Sweet Hush Page 8

  But the polls said most regular Americans—including many in her own party—wouldn’t touch her with asbestos gloves. Too mouthy. Too ambitious. Not modest enough. I watched sympathetically as she tried to fix her image by hawking homemade cookies. “I make these from my favorite recipe—they’re cinnamon nut crunchies,” she told Jane Pauley on Dateline. “That’s what Al and I call them.”

  Tops in her law class, smart as a whip, managed her husband’s political career from day one, but she had to do that cookie routine to make people trust her as a woman. I could see the hard decision in her eyes. I’d held up my share of womanly cookies, too.

  “I expect she threw those things down the nearest commode the first chance she got,” I told Smooch at the time. “Have you ever seen anybody ask a man to prove he can bake cookies, just so we’ll believe he’s no threat?”

  “But those cookies appeal to the soccer mom voting demographic among her husband’s voters,” Smooch pointed out, bewildered by my disgust. “That’s what my professor in marketing class says. And what’s wrong with baking cookies? I’d bake cookies if some man asked me to.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “But I can’t even find a good man to marry. Much less bake cookies.”

  I said no more on the subject, but I knew. Edwina Jacobs would do what she had to do to get herself and her man into the White House. She’d even pretend to be a sweet little girly girl at fifty-something years old, if she had to.

  The act didn’t last long. Standing on a windy stage in front of a crowd in Des Moines, Iowa, Edwina leaned too close to a microphone that was supposed to be turned off and said to one of her assistants, “That bitch from the L.A. Times is here. Go tell her that if she hurts my daughter’s feelings again by calling her ‘a skinny nerd,’ I’ll cut her head off and defecate down her exposed windpipe.”

  God, MSNBC, and everyone else heard every elegantly obscene word.

  Well.

  No one in the entire country talked about anything else for the next two weeks. The other candidates and their wives didn’t stand a chance in the battle for public attention. One Presidential candidate’s wife was reduced to assuring Larry King, “Well, I say a good healthy damn and hell occasionally,” and then every righteous blabber in the country began debating the value of cuss words and Edwina Jacobs’ potential influence on our Precious Children. All right, so Edwina Jacobs wasn’t a sweet little cookie-baking wife or a demure Jackie Kennedy. She apologized, but you could see she had to grit her teeth.

  The strangest thing happened. Her poll ratings soared. People decided to love her for a while. She was a fighter, by God. A woman who stood up for her child and was willing to threaten people to do it. She would stand up for other women’s children. She understood. She was a working mother.

  Thanks to her, Al Jacobs won the Iowa primary, and the rest is history. I didn’t vote for him, but then I never voted in Presidential elections. I considered myself an independent with libertarian leanings, meaning the pickings were few and far between. I had given up hope on national independent candidates after Ross Perot went bat-ass silly.

  But if I had voted, I would have voted for Edwina.

  All through the campaign, there was one thing no one could dispute: Al and Edwina Jacobs had done a damned fine job as parents. Their daughter, Eddie—that skinny nerd—supported them with the wholesome sincerity of a Girl Scout doing a hard sell on leftover cookies. Not one dark whisper tainted her reputation as a sterling daughter, a dedicated student, and a fine young citizen. She didn’t drink, she didn’t smoke, she didn’t do drugs, and she told girls it was okay to keep their legs together.

  Everyone should have known she was only waiting for the right chance to run hog wild, and that a woman with Edwina’s personality was the brand of stage mother who’d make a daughter want to bolt for the nearest exit.

  I was just sorry Eddie picked my son to bolt with her.

  EDDIE THREW UP in the kitchen sink. I fed her freshly sliced apples soaked in saltwater, just as I’d promised. She ate the crisp, salty slices politely. “Holistic medicine is so admirable and down-to-earth. Davis has told me your maternal grandmother was a Cherokee apple farmer named Fruit Halfacre. I admire the Native American traditions so much.”

