59
Nancy’s husband said they would take the kids home, and Michael insisted on driving me to the station, my father following in his car.
“What were you thinking?” I asked after a few minutes.
“Me?”
“Were you going to hit him?”
Michael smiled ruefully. “I don’t know, honestly. It was instinct.”
“You can’t go around hitting people if you want to get into the Senate.”
“No,” he said. “Although there was a time when duels were appropriate.”
“And how did that work out for Aaron Burr in the end?” I asked.
“Hamilton may have gotten the better part of that deal, if I remember my history.”
“As I tell Robbie, fight with your words, not your fists.”
Michael glanced over at me. “Yes, Mother.”
“Don’t you start.”
We drove the rest of the way in silence.
At the station, there was a kerfuffle in progress as my mother was fine with a mugshot, provided she could freshen her lipstick first, but she drew the line at fingerprints. The entire station seemed to have turned out to watch as the chief argued with her. Finally, he put her in a cell, giving up on the prints for the moment.
Michael and my father went to talk to the chief, and I followed while they began explaining the situation.
A few minutes later, a secretary came in and gestured for the chief. He excused himself, and when he returned, he told my father and Michael to follow him to speak to my mother and said there was someone there who wanted a word with me.
The secretary led me to an interrogation room with a small table and two chairs. Larry was sitting in one of them.
“No,” I said, turning to leave.
“Bev, wait,” he said. “I told them I’m not pressing charges. I deserved it.” I looked at him warily, and he gestured to the other chair. “Please? We really need to talk.”
I moved the chair so it was as far from him as it could possibly be in the tiny room and then sat.
“What do you want?”
“I—” He stopped and thought. “I’m sorry.”
My expression didn’t change. “For which part?”
“All of it. Today. The pictures. Cheating.” He looked down at his hands, then back up at me. “Marrying you.”
I stood up. “Goodbye, Larry.”
“No, I don’t mean it like that. Please. Sit. Let me explain.”
Curiosity got the better of me, and I sat down, though I was close to joining my mother in her cell after that last part.
“Sam—Sam encouraged me to propose.”
“You married me because Sam wanted you to?”
“It wasn’t just—I liked you. I liked you a lot. But I wasn’t head over heels in love with you, and I should have been.”
“This isn’t getting better,” I said.
“I wanted to be. And he said—he said the best marriages are built on friendship and respect and grow into real love.”
“What does Sam Gibson know about a good marriage?” Sure, he and his wife put on a good show. But knowing what I knew about Linda’s sister ...
“I didn’t know—then—about all that.” He looked down again. “I saw him as my mentor.”
“We have kids,” I said. “Did Sam tell you to do that too?”
He still couldn’t look at me. “No. I wanted us to be happy,” he said. “But being your husband wasn’t always easy.”
“Yeah. I know. You blamed me for Linda.”
“No, I—I wanted to feel needed,” he said. “You never needed anything. And it seemed like there was never anything I could do. It was—it was emasculating sometimes.”
I didn’t reply. I had spent so much of my life making sure he never wanted for anything. That he was comfortable. Happy. Fed. Cared for. And he was sitting here telling me he didn’t want that?
It was what a wife was supposed to do. Wasn’t it?
“Maybe emasculating isn’t the right word,” he said. “I—” He sighed. “I knew I was doing the wrong thing, and it just made me feel worse when you did everything right.”
I wanted to go put my head down. My whole marriage was just something Sam Gibson told him to do.
Larry reached across the table for my hand, but I moved it away. “The first couple of years, I really was happy,” he said. “I couldn’t believe someone like you would want to be with me. And I shouldn’t have said it was your fault with Linda. It wasn’t. It was mine.”
“Yes. I know that.”
He pulled his hand back when he realized I wasn’t going to take it and nodded. “And I came to synagogue today because I wanted to tell you that I didn’t plant the stories in the Sentinel and the Gazette . Then I saw you with Michael, and ...” He trailed off, shaking his head.
