A change of gravity

ELEVEN

In February of the 1982 election year Hilliard cheerfully endorsed Joseph Bryan, a House colleague, for the Democratic nomination for the largely ceremonial and thus lightly regarded office of lieutenant governor, then vacant. It was an automatic; Bryan had done many minor favors for Hilliard and was calling his chits.

In May the senior US senator with four years remaining on his term received bad news from his cardiologist: "I'm afraid the results of the angiogram don't look good, and you're too old for a transplant. Without one at your present pace you may last three years. For your family's sake as well as your own, you ought to consider retirement." Shaken, the senator had confided in his staff, and one of them, stupid or treacherous, had leaked it before the victim could collect his wits and plan his succession.

The governor, a shoo-in for re-election, had long coveted a senate seat. It was apparent that the senator would defer his resignation until after the general election so that the governor, a friend, could appoint himself to fill the vacancy. The next lieutenant governor would succeed him. Suddenly Bryan had two strong competitors. Each of them had done several very important favors for Hilliard. Each of them sought his support. Matters became complicated.

Merrion one night about a week before the '82 primaries was in a motel bar in Worcester with several reporters, among them Charlie Doyle.

Charlie's facial skin had folds as deep as those in the hides of bulldogs, and the silver sweaty stubble in the crevices glistened in the light when he changed expression — as he did with admiration, talking about Hilliard. Charlie said that as long as he'd been around the game, 'and that is one long fuckin' time," he'd never seen anyone who could duck a question better than Dan Hilliard.

"I collared him this afternoon and asked him how he stands now on the lieutenant governor thing: is he still with Bryan? If you'd been standing here beside me you'd've sworn he's answering it — I know I thought he was. He wasn't.

"He may be the best I've ever seen, it comes to slinging it. He will not lie to you at least so you could prove it. He does not refuse to answer, and he doesn't whine and plead. "Oh gee, you can't ask me to do that." Stuffs beneath him. You stop him and you say: "Hey Dan." He says: "Hey Charlie," and that's how it begins. He stands there and talks to you, and twenty minutes go by in the twinkling of an eye he doesn't seem to stop for breath.

"You just can't help but be impressed, even thankful, all this time he's giving you. And he's so earnest about it. When he gets through doing it, he's just as fresh as springtime, and you're totally worn out. And furthermore, what's more important, you don't know a single thing you didn't know before. You may know even less. At least until this afternoon, I knew he was still with Bryan.

"Now I'm not sure of that. I've had the Hilliard Treatment, and boy, do I feel good, like a million bucks, Dan Hilliard's been so good to me. When you feel like you've just had sex you've had the Hilliard Treatment. Yes, my child, you have been fucked, but it's really not so bad you've been fucked so very well. That's why all us whores like Danny; he's what makes the job worthwhile. We let him have his way with us, anytime he likes, 'cause we have a good time too."

Then Charlie Doyle had smiled. "That's how he does the magic tricks.

He gets you to help him. You don't even realize it. You went in as his adversary: this time you're gonna smoke him out, once and for fuckin' all. But before you even know it, you've become a volunteer from the audience, right beside him in the footlights, grinning like a fool.

"You know what I bet?" Charlie'd said. "I bet he's always like this now, he's so good at it. He's with the wife and kids, and one of them says to him "Daddy, can I have an ice cream cone?" He does the same song-and-dance he does for you and me, everyone he deals with, face-to-face and day-to-day. By the time he's through, the little kid has either gone to sleep, or lost all interest in the fuckin' ice cream cone. Grown up, gone off to school."

"Julian's one of those people," Hilliard said on the patio, 'that you go to when you really don't have enough on your mind. You give him money to relax you. Julian's very relaxing. He's in charge of fixing things that don't need fixing, and really don't have to work right anyway. Like golf. You do not have to play golf, much less play golf well. Golf is an option, nothing more. The problems it creates for those who get problems from it are volitional. The only reason they exist is because we wish them to. Julian solves those problems."

Julian's third client hit his drive straight down the fairway with a nice loft on it, but it traveled no more than 150 yards, down to the first little hollow. He appeared to have sacrificed distance for accuracy. Julian cleared his throat and said: "Nice and true, Paul, nice and true. Need some more oomph on it, though. Little more meat in it."

