“Richard’s like that whenever we have a staff meeting,” he explained. “He likes to make trouble.”
“I shouldn’t have sworn,” Lillian sighed.
“You’re human,” said the man.
That’s right, Lillian told herself as they headed north to Concord, where she was going to meet Murray for lunch at a senior center. Buck up, she thought. You’re human. So you got a little emotional. So what?
“How’d it go?” asked Murray, when she joined up with him.
“Well . . .” Lillian began.
Murray looked at Martin, who explained that someone had pressed her about abortion.
“He was an asshole,” Lillian said defiantly. “He was looking for a fight.”
“Did you give him one?”
“Well . . .”
“How bad was it?” Murray asked Martin. “And was the press there?”
Oh, the press was there, all right. The next morning the Manchester Union Leader, the state’s ultra-conservative newspaper, would publish a photo of Lillian with her mouth in an awkward snarl, with the caption “Candidate’s Wife Attacks Pro-Lifer.” The story opened with a summary of her “dramatic outburst,” describing her as “prickly,” and portraying Richard the Pro-Lifer as steady and measured.
But by the next morning, this story wouldn’t upset them as much as expected—because upon arriving back at the beach house after Lillian’s outburst, they had something else to deal with. Apparently, during their day at Old Orchard, Daniel had snuck off with some friends and spent his five dollars on a quart of vodka, and not only vomited on the Zipper but stumbled as he was getting off and did a face-plant on the cement, knocking out his two front teeth. The press, who had been following the four Blaire children from ride to ride (this being a human interest story; “The Candidate’s Children Have Some Fun” was the editor’s idea), got a photo of a bloody-faced Daniel being dragged off by Ruth and George with Lizzie trotting behind carrying Daniel’s two front teeth in a giant cup of Coke, and followed them to Maine Medical in Portland, where the Blaire children were met by a police officer, who promptly ticketed Daniel for underage drinking, even before the ER technicians had hooked him up to an IV.
And now they were all back at the beach house, gathered in the living room. Daniel lay on the sofa with a mouth full of gauze; the dentist who showed up at the ER had simply stuck his teeth back into his gums. Murray’s parents emerged from their bedroom, looking dazed and rumpled from their summer bug—and probably from the Pernod that Murray’s father insisted was a cure-all.
Murray paced back and forth on the worn braided rug. “How could you?” he demanded.
“Ih wah ust a ew hots,” Daniel mumbled.
“Enough to give you a blood alcohol level of point one three!”
“Ho?”
“So that’s pretty goddamned drunk,” Murray said. “Do you do this on a regular basis?”
“It was me who found his teeth,” Lizzie whispered to Lillian.
“Very good, dear,” said Lillian.
“I put them in my Coke,” said Lizzie proudly.
“Very good, dear,” said Lillian. She was wondering which story would draw more attention: Daniel getting soused, or her blowing her cool with Mr. Fetus.
“Can someone explain what happened?” Murray’s mother pleaded.
“Ruth, where were you?” Murray asked. “You were supposed to keep everyone together.”
“Daniel said he was going to the bathroom. What was I supposed to do, follow him into the men’s room?” Ruth’s tone flared with righteous indignation; she perceived her role in the day’s events as one of supreme responsibility for being there when Daniel stumbled off the Zipper, and for getting him to Maine Medical without herself getting a speeding ticket on Route 1. She was quite pleased with herself, really.
Lillian wanted a drink, but didn’t want to drink in front of Daniel, so she went into the kitchen and poured an inch of vodka (gin would smell too much) into a mug and carried it back in, cupping her hands around it and blowing as though it were hot tea.
“You realize this will be all over the news,” Murray told Daniel. “How do you think it’s going to make me look? Like my family’s out of control, that’s how.”
Lillian didn’t think it was a requirement of public office that a candidate have a perfect family. Look at those Kennedy kids. She thought back to her outburst, though, and found it unfortunate that her outburst and Daniel’s drinking had coincided on the same day.
“Can we eat?” asked George.
“It’s bad enough to go off and get drunk like that,” Murray went on, pacing. “Do you realize how many brain cells you killed today? It was a stupid thing to do. But it was selfish as well. Were you thinking of anybody besides yourself when you did this?”
“I’n horry!” cried Daniel. “Okay? I didn’t know how drunk I ould get!”
“Well, now you know, don’t you?” Murray shook his head. Lillian thought he was rubbing it in a little too thick. She felt sorry for Daniel. He was, after all, only fifteen. His mouth was a mess. His head was a mess. Murray didn’t need to make it worse.
Lillian lit a cigarette and waved out the match. “Beating a dead horse . . .” she murmured.
Murray turned to her. “It’s an opportunity to learn a good lesson, Lillian,” he said sternly. “He’s got to understand that he’s not the only person in the universe.”
“I’m just saying you don’t need to be so hard,” Lillian said. “I think he’s already learned his lesson.”
