Chapter 2
The landslide, while inevitable, did not happen for a week, but there was never any doubt that Taylor Barbour would have no trouble with the Senate. In the interim he was the focus of immense and immediate media interest.
“And so when did you first decide you wanted to be a Supreme Court Justice?” his bright young interviewer asked when The Washingtonian magazine sent her to the Labor Department late on the afternoon of his nomination to do an in-depth cover story on “Our New Man on The Court.”
He smiled in his pleasant, noncommittal fashion and for a moment looked far away into some private distance.
“I don’t know that I ever really wanted to be,” he said, “or ever made it a specific goal of mine. But I suppose if one is a lawyer and by good fortune and the grace of Presidents has been permitted to reach high place in government, it is an idea that occurs.”
“That’s very diplomatic, Mr. Secretary,” she said with a smile that he found he quite liked, “but of course you know I don’t believe you for a minute. I think you’ve been eating your heart out for this job most of your life. I think you are inwardly doing a rain dance for glee.”
“Whoopee,” he said mildly. “What did you say your name is?”
“Catherine Corning,” she said. “Isn’t that awful? They call me Cathy Corny on the magazine because I’m always doing these sob-sister stories on the more glorious monuments of our government such as Secretaries of Labor, former Solicitors General who get appointed to the Court, and people like that. They say I have a Touch.”
“No doubt,” he said. “Well, I hope you’ll give me the same sweet treatment you’ve given all the rest.”
“Have you read any of my stuff?”
“Occasionally.”
“Then you know I bite. Beware!”
“You bet I will,” he assured her solemnly. Then he smiled, more broadly and in a more relaxed fashion this time. “As a matter of fact, to level with you, I have wanted to be a Supreme Court Justice ever since I first decided I wanted to be a lawyer. And that was about thirty years ago, now. Roughly the time you were in diapers.”
“Not quite,” she said. “Not—quite. Tell me the story of your climb to the Court. Our public wants to know.”
“Then we can’t disappoint them,” he agreed, and obliged; much more fully and candidly, he realized later, than he had ever related it for any other interviewer in a career that had in large part been spent in the public arena.
It had begun sometime around age sixteen after a childhood and youth spent on the family ranch in California’s fertile and lovely Salinas Valley, inland and south from San Francisco. His parents had assumed, and so had he for quite a long time, that he would grow up, go to college, probably at the University of California’s agricultural school at Davis, and then come home to work with his father and eventually assume management of the property. It comprised some four thousand acres, acquired originally by his grandfather starting in 1894, and had provided the family with a more than comfortable living ever since. They raised truck crops, as did most of the valley: lettuce, tomatoes, beets, turnips, the like. The ranch’s prosperity ebbed and flowed with the seasons and the weather, sometimes good years, sometimes bad, but overall far more of the former.
“It’s a good living,” his father said comfortably, and no one could deny it. The temptation for Tay to take the easy way and stick with it was very great, strengthened by sentimental ties, the fact that he was the eldest of two sons and a daughter and was locked into the family assumption that, naturally, he would take over the ranch. What else did Barbours do?
It therefore required some major event to pull him away. It had occurred quite by accident in high school when a civics teacher with some imagination had decided to form the class into a student replica of the federal government and take a mock piece of legislation through its various stages up to and including legal challenge and final decision by the Supreme Court.
He often reflected that if Miss Tillson had not had this inspiration, he would probably be a pillar of the Salinas Valley to this very day, president of Rotary, adviser to the Future Farmers, battler with Cesar Chavez, staunch believer in all the things his father had believed in without question or quarrel.
Instead Miss Tillson had said, “Tay, you’re going to be the Chief Justice,” and a life’s direction had changed in a moment.
(She was in her seventies now, in a retirement hotel near Monterey. She had called him twenty minutes ago and with the persistence and determination he remembered had worked her way through the Labor Department switchboard to his office. “Tay?” she inquired without other introduction. “Do you remember Civics I and our ‘Supreme Court’ days together?” “Yes, Erma,” he said, “bless your heart, I do.” “Well, you haven’t made Chief Justice,” she said; “yet. But now you’ve got a foot in the door, you’ll get there.” “One step at a time,” he said. She chuckled, a fading but still gallant sound. “Do us proud, now!” she admonished. “Don’t let Civics I down!” “How could I?” he asked. “After all, you’re the one who got me into all this.” Which had pleased her very much, of course; and truly enough, she had.)
He was a thoughtful and conscientious boy, and in preparation for his role he did considerable research on the Court. He found the two weeks during which the class carried its legislation through mock House, mock Senate and mock Court not only fun, but exciting. Some glimpse of something came to him, growing stronger every day they played their educational game. It became very serious for him before it was over, and when, as “Chief Justice,” he presented all his arguments with force and clarity and then declared solemnly, “Accordingly the ruling of the Supreme Court of California is reversed,” the class burst into spontaneous applause.
Afterward they had to prepare a theme on their experience in “government.” Miss Tillson gave him a straight A. “Some critics,” his paper concluded, “find it hard to analyze exactly why the Supreme Court is as powerful in our system as it is. They say it has ‘lifted itself by its own bootstraps’ to acquire this power. One critic even says that the Court ‘rests firmly on the cushion of its own self-esteem.’ But it has been many, many years since anyone has successfully challenged its power. It is a special place.”
And so it is, he thought now as he sorted out his memories for “Cathy Corny,” whose quick intelligence and deliberately disrespectful challenges intrigued him into a greater unburdening than he had intended. Their interview easily lengthened past the hour she had requested.
“You sound as though you were quite a little prig before you got this sudden flash of light about the Court,” she suggested with a smile she knew would be provoking. “A real little Goody Gumdrops of an obedient son and heir.”
“No, I wasn’t,” he objected, but much more mildly than he might have with someone else. “I was just a good boy. That meant something, when I was growing up in the Salinas Valley.”
And so it had. Aside from normal childhood deviltry, such as the time they took their three horses and decided to run away to Carmel over on the coast at ages ten, eight and six, he and his sister Anne and brother Carl were good and reliable kids whose parents felt that they would all settle surely and without difficulty into the pleasant pattern of ranch and valley life. Fortunately Carl and his wife, Dorothy Sterling, and Anne and her husband, Johnny Gonzales, all had, so the ranch today was still in the family, still flourishing and still a homestead for all the Barbours. His own wife Mary didn’t like it much, being the city-girl daughter of a Philadelphia banker, but for him there was still no tranquility like that he felt when he stood in the furrows of a newly plowed field and watched the gentle purple light of California evening touch the hills along the valley.
“I’m Antaeus,” he had said recently in one of his increasing arguments with Mary about that and many other things. “I get a lot of strength out of touching foot to my own ground.” She had snorted derisively but it was true. True enough so that the last time he had said he was going to the ranch and she snapped, “Go without me, then!” he had.
No, not a Goody Gumdrops as a kid, just a good and generally well-behaved little boy, who had grown up rapidly into a physically strong, mentally sharp, steady, thoughtful and trustworthy youth. Erma Tillson was not the only elder who thought he had much promise and tried to steer him toward its fulfillment. She happened to be the one who got through.
She did not realize this until the end of his senior year, when he came to her one day and said he wanted advice. Not very many students did this with her, because though she was a good teacher and imaginative in her approach, she was painfully shy and inclined to run from any intimate contacts. Also, many of the valley sons and daughters, though of good stock, salt of the earth and all the other things complacent rancher-parents said of them, were not touched with any special genius or interest in life beyond the prospects of the next crop and what could be accomplished on side roads in the back seats of cars after school dances. Tay Barbour’s interests, as healthily lively in these areas as any of his contemporaries’, also had room for a great deal more. She had thought this might be the case when he had proved so dedicated to his role as “Chief Justice,” but she had not been sure: it might have been just a passing fancy that would soon subside into the general level of valley living. She found out now with thrilling certainty that this was not so.
“Yes?” she said, sounding as always more quick and impatient than she was—not meaning to, but cursed. (It was not until many years later, when he came home after being named Solicitor General and accidentally met her on the street, that she had finally begun to relax with him. By then he was at last old enough to start calling her “Erma,” and after that they became real friends. But the ease of years was not yet)
“Miss Tillson—” he began earnestly, blushed, and stopped.
“Yes, Tay?” she said, resisting her impulse to flee, forcing herself to be steady, authoritative and grown up. “Can I do something to help?”