  “Thank you.” My Grandmother Fruit was a tough old lady who downed a shot of hundred-proof homemade liquor and a chew of rabbit tobacco every morning, not a slice of apple. I smoked a soapstone pipe she left me. But I told Eddie none of that. Unnerved, I ate several medicinal apple slices myself and debated whether a glass of wine at seven a.m. would look suspicious.

  Within five minutes our runaway First Daughter fell asleep with her head on her arms at my antique pine harvest table. Davis bent over her and stroked her golden brown hair lightly. “Get some rest, honey,” he whispered. “I’ll be nearby.”

  I motioned to him to follow me. We sat down across from each other in the cool dawn light of the farmhouse’s large dining room, a place of good carpet and old beadboard ceiling and white wallpaper embossed with fine golden apple leaves, a room filled with crystal and china and good antique furniture I’d put together over the years, piece by hard-earned piece. No apple wholesaler or grocery chain VIP or apple lobbyist or state tourism official would ever sit at my table thinking the McGillens of Chocinaw County had not returned to their former glory, or that I was an unsophisticated Daisy Mae with a few apples to sell. By god, they took me and my fine china seriously. I faced my son over a cut-glass crystal bowl filled with handsome wooden apples I’d carved with my grandfather’s whittling tools in the farm’s workshop.

  “Let’s get something out in the open,” Davis said. “I love her. And she loves me.”

  I had seen that announcement coming, but it still hit me in the stomach. The best I could manage sounded like a worn-out song lyric. “What’s love got to do with it?”

  “I love her the way Dad loved you. He lived for you. He’d have done anything to take care of you when you were upset and needed him.”

  He had no idea. “What are you trying to protect Eddie from, besides a meddling mother?”

  “She’s a prisoner in her own life. Death threats, hate mail, stalkers—you name it, she gets it. If she sits down alone in a coffee shop or a bookstore or a theater, some loudmouth mouths off about her parents. You can’t imagine what her life is like. What the world is like out there, for the daughter of a President.”

  “So you feel sorry for her and you think you can take care of her without the help of a whole troop of highly trained professionals who’d give their life for her if they had to. So you voted to get rid of them and do it all yourself. Makes sense.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “You could have counseled her to talk to her parents. You could have told me you were dating her and I’d have talked to her about her problems.” I looked at him mournfully. “Why didn’t I deserve to know about you and her? Should I hire myself some spies to find out the most important things in my own son’s life?”

  “Eddie was afraid word about us would leak out. The last guy she dated ended up on the cover of the Enquirer.”

  “You think I can’t keep a secret?”

  “We just wanted privacy.” He paused. “I know how it feels to grow up under a spotlight, with expectations.”

  I went very still. “What?”

  “I didn’t want you and a hundred McGillens and Thackerys debating whether she was good for my future.”

  “Is that how you feel your life has been?”

  “I’m only saying I understand the pressure on her.”

  “I see. You don’t trust your mother, either.”

  “Mother.”

  “She’s young. She doesn’t know what she wants. And neither do you, at the moment.”

  “Oh? You gave me a bank account and a computer on my tenth birthday and taught me to help y
ou run the business. Dad gave me a rifle and a dirt bike and taught me to stand up for myself. You told me I was a genius. He told me I was a man. Neither of you ever said I was too young to take care of myself.”

  “We lied.”

  He stood. “Do you want Eddie and me to leave?”

  “No. Of course not. This is your home. She’s your . . . guest. My guest.”

  “Good. Then please don’t ask me to explain every decision I make.”

