Close Relations by Susan Isaacs

Author:Susan Isaacs [Susan Isaacs]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780062031051
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1980-04-10T14:00:00+00:00

Twelve

Our adversary, Sidney Appel, announced his candidacy for governor of New York from beneath a flowering dogwood. He stood behind a row of microphones which reached toward him, like flowers in different stages of bloom seeking warmth or nourishment from his mouth.

His wife stood at his left. Political strategists hold differing views of a wife’s position. Some say she should be on his right to show her importance: “She’s my right hand.” Others say the left, the wedding-band hand, is better, more clearly associated with marriage. Mrs. Appel wore a blue shirtwaist dress, appropriate for a country wife under a dogwood tree. Her expression was unreadable, although it might have been the late-afternoon Catskill sun in her eyes. Perhaps she was annoyed that, despite her cat-food millions, she was forced into a cotton dress when she could have been draped by Givenchy. Perhaps the cameras made her nervous. Maybe she didn’t care. She could have been drugged.

On Appel’s right was Senator Maryjo Beinstock, two years into her first term, wearing her usual sensible suit and, quite unsensibly, taking sides very early in the primary. Squinting through her thick glasses, she looked pleased with her decision though, pleased with Appel, with life, and with the television coverage. She was a liberal, a Reform Democrat. She and Paterno were polite to each other, but he had no reason to suspect she would back him. Yet he seemed upset, angry with her.

“Damn Maryjo,” he spit out. We were standing in LoBello’s office, in front of his color television, watching Appel declare. “Not even a courtesy call. She just marches out there wearing those goddamn eyeglasses of hers.” Paterno, just back from an upstate swing, was trying on moods until he could find the right one. He had been pleased at the attention paid to him by the press, chagrined that the mayor of Utica would not endorse him, angered that the crowd at the Albany airport had been so sparse, delighted that the teachers’ and the steamfitters’ unions had come forth with hefty contributions, irate over Sunday dinner in Syracuse. “Could you believe it? Rare chicken,” he had told me. “Disgusting. I almost threw up.”

On each side of “the two best supporters a man could hope for” were arrayed Appel’s backers and key staff people. His media director had obviously decreed that this was a simple plain-folks event. All of them—from Lowell Drutman, a normally pin-striped congressman, to Phoebe Nemo of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, who generally preferred made-in-U.S.A. green sateen—were dressed as if about to choose partners for a square dance.

Rowena Hollander, who would head Appel’s advance teams, actually wore a red bandanna over her short black hair. While this might have been acceptable on a teenager about to allemande right, it was odd-looking on a Smith alumna who hadn’t seen nineteen since the days of the Army-McCarthy hearings.

“Hey, look at old Rowena,” Lyle hooted. “Boy, does she look like a jerk.”

She had advanced for every major New York Democratic

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