“Well—yes, I think so,” he said. He paused and then plunged doggedly on. “Do you remember in civics class when you had us play government?”
“Of course. You were the Chief Justice.”
He nodded, hesitated a moment, looking awkwardly at his feet, the room, out the window, anywhere but at her.
“Miss Tillson,” he blurted out, “would you say I was crazy if I said—” And stopped again, overcome.
“I won’t say you’re crazy, whatever you say,” she promised, for she realized something very important must be in the wind. “So go right ahead. What is it?”
“If I said I wanted to be a lawyer,” he said, almost angrily.
“Why, now,” she said with growing excitement “Not at all! Why would anybody say you’re crazy?”
“Well,” he said, struggling but determined, “the—the ranch, and—and all. My sister Anne and brother Carl say I’m crazy. They say it’s crazy for any Barbour to leave the ranch. They say none of us ever has. They say I’ve got to stay here and run it, just as my—my father—wants me to.”
“Has he ever said that?” she demanded.
He looked miserable.
“It’s just understood.”
“But not by you.”
“No,” he said, forlornly. “Not by me. I love the ranch, you know that. But I don’t want to stay on the ranch. Carl wants to. Anne wants to. So why can’t I go away and be a lawyer, if I want to? I’d still come home to see them and help out. I’d still be part of it!”
“Of course you would,” she said soothingly. “How could anybody, particularly your brother and sister, doubt that?”
“It’s—it’s my dad I’m worried about,” he said, miserable still. “He’ll raise hell.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” she said with far more confidence than she felt. Frank Barbour loomed a large, rough, red-faced presence in her mind, glimpsed occasionally at school functions, awesome and omnipotent in his role as chairman of the school board, which he had been for all of the seven years she had been teaching there. “I think he’ll understand. After all, he does have Anne and Carl. Why don’t you go and talk to him about it?”
“That’s easier said than done,” Tay said with a wan smile. “You don’t know how determined my dad is.”
“I know how determined his son is,” she said stoutly. “He ought to be proud of you!”
“He’ll be prouder if I take over the ranch someday,” Tay said in a desolate tone. “There’s no doubt about that.”
“Well, then,” she said, dreading the answer, telling herself desperately, I do not want to talk to Mr. Barbour, “what do you think I can do about it?”
But Tay surprised her.
“I just wanted to know,” he said, suddenly looking her straight in the eye with an anguished appeal, “if you think I’m crazy.”
She was relieved and pleased in about equal measure.
“I most certainly do not!” she exclaimed. “I think you have the mind for it, and the character, and I think it’s wonderful you want to do something like that. Just wonderful! And if I had anything to do with it by assigning you in our little play, then I shall be proud of it for the rest of my life! And proud of you! So there!”
“Well,” he said, relaxing for the first time and giving her the shy, easygoing grin that was one of his most attractive characteristics, “if you feel that way and I feel that way, then maybe I’m not so far out, after all.… But,” he said, reverting again to gloom, “that doesn’t make it easier with my dad.”
“Well!” she said, and took a deep breath. “What about your mother?”
He looked a little less glum, but still with the world on his shoulders.
“She’s a Taylor, you know, from over in the San Joaquin Valley. They’re ranch people, too. She’ll probably feel the same way.”
“Maybe not,” she said thoughtfully. She took a deep breath. “I tell you what. Suppose I try to find a way to talk to your mother alone about it. Sometimes when we girls—we ladies—put our heads together; we can get the men to agree to a lot of things they didn’t think they would. How would that be? Would you mind?”
“Oh, Miss Tillson!” he said, face lighting up with a great relief. “That would be great.”
“Good,” she said, feeling quite giddy with daring and excitement and triumph at not having failed this tall, gangling, earnest youth—at least, not yet. “I’ll do it!”
“You will?” he demanded, not daring to believe it or to hope that it would really solve anything.
“Cross my heart!” she said with a giggle that sounded surprisingly youthful for one so elderly (she must then, he estimated years later, have been about forty). “And hope to die!”
And joined him in the relieved and happy laughter into which this schoolyard promise plunged him.
But after she shooed him out—“Get along now, or you’ll be late for basket-ball practice!”—she sat at her desk in the empty classroom for quite some time, telling herself, Erma, you’re a fool. You know you shouldn’t get involved in your kids’ family matters. You know you shouldn’t. But Tay, she realized, was a special kid of hers, not just any kid. So presently she took a deep breath, uttered a little prayer to the Lord above, and told herself firmly: It is meant to be. It will be all right.
And so, much to her surprise, it was. Helen Barbour, to begin with, was much more approachable than Frank, being a small, petite, dark-haired woman with a kindly, pleasant face and a personality to match. She also possessed considerable charity and a perception that permitted her to empathize with old-maid schoolteachers rounding forty and becoming aware that surrogate children were probably the only ones they would ever have. She did feel a momentary and inescapable pang of jealousy when Erma Tillson, having driven out to the ranch to see her on a day when she had ascertained that Frank would be away on business in Stockton, disclosed hesitantly but determinedly that her son had turned first to his teacher instead of his mother. But Helen was a fair-minded woman and this swiftly passed. They both, she realized, loved Tay and wished him well; and that was more important than anything.
“Tell me about it,” she said comfortably, sitting back in the porch swing overlooking the valley and studying Erma with a kindly attention as she sipped on the heavily scented herb tea into which Helen had thoughtfully slipped a teaspoonful of vodka out in the kitchen. Poor Erma needed something, she had told herself, she was so tense. But Erma was quite determined enough, as it turned out, though the unsuspected liquor did perhaps make her words a little more fluent than usual.
“Tay is a good boy,” she began. “And,” she added firmly, “my favorite pupil. I think he has great potential.”
“So do I,” Helen agreed. “Is it something to do with his potential that’s involved here?”
“That and—and the ranch. And his father.”
“Does he want to leave the ranch?” Helen asked, dismay seizing her heart—but she could not, being perceptive and honest, claim surprise.
“Yes, he does,” Erma said, finding suddenly that all her doubts and hesitations had disappeared: Helen was so easy and understanding. “You remember we had that class project a while back, when we set up a mock government and he was ‘Chief Justice’?”
Helen chuckled.
“He was absolutely fascinated. But isn’t it a little early for him to think about being Chief Justice? I believe that takes a little time and a few more years.”
“But you have to start by being a lawyer,” Erma Tillson said. “You don’t do it running a ranch in the Salinas Valley. And there,” she added, something making her a little more daring and blunt than she might normally have been, “is where he’s afraid he’s going to run squarely into his father. And I agree. I’m afraid Mr. Barbour strikes me,” she said, feeling slightly giddy with her daring, “as a stubborn, if not, one might say, even a hardheaded man.”
Helen Barbour smiled, evidently not at all offended.
“He has his opinions,” she agreed. “But, then, so do I, and we seem to have managed pretty well for almost twenty years.”
“I think,” Erma said, now feeling completely and delightfully free to say whatever she pleased, “that it’s obvious that he adores you. I think he’ll do anything you say.”
Helen laughed.
“I’d like to think so, on both counts. But I don’t carry the day every time. My record is pretty good, but not perfect.”
“In this case,” Erma Tillson said solemnly, “I think it is extremely important to your son’s whole future and happiness in life that you do carry the day. If, that is, you agree with me that the young, if they really find a goal in life as imperative as this seems to be for Tay, be allowed to pursue it.”
“Oh, I do agree.”
“Then you will persuade Mr. Barbour that Tay should be allowed to leave the ranch and go to law school?”
“I’ll do my best,” Helen said, “but I think first you should talk to him directly yourself.” For a second Erma looked so stricken that her hostess laughed. “He won’t eat you up,” she promised. “Really. I know he intimidates a lot of people, including, obviously, his own son, but he’s really quite amiable. Why don’t you come back tomorrow afternoon and we’ll have tea? You’ll find it much easier than you think.”
And to her amazement, as she told Tay years later, Erma did. Frank Barbour was formidable and apparently challenging at first, but this soon changed, and presently he was agreeing mildly with both of them that possibly, after all, it was time for those Barbours who wished to, to venture from the ranch.
“Of course,” he said, looking so like a big disappointed lion that Miss Tillson almost wanted to throw her arms around him and comfort him, “he is the oldest son, and I have been counting on it. In fact, I never thought there would be any question. But if that’s what he really wants to do—”
“It is,” Helen said. “Erma’s just told you how he feels.”