“Can I try some vodka?” Lizzie asked. “Does it really taste like water?”
Murray glared at her. Things were getting out of control. Everyone had had a long day.
“I think dinner would be a good idea,” said Lillian, although she noticed Daniel looking queasy at the mere mention of food. Still, dinner would distract everyone, would give them time to cool down. She went into the kitchen and opened up the boxes of Chinese food and called everybody in.
“No pot stickers?” Murray’s father asked.
“I just remembered our teacher telling us that if we lost a tooth, put it in Coke,” Lizzie was telling Murray’s mother. “And I had a Coke, so I put Daniel’s teeth in it.”
“You’re a smart little girl,” Nana Blaire said. “Though I think it was milk, not Coke.”
Lillian made herself a moo shu pork pancake and helped herself to some of the fried rice, though she didn’t have much of an appetite herself. She followed her family into the living room, where they sat with plates on their laps, and Murray began to calm down, and there was just the clink of forks on plates as everyone ate. I wish the press could photograph this, she thought. “The Blaire Family Survives a Crisis.” “Blaire Teen Learns a Valuable Life Lesson.” Murray’s numbers would rise, not fall. They would be seen as a regular family. They would go on to sweep their district.
“What happens tomorrow?” she asked Murray. “What’s on our schedule?”
Murray sighed. Lillian could see a cynical response forming on his lips, Noon rally at Fuck-Up Plaza or something like that, but instead he said he thought they’d take a day off. It wouldn’t hurt them. Besides, Daniel had to see an endodontist, and Murray wanted to be there.
Lying in bed that night, she found herself thinking back upon her outburst. She was glad she’d stuck up for herself, glad she didn’t let herself get bullied into silence. If it hurt Murray’s numbers with the Catholic vote, so be it. And Daniel’s problem would blow over. Team Blaire did not have to be perfect all the time.
The rest of the house was still. Next door Murray’s parents snored off their bug. Down the hall Ruth was probably reading with a flashlight while Lizzie lay with limbs splayed on the bed next to her. Farther on down in the boys’ room, Daniel would be tossing fitfully, and George would be dreaming of breakfast. The only noise came from outside, the sounds of the Atlantic Ocean, waves breaking gently, lulling all the summer people to sleep.
All but Lillian, that is. She slipped out of bed and went into the kitchen and found a legal pad. Imagine: You’re sixteen and pregnant, she wrote, continuing the idea from the night before. You’re nauseous. Your boyfriend is a child. You have no money, no diploma, no support from your parents . . . She paused and reread her words. She didn’t like them. There was something self-righteous about the tone. And it was going to be too abstract.
She poured herself some gin and thought back to her own experience, learning she was pregnant back in 1967, and about her friend who had almost bled to death. What if she hadn’t loved Murray enough to want to marry him? And as she began to write, she became that girl in her essay, and followed her up some dimly lit stairs to a second-floor apartment with the linoleum floor, the wind-rattled windows, the threadbare sheet laid across the dining room table. She clenched her teeth throughout the procedure and barely made it home on the T before collapsing into her own bed, and when, two days later she ended up in the emergency room at Mass General and got a scolding from both the nurse and the doctor, she refused to give the name and address, because if he didn’t do it, who would?
There, she thought, setting down her pen. Much better as a piece of fiction, first-person point of view. She stepped outside into the cool, salty night air and lit a cigarette. She planned to quit after the campaign, but right now it was the most satisfying cigarette she’d ever had.
It was three o’clock when she went back and climbed into bed beside Murray, who lay curled away from her. He slept in a T-shirt these days, not the old-man pajamas Lillian’s mother gave him every Christmas. She wanted to tell him about the piece she was writing but didn’t want to jinx things. So she merely spooned up against him and smelled his sweet, peppery smell.
He sighed, and settled more deeply into sleep.
8.
Fidel-ity
The idea for the Blaire-Mobile, born after love-making on the Fourth of July, blossomed into reality after Daniel’s incident. Murray wanted the people of new Hampshire to see that they were a normal family, one that did things together on the weekend. A family that explored the state together, and stopped for pie and coffee now and then, and took a swim at one of the state’s many pristine lakes—as opposed to, say, a family with a wayward teen who went off and got himself drunk as a skunk at an amusement park while his mother was out yelling at antiabortionists.
Ruth, at sixteen, was excited to have an official role. Daniel, however, saw this compulsory togetherness as punishment and couldn’t believe his parents were going to make him drive around with them on a perfectly good Saturday. George wanted to paint a peace sign on the old blue van; Murray vetoed that idea, but allowed him to plaster the bumpers with Murray’s blue-and-white stickers. Lizzie just wanted to bring her Barbie.
Despite the underlying discord, they were a photogenic bunch, packed into the van with Murray at the wheel. Lillian agreed not to smoke in the car, and the children perfected the art of the white-toothed smile that showed off years of budget-busting orthodontia.
