22

BRUCE SINGER SAT DOWN on one of the leather chairs in the family room. He waited for the next TV commercial before asking his wife how she was and whether there were any messages for him that night. Carol told him about the call from Jenna Richardson at the Herald and watched his reaction.

“I’ve seen her name in the paper on some stories, but not usually on political stuff,” Bruce said. “That’s Jim Callum’s turf.” He got up and began walking back toward the kitchen. “She’s probably just helping out.”

Carol tried to stay calm. “What are you going to tell her?” she asked.

He hesitated slightly. “That I haven’t made a decision yet.”

“You never mentioned that you were even considering it.” She turned down the volume to silence the commercial.

“I didn’t think we had to talk about it unless I was first convinced it was something I wanted to do. Cross the bridge when you get there, you know?”

“You know damn well, Bruce, that I don’t want to see you getting anywhere near that bridge.” She had raised her voice. Once again, she told herself not to get worked up. “Besides, Sacco has done a good job and he’s a shoo-in for reelection.”

“Are we going to talk about this now, and have it out, or do you want to watch the rest of the show? Just tell me what you want to do,” he said.

Carol didn’t answer. She reached for the remote again and pushed the power button. Bruce sat down on a side chair, instead of the leather one he was in at first, and leaned slightly forward in her direction.

“Someone has to run against Sacco,” he began. “You know that. Even if the polls show that nine out of ten people say they’ll vote for him, the Party can’t roll over dead and not contest the election. Dave Waller’s in a tough position. As Democratic Party Chairman, he’s got to come up with a candidate who has some credibility and then run a campaign. He talked to me about it. Remember, I was lieutenant governor for four years. I’m the last democrat who held such a high state position.”

She interrupted him. “Ed McGurty ran against Sacco two years ago, not you.”

“Right. And he got beat. Clobbered is the word. He came out of his automobile showroom and disappeared back into it when the election was over. He hasn’t taken a public stand on anything since then. He’s not even in the picture this time.”

“He was good enough to beat you in the primary,” Carol said.

“You don’t have to remind me.” He spoke the words slowly. “Believe me, it still hurts. I didn’t take McGurty seriously and I paid the price. The public got turned on for a while by a successful businessman who said he could run state government the same way he did a car dealership. He had everyone believing he’d spend less money and be able to lower taxes. People were tired of listening to politicians, and that’s what I was at the time, unfortunately. Also, it didn’t hurt McGurty to have some wealthy backers and a million dollars of his own money to throw into the campaign. He was running three TV spots for every one of ours.

“John Sacco had the same kind of story to tell. He served a couple of terms as a Republican state rep, but that was twelve years ago. He was the executive director of Rhode Island Blue Cross when the Republicans picked him to run for governor. That made him another outsider who could keep saying it was ‘time for a change.’ But that was the mood the voters were in and he rode the wave. He killed McGurty in the debates because Ed never understood the issues or how state government works.”

“And he’s done a good job,” Carol said. “There’s no reason for people to vote against him.”

“Sacco’s been fairly successful, I’ll admit, but that doesn’t mean he’s unbeatable. Rhode Island has taken its share of hits in the recession and a lot of people are out of work. Mostly blue-collar jobs, Carol, and those are democrats. Sacco didn’t exactly beat up on the banks when the Herald broke the story about the redlining that was being done in different towns. He’s going to take a lot of heat for that. And the statistics on crime and drugs aren’t any better than they were two years ago. I don’t know how he feels about casino gambling run by the State. That could become a major issue in November. There are some pretty important things to discuss and debate before the election. Anything can happen.”

“There must be someone else in the Democratic Party who wants to run,” Carol said.

Bruce laughed. “No question about it. So far three mayors have told Waller they’re interested, including Gene D’Amico in Providence. There’s still plenty of time for a few more candidates to come out of the woodwork. Spence Hardiman is probably getting ready to announce for another six years in the Senate any day now. Then Sacco will call a press conference and let us know he wants a second term as governor. At that point any democrat who’s serious about running against him will have to go public if he wants to start getting some name recognition before the primary.”

Carol suddenly began to feel cold. She reached for the afghan on the couch and wrapped it around her. “I don’t want you to run, Bruce.” There was a hard edge to her voice. “I mean it. Politics has already done enough damage to our marriage. Another campaign could kill it.”