“I think,” Frank said, shooting them both a gloomy glance, “that it’s time he tells me so himself. Don’t you?”
“Yes,” Helen agreed. “I think maybe, now, it is.”
Their interview, Tay remembered while Cathy listened intently, had been initially one of the hardest things he had ever done and ultimately one of the easiest and most rewarding. For this he always thanked Erma.
“And you never thanked your mother?” Cathy demanded sharply. “That was a damned thoughtless thing, considering she was really the one who paved the way for you—”
“Just a minute!” he said with equal sharpness. “I didn’t say I never thanked her. I often did.”
“But you thanked Erma more, somehow, didn’t you?”
“Well—maybe,” he admitted uncomfortably. “But I did thank Mother. She knew how I felt. But I just didn’t feel—well, that I should gush about it. She understood.”
“Mothers like to be gushed over,” she said. “Didn’t you like your mother?”
“Are you kidding?” he demanded. “Cut this amateur psychology, okay, and let’s get on with it. Anyway, how do you know what mothers like?”
“Because I am one,” she said tartly. “And don’t you get into any amateur psychology, either, okay?”
“Ah ha!” he said dryly. “So all this demon journalism, all these piercing questions, all this killer instinct is just getting back at some man, right? He got you pregnant and left you and now you’re stuck with his child? What is it, a boy or a girl?”
“Talk about killer instinct,” she said, putting down her pen and notebook and giving him an appraising look. She was really quite pretty, he realized, especially when annoyed—not angry, he could sense that, just annoyed. The distinction suddenly seemed quite important for some reason he didn’t really want to think about.
“If you must know,” she said, “and obviously you must if we’re going to get any further with my interview of you, I met this boy at Columbia when we were both in journalism school. It was Watergate time and everybody was going to save the world and win a Pulitzer, no one more surely than he and I. So we lived together for a while, and then we got married, and then we had babies, Sandra and Rowland. And then I began to be successful and he began to fail and he started drinking and his fatal charm wore off and then we got divorced and then I came to Washington at thirty-three, landed on the magazine two years ago, and here I am.”
“Hardly drawing a breath,” he said with mock admiration. “How do you do it?”
“I’ll show you sometime,” she said shortly. “Now can we get back on the track, please? That must have been a tough talk you had with your father.”
“Not really,” he said; and looking back now he could see that it really hadn’t been, although at first his father, as always, appeared massive, formidable and quite overwhelming to the nervous and genuinely frightened youth Tay was then.
“Let’s take a walk,” Frank Barbour suggested next night after dinner; and, “Yes, sir,” he said humbly, thinking, Oh, my God, here it comes. What will I do? But his mother gave him an encouraging smile and a definite nod that said: Don’t worry. That was comforting but not enough to make it an easy walk. It was a silent one, ending in the middle of the newly plowed fields when his father broke the silence with an abrupt “Let’s stop here.”
Tay would always remember what a beautiful spring evening it was, the air soft and warm with the smell of fresh-turned earth, the valley stretching away below as far as the eye could see, the western range falling into darkness behind them, the eastern still aglow with the gently fading purple light. He would find his private tranquility here many, many times in the future but it was not here now. He felt frightened, miserable, terribly tense and just plain sick.
“You see all this,” Frank Barbour said with a quick, almost embarrassed gesture that encompassed it.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“Four thousand acres of it belong to us. That’s a mighty damned hell of a lot.”
“Yes, sir.”
His father stopped quickly, scooped up a handful of the rich black soil, let it dribble through his fingers.
“It’s damned fine ground, too,” he said harshly, as though someone were arguing with him.
“Yes, sir!” agreed Tay, who wouldn’t have dreamed of it. Or dared to.
Frank Barbour swung around and looked him squarely in the face.
“Why don’t you like it?”
“I do like it!” he cried then, halfway between tears and anger. “I love the ranch! You know that! I love the ranch!”
“That isn’t the way I hear it.”
“Then you don’t hear the truth!” He paused for a moment, everything heightened by emotion, the earth darker, the sky bluer, the mountains sharper, his heritage everywhere more lovely. “Who told you that?” he demanded finally, voice shaking. “That isn’t true!”
“Your mother and your teacher say you want to leave it.”
“But that doesn’t mean I don’t love it!” he protested, quivering with the unfairness of it. “They didn’t say that!”
“No,” his father admitted grudgingly. “But they said you like something else more.”
For a moment he didn’t answer, knowing that it would be one of the most decisive answers he would ever give to anything. Then he said, very low, “Yes sir.”
A silence fell, evening deepened, night advanced. Finally his father spoke, more softly and more reasonably.
“Tell me about it.”
“I like the law,” he said, voice still shaking at first but growing calmer and steadier as he went along; and not deterred by his father’s first derisive “Hmph!”
“Yes, sir,” he said, more strongly, ‘I think I want to be a lawyer.”
“Hmph!” his father said again, but this time in so much more reasonable a tone that Tay was emboldened to tell him, with a shaky little laugh, “And don’t say Hmph! It can be an honorable profession.”
“Really?”
“Don’t you think it will be when your son is in it?” he demanded like a flash; and before he knew it his father had started laughing, and after a tentative moment he joined in, though at first he didn’t quite know why.
“That’s mighty sharp,” Frank Barbour said, still chuckling. “Mighty quick. You turned it right back on me. Maybe you wouldn’t be such a bad lawyer, at that.”
“Then you’ll let me—” he began eagerly. But his father held up a hand.
“Slow down, now. Slow down. I haven’t promised anything yet. You do owe me and the ranch something, you know.”
“Everything,” he said fervently. “Everything!”
“That’s right,” his father said, more grimly, “and don’t you forget it. First of all, you owe me an apology for not coming to me with this, first thing, instead of relying on a couple of women to do your work for you.” He paused and snorted. “That mousy little Tillson woman! She got you into this!”
“Don’t you hurt Miss Tillson!” Tay cried in sudden alarm. “Don’t you and your old school board do anything to Miss Tillson! She’s a fine lady! Don’t you hurt Miss Tillson!”
“I’m not going to ‘hurt Miss Tillson’!” his father said grumpily. “Probably wind up giving her a raise, when all is said and done, for helping my son discover what he really wants to do. That’s the tough kind of old son of a bitch I am. But that doesn’t make me any happier that you didn’t come to me first. Why didn’t you?”
“Well …” He paused and drew a deep breath, because he knew this would hurt, and probably terribly; but even at eighteen he realized that life does these things, inevitably. “Well, Dad—because I’m afraid of you. Anne and Carl are afraid of you, too. All of your kids are afraid of you. We love you, but we’re—we’re—just—afraid, I guess.”
Then there was a silence, a very long silence, during which he did not dare look at the massive figure looming beside him. Somehow it did not look quite so massive anymore; and when a strangled, savagely suppressed sound burst from it for a moment, he realized with a sort of horror that his father was actually crying. To his great relief it did not last more than a minute or two; after which the world was back in place.
“Well,” Frank Barbour said in a stifled voice, blowing his nose vigorously, “you know that isn’t what I ever intended.” His voice grew stronger and he kicked the earth with a sudden savagery. In some instinctive way his son knew it was far from the first time. “I’ve fought this earth all my life,” he said. “Sometimes it’s been easy, sometimes it’s been hard. Sometimes I’ve licked it, other times it’s licked me. But the war never stops. Nature never gives up. You have to keep after her all the time. Maybe that’s why some of us ranch types get a little tough, sometimes. Maybe that’s why we scare the people we love. Maybe that’s why”—his voice trembled again and threatened to stop, but after a moment he went on as calmly as ever—“maybe that’s why it’s not so easy to see a son of mine, my oldest son, on whom I have always set my hopes, decide he’s going to give up the battle and go somewhere else.”
“That isn’t fair,” Tay said, quietly and more maturely now, fortified by the knowledge that his father knew it wasn’t fair. “I’m not giving up the battle, and I’ll never be far away. You know that Carl and Anne both want to stay on the ranch, and when they get married, Carl will get a lot of help from Anne’s husband—”
“Johnny Gonzales!” his father said in a strangled tone. “At sixteen, she thinks she wants to marry Johnny Gonzales! That—”
“Yes,” Tay said, without giving an inch. “And that’s great too. He’s a great guy and Carl and I want him in the family as much as she does. Things are changing, Dad. We need new blood in the family. And he loves the ranch as much as you and I do. After all, he’s grown up here almost as much as we have.”