  I got to my feet, too, fighting mad. “School has to come first and girlfriend trouble comes second. I don’t care if Eddie’s parents are the First Family of the United States – they could be the Royal Wazoos of Wazooland for all it means to me. I won’t let you jeopardize your future and drag our family’s name into the mud. I’ve worked too hard to keep it clean.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I went off on a long tirade outlining the nasty gossip about Presidents and their relatives. Hadn’t the media swarmed down to Plains and pried out every odd-peanut relative and ugly family tale among Jimmy Carter’s people? And look at what Clinton’s family had been put through. And the Kennedys, bar none. And Betty Ford’s drinking problem—all over the news. And Patty Davis’s I’ll-get-you-Mother antics. And her mother’s little astrology secret, for that matter. I stood there yelling about all that to my son because the more I thought about it the more I realized people demanded to look at every single shovel full of shit and innuendo in every Presidential household going all the way back to where Washington slept. And I was terrified.

  “Mother, calm down,” Davis said grimly, watching me. “I don’t understand what this has to do with us and our family. We’ve got nothing to hide.”

  “I just don’t . . . want to see you on the cover of the National Enquirer as Eddie Jacobs’ kidnapping boyfriend.” I finished lamely.

  “You think our family’s good name isn’t safe with me?”

  “I just want you to go back to school and graduate next spring and have options I never had.”

  “Oh? My mother is the finest apple farmer and the best businesswoman in the state,” Davis replied hoarsely. “She brought her family name back to prominence despite everyone telling her it couldn’t be done. My father loved her and believed in her and devoted himself to helping her make her dreams for us come true.” Davis halted, cleared his throat, and pinned me with his father’s heartbreakingly handsome blue eyes. “I’d be honored to live my life as successfully as either one of you. Because the two of you inspired me, and you still do. But on my own terms.”

  I stifled a need to cry. Tears, I had learned over the years, only watered the ground that wanted them. “All right, then tell me what happens next.”

  “Eddie’s parents are sending a relative to bring her back. I don’t intend to let him. I’d appreciate your support.”

  “Who is this mystery man?”

  “His name is Nicholas Jakobek.” Davis paused. “And he’s already killed one man on Eddie’s behalf.”

  Chapter 6

  NICK

  I WAS FOURTEEN IN 1972, when I first met my uncle, John Aleksandr Jacobs, the future President, in a dirty hallway outside the morgue of a hospital in Mexico City. The policio had taken my mother’s body there after she overdosed on heroin. Julia Margisia Jacobs had been kind and beautiful, but easy to break. She didn’t know who my father was, only that he must have been one of the boys she’d dated during her freshman year at the University of Illinois. Margisia Jacobs—the first college girl in the history of the Jacobs in America.

  “Everyone was so proud of me,” she liked to tell me, crying. “Until I fell from grace because I became pregnant with you.”

  She never understood how that sounded to me, her son. I lay in bed at night, swearing I’d be worthy of every breath I took. Telling myself I had to earn the right to live. Telling myself if I could save her from myself, I’d deserve to be loved. The Mexican diplomat and drug addict who had been my mother’s last boyfriend called her Dreaming Margarita. She told me her little brother Al, back in Chicago, had called her Margee. By the time she died, I called her nothing. It hurt too much to call her Mother. She’d stopped playing that role as soon as I was old enough to take care of myself. She thought she was taking care of me, and didn’t realize we’d switched. The drugs told her she was in control. I knew better. I took care of her as much as she’d let me and I never hurt her feelings, but I never called her Mother, either.

  And toward the last, she never noticed.

  I was handcuffed to a metal bench late that night at the hospital, with blood on my hands and my clothes, my knuckles swollen and bruised, my head down. I stared at the floor between my tennis shoes and tried not to think. The hallway was empty. My mother had been well-known in society as the diplomat’s drugged American mistress. I had hurt him badly.

  I heard footsteps on the tile floor, but didn’t look up immediately. I’d spent a lot of years on the streets, and I could gauge the proximity of trouble by sound and smell and even the feel of the air, like a dog. When the hard-soled feet came within range I flicked an ice pick from the cuff of my jacket, and, hiding the sharpened point inside my palm, raised my head. “Stay back,” I said in Spanish.

