The Lavette Legacy by Fast Howard;

Author:Fast, Howard;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
Published: 2017-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

Six

She was so relieved. That was the astonishing part of it, that relief enveloped her like a benediction. Thank God, thank God, thank God — but why? This is what she tried so desperately to understand, something she had put such a price on, and now worthless. It filled her with guilt. People were plying her with sympathy and understanding, and this brought on additional guilt. They were so sincerely sorry and she was so sincerely delighted. For more than two long months, she had been a ravenous, pitiless beast. Yes, pitiless, she said to herself. You, Barbara Lavette, savage with that disease called candidatitus. It couldn’t happen to decent, knowledgeable Barbara Lavette; and then it had happened, and she had let it happen and had taken refuge finally in the indecency of Alexander Holt’s performance; and now she could look at herself and ask herself whether she wouldn’t have done the same thing — had she had the kind of dossier on Holt that Holt had on her. She tried to convince herself that if she had done the same thing, she would at least have been truthful; she would not have twisted and slanted the facts as Holt had.

But what did Alexander Holt believe, if indeed he had any beliefs beyond self-preservation? He was fighting for his life. Think of it, she told herself — the key to existence there in Washington in a hall where several hundred representatives of the people watched the world go spinning down to an atomic holocaust — and did nothing because there was absolutely nothing that they could do beyond the posturing and pretending that took up their endless hours of debate. You didn’t have to believe or dream or hope; you only had to get the votes and magic would commence. All kinds of magic. Importance. Desirability. Youth! In addition to everything else, it was a fountain of youth, because so much of youth is the ecstasy of being desired by others, and down there in Washington, where all aspects of government had turned into a lobby, to be desired and wined and dined by others was the name of the game. But wisdom sucked out of the marrow of defeat and humiliation is no halo. Barbara was not proud.

Tony Moretti sent her a great bouquet, and the note that accompanied the flowers said: “For a gallant lady, as gentle as she is lovely.” This brought tears, and Barbara wept over the note and the knowledge that Tony Moretti was dying of cancer. It was only after Election Day that she learned this. Al Ruddy told her, “He’s got six months, maybe a year. And when he goes, there’s no more like him. The damn computers have taken over.” Moretti reminded her of her father. You had to have someone in your life who would at least touch off a memory of Father or Mother. If Dan Lavette were alive, he would have been eighty-seven, and Barbara could close her eyes and see him, smell the odor of cigar smoke around him.

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