“That’s the trouble,” his father growled. “If I’d only known what was going to happen—”
“You still would have hired Martin, because he’s the best foreman in the valley. And you still would have got his son along with him. And Anne would still have done what she’s going to do. So why make it tough for everybody?”
“Isn’t nature enough?” his father asked in a half-wry, half-bitter tone. “Do I have to fight my own kids too?”
Tay dared to laugh, knowing he had the upper hand now.
“Not at all, Dad. Just give in to ’em. It’ll be a lot easier.”
“Are you afraid of me now?” his father asked and again there was a long moment, and again a decisive answer.
“Not anymore,” Tay said quietly. “Not ever anymore, I think. But now I think we can begin to love you more than we ever have, too. So that’s something.”
“Yes,” his father said, blowing his nose abruptly again. “That’s for damned sure something. So how do you plan to go about this law bug of yours?”
“Well, first,” he said, “I was thinking Stanford for undergraduate work. And then I think maybe Harvard, if I can get in.”
“You want to go east?” his father demanded in the disbelieving tone of any loyal Californian who knows they have everything, and better, right there. “Why east?”
“Because that’s where the big opportunities and the big money are,” Tay said crisply, in a toughly practical tone his father had never heard before, though his mother had, in the past twenty-four hours when they had talked about it at length. “And that’s where the chance to help people really is. Maybe eventually I can even go to Washington and do something to help serve the country and help make our whole society better. I’d like to do that.”
“That’s that damned Erma Tillson again!”
“It is not!” Tay said flatly. “That’s my idea.”
“You might even want to be a politician,” his father said in a tone that unfortunately was not only Californian but virtually unanimous from coast to coast.
“I might even want to be,” Tay agreed in the same crisp tone. “So don’t be too shocked if it happens someday… Anyway, I have a long way to go. Are you going to wish me well on the journey?”
And now it was his time to run and look his father squarely in the face, though he could hardly see it in the now swiftly gathering dusk. But he could sense a smile, and presently the big hand closed firmly over his.
“I guess I’d better make it easy and give in,” Frank Barbour said with a chuckle that cost him more than Tay would ever know. “Since that’s what my kids want me to do.”
Five minutes later they came back to the house laughing and joking together, arm in arm. Helen Barbour gave her son a big wink and a grin and kissed them both heartily.
“There!” she said. “That wasn’t so hard, was it!”
“Hard as hell,” her husband said. “But I think we both survived.”
“Yes,” Tay said happily. “I think we did. I think I’ll go call Miss Tillson. She’ll be pleased to know.”
“So your mother had to play second fiddle even then,” Cathy remarked. “Didn’t she deserve something for—”
“Listen!” he said, suddenly genuinely annoyed. “Will you stop this phony women’s chip-on-the-shoulder business? Who says I didn’t? And who says there was ever any problem? Do you know that scarcely ten minutes before you came in I called the ranch and told my mother about this appointment—even before I told my wife? Do you know that she and my dad are flying back for my swearing-in? Do you know—but of course you don’t. You’re just jumping to conclusions, like all the media. It’s so damned stupid.”
“Am I damned stupid?” she demanded; and added quickly, “Why didn’t you call your wife first? Is something wrong there?”
“Oh, for—!” he exclaimed with a frustrated laugh. “Okay, you tell me. Go on and make up your own story. I’m obviously wasting your time. I know it will make much better reading than the truth.”
“You’re very defensive about your wife,” she remarked thoughtfully, making a note and staring at him unblinkingly. “I wonder why that is?”
“I don’t know,” he said, shifting to mockery for a moment. “Maybe it’s because we have the worst possible marriage there ever was and I’m planning to divorce her as soon as—”
“Are you?” she inquired with the same quick earnestness that appeared to be genuine, though he seriously doubted it. It was just a reporter’s trick, they all had them.
“No, I am not,” he said, deciding two could play at that game, turning completely calm and reasonable. “Mary and I have a close and satisfying marriage that has lasted for twenty years now, and which we aren’t about to dissolve. Sorry to disappoint you, but that’s the way it is.”
“Tell me about it,” she said; and after studying her for a moment, he smiled.
“All right, if you’ll treat it sensibly, I will. I met her in my last year at Harvard Law.”
The school years, divided between Stanford and Harvard, passed very profitably and pleasantly for him. He applied himself with diligence to his pre-law course at Stanford; enjoyed the many extracurricular activities he found available; was a star of the basketball team, as he had been in high school; speaker of the student senate in his senior year; had his share of conquests on the back roads west of campus; and generally enjoyed the life of a healthy, vigorous, studious, reliable and outwardly gregarious young male. “Tay is so well balanced,” one of his fraternity brothers who was not, particularly, remarked sarcastically as they neared graduation; and so he was.
When he was accepted at Harvard Law School and prepared to leave for the east at the end of his fourth Stanford summer back on the ranch, he took with him a thorough preparation, many good memories and a few good friends who would stay with him over the years. He did not take a wife, nor did he take the unbalancing of emotion and of views that were to warp and twist so many of the college generation that came soon after.
He completed his undergraduate years, he often reflected, just in time to escape the effects of the Vietnam war. Unlike Earle Holgren, now staring vacantly at nothing in his carefully modest cabin in the woods, who came to Harvard a few years later, Tay was not a self-conscious child of rebellion self-consciously rebelling. A character infinitely steadier than Earle’s would not have permitted it, even had the timing been right. Fortunately for him it was not. The maintenance of a level head and an undeviating advance toward established goals did not become a personal battle to survive the chaos of a generation but simply an extension of an already well-ordered progression.
At Harvard his love affair with the law, which had begun rather lightly in Erma Tillson’s Civics I and had grown steadily more serious at Stanford, became a final commitment. By now it absorbed him to the point where it almost seemed that there had never been any other major interest. The ranch was still a part of him—he was drawn into its affairs on many occasions by the family corporation Frank Barbour had set up, he still went back for vacations, pulled on jeans, work shirt and battered old hat, and drove tractors and trucks and plows and harrows with his father, Carl, Martin and Johnny Gonzales and the rest. He still loved it. But always his mind was at work on the problems of the law, his thoughts, never idle, were concentrated on examinations yet to come. His heart was at Harvard and, more specifically, in the law.
Aware of this—as who could not be?—Frank Barbour told Helen many times that he felt he had done the right thing to take the time to find out what the boy really wanted and encourage him to do it. She always agreed gravely that it had been one of the best ideas he had ever had.
At law school, also, Tay made several good friends whose paths crossed his repeatedly over the years as they all rose steadily in the profession. One of the first, the one who meant the most and always would, was a young Southerner of substantial wealth, political purpose and considerable personal charm who came into his life one day at the library with an amiable grin, reentered it when Tay came to Washington and now was about to become not only friend but colleague and fellow Justice. Stanley Mossiter Pomeroy was six months younger than he, a little less serious, a little more relaxed, but equally ambitious and dedicated to the law.
Their eyes had met across a study table, held, been followed after a moment by smiles.
“Hi,” the other had said, holding out a friendly hand. “I’m Stan Pomeroy, except I like to be called Moss because my middle name is Mossiter and it’s different. My best friends call me Moss. I expect you’ll want to do the same?”
And he gave an engaging grin that Tay could not help but respond to.
“I expect I will,” he said, “if you want me to.”
“I think I do,” Moss said. “You look like a good guy to me. Do you need any help on anything?”
“I’m making it okay.”
“So’m I, but on the whole I think a team does better.”
“Probably,” Tay agreed. “We can spread the headaches around.”
“And boy!” Moss said. “Does this place give ’em to you!”
A team they had become, studying together, researching together, writing together, serving as practice audience for each other’s oral presentations, giving each other critiques of substance and style, fortifying one another in all the rigors of the paper chase. And, cautiously at first on Tay’s part, but then with increasing acceptance and ease, they became a social team as well, meeting a steadily increasing number of girls from Radcliffe, Smith, Wellesley, Vassar, going on double dates to Boston and New York, skiing in Canada, picnicking on the Cape, breaking away from the grind whenever they could.
