Balance of Power

SEVEN

Their first night on Martha's Vineyard, Kerry awoke from a restless sleep.

Lara was gone. He pulled on blue jeans and a sweater and walked onto the deck. In the moonlight, Lara waded ankle deep into a chill ocean.

Watching, Kerry debated whether to go to her. Then Peter Lake said quietly, "She's all right, Mr. President."

Kerry turned. Standing beside the deck, Peter gazed at Lara.

She's not all right, Kerry wanted to say. She barely sleeps. She drops things she's forgotten she's holding. At times she's angry and demanding, and then silence descends. She cries when she shouldn't, can't cry when she should. I don't know what to do.

"Thank you," the President said simply.

* * *

At daybreak, Kerry found her sitting cross-legged on a windswept dune.

"Care to talk about it?" he asked.

Distractedly, Lara brushed the hair back from her face, still studying the water. She answered him with dispassion. "About hating myself? What is there to say? I abdicated my responsibilities in every possible way—assigning Joanie to you, helping the media to take her life over. Now they're all dead. So I sit here, hating the life we're supposed to lead."

Do you hate me? Kerry wanted to ask. But it was not the time to express his own anguish, or to ask for reassurance. Or even, right now, fairness. He could not define what fairness was.

"You didn't fail them," he told her. "I did. Our system of politics did, and our laws. That's how Bowden got his gun."

* * *

Later they drank coffee on the deck. "Politics," Lara said. This had become her recent pattern—talking in single words or phrases, at times connected to something said an hour before. When Kerry turned to her, she asked, "What will you do?"

"Break the power of the SSA, if I can. Pass a law that works. Try to keep this from happening to some other family—at least in the way it did."

Lara sipped her coffee. "Can you?"

"Perhaps. At a cost." Reflecting, Kerry studied the ocean, deep grey in a lingering mist. "People like Hampton will remind me about health care, or education—all the issues which affect more people than guns do—and worry that I'll cost us the next election.

"For my Presidency, this is a defining moment. I'm custodian of a lot of lives, a bunch of conflicting hopes, and the careers of a pack of senators and congressmen just trying to survive. Whatever I do will impact them."

Lara resumed her survey of the shoreline. "When I covered Congress," she said after a time, "I used to observe the pettiness and backstabbing, the sheer cowardice of politics, and pride myself on my worldliness. Now the whole thing makes me sick."

* * *

She tried to nap. When she emerged from the bedroom, holloweyed, Kerry placed two cups of clam chowder on the table.

Staring at the steaming cup, Lara picked up her soup spoon, put it down again. Tears welled in her eyes. "Do you know who I miss the most? My mother. She was the one who always cared for me.

"I know—she'd already lived her life. Joanie was breaking free, and Marie was so young. Mama would have gladly died to save them . . ." Voice catching, Lara bowed her head. "I feel so violated, Kerry. She was the first person I ever loved."

Kerry watched as tears ran down her face.

* * *

The night was deep and still—the faint whirring of crickets, sea grass rustling in the wind. Kerry and Lara sat on the deck, long moments passing in silence.

"A law." Her face and voice were affectless. "Can you promise me you'll pass it?"

This required no answer. Kerry offered none.

"If you're trying to protect me, don't." Her voice held a first trace of steel. "They were my family, not yours. This time I won't sit back and watch you."

* * *

They lay beside each other, sleepless in the dark. For an hour or more, neither had spoken.

"When I was little," Lara finally said, "my father owned a gun. Even then it scared me—like he did. Just passing a gun shop gave me the creeps.

"Then you were shot, and I nearly lost you." Her voice softened. "I made a pact with God—that if you lived I'd never leave you, no matter what sacrifices I'd have to make. And when you survived I believed that He had given you back to me, and now would never take you."

In the pause that followed, Kerry touched her hand. "He gave me you," she finished. "And then He took them in exchange . . ."

Heartsick, Kerry listened to the sound of muffled crying.

* * *

They walked the beach on a cool midmorning, hands in the pockets of their windbreakers. Out to sea, a Coast Guard cutter sliced along the perimeter mapped out by Peter Lake, beyond which two cabin cruisers carried photographers with telephoto lenses.

"Next week," Lara said, "there'll be a magazine cover of this moment, to remind me I'm First Lady. That's what I am now—a symbol. The only job I have."

"True. But there's much a First Lady can do."

Abruptly stopping, Lara turned to him. "Please, if I decide to do something about guns, support me."

In his worry and ambivalence, Kerry found no words. "Before this happened," she told him, "it might have been race and poverty—somewhere I could use my skills to make people see lives they choose to ignore, and actually give a damn. But I don't have a choice now. Now it's guns."

* * *

They ate more chowder by candlelight. "It's better the second day," Lara said.

Smiling faintly, Kerry watched her glass of wine kick in. At length he ventured, "There are some realities we should talk about."

"Such as?"

Aimlessly, Kerry stirred his chowder. "When it comes to First Ladies, Americans have problems with gender and lines of authority. They don't want the President's wife formulating policy, or running a task force. Marriage isn't enough—to push an agenda or propose new laws, you have to get elected to something."

"What about dead relatives," Lara answered coldly. "Is that too feeble a credential?"

"No. Not if your goal is to make people feel the tragedy of gun violence, the pain of lives lost for no good reason . . ."

