A little later he nodded off himself and woke with a start to find her looking out the window, her fist clenched. The television kept flashing up the result: Ralph Brooks selected as Democratic candidate for the Senate by 7,118 votes, a margin of less than half a percentage point. On the screen was a picture of Brooks waving and smiling to his supporters.
Florentyna turned around and stared at the screen once more. Her eyes did not rest on the triumphant State’s Attorney but on a man standing directly behind him. Now she knew where she had seen that smile before.
Florentyna’s career in politics had come to a halt. She was now out of Congress and would have to wait another two years before she could even hope to re-enter public life. After Annabel’s problems, she wondered if the time had come to return to the Baron Group and a more private existence. Richard didn’t agree.
‘I would be sorry if you gave up after all the time you’ve put into it.’
‘Perhaps that’s the point. If I hadn’t become so involved with my own life and taken a little more interest in Annabel, she might not be facing an identity crisis.’
‘An identity crisis. That’s the sort of garbage I’d expect to hear from one of her sociology professors, not from you. I haven’t noticed William collapsing under the strain of an “identity crisis.” Darling, Annabel has had an affair and was careless; it’s as simple as that. If everyone who took a lover was considered abnormal, there would only be a few of us strange ones left. What she most needs at this moment is to be treated as an equal by you.’
Florentyna dropped everything and took Annabel to Barbados. During long walks along the beach, she learned of the affair her daughter had had with a man at Vassar. Florentyna still couldn’t get used to the idea of men going to women’s colleges. Annabel wouldn’t name the man and tried to explain that although she still liked him, she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life with him. ‘Did you marry the first man you went to bed with?’ she asked. Florentyna didn’t reply immediately, and then told Annabel about Scott Roberts.
‘What a creep,’ said Annabel after she had heard the story. ‘How lucky you were to find Dad in Bloomingdale’s.’
‘No, Annabel. As your father continually reminds me, he did the finding.’
Mother and daughter grew closer together in those days than they had been for years. Richard and William joined them in the second week of the holiday and they spent fourteen days together getting plump and brown.
Richard was delighted to find Annabel and Florentyna so relaxed in each other’s company, and touched when his daughter started referring to William as ‘my big brother.’ Richard and Annabel regularly beat William and Florentyna at golf in the afternoons before spending long evenings chatting over dinner.
When the holiday came to an end they were all sad to be returning home. Florentyna confessed that she did not feel like throwing herself back into the political fray, until Annabel insisted that the last thing she wanted was a mother who sat home and cooked.
It felt strange to Florentyna that she would not be fighting a campaign herself that year. During her battle with Brooks for the Senate, the Democrats had selected Hugh Abbots, a capable young Chicago lawyer, to run for her seat in Congress. Some members of the committee admitted that they would have held up the decision if they thought Brooks had had the slightest chance of winning the party’s nomination for the Senate.
Many voters asked Florentyna to run as an independent candidate, but she knew the party would not approve, especially as they would be looking for another senatorial representative in two years’ time: the other United States senator, David Rodgers, had repeatedly made it clear that he would not be running for re-election in 1984.
Florentyna flew into Chicago to speak on behalf of Hugh Abbots on several occasions and was delighted when he won the seat, even though he captured it by only 3,223 votes.
Florentyna faced the fact that she would now have to spend two years in the political wilderness, and it didn’t ease the pain when she read the Chicago Tribune’s headline the day after the election:
The Future
1982–1995
Chapter thirty-one
William first brought Joanna Cabot home at Christmas. Florentyna knew instinctively that they would be married, and not just because her father turned out to be a distant relative of Richard’s. Joanna was dark-haired, slim and graceful and shyly expressive of her obvious feelings for William. For his part, William was attentive and conspicuously proud of the young woman who stood quietly by his side. ‘I suppose I might have expected you to produce a son who has been educated in New York, lived in Washington and Chicago but ends up returning to Boston to choose his wife,’ Florentyna teased Richard.
‘William is your son as well,’ he reminded her. ‘And what makes you think he’ll marry Joanna?’
Florentyna just laughed. ‘I predict Boston in the spring.’
She turned out to be wrong: they had to wait until the summer.
William was in his final year as an undergraduate and he had taken his business boards and was waiting anxiously to be accepted at the Harvard School of Business.
‘In my day,’ said Richard, ‘you waited until you had finished school and made a little money before you thought about marriage.’
‘That just isn’t true, Richard. You left Harvard early to marry me and for several weeks afterwards I kept you.’
‘You never told me that, Dad,’ said William.
‘Your father has what in politics is called a selective memory.’
William left laughing.
‘I still think—’
‘They’re in love, Richard. Have you grown so old you can’t see what’s staring you in the face?’
‘No, but—’
‘You’re not yet fifty and you’re already acting like an old fuddy-duddy. William is almost the same age as you when you married me. Well, haven’t you anything to say?’
‘No. You’re just like all politicians: you keep interrupting.’
The Kanes went to stay with the Cabots early in the new year and Richard immediately liked John Cabot, Joanna’s father, and was surprised that, with so many family friends in common, they had not yet met before. Joanna had two little sisters, who spent the weekend running around William.
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ Richard said that Saturday night in bed. ‘I think Joanna is just what William needs.’
Florentyna put on an extreme mid-European accent and asked, ‘What if Joanna had been a little Polish immigrant who sold gloves in Bloomingdale’s?’
Richard took Florentyna in his arms and said, ‘I would have told him not to buy three pairs of gloves because it would work out cheaper just to marry the girl.’
Preparations for the forthcoming wedding seemed complicated and demanding to Florentyna, who remembered vividly how simply she and Richard had been married and how Bella and Claude had lugged the double bed up the stairs in San Francisco. Luckily Mrs. Cabot wanted to handle all the arrangements herself and whenever something was expected of the Kanes, Annabel was only too happy to leap forward as the family representative.
In early January, Florentyna returned to Washington to clear out her office. Colleagues stopped and chatted with her as if she hadn’t left the House. Janet was waiting for her with a pile of letters, most of them saying how sorry they were that Florentyna would not be returning to Congress but hoping that she would run for the Senate again in two years’ time.