The barbecue couldn't just be a plain old barbecue. It had to be built around some kind of a central media concept. In this case, the concept was that all of the various regions of the United States were competing to see where the best barbecuing was done. Mary Catherine strolled among the smoking beef pits, from Texas, North Carolina, Kansas City, and decided that, beyond providing her with a quick take-out dinner, comparative barbecue was not very interesting to her.
Flocks of black birds, just like the ones Mel had raved about, swirled around the grassy areas scavenging the ends of french fries. One of Dad's favorite sixties rock bands was playing in the bandshell to the north, but she found their songs just one step above Muzak. To the south, on Hutchinson Field, a number of impromptu games were underway: touch football, frisbee, softball, volleyball. She didn't feel like getting sweaty just yet, and stayed close to the footpaths, which were lined with double rows of shade trees.
Across Lakeshore Drive, along the border of the yacht basin, things were much quieter and several degrees cooler. The basin was dotted with numbered white-and-blue buoys where recreational boats could tie up. There was no beach here, just a stone seawall with one or two depressed platforms where boats could take on or discharge passengers. A couple of big tour boats were circulating between these sites and the open lake, taking people on free rides so that they could appreciate the splendour of the Loop as seen from Lake Michigan. That looked cool and relaxing, so Mary Catherine climbed on board one of the boats, sat down in a deck chair, and took her freshly barbecued hamburger out of its wrapper. She and her Secret Service agents were the last persons to cross the gangplank; within a few moments the boat was motoring out through a broad avenue between the white buoys, headed for a gap in the breakwater.
As she was polishing off the last of her hamburger, a woman separated herself from the crowd of people standing along the railing of the boat and approached her. She was black, nicely dressed, probably in her forties but capable of looking younger. She " moved with unusual confidence through the loose picket fence of Secret Service agents, giving each of the guards a knowing smile and a nod. She had a nice face and a nice smile. "Hello," she said, gesturing to an empty deck chair next to Mary Catherine. "Is this taken?"
"Go ahead," Mary Catherine said. "You're not from around here, are you?"
The woman laughed. "Eleanor Richmond. It's nice to meet you, Ms. Cozzano," she said, extending her hand.
"Nice to meet you," Mary Catherine said, shaking it. "I'm sorry I didn't recognize you right away - I've seen you several times on TV."
"Several times. Well, you are one attentive TV watcher. I haven't been on that many times."
"I watch Dr. Lawrence's program pretty regularly," Mary Catherine said, "and he seemed to like you."
"He hates me," Eleanor said, "but I do wonders for his ratings. And, I suspect, for his fantasy life."
"I was so sorry to hear about Senator Marshall," Mary Catherine said.
"Thank you," Eleanor said graciously.
Caleb Roosevelt Marshall had gone back to his ranch in southeastern Colorado "to clear some brush" in the third week of July. The doctors, aides, and bodyguards who traveled with him all the time had arisen early one morning to find his bed empty. Eventually they had found him on the top of a mesa. He had ridden up there before dawn, watched the sun rise over the prairie, and then blown his heart out with a double-barrelled shotgun.
He left letters addressed to several people: his staff, various senate colleagues, old friends, old enemies, and the President. Most of the contents of these letters were never revealed, partly because they were private and partly because many of them were unprintable. The President read his letter - two lines scrawled over a piece of senate stationery - threw it into the fire, and ordered a double Scotch from the White House bar.
Eleanor's note said, "You know what to do - Caleb. P.S. Watch your back."
They flew his body back to the Rotunda, where it lay in state for twenty-four hours, and then they flew him back to Colorado, where he was cremated and his ashes spread over his ranch. As per Marshall's written instructions, Eleanor ran the office for the next two weeks, while the Governor of Colorado debated whom to appoint to replace Marshall.
He ended up appointing himself. The polls indicated that many Coloradans took a dim view of this, seeing it as naked opportunism. But his first official act was to fire Eleanor Richmond. That announcement sent his approval rating sky-high.
"I hope you get a good job," Mary Catherine said, "you deserve one."
"Thanks," Eleanor said. "I've had some feelers. Don't worry about me."
"You know, as a person who was raised Catholic, I have to take a dim view of suicide," Mary Catherine said, "but I think that what the Senator did was incredibly noble. It's hard to imagine any Washington person having that much backbone."
Eleanor smiled. "Caleb felt the same way. And apparently he said so in some of the notes he left behind."
Mary Catherine threw back her head and laughed. "Are you kidding? He taunted people-
"-for not having the guts to commit suicide," Eleanor said, "which would be the only decent way out for some people in D.C."
"Are you here as an observer," Mary Catherine said, "or are you a participant?"
"This whole thing is so slick I'm not sure there's a difference," Eleanor said.
"I hear you," Mary Catherine said.
"But to answer your question, I was invited here for the debate."
"Debate?"
"Yes. Thursday night. After The Simpsons and before L.A. Law. All of the potential running mates are going to fight it out."
"He's considering you as a running mate?" Mary Catherine asked. She was embarrassed to have been so surprised. Eleanor was looking at her knowingly and indulgently. "I mean, don't get me wrong, you'd be great," Mary Catherine said. "You'd be fantastic. But I hadn't heard any of this."
"Honey, remember how this works," Eleanor said. "Neither your dad nor any other candidate is going to pick a black woman as a running mate anytime soon - and if they did, they'd never pick me. But he does get some brownie points - as it were - for putting one in the final four. And that's why I'm invited."
"Well, I'll definitely look forward to the debate."
"How about you? What's your role in all this?" Eleanor said, sweeping her hand across the smoking panorama of the barbecue.
Mary Catherine looked at the view and considered this question. She knew now why she had chosen to go on the boat ride: to get away, to stand back from things, to look at her life from a distance. The same impulse had probably struck most of the people on the boat. This conversation with Eleanor was just what she had been looking for.
She trusted Eleanor instinctively and wanted to tell her the truth: that something was wrong with her father. That during the last couple of months she had watched his every move, listened to his every utterance, used every scrap of her neurological training to piece together the puzzle of what was happening inside his brain. That she was spending a couple of hours a day with him in intensive, private therapy, trying to bring him back. And that the further she got into this thing, the lonelier she got, the more scared she became.
But she couldn't quite say that yet. So she had to play the airhead. "Who the hell knows?" she said.
Eleanor put one hand over her mouth, in a gesture that was incongruous and cute in a tough middle-aged woman, and laughed.
Mary Catherine continued, "My role is to be pretty, but not too pretty; smart, but not too; athletic, but not too. I think what they really wanted was a nice college girl. You know, the kind of girl who could go to college campuses in jeans and a sweater and sit cross-legged on the floor in dorm loungers and rap with her peers. They got a neurologist instead. And there's only so many AIDS babies I can kiss before that gets kind of old. So my life is on hold for a while until things settle down."