"Gotta get the old ass into it, Paul," Julian's first client said, still gloating over his drive as he got into the cart with Steve.

Merrion hoped idly the gods of golf would punish Pete severely for the rest of the day.

"Julian's optional, too," Hilliard said.

"Yeah, yeah, where the hell've you been?" Merrion said, looking at his watch. "It's twenty after and the message that you left on my machine yesterday said our tee-time was eleven-thirty. Fuck've you been all this time?"

"I was over at the house in Bell Woods," Hilliard said.

"You were over the house in Bell Woods," Merrion said. "What the hell're you doing Bell Woods? Fourteen years, you haven't lived inna place? You forget all a sudden who owns it?"

"Mercy called up from the Vineyard this morning," Hilliard said. Under the terms of the property settlement agreement Daniel and Marcia (Hackett) Hilliard had in his words 'fairly rationally reached, meaning not too much blood was let' negotiating their divorce, they retained joint ownership of the house at West Chop, the survivor of them to enjoy a tenancy for life, at his or her death the remainder of the estate to be sold and the proceeds evenly divided between Timothy and Emily Hilliard. Mercy got occupancy during August, which both of them preferred; he had the run of it from Memorial Day through the last Saturday in July.

"She gets the part she calls "the hurricane season, when it's so crowded you can't move, horribly crowded, and so hot you can't do anything." Says it proves she got screwed on the deal. I say what she got's "the best part of the summer, when it's nice and warm and everyone you want to see is there," he said. "Of course it isn't crowded when I'm there; no one who's got any sense goes there in June.

July; they wait 'til August. The sun and the Gulf Stream don't warm up the water enough to swim in until around the end of July, so all of us who go there before that either stay out of the water or freeze our balls off."

She had gotten the main house in Bell Woods estates in Hampton Pond.

"When Nick Hardigrew was still alive, he had a key to the house. I think he found out how to get into something else over there too, but who'm I to make remarks? Nobody is. Hell, one of our English teachers, queer as a green horse but funny as hell; three or four of us were talking the other day about how all of us like western movies and nobody makes them anymore, and he says he even likes westerns. And somebody said: "Really? You guys like westerns?" And he says: "Oh, yes, absolutely, faggots love westerns. Especially the Lone Ranger.

Man with a mask on; so he goes on top. And Tonto: Such a hunk. If he'd only take his shirt off. Really he is such a dream. And once you know Kemo sabe means "Snookums," I mean, how could anyone ever resist?"

Everyone's got something going."

"Anyway, Mercy didn't give a key to this new lawn guy she's got now.

Told me she hasn't known him long enough yet to be sure she can trust him. So he was over there this morning and he called her and said he thought he heard water running inside, sounded like down in the cellar.

Somebody had to go over, go in and look at it, maybe get a repairman.

Tim's in Singapore with his new bride, seems to have a little better disposition than his old one did; showing her the assembly plants he runs from his office in Stamford, twelve thousand miles away. Emily's teaching summer session down in Santa Fe."

Hilliard had not lingered conversationally over his surviving daughter's living arrangements since she and a female collegue at Smith had purchased a showpiece antique farmhouse in Worthington. Since Merrion's policy was to welcome and honor personal confidences but never seek such information, he did not know whether they remained on the speaking but distant terms Hilliard had salvaged by groveling for his daughter during the publicly colorful passage of the break-up of his marriage.

In those days, to Emily's explicit disapproval, he had been frequently described in the papers as 'debonair chairman of Ways and Means' and 'man about Hill and town." The Herald called him "Dancing Dan' in the caption of a photo of him in swim trunks, surrounded by three smiling bimbos each with 'more cleavage'n Grand Canyon," Merrion told him dolefully by phone reclining on a beach chair with the ocean in the foreground and St. Thomas in the background, during a February blizzard in New England, Fred Dillinger in his Transcript column called him 'our own sunshine-lover, Dapper Dan Hilliard playing patty-cake while we all shovel."

He seemed then to be determined the parade of young women he was photographed escorting through his life would never end, one after another lissome lady in her twenties smiling at the camera with many white teeth and displaying long shiny hair, generally blonde, their large bosoms and long legs exposed to vulgar eyes and lewd speculation by microscopic dresses and 'wide belts instead of skirts." But in time the fun did end when he resigned his seat in the House in '84, four months ahead of impending electoral disaster, to become at age fifty president at Hampton Pond Community College.

