24
The day of the women’s luncheon came, and I was nervous. Not that I’d let Michael—or worse, Stuart—see that.
But I had taken Michael to the barbershop just over the DC line in Friendship Heights, where my father got his hair cut. I didn’t tell him that was where we were going—I told him we were going to test out his speech on a friend. But once he was in the chair, he couldn’t say no to a cut.
And when I caught him admiring himself in the mirror, it wasn’t a hard sell to go to Hecht’s for a new suit. I couldn’t quite bring myself to take Michael to the Friendship Heights Woodies after the way I left the makeup counter in shame. I wanted to do a complete wardrobe overhaul, but Michael said we should start slow. I did talk him into ties and a new pair of shoes though. “Women notice shoes,” I warned, and the salesgirl agreed with me.
“Size eleven,” he said, conceding defeat.
It was a lot easier when Stuart wasn’t with us.
And the two of us polished his speech until it shone.
So while my nerves were jangling, I did know we were ready for this.
Stuart drove us up Rockville Pike, past the Colonial Manor motel and the shops at Congressional Plaza. “Such an ugly stretch of road,” he muttered.
“It’s better when we get to the club,” I said, smoothing my dress in the back seat. He wasn’t wrong, but I preferred to look on the bright side. “Turn left up there.”
Stuart put on his blinker and then made the left turn onto the tree-lined avenue. “Wasn’t this in Bethesda?”
“It’s been here for ten years,” I explained. “The government wanted the old site for NIH.” He should have known that though. “Don’t you belong to a club?”
Michael and Stuart exchanged a look in the front seat. “No,” Michael said cautiously. “Neither of us do.”
“Your parents don’t?”
“No.”
“What did you do all summer as kids?”
They glanced at each other again, and I saw a hint of a smile on both faces. “Ran wild,” Michael said.
“We got to be kids. Not tiny adults in top hats.”
“I was at the pool all summer,” I said. “No top hats. Honestly, though, I was jealous of the families that spent their summer at the beach. Papa had to work.” It was a short-lived jealousy, but I thought that would make them feel less self-conscious about missing out on such a crucial part of social life. “I suppose that’ll be you soon too. No real point in joining a club when you’re working all summer until you have a family.”
Michael turned around to look at me as the Woodmont clubhouse came into view. “Our families didn’t have that kind of money.”
I realized my faux pas. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to imply—”
“No need to apologize,” Michael said. “I’m not ashamed of growing up poor. My parents worked hard to make sure I’d have an education, and Stuart and I both put ourselves through law school after college.”
“Is that why you’re running for office?”
“Partly. But mostly—”
“Finish this conversation later,” Stuart said. “Where do I park?”
“You don’t. You pull up at the front, and a valet will take the car.”
“I’m not giving my car to a stranger,” Stuart said.
I bit the inside of my bottom lip, resisting the urge to dress him down. He clearly hadn’t experienced valet parking before. “It’s their job,” I said, gesturing to a uniformed man in front of the building. “You’ll insult him if you don’t let him park the car. Is that really how you want to start this lunch?”
Stuart glared at me in the rearview mirror but pulled to a stop and left the car idling in front of the building, while the valet opened first my door and then Michael’s.
“Mrs. Diamond,” he said, tipping his hat. “Always a pleasure.”
“Thank you, Philip,” I said, grasping his hand in my gloved one.
The doorman greeted me by name as well, as did Sylvia, the receptionist. “I didn’t realize you were the queen of the club,” Stuart grumbled.
“Certainly makes it a good testing ground for this plan, doesn’t it?” I asked as I led them to the dining room. The interns had beaten us there and were buzzing around the room, arranging chairs and tables according to the map I had drawn them. A podium stood at the front of the room, adorned with the club’s Fourth of July bunting. We were lucky the speech was this week—a few days later and the bunting wouldn’t have been available. We would eventually have to buy our own, but we needed money for that. Which was the other reason I picked a club as a starting point—every woman here had access to a fully stocked checking account.
Once everything was set up to even Stuart’s satisfaction, we retreated into a side room. We would come out after the main course, before the desserts. There was a table set for us in there, and we ate a light lunch that started before everyone else’s, to make sure we would be ready when the plates had been cleared.
“It’s time,” Claire said, poking her head into our room.
“Ready?” I asked Michael.
“As I’ll ever be.”
I straightened his tie and raked my fingers through his hair. “Now you are.”
“If she licks her finger and wipes your face, I swear—”
I turned to Stuart. “Don’t be ridiculous. There’s nothing on his face. And I’d dip a napkin in a water glass, like a lady.” I gave Michael a playful shove toward the door, then looked at Stuart over my shoulder. “No offense intended if your mother used the licking method.”
He shook his head but didn’t reply. Which I should have known meant trouble. But at the time, I didn’t think anything of it.