“You literally told me you were going to do that if I didn’t resign, and I didn’t resign.”
“I wasn’t really going to,” he said. “Sam—Sam apparently sent the pictures to the papers before I even talked to you.”
He seemed to think that was enough of a mea culpa. “You still gave the pictures to Sam.”
Larry threw his hands up in exasperation, then made an effort to remain calm. “My job is to win. When our personal lives blended with professional, it got hard to know the right thing to do. I’m not perfect, Beverly.”
The implication was that I thought I was. “No one asked you to be perfect,” I said. “I wanted you to be a good person.” He reached up and touched his nose, then winced. “You’re going to need to see a doctor for that.”
Larry nodded. “Sam isn’t a good person,” he said finally. “I do see that now. I still think he’s a good politician, but I don’t have blinders on. But listen—I was telling the truth. I didn’t know the whole story about the Tom Stanton thing until much later.”
Neither of us spoke for a little while. “So what happens now?” I asked.
“I won’t fight for custody,” he said. “I know Linda is working with you now. I won’t bring the pictures into court.”
“In exchange for?”
He shook his head. “No exchange.”
“You don’t expect me to quit the campaign.”
“I mean, I’d like it,” he said. “But I’m leaving after the election regardless.”
“You are?” This was news. “What will you do?”
“I committed to seeing it through. But I don’t really know after that. I always thought maybe I’d go into politics myself. Maybe start local.”
I didn’t think he had the charisma for that. But I had just seen the ugliest parts of him. And once upon a time, I had thought he was charming. I wouldn’t vote for him. But that didn’t mean other people wouldn’t.
“Bev—I don’t want us to hate each other. It’s bad for the kids. It’s bad for me.”
I waited for him to say it was bad for me as well, but he didn’t. And I realized that was the contrition I needed. I wasn’t ready to forgive him, but he wasn’t telling me what to do. He finally saw that I was my own person who could decide what I needed.
“I don’t want that either,” I said. “I’m not inviting you to Rosh Hashanah dinner yet, but I’d like us to be civil for the kids.”
“That’s fair,” he said. “Do—do you think I could have them for some weekends? Maybe even overnight?”
We looked each other in the eye for the first time in the conversation. And I saw how much effort it took to ask that. He hadn’t been a very engaged father, and taking them for a weekend—well, he had no idea what he was in for. But it meant the kids weren’t just a byproduct of following Sam’s orders after all.
“Debbie isn’t fully potty trained yet,” I warned. “You’d have to change diapers.”
He smiled tightly. “I think I can figure that out.”
Was that part of the problem? Would he have helped more if I had asked for it?
There were a lot of questions that didn’t have answers. And I wasn’t sure they all needed to be answered. For now, this was enough.
“Then I think we can arrange that.”
“Thank you,” he said. I nodded.
When we left the room, Michael was sitting on a hard chair in the station lobby. He rose when he saw me, then he and Larry regarded each other solemnly. “Be good to her,” Larry said eventually. Michael nodded, and Larry left the station without looking back.
“You okay?” he asked me.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think I am.” Then I remembered where we were and why. “We should go check on my mother. Larry isn’t pressing charges.”
“I know,” Michael said. “The chief told us.”
“Then why—”
“Go look,” he said. “I don’t think we should interrupt.”
I went down the hallway and peeked into the corridor where the holding cells were. My parents were both sitting on the floor, which in and of itself was shocking to see—my mother settled on my father’s jacket, which was spread beneath her. They were holding hands, their foreheads touching between the bars.
My mouth dropped open.
“I think,” Michael said quietly in my ear, “that she may be moving home soon.”
I started to laugh, tears rolling down my cheeks, and I turned around, wrapping my arms around Michael’s waist.
“ Shana tova , I guess,” I said, my tears wetting his shirt.
He kissed my hair gently. “Shana tova,” he repeated.