"Because I'm a victim," Lara interrupted in anger and derision. "Do you know how much I hate being a victim? That's how too many people are most comfortable with women—as victims. 'Protect the mommies, save the children' . . ."

"There's more to worry about," Kerry warned. "If you get out front on this, people will say it's all about you—that if you'd become a paraplegic we'd be going full bore for stem cell research . . ."

"They say that about you," Lara snapped. "You need me, Kerry. You need women. You know it yourself—the only way to win this is by making women care even more than the gun fanatics do.

"I'm not going to tour the country with home movies of my mother, Marie and Joanie. They're dead, dammit—there's nothing I can do for them. But there are thousands of living people out there who've lost someone they love to guns.

"I know this can't be Lara Costello's traveling memorial service." Her tone was low and determined. "If I go out and do this, it will be with other men and women who are looking for a way to keep some other husband, wife or parent from suffering as they did. I can be that way."

* * *

At midnight, Kerry and Lara stood together, jeans rolled up, chill water nipping their feet and ankles. "There are risks to what you're proposing," Kerry said.

"Such as?"

"Getting shot, for one. We still get letters telling me how much better Jamie looked without the top of his head . . ."

"I'd have protection . . ."

"So did he. So did I."

Lara turned to him. "They killed my family, Kerry. When they killed Jamie, you didn't hide. You ran for Jamie's seat . . ."

"Dammit, Lara, to the kind of crazies who equate an AK-47 with their penis, you're a minority career woman with a high-toned education and a background in the liberal press, and now you want to take away their guns."

Lara shook her head, resistant. "I can't help it if people are crazy. Or that some frightened males see any assertive woman as emasculating."

Kerry watched a clump of seaweed swirl at his feet. "All right," he said wearily. "There's the abortion."

" 'The abortion,' " Lara repeated in mordant tones. "If that's to stop me, why didn't it stop you from wanting to get married?"

"Because I love you. I thought you knew that."

Silent, Lara gazed at him. Clasping her shoulders, Kerry spoke softly. "This is different. Like it or not, you're now a figure of sympathy for millions. It's a power you've never had before. Use that power, and the SSA will search for ways to destroy you.

"That would be enough for them. But it might not be enough for some fanatic with a gun. Guns and abortion is a combustible mixture— it's gotten too many people killed already. I don't want the next one to be you."

Lara studied him. "Is that all you're afraid of?" she demanded.

"What else do you think it's about?" he answered with real heat. "My visceral distaste for feminism? Or just politics?"

Lara's mouth formed a stubborn line. "If it isn't politics, don't try to intimidate me. My life, my choice." Her voice became more level. "You nearly died, then got out of bed and kept on running for President. All I could do was pray. Don't ask me to turn my back on this so you don't have to worry."

* * *

Later, Kerry held her. But that was all. They had not made love since the murders. To Kerry, Lara's grief had left her hollow.

"I don't want a child," she murmured. "At least not now."

"Why?"

"What's the usual line—'I can't bring a life into a world as cruel as this'?"

Kerry stifled his dismay. "Is that really how you feel?"

Lara exhaled. "I don't know. In the last day or so, I've wondered if a child would help heal us—a new life, a new person to love after so much death . . ."

"I've thought that, too . . ."

"But it's not a reason. People should have children more for the

child's sake than their own. Things are so unsettled now, even with us." Pausing, Lara spoke more quietly. "We need time to heal, Kerry. And I have something else to do."

Kerry fell silent.

"I worry about safety, too," Lara confessed. "All the people who'll hate me, and what could happen." In the darkness, she rested the crown of her head against his face. "I know what you want. But it's not the time to have a child."

* * *

After this Kerry could not sleep.

He lay thinking for what seemed like hours, waiting until Lara's stirring told him that she, too, was awake.

"If you do this," he told her, "use domestic violence as a wedge. Not even the SSA can advocate shooting women and children. If you keep the focus on the victims, instead of the gun lobby, there's less the SSA can say."

* * *

The next morning she asked to walk alone.

Kerry watched her become a small figure in an oversized sweater, perhaps a mile distant, gazing out to sea. It was an hour before she returned.

When she did, she took his hand. "At least you're here," she said. "If anything happened to you, I don't think I could bear it."

* * *

In candlelight Lara still looked wan. But at least, Kerry thought, she had begun to eat again.

"It's not just my family," she told him. "This is a once-in-ageneration chance to save thousands of innocent lives. What choice do I have?"

He could not quarrel with this. In his silence, Lara said quietly, "We've talked about everything but you."

"What has there been to say?"

"Quite a bit. We're caught in this cycle of guilt, me blaming myself, then blaming you. You've had nowhere to go."

Kerry could not speak. For the first time he fought back tears.

Lara watched his face. "John Bowden gave us a lot to live with. I'll try to do better, Kerry. For both our sakes."

When he reached out his hand, she took it, gazing at their fingers as they intertwined. "I'll never put this behind me," she said. "Whether I want to or not, my life will always be defined by this. The only question is what I do with it." Looking up at him, she finished softly, "I think I'm ready now."

* * *

The next morning, before they left, Kerry watched with Peter Lake as Lara took her last walk on the beach.

"Wherever she goes," Kerry said, "I want you to go with her."