He told Merrion that Emily had congratulated him on his appointment, saying she was happy because she figured he was 'finally getting tired of acting like the biggest asshole in the world." Because Hilliard was his best friend and Emily was not, Merrion did not say what he thought: that most people who knew and liked her father had for a while sadly and reluctantly shared her opinion.

All that had been several years before Emily at age thirty-one and her partner, Karen, thirty-eight, had decided to make public their commitment to each other in a meadow setting, inviting the papers. The Pioneer Valley Record, a weekly in Cumberland, ran two pictures;

Hilliard did not appear in them because he had not attended the ceremony.

"I was not invited," he told Merrion. "I chose not to be. Emily called me up and told me what was going to happen. She said she'd invited her mother and Mercy'd gotten all bent out of shape and begged her not to go through with it. Pleaded with her to be satisfied with living openly with Karen, if that's what she was sure she wanted to do.

No one was trying to stop them, so why go public and cause the rest of us all this pain and embarrassment. Emily said Mercy should have joy, not that negative reaction, that she's found her life's companion and partner, and celebrate their union, and that just shows how insensitive we are to her real needs.

"Emily told me her mother's reaction made her think she'd better call me up and ask me whether I wanted to come, or would I rather try to make her feel bad instead, like her mother had just done. So she was asking did I want to be invited, and she would like to have my true and honest answer.

"Remember the big kid in the sixth grade with you he'd been kept back so many times they had to let him out of gym so he could go and vote?

Used to stick his chin out and ask you if you were trying to start a fight at recess poke you in the chest before he hit you in the guts?

Same tone of voice.

"I thought about the way she acted when Mercy and I were having such a grand old time of it kicking the living shit out of each other when we were breaking up. Emmy's contribution then was to make it worse for both of us by acting like she's the one who's getting hurt, squawking at me about all the bad publicity I was getting as though I'd been out there trying to get it."

"I don't remember you working too hard to avoid it," Merrion said.

"No," Hilliard said, his voice roughening, "I didn't. I stopped living a monk like Sam Evans said after Mercy alleged adultery. The hell was the point of celibacy after that? Sit around and beat my meat after I've been publicly accused of getting laid three times a day? But I didn't go out and arrange the damned press coverage, which is what Emily's doing. She's deliberately staging this sideshow so it'll be in all the papers that she's a lesbian. Part of my job's enforcing college rules that say no public sexual conduct or display. And I've actually got people on my campus who say that's violation of academic freedom. So now Emily's very sweetly asking me if I wouldn't love to be a part of her little pagan feast.

"I gave it some thought. "Which'd I rather do: what my dear daughter's offering here or jump into a live volcano?" I decided I'd prefer the volcano. This isn't a celebration she's planning; this is a counterattack. No reason to stand out in front of it. So I said: "Uh uh, no thanks. Appreciate the call though. Lots of luck to you and Karen. Toodle-ooh." And that's the way we left it.

"So, who did that leave with a key around here? You're looking at him.

Hot-water heater tank blew a relief valve. I got Ralph Stallings to fix it this morning, actually come out on a Saturday, but I had to be there, let him in. Then wait around while he fixed it; lock up again after he left."

"You still got a key?" Merrion said.

"Yeah," Hilliard said. "I didn't realize it either, not for quite a long time. I first found out I still had it I dunno when it was, five, six years ago, same situation. Somebody was going to go there to do something, install something, I dunno, and that was the only day they could come and she'd been waiting a long time have it done. But it so happened she had to be someplace else that same day, so would I be a nice guy and do her a favor and go over there, let him in. I was kind of surprised myself. It wasn't like I minded or anything, I'm only just up the street and let's face it, I pretty much come and go as I like. So it was no big deal.

"But when she first called up and asked me, did I still have my key; I admit I was kind of surprised. I said: "Yeah, I think I might still have it around here someplace; I don't think I threw it away. Why?"

And she told me, and I said: "Well, geez, you know, the reason I'm not sure I've got it is I assumed it wasn't any good anymore. Isn't it sort of traditional, part of the ritual, that when the wife winds up with the house, she gets all the locks changed?"