I walked in first, waving to the assembled crowd. My mother wasn’t there—she had stayed home to watch the kids, but she had made good on her promise. The room was full of faces that I either knew or recognized. But it was the blonde hair in the very front that made me smile the widest. Her kids must have been in the pool, because Nancy was there, front and center, to support me and my cause. I reached out and grabbed her hand, squeezing it, before I went to the podium.
“Good afternoon!” I said into the mic, then backed up a little to avoid feedback. “Sorry—I think I’ve done everything here except speak into a microphone.”
“You’ve got this, Bev!” Nancy called out to some light laughter.
“I want to thank you all for coming out here today,” I said, which also got a handful of laughs, because where else would they be on a summer afternoon? “That is to say, I appreciate you taking your lunch inside instead of by the pool.” More laughs this time.
“But I’m not here to be social. I’m here because I have someone whom I’m dying to introduce you to. Michael Landau is here with us. As you may know, Michael is running for Senate against Sam Gibson.” I paused, looking out into the crowd and seeing the confused faces and hearing the whispers. “Yes, that Sam Gibson. So why am I here introducing you to his competition? The answer is simple—and it’s not because of the rumors I’m sure you’ve heard by now about my marriage. I’m here because Sam Gibson isn’t doing anything for us . Men? Sure. But women? He thinks we’re good for raising babies and cooking meals and not much else.”
Was I exaggerating? Yes. But it was a sentiment I had voiced to Larry previously, only to be dismissed as not knowing what I was talking about.
“Michael Landau is here because he wants your vote—but more importantly, he wants to earn your vote. He wants to listen to women, not just make decisions for them. And ... well, I’m not going to do his whole speech for him, but I want you to know that he has my support. And I think what he has to say is important enough that I’m going to make sure I go out to the polls in November and cast my vote for him. And I hope you’ll do the same.”
I looked around the room. They were interested. “And without further ado, I present your future senator, Mr. Michael Landau.”
The women clapped as Michael came up to the podium. He shook my hand, as he had done with Stuart when he was introduced at the most recent speech, and then I went back to the wall where Stuart was standing.
“Good afternoon,” Michael said.
Stuart leaned over. “Well done,” he said quietly.
I eyed him suspiciously. “But?”
His mouth twitched up into a smirk. “But nothing,” he whispered. “Well—maybe not nothing .”
I turned to fully face him. “What did you do?”
He shrugged. “Exactly what you did to me with his last speech.”
Oh no. He was about to deliver a speech to a roomful of women written by a man who clearly had no clue what women wanted. And worse yet, Michael was going to think that I made the changes. I would defend myself later, obviously, but depending on how this went, going after women voters could be dead in the water.
I wished for the first time that I were a man and could settle this with my fists.
Instead, I hissed that we would talk about it later and turned my attention to Michael, ready to go snatch the microphone out of his hand if things took a turn.
“—I think this might just be my mother’s dream. Wait, none of you are single, are you?” He paused for the laughs I knew he would get. “Just as well. I’m not here today to find a wife. I’m here to convince you that you should vote for me to be your next senator.”
He paused and looked around the room, making eye contact and smiling. We have to get those new pictures taken, I thought. With the fresh haircut and a smile, he had suddenly gone from bland to handsome. No one was going to confuse him for Rock Hudson, but the man could turn on the charisma.
“Notice I said your senator, not your husband’s, father’s, brother’s, or son’s. Because while I’ll be theirs too, I think it’s important that women have a voice in government. And I want to be that for you. You make up half of the population. We wouldn’t have a human race without you. So why is it that Maryland didn’t ratify the Nineteenth Amendment until more than twenty years after it became a national law?”
He looked around again. “I’ll tell you why—it’s because your leaders failed you.” He smiled, ruefully this time. “Now, if Maryland was my only goal, I’d be running for the state Senate instead of the national one. But the reality is, there are a lot of women in this great nation of ours who have it worse than you do. And I want to make sure this country is safe—”
Michael stopped and looked over at me quizzically. I shook my head emphatically and pointed a thumb at Stuart. Michael swallowed a chuckle and held my gaze for a moment before looking back out at the room.
“Looks like I picked up the wrong draft of my speech this morning. Will anyone object if I wing it a little?” Several women sat stoically, but most looked amused.
“Not at all,” Nancy called out from the front.
“Good. Now listen, everyone wants the world to be safe, not just for women and children. My opponent would have you believe that the way to make the world safe is to keep you in a bubble while we depend on men to protect you. Which may work to a degree. But I’m not interested in protecting you; I want to make sure the world is respecting you. Because if we genuinely respect women and teach that respect from an early age, you won’t need some man to protect you.”
“Close your mouth, darling. You’ll catch flies,” a voice whispered beside me.