Moss, as he explained matter-of-factly, was probably going to marry a girl down home in Charlotte, South Carolina, named Sue-Ann Lacey but, “In the meantime, I do not intend to let any virgins grow under my feet. I’ve got a better place for ’em.” In pursuit of this he ranged far and wide through New England’s educational institutions for the warm-blooded young and did not do at all badly in achieving his announced intention: even though, as he confessed to Tay from time to time, he really did love Sue-Ann and he only wished the damned law school would come to an end as fast as possible so he could marry her and have her save him from all this worthless carryin’-on.
For Tay, too, it was essentially worthless. He could not deny he enjoyed it, even if much more circumspectly and on a much more modest scale. But it soon lost its savor and before long he was beginning to look seriously for someone he could genuinely love and who could genuinely help him in his career.
He related none of this to Cathy Corning, though she did her best to pry it out of him. To hear him tell it this afternoon, he and Moss were virgin, hardworking, no-nonsense students who stayed glued to their law books until Moss went home to Sue-Ann and he found Mary Stranahan at Smith.
“That must have been boring,” Cathy observed dryly.
“Dreadfully,” he agreed cheerfully. “But it made us such good students that we both seem to have wound up on the Supreme Court. Don’t knock it.”
“Never,” she said, making a note. “I thought I was to get the truth.”
“Within reasonable limits.” He smiled. “I set the limits. And I define what’s reasonable.”
“You’ll make a good Justice,” she said with a sudden answering smile. “You sound like one already. You’re an arrogant bunch of birds, you know that?”
“I’m sure we don’t mean to be,” he said. “I’m sure we’re not. It just seems that way, sometimes.”
“Like now,” she agreed. “Get on with the fairy tale.”
“Well,” he said, “then I met Mary Stranahan.”
“And lived happily ever after.”
“Perfectly,” he said, although he knew, and by now she was absolutely certain, that this was not the case.
Yet for quite a while—more than half their years together, in fact—it had been. He had met Mary at a dance at Smith—one of his other classmates had a younger sister there and invited him to go along as a blind date. The whole thing was very conventional and clichéd—“No surprises,” as he had put it once not long ago, and with a sudden bitter twist to her mouth she had echoed, “No surprises. That’s for sure.” But he could not honestly see that this was his fault. “It takes two to tango,” he had snapped back, more sharply than he had intended; and then they were off again into one of those upward-spiraling exchanges that more and more often ended in angry silence, until now the angry silence was virtually unbroken save for the ordinary civilities of getting through the day.
How this had happened he was not exactly sure, because at first and for a long time thereafter things seemed to go very well. The original blind date escalated into more, and then soon into weekend trips to Mary’s Main Line home outside Philadelphia. There he met her bank-president father and her fashionable party-giving mother and was gradually accepted as worthy despite his rural background—“A farmer, my dear, from California. But a good boy, and really rather sweet.” Engagement and marriage soon seemed inevitable and came about on his graduation from law school.
If anything, he thought with a wry smile for Mrs. Stranahan which he kept to himself, Mary had more trouble passing inspection with his family than he did with hers. Frank Barbour was strongly opposed at first and did a lot of dark talking about “upper-crust arrogance” and “watered-down Eastern bloodlines.” Helen, more tolerant and ready to accept whatever would make Tay happy, expressed mild reservations about Mary’s “somewhat superior manner.” But eventually they came around, as they had about the law, and when the day arrived they were in Philadelphia to do their part as smoothly and pleasantly as he could possibly have wished. The day ended in amicable harmony for the parents and ecstatic happiness for the bride and groom. Everything seemed set for the rest of their lives.
He graduated third in his class—Moss Pomeroy was fifth—and went to New York, where his grades had brought him an invitation to join a prestigious firm that had many dealings with the government. One of its senior partners had been in the Cabinet, some of its juniors were “on the shuttle,” as they put it, commuting frequently to Washington to serve on temporary boards, commissions, congressional committee staffs, corporate law cases. Washington had always been a dream of his. He was not sure for quite a long time whether he wanted to use experience there as a springboard from which to go home and run for Congress, or concentrate on the type of pleading before the government that brought enormous fees from corporations and guaranteed a living both desirable and admirable in Main Line eyes.
Mary’s instincts and influence of course were all for the latter—understandably enough, given nature and background. She had been a little rich girl and she intended to remain one. That, he supposed, was the first start of the slow erosion, because his own ideas, conditioned by the compassion he got from his mother, and perhaps more than he knew by Erma Tillson and Civics I, moved increasingly in the direction of public service. He had no memories of great depression such as still haunted his parents’ generation, but taking care of people and making life better for the society as a whole seemed to him just common sense. Not only was it right in what he conceived to be the moral sense, it was right from the standpoint of keeping the democracy on an even keel. It was not on an even keel during his first years out of law school, and although the reasons were not economic at that time, they became increasingly so as he and the century grew older.
Five years after joining the firm in New York he was a hardworking, diligent and highly respected younger member who could ask for, and get, transfer to the Washington office. From then on his life became more and more involved with government. Inevitably in time he entered it, not via the congressional route that he had originally toyed with but through the administrative side, in which he felt he could perhaps contribute even more.
In a sense his decision to accept whatever opportunities might come his way in that area was a compromise with Mary. She had been vehement in her opposition to any thought of his running for Congress.
“I will not be a politician’s wife!” she announced, forgetting that all public service is inevitably political sooner or later. But the idea of holding high appointive office did not seem to bother her at all. It was respectable, and something the Stranahans and their friends could understand and appreciate.
He continued to handle corporate cases for a while longer but presently found himself leading a group of younger partners that began to agitate for a broader public service approach. On his tenth anniversary with the firm he found himself appointed head of a new public service division; and the process of transforming Taylor Barbour the likable farm boy from Salinas Valley into Taylor Barbour the increasingly prominent liberal lawyer was underway in earnest. It is a process that happens with Washington lawyers if they are shrewd enough to recognize, and properly make use of, the creators of reputation. Like so many successful careers in Washington, his was a combination of idealism, an eye for the main chance, and strong boosts from the capital’s liberal old-boy network. By the time he was thirty-five he was firmly set on the path that in eleven more years would bring him to the “special place” he had first become aware of in Erma Tillson’s class, thirty years before.
He had discovered in law school that he had a powerful grasp of his own language. He could both write and speak it with a touch that was always effective and sometimes mesmerizing. He began to contribute an occasional article to Harper’s and the Atlantic Monthly (the growth of violence, terrorism and irrational crime), the op-ed page of the New York Times (the need for judicial reform), the New York Times, the Washington Inquirer, the Saturday Review, Newsweek, Foreign Affairs, the like. Invitations to participate in an increasing number of seminars and public forums came his way, arranged by a steadily widening circle of influential friends. He was invited to serve on advisory committees of his political party. He began to work for causes dear to the hearts of those who can make or break. Anna Hastings of the Washington Inquirer and Katharine Graham of the New York Times invited him and Mary quite often to dinner. His name began to pop up with increasing frequency in columns, editorials, television commentaries. He was asked to appear, as “a rising young liberal Washington attorney,” on “Face the Nation,” and when that proved an easy success, on “Meet the Press.”
The old-boy network labored ceaselessly in his behalf. It took no more than a year or two until its members could congratulate themselves that they had made another good choice. Taylor Barbour was on his way.
He was already considered a highly successful lawyer and one of America’s leading liberals when, at thirty-eight, he received his first appointment in the executive branch of government, Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Office for Improvements in the Administration of Justice.
There had been many in this particular office, quite far down the ranks of the Department of Justice, who had not made much of it. By now, however, Tay was sophisticated enough to know that almost any sub-Cabinet office is what you make of it. His speeches and literary output doubled. He made a well-publicized call upon the then Chief Justice to discuss the administration of justice and what they could do—jointly, he gave the impression—to streamline it, speed it up and make it more efficient. The Chief was flattered by this dutiful attention from a man so much younger and already possessed of such an outstanding reputation. He promised to cooperate with Tay in every way he could.
It was Tay’s first direct contact with the Court, and although, in the way of Washington, nothing much came of it but paperwork, also—in the way of Washington—his personal reputation and public visibility were much enhanced. At the conclusion of their study he received a glowing letter of commendation and approval from the Chief. At Tay’s suggestion it was released to the media. The image grew.