"And she said yeah, she guessed it was, but one thing and another, she never got around to it. The kids when we split up, they were still living there. Later on, they're in college, they still had to have a place to come back to. After that Tim's first marriage came apart; he lived here until he got resettled. Emmy was sort of between jobs and up in the air for a long time, figuring out what she was. So they both would've needed new keys if Mercy'd gotten the locks changed.

'"It just seemed simpler," she said to me, "if I left things the way they were. And it wasn't as though, you know, I was ever afraid of you. I never considered myself a prospect for one of those afternoon talk-shows: "Women whose ex-husbands stalk them." I never went to bed at night thinking maybe you might be looking in the windows; I never thought you'd ever want to hurt me. Not in that way, anyway."

Hilliard smirked. "My little Mercy, just as sweet as ever always gets her little dig in.

'"And anyway," she says, "everybody that I know who's got a house, ex-husband or no ex-husband around, they've all got someone who doesn't live there that's got a key to it. In case someone needs to get in while they're gone, the fire department or something. Someone they can trust. Well, you're ideal far as that kind of trust's concerned anyway. You live right near me; I know if I fall down some night, break my leg or something and can't move, if I can call an ambulance I can get you up and you'll come over, let the paramedics in. And when I'm on the island, you're usually here. So I just never got around to it."

"So anyway, that's where I was," Hilliard said. "Waiting for Ralph Stallings to come. And finish his work and then go. Sorry to've kept you waiting."

"So, are we playing?" Merrion said, catching another whiff of cognac, thinking: Mercy's still stocking the bar in the study with V.S.O.P.

"I called Bolo up this morning," Hilliard said, 'after I called your house first and I got your machine. That to me says you'd either left already to come here or were on the road to God-knows-where-else first, and then you're coming here. Or else that you got lucky last night and you haven't been home, and as soon as you two get through hiding the salami a few more times with last night's catch-of-the-day, you're coming directly here. I didn't have your car-phone. So I called Bolo and told him the situation. So when you got here and came looking for me, tell you what's going on, ask you to wait; I'm on my way. Bolo said when I got here to find him and he'd fit us in whenever we wanted.

I take it you didn't bother, see Bolo."

"No point in it," Merrion said. "Your car wasn't in the lot when I got here. Obviously you're not here. I changed my clothes and come out here. Obviously also, something's going on, which so far I don't know about, but probably will when you finally get here. So I'll sit here and wait, watch Heck's baffling kid for a while. You've known me a long time, Daniel my friend. I'm the patient sort, not a guy who craves excitement. I'm more the type who likes to sit back, take his time and see how things develop. Hell, I out waited Larry Lane and Richie Hammond, both; so far that's worked out pretty well."

Hilliard snickered. There was no happiness in it. "Well, yeah, up 'til now it seems to've," he said. "Like the guy who fell off the roof forty stories up: when someone yelled from the twentieth floor he was gonna get killed, he said: "Oh I dunno; so far now it's been all right." I'm just not so sure how much longer." '"How much longer" what?" Merrion said.

"How much longer things stay okay," Hilliard said. "I'm beginning to think time isn't always on your side. You can't always count on it being that way, time's always working for you. Stands to reason that sometimes it has to work the other way, right, in favor of somebody else. And therefore work against you.

"You shouldn't let yourself become too sure of things. They've got a way of turning on you in a flash and taking a big bite out of you.

Things don't always stay the same, the way we're used to and they've always been. At least that's what I'm starting to think. This could be a true fact; that we may be starting to find out what we've got on our hands now may not be something we're used to. And wed be a whole lot better off if we came to grips with it right off, started dealing with it. Things may now be very different. I think maybe we have to realize that."

He paused and moistened his lips, gazing at Merrion as though expecting him to say something. Merrion frowned and shook his head. He said nothing.

Hilliard cleared his throat. "Well, ah," he said 'one reason I'm late … well, the reason I'm late is the reason I told you. I hadda go over Bell Woods. But I wasn't sorry, it made me be late. It gave me some time to think. I'm seeing some stuff going on that I'm not sure I like. And I'm not sure what we do about it. I wanted to think, before I saw you, about what it is that we should do about this shit."

"Dan," Merrion said, 'you're making me nervous here. I'm starting to get very nervous."

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Hilliard said, looking worried and licking his lips. "That's what I mean, I was trying to say. I'm a little uneasy myself."