  The guy halted, and he looked as startled as I must have. I knew at first glance, on some instinct, that he was there to see me. He was young, maybe just a year or two out of college, but looked serious as shit. He had dark eyes and hair, like me and my mother. I pegged his build for middle-weight boxing, or playing shortstop. His hands were big but clean, like the pants and dress shirt he wore with a broad red tie askew at the collar. He was over six feet tall—my height, and I was still growing. His face looked ordinary and smart and honest. It surprised me when I thought that. Honest.

  As I sat there in a daze, looking at him, he walked all the way up to me and dropped to a squat inches from my knees. I straightened quickly and curled my fingers around the hidden stiletto. Who was he—a goddamned snake charmer? “You don’t fucking listen,” I said in English.

  “I hear what I want to hear. I only care about one thing: I’ve finally found you.” He paused, his throat working. “And your mother.”

  “I don’t know you.”

  “But I think I know you. You look like her. You have to be Nick. You call yourself Nicholas Jakobek. Jakobek is an old family name. The name your mother’s family brought over from Poland.” I said nothing. Didn’t know what to say. My mother and I had moved around a lot. As far as I was concerned, I had no family I cared about, other than her. I took the Jakobek name because she had liked it. Thought it was elegant and romantic.

  “Stay back,” I repeated louder, and lifted my hand, flashing the ice pick.

  “Impressive. I had one of those when I was a kid.” The stranger’s voice was gentle. “My father found it in my sock drawer. He threw it away and made me clean chicken carcasses for a month after school every day, at his butcher shop. ‘Here,’ he said. You punk, you want to draw blood? Cut the guts out of chickens.’ He looked like John Wayne. I loved him, but he scared the crap out of me.” The stranger paused. “He never got over your mother’s disappearance. He died young.”

  I drew a long breath. My ribs hurt. I couldn’t cry in front of him. “Who the hell are you?”

  He hesitated. His throat worked again. “I’m Margee Jacob’s little brother. I’m your uncle. Uncle Al.”

  AL JACOBS MIGHT LOOK clean-cut and All-American, but he didn’t hesitate to bribe a policeman, who unlocked my handcuffs. I stood in the morgue while a bored-looking attendant pulled my mother’s body to us on a rattling gurney, draped in a sheet. When the attendant started to toss the sheet back I said in Spanish, “Don’t touch her.” He looked at Al, who said, “Do what my nephew asks, please,” in awkward but earnest Spanish, too. The man held up his hands and backed away.

  I stood close bes
ide the gurney with my fists against my thighs, not moving, daring anyone to touch my mother, daring her to stay dead and leave me feeling as if I’d been gutted. Daring her to leave me with this brother of hers, this uncle who had shown up after all these years.

  “Nick, may I have your permission to look at her face?” The words came to me down a dark tunnel. My new-found uncle was speaking to me, his voice a low rasp. We were alone in the morgue, the only two living souls. My mother had told me a little about him when she was sober. He was still a kid when she ran away from Chicago, but they had been close. She had loved him. “Nick, please, it’s your choice,” he went on. He spoke to me with respect. He asked my permission.

  “She never forgot you,” I told him. “It’s all right for you to look at her.” I walked over to a wall and sat down on my heels with my back against the cold tile behind me.

  I heard the rustle of the sheet, and then his low sobs as he cried over her bloated body. I didn’t look up, just stared at the floor, dragging the back of one bloody hand and then the other across my eyes. After a while he grew quiet. I heard his footsteps. He dropped to his heels beside me. We shared a view of the floor in silence. Finally, he spoke. “I know you don’t think you have a family anywhere, but you do. I want you to come live with me in Chicago.”

  I wanted to tell him he was a piss-yellow do-gooder, and I didn’t need his charity. I should have told him I had no idea how to live among his kind of people, and that his family must have done something deliberate to drive my mother away when she was pregnant with me. Since he’d been gullible enough to let me out of the policio’s clutches I could walk out of this hospital anytime I wanted and disappear into the Mexican night. He’d never find me again, if I wanted it that way. The threat formed like blood on my tongue, and I started to say so.