And it was not an empty image, either, he could tell himself with justified satisfaction. He worked hard at his new assignment, spent many hours studying the administration of justice, traveled around the country to visit most of the major federal and state courts, offered recommendations that were practical, specific and, he felt, sound. If they did not do much to break the growing logjam of an increasingly litigious nation, that was not his fault. His work was diligent, thorough, constructive, farsighted. “Somebody else will have to follow through on it,” he told Moss when he was moved up two years later to be Solicitor General, “but at least I’ve laid a good foundation.” Later he was to perform equally diligent service, and gain further public acclaim, when as Secretary of Labor he was appointed vice-chairman of the President’s Special Commission on Crime and Violence. Unlike most of his politically cautious fellow members he came out strongly against the rising tide of vigilantism, which brought him much praise from major media and much bitter condemnation from his more worried countrymen. But he felt it must be said.
Only one thing galled him as he ascended the public ladder toward what he continued to hope would eventually be appointment to the Court, and that was Mary’s apparent growing disaffection and dissatisfaction with their life in Washington. The political melting pot throws together the multimillionairess who has come to the capital to trade her lavish parties for the chance to call the mighty by their first names and the wife of the truck driver from New Jersey who by some fluke happens to get himself elected to the House of Representatives. It blends them into a fascinating and amicable mélange of backgrounds and interests.
The charm of this escaped Mary. She had been reared to associate with a certain class of people and that was really all she wanted to do. She was, he realized, a genuine snob; and in the extremely democratic society of the capital, where office and rank, not an individual’s background, wealth or even manners, determine whatever snobbism exists, she was never entirely at ease. She was one of the few people he had ever known who did not find Washington fascinating. At the same time she had a loud and frequently expressed horror of “going back to California and just being a farmer’s wife.” Going back to California was of course the last thing he himself intended to do, but it had inspired quite a few dramatic scenes in recent years.
The only thing that would make her really happy, he felt, would be for him to join a top law firm in Philadelphia, buy a house on the Main Line and sink slowly into affluent desuetude as the years passed profitably, and lifelessly, by.
This was not for him; yet he could not really conceive that this alone was enough to bring about the slowly growing separation he had sensed, fought against, and ultimately found too strong to overcome. There must be something more to it; and being an honest, generous and compassionate man who often blamed himself for others’ errors, he felt that it must be something in him that was lacking. They had been married six years when they were finally blessed with one child, Jane, on whom he gradually came to focus much of his time and emotion; Mary announced firmly that she was having no more. He had balked but she had been adamant. After a time he had come to accept it and had hoped that by giving Janie the best possible home and trying always to keep them a close-knit and love-surrounded family unit, he could both protect his daughter and strengthen his marriage. Because he was also a man of great tenacity and determination and because Janie obviously grew to love him considerably more than she did her increasingly cold and absentminded mother, which did not help, he had been able to pretend to himself for far longer than most that something less than half a loaf could be made to seem better than none. In the last few years the pretense had become increasingly thin.
Mary did her duty socially, entertained for him, smiled and bowed and flattered the people she thought would advance his career, and he could not fault her on that. But she made it increasingly clear that she did it not really for him but simply because that was what girls from her background were trained to do. Her private comments on his growing success and rising reputation became increasingly sharp and destructive. She did not seem to approve of ambition, and she apparently realized that he had far more than most people, observing no more than his pleasant smile, steady calm and quietly decisive manner, perceived.
It was only after he became Solicitor General, however, that she began to be really outspoken about this. He had long ago ceased to discuss his duties or his dreams with her, but with the shrewdness of the disgruntled (and, in fairness, the unhappy, because he thought sometimes—and tried not to think it—that she must be very unhappy) she knew where his ambitions lay.
“You want to be on the Court,” she said flatly after his first day of arguing the government’s cases before it. “You’re positively glowing. I’ve never seen you so excited. Did they make you an honorary member?”
“I don’t think anybody but you would know I’m excited,” he said with the calm that seemed increasingly to annoy her. “And if I ever make it, it won’t be honorary. I’ll be there.”
“I can’t think of anything more boring. Those dowdy old men and their dowdy old wives! But I suppose you’d love it.”
“I don’t think you can call Sue-Ann Pomeroy dowdy,” he said mildly. “She has enough glamour for—”
“For all of us? Yes, I know you like Sue-Ann, you always have. And she likes you, too. I wonder if you think Moss is fooled?”
“There’s nothing for Moss to be fooled about!” he said sharply, provoked into the sort of retort he felt she was looking for, nowadays. “You know Moss and I and Sue-Ann are the best of friends, always have been, and always will be.”
“I’m surprised it’s even a threesome,” she remarked as she hurried into her jewelry (they were on their way to dinner at the gracious old Spanish Embassy on Fifteenth Street Northwest, their fourth black-tie affair in that one typical week). “The way you and Moss worship each other.”
“We don’t ‘worship each other,’” he said, putting on studs and cufflinks, keeping his voice low-keyed and matter-of-fact. “Next to my brother Carl and my brother-in-law Johnny, I expect he is my best friend, but we don’t worship each other. We know each other’s faults too well for that.”
“You tell him things you’d never tell me!”
He gave her a level look.
“I often get the distinct feeling that you don’t want me to tell you anything. So why shouldn’t I tell Moss?”
“But I’m your wife!” she said, angrily, and as he saw it, completely irrationally.
“Really?” he said in a cold tone that only she ever heard, and that only lately. “I didn’t know.”
“Well, why don’t you know!” she demanded, her voice suddenly ragged between held-back tears and growing anger. “I’ve done my best to be a good wife to you, all these boring years in this boring town with all its boring parvenus from all over America! And all the time I’ve hated it! Hated it, hated it, hated it!”
“And hated me too, I guess,” he said, staring at her with a thoughtful reasonableness he knew must anger her still further, but he couldn’t help it; he was thoughtful and he was reasonable. “I’m sorry I’ve been such poor company for you, all this time.”
“Well,” she said, turning back to her dressing table, adjusting her hair, voice returned abruptly to normal, “you weren’t once, I guess I have that to be thankful for. We had a few good years.”
“Oh, don’t sound so damned elegiac all of a sudden!” he said, suddenly angered himself now. “Why haven’t we got good years now? Whose fault is that, tell me? Not mine, I assure you, not mine! I do my best! I try.”
“Noble you,” she said, no longer tearful, no longer sounding even angry. “And I suppose I don’t?”
“I don’t see very damned many signs of it.”
“Well,” she said, gone away, dismissing it and him in one of the rapid mood changes that seemed to be increasingly frequent, “don’t worry about it. I won’t leave you. I’ll stick around and be your dutiful little Supreme Court wife, if that ever comes.”
He hesitated for a fraction of a second and then put it into words.
“What makes you so sure I don’t want you to leave me? What makes you so sure I won’t leave you?”
“And jeopardize your career?” She gave a hoot of disbelieving laughter. “Oh, come on, now, Mr. Justice! Never that! Never, never, never that!”
All he could manage was a “Don’t be so sure!”—which sounded weak. And was weak, for he was certain, then, that she was right.
And yet, he told himself later as he drove in silence to the Spanish Embassy—and yet. Whatever was left of it for her, if anything, there was much still left for him. He had loved her very much once, and the residue could not be dismissed so ruthlessly. He still sought desperately from time to time for some way to re-establish it, but increasingly in these recent months he found himself gradually giving up the fight, retiring more and more into the patient uncommunicative silence he observed in so many Washington unions that gave substance to the standard aphorism, “Washington is full of great men and the women they married when they were young.” Increasingly he found that this concentrated his thoughts and emotions on Janie, who gave promise of developing into a stunning young lady, beautiful, intelligent, lively and interested in a thousand things, most particularly her father’s career.
“I suppose she wants to be a lawyer, too,” Cathy suggested, having without comment made a few brief notes on his brief comments about his marriage: “a real partnership … a sharing of mutual interests … her consistent and helpful devotion to my career … think you’ll agree she’s considered one of Washington’s best hostesses, which has been of great assistance … always supportive, always helpful…”
Whatever Cathy thought about this—and she had already made clear in tone and glance that she didn’t think much—she did not quite dare challenge him openly. All she did was grow increasingly silent and thoughtful as he telescoped some fifteen years of happy marriage and four or five increasingly unhappy ones into a few bland sentences from which emerged a picture of domestic partnership resting on a solid foundation of love and mutual absorption in his career.
“So you really aren’t going to get a divorce after all,” she said at the end, mockery muted but present. “You had me fooled for a minute there. That’s good. There has to be something solid in this world, and I’m glad you and Mrs. Barbour are it. It restores one’s faith.”