They were both silent for several seconds. Carol thought about what she would say from the time her phone conversation with Jenna Richardson ended. Now it all began to spill out. “I went along with you two years ago because you said you owed it to the Party. You told me they would never have supported you for lieutenant governor earlier if they knew you wouldn’t go after the governor’s chair when it was vacant. I hated every minute of that campaign. It was a blessing to me when McGurty beat you in the primary. I thanked God for that. It gave me back two months of my life that I thought would be thrown away in the general election.”

She found an old balled-up tissue in her bathrobe pocket, wiped her nose and sniffled deeply several times before going on. “If you get into this campaign, you know what it means. It’s running all around the State every day of the week. You’ll be getting home at midnight Monday through Friday, when you don’t stay over in a hotel somewhere. On weekends you’ll be attending all kinds of stupid functions. The two of us will be like ships passing in the night. You’ll shake hundreds of hands a day, but you won’t have a minute to hold mine.”

She paused again. “We were very happy when you just practiced law. There were always periods when one of us was stressed out with work, but we still managed to find time for each other. That’s not how it is when you get into one of those campaigns. The meetings, the phone calls, the fund raisers, the radio and TV shows, everything else … they never end. You do it eighteen hours a day and that’s only because everyone else is sleeping the other six.

“I’ll tell you right now that if you get into this, I won’t be out there with you. I mean for anything! Not when you make your announcement, not for any of the fancy dinners, not any place where they want to see what your wife looks like before they consider giving you their vote. So do what you want, but if the loser in this whole thing is our marriage, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

And yet Carol knew that she already did as much to destroy their marriage as he had. It all started during the primary campaign two years earlier when Bruce simply had no time for her. He was coming home late every night and running around from one event to another on weekends until he was exhausted. As it turned out, he kept delivering the wrong message, and the State’s democrats gave Ed McGurty a victory on primary day.

The result left Bruce in a deep depression. He couldn’t hide the embarrassment of a two time lieutenant governor losing to a neophyte politician, a car dealer who came out of nowhere. His law practice became his refuge and he began to cut himself off from Carol and their closest friends. He might as well have been off campaigning for President for the amount of time he spent at home. Nothing changed after John Sacco soundly defeated McGurty in the general election, receiving sixty-seven percent of the vote, an unbelievable result in a state where Democrats were the overwhelming majority. Carol began to worry about her husband. When he wouldn’t discuss his feelings with her, she urged him on several occasions to see a psychiatrist. But he refused, always intimating that his workload was getting lighter and he’d have more time to be with her.

She recalled that little changed even a year after his unexpected defeat. Carol took several weeks off from work during the summer to spend as much time as she could with Rachel, their younger daughter, who was starting college at Cornell University the last week in August. They spent long days at the shopping malls, mostly in the Boston area. And there were some wonderful mother-daughter talks when they went out for dinner together on nights when Bruce let her know he’d be home late. Carol wanted him to get in some “quality time” with Rachel also, but his tentative plans to do something with her always fizzled at the last moment.

Their sex life was mostly non-existent after Bruce’s failed campaign for governor. Every so often he seemed to break out of his depression for a day or two and appreciate her being there, but then weeks of nothing more than a soft “good night” at bedtime would follow. Carol hoped things would change when Rachel went off to Ithaca and they were alone in the house. She dressed a little more provocatively in the evenings and tried to bring a more romantic setting to the dinners they had together. Even so, her success in stimulating Bruce’s passion was very limited.

She felt unloved and unwanted most of the time. Eventually, Carol began to fantasize about a love affair that would make her desirable to someone and let her respond like a woman again. She knew she was ripe for the picking when she first fell into Doug Fiore’s arms. Her marriage would come to a crashing end if Bruce ever learned of her infidelity, but he still was far from being the partner she had to have before she could stop seeing Fiore.

Bruce looked at his wife a long time before answering. He noticed the dark shadows under her eyes and the small folds of flesh that were beginning to invade her face on both sides of her jaw. He spoke in a quiet, relaxed tone, the same way he would have tried to persuade one of his children not to drop out of college.

“Look, I don’t want anything to happen to our marriage. You know how I feel about you. But I’ve got to tell you a few things. In the first place, Carol, you’re exaggerating the time that goes into a campaign. Maybe it turns into an all consuming thing a few weeks before the primary and for a good part of the general election, but the period from April through July isn’t that bad at all.”

She cut him off. “So maybe you’re home by eleven on those nights. Call me a liar for an hour.”