The problem was that, even though it was a van, it was a very small space for a family of six to confine themselves for a long day full of campaign stops, and things could get touchy. Squabbles usually broke out within the first hour. Daniel’s feet stank. Daniel stank. George wanted to make the A Band this year (rather than the dreaded B Band), so he brought his trumpet along. Ruth cried that it was blasting her eardrums. Lizzie kept singing the same song over and over again, right in Murray’s ear. Ruth was getting carsick from Daniel’s feet. Lillian broke down and had a cigarette.
Murray wondered if every family fought as much as his did.
“You and your brothers fought,” Lillian reminded him. “Your mother said she had to break up fistfights. At least we don’t have fistfights.”
“Not yet,” Murray grumbled. “Wait until George’s testosterone kicks in.”
“If they get into fistfights, I will spray them with the garden hose,” Lillian vowed.
The short-term solution—at least as far as travel in the Blaire-Mobile went—was obvious. Daniel had to shower and keep his shoes on. No smelly bags of popcorn. No cigarettes. No trumpet. Books were allowed, a Walkman, too; general conversation was allowed unless it veered toward the argumentative, in which case Lillian called a Quaker Meeting. Quaker Meeting has begun, no more laughing, no more fun. With these restrictions, the day on the road could be tolerated by everyone.
All through September they spent their Saturdays tooling around New Hampshire’s second congressional district. Sometimes Murray allowed Ruth to drive. They visited Hanover, the White Mountains, the Great North Woods. They visited a shoe factory and a wool mill. They toured a meat processing facility, where they got free baloney roll-ups with frilly toothpicks. Leaves changed color and they got stuck in traffic jams with leaf-peepers from New York.
“I gave up football for this?” said Daniel.
“You didn’t make the football team,” Ruth reminded him.
“Because I have a bum knee,” Daniel shot back.
“Poor cripple,” said Ruth.
“Quaker Meeting,” said Lillian.
Meanwhile, they were constantly having to deal with the press. It amazed Lillian how much they could dig up. They found out that Murray had been a member of Students for a Democratic Society for a brief time in college. That Lillian had dated a Black Panther one summer in Boston, before she met Murray. “It was just one date,” she protested, but nonetheless the story ran in large part focusing on her wealthy childhood and speculating that her association with student radicals in college was simply a way of rebelling against her privileged background.
Murray slammed the newspaper down.
“This isn’t reporting; it’s total conjecture,” he fumed. “Who cares who you hung out with back then?!”
“What’s a Black Panther?” Lizzie asked. She had shaved her Barbie with Murray’s electric razor the day before, and was now trying to fix matters by scotch-taping the hair back on. “Are there any in New Hampshire?”
“You dated a Black Panther?” Ruth asked. It being 1984, she was learning about the sixties in her U.S. History class.
“Once,” Lillian said. “It was never serious.”
“Was he really black?” Lizzie asked.
“No, he was lime green,” Ruth said.
“Ruth,” Lillian said. “Really.”
“I’ll bet Grandfather didn’t like that,” Daniel declared, always titillated by a little family discord.
“No,” said Lillian, “he didn’t.” She didn’t tell them how her father refused to shake the young man’s hand. It still mortified her.
Suddenly Lizzie whapped her Barbie on the table. “It’s not working!”
“Let me try,” said Lillian, taking the doll. “You need to think before you act, Lizzie dear.”
“I wish I’d never been born!” Lizzie cried, burying her head in Lillian’s lap.
George came out of the pantry holding a jar of Skippy. “We’re out.”
“That’s because you eat it like ice cream,” said Ruth.
“I’m a growing boy,” said George.
“You’re a Neanderthal is what you are,” said Ruth.
“What’s that on your chin, Ruth?” said Daniel, who sensed his plump younger brother at a disadvantage. “Is that another zit?”
Ruth touched her chin.
“Leave it alone,” said Lillian. “You’ll just make it worse.”
“It’s growing as I watch,” said Daniel. “Oh my God, it’s turning white on top.”
Ruth burst into tears and fled the room.
Lillian sighed. “Really, Daniel, was that necessary?”
“She called George a Neanderthal,” said Daniel. “Watch this.” He began juggling three tangerines. Lizzie tried and promptly dropped them.
“Nobody answered me,” she said, scrambling to pick them up.
“I forgot what you asked, dear,” said Lillian.
“What’s a Black Panther?”
“A radical,” said Ruth, back now wearing cakey orange makeup.
“What’s a radical?” asked Lizzie.
And so Ruth proceeded to explain the different political factions in the United States, going on about liberals and conservatives and the radical right and left, SDS, SNCC, the antiwar movement, the John Birch Society, and Patty Hearst, so engrossed in her didactic role that she barely noticed that everyone had left the room except George, who, having located a new jar of Skippy, had made himself a mountain of toast and was going through the stack, piece by piece, annihilating the jar of peanut butter that Lillian had allocated for the next week’s sandwiches.