“I hope so,” he said, matter-of-factly, giving her an impassive gaze, which she returned with an amused and unmistakable skepticism in her eyes. But he continued to stare at her with a bland interest and after a moment her eyes dropped and she made the pretense of another note.
“So,” she said, “tell me about Jane. I suppose she wants to be a lawyer, too.”
“Janie,” he said, eyes and voice suddenly filling with pride, “is quite a girl. She’s almost fifteen—tall-blond-dark-eyed, which makes for a combination—everything in the right proportions and getting more so-charming—lovable—extremely intelligent—quick-witted—just a hell of a bright kid.”
“And obviously the apple of daddy’s eye.”
“Obviously,” he conceded with a smile. “But she deserves to be. She’s at the top of her class at Madeira School right now, associate editor of the school paper, going to be editor, captain of the basketball team, head of the social committee, president of the honor society—you name it, she’s got it. And she does think she wants to be a lawyer, yes. I think some astute young man is going to get to her first and change that into home and babies. But maybe not—maybe not. Maybe he’ll be a lawyer, too, and they can work out a legal career together. And still have home and babies. That would be the ideal thing. Tell me about Sandra.”
“Oh, you remembered,” she said with a pleased smile. “Her name came up so far back in the conversation I thought you’d forgotten.”
“I don’t forget things of interest to me,” he said; and this time his direct glance caused her to blush, which caused him to say sternly to himself: Whoa. But he did not stop looking at her and after a second she returned a gaze as steady as his. This time his eyes shifted first and his voice was not quite so matter-of-fact as he asked, “How old is she?”
“She’s eight. Pretty much the tomboy and hoyden right now, but she’s going to blossom when the time comes. I don’t think she’s as smart as Jane, probably, but then”—she smiled—“she probably doesn’t have as smart a mother. Or father.”
“I don’t know the father,” he said, “but I don’t doubt the mother.”
She blushed again and gave him a little mock bow.
“Thank you, sir, you’re most kind. I also have Rowland.”
“Yes, I remember. Younger or older?”
“He’s ten. A reflective kid, but active. Thinks a lot and then goes out and plays baseball with the rest of the guys on the block. A funny combination, in some ways. I think he’s going to go places.”
“I’m sure of it. You have a housekeeper?”
“Yes, during the day, until I get home. She babysits at night if I want to go out.”
“Which I imagine is frequently. You must have half the males in the press corps at your feet.”
She looked pleased again, but shook her head and laughed.
“We’re too busy competing all the time. It doesn’t leave much room for romance.”
“Oh, well,” he said lightly, but with a little excitement he told himself sternly was nonsense, “maybe one of your interviews will lead to something, someday.”
“Yes,” she agreed levelly. “That’s always a possibility… So then, last but not least, came the Labor Department.”
He nodded, accepting her lead, turning businesslike again also. “Yes, two years ago, as you know. A lot of work, a lot of headaches. Off the record, I really wasn’t all that interested; I would have preferred Attorney General. But the President seemed to think I could do a good job here, so I agreed and took it on. It hasn’t been dull, I can say that.”
“And you’ve probably gained perspective from it.”
“Oh, yes. The Court takes a lot of cases that are labor-related. I argued some before them as Solicitor General. This is a different perspective, as you say. I expect it’s been good for me.”
“And it’s been good for the country,” she said thoughtfully. “You’ve done a good job here, in a tough spot.”
“I’m glad you approve,” he said, intending it to be a lighthearted remark. It came out, however, somewhat more seriously. For a second her eyes widened and she gave him a quick glance, though her face remained noncommittal.
“As a matter of fact,” she said with a pleasant smile, “I think you’ve been on the right side of nearly everything.”
“Still a good boy,” he said wryly.
“Always,” she agreed. And added with a sudden mischievous little grin, “Have you ever had any desire not to be?”
“Never,” he said with mock solemnity, a restless little excitement stirring again. “Miss Tillson wouldn’t let me. To say nothing of my mother.”
“I hope not,” she said, laughing with genuine amusement. “So that’s your story… And now you’re on the Court—and you’ve achieved your life’s ambition—and so where do you go from here?”
“Nowhere. I’m on the Court, it’s where I’ve always wanted to be, it’s where I expect I’ll stay for the rest of my life.”
“No presidential ambitions?”
“None, and that’s the truth.”
“Chief Justice?”
“Off the record, it would be nice, but essentially, aside from five thousand dollars a year more and a little better chance of getting your name in the history books, we’re all on about the same level. It’s nothing I’ll look for. If it comes someday it’ll come, and if it doesn’t I’m going to be quite content where I am. I won’t lobby for it.”
“A contented man in Washington,” she said. “There’s a rarity. Maybe I’ll suggest that for the title of my piece: ‘He’ll Be Happy Where He Is.’”
“It’s true,” he said, and for the first time the full impact of his appointment hit him and he realized with a sudden deep satisfaction that, yes, it was true. He had achieved everything he wanted now. The years opened before him full of dignity and service.
“What would you like to have said of you when you retire?” she asked. “I always find that’s usually a good question with which to conclude an interview. People reveal a lot about themselves when they write their own obituaries. After all, with a little luck and good health you’ll be on the Bench for—good Lord, thirty years or more. It’s awesome.”
He laughed.
“Yes, it is, isn’t it? Frightening, too… Well… I’d like it said of me that I tried always to help the people of this land who need help—to uphold the law, and peaceful orderly process, in all disputes—to strengthen the law and make it fairer, insofar as one Justice can do that—to work amicably and well with my brethren—and Mary-Hannah and any of her sisters who may join us in the future—in trying to bring justice to our judgments and to all who appeal to us for help. I’d like it to be said that I was a fair, decent, honorable and worthy judge—that I had some consistent view of social betterment and social progress for America—and that I did what I could, as effectively as I could, to advance that view in a tough and difficult time in the life of our country…”
He paused and smiled. “Is that enough, or do you want more?”
“If you manage all that,” she said, smiling too, “you’ll be doing very well. I just want to say, quite seriously,” she added, putting away pen and notebook, closing her handbag, “that as one American citizen I am personally very pleased with your appointment. I think you’re a real liberal and a fine person and I feel genuinely good about having you on the Court. I really do.”
“Well, thank you,” he said, surprised and pleased. “I know you journalists are chary with personal accolades, so I appreciate that doubly.” He hesitated and then yielded to impulse, something he almost never did, for he had become a thoughtful and careful man. “As you know,” he said, and something in his tone made her look at him with a sudden close attention, “we almost never give interviews on the Court, but if you want to stop by sometime just to check and see how things are going—talk about the country or the world or whatever—feel free. I’ll be glad to see you.”
For a moment she did not reply, continuing to study him with the same grave expression. He felt with sudden panic that he had said too much, gone too far, been very foolish. But she showed him it was not so.
“Why,” she said quietly, “I’d be delighted. I will try to do that. Soon.”
“Please do,” he said, and ventured further. “I’d be pleased.”
“Yes,” she repeated gravely, “I will do that… Mr. Secretary—Justice—thank you very much for your time. I think we’ve got a good interview. I’ll send you a copy when it comes out in the magazine. I hope you’ll like it.”
“I’m sure I will,” he said with equal formality, shaking hands as he saw her to the door. “Thank you so much.”
“Good luck,” she said.
He smiled.
“Thanks. I’ll need it.”
And so he would, he thought as he turned back to his desk, and perhaps not entirely with the law.
But this thought, for whatever it was worth—and he told himself with some impatience that it probably wasn’t worth much, certainly shouldn’t be worth much—did not occupy him for long. His secretary buzzed and he returned to his desk to pick up the phone. He assumed it must be Mary, who had not been home when he called earlier with the news. He braced himself for some sort of sarcasm, he was not sure exactly what.
“Yes?” he said, tone sharp.
“Is that you, Daddy?” Janie asked with some hesitation. “You sound awfully—awfully mad, somehow. I thought you’d be happy. I just heard about your appointment. I’m happy.”
“Thank you, baby,” he said, tone softening immediately as he sat down and swiveled his chair around to stare out at the dull blue sky and the sunlight getting heavier as the afternoon lengthened. It would be a hot night: full summer not far behind. “I’m not mad, just busy. I’m pleased too. It’s good of you to call.”
“Everybody out here at school is jumping up and down, they’re so excited,” Jane said; honesty prompting her to add, “At least, my friends are excited. Betsy Randall says her father is going to get you through the Senate Judiciary Committee in ‘jig time.’”