“Wait a minute,” he answered quickly. “I listened to everything you had to say. It’s my turn, so let me finish.” He didn’t speak until she sank back into her chair. “I got home late a lot of those nights because I had to go back to the office and do some things for clients after I got through campaigning. Everyone there helped me out as much as they could, but there were some cases I still had to work on myself. I’m pretty sure they’d give me a commitment for more assistance this time if I asked for it. That would let me be here for dinner most nights until the heavy campaigning picked up.

“Secondly, you knew when you married me that I wanted to get into public service at some point. Two of my uncles were in the State Senate for years and that’s all I used to hear about when I was a kid. You and I laughed about my being governor some day, remember?” He paused a few moments to see if she would answer, but she didn’t.

“I stayed out of politics until Bonnie was twelve and Rachel was ten because it would have been too hard on you before that. I waited until the kids could stay home alone. That way you wouldn’t be under any pressure to leave your office by a certain time every day if I couldn’t be there. But I always contributed whatever spare time I had to help out in the elections. I networked, Carol, because I felt pretty sure that I’d be looking for those people to support me some day.

“Politics isn’t an ego trip for me. You know me better than that. I never wanted power just for the sake of having it. I don’t want people fawning over me and I don’t need anyone applauding when I speak or telling me what a great man I am. As far as I’m concerned, that stuff is just bullshit.

“All I’m interested in is making this State a better place to live and giving people a chance to grab hold of at least part of what they dream about. I want to help solve problems. Since I think I’ve got good ideas on how to make that happen, I have to be in a leadership position. Those four years as lieutenant governor don’t count. My role was just a ceremonial one. No one was interested in what I thought. I’d hate to look back years from now, knowing that I had a chance to make a difference, but stayed out of it. That would really hurt. Look, Carol, I …”

“You’ve already done your share,” she interrupted, not quite in control of her voice. “And you know that you don’t stand a chance of beating Sacco, so why drag the both of us through hell for nothing? It doesn’t make sense.”

“You may be right,” he said. “And I haven’t told Waller yet that I’d be a candidate. It might be a lot smarter for me to wait until I don’t have to go up against an incumbent, assuming the Party would still want me then. Whoever runs this time may be the Party’s choice in the next election too. It would depend on the type of campaign it turns out to be and how close the vote is. Look at what happened to Mario Cuomo in New York. He figured it would be better to wait and run against Dan Quayle instead of Bush. He never dreamed that Bush would get beat by Clinton or any other democrat. Now he’s looking at maybe eight years of Clinton and eight more years of Gore. At his age, he’s probably all washed up as far as ever running for President.”

Bruce moved his chair a little closer to Carol and put his hand on her knee. He gave her a smile he hoped would send a message that he was serious about what he was about to say but didn’t want it to anger her. “I feel bad for Mrs. Cuomo if Mario decided to stay out of the race because she told him he didn’t stand a chance of beating Bush.”

Carol didn’t react to it in any way. “When do you have to give Waller an answer?” she asked.

“He didn’t give me a deadline but the time’s getting short.”

“How will you make up your mind?”

“The usual way,” he said. “There are a number of people I still want to call. I’ll see what they think, get their advice. Then I’ll just have to weigh it myself and make a decision.”

Carol put her hand on his. “Can I add my parents to that list of people you’ll speak to before you decide?” She gave him less of a smile than she intended. Her face wasn’t cooperating.

Bruce was relieved by her change of mood. “Carol, I started to say before that I don’t want anything to hurt our marriage. I really mean that. I may hardly ever come out with the words and say ‘I love you,’ but I do, I love you very much. I can’t imagine what my life would have been like without you in it. You’ve been a wonderful wife and a great mother.

“But you’re a lawyer because it’s something you wanted to do and I’ve had to adjust to that in different ways. I’m not complaining about it. I admire you for what you’ve achieved. I just want you to understand that public service is a very big thing in my life right now and that it’s something you have to find a way of adapting to. Maybe I’ll never run for office again, who knows? But if I do, we’ve got to work out something we can live with during that period. I’ll do my best if that time ever comes, I promise. What do you say?”

Carol understood why she chose to marry this man. “I don’t know, Bruce. You’ve got to appreciate the fact that I detest politics as much as you love it. I hate what it takes away from our lives. But for right now, let’s wait and see what happens.”

Bruce took his wife’s hand, stood up and pulled her to her feet. He opened his arms and she moved willingly into his embrace. He held her tight and pressed his cheek against hers. “Are you in the mood?” he whispered.

Carol took his hand again. “To tell you the truth, I was looking forward to some good sex all day long.”