I whipped around and saw my mother standing at the wall with me. I closed my mouth, which I hadn’t realized was hanging open. “Where are the children?” I hissed back.
“With Rosa. I couldn’t miss this at my own club.”
I shook my head, then turned my attention back to Michael, noting Stuart silently fuming to my right.
“We all know Thomas Jefferson’s famous line about all men being created equal, which may have been good enough in 1776. But do you think we would have a country without the women who toiled endlessly while their men fought for our independence?”
He hadn’t veered back to the prepared remarks yet, but he didn’t need to—in fact, this was better than what we had written. And for the first time since I walked into his office and declared that they were going to have to hire me if they wanted to win, I realized we could win this. All we had to do was give him a push in the right direction and let him talk. Sam was charming as well, but he was a career politician, and there was an oily feeling to speaking with him that you couldn’t put your finger on if you hadn’t grown up the way I did. My father had grudgingly given his endorsement six years ago entirely for me, a decision that he came to regret in his final term in the House, and I understood why.
“He’s quite good,” my mother murmured. “Green, of course, but you should have seen your father when he started.” I looked over at her. “There isn’t much a woman’s touch can’t fix.”
“If you’re suggesting I—”
“Will you two stop?” Stuart whispered angrily.
I patted Mama’s arm, and we stood in companionable silence through the rest of Michael’s speech, which received a standing ovation as he finished.
“That should loosen some checkbooks,” Mama said. “Where is he speaking next? People will talk.”
“You two did enough of that,” Stuart grumbled.
“Who is this angry little man?” my mother asked, more than loudly enough for him to hear.
I tried not to laugh. It wouldn’t help the relationship at all. But the way Stuart’s chest puffed up like a bantam rooster at being called “little” was too much.
“Oh dear,” I said, once I managed to swallow a giggle. People were lined up to speak to Michael, so we had a little time. “Mama, this is Stuart Friedman, Michael’s senior campaign manager.” He glowered at the inclusion of “senior.” “Stuart, this is my mother, Mrs. Mildred Gelman.” I put a slight emphasis on her last name to remind him of my pedigree in politics.
The name washed over him, and his entire countenance changed. “Mrs. Gelman,” he said, offering his hand. “I’m terribly sorry.”
“Had I been Mrs. Smith, would you be as sorry?”
“If you were married to Franklin Smith from New Jersey, absolutely.”
My mother let out a peal of laughter, now charmed, as I rolled my eyes.
The two of them continued in conversation as Nancy came over, grabbed my arm, and pulled me a couple of feet away to talk.
“I think I see why you’re working for him,” she said, waggling her eyebrows.
“Nancy!”
“What? If you really want to make Larry sorry, you’ve got the perfect opportunity.”
“Nance—”
“I know, I know. This went really well. You need to keep the momentum going though. If that other guy ...” She circled her hand in the air, digging for his name.
“Sam Gibson?”
“That one. If he comes and speaks, this one—”
“Michael Landau.”
“That’s what I said. He’ll need to come back.”
She had a point, though she was notoriously terrible with names, often going through her siblings, neighbors, my children, and her dog’s names before reaching her own children’s correct designations, so I didn’t take her inability to remember Michael’s name as an indication that she would forget who to vote for at the polls. Besides, the odds of Sam deciding to speak to a roomful of women was on par with him going into space.
“Do you think they’ll vote?”
Nancy nodded. “I do. That line about respecting instead of protecting was gold.”
I smiled. “It was, wasn’t it? That was all him too.” Well—mostly. I had said something to that effect in his office, but the rhyme sold it. Maybe we should get that printed on posters.
My eyes drifted toward the front of the room, where Michael was deep in conversation with my mother’s friend Mrs. Klein. As if feeling my eyes on him, he looked over at me and smiled quickly before returning his attention to whatever Mrs. Klein was saying.
I didn’t even notice Nancy was still talking. “—sent him packing. Do you know he had the gall to go on a date?”
“Wait, start over,” I said.
“Larry,” she said. “I told him he had to leave. My mother came over, and a pair of his shorts were sticking out from under a sofa cushion. The poor woman nearly had a stroke.”
Anyone who birthed Nancy wasn’t going to have a stroke over a pair of men’s underwear, but I appreciated the sentiment being used to make Larry less comfortable. “Where did he go?”
She shrugged. “I don’t care. I just wanted him gone.”
I pulled her in for a hug. “Thank you for being here.”
“Where else would I be when you need me? But it looks like you have this under control, so I should go make sure the kids are alive and not destroying the whole place.”
“Go,” I said and turned to watch Michael continue to charm the ladies of the club. This crazy plan just might work after all, I thought as a woman walked up and handed Michael a check. If they were willing to donate, they would definitely vote.