“Oh, she does, does she?” he said with a chuckle. “And how does she know? He hasn’t told me that, yet.”
“He will,” she said positively. “Betsy says they talked about it at dinner last night after the President called him. Has the President called you?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, remembering that quick, terse notification that assumed, as it always did, that anyone approached about anything would automatically recognize its wisdom and accept immediately without question; which in this case, of course, was true. “Yes, he called. I think it’s nice of him to select me.”
“He’d better pick you, silly old President,” Janie said. “Who else is there?”
“Lots of people.”
“Not any better!” she said stoutly.
He laughed. “Well, I can’t argue with that.”
“Have you talked to Mommy?”
“I called her earlier.”
“Yes, I know,” she said, “but did you talk to her?”
“She wasn’t home. She hasn’t called back yet.”
“But she must know by now. It’s on the news. Everybody knows.”
“I expect she’ll be calling pretty soon,” he said, tone revealing nothing. “She’s probably busy doing some errands or something.”
“I doubt it,” Jane said, sounding much older than fifteen.
“Well, I don’t know where she is,” he said, a little sharper. “I told you I called her and left word. That’s all I can do, isn’t it?”
“She ought to call you right away,” Jane said. “I did, just as soon as I knew.”
“Now, see here, Janie,” he said, “just lay off it, okay? She’ll find word at the house, or she’ll hear it on the news, or somebody will tell her—”
“Not me,” Janie said.
“—or somebody will tell her,” he repeated firmly, “and then she’ll call me. Would you like a report when she does?”
“No,” she said, laughing in spite of herself. “Of course not. But I just want her to call you, that’s all.”
“So do I,” he said calmly.
“But I expect,” Janie added, “she may say something mean. I don’t think she likes you to be famous.”
“No, it isn’t that. And you mustn’t be so critical of your mother.”
“She’s critical of you.”
“That’s something else. It’s also none of your business, young lady.”
“Well, I don’t understand it!” his daughter said flatly. He sighed.
“I think she just doesn’t—like Washington too well. She’d rather I wasn’t in public life.”
“Well, you are,” Janie remarked. “She ought to be used to it by this time.”
“I know,” he said. “But—maybe she never will be. We’ll just have to see. Anyway,” he went on firmly, closing that subject, “I’m glad I’m in public life, and I’m very glad I have your support. I’m very glad you called. Thank you very much for that, baby. I’ve got to get back to work and clear up a few things here, right now, so I’ll see you later at home, okay?”
“Okay, Daddy,” she said. “I love you.”
“I love you too, baby,” he said, and put down the phone with another sigh. His secretary promptly buzzed again. This time it was the call he expected.
“Well,” she said, “you made it, Mr. Justice. I suppose I should congratulate you.”
“I expect most people will,” he said, voice calm and, he knew, infuriating. Her voice rose sharply, as expected, in reply.
“And so I’d better not go against the crowd, hm? Well, I expect they’ll congratulate me, too. In fact, some of my friends already have.”
“And how did you answer them?” he couldn’t help asking. “With a scream?”
“I should have. But no, as always I’m being the perfect wife. ‘Thank you so much—such an opportunity for him—yes, he can be of great service—so honored the President considered him worthy—you think he will be a great Justice?—well, aren’t you kind and sweet—I shall certainly tell him… You seem to be very popular.”
“I’m getting a few calls myself.”
“All favorable?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“There’s no possibility you’d turn it down?”
“The Supreme Court?” He snorted. “Oh, come now. I accepted two hours ago, when the President called. But don’t worry. The Court doesn’t have a very heavy social schedule. You won’t have to play the perfect wife too many times a year.”
“Then I really will be bored,” she said, and sounded genuinely bleak. “But I think I’ll go right ahead entertaining anyway. It’s the only thing to keep myself from going mad.”
He uttered a sound that combined protest and resignation.
“You’re always so frantic lately. Why don’t you just relax and take it easy? There are plenty of things to keep you busy in this town. And even on the Main Line I think they consider Supreme Court Justices worthy of some respect.” He tried to be light. “I mean, there are only nine of us in the whole world, after all. Rarity should mean something.”
“I’m bored,” she said, “don’t you see? Bored, bored, bored! As I’ve told you before.”
“Then,” he said quietly, “I can only conclude that, at the heart of it, you’re bored with me. Because Washington is not all that boring a city. It is, in fact, a very exciting city. So I guess I’m the culprit.”
There was silence, after which she said in a rather distant, thoughtful voice, “Yes, I’m afraid that’s probably the truth. There was a time once, quite a long time, when you weren’t. We had fun when we were younger and you were just starting up the ladder. And for quite a while after that. But the higher you’ve gone, the more absorbed you’ve become. The more your career and ambitions have meant to you, the less I have.”
“That isn’t true! That’s a horrible thing to say! I have been a good and loving husband, a good father—”
“Yes,” she interrupted sharply. “You’ve taken Janie away from me, all right, there’s no doubt of that.”
“I haven’t taken Janie away from you! I can’t help it if Janie finds you cold and me loving. You’ve had her with you a lot more than I have. I’m sorry if you feel left out, but that must have been your own decision. It wasn’t mine.”
It was her turn to cry out.
“Oh! How can you be so—so cruel! How can you be so obtuse? I don’t think you’ve understood anybody’s feelings but your own, or been interested in anybody’s feelings but your own, for the past ten years. You’ve been so busy scheming how to get on that Court that you’ve just lost all touch with human emotions! You no longer have a heart, if you ever had one!”
“That isn’t how Janie sees it,” he said, knowing he shouldn’t, but driven by some devil he seemed unable to control. “Now is it?”
“Oh!” she cried again. “Oh!” And began to cry, which he thought was probably just a trick, so far had they parted from one another in these recent years and so little did he trust the honesty of her emotions now.
“The thing I will always remember about this day,” he went on quietly in words that he knew were searing, but again, he seemed unable to stop, “is that my own wife spoiled it for me with this telephone call. I thought all my family would be happy for me. The rest are, but the most important one is not. I feel a dead weight of opposition as I take up these new burdens. It doesn’t make them any easier to carry, and it spoils the day that should have been one of the happiest of my life.”
“You are impossible,” she said in a choked voice. “Just impossible. So superior. And so smug. And so—so perfect.”
“I’m sorry,” he said evenly, “but if that’s the way you feel, then maybe we’d better be honest about it and get a divorce.”
“Oh, no,” she said with a bitter little laugh. “Oh, no, I won’t let you get away with it that easily. I’ll stay around for a while and go right on pretending that everything’s all right. You’ve put me in hell, but that will be your hell, Tay. The perfect Justice will continue to have the perfect wife. And how envious the rest of them will be. And how happy we will be.”
“I’m going to hang up now,” he said in a dulled voice. I’ll see you at home. We can talk about it there.”
“No!” she said. “We won’t ever talk about it again! We’ll just go on, that’s all. We’ll just go on.”
“All right,” he said in the same lifeless tone. “Well just go on.”
But how they could, or how he could take up his new responsibilities with the clear head and untroubled heart he felt he must have, he did not know; and all through the afternoon as he took more calls, accepted more congratulations, answered questions from the media, taped two television segments for the evening news, a leaden sadness and worry dragged him down. Just before he left the Department of Labor at 6 p.m., after his secretary had gone for the day, he put in a call to the Washingtonian.
“Catherine Corning, please,” he requested, holding his voice steadier than he at first thought he could.
“I’m sorry,” the receptionist said, “but I believe she’s gone for the day.”
“Do you have a home number for her?”
The standard Washington answer came back.
“I’m sorry, but she has an unlisted number and we’re not permitted to give them out. If you wish to leave your name and number, I can have her call you tomorrow—”
He took a deep breath.
“Just tell her that her friend from Civics I called.”
“Civics I?” the receptionist asked in a puzzled voice. “What agency of the government is that?”
“Just tell her,” he said with a sudden impatient harshness. “She’ll understand.”
“Is this some kind of a joke?”
“That’s for her to decide,” he said in the same tone. “Just do as I say, please.”
“I’ll see she gets the message.” There was a sniff. “I only hope you know what you’re doing.”
I hope so, too, sister, he thought bitterly as he put on his coat and hat and let himself out, saying good night to the handful of guards on night duty. You bet your bottom dollar I hope so, too.
***